I don't know if it has to suppose that neoliberalism is "complete," just that it is hegemonic.

First, that neoliberalism is a completed project with no real internal challengers.

Well, Fukuyama's End of History thesis, despite often being misread, has held up remarkably well over 30+ years. There is no challenger with any significant following. Even the authoritarians within the liberal order describe themselves primarily as the saviors of that same order. The policy solution for the failures of liberalism are still virtually always "more liberalism" (just "more" of variously its conservative or progressive varieties). Even the biggest external critics of the global order keep "legislatures" and hold titles like "president" instead of "king" or "caliph." When they want to attack the neoliberal order, they almost always do so in its own terms, by claiming it fails to live up to democracy, providing liberal freedoms, etc. They don't attack it with any sort of coherent parallel vision. Radical Islam is the closest thing to a real challenger, and it necessarily has limited appeal.

The term "internal" makes things a bit more difficult though. I'd say that neoliberalism does have one significant challenger, and that is its own positive feedback loops. But if neoliberal states like the US become less democratic, and more authoritarian, I don't think that necessarily means much for neoliberalism. It has proven if can exist alongside more oligarchic or authoritarian settings.

Second, that both the ‘Woke’ and the ‘Alt-Right’ are united in their rejection of liberalism, driven by its perceived spiritual or moral emptiness.

That might put to fine a point on it. The lack of any sort of thymotic outlet leads to activism for activism's sake. That is not the same thing as a self-conscious rejection of liberalism per se, nor even a recognition of its spiritual and moral emptiness. All it requires is that activism becomes a sort of performative outlet for the desire for recognition that is otherwise frustrated in a society of atomized "worker/consumers."

You can’t wish away real, entrenched differences in outlook and ways of life separating one community from another by blaming them on the nefarious influence of some powerful individual. That’s insulting to persons and communities who rely on forging their own value system as a compass for guiding their life and making sense of their world. — Joshs

I get your response and I agree with you. I am not blaming leaders for causing our problems. I am blaming them for capitalizing on them, attempting to make our divisions wider.

I don’t know why that would be an insult. I am not saying we are all sheep looking for leaders to solve our problems. Not at all. I am saying our leaders call us sheep and tell us what we need, and say they can solve our problems for us, and to do so we need to hate those bad people over there….

Your go to response to something you disagree with is personal insult. — unenlightened

It's not meant as a personal insult. It's genuinely how I feel about the position you're laying out.

You talk about an obsession with sex, but it's you who seems to throw all reason out the window on this topic.

I genuinely believe that you, and people like you, are being manipulated into an emotional response by people much cleverer than you, in order to control you for political ends. This is essentially just how propaganda works.

Topics of sex and sexuality are especially suitable for this, due to the fears, insecurities, resentments, etc. that a lot of people harbor and are often ashamed of - fear and especially shame are very powerful emotions. You give people an excuse to turn that shame into righteous indignation and a sense of moral grandiosity, and you have a delicious emotional cocktail for people to get drunk on. Or actually hooked would be a better word, because very few people will voluntarily trade that emotional drug back for the shame that started it - it's addictive; a clever propagandist will seek to fuse the subjects ego to whatever it is they're being made to believe, making the road back to sanity all the more difficult.

In addition, sexual topics are often taboo, ensuring limited interaction with the real world, and thus a lower threat of the echo chamber being disrupted.

Maybe you should read up on how propaganda works. Propagandists are very clever, and they know people better than people know themselves.

Your go to response to something you disagree with is personal insult.
— unenlightened

It's not meant as a personal insult. It's genuinely how I feel about the position you're laying out. — Tzeentch

Oh, your sacred feelings! How very woke! How very feminine! How very irrational!

https://www.unh.edu/sharpp/prevention/rape-culture

Oh, your sacred feelings! How very woke! How very feminine! How very irrational! — unenlightened

Bit of a weird response. No idea why the word 'feel' set you off in this way, but at this point I figure I'm not surprised. You obviously have a chip on your shoulder, and are not interested in having it pointed out.

Universities and academia are at the root of this mania, so you'll excuse me if I don't take their views on the topic especially seriously.

They spent years trying to stretch the definition of rape and sexual violence to 'drunk people having sex' and 'I had a shag that I regretted', and are now trying to sell the idea of a "rape epidemic" - I'm not buying it. Sorry, not sorry.

