This is extremely well written, and nails almost all of my thoughts on the matter. I try and be skeptical when someone says something I agree with *a little too much* but I've been down this exact road and come to the exact same conclusion. I've also ran into others who have as well.
A friend I had made on Twitter who was really into stoic philosophy called it the Meta-crisis. I learned of a professor who teaches in the University of Toronto who calls it the Meaning Crisis. I call it the Paradox Crisis.
It's a nebulous effect, and I don't believe there's a singular mind with a singular purpose behind it, but thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of mutually aligning agendas converging into one phenomenon. The result is a population of stereotypes:
People who are either so indifferent or overworked that even starting to figure it out is impossible for them or simply lack the natural creativity to understand
People who are so burned out from trying that they've abandoned the task and withdrawn from society as much as possible and refuse to help anyone else
People who have been rewarded for toeing the line and accepting the status quo and ruthlessly mock anyone who thinks there's more to it than what they can see
People who have succumbed to paranoia and faulty research methods and can no longer differentiate between fiction and reality
People who, like you and me, have tried their best, made a lot of progress, but at the end of the day, still don't know and see the rough outline of the true problem and are overcome by the enormity of it
I've been searching for a way to solve this, some perfect combination of words which can be used like a swiss army knife to solve it all, and the more I do the messier it gets, like a kid playing with finger paints. It's a problem that resists fixing, because truth is messy and we like the comforting order that fiction provides us.
Absolutely, all of that. I think for me personally it helps a lot to find other people who at least also see the problem and go ‘this is being presented to us from two radically different angles and they’re both stupid, aren’t they?’ And then they go ‘yep’ and just that makes me feel better.
I mean in the end none of us can prove anything - that we’re not in the matrix, that we’re not butterflies dreaming they are human. But trying to follow some degree of logic, even if it brings us to a point where we have to admit that a certain thing is currently unknowable - or unknowable to us at this time at least - that’s already something.
I just need to be able to call out obvious bullshit when it’s obvious, otherwise it literally hurts my soul. I think a lot of us are like that. You need to put your finger on ‘what they’re trying to sell me as a reason is a pile of horseshit’.
Yup I agree completely. Before I gave up and left Facebook completely I was starting to lose friends left, right and center because any time they were posting things it was bullshit. I was nice about calling it out but they didn't care that what they believed wasn't true and kept getting angry at me for addressing their delusions. If I have to choose between being popular and knowing the truth, I pick the truth.
Also love me some Chuang Tzu. My first introduction was the video game review I'm currently doing; Chrono Trigger. There's a city on a floating island called the City of Dreams and you run into a spirit who says: "Am I a butterfly dreaming I'm a man... Or a bowling ball dreaming I'm a plate of sashimi? Never assume that what you see and feel is real!"
Haha totally. But you have to assume a little bit. It’s basically the theory of the God of the Gaps, right? We can’t know eeeeeverything, so we have to assume some basic things. But we should always be aware of where that assumption line is, I guess.
Truths are like a net while lies are like a brick wall.
Truths support each other. You start with one truth and link it to another. They reinforce each other. The more truths you have, the bigger your net becomes and the smaller the holes. You start to realize where the holes are, and what doesn't support each other, so you're more likely to notice what isn't a truth. At first you can catch really big lies, and eventually your net gets good enough that you're even catching the really small ones.
Lies don't support each other. You pile one lie on top of another lie and the wall becomes crooked. Add another one and it starts to become unstable. Eventually you just can't keep stacking them up because the wall wants to fall over. Now, you can either admit you've surrounded yourself with lies, tear the wall down and start over, or you can spend all your time trying to hold the wall up to keep reality out.
So while you can't know everything, the more you work on telling the difference between fact and fiction, the better you get at it. It will never be perfect, but it will be good enough to fit your purposes most of the time.
Just yesterday someone was sharing a picture of 2 people, a man and a woman. They were holding what looked to be a mummified fetus. The picture was being spread around on social media with people saying "This is what happens when you let people have abortions! This liberal couple embalmed their baby and went around showing it off to people!"
The person sharing the photo was like "These people don't represent us!" Even though she was pro-choice, her bullshit detector wasn't going off. She was focusing on how most people wouldn't do that.
Well, my net is good enough that I didn't believe that for a second. So I checked. The fetus was a prop from a video game. The 'couple' were video game developers, not pro-choicers. I knew to be skeptical because I happen to know just enough about the criminal code that I knew that would be desecration of a corpse, so no one would be embalming it, and I knew hospitals don't let you keep the fetus. They get cremated or buried. It took me 3 seconds to figure out.
Yeah there are so many of these stupid stories where I’m like if we’re massively falling for this there is something going wrong in our education system. Like the claim schools are accepting kids identifying as cats or dogs and providing them litter boxes in class to pee into. Or that Haitians are eating people’s pets. Or that ‘babies are being aborted after birth’ (that’s called murder wtf). But people are like oh yeah well it might be happening!!! Like, no. Jesus. Grow a brain.
