Schopenhauer too... and Nietzsche wasn't to happy with it.

How do you do away with bad ideas, and how do you identify them as bad? Is it just that they don't provide a non-religious theodicy?

I'm guessing not because you go on to say "tragic/sensual/empirical" as something good whereas "spirituality, metaphysics, over/mis-use of dialects or reason" is bad -- in the aesthetic sense.

If no further answer then cool. We've reached the aesthetic terminus. — Moliere

I guess it's about the basic assumptions a philosopher makes and the way they use langauge because of those assumptions. Certain ideas and ways of thinking hang together more or less coherently and give rise to distinct worldviews depending on the basic assumptions one makes.

If for instance one doesn't view the Forms, Ideas or the Logos as the fundamental underlying reality, one would have to view reason, and the use of the dialectical method for instance, with a lot more scepsis.

I think the way one leans vis-à-vis those basic assumptions typically colours the rest of ones philosophy.

I think that's a common experience for people who read philosophy. Eventually you start to focus in on the couple of things that really interest you because there's just too much out there to be able to read it all.

But I like to wander around, still. I'm uncertain that much philosophy is truly bad, but only appealing to some other aesthetic. Not quite -- there are times where I don't think this -- but it's the idea that I'm thinking towards. — Moliere

For me it's not so much that there is too much out there, but that I have decided on some basic assumptions and want to progress in a certain direction from there. Coherence is typically also one of the goals of philosophy, and I feel like you can't progress if you leave everything open. These assumptions have consequences.... and so that means you try to do away with ideas that don't work with them.

Do you think that aesthetics in philosophy is a thing? Should it be?

Do you have a sense of your own taste?

Why are you more drawn to particular philosophers, schools, styles, or problems?

Is there such a thing as bad taste in philosophy? If so, what should one do if we encounter bad taste?

Likewise, is there such a thing as good taste in philosophy such that it differs from "the opposite of bad"?

How do you feel about your own personal aesthetic choices? Do you think about how to choose which philosopher to read? How do you think about others choosing different philosophers from you? Is that the sort of thing one you might be "more right about"? — Moliere

Yes I think as a atheïst I'm looking for a sort of non-religious theodicee, like the first philosophers, that is an 'arche' or way to envision the world as one continuous whole.

I find that I side mostly on the side of the tragic/sensual/empircal and dislike most spirituality, metaphysics or over/mis-use of dialectics or reason.

Philosophy at this point for me is mostly about doing away with bad ideas, which is most of philosophy.

And I feel pretty good about it actually, maybe wish I had come to this conclusion sooner. I certainly wouldn't want to waste any more time on bad philosophy.

I think other people have to go through the process they have to go through, and maybe that involves trying out bad ideas, but mostly I think they are just misguided.

I think praxis is part of wisdom, but so is theoria. That is, the sage knows why he acts. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If you're denying these as standards then we're back to: "my epistemology is not "anything goes,' but I can give no explanation of why some narratives 'don't go.'" Or "my reasons for denying some narratives are sui generis in each instance." How does this keep arbitrariness out? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Maybe the sage doesn't consciously know why he acts. There are many things we 'know', but can't really explain why we act in a certain way, like say riding a bike or playing an instrument. If living wisely is a praxis too why should we expect an explanation for it not to be arbitrary, or anything goes?

This is the assumption that isn't justified, that everything first must be understood consciously, in terms of universals, before we can be said to know anything.

There was a very long running debate over whether terms signify concepts in the mind (Aristotle) or whether they signify things (through a triadic semiotic relationship, Augustine). I've always been partial to Augustine here, but I can see the impetus in the other direction as well, and language plays a crucial role in either case. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Augustine views seems close to Peirces theory on semiotics. I could get on board with that I think.

I think in either case you're right, it's about the world in at least some way. It's mediated, so "indirect." I'm not sure if anything is ever truly unmediated; that's another question. Logic and language only ceases to be "about the world," if the terms/concepts cease to be determinantly related to the world in any way. So, even on the view that signification is of concepts (usually universals), this isn't overly problematic because universals come to us from things via the senses. It becomes a difficulty only when that linkage is somehow severed.

