Two articles I think are worth reading on this, the 250th birthday of the United States because they describe how far we have come, yet still the same, while fighting against what we tell ourselves is the norm of civilization.
America, 1926: What a Forgotten 100-Year-Old Report Says About Who We Are
Derek Thompson
https://www.derekthompson.org/p/america-1926-an-absurdly-deep-dive
“In other ways, the America of 1926 was another world—practically another planet. Roughly half of the U.S. still counted as rural, and tens of millions of Americans had no indoor plumbing or electricity. Thick smoke from oil lamps filled their homes, and they emptied their bladders and bowels in old-fashioned chamber pots. Women had only voted in two presidential elections. Millions of children still worked for pay. Of the nation’s 27 million households, only 11 million had a phonograph, to listen to music, or a car. The first movie with sound would not come out for another year.”
Democracy Is Bullshit
David Pinsof
https://www.everythingisbullshit.blog/p/democracy-is-bullshit
“So what is democracy? It is a key that perfectly fits the lock of group mode. It is a system that brandishes a fearsome weapon before our eyes—the coercive power of jails and cops and militaries—and tells us we cannot control it, and cannot defend ourselves from it, unless we band together into huge, lumbering groups. It is a system that pries power away from the hands of individuals and tosses it to mobs, cliques, unions, religions, interest groups, ethnic groups, and grotesque agglomerations of all the above called ‘political parties.’ It is a system defined by the crushing hopelessness of individual toil and the awesome power of collective synchrony.”
People are wonderful. I love individuals. I hate groups of people. I hate a group of people with a ‘common purpose’. ‘Cause pretty soon they have little hats. And armbands. And fight songs. And a list of people they’re going to visit at 3am. -George Carlin
“The purpose of a group is to increase the power, status, and resources of the humans inside it relative to the humans outside it. How do we know this is true? Because over evolutionary time, the groups that reliably fulfilled this purpose became our ancestors.”
“Monarchy is rule by monarchs. Oligarchy is rule by oligarchs. Democracy might seem like it’s rule by the ‘demos’—by the people—but it’s not. Or at least, not by individual people. Democracy is, instead, rule by tribes. Yes, it’s time to switch from ‘groups’ to the more pejorative ‘tribes.’ The most cohesive, well-organized, well-funded tribes, bound into supertribes called ‘parties,’ are the ones who rule. It’s a tribeocracy. And given the well-documented ethical and intellectual downsides of tribalism, that is a very bad thing. It’s hard to think of a worse way to run a society than to systematically take power away from wonderful individuals and wise crowds so we can give it to mean, dumb, incoherent, sanctimonious tribes.”
“But there is a worse way to run a society, called autocracy, which leaves us with an important question: Why are democracies nicer places to live than autocracies? The main reason is that democracies are multitribal while autocracies are unitribal.”
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Notes From The Cave 