Oh, them smart people trying to make us passive with their theories. I have strong feelings about feelings; respect my feelings!

Alas, you do not seem to recognise your own arguments played back at you. I genuinely do not feel that you are genuine, therefore you are fake.

Two sad people having a really sad discussion about a really sad topic. This is why woke died. :sad:

Sorry, not sorry.

That's cause you're here politicizing over other people's self awareness.

What would happen if people started demonizing your traits and qualities as trash and shit to be stamped out of society? Suddenly you would be the point of contention in the lives of others for simply living your life the best way that you know how.

There never will be an end of woke, it's the history of the fucking world... "we don't like X so fucking kill it!" Ressentiment at it's finest. The word woke is just a modern mask for people to discriminate against others.

The term woke was originally used in philosophy as in those who are self aware, as in those who don't slumber their lives away to the status quo of some falsified world. For those awake and aware of this falsified world.

There will always be people who are awake and aware of this falsified world we live in. You used to get burned at the steak for simply being awake and aware.

Now it's a bunch of lazy fucks not minding their own business, attempting to assert their objective dogshit upon others as if that's the burning at the steak.

Their life, their rules, not yours. Ya feel?

Ya feel? — DifferentiatingEgg

No, but I’m only on chapter 7 of Zarath so I’m not fluent in uber-speak.

It seems that Nietzschean values place power (self-overcoming) on a pedestal, perhaps slavishly.

There never will be an end of woke, it's the history of the fucking world... "we don't like X so fucking kill it!" — DifferentiatingEgg

I agree.

What is wrong about “woke” is calling it “woke”.

People on the left are no more awake than people on the right. The loudest of both sides are the deepest sleepers.

“Woke” is false advertising. It’s really just another package for “my way” versus “your way” shit, and no one willing to mind their own business, or willing to truly develop their own “my way” and just live it, and damn the whole rest of the world and their hatreds and failings.

Society will never be comfortable for us. Admitting that fact is the first awakening.

The woke stand for victims of racism. Right? The woke want to stamp out racism. But they are racist. So woke solutions are not even woke by their own standards.

We should all wake up, cut the crap and admit it.

Wokeism is a set of vague moral aspirations, and practices to enforce these moral judgments in oppressive and facistic ways. No different than your basic caricature of any church, or naziism, or tyranny.

No one (besides me) one this thread has been able to demonstrate something that is clearly on the side of woke that has benefited society, or just benefited yourself. Woke is mostly shallow, empty hatred of those deemed powerful with no real solutions besides rioting. It is embracing weakness for sake of staying weak. It is self-contradictory and self-defeating.

And I hope we learn something from this present anti-woke moment.

We won’t.
Wokeism may change its name, but it will stay strong.

Truly aware and enlightened people don’t blame anyone else for their problems, even the “systemic” problems. And truly aware and free people do not need laws or society to “level the playing field” for them, or for “justice and fairness”. You want a level playing field? Wait for an earthquake, tsunami and a wild fire from the volcano to level things out for everyone. You want justice? Wait for death and for God to sift the sheep from the goats. Just sit there and wait.

Or, be awake. Or, make and live your own life. Regardless of everything and everyone and all that they say and all that they throw in your way. We will always hav to learn to say “fuck it” before we might attempt freedom. “Equal opportunity” is called having lungs and breathing air. The rest is up to you.

Tolerance isn’t a virtue. It’s a tactic. Useful for the time being once in a while. But most often, tolerance is avoidance. So it’s more like a vice.
Diversity isn’t a virtue. It’s an assessment of multiple things.
There is nothing good to learn by preaching “tolerance” and goals like “diversity”.

Be more precise and specific if you want to tell other people what to do. DEI is vacuous and amorphous.

If you are truly interested in a building a better society, cultivate humility in yourself (so others may tolerate you) and respect for all others above yourself (so you can learn from their diversity), and then become a leader, and show everyone what it is like to be truly free. Serve others out of your own free choice.

I’m sure that sounds like no fun - well, that is why society is a mess. No one wants to actually do the work to get what they want; it’s more woke if the system will just hand it to you.

This is where we sleep - in between our false selves and the false others around us we blame. These moralistic problems are never about others, or politics - they are about ourselves. But we are asleep to that fact, dreaming of how others are to blame and how if we just could normalize the TQ in LGBTQ, the world will make more sense to everyone….