Here, I don't really mind the Kantian interjection that what we say about things is always "things as we know them." That's fair. Surely we are not speaking about things as we don't know them. Where it gets dicey is in the idea that there is no determinant linkage between things and what is known, in which case, it doesn't even seem like the knowledge can be "of" the things. — Count Timothy von Icarus

They are related to the world, but in an abstracted way.

I think particulars come to us via our senses, which I would consider unmediated (stricly speaking maybe not as sense-organs, nerves etc are involved, still I think we have a sense of the world).

As in Heraclitean 'metaphysics' only particulars/only becoming exists in space and time, that is the world of our senses anyway... panta rhei.

When we name a particular thing and abstract it into a universal concept we are equating and lumping together things that are similar but not identical, and take them out of their spacio-temporal context (the spirit/the eternal).

That is fine and can be usefull as long as we don't forget that universals are not really real like Plato (contra Cratylus).

Wel words do usually signify something in the world, though not allways. Those words are abstractions from the world, and it's to some extend arbitrary where lines are drawn.

Logic then applies to statements we make with those abstractions, not directly to the world itself. Insofar those statements are about the world, maybe you could say it's also about the world indirectly. But only if those statements are about the world, which they don't have to be. Logic isn't concerned with epistemics per se.

Only 'about language' was maybe a bit loose and fast.

To everyone who thinks logic and causality were the same. They are not.

The trigger before the explosion is not a logical reason; it's a physical cause. This cause is not based upon a logical law nor is it linked with it. It's not logical that the trigger causes an explosion. This is just an empirical observation and it's not guaranteed that this effect will be the same at all times. If this were logical and the effect would change, it would be like saying: "2+2=4 has been correct until now, but in the future it may be 2+2=3." -- This is not logic. Logic is independent of space and time. — Quk

Bingo! Logic is about language, not about the world itself.

The problem is a lack of telos, and a lack of hope that man can ever fulfill his innate, infinite desires. The cosmos is no longer an ordered whole animated by love. You lose the great Eastern thinkers (e.g. Saint Maximus the Confessor, Saint Gregory Palamas) vision of a cosmos moved by love to union in love, the process of exitus et reditus whereby everything in the cosmos is , a revelation of God, and history a path towards theosis.

David Bentley Hart uses Dostoevsky as his main source for his book on theodicy, "The Gates of the Sea," and this is at least his reading too. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Christian theology is a bit of a blind spot for me unfortunately, so I'm not sure I have something sensible to say about it.

Zosima, and Alyosha, which presumably are mouthpieces for Doestoevsky's views, are advocating love of everything as the way to go, in spite of all the bad in the world. That is contra the rational Ivan who is stuck on the problem of evil, i.e. what God would create a world where innocent babies are being killed.

I could be way off here, but Exitus et reditus seems to have a lot of similarities with some of Nietzsches ideas like amor fati (love of everything, because everything is one, and thus wanting to change one thing is the same as wanting to change everything), eternal return (the cyclical nature of things) and the Dionesian (dissolution of boundaries to return to primordial one).

The difference maybe is that Nietzsche doesn't see the Good as the source of everything. Time is a child playing dice (Heraclitus), meaning it's an arbirary, amoral universe. And presumably in an amoral universe love means something else than in a moral one.... a more aesthetic appreciation of surfaces, of the temporal and immanent, instead of a contemplative appreciation of the eternal and transcendent.

Or perhaps religion and theism don't have as much to do with morality as some think, and are primarily a justification for particular codes of conduct, some of which we might consider immoral today.

It’s not as if religions or theism doesn't commit egregious crimes against people, right?

Zizek (borrowing from Lacan) flips Dostoevsky’s quote to account for the poor moral behaviour of theists: “If God exists, everything is permitted." Presumably the idea is that there's not a crime going that hasn't been justified by theists as part of God's plan. — Tom Storm

I'm guessing he means that one needs something to believe in, some passion for some end or another, to have people commit attrocities they normally wouldn't. I think that's true to some extend. He says something similar about poets if I remember correctly. One could do away with poetry or religion that inflame the passions, the question then is if a society doesn't lose something vital also in that process?

