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Society produces excess and then must channel it, either into conquest or religion, or conspicuous wealth. This frivolous expenditure, this blatant waste, undermines society’s stability. (The “peasants” become angry.)
In the face of revolt, society must find a new collective means to channel its excess, perhaps a means that decries violence and lot in the name of peace.
Those busy making peace would consume the surplus.
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We err when we consider ideas, like freedom, as rights inherent to the species; we should think of them as scaffolding.
Freedom is built to lift us out of the filth and normalized through familiarity and cultural pressure.
To forget how the “right” arrived (i.e., to think they are immanent to the individual) is to allow ourselves to become passive in their upkeep. Once tolerant, we are easily determined (guided). While assuming we have freedom (because it is constitutive to ourselves), we perpetuate unfreedom: kicking out the scaffolding because we forgot why it was there.
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Supposedly punitive self-flagellation trains you not to make the same mistakes. However, the cycles of rumination embed negativity, leading to repetition and catastrophizing.
Equally, these behaviors happen internally, pulling you out of the present reality to focus attention inward.
Attention is a precious light: by focusing you prioritize. By beating yourself up you miss out on the world, the only place you can find redemption.
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Adam Smith said our economy is based on self-interest, which seemingly relegates equity, equality, and altruism to symbolic social cries.
The story goes that material reality (foundational) allows contradictory wishes and dreams (philosophical/ideological) to ride atop it. Our economy encourages the symbolic virtues as a distraction and abundant energy source.
Yet, let’s consider that cooperation and collaboration maintain functional economies. Virtues of trust and loyalty (beyond self-interest or reason) are the foundation upon which parasitic, disruptive economies establish themselves. In this reversal, the parasite has convinced us it is the host, and every man must be for themself.
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I am always pissy until I solve a problem.
This means I am perpetually annoyed because life is nothing but problems (challenges) I seek to exterminate. A healthier approach is to cohabitate with problems; accept instead of conquer.
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Addendum to yesterday: The image of a leader (or a concept), standing like a statue at the center of controversy, employs a multi-sided tug-of-war. With each faction working to pull the leader toward them (down) the other side counter-balances, forming guy wires (spokes) of strain that work to center, maintain, and stabilize the controversy.
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Technology moves rapidly forward, providing new options through speed and extended agency.
Culture (religion and tradition) remains slow, providing stability and attempting to secure identity against the void of meaninglessness.
When a culture uses technology, it adopts asymmetrical aims: to stabilize through speed. The problem manifests when converts leave rapidly: the speed of adoption is directly proportional to stabilization.
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Magic is in you, you can’t become magic.
Technology, on the other hand, promises empowerment through application and effort.
However, technology often becomes anti-egalitarian by limiting access, rendering it’s promise back into the realm of magic.
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Karl Marx, in 1875, critiques seeing workers as only workers, diminishing them through categorization and ignoring their diversity of human beings.
Contradictorily, to be “brought under an equal point of view” is a social form we apply to better measure and account for equality.
“… unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored.”
