Bloggers: I have seen all too often that bloggers have a limited amount of stuff they want to say, they say it, and the more or less stop. Whoever happened to discover their blogs—and that is a tiny fraction of the people who would be potentially interested but the information is super hard to fish out from the overwhelming amount online, there are no good Google keywords that filter for “anything, just interesting”—will forget a few years later because blogs are not as a good media to make classics as hardcover books. In fact, I am halfway surprised OB/LW managed to survive so far, and I think it managed to survive largely through consciously forming networks out in meatspace, many early readers and contributors living in the Bay Area and meeting face to face, this also being facilitated by the super extroverted and open culture of California, so, anyway, I think we need to see blogs that survive not as much as magazines but periodicals sent to members of a club who also meet and everybody has the phone number of someone who has the phone number of someone who has the phone number of anyone you would want to get in contact with. Without a meatspace backbone, most blogs die. Exceptions are the ones backed up by mass media fame.
National loyalty: it really depends on how well that nation is doing. If you were from the third world, or a closer example: Kosovo, you would probably see nationalism as an altruist ethical duty, and it would not be very wrong: perhaps Haiti needs more fixing, but still there is enough fixing work to do there, too. It would not be highly efficient altruism but efficient enough. The points: expect it to stay alive for less-well-off nations, because they can make a very convincing case of it being ethically okay. As of now, I think a lot of military-age Ukrainians living safe in the West feel ashamed a bit and wrestle with the felt duty to go back and fight. And this is at least defensible enough ethically and emotionally to safely predict that nation-in-trouble-nationalism will not die out as fast as the nationalism of rich, safe, comfortable nations.
I mean, my whole point is how to prepare the soil in the ex-second-and-third-world for some LW injection :)
Tight community that gives their members a sense of purpose and belonging also get more power. Wikileaks needed very little resources to have a bigger impact.
Definitely, but factor in that coercive power still lies in the hands of the nation-state. You probably don’t want to wield it, but it can be wielded against subcultures and their ideas. What happens when subcultures that value experimenting with psychedlics meat drug laws head-on?
Nassim Taleb writes a lot about why nation states lose power.
Where? I’ve read Anti-Fragile but I don’t remember this.
National loyalty: it really depends on how well that nation is doing. If you were from the third world, or a closer example: Kosovo, you would probably see nationalism as an altruist ethical duty, and it would not be very wrong: perhaps Haiti needs more fixing, but still there is enough fixing work to do there, too.
In a lot of the third world the prime loyalty is towards one’s clan and not a nation state. That’s why those states can’t implement the rule of law. The rule of law requires that loyality to the nation state is more important than loyality to one’s clan.
If you look at the Middle East the Sunni/Shia devide isn’t about nation state loyalities. IS might be called the Islamic State but it is no real state. It’s structured very differently from the way nation states are structured. The no need for a parliament that passes law because the law is the Sharia and a local Islamic community can simple govern itself after Sharia laws.
The “nations” in the Middle East are also very much 20st century inventions.
You probably don’t want to wield it, but it can be wielded against subcultures and their ideas. What happens when subcultures that value experimenting with psychedlics meat drug laws head-on?
Drug decriminalization. There’s a lot of movement towards it. Yes, it’s today still possible that the nation state wins some conflicts but it’s power dwindles and I wouldn’t be surprised if in one or two decades most of the drugs are decriminalized.
As of now, I think a lot of military-age Ukrainians living safe in the West feel ashamed a bit and wrestle with the felt duty to go back and fight. And this is at least defensible enough ethically and emotionally to safely predict that nation-in-trouble-nationalism will not die out as fast as the nationalism of rich, safe, comfortable nations.
In some sense yes, but do you notice that those Ukrainians you are talking about in that paragraph don’t live in Ukraine and likely don’t pay any taxes to the Ukrainian government? They might feel bad about not putting energy into supporting Ukraine, but as far as power is concerned it’s not the feeling guilty that counts, it’s the doing something.
30 years ago a lot of leaders of alternative groups were really bad. We had cults that were really awful. Complete obedience to a leader got preached in a lot of places. Cult members got encouraged not to think for themselves. They got encouraged to cut family ties.