Well, if you talk to some theists, they don’t think secular culture is moral. They see it as empty hedonism that promotes what they consider outrages, like gay marriage or expanded rights for women. What’s clear is that different moral systems or codes of conduct are at play simultaneously in the West, and they are unlikely to disappear. Humans are a social species, and living together requires shared norms. The idea that without belief in God humans will revert to killing and rape is clearly false. It's also evident that prisons are full of rapists and murderers who are theists. I can attest to this, having worked with prisoners and gang members, most of whom are believers. — Tom Storm

Maybe you can only see the effects of it over longer periods of time as religion slowly wanes from generation to generation. And I would say it is not only about more extreme things like killing and rape, but also about basic virtues, the general state people are in. And if you look at our secular societies today, maybe they have a point that it tends to hedonism. I'm not talking about gay marriage or something like that either, but generally there's a lot of drugs, gambling, lack of discipline, etc, etc, etc.

And if we indeed need shared norms, isn't that essentially what religion does? Etymologically, religion comes from re-ligare, which means to bind, to unite. What does the uniting absent religion?

Yes, they had a very similar diagnosis of society, i.e. that it was build on religious foundations, and that it would fall apart if you take that away. And they probably had a similar insight about the role guilt played psychological and in contemporary morality.

Their proposed solution was different though. Nietzsche wanted to go beyond Good and Evil, beyond guilt-based morality, at least for some. I think he saw a 'morality' based on shame rather than guilt with the pre-platonic Greeks. Socrates and Plato were a break from what came before, a re-evaluation in Greek valuations... from values based on the sensual, on aesthetics, to 'moral' values, ultimately ending in Christianity. He saw that as a mistake. The question for him was how to go beyond that, whereas Dostoevsky wanted a return to true Christianity.

What I want to propose is that there are two different ways of doing philosophy. There are those who do philosophy through discourse. These folk set the scene, offer a perspective, frame a world, and explain how things are. Their tools are exposition and eulogistics. Their aim is completeness and coherence, and the broader the topics they encompass the better. Then there are those who dissect. These folk take things apart, worry at the joints, asks what grounds the system. Their tool is nitpicking and detail. Their aim is truth and clarity, they delight in the minutia. — Banno

Yeah, people seem confused about language and the process of abstraction.

Knowledge is only possible through abstraction. That is trying to go beyond the world of particulars we sense to more encompassing general concepts. Without that there is no knowledge, only particulars. The flipside is that in this proces of generalisation and abstraction we lose information about particulars... and so it tends to become less useful the further we push it.

Since the beginning of philosophy there have been those misvaluating the highest concepts to the point that they were considered more real than the world of the senses, when in reality they were merely the most general, the 'highest' abstractions of that world, and consequently also the most empty.

Those that don't really understands this proces, or the implications thereof, tend to overvaluate what can be done with it.

Ramifications... Reifications and rationalisations.

As an atheist I didn't understand why the absence of divinity would necessarily lead to a world without righteousness.

I do feel guilt and feel compelled to act on moral principles eventhough I don't believe in God. So I do think it is perfectly possible for an individual to act morally without God.

Is it maybe that the world or society as a whole tends to deteriorate over time without some divine command, so eventually this also gets to individuals who are formed by the world they spring from?

Or maybe to put the question another way, why are there still people acting morally in societies that are largely secular, like say in parts of Europe today? Is it that we are still living in a world where the divine lingers on after the dead of God? Or maybe we have replaced the strictly divine with belief in something that serves a similar function, for instance the idea of 'never again' after the holocaust?

His anti-essentialist views follow from his Heraclitean 'metaphysics' (Panta rhei) and his views on language and 'truth'... from his perspectivism.

Perspectivism implies that things are viewed from a certain point of view, which is necessarily only partial and within a historical context.

