@StreetlightX I try to come in here with an an empty fifth and a bad attitude, and I'm still welcomed with open arms. Makes it hard, you know?

But what I was trying to point out, sort of, way too elliptically, is that:

So I guess the socio-political point is that this whole gamut of complexity is lost when or if we simply attempt to treat organisms in the abstract apart from these cycles of interconnection and mutuality. One imagines a fresh field of soil, with sprouting saplings planted a meter apart from each other: that's the philosophy of individualism. And moreover, that's what it sees when it looks at a forest.

that ^ is, basically, the traditional conservative argument in a nut shell (upstart lefty idealists think they know better than whats worked for billion of years, want to rationally organize things, plant this there, and that there)

Nothing wrong with that criticism by any means. I think its quite good, actually.

@Metaphysician Undercover from where I'm sitting, everything in the op points to a poetic defense of conservatism. What's being conserved is open to debate ( tenured profs double down on the ideas that tenured them and the department follows suit) but the concept is the same. Now of course traditional conservatism also values the social over the individual, but 'conservatism' in the 'west' today connotes the [infantile, babyish] idea of individual rational actors and free markets etc etc.

So why the non sequitur about individualism and politics?

I have some ideas but im bitter and broke and as suspect as anyone else ressentiment-wise.

@fdrake

Nature seems to care about the parameters since we can study ecosystems using them and learn things, but I don't think nature 'sees', say, the distinction between altitude's effect on the spatial distribution of soil bacteria (propensity-to-change) and the functional form we specify.

In all seriousness, I think this is an elegant way to sum up the difference between the 'in-itself' and the 'for-itself'.

It reminds me a little of a passage from that blog Slate Star Codex reviewing a David Freidman book.

Whenever I read a book by anyone other than David Friedman about a foreign culture, it sounds like “The X’wunda give their mother-in-law three cows every monsoon season, then pluck out their own eyes as a sacrifice to Humunga, the Volcano God”.

And whenever I read David Friedman, it sounds like “The X’wunda ensure positive-sum intergenerational trade by a market system in which everyone pays the efficient price for continued economic relationships with their spouse’s clan; they demonstrate their honesty with a costly signal of self-mutilation that creates common knowledge of belief in a faith whose priests are able to arbitrate financial disputes.”

This is great, and it’s important to fight the temptation to think of foreign cultures as completely ridiculous idiots who do stuff for no reason. But it all works out so neatly – and so much better than when anyone else treats the same topics – that I’m always nervous if I’m not familiar enough with the culture involved to know whether they’re being shoehorned into a mold that’s more rational-self-interest-maximizing than other anthropologists (or they themselves) would recognize. — Slate Star Codex

Another question entirely is the generative process that gives rise to the appropriate parameter spaces for studying ecological dynamics. How does nature learn what to care about? — fdrake

Maybe we could get a better grip on how nature learns to care by looking at the gap between the ways in which 'pre-rational'* peoples acted (rational in-themselves, were there someone observing from a distance) and how those peoples experienced and made sense of the ways in which they were acting (probably a big confusing blend of the emotional/spiritual/aesthetic/pragmatic).

That may be a little too schopenhauerian though, idk, but ( a very qualified sort of )panpsychism makes more and more sense to me these days



----------------------
*in the sense of 'not reflexively taking their own society as a scientific field of study'

(hey guys, been a minute)

@StreetlightX What's the affective oomph you got when [encountering->considering->incorporating] this new (?) idea [self qua ecology]? I'm assuming, here, that you had some older model for self that this new ecological idea upturned (or, less dramatically, modified in some significant way.)

Part of me wants to read something into the fact you hastily appended a brief political moral ('individualism is [for babies]') in quasi-spenglerian terms.

I think individualism is [for babies] too, of course, but what's the freudian term for when:

(i) you send an email, and realize maybe you suggested the wrong thing (which, granted, is what you meant (tho maybe you didn't realize it) but definitely not what you want to be seen as having meant)

and then

(ii)send a follow up like: [but all in all, i think the faculty really is great here, i didn't mean...]

