This episode showed Alex doing what she does better than anybody else out there, bringing out the best from a niche but intriguing player. This interview skill helps them express the full breadth of their vision, so we can then understand it, and then position those provocative ideas into the wider view.
Alex is effectively running an intellectual salon for the modern era.
Many people, particularly those on the Left, seek to substitute political tribes ("our shared values") for the more traditional tribe (family, and family values), which they dismiss as primitive. This choice can work fine at first, but fails badly in retrospect when one is rounding life's final curve and heading for the finish line.
It seems to me that the core question here is how to handle the paradox of intolerance. Supposedly the Vlach Rom believe they have absolutely no moral or legal obligations towards outsiders, which makes it difficult for mutually beneficial agreements to be made with the rest of society. Famously, the rationalist position is to more or less tolerate anyone. Among “liberal” progressives, the position is something like that you should not tolerate the intolerant, unless they happen to be officially marked disadvantaged (which can be thought of as a sort of threat assessment). Presumably, disagreement with both of these heuristics is why Jonathan felt the need to describe his current position. I personally don’t really understand it though, because to me the fundamental unit should be the individual and not the group, particularly in societies where most people are literate and so capable of doing their own moral reasoning. As Jonathan himself mentions, tribalism historically has been the cause of many violent conflicts, exactly because mutual intolerance means that coexistence is not possible.
I think Jonathan's view is closer to: If we want something close to liberalism to continue, and we do, because of its obvious advantages, we need to get tribalistic about it, for the simple fact that societies which don't care about the in-group will be outcompeted by those who do (or outbred at least). The future will be inherited by those who show up.
If and how such a moderate, elite level of tribalism can be calibrated remains to be seen.
Yeah, but what I mean is that (to me) the whole point of liberalism is that you the individual can think and do whatever you want so long as it doesn't cause harm to others. So it doesn't make sense to me to say you are going to save liberalism by adopting a tribal group mindset.
I'm also worried about the fertility side of things but I don't see how mere identification will fix anything. But my understanding is that groups like the Amish and Haredim reproduce faster not because they are tribal, but because they are "unenlightened". If you look at examples of capitalist countries that are highly nationalistic, like China, that nationalism doesn't seem particularly successful in motivating reproduction. So it's unclear to me why someone would think that potential solutions should target groups rather than individuals on a mechanistic level. For example, if I argue that: if people who care about women's reproductive freedom do not reproduce, then that viewpoint will eventually disappear, people generally find it convincing as something that might change their behavior at an individual level; it's not something that needs to be extrapolated out to some larger group to result in change, and actually if it is then that group is the entirely of human civilization.
Anyways, what I wrote earlier was more about dismissing the idea of being out-competed. Firstly, because at least half the reason we like liberalism and think that it is good is because it is effective. But what I was mostly getting at is that I think its exactly because liberalism has such broad criteria for acceptance and toleration of the outgroup that it can compete without appearing to compete, spreading throughout the world and only leaving small pockets of primarily nonthreatening opposition. However, if you decide you want to start competing in the traditional manner, everyone who you have been covertly competing with is now an overt enemy. At the same time, many traits of liberalism which were beneficial in the previous arena (like caring about human rights) will turn into liabilities.
This episode showed Alex doing what she does better than anybody else out there, bringing out the best from a niche but intriguing player. This interview skill helps them express the full breadth of their vision, so we can then understand it, and then position those provocative ideas into the wider view.
Alex is effectively running an intellectual salon for the modern era.
Many people, particularly those on the Left, seek to substitute political tribes ("our shared values") for the more traditional tribe (family, and family values), which they dismiss as primitive. This choice can work fine at first, but fails badly in retrospect when one is rounding life's final curve and heading for the finish line.
It seems to me that the core question here is how to handle the paradox of intolerance. Supposedly the Vlach Rom believe they have absolutely no moral or legal obligations towards outsiders, which makes it difficult for mutually beneficial agreements to be made with the rest of society. Famously, the rationalist position is to more or less tolerate anyone. Among “liberal” progressives, the position is something like that you should not tolerate the intolerant, unless they happen to be officially marked disadvantaged (which can be thought of as a sort of threat assessment). Presumably, disagreement with both of these heuristics is why Jonathan felt the need to describe his current position. I personally don’t really understand it though, because to me the fundamental unit should be the individual and not the group, particularly in societies where most people are literate and so capable of doing their own moral reasoning. As Jonathan himself mentions, tribalism historically has been the cause of many violent conflicts, exactly because mutual intolerance means that coexistence is not possible.
I think Jonathan's view is closer to: If we want something close to liberalism to continue, and we do, because of its obvious advantages, we need to get tribalistic about it, for the simple fact that societies which don't care about the in-group will be outcompeted by those who do (or outbred at least). The future will be inherited by those who show up.
If and how such a moderate, elite level of tribalism can be calibrated remains to be seen.
Yeah, but what I mean is that (to me) the whole point of liberalism is that you the individual can think and do whatever you want so long as it doesn't cause harm to others. So it doesn't make sense to me to say you are going to save liberalism by adopting a tribal group mindset.
I'm also worried about the fertility side of things but I don't see how mere identification will fix anything. But my understanding is that groups like the Amish and Haredim reproduce faster not because they are tribal, but because they are "unenlightened". If you look at examples of capitalist countries that are highly nationalistic, like China, that nationalism doesn't seem particularly successful in motivating reproduction. So it's unclear to me why someone would think that potential solutions should target groups rather than individuals on a mechanistic level. For example, if I argue that: if people who care about women's reproductive freedom do not reproduce, then that viewpoint will eventually disappear, people generally find it convincing as something that might change their behavior at an individual level; it's not something that needs to be extrapolated out to some larger group to result in change, and actually if it is then that group is the entirely of human civilization.
Anyways, what I wrote earlier was more about dismissing the idea of being out-competed. Firstly, because at least half the reason we like liberalism and think that it is good is because it is effective. But what I was mostly getting at is that I think its exactly because liberalism has such broad criteria for acceptance and toleration of the outgroup that it can compete without appearing to compete, spreading throughout the world and only leaving small pockets of primarily nonthreatening opposition. However, if you decide you want to start competing in the traditional manner, everyone who you have been covertly competing with is now an overt enemy. At the same time, many traits of liberalism which were beneficial in the previous arena (like caring about human rights) will turn into liabilities.