Its hard to point to a particular passage to illustrate this because it runs through his entire work.

On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense maybe is good place to start:

Let us still give special consideration to the formation
of concepts. Every word immediately becomes a concept,
inasmuch as it is not intended to serve as a reminder of the
unique and wholly individualized original experience to
which it owes its birth, but must at the same time fit
innumerable, more or less similar cases—which means,
strictly speaking, never equal—in other words, a lot of
unequal cases. Every concept originates through our
equating what is unequal. No leaf ever wholly equals
another, and the concept "leaf" is formed through an
arbitrary abstraction from these individual differences,
through forgetting the distinctions; and now it gives rise to
the idea that in nature there might be something besides the
leaves which would be "leaf"—some kind of original form
after which all leaves have been woven, marked, copied,
colored, curled, and painted, but by unskilled hands, so that
no copy turned out to be a correct, reliable, and faithful
image of the original form. — Nietzsche

1 - Competition. — Martijn

Competition and coöperation are no opposites, and can and do go together, if we compete in groups for example, as we usually do.

I feel like what you describing as the problem, the lack of coöperation between people, is not the result of competition as a value, but rather the result of dissolution of community.

How did it come to be like this? Why are we so disconnected as a collective? I believe it's because we are brainwashed into thinking that human life is supposed to be competitive, a faulty assumption from the very start. — Martijn

In Asia there's still more of a sense for the collective. I think it's a specifically Western evolution that let to dissolution of community. First you had Christianities universalism unrooting people for more their more local pagan traditions. And then renaissance and merchand/burgher class ideas lead to reformation of part of christianity into a more individualist striving religion. The scientific revolution ultimately put into question the whole moral fabric of the religion leaving little of substance left to reign in baser parts of our nature like greed.

2 - Desire. Also known as 'hunger', this is also something that has been drilled into us from a young age. We are taught to constantly work so that we can 'achieve' a lot of things. This applies mostly to wealth, status, appearance, reputation, job experience, sexual partners, and fitness. As the ancient philosophers knew: desire is the root of suffering. Any Stoic or Buddhist philosopher (or perhaps all philosophers) realize sooner or later that genuine happiness and stillness can only come from within. It does not matter if you are living in poverty or if you are a literal king or billionaire: happiness can never be external. As Marcus Aurelius famously stated: "Your happiness depends on the quality of your thoughts." — Martijn

This only follows if we assume happiness should be the goal.

What if we instead taught young individuals to be more autonomous and embrace their individuality? What if we stopped constantly shaming each other out of insecurity, and we encouraged each other to be different? — Martijn

This seems to be in tension with the earlier point you made about the lack of community and disconnected collective.

Isn't shaming part of how humans make people fall in line?

Or how do you think we could have a connected collective if we teach people to be autonomous individuals that encourage oneother to be different?

Norms are illusions. — Martijn

Norms are illusions, or rather conventions we make up... but so is money, or language. That doesn't mean they can't be usefull or we don't need them.

You can breathe again, and begin to write your own story. Understanding this gave me an immense amount of stillness, mental clarity, and equanimity. I don't know if it was Stoic philosophy that gave me this insight, or if there was some other way I discovered this truth, but regardless: I am free. — Martijn

If humans are these fragile creatures that need to coöperate with others to survive, as you described at the start, realising the illusory nature of the stories people tell eachother doesn't really free you from their effects.

Yes it is very confusing. It occured to me after I posted the reply to Banno that we were talking about something different probably.

I was talking mostly about how 'liberalism' has been used as an ideology historically by different political actors to further their poltical and economic aims.

And Banno was talking more about how 'liberal-democracy' (not only liberalism as an ideology, but as a political system we have ended up with in the West) has served or should serve as an ethic and system of poltical organisation to keep diverse societies functioning without coercion.

I suppose there's truth to both perspectives, and I'm not sure how to disentangle these from eachother.

I've never used an AI.

