So supposing my objective is to successfully express the pro-transhumanism cause in the government. We have already discussed “Is it possible to start a new party along these lines?” We have recognized because transhumanism even accepted by the populous is a “lesser virtue” therefore if it the central virtue of said new party the new party will remain a minor actor on the political scene. When viewing the political situation without bias as a pragmatic man the question then arises “can I subvert a major party to my ends?”
We recognize that the major parties have the strength we need. Therefore we need to figure out what sort of pressure and incentives we need to encourage the main party to behave the way we desire. In these calculations we of course must ensure we pick a major player whose primary virtues do not come in conflict with our desired virtue. Of course this still asks how can this be done? The first obvious step of course is to target the voting population that said party depends upon and instill the desired virtue in them.
That of course creates a whole new set of problems! How DOES one change a group of people’s moral compass? Even a minor change can be hard.
Actually I argue that there was less change in the 1930′s than most people realize. Anti Semitism goes back in Germany for centuries. This is a trend going back to the black death when whole Jewish communities were wiped out. This sentiment remained strong even in the 1930′s.
Further, the Nazi party was not expressing anything the German people had not already had a connection with. An example is that the Nazi party expressed the need for an autocratic central figure or group to command and lead the nation. Germany’s experience with democracy was fresh and it was associated with the exceptional economic downturn and inflation so high children played with piles of worthless money in the streets.
Of course old German sentiment was tied together with ideas that almost everyone can get behind. In a period of complete economic ruin the Nazi party came and said “Wipe those tears off your face, your better than this. I know this, you know this. Get up. You can do better. You WILL do better. I will not let you fail.” You actually see this strategy used in the tv show “kitchen nightmares” by Chef Gordon Ramsey for example. There is also the community aspect that German citizens in particular were in full aggreance with.
From all of my knowledge of German history I see that the Nazi party did not instill new virtues on its people, merely commanded the German people to live up to them. Some of these we can all agree with. Hard work, diligence, responsibility, dedication to community, meaningful sacrifice. Its the others that were so dark.
Actually I argue that there was less change in the 1930′s than most people realize. Anti Semitism goes back in Germany for centuries. This is a trend going back to the black death when whole Jewish communities were wiped out. This sentiment remained strong even in the 1930′s.
Antisemitism was neither central for Hitler getting power nor was pre-1930 antisemitism much different in Germany then elsewhere in Europe.
Given what the other nations did in terms of mistreating Africans in their colonies, I’m not sure that German nationalism that complained about having no place at the sun was worse.
The idea that Germans carried a sense of supremacy stronger than that of other peoples seems very doubtful to me. My impression is the various units that became Germany weren’t particularly nationalistic until the Napoleonic wars and occupations which left behind a sense of vulnerability to the West, and also Napoleon’s own kind of modernized bureaucratic government. This lead to intensified sense of “German-ness” and a zeal for “catching up” which helped inspire the German style research university (which gave the world modern industrial chemistry and modern physics, as well as some very bad philosophy).
The mid-19c was another rude shock as technology accelerated colonialism. Steamboats that could ply the rivers of Africa set off a scramble among the main colonizing nations, giving them the raw materials for a huge acceleration of economic strength.
Bismark’s consolidation made turned a somewhat medieval patchwork into a nation and left the world in no doubt of its strength. Wilhelm III was a reckless spirit who did much to put Germany on course to its first great disaster.
Antisemitism was strongest in Austria not coincidentally Hitler’s home. Lately, I’ve read from a couple of sources that Jews were about 1% of the population of Germany, but Austria had to deal with a lot of ethnicities that they once dominated.
It was 14 years from the end of WWI to Hitler’s becoming Chancellor, a period of shame and humiliation, and recent and continued encounters with socialism and Communism. The atmosphere seemed to breed only extreme parties. In the interim years, Hitler’s propaganda conflated Jews and Communists, and he opportunistically took advantage of a sort of sense of moral superiority which often wells up among beaten people.
Hitler, like Mussolini (whose nation also was playing “catch up” in terms of modern national forms) was able with new technology to stage mass spectacles and nationwide radio events which with his talents whipped Germany into a kind of hysterical paranoia about the rest of the world and “will” to reverse the situation.