Thanks! And yeah I remember looking into the 'identifying as cats' one.
The reality was that schools were using cat litter as an emergency precaution in case of lockdowns for like a shooting. The idea being since kids wouldn't be able to access a bathroom in a safe room, they'd go in the litter because it's more hygienic than... you know... just going on the floor.
But of course admitting that wouldn't be good for the narrative, so they turned something that's already fucked up into something even more fucked up. I have ran into people doing that weird "I identify as a pet, yip-yip" thing before though. Those people make my skin crawl.
And it used to be the Chinese being blamed for eating people's pets. I remember as a kid people would try and convince me that they were just running around grabbing cats off the streets to throw into chicken chow mein. Peoples pets go missing and they just start blaming the closest immigrant for it.
People have always been stupid, but thanks to the internet they can now be stupid faster than ever.
Rule of thumb: if someone is telling a goodies and baddies story, what they're saying is probably not the truth. The truth is complex and paradox-riddled- virtually always. That's what it boils down to, for me: I believe in reality and complexity. We can and should seek to see more clearly and understand things better. That's gnarly work, and it never stops! It's better than bullshit, though!
The problems comes from what the goals are, and the goals of capitalism (profit) are unhealthy and damaging - in fact leading us straight to climate destruction hell - and the goals of religion is order & control, and must necessarily combat the truth that would expose their own untruths (eg teaching creationism in school). On top of that, we live in denial about so much, are uneducated, our attention is stolen/hacked (capitalism again).
Suggested reading: Leverage Points (Meadows), 21pages & free online, and Entertaining Ourselves to Death (Postman)
For sure. And I get that it’s dangerous to mythologize ‘the noble savage’ narrative, native peoples were of varied customs and traditions and definitely did all the different things that fall into the regular scope of human behavior. But just the fact that they had no concept of amassing riches, and actually measured a person’s greatness and success by how much they had to give away to others, is sheer genius. Can you imagine our society if that were the cool thing? If billionaires were competing in who can improve the lives of the largest number of people in the most meaningful way? Wow.
Thought you’d be interested in reading this article from Faceache but about a scheme avoiding food waste with no money involved….. worth copying everywhere I’d say.
Also, if you haven’t already, you might enjoy Rutger Bregman - Dutch economist who has a different take on economic models and human psychology. His books Humankind and Utopia for Realists are well worth a look.
A timely post, Lidija. I was already prepared and expecting to watch and hear the VP debate this evening and come away with a raw scalp from the 90-minute head-scratching event. Now I have a description for it... An Exercise in Truthy-ism.
Excellent!
It also allows me to forgive myself when I learn absolutely nothing from said exercise.
"...the Democratic Party is extremely unlikely to budge its views on Gaza without a lot of external pressure. So essentially, if you are comfortable voting for the Democratic Party without putting on that political pressure, you are essentially accepting that the genocide in Gaza is not a deal breaker for you."
The same thing is true for the Republican party. If one is on the Right and sees genocide as a deal breaker, applying pressure to the GOP will, if successful, cause the Democrats to win and the genocide will go on.
Similarly, if one is on the Left and sees genocide as a deal breaker, applying pressure to the Democrats will, if successful, cause the Republicans to win and the genocide will go on.
If putting successful pressure to stop genocide gets you genocide and a lot of other things you don't want. How is not doing this mean one is ok with genocide?
Why do you conclude putting pressure means more genocide and not less? Putting pressure isn’t just abandoning your candidate . It’s like the Uncommitted movement. You say ‘I WILL vote for you - I want to, I’m ready - but you have to stop this shit first’. The only way that DOESN’T work is if both parties actually give zero shits about what their voters want and are both committed to continuing the slaughter no matter what, at which point we have to admit we have a wayyyyyyyy bigger problem than winning or losing one election.
Well not so much *more*, but a continuation of the genocide.
I interpreted putting pressure as withholding your vote unless Dems withdraw support for Israel if they won't agree to a ceasefire. This pressure has teeth if by following through on it you hand the election to the Republicans. So, if you follow through by withholding your vote the genocide continues. And if you vote for the Dems and they win the genocide continues.
You appear to be assuming that if Democrats did what you want, they could still win (in which case the US would actually do what you want). I would note that Netanyahu despises Democratic leaders, and actively prefers that Republicans be in charge here. In this he is of the same mind as Vladimir Putin, who isn't on any Democrat's favorite person list. Don't you think if Dems believed they could win by sticking it that sob they wouldn't do so?
