I don't find nihilism to be a valid reason to not have a conversation but alas.
What's on your mind?
- Thread starter Goker
- Start date
Users who are viewing this thread
it is fortunate, then, that nihilism isn't among the reasons.
It's German fatalism - "nothing we say here matters, so we might as well march for the mustachioed man" .
But srsly, "The German sample showed the highest fatalism scores compared to almost all other countries".
The vast majority of voters (outside america which follows its own rules) don't care about the infighting between "progressives" (young liberals) and "moderates" (old liberals). Most of the people I know irl know what cancel culture is, but none of them are going to factor that into their voting patterns because frankly it's meaningless garbage that only wealthy middle class urbanites give a toss about.
The reason socdem and libtard parties are getting slaughterd worldwide isn't because theyre "too far left" whatever that means, but it's because the vast majority of people have collectively figured out that technocrats and left liberals are a bunch of elitists who look down on them. Catering to one group over another, or marginally changing the cultural politics of these parties isn't going to help at all, because the vast majority of voters don't hate the party or its policies per se, they hate your technocratic establishment-supporting social class specifically, and how its very existence as the ruling class humiliates them. It's like how for me, seeing blm logos used by corporations, media celebrities or rich liberals is humiliating, because for the most part I passionately hate them.
The conversatives across Europe have rightly figured out that they just have to pretend to be anyone other than technocrats, and they will win every time. Boris Johnson openly portrays himself as a kind of hedonistic feudal baron, and that is more than enough for voters to think "well at least he's not a technocratic liberal who'll ruin our local communities, let's vote him in." He hasn't convinced everyone with this, but he's convinced the majority of formerly working class people who "should" be voting labour but have rightly seen how that party no longer represents their class interest and is an embodiment of humiliation that won't solve any of their economic problems.
You can label it as populism or claim that voters are just stupid idiots who are brainwashed by social media all you want, but this is a spiral of nihilism just like monty telling you he doesn't want to chat. A cultural revolution is happening in the west right now whether you like it or not, and if you don't reconcile with it and grab it by the horns then someone else will.
The rise of populism as anti-establishment sentiment is obvious since the Great Recession, but it works on both sides of the spectrum - the voters moved towards the extreme left and right and political parties or personalities who followed them benefited - up to a point.
European socdems as a rule didn't follow and lost a lot of ground to the populist left (and right). However, they may be making a comeback as is the case in Germany.
I think you are wrong when you think the populist wave has some kind of permanence or trend. As soon as the voters calm down and are more certain about their future and safety, they'll gravitate back to the moderate, non-radical parties. Unfortunately the near future will be marked by moderate inflation and more Covid troubles, so that won't help. But once the inflation dies down during 2022 and the restrictive Covid measures are no longer necessary, I foresee a drop in populist adventurers getting into power.
Resentment towards elites is as old as history, but it only becomes a burning issue when the proles are feeling pain. When the economy gets back on track, they won't mind the elites as much.
European socdems as a rule didn't follow and lost a lot of ground to the populist left (and right). However, they may be making a comeback as is the case in Germany.
I think you are wrong when you think the populist wave has some kind of permanence or trend. As soon as the voters calm down and are more certain about their future and safety, they'll gravitate back to the moderate, non-radical parties. Unfortunately the near future will be marked by moderate inflation and more Covid troubles, so that won't help. But once the inflation dies down during 2022 and the restrictive Covid measures are no longer necessary, I foresee a drop in populist adventurers getting into power.
Resentment towards elites is as old as history, but it only becomes a burning issue when the proles are feeling pain. When the economy gets back on track, they won't mind the elites as much.
Don't you realise how complacent and elitist this sounds?
I really don't believe that "populism" is just going to fade away once the economy gets better (which I don't believe it will either). The last economic crash was in 2008, Trump got into power 8 years later, Brexit was the same year. By all metrics the economy was doing better in 2016 than the entire rest of the decade. The idea that economic crisis directly results in non-establishment political parties is from an old flawed understanding of the Nazi rise to power, which fails to acknowledge that it was the establishment itself that put Hitler and all other fascists in office. None of them would have succeeded without powerful liberal and conservative allies.