When it comes to “gaming democracy” Weimar democracy was very peculiar. Once Hitler had a kind of figurehead power (very insecure for the first months), he could control events with his private armies, the SA and SS, whose numbers dwarfed the official army severely limited in number by the Versailles Treaty. Whether or not the Nazis set the Reichstad fire, it gave them the excuse to raise the level of paranoia and declare a state of emergency during which the Socialist and communist parties were crushed—mostly I believe not by the regular government, but by the SA and SS.
Hitler used his private armies, a force to anarchic to be precisely controlled to destroy order in Germany. Soon after, he decapitated the SA’s leadership in the “night of the long knives”. Had he not, the regular army would have seen Hitler as connected with them. It was his way of declaring to the General Staff “You don’t have to worry about this band of thugs pushing you out of power, you are just what I want”.
Much of the persecution of Jews was extra-legal until Krystallnacht, which occurred in 11⁄38, four years after the night of the long knives.
An incredible amount of system gaming that we’ll probably not see the like of again. Hitler started off with millions in extra-governmental forces and up-front declared intentions such that when he was placed in power, the people looked around and, as his grip tightened, were apt to say the nation elected this guy, so this is the course the nation has set itself on (even if I personally can’t condone it).
There is a wide general belief that somebody could gain power talking nice and democratically with a hidden agenda, and once in that seat, the reins of government would be his—it is the myth of the Reader’s Digest version of The Road to Serfdom, which turned Hayek’s reasonable arguments and fears and concerns into a paranoid fantasy (see http://whatwasthecoldwar.blogspot.com/2010/07/illustrated-comic-book-in-fact-road-to.html) for an illustrated even more condensed summary.
I’m not talking about German Nationalism, but German Supremacism. Keep in mind the linked text was written in 1915, so while Chesterton was certainly biased, being on the opposite side of WWI, he was going by and responding to what was happening then. The relevant quote:
The nature of Pan-Germanism may be allegorised and abbreviated somewhat thus:
The horse asserts that all other creatures are morally bound to sacrifice their interests to his, on the specific ground that he possesses all noble and necessary qualities, and is an end in himself. It is pointed out in answer that when climbing a tree the horse is less graceful than the cat; that lovers and poets seldom urge the horse to make a noise all night like the nightingale; that when submerged for some long time under water, he is less happy than the haddock; and that when he is cut open pearls are less often found in him than in an oyster. He is not content to answer (though, being a muddle-headed horse, he does use this answer also) that having an undivided hoof is more than pearls or oceans or all ascension or song. He reflects for a few years on the subject of cats; and at last discovers in the cat “the characteristic equine quality of caudality, or a tail”; so that cats are horses, and wave on every tree-top the tail which is the equine banner. Nightingales are found to have legs, which explains their power of song. Haddocks are vertebrates; and therefore are sea-horses. And though the oyster outwardly presents dissimilarities which seem to divide him from the horse, he is by the all-filling nature-might of the same horse-moving energy sustained.
Now this horse is intellectually the wrong horse. It is not perhaps going too far to say that this horse is a donkey. For it is obviously within even the intellectual resources of a haddock to answer, “But if a haddock is a horse, why should I yield to you any more than you to me? Why should that singing horse commonly called the nightingale, or that climbing horse hitherto known as the cat, fall down and worship you because of your horsehood? If all our native faculties are the accomplishments of a horse—why then you are only another horse without any accomplishments.” When thus gently reasoned with, the horse flings up his heels, kicks the cat, crushes the oyster, eats the haddock and pursues the nightingale, and that is how the war began.