The woke are worse off than many.

Woke just is Satan. Satan stepped into the soul of the oppressed and told them to open their eyes, and they did so not to God but to Beelzebub. They became full of hell-fire and spat it on God-fearing folks who had no idea they were oppressing anyone. After all, they paid their taxes. And so the woke demons ran rampant for a while and spread their vile ideology. On they ran through university eggheads who bitten by these woke bugs became rotten stinky eggs farting woke gas all over their students. And the stupid young people who did not know God made a deity of the Dark Prince. Eventually the God-fearing folks got wise to this evil and learned how to defeat woke. But, irony of ironies, it was too late, for woke had defeated itself by making of the universities lakes of hellfire in which the stinky eggheads and their rotten students melted and disintegrated. And now that woke has been ended, let us all join hands and open our eyes to the Lord. Glory be...

[Paraphrased from an actual real life sermon by a cool holy man of the deep south who, though he had been sniffing coke that day, abstains on the Sabbath]

Woke just is Satan. … farting woke gas all over their students. … and their rotten students melted and disintegrated. … Glory be... — Baden

Amen. :pray:

Wait... is that a whiff of irony I detect, drowning in the woke gas?

You are probably insulting Satanists, which isn’t very woke.

irony of ironies — Baden

Irony, or feature of wokeism?

The lack of any sort of thymotic outlet leads to activism for activism's sake. That is not the same thing as a self-conscious rejection of liberalism per se, nor even a recognition of its spiritual and moral emptiness. All it requires is that activism becomes a sort of performative outlet for the desire for recognition that is otherwise frustrated in a society of atomized "worker/consumers." — Count Timothy von Icarus

In principle, I agree with your general evaluation of contemporary activism, which may also help qualify the nature of “wokeness.” However, the notion of “activism for activism’s sake” requires a more nuanced and elaborated analysis. What you describe as “the lack of any sort of thymotic outlet” appears to stand in tension with the potent vigour and intensity of emotional expression and the clear sense of authenticity that are often embedded within activist practices.
The idea of a “performative outlet for the desire for recognition” points to a broader performative enactment of contemporary subjectivity. Likely, it implicates not only those engaged in activist practices but also affects all of us. Félix Guattari’s framework shows that subjectivity emerges as the culmination of processes of aesthetic enunciation. An aesthetic reconfiguration of experience incorporates elements of the unconscious subjectivity, which operates beyond conscious intention.
For Guattari, aesthetics is not limited to artistic production or the traditional domain of art. Rather, it represents a broader mode of subjectivation that occupies a central place in the dynamics of contemporary capitalism. In this sense, the aesthetic dimension of activism may reflect a deeper transformation of subjectivity under capitalist conditions, where novel forms of expression and recognition are constantly negotiated. So, the sense of identity is no longer a fixed essence but becomes something performatively achieved and continually redefined.

That’s brand infringement, dude.

“I think [something off target or superfluous, about what someone else thinks]” - praxis

That’s brand — praxis

Woke is … with no real solutions besides rioting. — Fire Ologist

subjectivity emerges as the culmination of processes of aesthetic enunciation. An aesthetic reconfiguration of experience incorporates elements of the unconscious subjectivity, which operates beyond conscious intention. — Number2018

Does this operation “beyond conscious intention” serve to select the matter one is active about (environment or trans or women’s rights), or does this operation beyond conscious intention make one an activist at all, as part of one’s aesthetic reconfiguration? Are activists activists because they can’t help it; or are they activists against capitalism and not against racism because they can’t help it?

(Because they “can’t help it” may be too extreme but it’s my short form of “operates beyond conscious intention”.)

aesthetics …represents a broader mode of subjectivation that occupies a central place in the dynamics of contemporary capitalism. — Number2018

Why “capitalism”? I thought you were going to say “contemporary society.”

under capitalist conditions, where novel forms of expression and recognition are constantly negotiated. — Number2018

I’m not sure I can picture a world where the shape of one’s subjectivity did not involve some sort of social negotiation. Are you saying that capitalism has produced activists operating beyond conscious intention? If this is what you are saying, why is this peculiar to capitalism?

I have to say, there is something ironic to this subconscious motivator for behavior of the “woke”.