An organisation like Landmark still resembles in some aspect the old cults but instead of encouraging to cut family ties they preach actually going and forgiving your family members for things that went wrong in the past and build better relationships with them. Instead of blind obedience people are encouraged to think for themselves.
France does fight Landmark and similar organisations as cults but overall those organisations do get better and can provide the sense of belonging and meaning that a lot of people seek.
Hm, these are good points. Some remarks:
Bloggers: I have seen all too often that bloggers have a limited amount of stuff they want to say, they say it, and the more or less stop. Whoever happened to discover their blogs—and that is a tiny fraction of the people who would be potentially interested but the information is super hard to fish out from the overwhelming amount online, there are no good Google keywords that filter for “anything, just interesting”—will forget a few years later because blogs are not as a good media to make classics as hardcover books. In fact, I am halfway surprised OB/LW managed to survive so far, and I think it managed to survive largely through consciously forming networks out in meatspace, many early readers and contributors living in the Bay Area and meeting face to face, this also being facilitated by the super extroverted and open culture of California, so, anyway, I think we need to see blogs that survive not as much as magazines but periodicals sent to members of a club who also meet and everybody has the phone number of someone who has the phone number of someone who has the phone number of anyone you would want to get in contact with. Without a meatspace backbone, most blogs die. Exceptions are the ones backed up by mass media fame.
National loyalty: it really depends on how well that nation is doing. If you were from the third world, or a closer example: Kosovo, you would probably see nationalism as an altruist ethical duty, and it would not be very wrong: perhaps Haiti needs more fixing, but still there is enough fixing work to do there, too. It would not be highly efficient altruism but efficient enough. The points: expect it to stay alive for less-well-off nations, because they can make a very convincing case of it being ethically okay. As of now, I think a lot of military-age Ukrainians living safe in the West feel ashamed a bit and wrestle with the felt duty to go back and fight. And this is at least defensible enough ethically and emotionally to safely predict that nation-in-trouble-nationalism will not die out as fast as the nationalism of rich, safe, comfortable nations.
I mean, my whole point is how to prepare the soil in the ex-second-and-third-world for some LW injection :)
Definitely, but factor in that coercive power still lies in the hands of the nation-state. You probably don’t want to wield it, but it can be wielded against subcultures and their ideas. What happens when subcultures that value experimenting with psychedlics meat drug laws head-on?
Where? I’ve read Anti-Fragile but I don’t remember this.
Thanks for the book recommendations!
In a lot of the third world the prime loyalty is towards one’s clan and not a nation state. That’s why those states can’t implement the rule of law. The rule of law requires that loyality to the nation state is more important than loyality to one’s clan.
If you look at the Middle East the Sunni/Shia devide isn’t about nation state loyalities. IS might be called the Islamic State but it is no real state. It’s structured very differently from the way nation states are structured. The no need for a parliament that passes law because the law is the Sharia and a local Islamic community can simple govern itself after Sharia laws. The “nations” in the Middle East are also very much 20st century inventions.
Drug decriminalization. There’s a lot of movement towards it. Yes, it’s today still possible that the nation state wins some conflicts but it’s power dwindles and I wouldn’t be surprised if in one or two decades most of the drugs are decriminalized.
In some sense yes, but do you notice that those Ukrainians you are talking about in that paragraph don’t live in Ukraine and likely don’t pay any taxes to the Ukrainian government? They might feel bad about not putting energy into supporting Ukraine, but as far as power is concerned it’s not the feeling guilty that counts, it’s the doing something.
30 years ago a lot of leaders of alternative groups were really bad. We had cults that were really awful. Complete obedience to a leader got preached in a lot of places. Cult members got encouraged not to think for themselves. They got encouraged to cut family ties.
An organisation like Landmark still resembles in some aspect the old cults but instead of encouraging to cut family ties they preach actually going and forgiving your family members for things that went wrong in the past and build better relationships with them. Instead of blind obedience people are encouraged to think for themselves.
France does fight Landmark and similar organisations as cults but overall those organisations do get better and can provide the sense of belonging and meaning that a lot of people seek.