This apologue is not in the least more fantastic than the facts of the Teutonic claim. The Germans do really say that Englishmen are only Sea-Germans, as our haddocks were only sea-horses. They do really say that the nightingales of Tuscany or the pearls of Hellas must somehow be German birds or German jewels. They do maintain that the Italian Renaissance was really the German Renaissance, pure Germans having Italian names when they were painters, as cockneys sometimes have when they are hair-dressers. They suggest that Jesus and the great Jews were Teutonic. One Teutonist I read actually explained the fresh energy of the French Revolution and the stale privileges of its German enemies by saying that the Germanic soul awoke in France and attacked the Latin influence in Germany. On the advantages of this method I need not dwell: if you are annoyed at Jack Johnson knocking out an English prize-fighter, you have only to say that it was the whiteness of the black man that won and the blackness of the white man that was beaten. But about the Italian Renaissance they are less general and will go into detail. They will discover (in their researches into ’istry, as Mr. Gandish said) that Michael Angelo’s surname was Buonarotti; and they will point out that the word “roth” is very like the word “rot.” Which, in one sense, is true enough. Most Englishmen will be content to say it is all rot and pass on. It is all of a piece with the preposterous Prussian history, which talks, for instance, about the “perfect religious tolerance of the Goths”; which is like talking about the legal impartiality of chicken-pox. He will decline to believe that the Jews were Germans; though he may perhaps have met some Germans who were Jews. But deeper than any such practical reply, lies the deep inconsistency of the parable. It is simply this; that if Teutonism be used for comprehension it cannot be used for conquest. If all intelligent peoples are Germans, then Prussians are only the least intelligent Germans. If the men of Flanders are as German as the men of Frankfort, we can only say that in saving Belgium we are helping the Germans who are in the right against the Germans who are in the wrong. Thus in Alsace the conquerors are forced into the comic posture of annexing the people for being German and then persecuting them for being French. The French Teutons who built Rheims must surrender it to the South German Teutons who have partly built Cologne; and these in turn surrender Cologne to the North German Teutons, who never built anything, except the wooden Aunt Sally of old Hindenburg. Every Teuton must fall on his face before an inferior Teuton; until they all find, in the foul marshes towards the Baltic, the very lowest of all possible Teutons, and worship him—and find he is a Slav. So much for Pan-Germanism.
I’m not talking about German Nationalism, but German Supremacism.
You mean those people who chained and mistreated their slaves weren’t practicing supremacism? Maybe because the people they mistreated were black and not white and Chesterton probably wouldn’t have found mistreating blacks a big deal?
When you find Germans at that time saying that the English are partly German that reason to treat Englishman well and not mistreat them.
I think the main issue is that you lack an idea of how other nations practiced their supremism.
there was less change in the 1930′s than most people realize.
That’s a VERY low bar :-)
No, the moral compass in Germany in the 1930s did not rotate 180 degrees—for that you usually need to kill a lot of people (see bolsheviks and such). But your scenario with which you started was transhumanism—it does not require major surgery on the society’s moral compass either. The magnitude of change is probably comparable to what Germany did in the 30s...
So supposing my objective is to successfully express the pro-transhumanism cause in the government. We have already discussed “Is it possible to start a new party along these lines?” We have recognized because transhumanism even accepted by the populous is a “lesser virtue” therefore if it the central virtue of said new party the new party will remain a minor actor on the political scene. When viewing the political situation without bias as a pragmatic man the question then arises “can I subvert a major party to my ends?”
We recognize that the major parties have the strength we need. Therefore we need to figure out what sort of pressure and incentives we need to encourage the main party to behave the way we desire. In these calculations we of course must ensure we pick a major player whose primary virtues do not come in conflict with our desired virtue. Of course this still asks how can this be done? The first obvious step of course is to target the voting population that said party depends upon and instill the desired virtue in them.
That of course creates a whole new set of problems! How DOES one change a group of people’s moral compass? Even a minor change can be hard.
Look at Germany in the 1930s.
Actually I argue that there was less change in the 1930′s than most people realize. Anti Semitism goes back in Germany for centuries. This is a trend going back to the black death when whole Jewish communities were wiped out. This sentiment remained strong even in the 1930′s.
Further, the Nazi party was not expressing anything the German people had not already had a connection with. An example is that the Nazi party expressed the need for an autocratic central figure or group to command and lead the nation. Germany’s experience with democracy was fresh and it was associated with the exceptional economic downturn and inflation so high children played with piles of worthless money in the streets.
Of course old German sentiment was tied together with ideas that almost everyone can get behind. In a period of complete economic ruin the Nazi party came and said “Wipe those tears off your face, your better than this. I know this, you know this. Get up. You can do better. You WILL do better. I will not let you fail.” You actually see this strategy used in the tv show “kitchen nightmares” by Chef Gordon Ramsey for example. There is also the community aspect that German citizens in particular were in full aggreance with.
From all of my knowledge of German history I see that the Nazi party did not instill new virtues on its people, merely commanded the German people to live up to them. Some of these we can all agree with. Hard work, diligence, responsibility, dedication to community, meaningful sacrifice. Its the others that were so dark.
Antisemitism was neither central for Hitler getting power nor was pre-1930 antisemitism much different in Germany then elsewhere in Europe.
On the other hand, German supremacism predated Hitler and was different from the nationalism in other parts of Europe.
Given what the other nations did in terms of mistreating Africans in their colonies, I’m not sure that German nationalism that complained about having no place at the sun was worse.