I think a good way to look at language games is by reference to child's games, to play. Some games have strict rules, others are more free and loose. And the games can occasionally bleed into one another. Rules are often laid down while the game is already happening, to give it a coherence that will allow it to continue- etc etc.

Yeah, a vague image. In the same way I don't need to decide on how many stripes the zebra has, I don't need to decide exactly on the triangle's shape.

I've been reading a lot of fiction lately, and I've noticed I can have a visual presence in the story while barely deciding on any visual details, if I don't want to imagine anything – so just the visual outlines of the scene appear to me. The characters might not even have any specific eye, hair, or skin color, or height.

Yeah, that's similar to my usual experience when reading fiction. It takes conscious effort for me to deeply visualize anything. (I first noticed this as a kid, reading the redwall series, when I became aware i was both thinking of the characters as animals, and not thinking of the characters as animals.)

But I guess I'd just say that this is exactly the 'zebra with some stripes' thing you mentioned above, so I don't think the idea is all that alien. I'd say this is more common than deep,detailed visualization for most people.

But to go back to the triangle - my hazy triangles tends to be hazy equilaterals. If I try, I can it make it a hazy right. I can't imagine what it would be to visualize a hazy triangle without it being at least a little determined. It seems like, at that point, it would literally be just a concept with a feeling attached. (though I think that a lot - though not all - of what we spontaneously describe as imaginative visualization is actually of the concept with feelings type. )

On board with this description. But I think this imaginative capacity is something very different than visualization. In that sense, Berkeley would've been right. But the proper response wouldn't be to confirm or deny the possibility of visualizing an abstract triangle, but to say that dealing with abstract triangles involves a capacity different than 'visualization'. As in: you can't apply the sense-impression model here.

Like what are you visualizing when you visualize the abstract triangle with no particular angles....If you're actually visualizing, that shit has actual angles. Otherwise, you have a vague image with a concept nestled up alongside. I don't see a way out of this. Unless you're claiming you can visualize a triangle that geometry doesn't apply to?

That feels a lot like a zebra with some stripes. I don't know. I think you either visualize a triangle, or you visualize a hazy triangle that would have some exact angles if you dispersed the haze. I think his point stands, for sure.

I don't think you can have the zebra with exact stripes and the triangle with hazy angles.

I might be mixing up empiricists tho

Wasn't the point about visualizing abstract triangles that you'd have to visualize a particular triangle (with certan angles etc) ?

That's fair. a "thick" present feels in line with my feelings about this theme. I wonder though, if the present reaches a sufficient 'thickness' is 'presentism' still a good name? I still think what I want to say is that the past existed, the present exists, and the future will exist. I think theres both a simplicity and a suprisingly subtle complexity in this. If you make everything present (whether through presentism or eternalism) you lose the past and the future ( even when you do the Husserlian trick of past-for-and-of-the-present and future-for-and-of-the-present.) I couldn't defend this adequately yet though. I just think there's something irreducible im both the past and the future you lose when you substitute presentism or eternalism

It's like music. The past is there as past, the future as future, the present as present.

Both presentism and eternalism are fixated on the present. Presentism denies the past and the future for the sake of the present. Eternalism preserves the past and the future by reference to a higher present (it often denies this, but thats exactly what it does.)

You can't get time in the abstract, you have to look to your experience. And if you actually do that (instead of mining your experience to support a thesis, examining it through a premeditated lens) its all there, very simple. The past is past, the present is present, the future is future. It's not mystical - its common sense.

If anything, things happen within rhythms, (which are nestled within bigger rhythms, which are nestled within bigger rhythms) - you have to understand time a little more musically, or you'll get nowhere.

so eternalism is straight up very bad at dealing with lived experience (which is a real thing, because you're doing it right now.) Presentism is dumb because it wants to make everything happen at this very moment, but things don't happen at a moment. (When's the present? the current planck whatever? the current nanosecond? second? minute? doesn't experience itself happen over time? How long does it take neurons to fire?)