I think the people who run our government often do a poor job of statecraft. But I do grant that they know a lot more than I about electioneering. Both sides do, which is why our elections are so close, the two parties are *very* competitive at winning elections. So, if they believe doing what you want will cause them to lose the election, I will accept that they know what they are about here.
Do you have good evidence that Democrats can win by turning against Israel, after supporting them for seventy years?
Do I have good evidence??? How could I possibly? What would even constitute evidence for something like that? A crystal ball?
What I DO have good historical evidence of, however, is that when people rise up, they can overthrow a government. We had to do it. It took 7 years of protests and clashes with the police and wondering if the army is gonna start firing on us eventually but yeah, the people of my birth country took down a tyrannical government. It’s not impossible, you just have to get pissed off enough. And here we’re not even talking about going that far. Just exercising political will.
People will not stand for injustice forever, and I think the time we stop standing for it is now. Your implication is that no one on the republican side even cares about genocide (which polls don’t really support, from my understanding at least a half of them are against sending weapons to Israel) and that the democrats CANNOT be pressured into stopping it, meaning we would have to go through with withholding our votes. I think they would cave if they met with enough pressure, they replaced Biden after claiming they wouldn’t because of the Uncommitted movement applying that pressure (brilliantly, may I add). So yes, I do think that they’re continuing the shit show because they think we don’t have the guts to protest, and I guess seeing your stance replicated all over social media maybe they are not wrong.
Also let us not forget that in the 75 years of supporting Israel, multiple US presidents have faced a similar situation and have handled it with absolute ease. One single phone call saying ‘simmer the fuck down or we stop sending the weapons’ resolved the issue instantly, because of course it did. So this ridiculous pretense that Israel must have full impunity because it has always been so and oh there is nothing to be done is either bad faith or deeply uninformed?
I think there is evidence. Seems to me there was a movement to pressure Democrats to stop arming Israel, right here in Michigan when Israel opponents showed sufficient electoral strength in the Michigan primary to tip the state to Trump this fall. Nothing seems to have come from it. Harris is forecasted to win Michigan, though I fear she will lose the election.
I don’t think we can know the future and I also don’t think we should make our decisions only based on predictions of future outcomes. Some things are just wrong, and if we accept that sliding scale, when do we stop sliding?
I totally agree we need SOMETHING. And I think you nail some really eloquent examples of that something here. What I hear you getting at is a distinction that’s made in NonViolent Communication; observation as opposed to evaluation. It’s also sometimes called a non-controversial essence - a name I really like. It’s rare to read such lucid non-evaluative observations of political and global events as you’ve put here and I find it genuinely healing. So thanks for that, as usual.
Calling it an objective reality, though, I think gets very metaphysically hairy. Just cos of all the whole stuff about how identifying and enforcing the Real has historically been an unbelievably bloody metaphysical paradigm. Re colonialism etc. I used to think metaphysics was just some abstract pontifications of aristocratic numpties with nothing better to do than mope about pondering all day, but I start seeing it as profoundly consequential, like a dna code of society. 100 years ago there were some very influential positivist metaphysicians who called for a singular legitimising global body for determining and enforcing the Real, which they got in the form of the USA becoming an unquestionable world power, and personally I can’t help but see the violence happening right smack bang in the centre of our global stage now as an inevitable result of their belief in an observer-independent objective reality (the utterly brilliant central core teaching of that buddha fella (which he was very clear was THE key to peace), not to mention an overwhelming conclusion of contemporary physics and neuroscience, is that there ain't no such thing). We planted the seed this tree grew from a long time ago. If only we can learn to see the causal strings that got us here.
But we definitely do need something! Before we can be done with an old paradigm we must build a new paradigm that makes the old one redundant. We’re probably not currently ready for a post-truth world because we don’t yet have an alternative paradigm. We’re just tearing down the old one, which might end up going very wonkily. Some of my friends teach NVC and I’ve found it to be a major game-changer for the whole being alive thing, and I think it’s so on it with the paradigm, which is instead of focusing on being right, to focus on connection. Focusing on a shared reality rather than an objective reality. And to be clear, that’s what I think you’re doing here.
I dunno how familiar you are with nvc but as a conflict resolution process it’s typically taught as a set of steps (though in practice it tends to be more cyclical). Step 1: jackaling, people sometimes need to first just vent and let off some steam. Preferably to someone other than whomever they’re in conflict with. That’s the level I see us currently at in contemporary politics, except that we do it right in each other's faces. The first of five steps! And we think we can resolve entire global issues from there! Bananas! What you’re doing here is step 2. Observations without evaluation. Very difficult for most people to do. But just because we’re so unpractised at it. Pretty much anyone can quickly learn it, at just about any age. It works because it begins to connect. It finds the noncontroversial essence.
This is a process that’s very much proven by now to be extremely effective on individual, interpersonal and grassroots community levels with people who are actually willing to come to peace. And this basic paradigm, at least, was effective on a fairly large scale in peace talks in northern ireland, where representatives of both sides wanted peace.