———-

As I’ve said before, the focus on the notion of “implicit bias” (much like “beyond conscious intention”), is one of the most positive contributions of wokeism. We do operate unconscious of our motivations, and we need to identify and face these motivations if we are to change future behaviors. That’s a positive contribution of wokeness and justifies the term “woke”.

Meaning you’re fully onboard with conservative branding?



That’s Viktor Orbán, btw. He was a rockstar at CPAC.

I think you're right and bring up some good points. My point would be that other maladaptive thymotic outlets are not so straightforwardly corrosive for politics and civic virtue.

For instance, two things I've noted before:

This phenomena [the maladaptive search for thymos] isn't unique to the far-right. I think it explains many trends across our culture, e.g., the widespread popularity of post-apocalyptic media. The basic idea there is: "if everything falls apart I can actually become a hero, actually have a meaningful life, rather than living a meaningless life where I have been reduced to a bovine consumer," or even "war or crisis will help make me into something more heroic." [Note: whether he is read correctly or not, I think this phenomena explains something of the enduring appeal of Nietzsche in our era]. And this also helps explain other changes in patterns of consumption (e.g. "tactical" everything flying off the shelves, people driving off-road vehicles for their suburban commutes, etc.).

The effects of this sort of thinking are particularly strong in the sphere of gender politics because sex is one of the last elements of human life not to be wholly commodified. Hence, sex remains a strong source of validation, a source of self-worth. And yet, as de Beauvoir points out, Hegel's lord-bondsman dialectic ends up playing out between men and woman here, because the misogynist, having denigrated woman, can no longer receive meaningful recognition from her.

Now, the political gap between the genders and the follow phenomena like the "Manosphere" and equally "economic" dating advice for women (e.g., "sexual marketplace" lingo) certainly do have follow on effects for politics, but not in the same way that direct calls for activism do. The two are not unrelated though of course.

In this sense, the aesthetic dimension of activism may reflect a deeper transformation of subjectivity under capitalist conditions, where novel forms of expression and recognition are constantly negotiated. So, the sense of identity is no longer a fixed essence but becomes something performatively achieved and continually redefined.

Right, and also identity is less fixed because it is less attached to more static sources such as a particular denomination, ethnicity, or even class (class identity has dissolved in some ways even as economic mobility plunges). Patrick Deneen is pretty good on how liberalism (both conservative and progressive) tends to positively drive the destruction of these more static forms of identity in its quest to transform man into homo oecononimicus (or in more positive terms, into enlightened—perhaps Rawlsian or Nozickite—properly atomized rational, reasonable utility maximizers; "properly atomized" here being "holding to just those relations the liberal individual positively consents to").

I find Charles Taylor to be quite good on the appeal of the New Age movement in this context. But, because liberal, capitalist culture tends to be quite politicized and focused on competition (and nowadays, very conspiratorial, and also soaked in the language of market competition) these efforts, some of which might be very positive for some groups, can often derail into toxic "culture war" activism. For instance, I saw a paper once that identified a solid path between organic food, meditation, and wellness spaces (all positive I would say) and anti-vaccine activism, which for some broadens out into participation in "culture war" identities.

subjectivity emerges as the culmination of processes of aesthetic enunciation. An aesthetic reconfiguration of experience incorporates elements of the unconscious subjectivity, which operates beyond conscious intention.
— Number2018

Does this operation “beyond conscious intention” serve to select the matter one is active about (environment or trans or women’s rights), or does this operation beyond conscious intention make one an activist at all, as part of one’s aesthetic reconfiguration? Are activists activists because they can’t help it; or are they activists against capitalism and not against racism because they can’t help it? — Fire Ologist

Let me re-formulate your questions: Is activism an effect of an involuntary process of subjectivation (i.e. “one can’t help it”)? Does this process also determine the cause one takes up (e.g., anti-capitalism vs. anti-racism)?
Likely, one does not “decide” to be an activist in a fully autonomous, intentional sense. Instead, a need to stabilize identity or a desire for recognition, beyond individual control, draws one into it. So, in a sense, one “can’t help it,” but not because one is a passive victim of manipulation. From another perspective, the content of activism (environment, trans rights, anti-capitalism, etc.) may not be simply chosen, nor is it arbitrary. The activist might feel aligned with anti-capitalism or anti-racism because one’s ideology resonates with the subject’s unconscious investments, shaped by one’s socio-aesthetic milieu.