Both options are bad.

Agreed

I don't have a horse in the presentism/eternalism race (I think they're both so stupid!) but I guess the obvious rejoinder would be that his decision remains present insofar as it has tangible effects in the present (e.g. his memory of having made the decision, the ways in which he acts based on knowing/remembering he's committed to that decision etc etc.)

I don't really see how eternalism is better here. What, his current state would be related to the past state in a kind of cosmic memorybank which he could draw from as he acts? What work is eternalism doing here? At the very least, you need some supplementary explanation of how separate (eternally preserved) states relate to each other. Which is a total fucking headache. Just ditch the whole dichotomy!

I'll provide a full response soon, but wanna note now that Mctaggart (from whom all this a series b series stuff derives) made it very clear that if the a series goes, so too the b series.

Right you are, illustrating the danger of using A-forms. I used 'exist' without a definition of it. If it means any presence in the block, then there is no valid use of the tense 'existed' or 'will exist'. I suppose the growing block view invalidates only the former of those two tenses.

What do you mean by 'presence'?

@noAxioms
Another way to look at this:

I can say something like 'dodos once existed, but they don't any longer'

'But,' you would say, 'from a block-perspective, its not true that dodos existed, but don't any longer."

'Ok, I would say, 'then show me one.'

'Well, no,' you would say, 'they don't exist now in 2017'

'Right,' I'd say, 'they don't exist. They existed.'

'Yes,' you'd say. From the reference point 2017, they existed.'

'But since it's 2017,' I'd say, 'We can just say, simply, that they don't exist. We don't need to include the reference point'

'Yes,' you would say 'but, since it is 2017 when we say that, then that is included implicitly. @ 2017, dodos existed, but no longer exist.'

'But wait, I'd say, 'When you said 'from a block perspective it's not true that dodos no longer exist', didn't you also say that in 2017? So isn't it implicitly time-stamped in the same way, rendering it false? Since Dodos don't exist, now, in 2017?'

'Ok,' you might say, 'but I said from a block perspective.'

'So,' I'd say, 'it is both true that dodos exist and that they don't exist (any longer)'?

'It depends' you'd say 'whether you're speaking as someone in 2017 or as someone speaking from a block-perspective.'

'But both apply to you!' I'd say. 'Are you saying that you can hold two contradictory statements to be true, simply by claiming to be making use of two different perspectives? Two perspectives you're incapable of occupying separately (since, try as you will, you'll still be talking in 2017.)? I can understand two different perspectives illuminating two different aspects of something. But I don't understand how the same person can hold as true two statements so utterly contradictory as 'dodos don't exist' and 'dodos exist.' It seems like you'll have to give up one or the other!'

(Note that the conversation would have gone smooth as butter if we weren't talking about whether dodos exist, but whether 2+2=4 or the truth of the pythagorean theorem. 2=2=4 is a timeless truth, yet there's nothing contradictory about someone uttering a timeless truth in 2017)

But from the reference point of 2005, the 2010 version will exist, without conflict

Right, and furthermore, any felicitous use of 'exist' will involve it being tensed in accordance to a reference point (a 'now'). From the reference point of 2017, 2010's noAxiom existed. And from the reference point of 2017, 2017's noAxiom exists

What is the reference point here: "As a worm being, I exist in 2010 as much as I exist in 2017'? The answer is no reference point at all. You're using 'exist' to mean something radically different than it means in ordinary usage, while nevertheless retaining aspects of its ordinary usage.

Again, I suspect that what's happening is that a model is buckling under a metaphysical weight it was not meant to hold.

I agree with the criticism of the OP's letter, but do we agree with the spirit of the OP? Which I think is something like: 'To exist is to exist at a certain time (I'd add: without choosing to exist at that time.) a 4D worm is a totality of different times which, by definition, cannot exist at a certain time. '

Existence is always tensed, so when, for instance, @noAxioms says "As a worm being, I exist in 2010 as much as I exist in 2017,' it's clear that something is amiss. noAxioms does not exist in 2010 though it's true (I imagine) that he existed in 2010.

