The Real Reason the Right Continues to Lose Every Ideological Battle
(www.strategic-culture.org)
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Don't take it personally, I wasn't insulting you but the people who agree with such a point of view. I apologize if it came across that way.
He proposes that "rules" are the solution and I'd agree and disagree. The reason for that is because "rules" are what ended us up in this very position to begin with.
What I believe is much* more important and necessary is education — and not just in the traditional sense, although that's important as well. Understanding why certain traditional systems, values, and and structures are in place and how those benefit society as a whole. You can make all the rules you want, it's really not going to amount to much as we've seen elucidated time after time. In fact, even this conversation itself is antithetical to the belief that rules will solve the issue. Mainstream culture has dictated that many of the things we're speaking of are no longer appropriate and go against the "rules" that are promulgated every day.
But before that, we need to address what the problems are. From my perspective, there are plenty of major issues; however, there are two that stand out above the rest that have been like a pestiferous tumor on society in recent years: Ideologies and Consumerism.
I've spoken about both at great lengths before, but it's important to reiterate how inimical they've become to the world we live in. He addressed one aspect already by mentioning consumerism and I agree with much of what he says, but when his solution is to use ideologies to solve the problem, that's where it immediately falls apart. Ideologies are what have created this cycle that we've seen repeat throughout history.
If we went with his solution of "rules," then it's going with a solution of trying to impose one groups ideological beliefs over another. I don't see any way that it's possible for that to work at all. I would agree that in most regards the traditional ideologies are far better for society as a whole. I actually don't even have much of a problem with most of that ideology and very likely share many of the views concomitant to those beliefs as well, but as a solution it doesn't measure up to what's needed presently. We also inevitably run into the problem of who, exactly, determines what these rules are?
More than ideologies, it's consumerism that's decimating our society. As we watch the slow merge of corporations and government pushing for the unification of the western world to form an omnipotent globalist government with a foundations built on top of authoritarian socialism.
The degradation, hedonism, and degeneracy, that he justifiably points to as the problems certainly are a major source of societal decay. Where he gets it wrong, however, is saying that it's a result of "individualism" — it's most certainly not. Anyone who pays attention to the deleterious trash being inculcated through consumerism should quickly realize that everything they offer is saturated in promoting intellectual conformity. It's mendacious propaganda that tells people to surrender their intellectual autonomy and let those deemed "experts" make the decisions for them. There's no way that anyone can convince me that the people who ingurgitate consumer culture are expressing "individualism" — it's an idea that borders on absurdity. By every conceivable unit of measure I feel confident in saying that consumerism — in its current iteration — promotes conformity over individualism.
I don't even understand how he could possibly suggest otherwise, honestly. They may throw a thin veneer of "individuality" on top, but it doesn't take much investigating to quickly realize the intolerance that accompanies that "individuality."
I mentioned it elsewhere in this thread, but what they promote is diversity of the material self, while simultaneously demanding intellectual conformity. More often we're seeing a total lack of diversity of thought, which is the part that truly makes us who we are, and the creation of a homogeneous hive-mind of miserable people screaming consumer manufactured shibboleths.
To put it another way, consumerism proposes that people sacrifice their individual identity and instead appropriate a group identity; they celebrate tribalism and admonish the individual.
One of the more gross abuses that we see come from consumer culture is the use of emotional manipulation in order to guilt people into following the prescribed narrative. Any time you see a celebrity, influencer, media talking head, politician, etc. make an appeal to emotions, it should immediately set off alarms. That's a tactic that's been used by con-artisits, charlatans, and dictators with great success throughout history. Besides its effectiveness, it's pretty apparent why the use it as well: women. Women not only make up a larger portion of TV/Entertainment viewership, but they also make up a much larger portion of consumers overall.
For brevity, I'll simply say that putting subjective emotions over sensible logic is one of the cornerstones present in consumerism that's destroying our culture. Basing policy and cultural norms off of emotional responses will only lead down a rabbit-hole of self-destruction. It's a practice that must be balanced. Historically, this has always been the case. Where men have made decisions based off logic, women have always been present to temper them by helping them consider things through an emotional lens, so they can consider the impact. Basing any culture off of just one or another is a recipe for disaster. For the overall health of society, balance must be kept.
I'll get to the point since no one wants to read some garrulous internet post anyway. As I mentioned in my other post, there's no going back to how things were. The methods being use are working, we're just not seeing those results promoted in consumer culture. For me, that's totally ok, since I don't particularly subscribe to that part of society much anymore. We have to consider if those results that are being achieved are enough, though. In my opinion, I don't believe they are.
Earlier I said that I believe education is a much more necessary part of the solution. That's not just education from schools either; parents, neighbors, and all of society must take an active role in participating in understand and passing down these values. That's how it's traditionally been done with great success. It's not the entire solution but just one of the more important parts. At some point people must stop relying on their consumerism habits to do all the work for them. We live in a time where people have the entire breadth of human knowledge at their fingertips at all times. Instead of using such an amazing tool to further their knowledge and educate themselves, they've decided to accept the convenience of being told what they should think by people they've designated as superior to them because of their platform. This is pure insanity on every level. When was it that people suddenly began believing that education ceased the moment you were no longer participating in an institution? We can all strive to become polymaths by using the massive wealth of tools available to us. in that regard, almost all of our Ancestors would be flabbergasted at the intellectually inept drones that so many have become.
We've reached a point where a ton of people are finally coming to the realization of the consequences for their apathy and complacency.
While there's a lot more I could say, this post has already become far too long for something that's just going to slide into oblivion.
I hope it helps clarify a little bit what my thoughts are. I'm pretty much done with it all for now. It's a much more complicated problem than I think most of us would think. There's undoubtedly a huge amount of intricacies that I'm sure I'll continue to discover as well, but I don't think I'll ever agree that the solution to combating authoritarian ideologies being pushed is to respond by doing the same thing.