These are all excellent points LW, however… the dynastic cycles 3 traps which we are most definitely fallen into in America are tied to and superimposed by DC. They’re also funded by DC.
Which means if anything happens to DC and something is happening… those 3 tornadoes are loosed.
The entire meritocratic system is an Imperial One imposed upon the American Federation- which America is and has been since the Iroquois Confederation.
One might well say it’s DC Imperial Forces vs American 🇺🇸 Federation Forces.
I don’t fancy their Map, I mean the Red/Blue county map. Rather grim if it comes to blows.
Trump is certainly sending his Team of Vengeance, Gabbard, Gaetz, Ratcliffe all have suffered injury and lawless abuse at the hands of those they now command, and Hegseth * is a combat veteran, which means he intensely dislikes the Pentagon and probably most Generals.
The ranks don’t care for their Generals or Admirals.
In fact hissing isn’t considered bad form and no Officer will correct you.
*Hegseth may not be known abroad or in Elite circles but he’s well known and respected by veterans.
Not a veteran myself, but I have agreed with everything Hegseth has said when it came up on my YT feed. That Tulsi Gabbard was a fighter for the rights of Americans was a striking note for President Trump to put in his DNI nomination letter.
Our Intelligence Community has elements within it that have begun to degenerate from behind the scenes gendarmerie (but only by exception) to rather erratic political operatives abusing tools of the state for selfish or partisan purposes- this being utterly against the entire political and social contract, and illegal, and flat fraudulent.
They aren’t just past the limits, they’re irrational.
In America blowing past the Constitution acting as the personal bodyguard - thugs of a rather bizarre set of rulers gets more notice than say a Kingdom in Africa or Asia.
Going after a Congresswoman with anti terrorism surveillance is acutely bizarre.
We just have mad tyranny and they’re a committee in drag .
The Rocky Horror Ruling Class…
So yes sending a fierce wronged veteran to play the Valkyrie is necessary. Not to mention the assassins who tried to kill Trump.
The reputation of Marx as an intellectual is not supported by the facts of his writing, nor is his alleged championing of workers supported by his actions.
In essence, Marx embodies everything wrong with Marxism - Marxism can never succeed because Marx’s inherent failure is fundamental to the philosophy.
Correct. And his intellectual sins get replicated in academe again and again. Especially, by everyone who adopts, and updates, his oppressor/oppressed, we-live-in-a-social-prison, template.
ROFL. Quite. Socialism/communism/Marxism never fails. People fail socialism/communism/Marxism. A religious view, not a remotely scholarly or scientific one.
Notice how many “liberal” internationalists take the same view of migration?
Having gotten my undergrad degree from a provincial Catholic university in Brazil in the early 90's when Marxism was still the latest thing, I can appreciate how it ORDERS an understanding of THE WORLD, for the modern mind that feels itself overwhelmed by it. The modern world IS overwhelming when you enter it as a VERY SMALL PERSON with big feelings. A great historical example? Hitler, as portrayed in Konrad Heiden`s definitive portrait of the man, "The Fuhrer", published way back in 1943. Very few people read it today.
You could say that the immutable order of order, is that we are born, we suffer, then we die, in that order. It would accurately reflect the nature of the world, but it also leaves a lot of young people very upset.
Leaving the justified condemnation of Karl Marx to one side, this analysis of the unified Chinese state probably explains the relative success of Maoism and its successor ideologies in PRC.
The Party apparatus supplanted or suborned the remnant Imperial bureaucracy; any dissent or resistance cannot scale because there is only the state, no alternative groups exist in opposition.
This idea could explain the suppression of Falun Gong, the restriction of Christian churches, genocide of Uyghurs, and the repression of expected freedoms in Hong Kong since the takeover. These actions are not specifically because of the philosophy or activities, but are to disrupt large scale organisations outside the party.
Part of the analysis here is the CCP using competition to direct action towards what serves the regime. It may be in the process of exploding on them (maybe) but there is a definite touch of “Chinese patterns rewound” about it.
Yes. There is a lot of great scholarship on contemporary China and Chinese history being done largely by expatriate Chinese scholars, or scholars of Chinese origin, in the West which brings out the continuities.
Even beyond the dynamics of Leninism, the natural tendency of bureaucratised government is to suppress and replace coordination external to the state and/or insert the state into such as much as possible. The Dominate bureaucracy of imperial Rome, for example, suppressed city self-government. The modern British state largely replaced the Friendly Societies, and so on. The combination of Leninism and the legacy of Chinese bureaucratised autocracy amps that up.