But as a worm being, does he exist in 2010? No more than he existed in 2010, or will exist in 2010. But if, qua worm being, he simultaneously existed, exists, and will exist at all times (during the life of the worm being), then we're using 'exist' in an entirely novel and extremely fuzzy way.

If we can say that in an eternalist universe everything exists, we can, with as much right, say everything existed (but no longer does) or will exist (but does not yet). *

What's tacitly being done, when people get metaphysical with these models, is the smuggling in of a higher now in which this worm, as a totality, can exist. But the model was not meant to bear this kind of metaphysical load, and so becomes impossibly strained.

*Try arguing against this without unraveling the idea altogether.

I've always thought most of Hegel's pretty obvious once you get used to his prose. surprised to see him on your list - what seemed new to you? I think most people on this board agree he essentially rehearses a familiar set of gnostic/mystic principles (you know which ones I mean)

Have you ever encountered a thought or theory that didnt seem either stupid or else trite and obvious?

Ok, it may be envy, but It's just very surreal how many hard-won concepts are transparently obvious to you. Godel's theorems, Heisenbergian uncertainty etc etc. What do you think of Einstein's general relativity? Cantor's kind of a no-brainer?

Funnily enough, I read GEB in high school too (tho I was 17.) I liked it but I thought it was hard at that time. I guess I'm confused though, you said you didn't realize til you were an adult that most people didn't know Godel. But now you're saying you found the book on your own and you didn't imagine others would have trouble understanding it. So do you think more or less everyone finds GEB on their own, but that you are only realizing now that not everyone understands it?

I just find it very idiosyncratic to find a book at 15, learn it, and then assume everyone else knows whats in it, until realizing much later thats not the case.

Well that is interesting. I should say it is obvious *to me* because I learned Gödel's theories when I was 15. What I am discovering as an adult is that most people were not granted such a good education.

Trying to parse this. You were taught 'Godel's theories' at 15 in formal education setting? (what else would it mean to be 'granted' an 'good education' that included those theories?) But, though you learned those easily enough, it never struck you that others might not have been learning them in a similar manner? Like, you assumed 'Godel's Theories' were part of a universal high school sophomore curriculum? and only in adulthood were you disabused of that notion?

tl:dr

finite doesn't have to mean false & authentic doesn't have to mean infinite.

I take your point. Still, when we speak as "philosophers" (or present a crystallization of our living personality in a blog post), we are indeed (like it or not) carving a persona, which is to say an image of ourselves in the mind of another. We do not have direct access to one another. We do tend to attempt at least to control this image. And this makes sense, since we largely define ourselves in terms of the inferior other (liberals versus conservatives is an easy example). We know all too well (from our own dark hearts) how quick to stereotype and categorize that pesky, self-preserving Other can be.

(forewarning: this is a rambly post)

Yes, agreed. I've always struggled to understand the ethical import of the fact that we carve personas. Like, is carving a persona a falsification, a cynical manipulation? Maybe some of the moral stickiness of this stems from the Romantic idea that a work in any given medium can - and ought - to express fully the person who creates it.

One way to sidestep this dynamic is to view any expression, in any medium, as operating within an (inherited) genre. It's impossible for a work, within a genre, to express the whole, and there's no way to escape genre into the Genre of all Genres. Literature's 'realists,' for example, quickly, helplessly, developed their own set of conventions (and also half-consciously imported a whole bunch of old ones.)

This is a kind of language-game type view. A blog post (or anything else) would consist of 'moves' within a game. In addition to object-level moves (just the shit you talk about: Recipes maybe or thoughts on Hegel or Hillary's being implicated by Benghazi etc.) there are also meta-moves which

- communicate your own credentials to make certain object-level moves ('hell I was THERE at Benghazi" "I went to a prestigious culinary school" etc.)