Are you saying that capitalism has produced activists operating beyond conscious intention? If this is what you are saying, why is this peculiar to capitalism? — Fire Ologist

For Zizek, activism often operates as a displacement of desire. The radical energy that cannot confront capitalism gets sublimated into more manageable, identity-based struggles. In a sense, wokeness may simultaneously express political powerlessness and a mode of enjoyment. So, activism may be both an expression of unconscious desire and an adaptive performative mechanism within the late capitalist subjectivity.

I actually understand you, the signal strength is loud and clear. And I agree, both sides of the spectrum use it as a weapon against the other. Whereas some don't give a damn about the political nature of the movement, they are simply self aware, awake to their own demands on life, yet they're caught in the crosshairs in a way that alienates them from genuine and authentic interaction with those who have tried to weaponize self awareness as "woke," which is a very large portion of society on the left or right.

And you're right preaching diversity doesn't really do anything but create a prejudice for equality, how many people actually want to admit they are a dei hire/promotion? That their advantage comes from nothing important to the position? It's literally a way of fighting back against prejudice with prejudice and solves absolutely nothing. As you said it literally adds to the divide of us vs them.

What have you read from Nietzsche's yea-saying period and what have you read from Nietzsche's nay-saying period? Thus Spoke Zarathustra wont make a whole lot of sense or speak to your intuition until you have a decent handling of both branches.

Just as man is the rope between the animal and the Superman, Zarathustra is the chord between Nietzsche's yea-saying and nay-saying periods...

John 15:4-5
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine: you the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing.

Just as Nietzsche details in Beyond Good and Evil 2, and in Birth of Tragedy 1:

For all the value which the true, genuine, unselfish man may be entitled to, it might be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for everything in life must be ascribed to appearance, the will for deception, self-interest, and desire. It might even be possible that whatever creates the value of those fine and respected things exists in such a way that it is, in some duplicitous way, related to, tied to, intertwined with, perhaps even essentially the same as those undesirable, apparently contrasting things. Perhaps!

And from BoT we can see from his first Aphorism that the dual orbit exists in such a way that there is a bridge linking the two values together... hence why in the Prologue Zarathustra declares what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal (the goals are the branched ends of the values, the Left/Right, the Good/Evil, the Bad/Good, the Ignoble/Noble)

Man is the vine, the bridge, between the branches of his valuations. One does not exist without the other and both values ultimately stem from the creator of the values.

The bear fruit from Zarathustra one must abide in him, and to do so one must develop an understanding of both Nietzsche's yea-saying and nay-saying periods with a discerning eye.

From Gay Science:

Vademecum—Vadetecum.

Attracted by my style and talk
You'd follow, in my footsteps walk?
Follow yourself unswervingly,
So—careful!—shall you follow me.

Ha, let me clarify by commenting that woke is the anti-Coke. Uncle Sam drinks Coke and sprinkles golden urine on his flock. Satan drinks woke and pisses hellfire on his army of demons who terrorize colleges across the land. The final war as prophesied between the golden sheep and the woke demons, the fight between Coke and hellfire is ending now in the defeat of woke. Glory be to Coke…

[Taken verbatim from the real life sermon of our preacher hero, at the gates of Berkeley San Fran, wearing a sign “The Last Bastion of Satan”]

But, less facetiously, on one end of the spectrum, woke collapses into vain resistance (in the form of naive anger), and, on the other, it's just critical theory or something with fairly obvious value. And for anti-woke: on one side of the spectrum, it's non-resistance, naive passivity, wrapped up in indignance, and on the other, it's a justified critique of the excesses of woke as naive anger.

The media-fuelled woke/anti-woke war is a kind of a cartoonish oversimplification.

It seems that Nietzschean values place power (self-overcoming) on a pedestal, perhaps slavishly — praxis

Would you feel better about the Nietzschean notion of power if you saw it as radically distinct from its conventional definitions? For instance, if we filter his concept of power through interpreters like Joseph Rouse, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, we get something like the following:

Rouse, channeling Foucualt, argues that connventional understandings of power usually come in two main strands. First there is power as possession or capacity: someone or some institution has power because they have resources, authority, or force at their disposal. This is the classical liberal or realist view: power is something one can hold, wield, or lose. The. there is power as domination. Especially in critical or sociological theories, power is often understood in terms of control, coercion, or subordination (e.g., Max Weber’s definition of power as the ability to impose one’s will despite resistance).