How to apply it on a global scale with powerful entities actively avoiding peace obviously gets more complex, but… well, what else to say? I reckon now is a good time to plant paradigmatic seeds for avoiding WW4.
I love the term ‘non-controversial essence’, it makes a lot of sense in this context. And I love how we have already accepted the inevitability of WWIII and are immediately skipping ahead to trying to prevent WWIV :)
Observation without evaluation doesn’t happen because it doesn’t serve the purpose of those who are currently leading. I’m thinking more and more on how everything that seems to be malfunctioning in society is actually working perfectly, it’s just that we are mistaken about its purpose. A failing health system seems bad if you think its purpose is to provide health care. A failing health system is VERY GOOD if its purpose is to provide wealth extraction opportunities by presenting privatization as desirable and inevitable.
An overly complex private healthcare system that denies a lot of necessary care seems bad if you think its purpose is to provide health care. It is however VERY GOOD if the objective is to extract as much wealth as possible and give back the minimum care possible.
And you can do this with absolutely every other system we have - education, voting, government decision making, whatever. The problem is, obfuscating the true purpose of each of those systems is a core part of running them, because if instead of waffling on about diversity and human rights they came out and openly admitted it’s all geared to grinding us down to a fine paste, we wouldn’t like that very much.
Hence a raging war against observation without evaluation.
I recently reposted a Vogue magazine cover with Imane Khelif on the front on IG. The post was flagged and removed for being false news. Very depressing.
What is false news, Imane Khelif existing? Or being on the cover? We really have to reconsider our whole relationship with media, social, traditional, and all in between. It’s becoming pretty adversarial.
Right? They (IG) don't even tell you why, just "this information was proved to be false by other sources." I agree about social media. I recently deleted 2/3 of my friends on Facebook, and have curved my Instagram usage 90%. I'm also on a TikTok hiatus. I haven't looked at the news website in months; I have trickle down information through friends, which I value, and then what I'm reading here on Substack. I do this at least four months out of the year regularly, just to get my brain back in order. I made a conscious decision in 2024 to replace the daily news cycle with books. I've been pretty successful so far though of course I have bad scrolling days like everyone else.
Yeah it’s important to protect yourself. Scrolling all day I really feel there’s no hope. Stepping away is sometimes the only thing you can do to protect yourself.
I really feel the need to know what’s happening so I have to keep looking for sources but I try to take breaks too
I would have to disagree with the degree of “lesser of two evils” that you present with the rather cavalier “have fun deciding”, the United States has been the supporter of war, genocide, coups, and other horrific things since its inception.
It has not, however, had an existential threat to its constitution and its basic principles of Democracy.
That should be the subject of every Substack.
The over 70 decades of religious violence from that region is the world’s headache, not just the American gov. a series of failures of leadership from both the Israelis and the Islamic world.
We the American people face a greater challenge here at home, one that has nothing to do with your political feelings on the mid east.
To decide if we change the face of our gov. with a king.
There are not two choices as there is no Republican Party, there is a cult in its place.
Massively disagree. The US is a lethal people-grinding machine that turns blood into money, and I say that as someone who grew up under your ‘democracy-spreading’ missiles. I leave your domestic issues to you, but we all wish your foreign policy would cease to exist.
Nothing about this has anything to do with foreign policy.
Would you rather Putin, Xi, or Kim to roll over you?
Americans are no more their foreign policy than the Jewish are Israel’s… the freedom of people comes from resisting authoritarianism, resisting religious rule, the freedom we have was fought for with little help from the outside.
This election is about keeping the freedom that we as Americans have.
Haha well we all are who we are. I am not launching in extensive explanations when faced with clearly bad faith arguments. If you think the US ‘isn’t its foreign policy’ I don’t think we have much to discuss? Imagine a man who is a serial killer and you only want to talk about how he treats his wife and kids. I say but he is a serial killer!! He is murdering people! And you say what he does outside his house is no concern of mine’. Would you debate that hypothetical person?
This is extremely well written, and nails almost all of my thoughts on the matter. I try and be skeptical when someone says something I agree with *a little too much* but I've been down this exact road and come to the exact same conclusion. I've also ran into others who have as well.
A friend I had made on Twitter who was really into stoic philosophy called it the Meta-crisis. I learned of a professor who teaches in the University of Toronto who calls it the Meaning Crisis. I call it the Paradox Crisis.