- anticipate and prevent undesired countermoves ( "I know DMT has a reputation, but I'm not one of those Joe Rogan bros, my experience with it stems from my background in chemistry" "One objection to what I've said is x, but this is why x doesn't apply here" etc.)

- change the rules of the game itself (Having trouble thinking of a good example at the moment, but basically reframing things in a way that disrupts the way one's audience has grown to expect how one move will lead to another.)

- facilitate a transition from one game to another ( "OH YEAH, how bout you come down here and say that to my face!"

Anyway, the whole idea is that, if you get rid of the notion that you can or ought to express yourself fully in any one game, then the authentic/inauthentic dialectic and the language of masks no longer applies. An attack on one's honor isn't an unmasking, but an assault on one's right to participate in this or that social or political game. Of course that doesn't make it any less emotionally charged.

& of course, things don't break apart that easily. We contain multitudes, right, and we're animated by different forces that are all jostling to play different games, often at the same time. Many different uses can be made of the same game. So, for instance: talking about an alternative reading of Sartre's Being and Nothingness can be both an analysis germane to the topic and hand and a way of signalling that you have the capacity to not only comprehend difficult texts, but to also understand it at a level that goes beyond simply grasping what the author is trying to communicate.

I still can't meditate very well, but I started to get better when I realized the point wasn't to shut up my inner dialogue, but to watch it without identifying with it. (That's a truism, but it took me a long time to realize what that really meant.) But the neat part was seeing how my inner chatter consisted of a bunch of different, like, voices, each with very different goals. One would talk about how much I fucked this up, and that that meant I was BAD . One would talk about conceivable fantasy futures where I'm recognized as really great for x, y or z. One would talk about reasonable, practical ways to do this or that. One (instantly shouted out by the others) would try to get me to remember this or that memory from childhood.

One in particular though, was (is) super obsessed with stating novel truths. It's an end-in-itself for this voice. It's always on the prowl for new material to do this. But it's also kind of dumb in that it seems to think that the next truth will be the final one, despite that (obviously) never having happened in the past. This voice likes to team up with the voice that says I'm BAD and the voice that talks about fantasy futures. Or rather, the fantasy future voice and the let's-say-a-truth voice are constantly fighting with the bad voice, in a futile sisyphean tug-of-war. 'You're Bad.' 'But you could be very good!' 'And one way to do that is to find a truth, and say it!'

To go back: while the dialectic is useful, it seems to unfold by drowning out most of the voices, in order to highlight a select few. And when those voices have the stage, they like to pretend they're the only ones.

This seems impossible to escape if you're (half-consciously) identifying with any given voice (and so assenting to what it says). It takes effort - for me at least - to remember that anything I happen to be thinking at any time is only a small part of the actual situation.

In Hegel's case the need to state the final truth was desperately trying to assert itself, I think, above all the other voices. And Hegel was clever and self-conscious enough to realize he couldn't simply ignore those other voices. So instead he organized them and set them in motion in a way that allowed them to be subjected to the one voice.

So, there was a time when I would have written this whole thing goaded on by the 'future fantasy' voice, only to realize that I was looking for recognition for stating a final truth, which would make me feel bad.

But like, Idk, its part true, part not. I'm trying to convey something I actually feel, and, probably, some of the other voices, or tendencies, are gonna try to get their cut, but that's only a small part of the whole.

(Also NB these aren't 'real' voices.)

I didn't much like Feuerback, or Marx, for that matter, or any of other European atheists intellectuals. My view always was, they're reacting against the extreme pressure to conform that characterised the Western and European religious tradition. In European history, the Church was for a long while the only central authority and political power. The various wars of religion and other conflicts, engendered a massive counter-movement, exemplified in Enlightenment rationalism, of which the secular intelligentsia are a product.

But this reaction was based on a particular type of religous mentality and an authoritarian conception of God. It is not at all like the understanding of the mystics, the spiritually illuminated, and many other forms of religious sensibility that existed inside, outside and along side the Church-dominated authoritarianism of the West.