Rouse’s account of power, drawing heavily on Foucault, shifts away from both of these “substance-like” views. For Rouse, power is not a thing or resource one possesses. It’s not an object or capacity that sits in someone’s hands waiting to be used. Power is relational and productive. It emerges through practices, discourses, and networks of interaction. Power doesn’t just repress or constrain, it also constitutes possibilities for action, knowledge, and subjectivity. Power is inseparable from meaning and normativity. It is bound up with how practices make certain things intelligible or significant. It is “mid-stream,” always embedded in ongoing activities, rather than a force applied from outside.

Rouse rejects the idea that power is something imposed in a top-down, centralized, hierarchical fashion (“the state” or “the sovereign” commanding from above). Instead, he emphasizes that power circulates and operates from below. It is embedded in local practices, everyday interactions, institutional routines, and forms of knowledge. It is capillary, spreading through networks rather than radiating from a single source. It works through norms, practices, and discourses that people themselves enact and reproduce, not simply by external command. Hierarchies are effects, not origins, of power. Institutions like governments, professions, or sciences don’t so much “possess” power and trickle it down; rather, they are stabilized patterns of already circulating power relations.

Nietzsche attempts to ground this circulating, capillary relational nature of constitutive power in a principle
of differentiation. As Deleuze explains,

The relation of force to force is called "will:' That is why we must avoid at aIl costs the misinterpretations of the Nietzschean principle of the will to power. This principle doesn't mean (or at least doesn't primarily mean) that the will wants power or wishes to dominate. As long as the will to power is interpreted in terms of a "desire to dominate," we inevitably make it depend on established values, the only ones able to determine, in any given case or conflict, who must be "recognized" as the rnost powerful. We then cannot recognize the nature of the will to power as an elastic principle of aIl of our evaluations, as a hidden principle for the creation of new values not yet recognized. The will to power, says Nietzsche, consists not in coveting or even in taking but in creating and giving. Power, as a will to power, is not that which the will wants, but that which wants in the will (Dionysus himself). The will to power is the differential element from which derive the forces at work, as weIl as their respective quality in a complex whole.

You’ve got it backwards. The polarization wasn't the result of the make-up of the political parties. It was due to the fact that one part of the country, the cities, moved more rapidly into a post ‘60’s economic, social and intellectual way of life than the slower changing rural areas. As a result, people needed to change what the political parties stood for in order to reflect the growing cultural divide. They have now done that. — Joshs

Do notice that this has been an universal transition that has happened in all Western (and other) countries. Yet not all countries have suffered similar polarization. The usual stereotypes in jokes of the city dwellers and rural folk doesn't result in such dramatic polarization. For example, in my country clearly derogatory terms of poor people, like white trash, were used in the 19th Century, but disappeared from use in the 20th Century.

In US politics there was a quite unique event of the two political parties switching their traditional base as the Democratic Party left the traditional white southern voters and the Republicans took them eagerly under their wing. Also the divide from the Civil War era is something notable even today.

60 years ago the republican party was socially moderate , fiscally conservative , supportive of the U.S. as the world’s policeman, and over-represented by wealthy, educated voters. It is now the populist party, is dominated by the poor, lesser educated and working class, is isolationist and socially conservative. — Joshs

The radical transformation of the Republican party is something that has happened quite recently. Perhaps one thing was that the Republicans started fearing that the demographic transition where white Americans lose the majority and minorities would stay loyal to the Democrats made them to choose populism. Or simply Trump and populism took them and they have carried on with the flow.