It's a nebulous effect, and I don't believe there's a singular mind with a singular purpose behind it, but thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of mutually aligning agendas converging into one phenomenon. The result is a population of stereotypes:
People who are either so indifferent or overworked that even starting to figure it out is impossible for them or simply lack the natural creativity to understand
People who are so burned out from trying that they've abandoned the task and withdrawn from society as much as possible and refuse to help anyone else
People who have been rewarded for toeing the line and accepting the status quo and ruthlessly mock anyone who thinks there's more to it than what they can see
People who have succumbed to paranoia and faulty research methods and can no longer differentiate between fiction and reality
People who, like you and me, have tried their best, made a lot of progress, but at the end of the day, still don't know and see the rough outline of the true problem and are overcome by the enormity of it
I've been searching for a way to solve this, some perfect combination of words which can be used like a swiss army knife to solve it all, and the more I do the messier it gets, like a kid playing with finger paints. It's a problem that resists fixing, because truth is messy and we like the comforting order that fiction provides us.
Absolutely, all of that. I think for me personally it helps a lot to find other people who at least also see the problem and go ‘this is being presented to us from two radically different angles and they’re both stupid, aren’t they?’ And then they go ‘yep’ and just that makes me feel better.
I mean in the end none of us can prove anything - that we’re not in the matrix, that we’re not butterflies dreaming they are human. But trying to follow some degree of logic, even if it brings us to a point where we have to admit that a certain thing is currently unknowable - or unknowable to us at this time at least - that’s already something.
I just need to be able to call out obvious bullshit when it’s obvious, otherwise it literally hurts my soul. I think a lot of us are like that. You need to put your finger on ‘what they’re trying to sell me as a reason is a pile of horseshit’.
Yup I agree completely. Before I gave up and left Facebook completely I was starting to lose friends left, right and center because any time they were posting things it was bullshit. I was nice about calling it out but they didn't care that what they believed wasn't true and kept getting angry at me for addressing their delusions. If I have to choose between being popular and knowing the truth, I pick the truth.
Also love me some Chuang Tzu. My first introduction was the video game review I'm currently doing; Chrono Trigger. There's a city on a floating island called the City of Dreams and you run into a spirit who says: "Am I a butterfly dreaming I'm a man... Or a bowling ball dreaming I'm a plate of sashimi? Never assume that what you see and feel is real!"
Haha totally. But you have to assume a little bit. It’s basically the theory of the God of the Gaps, right? We can’t know eeeeeverything, so we have to assume some basic things. But we should always be aware of where that assumption line is, I guess.
Yup. I have a rant that goes like this:
Truths are like a net while lies are like a brick wall.
Truths support each other. You start with one truth and link it to another. They reinforce each other. The more truths you have, the bigger your net becomes and the smaller the holes. You start to realize where the holes are, and what doesn't support each other, so you're more likely to notice what isn't a truth. At first you can catch really big lies, and eventually your net gets good enough that you're even catching the really small ones.
Lies don't support each other. You pile one lie on top of another lie and the wall becomes crooked. Add another one and it starts to become unstable. Eventually you just can't keep stacking them up because the wall wants to fall over. Now, you can either admit you've surrounded yourself with lies, tear the wall down and start over, or you can spend all your time trying to hold the wall up to keep reality out.
So while you can't know everything, the more you work on telling the difference between fact and fiction, the better you get at it. It will never be perfect, but it will be good enough to fit your purposes most of the time.
Just yesterday someone was sharing a picture of 2 people, a man and a woman. They were holding what looked to be a mummified fetus. The picture was being spread around on social media with people saying "This is what happens when you let people have abortions! This liberal couple embalmed their baby and went around showing it off to people!"
The person sharing the photo was like "These people don't represent us!" Even though she was pro-choice, her bullshit detector wasn't going off. She was focusing on how most people wouldn't do that.
Well, my net is good enough that I didn't believe that for a second. So I checked. The fetus was a prop from a video game. The 'couple' were video game developers, not pro-choicers. I knew to be skeptical because I happen to know just enough about the criminal code that I knew that would be desecration of a corpse, so no one would be embalming it, and I knew hospitals don't let you keep the fetus. They get cremated or buried. It took me 3 seconds to figure out.
That’s a genius analogy actually ❤️
Yeah there are so many of these stupid stories where I’m like if we’re massively falling for this there is something going wrong in our education system. Like the claim schools are accepting kids identifying as cats or dogs and providing them litter boxes in class to pee into. Or that Haitians are eating people’s pets. Or that ‘babies are being aborted after birth’ (that’s called murder wtf). But people are like oh yeah well it might be happening!!! Like, no. Jesus. Grow a brain.
Thanks! And yeah I remember looking into the 'identifying as cats' one.
The reality was that schools were using cat litter as an emergency precaution in case of lockdowns for like a shooting. The idea being since kids wouldn't be able to access a bathroom in a safe room, they'd go in the litter because it's more hygienic than... you know... just going on the floor.
But of course admitting that wouldn't be good for the narrative, so they turned something that's already fucked up into something even more fucked up. I have ran into people doing that weird "I identify as a pet, yip-yip" thing before though. Those people make my skin crawl.