All life, from the perspective of the system, works towards the same goal - to preserve and propagate. This includes the fortification against negative signals (e.g. parasitic susceptibility, pain response, etc.). Even parasitism serves the broader life cycle. — James Dean Conroy

Ok I'm not entirely sure we can ascribe agency or a telos to life in general like that, but I maybe could get on board with it as a general description of what life does.

But I think I still would hold that the general system perspective isn't all that relevant for us as a particular lifeform. We value what makes sense from our particular perspective, and by doing that maybe inadvertently also serve some larger systemic purpose... but it's not by taking that larger systemic perspective that we would serve the whole, but precisely by valuing from our perspective as a part of the whole.

So I'm maybe fine with it as a description, not so much as an axiom that can be used as a basis for our morality.

Do you mean ontological necessity from the point of view of the organism, or from a more general point of view of all life?

The latter seems hard to justify since life is often parasitic on other life, and the death of one life is often a condition for other life to persist.

So my main critique would be that in generalising all the way to life in general, you seem to have reduced away the multiplicity of life, and the different perspectives and valuations that come with that.

You're welcome.

And 'Life = Good' isn’t a moral claim - it’s the foundational logic that undergirds any value-based claim, including Nietzsche’s own. — James Dean Conroy

He wouldn't see it as a logic exactly I don't think, but as a description maybe, because he doesn't see valuing as derived from or based on a logical foundation at base, but rather coming from physiological needs... because of the type of lifeform we are.

We value from a certain point of view, not from the totality of life, and not from life as the good as an abstract principle.

Perspectivism.

Sea water is at once very pure and very foul: it is drinkable and healthful for fishes, but undrinkable and deadly for men. — Heraclitus

You seem to be one step removed from the will to power as a basic principle.

Life doesn't seek to perserve itself, but to overcome itself into something more adaptive, something greater.

Preservation makes sense only in a static world, not in a world that changes constantly... life creates order and destroys order to create another order ad infinitum.

Nietzsche wrote a couple of books on what he thought the implications were for philosophy and morality.

Outside the USA socialist policy has a greater standing and liberalism can be considered a counterpoint to capitalism, a way of constraining capitalist excess. — Banno

Outside the USA liberalism has serves against capitalism, curbing its excesses, defend individual dignity, and secure public goods. — Banno

I think you have it exactly backwards here. In Europe liberalism is more about less government intervention, more market freedom, less welfare state etc etc... a bit like the libertarians in the US but less extreme. Typically they find themselves in opposition to and to the right of Christian- and Social-democrats who do favour a larger role for the state.

US 'liberals' on the other hand are typically the party that favours more government intervention, as opposed to the Republicans and Libertarians. They have more in common with Social-democrats in Europe, but less social or less to the left.

Historically liberalism was the ideology of the capitalists class, of the bourgeoisie who wanted to take power from the aristocracy and the clergy... and it seems they have largely succeeded as the aristocracy and the clergy have very little power left in the West.

Liberalism has been mainly about "freedom from", whereas a more sensible way to look at freedom is as "freedom to" as Timothy Snyder argues is his book 'On freedom'.

I probably have a slightly different view of morality if you think it is only about figuring out cause and effect.

I think we create morals, as a society, over time. Cause and effect plays a role in that these morals get refined and adjusted by a process of trial and error when we interact with the world. But it's not like science that we just go observing the world and find out what the causes and effects are. There's also a 'subjective' valuing part to it and so there's not only one correct true answer that follows from facts about the world.

So separate societies develop different moralities because of historical contingencies, and these then get passed on to the next generations. To some extend there's an arbitrary element to them that cannot be fully justified rationally or empirically, but has to be taken on faith. Since we live in groups it is also important that there is some coherence to the morals being pursued in the same group. Myths function to justify and anchor those moralities in coherent and comprehensive stories, because that is the way we pass them on and remember them best.

If we come to question those mythical foundations, like say via the scientific method, you eventually also end up losing the justification and anchor for that particular morality. And then people start questioning them and develop their own particular diverging views on it... and you eventually end up with the anarchy or chaos I was referring to (nihilism or Durkheim would call it anomie).