Do notice that this has been an universal transition that has happened in all Western (and other) countries. Yet not all countries have suffered similar polarization. — ssu

I have claimed that there is a direct correlation between population density and political orientation in the current era. But by population density , I don’t simply mean how many people live in a country relative to its size. After all, a huge percentage of Australia is uninhabited. What I’m looking at is the density experienced by the average inhabitant of a country or region. One can calculate this by median pwd (population-weighted density). Doing so, one sees that the average person in countries like the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Belgium and Germany lives in a much denser environment than in many U.S. states (like Wyoming, Idaho, Arkansas, Oklahoma, etc) . So to be fair in our comparisons, we shouldn’t compare the level of political polarization in Belgium or the Netherlands to the U.S. as a whole, we should compare them to states in the U.S. with comparable average lived density, like Massachusetts, Illinois or California. What we find by doing so is that such highly dense U.S. states are no more polarized than their European counterparts, because like those counterparts, a large percentage of their populations are relatively urban and therefore reject strong social conservativism.

Perhaps one thing was that the Republicans started fearing that the demographic transition where white Americans lose the majority and minorities would stay loyal to the Democrats made them to choose populism. Or simply Trump and populism took them and they have carried on with the flow. — ssu

That's part of it, but a lot of it is Republicans and independents reluctantly voted for Trump because the Democrats have lost their minds. A lot of people here could care less if boys are playing in girls sports, but to many Americans, boys in girls sports became a gateway wedge issue that opened the door to much weirder shit: you can't tell me what a woman is? You want me to pay for gender affirming surgery for prisoners and detained immigrants? You want to allow doctors to remove 13 year old girl's breasts? You want to let male rapists in women's prisons? They concluded that Democrats shouldn't be allowed anywhere near political power. And that's not even getting into the open Southern border.

It's also shrunken some differences. For instance, I've heard the sentiment expressed, and even seen it in op-eds, where bourgeois Americans (or Europeans) claim they have more in common with and feel closer to (more kinship with) other bourgeois from Dubai to Hong Kong then with their fellow citizens outside their socio-economic context. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This might be actually simply globalization, when we all watch the same movies, follow the same TV series and sports and listen to the same music and buy basically the same stuff. Urban life is quite similar as you can go to a McDonalds or a Starbucks everywhere around the world. Few customs are just different, as in the climate. Being a farmer is different way different from that life of an urban consumer. What is a total world apart is when someone is still a subsistence farmer, which means absolute poverty basically.

The dissolution of custom and culture brings with it its own tensions, since there is no longer a "binding together" of ends and identity. To some extent, this is papered over by making pluralism and the destruction of custom its own goal. But this cannot go on forever. Eventually there isn't much left to transgress or destroy except for liberalism and pluralism itself. I think that's pretty much the stage we have gotten to. Once that sort of "call to activism in service to liberalism" is no longer an option (because neoliberalism has won) only the pleasures of epithumia—i.e., sensible pleasures, wealth, and safety—are left to support liberalism. Hence, those seeking thymos (honor, recognition) or any higher logos (as against the emptiness or "decadence" of an epithumia culture) will end up turning against liberalism. I think you can see this in "Woke" and the "Alt-Right." — Count Timothy von Icarus

If people think that the present is dominated by liberalism / neoliberalism, then naturally their critique is against this. But here it should be remembered that what isn't important is the grievance, which everybody can see, but what is purposed to solve it. You will have the "Woke" answer as you will have the "Alt-Right" or the "Populist" answer.

Liberalism or neoliberalism don't eradicate identity. The Swiss have still an identity, even if the country is very liberal and made up of many ethnic groups. Common identity is eradicated by the juxtaposition of us and them. The evil rich, the hostile foreigners and the nasty migrants against the good common people. A juxtaposition of populist and the nativist.

I think the dissolution of custom and culture is hastened when the political field is polarized and there's not much if anything that everybody believes. If the political establishment is incapable of finding any general agreement where they stand for a common cause as "team nation", the destruction of a common idea and citizenship is a true possibility.

I could notice just how different Finnish politics is from US politics. Naturally there's a heated debate about income distribution, taxes and the role of the government in both countries. Yet that is simply normal political discourse. Yet when the Pandemic hit or when Putin assaulted Ukraine, the Finnish ruling administration and the opposition got behind a common policy in no time, which was accepted by the vast majority of the people (in both cases). Especially the discourse during the COVID-pandemic was totally different: in the US the Pandemic just increased the political polarization, which has lingered on still until today. This actually didn't happen in Finland (or Sweden, which went it's own way during the Pandemic).

Rallying around the flag in a time of crisis is very important for social cohesion and for a nation to function properly.