In the light of that, Taiwan and Singapore become minor miracles.
I think Emmanuel Todd has useful insights here. His observations that the extent of communism closely overlaps the regions with communitarian family structures, and that of Islam closely overlaps the regions of cousin marriage are, I think, insightful. As are his observations on the differences in governance structures among the nuclear families of England, the Paris basin, and the Low Countries, versus the authoritian family structures in the Germanies and northern Italy, and the strict primogeniture of southern Sweden. And the effect of the Church's ban on cousin marriage on the elites of Europe.
Family structure seems to be in the blind spot of many commentators on society and politics, and of the elites that govern them. It is the water in which the fish swim, controlling their ways of apprehending the world without them being aware of that fact.
So yes, the state structures society, but also the most fundamental layer of society, the family, structures the state.
Yes. I find Emmanuel Todd’s analysis fascinating. His empiricism has a little too much French love of abstraction and Theory layered on top of it, but there is definitely something there.
The most damning fact about Marx (Karl not Richard) is the fact he was not seeking knowledge nor its propagation. He was an activist (his famous quote - "the point is to change it"), and as such mis-representing himself as a true philosopher. Assuming he was acting in good faith and not explicitly intellectually dishonest he was likely engaging in what's been labelled as "motivated reasoning".
I discovered something truly enlightening - a process that describes motivated reasoning on a mass scale has been proposed. It has been labelled as "A market place for rationalisations" and I'm working on a full-length essay on summarising it, the original is here:
Yes, that is a fine essay. The author also has a substack. He needs to get outside the progressive/university bubble more, but his basic analysis is very sound.
You're right. The Samuel reference is to the emergence of the monarchy for Israel with Saul as the first king. There is no reference, best I know, of God as King in the OT.
Fascinating! Thanks for the run potted history lesson.
Is it true that Britain (perhaps) sealed its fate when it adopted the Chinese model of administration by creating the Civil Service?
Also, one very interesting company in China is Haier - who have built on the Japanese and Western models of management to create a new model which doesn't rely on bureacracy - it's called The Rendanheyi model.
Haier employs about 70,000 people and transitioned to self-organising networks. There's a great book which goes in depth on how it works : 'Start-up Factory: Haier's RenDanHeYi model and the end of management as we know it' by Joost Minnaar.
10 Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle[c] and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
Whoh dawg; subheading ‘ the state structures society not reflects society’ Ima stop you there; that’s highly problematic in America, it’s problematic in Latin American countries, and it’s extremely problematic in the Middle East.
…I daresay problematic the Balkans and Africa from what I have seen.
I spent a lot of my mental time thinking about the differences in the ME and the West + Developed East. With Arab/Muslim society I inevitably come down to tribal social structure mixed with the limitations of religion and possibly too-fast access to big money in the oil era (the money allowed a primitive structure to survive and actually propagate its belief system in the modern world.)
Re Latin America, my thoughts run to a continuation of effectively a feudal social structure that produced an extreme differential between bourgeois & proletariat which is the basis of the extreme political polarisation there.
On the matter of cousin marriage I've encountered a couple of interesting sources. One of them a very controversial Danish psych Nicolai Sennels who attributes a lot of social dysfunction to this practice in immigrant groups.
Apparently the FBD variety is particularly damaging because it accumulates genetic faults produced by inbreeding - and produces an extremely clannish social structure.
Not very PC but in the absence of apolitical debunking I lean toward concurring with the above conclusions.
Marx is wrong, but isn't it amazing how plausibly it reads? It's one of those "simple, neat and wrong" situations.
These are all excellent points LW, however… the dynastic cycles 3 traps which we are most definitely fallen into in America are tied to and superimposed by DC. They’re also funded by DC.
Which means if anything happens to DC and something is happening… those 3 tornadoes are loosed.
The entire meritocratic system is an Imperial One imposed upon the American Federation- which America is and has been since the Iroquois Confederation.
One might well say it’s DC Imperial Forces vs American 🇺🇸 Federation Forces.
I don’t fancy their Map, I mean the Red/Blue county map. Rather grim if it comes to blows.
Trump is certainly sending his Team of Vengeance, Gabbard, Gaetz, Ratcliffe all have suffered injury and lawless abuse at the hands of those they now command, and Hegseth * is a combat veteran, which means he intensely dislikes the Pentagon and probably most Generals.
The ranks don’t care for their Generals or Admirals.
In fact hissing isn’t considered bad form and no Officer will correct you.
*Hegseth may not be known abroad or in Elite circles but he’s well known and respected by veterans.
