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Tag: conflict

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    Logic as a Trojan Horse

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    1–2 minutes

    Modern political discourse has abandoned the binary of “heart vs. head” for a more potent alchemy: the synthetic appeal.

    We no longer choose between empathy and utility; instead, we witness a tactical weaving where cherry-picked data serves as a Trojan Horse for moral signaling.

    By grounding arguments in a “utilitarian chessboard” while simultaneously invoking the “sanctity of the soul,” rhetoricians create an impenetrable fortress. To challenge the stats is to be branded heartless; to challenge the emotion is to be labeled irrational.

    This strategic blurring ensures that we don’t just disagree—we exist in entirely different epistemological states, forever talking past one another.

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    The fragility of absolutes

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    1–2 minutes

    Consensus (group alignment) and rigidity (particular absolute) both fail because they attempt stability in a world of competing, shifting perspectives.
    A singular idea, trait, or belief feels stabilizing but counterintuitive it invites opposition, as others will demand their own exclusive primacy. This creates an endless cycle—each side asserting dominance and undermining consensus with conflict.
    Systems (and ideas) must allow for dynamic interplay, negotiation, and adaptation, which feels like unstable, contingent relativism.
    And yet, the strongest structures are not monolithic but flexible, capable of absorbing contradictions without fracturing under the weight of competing demands.

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    Struggle as Ideological Compass

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    The desire for struggle determines the ideology we adopt. We may claim to want calm, but we are looking for a fight and will align with the side that grants it.

    Be it the pride of rebellion against oppressive injustice, the underdog’s martyrdom, or dominance gained through oppressive group bullying tactics, we are choosing fights over comforts despite our sensible claims made to friends and family.

    Even meek souls who lead quiet lives fantasize about a secret struggle, practicing their own escape from the false orthodoxy of complete compliance.

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    The story of capitalism

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    1–2 minutes

    Capitalism, as a narrative ideology, can be seen as an evolved version of the master-slave dynamic, where economic power replaces direct subjugation.

    It offers a more complex, dramatic story—one of individualism, opportunity, and self-made heroes. The chaos of markets and competition heightens the stakes, turning economic struggles into personal dramas.

    However, this narrative also generates great tragedies. The heroes—entrepreneurs, and capitalists—are often accompanied by victims: the exploited or marginalized. Thus, capitalism’s appeal lies in its dramatic potential, but its tragedy arises from the inherent inequalities and systemic pressures embedded in this grand narrative.

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    Paradox: fighting for natural rights

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    We cannot fight for natural rights with war and coercion, because it is antithetical to the spirit natural rights, forcing a hypocritical solution.

    Neither can natural rights be reinstated by appealing to settled peaceful times, because such a time is managed by industrial complexes and conglomerates that work fracture liberty and the individual into serfdom.

    From Robin Mackay and Armen Avanessian, #Accelerate

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    mystical positions: pacifist or miltant

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    Can passivity exist without eventual repression or injustice? totalitarianism or fascism?
    This becomes tangled in being either for or against struggle, for or against violence, which are mystical, fantastical positions of abstract language.

    To be pacifist or militant does not engage in the real world and, therefore, does not truly exist.

    from Blase Bonpane

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    who dares, wins

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    Typically, the winner is determined by (1) might (overwhelming scale), (2) surprise (unexpected violence or betrayal), or (3) weak point leverage (fulcrums or flexibility).

    Given the goal of a revolution, you will not have the numbers to win, so the revolutionary must use (2) surprise and/or (3) weak points. This is called terrorism or guerilla warfare.

    To attempt a pacifist rebellion is to protest from inside your moral strictures: we can only beg for concessions and policy tuning from a violent state. Further, in our clamoring, disruptive asking, we are verifying the state’s power to give and our subordinate status.

    If you protest but do not dare, you lose perpetually.

    from Ward Churchill, Pacifism as Pathology

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    Burning itself: Excess materialism or idealism

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    Observing reactions against our materialistic culture, with its perceived absence of values and overemphasis on self-centeredness, prompts a yearning for spirituality and transcendence.

    Ironically, the idealist aspirations often underpin myths that fuel conflict, powered by the machines and wealth of the materialists.

    It seems that excess must burn itself: too much idealism or materialism provokes its use, which tends towards its own destruction.

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    of idiots and believers

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    At a recent gathering, one individual remarked to me, ‘Texans, always brandishing their firearms, oblivious to the potential government response: a drone strike, and they’d vanish in an instant.”

    What’s intriguing is not just the vitriol, but how it is delivered: a common enough observation wrapped in an insult denigrating intelligence, appealing to factional loyalists. “If anyone believes this they are an idiot. I’m on the smart side.”

    However the inverse is more accurate.

    To believe someone is an idiot, and voice that in public when the premise of your logic doesn’t address the primary aspects of their motivations, makes you the idiot believer.

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    shedding aspirational values

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    People cry out at the injustice of America and Israel’s wars in a way they don’t for Ukraine versus Russia. In the West, we claim it is hypocrisy for colonial empires to claim civilized, liberal values while destroying innocents.
    Of course, there is a more profound truth behind the motivation, which is that liberalism announces aspirational values, but ideals are not principles.

    Any civilization that can survive genocide and withstand the brutal attacks of religious fanatics must foundationally exist on an earlier primordial law; which is evoked under stress and sheds the aspirational.