The idea that Germans carried a sense of supremacy stronger than that of other peoples seems very doubtful to me. My impression is the various units that became Germany weren’t particularly nationalistic until the Napoleonic wars and occupations which left behind a sense of vulnerability to the West, and also Napoleon’s own kind of modernized bureaucratic government. This lead to intensified sense of “German-ness” and a zeal for “catching up” which helped inspire the German style research university (which gave the world modern industrial chemistry and modern physics, as well as some very bad philosophy).
The mid-19c was another rude shock as technology accelerated colonialism. Steamboats that could ply the rivers of Africa set off a scramble among the main colonizing nations, giving them the raw materials for a huge acceleration of economic strength.
Bismark’s consolidation made turned a somewhat medieval patchwork into a nation and left the world in no doubt of its strength. Wilhelm III was a reckless spirit who did much to put Germany on course to its first great disaster.
Antisemitism was strongest in Austria not coincidentally Hitler’s home. Lately, I’ve read from a couple of sources that Jews were about 1% of the population of Germany, but Austria had to deal with a lot of ethnicities that they once dominated.
It was 14 years from the end of WWI to Hitler’s becoming Chancellor, a period of shame and humiliation, and recent and continued encounters with socialism and Communism. The atmosphere seemed to breed only extreme parties. In the interim years, Hitler’s propaganda conflated Jews and Communists, and he opportunistically took advantage of a sort of sense of moral superiority which often wells up among beaten people.
Hitler, like Mussolini (whose nation also was playing “catch up” in terms of modern national forms) was able with new technology to stage mass spectacles and nationwide radio events which with his talents whipped Germany into a kind of hysterical paranoia about the rest of the world and “will” to reverse the situation.
When it comes to “gaming democracy” Weimar democracy was very peculiar. Once Hitler had a kind of figurehead power (very insecure for the first months), he could control events with his private armies, the SA and SS, whose numbers dwarfed the official army severely limited in number by the Versailles Treaty. Whether or not the Nazis set the Reichstad fire, it gave them the excuse to raise the level of paranoia and declare a state of emergency during which the Socialist and communist parties were crushed—mostly I believe not by the regular government, but by the SA and SS.
Hitler used his private armies, a force to anarchic to be precisely controlled to destroy order in Germany. Soon after, he decapitated the SA’s leadership in the “night of the long knives”. Had he not, the regular army would have seen Hitler as connected with them. It was his way of declaring to the General Staff “You don’t have to worry about this band of thugs pushing you out of power, you are just what I want”.
Much of the persecution of Jews was extra-legal until Krystallnacht, which occurred in 11⁄38, four years after the night of the long knives.
An incredible amount of system gaming that we’ll probably not see the like of again. Hitler started off with millions in extra-governmental forces and up-front declared intentions such that when he was placed in power, the people looked around and, as his grip tightened, were apt to say the nation elected this guy, so this is the course the nation has set itself on (even if I personally can’t condone it).
There is a wide general belief that somebody could gain power talking nice and democratically with a hidden agenda, and once in that seat, the reins of government would be his—it is the myth of the Reader’s Digest version of The Road to Serfdom, which turned Hayek’s reasonable arguments and fears and concerns into a paranoid fantasy (see http://whatwasthecoldwar.blogspot.com/2010/07/illustrated-comic-book-in-fact-road-to.html) for an illustrated even more condensed summary.
I’m not talking about German Nationalism, but German Supremacism. Keep in mind the linked text was written in 1915, so while Chesterton was certainly biased, being on the opposite side of WWI, he was going by and responding to what was happening then. The relevant quote:
You mean those people who chained and mistreated their slaves weren’t practicing supremacism? Maybe because the people they mistreated were black and not white and Chesterton probably wouldn’t have found mistreating blacks a big deal?
When you find Germans at that time saying that the English are partly German that reason to treat Englishman well and not mistreat them. I think the main issue is that you lack an idea of how other nations practiced their supremism.
Which people? England, for example, had abolished slavery in most of its Empire in 1834 and fully in 1843.
That’s a VERY low bar :-)
No, the moral compass in Germany in the 1930s did not rotate 180 degrees—for that you usually need to kill a lot of people (see bolsheviks and such). But your scenario with which you started was transhumanism—it does not require major surgery on the society’s moral compass either. The magnitude of change is probably comparable to what Germany did in the 30s...