Not a veteran myself, but I have agreed with everything Hegseth has said when it came up on my YT feed. That Tulsi Gabbard was a fighter for the rights of Americans was a striking note for President Trump to put in his DNI nomination letter.
We need a housecleaning.
Our Intelligence Community has elements within it that have begun to degenerate from behind the scenes gendarmerie (but only by exception) to rather erratic political operatives abusing tools of the state for selfish or partisan purposes- this being utterly against the entire political and social contract, and illegal, and flat fraudulent.
They aren’t just past the limits, they’re irrational.
In America blowing past the Constitution acting as the personal bodyguard - thugs of a rather bizarre set of rulers gets more notice than say a Kingdom in Africa or Asia.
Going after a Congresswoman with anti terrorism surveillance is acutely bizarre.
We just have mad tyranny and they’re a committee in drag .
The Rocky Horror Ruling Class…
So yes sending a fierce wronged veteran to play the Valkyrie is necessary. Not to mention the assassins who tried to kill Trump.
The reputation of Marx as an intellectual is not supported by the facts of his writing, nor is his alleged championing of workers supported by his actions.
In essence, Marx embodies everything wrong with Marxism - Marxism can never succeed because Marx’s inherent failure is fundamental to the philosophy.
Correct. And his intellectual sins get replicated in academe again and again. Especially, by everyone who adopts, and updates, his oppressor/oppressed, we-live-in-a-social-prison, template.
“But this time we’ve fixed it!”
ROFL. Quite. Socialism/communism/Marxism never fails. People fail socialism/communism/Marxism. A religious view, not a remotely scholarly or scientific one.
Notice how many “liberal” internationalists take the same view of migration?
Having gotten my undergrad degree from a provincial Catholic university in Brazil in the early 90's when Marxism was still the latest thing, I can appreciate how it ORDERS an understanding of THE WORLD, for the modern mind that feels itself overwhelmed by it. The modern world IS overwhelming when you enter it as a VERY SMALL PERSON with big feelings. A great historical example? Hitler, as portrayed in Konrad Heiden`s definitive portrait of the man, "The Fuhrer", published way back in 1943. Very few people read it today.
The problem with Marxism is that it’s incorrect. The order it gives understanding doesn’t reflect the nature of the world.
You could say that the immutable order of order, is that we are born, we suffer, then we die, in that order. It would accurately reflect the nature of the world, but it also leaves a lot of young people very upset.
Leaving the justified condemnation of Karl Marx to one side, this analysis of the unified Chinese state probably explains the relative success of Maoism and its successor ideologies in PRC.
The Party apparatus supplanted or suborned the remnant Imperial bureaucracy; any dissent or resistance cannot scale because there is only the state, no alternative groups exist in opposition.
This idea could explain the suppression of Falun Gong, the restriction of Christian churches, genocide of Uyghurs, and the repression of expected freedoms in Hong Kong since the takeover. These actions are not specifically because of the philosophy or activities, but are to disrupt large scale organisations outside the party.
Part of the analysis here is the CCP using competition to direct action towards what serves the regime. It may be in the process of exploding on them (maybe) but there is a definite touch of “Chinese patterns rewound” about it.
https://youtu.be/Di5rmpD03iM?si=fSIW_8MmdDCVYLxW
Yes. There is a lot of great scholarship on contemporary China and Chinese history being done largely by expatriate Chinese scholars, or scholars of Chinese origin, in the West which brings out the continuities.
Even beyond the dynamics of Leninism, the natural tendency of bureaucratised government is to suppress and replace coordination external to the state and/or insert the state into such as much as possible. The Dominate bureaucracy of imperial Rome, for example, suppressed city self-government. The modern British state largely replaced the Friendly Societies, and so on. The combination of Leninism and the legacy of Chinese bureaucratised autocracy amps that up.
In the light of that, Taiwan and Singapore become minor miracles.
The ACT government forcible acquisition of Calvary hospital is an example.
Not that the ACT should even have a government.
Which Australian entity had the largest population when it first achieved self-government?
You should be able to edit your comment. Hit the three dots.
I think Emmanuel Todd has useful insights here. His observations that the extent of communism closely overlaps the regions with communitarian family structures, and that of Islam closely overlaps the regions of cousin marriage are, I think, insightful. As are his observations on the differences in governance structures among the nuclear families of England, the Paris basin, and the Low Countries, versus the authoritian family structures in the Germanies and northern Italy, and the strict primogeniture of southern Sweden. And the effect of the Church's ban on cousin marriage on the elites of Europe.