I think your diagnosis is exactly right, but that doesn't mean there's nothing of value in Marx (or Feuerbach, though I don't know with him. I never read more than a tenth of the book; i asked for it more for symbolic reasons. What I do recall strikes me as Common Sense carving a path in the Hegelian thicket.)

But mysticism and lived-religion (as opposed to socially-driven participation in rituals for pragmatic reasons) carries its own dangers. The guy who does Slate Star Codex made the very good point that mysticism is a practice but a weird one in that, to a much greater extent than with other practices, people are prone to conflate knowledge/theory of the tradition with actual faniliarity(think periodic participation in meditation retreats as analagous to silver-spooned well-theoried radicals participating in worker demonstrations from time to time. Does the theory serve the participation or is the participation an offering to (or credentials to speak of) the theory?)

Incidentally, I asked for The Essence of Christianity as a fuck-you-I'm-an-atheist xmas present in high school and my dad wrote on the inside front cover 'I hope this will take you far in your journey for understanding' and I thought that was so funny, at the time.

I may have misframed you, but not quite as an angry young man (they talk more Schopenhauer, Zapffe & Cioran). You reminded me a bit of another poster - I can't remember his name, don't think he's posted recently - but a mid-late 30s recovering artist who had shifted to academia (pure mathematics) but was still in touch with his Blake. & also Stirner.

Here's my grand theory: Some people grow up feeling somehow cut-off from the group, and the group's recognition/admiration economy. That sucks, and is no-joke traumatic. Or, more exactly, its traumatic if you've have at least a taste of intimate adoration at home. Then this having-been-cut-off feels like a terrible breach, and its like something's gone very wrong. It feels like there's some gap between what you actually are (the rightfully admired child) and what you're perceived to be. Then: you build up a persona and self-image, half-knowing its false, in order to re-position yourself in a way that will restore things to how they're supposed to be. It's a white lie, because it's not quite you, but it's your way of getting the admiration your deserve. But forever after you're aware of the ad hoc precarious nature of the persona. Not always consciously (you can sink deep into the persona) but perhaps as a vague anxiety or mistrust. And in this half-conscious state, there's a tendency to want to build up the persona, to make it as air-tight and grand as possible.

(I think there's a parallel story, one I haven't experienced, but where people do admire you, but it strikes you that they admire you for the wrong reasons, but oh well, you double down on the stuff they admire you for anyway, which, again, cashes out as a persona)

And if you think about yourself that way, then you start to think about the whole world that way. Not people, but personas. A persona can only see personas. That kinda thing.

Maybe you don't have that kind of thing, but I know I've struggled with it, and you have the tics: ("But this "amor fati" is one more "finite" and quickly mockable persona, for instance, which the restless spirit does not neglect to chew" & " I understand the beauty of true humility, of the courage to not know and to not dominate. But the anti-ego talk can become so false" & "He's something like an implicitly "nihilist" clown, in the sense that a certain kind of skeptic (close to my meaning of nihilist) plays by the rules for pragmatic reasons, without affirming those rules from his depths as an expression of his true self."

I like -and can relate to - a lot of what you've said but two quick things

(1)It seems like 'dreaming of a better world' and 'dreaming of being the focal point of a better world' are being conflated here. I'm not sure it has to be that way

(2) It doesn't have to be dialectic reversals all the way down! (e.g. 'unwordly Nietzsche fantasizing about worldliness' & "the "ugly" intellectual who pops a hole in a dream within the dream. There's an appetite for Bing with his glass to his throat, just like there was an appetite for grunge. There's an appetite for dissonance.")

So, it's possible just to find something you're not very good at, but capable of learning, and, slowly, through fucking up a lot, learn it. From within a hero/master dialectic, this just looks like 'trying to achieve a deeper mastery through mastering the idea of relinquishing mastery" but, if you just actually do it, patiently, the actual fine-grained texture of the process repels dialectical thought.