Furthermore thinking that anti (dis) establishmentarianism will just go away with no lasting effect on the status quo political sphere is equally deluded. The liberal establishment status quo is not the "centre" or some kind of non-radical moral majority. Most people see it as a kind of abomination. Only a tiny minority of people, especially among the most apathetic voters everyone wants, ever take it seriously, they just tolerate it. The republicans have been anti establishment since the Reagan era, and that is the core of their success in mobilising millions of otherwise apathetic defeatist voters. People like Zizek, Ben Shapiro and Peterson are popular because they basically treat the establishment ideology as a stupid joke. Plugging your ears and acting like this will all return to "normal" is psychotic. Nothing ever returns to normal. All large scale change is permanent.
Just like in the establishment crisis of the 1930s, the current western political order has run out of steam. Liberal democracy didn't just return to its 1920 state after WW2, it was completely transformed and almost unrecognisable in the postwar era. America, the UK and France avoided violent revolution by basically having a peaceful internal revolution within liberalism that basically turned it into something fundamentally different. The power of this postwar machine ran pretty much unopposed in the west until the 1970s. The same thing is inevitably going to happen in the near future as the crisis of faith in the establishment grows, just hopefully without a war that wipes out 100 million people.
I'm sure we are doomed and our times are special because you have lived your entire thinking life in a couple of decades of economic upheaval and radical politics. By that snarky comment I want to say that you may lack perspective because you are not old enough to have experienced optimistic boom times where radicals and populists couldn't get into power (i.e. the 90s).
It seems that you draw heavily on personal experience and the sentiment of your social circles and try to extrapolate this on the whole of society, which is not an objective perspective. To envision that we are going to a major point of crisis that will bust the system wide open is either doomsaying or too much Marx. Radicals of every decade were claiming that capitalism had run its course and they were wrong every time.
Of course, by the same token, I'm a boomer who thinks nothing will or should change, comically shaking my fist at clouds.
There's no doubt that new things happened driven by tech (like social media and crypto) and society changed a bit (migration pressure and more LGBT advocacy in the developed countries), but I don't see the (capitalist) system in crisis. The stock exchanges are optimistic about the future and hefty post-Covid growth is expected - that doesn't look like a crisis to me.
And yes, I'll repeat that content voters don't vote for radicals if they are not nervous about their future and have jobs. (It would be great if I can get some supportive data on correlation between GDP growth or some better index and electoral success of moderates, but I'm in hurry, so you'll have to trust me, dude.)
Also in the US, Republicans are definitely pro-establishment (despite the anti-establishment "mah freedoms" streak of some of their voters), and even Trumpist policies were conservative and regressive, not reformist. Democrat progressives are just a loud faction and don't control the party, nor will they ever, and they got a couple of election cycles in uncertain times to make hay - they failed to seize the moment.
It seems that you draw heavily on personal experience and the sentiment of your social circles and try to extrapolate this on the whole of society, which is not an objective perspective. To envision that we are going to a major point of crisis that will bust the system wide open is either doomsaying or too much Marx. Radicals of every decade were claiming that capitalism had run its course and they were wrong every time.
Of course, by the same token, I'm a boomer who thinks nothing will or should change, comically shaking my fist at clouds.
There's no doubt that new things happened driven by tech (like social media and crypto) and society changed a bit (migration pressure and more LGBT advocacy in the developed countries), but I don't see the (capitalist) system in crisis. The stock exchanges are optimistic about the future and hefty post-Covid growth is expected - that doesn't look like a crisis to me.
And yes, I'll repeat that content voters don't vote for radicals if they are not nervous about their future and have jobs. (It would be great if I can get some supportive data on correlation between GDP growth or some better index and electoral success of moderates, but I'm in hurry, so you'll have to trust me, dude.)
Also in the US, Republicans are definitely pro-establishment (despite the anti-establishment "mah freedoms" streak of some of their voters), and even Trumpist policies were conservative and regressive, not reformist. Democrat progressives are just a loud faction and don't control the party, nor will they ever, and they got a couple of election cycles in uncertain times to make hay - they failed to seize the moment.