And it used to be the Chinese being blamed for eating people's pets. I remember as a kid people would try and convince me that they were just running around grabbing cats off the streets to throw into chicken chow mein. Peoples pets go missing and they just start blaming the closest immigrant for it.
People have always been stupid, but thanks to the internet they can now be stupid faster than ever.
Rule of thumb: if someone is telling a goodies and baddies story, what they're saying is probably not the truth. The truth is complex and paradox-riddled- virtually always. That's what it boils down to, for me: I believe in reality and complexity. We can and should seek to see more clearly and understand things better. That's gnarly work, and it never stops! It's better than bullshit, though!
Oh my god absolutely. That’s it exactly - if it’s a heroes and villains story there’s an agenda for sure.
The problems comes from what the goals are, and the goals of capitalism (profit) are unhealthy and damaging - in fact leading us straight to climate destruction hell - and the goals of religion is order & control, and must necessarily combat the truth that would expose their own untruths (eg teaching creationism in school). On top of that, we live in denial about so much, are uneducated, our attention is stolen/hacked (capitalism again).
Suggested reading: Leverage Points (Meadows), 21pages & free online, and Entertaining Ourselves to Death (Postman)
The worst things man ever invented - money and religion.
From what little I’ve seen and read, the indigenous peoples without either actually have the most sustainable, fair and pleasant “societies”.
For sure. And I get that it’s dangerous to mythologize ‘the noble savage’ narrative, native peoples were of varied customs and traditions and definitely did all the different things that fall into the regular scope of human behavior. But just the fact that they had no concept of amassing riches, and actually measured a person’s greatness and success by how much they had to give away to others, is sheer genius. Can you imagine our society if that were the cool thing? If billionaires were competing in who can improve the lives of the largest number of people in the most meaningful way? Wow.
Thought you’d be interested in reading this article from Faceache but about a scheme avoiding food waste with no money involved….. worth copying everywhere I’d say.
Also, if you haven’t already, you might enjoy Rutger Bregman - Dutch economist who has a different take on economic models and human psychology. His books Humankind and Utopia for Realists are well worth a look.
https://www.facebook.com/100064865345158/posts/pfbid0FbP5VLqet96op4jpQPhAyfUubRe8iRrTQxVV52dBrZ432AzKf2BrhU6F1HGBffmhl/
Yep, all of those things. I’ll check those out!
A timely post, Lidija. I was already prepared and expecting to watch and hear the VP debate this evening and come away with a raw scalp from the 90-minute head-scratching event. Now I have a description for it... An Exercise in Truthy-ism.
Excellent!
It also allows me to forgive myself when I learn absolutely nothing from said exercise.
Oh yeah it’s not you. Their purpose is to confuse.
"...the Democratic Party is extremely unlikely to budge its views on Gaza without a lot of external pressure. So essentially, if you are comfortable voting for the Democratic Party without putting on that political pressure, you are essentially accepting that the genocide in Gaza is not a deal breaker for you."
The same thing is true for the Republican party. If one is on the Right and sees genocide as a deal breaker, applying pressure to the GOP will, if successful, cause the Democrats to win and the genocide will go on.
Similarly, if one is on the Left and sees genocide as a deal breaker, applying pressure to the Democrats will, if successful, cause the Republicans to win and the genocide will go on.
If putting successful pressure to stop genocide gets you genocide and a lot of other things you don't want. How is not doing this mean one is ok with genocide?
Why do you conclude putting pressure means more genocide and not less? Putting pressure isn’t just abandoning your candidate . It’s like the Uncommitted movement. You say ‘I WILL vote for you - I want to, I’m ready - but you have to stop this shit first’. The only way that DOESN’T work is if both parties actually give zero shits about what their voters want and are both committed to continuing the slaughter no matter what, at which point we have to admit we have a wayyyyyyyy bigger problem than winning or losing one election.
Well not so much *more*, but a continuation of the genocide.
I interpreted putting pressure as withholding your vote unless Dems withdraw support for Israel if they won't agree to a ceasefire. This pressure has teeth if by following through on it you hand the election to the Republicans. So, if you follow through by withholding your vote the genocide continues. And if you vote for the Dems and they win the genocide continues.
You appear to be assuming that if Democrats did what you want, they could still win (in which case the US would actually do what you want). I would note that Netanyahu despises Democratic leaders, and actively prefers that Republicans be in charge here. In this he is of the same mind as Vladimir Putin, who isn't on any Democrat's favorite person list. Don't you think if Dems believed they could win by sticking it that sob they wouldn't do so?
I think the people who run our government often do a poor job of statecraft. But I do grant that they know a lot more than I about electioneering. Both sides do, which is why our elections are so close, the two parties are *very* competitive at winning elections. So, if they believe doing what you want will cause them to lose the election, I will accept that they know what they are about here.