That is when people instinctively start asking for some kind of unifying power to remedy the situation, which can be abused by fascists and the like.

What do you think fascism is? — Athena

It's an attempt at overcoming a culture that has become nihilistic by creating a new shared nationalistic myth.

Western culture has become nihilistic because it is based on Christianity that has within it the seeds of nihilism because of its life-denying values and emphasis on Truth as a value.

Over time a culture that has Truth as one of its core values eats its own foundational myths, and thus eventually also devaluates Truth as a value that was justified by that myth... the highest values devaluate themselves.

First the metaphysical/mythological basis of morality dissolves over time.

Then the morality based on that foundation erodes away.

Then the belief in the societal and legal structures based on that shared understanding of morality wanes.

Then you get dis-unity, splintering, corruption, power-struggles... chaos.

Then you get fascism trying to rectify that by imposing a new kind of order onto a choatic society.

It's not enough by itself. The top institutions, like the UN, aren't working or aren't adjusted to the times. Stopping the current path of militarization is at least as important if we don't want to totally lose track.

Well at the moment it doesn't look to good, that's right. But you know often we need to really feel the consequences first before we act... when we do, it can change quickly.

If we don't find agreement on a global level then the incentives won't be there... and I think you'll see a mad scramble for the remaining fossil energy sources and other resources, as everybody will be desperately trying to fend off collapse. Morality typically takes a back seat in such circumstances.

The ecological point of view on all of this is more suited to a post-collapse world it seems to me, when larger structures have already broken down.

My view is that the world is changing now, and that opens possibilities for good, and for bad. I think we need more people on board to try and make the best of it. And to achieve that we can't be to morally pure about it. There's going to be a lot of pain no matter how you slice it.

But in any case, I don't plan to go quietly into that good night.

I would rather have there be a pond, any kind, otherwise we'd only have fried fish big or small.

I'm not advocating for a world government, just an agreement like we've had for many other things like the UN, WTO or more specific for the ozone layer or nuclear weapons.

Honestly I don't get the aversion for the idea, when it seems clear to me that this is the only way forward.

It is the only way forward because geo-politics has always and will always be a thing, and it determines and constrains what is possible. To deny that is to deny reality... and so we get stuck on solutions that are purely idealistic because they deny a basic part of our existence.

It's like this aversion for any kind of power-structure is so deeply routed in our culture, that we'd rather have the world end, before we allow some concentration of power that could actually do something.

But I guess maybe that is the way we want it to go, so the apocalyse can finally reveal all our sins and judgement can be passed on the wicked.





If the AMOC collapses it could change the other way rather quicky in Liverpool.

Haven't we evolved in-group coöperation inclinations, and out-group conflict inclinations? If this is true, and I think it is, you would need something to overcome those inclinations, i.e. binding supra-national agreement.

Clearly neither of you understand the prisoner's dilemma. You, the prisoner, cannot "create incentives", you have to rely on each other's solidarity - or not. — unenlightened

I do understand it. The prisoner's dilemma is set up so that the prisoners can't talk to each and don't know what the others choice is going to be when making their choice. Also it's a one off situation where their actions don't have any other longer term effects other that those stipulated.

In that hypothetical situation what you say is true. But luckily we don't have to live in splendid isolation, we can talk to eachother and trust can be build up over many instances of facing similar dilemma's... that changes the math.

It isn't exactly a prisoner's dilemma, but it is a collective action problem.

This statement is meaningless without a standard of real measurement. If one group of people is living in luxury while the other is living in poverty, it makes no sense to complain that the wages of those living in poverty rose while the wages of those living in luxury stayed the same.

And there has always been capitalist "elites". When the elites already have more money than they could ever possibly spend, therefore are free to do what they want, what does "benefitting the elites" even mean? — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not sure I understand what you are getting at. My claim is that real wages of workers haven't changed that much since the seventies... that is in terms of cost of living (wages compared to buying a house and food etc...) which is what really matters to them. And a further claim that is probably save to make, is that the gap in wealth between workers and elites in the West has only grown.