I can tell when you're not confident enough to continue a discussion properly because you always fall back on this condescending preamble of "You aren't experienced enough kiddo". "Maybe go out and live a little, you're just a confused radical". You aren't even that old either, you're talking about the goddamn 1990s like it was a golden era. It's such a strange thing you get on the internet where middle class, middle IQ, middle aged men act like they're ancient sages flowing with wisdom, and build their whole identity around being the dodgiest coffin dodger on their corner of the internet. But that's neither here nor there.
My alarmism about the current era doesn't come from the internet, or from some petulant rage against authority. Quite the opposite, it comes from my grandparents, who for the most part I grew up with, and who all have far more experience with the real world and the cycles of economic and social change than you do. If I was just a normal isolated western citizen I would probably would have dismissed the current crisis since the area I live in has always been poor and crappy, while my own immediate family has gone from completely broke to relatively comfortable in the past 30 years.
But having been raised by people who spent the first 20 years of their lives farming sugar cane for the british empire, then doing menial tasks in london for the next 40 years, and hearing them talk about how the current crisis is unprecedented, and how politics post Reagan is completely different from anything else in the postwar era, it makes me confident in calling you deluded.
This is especially laughable to me and makes it obvious you live in a media bubble, and just have to guess what life is like for ordinary people. LGBT advocacy and crypto currency are not the sort of thing most people talk about or are affected on a daily basis. The stock market is not even remotely aligned with normal people's ability to get a job. Currently Britain is seeing the highest spike in the cost of living for decades, while wages are plummeting across the board.
I've been job searching for 3 whole years, since before the pandemic, but despite over 100 applications, I am still unemployed. I have a fairly good résumé, but there are fewer and fewer vacancies (despite what the government claims), and the requirements are ridiculous since the labour pool of unemployed people is so massive.
Combine that with chronic food shortages (which started before the pandemic), skyrocketing rent and house prices (years pre-pandemic), the government's inability to do anything about any of it (pre 2008 crash), and now brexit, and I can say you have to be mentally ill if you think this is returning to normality. Nothing on this scale has happened in the Postwar Era.
I'm sorry to have appeared condescending, but I really think your age (and its limited perspective) is one of the problems with your views. Particularly when you continue to discuss your particular life experience as if it's universal. Instead of marshalling macroeconomic trends and analyses or something.
You need the media as a corrective to the relatively skewed views you hold based on your experience and the shared experience of your social circles (=people similar to you). Of course you would say that you actually know people from all walks of life, but that won't stop you from cherry-picking their views to agree with your own view. Everyone does this because confirmation bias is a thing.
Besides, the UK has its own share of aggravated post-Brexit and non-Brexit problems, which are, again, not universal.
Imagine if someone from rural Trumpland described his worldview (which he shares with everyone he knows) as something all people think and experience - you would laugh at him.
A hard thing to understand is that our social circles are limited and we actually don't know much about large swathes of society, but like to pretend we do.
You need the media as a corrective to the relatively skewed views you hold based on your experience and the shared experience of your social circles (=people similar to you). Of course you would say that you actually know people from all walks of life, but that won't stop you from cherry-picking their views to agree with your own view. Everyone does this because confirmation bias is a thing.
Besides, the UK has its own share of aggravated post-Brexit and non-Brexit problems, which are, again, not universal.
Imagine if someone from rural Trumpland described his worldview (which he shares with everyone he knows) as something all people think and experience - you would laugh at him.
A hard thing to understand is that our social circles are limited and we actually don't know much about large swathes of society, but like to pretend we do.
Last edited:
You don't get to say "you don't have enough real world experience" and then once you realise I actually do have real world experience, immediately pivot to holding up abstract data and news aggregates to "correct" it. I'm not saying it's flatly one or the other, but you don't get to sit on both high horses.
My real world experience correlates with everyone I've met in western countries who is in a similar socioeconomic position as me. I can be fairly certain that someone in America or France or even Germany who lives in a ****e urban area is going to say more or less the same things. What I'm not going to trust is the glasnost soviet officials like you telling me everything is fine when I can see with my eyes that it isn't.
