PostmodernPhilistine

Kiwi. There is a right way, but we may well miss it.

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT I think I just plainly agree with you. It's just that the respect that is warranted by our capacities is less than what Christians give to the imago dei and what Aristotelians give to human nature.
Do you really believe that goodness hinges on adaptability?

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT What is the target? My common law analogy breaks down - it has no target, only history. So what are natural rights? Where did they come from? How do they fit into the evolutionary picture?

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT Wouldn't that make natural rights something like animal common law? That is, not a set of objective facts, but a history of real negotiations?

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT True. But when did the agentic individual arise? Our pre-human ancestors must have had everything we have to a lesser degree. Like, what follows from the fact of individual agency? And how much of agency is determined by factors external to the individual?

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT That would make them a coherent tribe. But obviously basic trust is bare bones for a people. There's no guarantee their culture would be good or interesting, but the trust would benefit them as a group.

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT Well, 50,000 years ago my ancestors did not understand the individual as I do. If I were born then I would be much like them in their view of the individual. My understanding is informed by millennia of cultural acheivement. This does not make my understanding wrong.

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT Yes that would be creating a new tribe, or at least revising the essence of the tribe. I would prefer the cooperative tribe myself.
Mafias suck, western culture does not. If my heritage sucked I would jump ship.

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT 'Trust' isn't the word I'd use. I'm just more optimistic about disputes within a shared heritage than between traditions. The less we have in common, the more quickly our disputes turn primitive. I think the 'individual' is more culturally informed than you do.

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT The British imposed a whole new way of life, and Maori were not sentimental about tolerating difference. They attempted to preserve their ways by force, as was their right. Historically liberals have been sentimental.

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT Well yeah that's basically how I see it. Many Maori resisted, but the British took the land by force, so they own it fair and square according to Maori tradition. But Maori were right to resist. They wanted to preserve their heritage against foreigners.

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT It's about scale. The American revolution created a new tribe, but was informed by millenia of British tradition. The population was malleable enough to adapt to the changes. An American revolution lead by Sikhs would have to be imposed by force.

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT It's a bit of both but mostly critical theory crap. Maori were pretty much like the Vikings. Land is owned by gift, inheritance or conquest. Violations are considered with respect to the mana of the tribe and its cheif. They didn't write so there is nothing explicit.

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT That is the thing man. They are revolutionaries producing a new tribe. History is littered with such people, and some of them succeed. The founding fathers for instance. But I am less obliged to entertain foreign revolutionaries than domestic ones.

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT In New Zealand, courts are informed by British common law. Disputes are constant but internal to that tradition. There is a movement to include Maori legal tradition, and this would require revision of the basic principles of the law as it is currently practiced. Two tribes.

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT Here's a provisional definition of a tribe as I mean it: a population with cultural heritage similar enough that most political dispute occurs within shared cultural norms rather than requiring revision of those norms.

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT Sorry for the delay. I guess my intuition is that Russian communists were Russian AND communist. Chinese communists were Chinese AND communist. But American liberals are just liberals. There's a hollowness.

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

Very good thread

[Marko Jukic @mmjukic]

I mean, it's a good question. Why hasn't human civilization naturally developed into a brutal aristocracy of the highly moral and high-IQ? Why don't we have a global "130 IQ high-trust Anglo" paradise already?

What mysterious force obviously overcomes and beats intelligence?

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@Ne_pas_couvrir You're off the rails man! Come back to the pale. I have been told there is no return from that underworld

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT as it has people. The lack of coordination is a severe tactical disadvantage. I don't want to join a Nazi gang, but I might in a high security prison. And international politics is on prison rules right now. A bit of tribalism is just necessary.

[PostmodernPhilistine @PostmodernPhil]

@CuriousnTT Yeah I guess everything can be subverted. But it takes effort to live by principle, where tribalism is instinctive. Thinking game-theoretically, a nation of tribalists coordinates itself against an enemy instinctively, where a nation of principled individuals has as many opinions