The dialectic is a great and useful tool, and can yield all sorts of important truths, but has serious limits - the trouble is it wants to set its own limits, endlessly. (Incidentally, it's only from within a brutally sharp beauty/ugly dialectic that, say, Louis CK is a symbol of the traumatic real. For most peole It's more like: i can relate to that guy)

Don't forget how much the futurists (and other avant-gardists) loved italian fascism!

Items 7-9 of the futurist manifesto:

7.Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.

8.We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.

9.We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman. — Marinetti

Thanks for that breakdown, that makes a lot of sense. I suspected something like that, but you've spelled it out nicely. (re: the continental/analytic split - I'm currently convinced that Sloterdijk and Sellars dovetail verynicely, and fill out complementary gaps, but I'll need to read much more of both to cash that out. I also think that much of what Sellars say is essentially Derrida with all the bullshit left out. But again, still haven't read enough.)

I think I've mentioned it before, but that aspect of formalization is something I encountered while dabbling with programming, and it's just extremely satisfying to have that kind of concrete push-back when you're doing the wrong thing (e.g., in this case, the program crashes or gives bunk output.) All that said, though, I think it's ok to keep an eye on a Big Picture so long as you do so warily.

I'll check it out. I think I'm undergoing something like that kind of conversion myself right now, through Sellars. I've realized I've wasted a lot of time constructing myself the left-out arguments in continental philosophy, and it's so refreshing to read people who spell it out. (That said, I still think many of the continentals make extremely good points and have a better synoptic vision. I would like to read them in conjunction.)

Counterfactuals are interesting and difficult, but not mysterious. They can be given reasonable treatments that don't commit to bizarre metaphysics.

Lewis' 1973 Counterfactuals will help.

I'm not familiar with either the literature on counterfactuals or Lewis, but I've heard the whispers, and isn't Lewis like the ne plus ultra of committing to bizarre metaphysics to explain counterfactuals? Which of course wouldn't meant that a particular essay he wrote on the topic wouldn't be helpful, even if you don't agree with his metaphysical stuff - but then, if he presents things clearly, in that work, one would imagine he'd also have presented things clearly to himself - so then why the weirdness?

Or is just that the whispers are wrong (I don't think I've read a word of Lewis in the original, or a page of secondary literature directly treating his work)

Were Mussolini's theories as quoted here all that far from the reality fascism?

I want to be clear that I, personally, have very little knowledge of fascist-era Italy, but, according to Paxton, the answer is yes.

The composite nature of Fascist rule in Italy was even more flagrant [than the composite nature of Fascist rule in Germany.] The historian Gaetano Salvemimi, home from exile, recalled the 'dualistic dictatorship' of Duce and King. Alberto Aquarone, the preeminent scholar of the Fascist state, emphasized the 'centrifugal force' and 'tensions' Mussolini confronted in a regime that still, "fiteen years after the March on Rome," had "many features derived directly from the Liberal State." The prominent German scholars of Italian Fascism Wolfgang Schieder and Jens Petersen speak of the "opposing forces" and "counter-weights"...Even Emilio Gentiles, most eager to demonstrate the power and success of the totalitarian impulse in Fascist Italy, concedes that the regime was a 'composite' reality in which Mussolini's "ambitions of personal power" struggled in "constant tension" with both "traditional forces" and "Fascist Party intransigents," themselves divided by "muffled conflict" among factions. — Paxton, Anatomy of Fascism, p. 120)

All of which is to say that the hyper-unified state Mussolini waxes ecstatic about in the text Street quoted was, at best, a kind of regulative ideal, something to work toward and, at worst, an utter politcal-rhetorical fiction. (In truth, it was probably somewhere between the two.)

BUT: even though it's kind of operating on a general, law-type, level, the sentence, involving a particular individual, nevertheless IS true. That is, it's a true, counterfactual, statement.

Also: part of the above is that it kind of uses particular individuals to illustrate general laws (i.e. if any individual a with power b does c, then d. If any individual a without power b does c, then e.) The reason the sentence in my example is true has absolutely nothing to do with alex, or any particular dumbbell.