Let’s start with the premise: “free trade is good for economies with excess production and trade surpluses.” That is a misunderstanding of how trade works. Free trade isn’t some rigged game that only benefits surplus countries. The US has run trade deficits for decades and still emerged as the most powerful economy on earth. That's not despite those deficits but in part because of the structure that allows them - namely FDI and the reserve currency status of the USD.

The US receives massive foreign capital inflows. Foreigners buy US Treasury bonds, stocks, real estate and invest in businesses. Those inflows keep interest rates low, fund domestic investment and support the dollar’s global role. In other words, the trade deficit is not some evidence of decline. It is the accounting counterpart of America’s central role in the global financial system. That is just how the balance of payments works. — Benkei

The position of the US economy in the world now is nothing like is was after the world war, or the seventies. Comparatively its advantage has declined steadily over time. It is still the most powerful for now, but if the trend continues it won't be for much longer.

You might say that's fine because a rising tide raises all boats, and so everybody gets more wealthy. But that's not what actually happened. Real wages of workers in the West haven't grow much since the seventies, it's Western elites and Asia that has benefitted from the growth predominantly.

The other problem is geo-political as Tzeentch pointed out. If you only look at the economic aspect this trend might not be that worrying, but the issue is that offshoring your production does mean you lose military industrial capacity and you will eventually not be able to keep up with China. In shipbuilding for instance China flew right past the US in the past decade.

You also claim that the US created the postwar global system because it used to run surpluses and that it should step away now that "the East" benefits more. But that ignores the actual historical logic behind the system. The US didn’t create the global economic order to rack up trade surpluses. It created the order to prevent another world war, contain communism and entrench a rules-based system in which it would remain the institutional and financial center, regardless of whether it was exporting more goods than it imported. That strategy worked. The US became the issuer of the reserve currency, the seat of global capital and the main power in the world. Walking away from that now doesn’t punish China. It vacates the field for them to take over as the second largest economy in the world . — Benkei

Well I'm not arguing that it was the only reason, but it was a reason... the dominant power will not build a system that doesn't work for them economically. Historically it has generally been the well performing established economies that advocated for free trade, and the less competitive economies that tried to protect their emerging industries. And that is what China has done, it has created the system that could maximally benefit from what the West had set up, i.e. protectionism not mainly by tariffs maybe, but by heavy subsidizing of industrial policy initiatives and erecting barriers to their internal market.

You say China should carry more of the burden. Fair enough. But then what? Are we handing them the keys to the system because the US is tired of leading it? Tariffs aren’t creating “space” for anything coherent. They’re just inflaming tensions and undermining trust in US stability. A real renegotiation of global institutions would require diplomatic capital and credibility; the very things a chaotic trade war destroys and Trump personally lacks. — Benkei

The issue is that China wouldn't necessarily want to fundamentally re-negotiate the system that was serving them reasonably well as it was. By threatening to plunge the entire thing into chaos you would think it will make them more amenable for talks about real change. They have the most to lose because their economy relies to most on exports. And finding other markets to sell their products is easier said than done because there aren't that many markets like the US that can buy up their surplus.

I don't know what Trumps plan is, or if they even have a set plan... And it could easily backfire for the US. But I do think you will have to eventually do something to re-adjust the system to a world that has changed fundamentally (the share of world GDP of the US having declined as much). It seems to me they are just throwing stuff at the wall now to see what sticks.

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

They are trying something alright, admitting failure frankly is another matter.

Your swipe at the left is a convenient distraction that makes me wonder why it's even in there. Yes, parts of the left were historically anti-globalist, but that was in defense of labour standards, environmental protections and democratic oversight: not nationalist economic isolation. And as a leftist I'm STILL in favour of tariffs but to force other countries to produce at the same level of regulations as the EU does so we have a level playing field between local and foreign producers and costs of production aren't unfairly externalised unto poor people abroad and the environment there. — Benkei

As a European myself I'm all in favour of those standards too, I like healthy food and and a clean environment. I would say the global system as it is now is a problem for that too because it typically encourages a race to the bottom. That's another reason a re-negotiation is in order. I'm thinking this probably won't happen under Trump, or at least not the way we would want it because he doesn't really care about these things, that's right. My swipe at the left is more an attempt at waking them from their dogmatic slumber. I think they should realize what moment we are in, and not waste the opportunity in little fights defending the status-quo against Trump... this is a transition period and so they should be working towards a real and new plan themselves.