So to be fair in our comparisons, we shouldn’t compare the level of political polarization in Belgium or the Netherlands to the U.S. as a whole, we should compare them to states in the U.S. with comparable average lived density, like Massachusetts, Illinois or California. What we find by doing so is that such highly dense U.S. states are no more polarized than their European counterparts, because like those counterparts, a large percentage of their populations are relatively urban and therefore reject strong social conservativism. — Joshs

It's a good point to look at the US as separate states as there's obviously a huge difference between Massachusetts and Wyoming and Alaska.

Yet I'm not so convinced about this. Urbanization might be too general as there are obvious differences between income levels and prosperity between urban dwellers. A place like Massachusetts, which is basically deep Democratic territory, has still it's Republican places:



Now even if we take a large city, we would have similar differences between the rich and poor places. And do notice that especially in Europe in many countries the conservatives haven't gone with the populism similar to Trump.

I think you're right and bring up some good points. My point would be that other maladaptive thymotic outlets are not so straightforwardly corrosive for politics and civic virtue.

For instance, two things I've noted before:

This phenomena [the maladaptive search for thymos] isn't unique to the far-right. I think it explains many trends across our culture, e.g., the widespread popularity of post-apocalyptic media. The basic idea there is: "if everything falls apart I can actually become a hero, actually have a meaningful life, rather than living a meaningless life where I have been reduced to a bovine consumer," or even "war or crisis will help make me into something more heroic." [Note: whether he is read correctly or not, I think this phenomena explains something of the enduring appeal of Nietzsche in our era]. And this also helps explain other changes in patterns of consumption (e.g. "tactical" everything flying off the shelves, people driving off-road vehicles for their suburban commutes, etc.).

The effects of this sort of thinking are particularly strong in the sphere of gender politics because sex is one of the last elements of human life not to be wholly commodified. Hence, sex remains a strong source of validation, a source of self-worth. And yet, as de Beauvoir points out, Hegel's lord-bondsman dialectic ends up playing out between men and woman here, because the misogynist, having denigrated woman, can no longer receive meaningful recognition from her. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Your point raises a fundamental question about the status and value of thymotic desire under the conditions of late capitalism. It seems we share the view that what is called “wokeness” has become embedded in adaptive, performative mechanisms of neutralized subjectivity. Recognition and the search for meaning become managed within existing capitalist structures.
Still, are there genuinely non-conformist or maladaptive thymotic outlets that stand outside or oppose to capitalist capture? As Deleuze and Guattari argue, desire is never pre-social. It does not originate from a pure, inner core of the individual, but is always produced within and through social assemblages. In capitalism, desire is no longer primarily repressed; instead, it is mobilized and redirected. It functions as an engine of productivity, consumption, and identity formation. Thus, the desire to be heroic, to be recognized, to live through crisis is intensely exploited by media, and consumer practices.
As Franco Berardi observes in ‘Heroes’, the epic form of heroism dissolved with the acceleration and abstraction of modern life. In its place, we find “gigantic machines of simulation”. Corporate structures and affective apparatuses produce mass illusions and manage subjectivities:
“The epic form of heroism disappeared towards the end of modernity, when the complexity and speed of human events overwhelmed the force of the will. Epic heroism was replaced by gigantic machines of simulation... Here lies the origin of the late-modern form of tragedy: at the threshold where illusion is mistaken for reality, and identities are perceived as authentic forms of belonging.” (Berardi, 'Heroes', p. 5)
You are right to point out that sex and gender, remaining the most intimate and affectively charged aspects of life, have not been fully commodified. But they also cannot be treated as primordial sources of authenticity or recognition. What we witness today is the amplification of gender struggles as zones of intervention, modulation, and mutation of desire.
All in all, these are not straightforward thymotic outlets. Instead, they are complex sites of negotiation. As Berardi notes:
“Identity is not naturally ascribed; it is the effect of the hypostatization, fixation, and naturalization of cultural difference… Identity is the opposite of style, which is singularity—a map of orientation, flexible and adaptable, retroactively changing.”
(Berardi, 'Heroes', p. 123)
Capitalism thus plays a double game with desire. From one side, capitalism fixes and commodifies it, but also keeps it permanently flowing and mutating. In this condition, resistance cannot rely on reclaiming “pure” desire or returning to a pre-capitalist authenticity. Rather, we may learn to track, map, and aesthetically engage with the ongoing dynamics of desire.