You spend too much of your time arguing with confused 11 year olds and psychotic QAnon boomers in the Guardian comment sections and have somehow convinced yourself that these are the main enemies of western civilisation, and if they were somehow overcome then all of the current problems in liberal democracy would be solved. You keep prematurely comparing people with these two bogeymen the moment they criticise anything about the status quo. For someone who has the Confucian wisdom that comes with age, you sure seem hell bent on pigeonholing the entire world into a race war between rational adults and petulant children, where the rational adults all happen to agree with a terminally online Serbian boomer locked into an eternal feud with a snarky German and a Turkish Schizo.
My real world experience correlates with everyone I've met in western countries who is in a similar socioeconomic position as me. I can be fairly certain that someone in America or France or even Germany who lives in a ****e urban area is going to say more or less the same things. What I'm not going to trust is the glasnost soviet officials like you telling me everything is fine when I can see with my eyes that it isn't.
You spend too much of your time arguing with confused 11 year olds and psychotic QAnon boomers in the Guardian comment sections and have somehow convinced yourself that these are the main enemies of western civilisation, and if they were somehow overcome then all of the current problems in liberal democracy would be solved. You keep prematurely comparing people with these two bogeymen the moment they criticise anything about the status quo. For someone who has the Confucian wisdom that comes with age, you sure seem hell bent on pigeonholing the entire world into a race war between rational adults and petulant children, where the rational adults all happen to agree with a terminally online Serbian boomer locked into an eternal feud with a snarky German and a Turkish Schizo.
Economically there have been vast improvements globally the past 3-4 decades.
Millions have been brought out of poverty and the middle classes have risen in many poor countries, like China and India e.g.
People in hunger/famine has also decreased a lot, according to UN figures.
On top of that global conflicts and wars have also decreased, although the big Middle East wars (Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq) means the decrease is not significant (debateable).
Access to medical care has also increased and some diseases have been fought with success (polio, measles, malaria) - let's ignore covid-19 for now
Globally though, economic inequalities have kept rising since the 1980's and it's especially troublesome in the western world where it's reaching levels not seen since the late 1800's until WWI (La belle Époque) as Thomas Piketty (French economist) shows.
The German economic boom of the past 20 years has also seen an increase in inequality, especially from wages being pushed down by EU immigrants and trade (labour) unions weakened. (The EU single market with free movement of labour).
There's a rising precariat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat
More and more middle class people are experiencing lower purchasing power as wages have stagnated.
The recent economic crisis (2008-2009) caused by deregulation (specifically scrapping 2 laws from 1999 and 2000) and the covid-19 crisis, along with the recent uptick in inflation, rising consumer prices (heating, not least), is hitting workers hard.
People in the western world are simply no longer experiencing the benefits of capitalism (to use a general term) unless they're wealthy with money stashed away on an island.
Millions have been brought out of poverty and the middle classes have risen in many poor countries, like China and India e.g.
People in hunger/famine has also decreased a lot, according to UN figures.
On top of that global conflicts and wars have also decreased, although the big Middle East wars (Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq) means the decrease is not significant (debateable).
Access to medical care has also increased and some diseases have been fought with success (polio, measles, malaria) - let's ignore covid-19 for now
Globally though, economic inequalities have kept rising since the 1980's and it's especially troublesome in the western world where it's reaching levels not seen since the late 1800's until WWI (La belle Époque) as Thomas Piketty (French economist) shows.
The German economic boom of the past 20 years has also seen an increase in inequality, especially from wages being pushed down by EU immigrants and trade (labour) unions weakened. (The EU single market with free movement of labour).
There's a rising precariat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat
More and more middle class people are experiencing lower purchasing power as wages have stagnated.
The recent economic crisis (2008-2009) caused by deregulation (specifically scrapping 2 laws from 1999 and 2000) and the covid-19 crisis, along with the recent uptick in inflation, rising consumer prices (heating, not least), is hitting workers hard.
People in the western world are simply no longer experiencing the benefits of capitalism (to use a general term) unless they're wealthy with money stashed away on an island.
Last edited:
In addition to all that, throw in climate change and our willingness to deal with it and yes, I do believe that we are not going to have a good time. If COVID should have taught us anything is that our society really isn't as stable as we like to think. Social media and misinformation campaigns are also exposing some fatal weaknesses of democracy, and given that we don't really have a better alternative I am not too optimistic about the future.
@Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James , I suspect that you applied to these jobs online? I went through a similar experience at the end of 2019 and I am fairly confident that my resume wasn't even read in 90% of cases.
@Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James , I suspect that you applied to these jobs online? I went through a similar experience at the end of 2019 and I am fairly confident that my resume wasn't even read in 90% of cases.
I actually got a few serious replies back, but in most cases you're competing with hundreds of other applicants. The closest I ever got was a teacher of 3D art for potential Creative Assembly employees which I would have enjoyed a lot, but out of the several hundred applicants I was second to a guy who had learned Maya while I hadn't.
Damn, that’d been a good one
Honestly, the idea of capitalism being a savior has never really made much sense to me, though I do admit it has its benefits. In every experience that I have had though, the only people who truly believe in it like that, are the better off people. Because they are nurtured on it, they come to the conclusion that nothing is fundamentally wrong with it, and that everyone else who does have a problem, just isn't "working" hard enough.
Which brings me to minimum wage. In most of the United States it is below or at $8, before taxes. No one who supports keeping wages down would survive two weeks on that kind of wage and yet perfectly expects others to simply because they didn't have someone to put them through college or the circumstance to financially do it themselves, nor can they ever truly understand the criminal nature of telling people their time and their lives' are worth so little. Then again, a lot of these people do not properly understand what middle class is or what poor people are, so they've become horribly blind to it. I've met people who couldn't comprehend—and I am not exaggerating—that someone could be so poor in the U.S they could not buy vegetables and fruits, or even bread. And it's been an uncomfortable about of people who couldn't believe it.
Which brings me to minimum wage. In most of the United States it is below or at $8, before taxes. No one who supports keeping wages down would survive two weeks on that kind of wage and yet perfectly expects others to simply because they didn't have someone to put them through college or the circumstance to financially do it themselves, nor can they ever truly understand the criminal nature of telling people their time and their lives' are worth so little. Then again, a lot of these people do not properly understand what middle class is or what poor people are, so they've become horribly blind to it. I've met people who couldn't comprehend—and I am not exaggerating—that someone could be so poor in the U.S they could not buy vegetables and fruits, or even bread. And it's been an uncomfortable about of people who couldn't believe it.
And then again (as Adorno said and looking at the big picture) it has generally speaking improved things for our species quite a bit.
The thing is: it’s probably kind of true that capitalism is the worst form of economic system out there, except every other form we’ve tried so far.. what feasible alternatives do we have anyway?
The thing is: it’s probably kind of true that capitalism is the worst form of economic system out there, except every other form we’ve tried so far.. what feasible alternatives do we have anyway?
I don't think that "capitalism" by itself is a complete descriptor. It is too generic and doesn't really take into account differences between different environments and regulations (like say Europe vs the US). I also don't think there is true free market anywhere in the world. Every country I can think of has either some kind of government control, or really large corporations with so much power that they can control the market to get what they want, at least partially.
~130 million people in the US workforce
~1+ mil people work federal minimum wage or less (some positions are exempt)
~ 1 % of the working population works federal minimum wage
- most states do in fact have their own minimum wage laws set higher than the federal minimum, these include major population centers like the Boston-D.C belt, California, Illinois or Florida.
- if you do work federal minimum wage, you qualify for various welfare programs, like Medicaid, housing vouchers, food stamps and other. That's not to say, you're gonna have a great time. You're not, but let's not make it sound like every other person lives on nothing but ~ 1,300 dollars/ month that a fed minimum wage full time job pays.
~1+ mil people work federal minimum wage or less (some positions are exempt)
~ 1 % of the working population works federal minimum wage
- most states do in fact have their own minimum wage laws set higher than the federal minimum, these include major population centers like the Boston-D.C belt, California, Illinois or Florida.
- if you do work federal minimum wage, you qualify for various welfare programs, like Medicaid, housing vouchers, food stamps and other. That's not to say, you're gonna have a great time. You're not, but let's not make it sound like every other person lives on nothing but ~ 1,300 dollars/ month that a fed minimum wage full time job pays.
Working minimum-wage jobs (and I use the plural because those who must do it can't survive with just one) in America is marginally better than living in a third-world country.