Do you have good evidence that Democrats can win by turning against Israel, after supporting them for seventy years?
Do I have good evidence??? How could I possibly? What would even constitute evidence for something like that? A crystal ball?
What I DO have good historical evidence of, however, is that when people rise up, they can overthrow a government. We had to do it. It took 7 years of protests and clashes with the police and wondering if the army is gonna start firing on us eventually but yeah, the people of my birth country took down a tyrannical government. It’s not impossible, you just have to get pissed off enough. And here we’re not even talking about going that far. Just exercising political will.
People will not stand for injustice forever, and I think the time we stop standing for it is now. Your implication is that no one on the republican side even cares about genocide (which polls don’t really support, from my understanding at least a half of them are against sending weapons to Israel) and that the democrats CANNOT be pressured into stopping it, meaning we would have to go through with withholding our votes. I think they would cave if they met with enough pressure, they replaced Biden after claiming they wouldn’t because of the Uncommitted movement applying that pressure (brilliantly, may I add). So yes, I do think that they’re continuing the shit show because they think we don’t have the guts to protest, and I guess seeing your stance replicated all over social media maybe they are not wrong.
Also let us not forget that in the 75 years of supporting Israel, multiple US presidents have faced a similar situation and have handled it with absolute ease. One single phone call saying ‘simmer the fuck down or we stop sending the weapons’ resolved the issue instantly, because of course it did. So this ridiculous pretense that Israel must have full impunity because it has always been so and oh there is nothing to be done is either bad faith or deeply uninformed?
I think there is evidence. Seems to me there was a movement to pressure Democrats to stop arming Israel, right here in Michigan when Israel opponents showed sufficient electoral strength in the Michigan primary to tip the state to Trump this fall. Nothing seems to have come from it. Harris is forecasted to win Michigan, though I fear she will lose the election.
What country were you referring to?
Serbia.
I don’t think we can know the future and I also don’t think we should make our decisions only based on predictions of future outcomes. Some things are just wrong, and if we accept that sliding scale, when do we stop sliding?
I totally agree we need SOMETHING. And I think you nail some really eloquent examples of that something here. What I hear you getting at is a distinction that’s made in NonViolent Communication; observation as opposed to evaluation. It’s also sometimes called a non-controversial essence - a name I really like. It’s rare to read such lucid non-evaluative observations of political and global events as you’ve put here and I find it genuinely healing. So thanks for that, as usual.
Calling it an objective reality, though, I think gets very metaphysically hairy. Just cos of all the whole stuff about how identifying and enforcing the Real has historically been an unbelievably bloody metaphysical paradigm. Re colonialism etc. I used to think metaphysics was just some abstract pontifications of aristocratic numpties with nothing better to do than mope about pondering all day, but I start seeing it as profoundly consequential, like a dna code of society. 100 years ago there were some very influential positivist metaphysicians who called for a singular legitimising global body for determining and enforcing the Real, which they got in the form of the USA becoming an unquestionable world power, and personally I can’t help but see the violence happening right smack bang in the centre of our global stage now as an inevitable result of their belief in an observer-independent objective reality (the utterly brilliant central core teaching of that buddha fella (which he was very clear was THE key to peace), not to mention an overwhelming conclusion of contemporary physics and neuroscience, is that there ain't no such thing). We planted the seed this tree grew from a long time ago. If only we can learn to see the causal strings that got us here.
But we definitely do need something! Before we can be done with an old paradigm we must build a new paradigm that makes the old one redundant. We’re probably not currently ready for a post-truth world because we don’t yet have an alternative paradigm. We’re just tearing down the old one, which might end up going very wonkily. Some of my friends teach NVC and I’ve found it to be a major game-changer for the whole being alive thing, and I think it’s so on it with the paradigm, which is instead of focusing on being right, to focus on connection. Focusing on a shared reality rather than an objective reality. And to be clear, that’s what I think you’re doing here.
I dunno how familiar you are with nvc but as a conflict resolution process it’s typically taught as a set of steps (though in practice it tends to be more cyclical). Step 1: jackaling, people sometimes need to first just vent and let off some steam. Preferably to someone other than whomever they’re in conflict with. That’s the level I see us currently at in contemporary politics, except that we do it right in each other's faces. The first of five steps! And we think we can resolve entire global issues from there! Bananas! What you’re doing here is step 2. Observations without evaluation. Very difficult for most people to do. But just because we’re so unpractised at it. Pretty much anyone can quickly learn it, at just about any age. It works because it begins to connect. It finds the noncontroversial essence.
This is a process that’s very much proven by now to be extremely effective on individual, interpersonal and grassroots community levels with people who are actually willing to come to peace. And this basic paradigm, at least, was effective on a fairly large scale in peace talks in northern ireland, where representatives of both sides wanted peace.
