politics

lead poisoning

We talk about society’s rightward journey. We talk about polarisation and division. We talk about isolation and the mental health crisis. But what underlies these trends is a shift in values. This is the cause of many of our dysfunctions; the rest are symptoms.

I read the whole article, yet in my head it was being narrated by Adam Curtis. Same vibes.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

From the tower bearing his name in gold letters to his gross overstatements of his wealth; from his endless ranting about “winners” and “losers” to his reported habit of cheating at golf; from his extreme objectification of women, including his own daughter, to his obsession with the size of his hands; from his rejection of public service, human rights and environmental protection to his extreme dissatisfaction and fury, undiminished even when he was president of the United States, Trump, perhaps more than any other public figure in recent history, is a walking, talking monument to extrinsic values.

If people live under a cruel and grasping political system, they tend to normalise and internalise it, absorbing its dominant claims and translating them into extrinsic values.

If, by contrast, people live in a country in which no one becomes destitute, in which social norms are characterised by kindness, empathy, community and freedom from want and fear, their values are likely to shift towards the intrinsic end.

Ever since Ronald Reagan came to power, on a platform that ensured society became sharply divided into “winners” and “losers”, and ever more people, lacking public provision, were allowed to fall through the cracks, US politics has become fertile soil for extrinsic values.

Under the criminal justice bill now passing through parliament, people caught rough sleeping can be imprisoned or fined up to £2,500 if they are deemed to constitute a “nuisance” or cause “damage”.

If so, his victory will be due not only to the racial resentment of ageing white men, or to his weaponisation of culture wars or to algorithms and echo chambers, important as these factors are.

The original article contains 1,061 words, the summary contains 274 words. Saved 74%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Toxoplasmosis.

Mental illness

Feels like some BS, using many words to separate the world into sane people and Trump (or his kind) supporters.

The author should pick a line between "inclination towards empathy, intimacy and self-acceptance" being attributed to one side and "dismissing social impacts" being attributed to another. Because "self-acceptance" is in direct conflict with "social impacts".

And a lynching crowd is a "social impact" too, for example.

Also behaving rudely and behaving aggressively is not the same. Most of time aggressive behavior is not rude and rude behavior is not aggressive in my personal social experience.

They have little interest in cooperation or community.

So every commenter here saying nothing meaningful except for "another part of my country consists of idiots and I'm of course smarter than them" is interested in cooperation and community?

However, I'm pleased by "intrinsic" here being something good and "extrinsic" being something bad. At least my kind of people is presented as the better kind for a difference.

are more likely to suffer from frustration, dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, anger and compulsive behaviour

Well, of course people in pain would be less pleasant. But your usual average human would say that they are themselves to blame, because the universe is a fair game (except for market economics and climate change and gender dynamics, of course, here they do notice problems or pretend to notice), so let's just call them all idiots who should be stripped of voting rights or something.