Family structure seems to be in the blind spot of many commentators on society and politics, and of the elites that govern them. It is the water in which the fish swim, controlling their ways of apprehending the world without them being aware of that fact.
So yes, the state structures society, but also the most fundamental layer of society, the family, structures the state.
Yes. I find Emmanuel Todd’s analysis fascinating. His empiricism has a little too much French love of abstraction and Theory layered on top of it, but there is definitely something there.
The most damning fact about Marx (Karl not Richard) is the fact he was not seeking knowledge nor its propagation. He was an activist (his famous quote - "the point is to change it"), and as such mis-representing himself as a true philosopher. Assuming he was acting in good faith and not explicitly intellectually dishonest he was likely engaging in what's been labelled as "motivated reasoning".
I discovered something truly enlightening - a process that describes motivated reasoning on a mass scale has been proposed. It has been labelled as "A market place for rationalisations" and I'm working on a full-length essay on summarising it, the original is here:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/economics-and-philosophy/article/marketplace-of-rationalizations/41FB096344BD344908C7C992D0C0C0DC
It uses economic paradigms to explain the drift of academia and journalism to become suppliers of evidence/theory to justify SocJus policy.
Yes, that is a fine essay. The author also has a substack. He needs to get outside the progressive/university bubble more, but his basic analysis is very sound.
https://www.conspicuouscognition.com/
So, help me, Lorenzo, the state for the OT is GOD?!
In a manner of speaking. Notice, however, that in 1 Samuel 8, the king is described as structuring society for the benefit of him and his.
Shouldn't you at least capitalize King? Also, it is after all the OT. How about the NT and all the other religions? And, God forbid, atheists?! 😉
A specific ‘the King’ should be capitalised. Not so sure about a generic king.
Pretty clear to me Samuel's reference is to the king of Kings, right: GOD?
No, God is referred to directly. The reference to is to a generic king.
You're right. The Samuel reference is to the emergence of the monarchy for Israel with Saul as the first king. There is no reference, best I know, of God as King in the OT.
Fascinating! Thanks for the run potted history lesson.
Is it true that Britain (perhaps) sealed its fate when it adopted the Chinese model of administration by creating the Civil Service?
Also, one very interesting company in China is Haier - who have built on the Japanese and Western models of management to create a new model which doesn't rely on bureacracy - it's called The Rendanheyi model.
Haier employs about 70,000 people and transitioned to self-organising networks. There's a great book which goes in depth on how it works : 'Start-up Factory: Haier's RenDanHeYi model and the end of management as we know it' by Joost Minnaar.
Does this work with the Old Testament?
1 Samuel 8, 10-18.
10 Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle[c] and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
Whoh dawg; subheading ‘ the state structures society not reflects society’ Ima stop you there; that’s highly problematic in America, it’s problematic in Latin American countries, and it’s extremely problematic in the Middle East.
…I daresay problematic the Balkans and Africa from what I have seen.
Not if you examine the anthropology of stateless societies.
I spent a lot of my mental time thinking about the differences in the ME and the West + Developed East. With Arab/Muslim society I inevitably come down to tribal social structure mixed with the limitations of religion and possibly too-fast access to big money in the oil era (the money allowed a primitive structure to survive and actually propagate its belief system in the modern world.)
Re Latin America, my thoughts run to a continuation of effectively a feudal social structure that produced an extreme differential between bourgeois & proletariat which is the basis of the extreme political polarisation there.
On the Muslim Middle East, the power of lineages (tribal/clan) structures can be mapped by the level of cousin marriage.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_prevalence_of_consanguinity.svg
There is also a kinship intensity index.
https://historicalpsychology.fas.harvard.edu/assets/files/bahrami-rad-2022-kin-based-institutions-and-econ.pdf
On Latin America, the Iberian state colonising pattern was very different from the Anglo version in ways that mattered.
https://www.lorenzofromoz.net/p/the-latin-americanisation-of-the
On the matter of cousin marriage I've encountered a couple of interesting sources. One of them a very controversial Danish psych Nicolai Sennels who attributes a lot of social dysfunction to this practice in immigrant groups.
Another is a blogger who calls herself HBD Chick and explains why the particular type of parallel cousin" FBD marriage is especially damaging: https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/tag/patrilateral-parallel-cousin-marriage/
Apparently the FBD variety is particularly damaging because it accumulates genetic faults produced by inbreeding - and produces an extremely clannish social structure.
Not very PC but in the absence of apolitical debunking I lean toward concurring with the above conclusions.
See also
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4567984/
And
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1110863017300174