How to apply it on a global scale with powerful entities actively avoiding peace obviously gets more complex, but… well, what else to say? I reckon now is a good time to plant paradigmatic seeds for avoiding WW4.
I love the term ‘non-controversial essence’, it makes a lot of sense in this context. And I love how we have already accepted the inevitability of WWIII and are immediately skipping ahead to trying to prevent WWIV :)
Observation without evaluation doesn’t happen because it doesn’t serve the purpose of those who are currently leading. I’m thinking more and more on how everything that seems to be malfunctioning in society is actually working perfectly, it’s just that we are mistaken about its purpose. A failing health system seems bad if you think its purpose is to provide health care. A failing health system is VERY GOOD if its purpose is to provide wealth extraction opportunities by presenting privatization as desirable and inevitable.
An overly complex private healthcare system that denies a lot of necessary care seems bad if you think its purpose is to provide health care. It is however VERY GOOD if the objective is to extract as much wealth as possible and give back the minimum care possible.
And you can do this with absolutely every other system we have - education, voting, government decision making, whatever. The problem is, obfuscating the true purpose of each of those systems is a core part of running them, because if instead of waffling on about diversity and human rights they came out and openly admitted it’s all geared to grinding us down to a fine paste, we wouldn’t like that very much.
Hence a raging war against observation without evaluation.
Absolutely. Everything is going exactly as intended.
Thankyou for this masterful writing!
(I shared it to FB)
It helped clarify and expand and improve on my own conclusions about "Why things are the way they are".
I really enjoyed the real world examples you gave to support each of your assertions and conclusions.
Democracy has a fatal flaw and it's definitely the two party system #duopolydemocracy
Any human who can still support team A or Team B with their lesser evil arguments is really just asking for business as usual on planet earth.
Homo sum;
humani nil alienum puto.
Man am I.
Nothing human is alien to me.
Thank you for sharing! We have to lean on each other I think to shake off the mountains of obfuscation they heap upon us 😅
I recently reposted a Vogue magazine cover with Imane Khelif on the front on IG. The post was flagged and removed for being false news. Very depressing.
What is false news, Imane Khelif existing? Or being on the cover? We really have to reconsider our whole relationship with media, social, traditional, and all in between. It’s becoming pretty adversarial.
Right? They (IG) don't even tell you why, just "this information was proved to be false by other sources." I agree about social media. I recently deleted 2/3 of my friends on Facebook, and have curved my Instagram usage 90%. I'm also on a TikTok hiatus. I haven't looked at the news website in months; I have trickle down information through friends, which I value, and then what I'm reading here on Substack. I do this at least four months out of the year regularly, just to get my brain back in order. I made a conscious decision in 2024 to replace the daily news cycle with books. I've been pretty successful so far though of course I have bad scrolling days like everyone else.
Yeah it’s important to protect yourself. Scrolling all day I really feel there’s no hope. Stepping away is sometimes the only thing you can do to protect yourself.
I really feel the need to know what’s happening so I have to keep looking for sources but I try to take breaks too
I would have to disagree with the degree of “lesser of two evils” that you present with the rather cavalier “have fun deciding”, the United States has been the supporter of war, genocide, coups, and other horrific things since its inception.
It has not, however, had an existential threat to its constitution and its basic principles of Democracy.
That should be the subject of every Substack.
The over 70 decades of religious violence from that region is the world’s headache, not just the American gov. a series of failures of leadership from both the Israelis and the Islamic world.
We the American people face a greater challenge here at home, one that has nothing to do with your political feelings on the mid east.
To decide if we change the face of our gov. with a king.
There are not two choices as there is no Republican Party, there is a cult in its place.
#voteblue
Massively disagree. The US is a lethal people-grinding machine that turns blood into money, and I say that as someone who grew up under your ‘democracy-spreading’ missiles. I leave your domestic issues to you, but we all wish your foreign policy would cease to exist.
Nothing about this has anything to do with foreign policy.
Would you rather Putin, Xi, or Kim to roll over you?
Americans are no more their foreign policy than the Jewish are Israel’s… the freedom of people comes from resisting authoritarianism, resisting religious rule, the freedom we have was fought for with little help from the outside.
This election is about keeping the freedom that we as Americans have.
You don’t have any.
Ah…so the mature thing to reply with is a glib blanket statement that lacks any real substance.
That tracks.
Haha well we all are who we are. I am not launching in extensive explanations when faced with clearly bad faith arguments. If you think the US ‘isn’t its foreign policy’ I don’t think we have much to discuss? Imagine a man who is a serial killer and you only want to talk about how he treats his wife and kids. I say but he is a serial killer!! He is murdering people! And you say what he does outside his house is no concern of mine’. Would you debate that hypothetical person?