Yeah free trade is typically good for economies that have excess production and trade-surplus. That used to be the US, which is why they created the system we have. Now that the balance has been shifting to the east, economically and thus geo-politically as well, it doesn't really make sense anymore for the US to be the garantor of a system that benefits export-countries in the first place.

Eventually you will need a re-negotiation of the system where China carries more of the burden because they are the prime beneficiaries of it. Tariffs on their own probably won't do it, but it does create space for things that weren't possible previously.

The left, who were the original anti-globalists let's not forget, could see the opportunity of the moment if they weren't so preoccupied with fighting Trump. Or maybe they don't really want to change the system anymore, because they have effectively become the party of the elites who do still benefit from it, at the cost of Main Street.

Apparently we already made a zero to zero tariff proposal to the US on industrial goods, which has been refused before by Trump. He probably wants some of the other EU barriers gone too,... or maybe that's already reading too much into it, who knows?

I guess we are going to escalate then.

I appreciate truthfulness.

But it is not 'let's pretend it's not really so bad' sort of help. — unenlightened

I've been down the limits-to-growth rabbithole. It's doesn't pretend it's not so bad, that's right, but it does put itself diametrically opposed to (our) civilization. There is no way we achieve the values you quoted there and keep our current civilization going.

That basically means you are either in permanent opposition to the current order, probably without much prospect of changing it because typically not enough people will be on board which such drastic changes, or you just give up on society alltogether and you go live somewhere of the land or in a small community isolated from the rest of society.

And it seems to me you still have the basic problem of 8 billion people relying on a technologically advanced but ecologically destructive system for their survival. I don't see how you go from where we are now to living in harmony with nature without a lot of people dying.

I think we should talk to Trump. There is a lot of misunderstanding between Europe and the new US administration.

They view our goverments basically as the same as the democrats, which is only partially true. We never had the same 'woke'-agenda in most of Europe for instance. And we view them as authoritarian fascists in the same mold as World War II fascists, which is also only partially true. They are not nearly as far down that road yet.

The knee-jerk reaction is to double down to stop them at all cost and polarise even further, but I think that is precisely how these populist parties tend to become more extreme, if they feel like everybody is against them no matter what.

Sure, they would say the same of the liberal democratic perspective. Ones freedomfighter is anothers terrorist.

I think what they dislike is the liberal democratic leadership of Europe and the EU, they are surprisingly high on Europe itself as part of the Western civilization.

So they want to change the leadership and ideology of Europe, hence the support for the far-right political movement in Europe. It does actually make sense if you look at it from their ideological perspective. They see themselves as the saviour of the US people, and so they want to extend the favour to Europe too if possible.

One thing that is not often discussed are the psychological effects of climate change on people and societies.

The ecological view on climate change and ecological collapse more general, is often that civilization and growth itself has been the problem that got us to where we are. While this may be true, it does get us into this logic of degrowth or civilizational collapse as the only possible ways 'forward'.

Problem is that this account 1) almost has to lead to a re-interpretation of most of our civilizational tradition as bad or misguided because of where it ended up and 2) it gives us and next generations very little to work towards or aspire to.

It think even before the physical effects get to us, the psychological effects might bring us down. If you wipe away the horizon... you get nihilism.

The question of whether there is climate change is a purely scientific one, but I think the way we deal with it is a political question and so a question of values ultimately.

For example, how much do you value future generation compared to living generations? Or how much do you value nature, only instrumentally or is there something more inherently valuable?

Seeing this purely as a scientific question, as if we can just ask scientist what to do about it, has been one of the problems it seems to me.