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Daily Alchemy: a question to think on together
23h ago“When a political system stops working for you, do you fix it from inside or build something new outside it?”
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American aristocracy could learn some things from the old world
A big American founding myth is that we eliminated the aristocracy from our government, but the real American innovation is making it much easier to join the aristocracy starting as an outsider. Sure, great. A little closer to meritocracy, one hopes.... Well, just to calibrate, I find it plausible that a literally random lottery for all high offices would be an improvement. Maybe with some very basic inclusion criteria, so that every election cycle we get a basically normal person to just fuck around and find out.... I wish I knew. I don't really have a manifesto about it or a plan, but my frame or hope when I wrote this was trying to pop people out the assumption that democracy is obviously great and definitely work once we correct a few recent minor issues.... - on“Noospheric bioregioning” — roots down, branches and leaves up. Bioregionality is an important piece of the puzzle, but I have also heard leaders like Joe Brewer argue that culture is only a subset of biology. It isn’t. How else to account for the “networked” aspect which is so clearly happening? How else would I be able to listen to a Joe Brewer podcast when I don’t live in the same bioregion? So better to think of networked bioregioning or “noospheric bioregionality”, imo. Socio-cultural systems are more like “intra-biological” items than mere subsets of, or reducible to, biology.by
Folks involved in the "noospheric bioregioning" are positioning themselves as distinct from "network states", sometimes using the language of "network nation".... Can one institution serve people at very different stages?: Constitutional realists
If men were angels "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." Madison wrote that in 1788, and it is still the most useful sentence ever written about institutional design. He did not build the American system for developed, enlightened citizens.... Can one institution serve people at very different stages?: The Story
The average pilot In 1952, an Air Force researcher named Gilbert Daniels measured 4,063 pilots across ten physical dimensions and asked one question: how many were close to average on all ten? The answer was zero. Not a single pilot.... - Godless Guru...
In that list of minority groups there is a conspicuous absence of a Natural majority, also at a lower status. Women, particularly in that nascent era, enjoyed, regardless of class, chattel status.... - Sassiebrat67...
Good Morning. Recently I was asked a question that took me 3 months to answer. Now Im asking YAWL. To you personally, what does freedom mean? Not The Gifts of speech, the ability to self protect, nor the search for happiness. Im talking about what is freedom to you.... What would civilizational purpose actually mean?: Skeptics
The plot nobody wrote There is no author. There is no script. "Civilization" is not a character with a destiny; it is a few billion people and their institutions, and the temptation to see a plot in that — a direction, a telos, a meaning the whole thing is building toward — is... What would civilizational purpose actually mean?: The Story
One sentence for a thousand years Imagine you could write a single sentence — the purpose of human civilization for the next thousand years — and everyone alive would actually take it to heart and pursue it. Two problems arrive at once. You have no idea what to write.... Is capitalism broken?: Post-capitalists
In 1930, Keynes predicted his grandchildren would work fifteen-hour weeks. Productivity had been doubling every generation. The math was straightforward. Where the surplus went Keynes was right about productivity.... Is 'Western civilization' a real thing or a brand?: Christian inheritors
The strangest idea A tortured provincial criminal, executed by Rome, became the figure half the planet dates its calendar around. Christianity took the cross — a tool of state terror — and made it mean that the humiliated outrank the powerful. Nietzsche despised this inversion.... Is genuine meritocracy possible?: Pluralists
Mana The Maori word mana names a standing with no English equivalent: authority, generosity, spiritual weight, and responsibility to the collective, all at once. No SAT measures it. No hiring funnel selects for it.... - Staci...
- Godless Guru...
The foundation itself is faulty in ways that we were disabled in perceiving via controlled introduction and idealized history. ‘We the People’ has been as misunderstood and poorly applied as , for example, ‘working class’ has been oft spoken of and mixed with middle class, to... - johnaweiss...
At core, your statement is anti-authoritarian. At core, the most anti-authoritarian ideology in existence is called "Anarchism". Perhaps you think of yourself as an Anarchist. I think you're not one. To oppose all forms of organization isn't Anarchist....