We are in one kind of thermodynamic regime - powerlaw - and not in another - Gaussian. As an example that makes one of the things we view as a big problem - gaping inequality - just a natural part of what is going on. Therefore eliminating that inequality is going to be hard as it is basically swimming against the tide.
So contra your pigheadedness, my point is that understanding the actual thermodynamical flow that entrains humanity is the only thing that actually could create a “choice” - ethical or pragmatic.
If we want to resist the “is”, and construct out own “ought”, one needs an understanding of history a lot more sophisticated than thinking it is one damn thing after another.
History has a Hegelian structure. It is a dissipative flow. We now have a science of all that. Time to leave your metaphysical nonsense questions in the past where they belong. — apokrisis
Over the past few centuries, changes in the international order have often been the result of a great war. Examples include the Westphalian System which followed Europe’s Thirty-Year War, the Versailles-Washington system which followed WWI, and the Yalta system which followed WWII. The basic outline of the current international order is more or less the result of WWII. But after more than 70 years, the existing order is beginning to waver as a result of multiple shocks, beginning with the end of the Cold War in 1991, and including the 9-11 incident in 2001, the financial crisis in 2008, and Trump’s election in 2016.
While its structure remains intact, the role of the United Nations is limited, the capacity of the WTO has been diminished, the resources of the IMF and the World Bank are stretched thin, the authority of the WHO is inadequate, the global arms control regime is on the verge of collapse, international standards are frequently ignored, American leadership and will have declined together, the mechanisms facilitating great power cooperation are in disorder, and the international order is hanging by a thread.
The outbreak and spread of the coronavirus pandemic has plunged the entire world into mourning, as countries locked down and borders closed, economies ground to a halt, stock markets plunged, oil prices collapsed, exchanges were broken off, insults were traded and rumors proliferated. The shock of the impact has been in no way less than a World War, which is yet another attack on the existing international order. The old order is perhaps unsustainable, but a new order has yet to be built, which is the basic feature of a once-in-a-century great change, and is also the root cause of the crisis roiling the contemporary international scene
[...]
The 2020 election will be a fight between Trump’s “keeping America great” and Biden’s “let America lead again,” but even if Biden wins, internal political handicaps and changes in the external environment suggest that America will have a hard time reassuming its role as a world leader. But just like Britain in the post-WWI period, the United States still has enough power to prevent other countries from taking her place, and America’s China policy will only get increasingly hyper-sensitive, unyielding, and arrogant as they double down on containment and suppression. Strategic competition between China and the US will become all the more fierce.
At the end of the pandemic, the existing order of “one superpower and many great powers” will change. America may remain “the superpower” but will have a hard time maintaining its hegemonic domination. China is rising fast, but faces obstacles in its drive to surpass the US. Europe’s star is fading, its future development course unclear. Russia plots its future moves in the chaos, and its position has perhaps risen somewhat. India’s weaknesses and shortcomings have been exposed, blunting the momentum of its rise. After having to postpone the Tokyo Olympics, Japan seems lost.
[...]
Since the 18th National Congress of the CCP [in November 2012], China has chosen cooperation and a win-win posture as its ideological foundation, and peaceful development as its strategic priority. It has adopted One Belt-One Road as its primary policy stance, and the construction of a new type of international relations as its immediate objective. Its ultimate goal is the creation of a community of mankind’s shared destiny, through the “five in one” general framework[10] and the “close links between peoples of the world 环环相扣,” forming a set of new international strategic frameworks that both respect the past and innovate for the future, so that the relationship between China and the world enters a new historical phase.
Yet just as China increases its participation in the world, just as China assumes world leadership, America chooses “strategic contraction” and “America first,” and the trend in Sino-American relations, which is going against the trend of development in relations throughout the world, will earn the contempt of history. The result is that the United States is not looking at China’s relations with the world from a progressive historical perspective, but instead is scrutinizing Chinese intentions through a lens of strategic caution, and using high-pressure tactics to carry out blockage and containment.
[...]
The coronavirus pandemic has not changed the fact that the world is experiencing a once-in-a-century change, but has simply made that change a bit quicker and a bit more abrupt. It has not changed the basic shape of China’s relations with the world, but instead has made these relations more complex and multi-faceted. Nor has it changed the basic judgment that China is currently in a period of strategic opportunities, a posture that will continue. After all, China led the way out of the most difficult moment of the pandemic, and began planning to return to work and production; marked by the convening of the "Two Sessions,"[12] the strategic deployment China established is still proceeding in an orderly manner.
However, it will become increasingly difficult for China to seize the opportunity, and the risk challenge will surely multiply. In this extraordinary moment when countries face the disaster of the pandemic and the entire world fights the virus, the crux of the issue is whether China be able manage its own affairs well at the same time that it assumes it role as a great power and does its utmost to supply public health goods to the world. This is both a prerequisite for restarting China’s relationship with the world as well as the foundation for the great revival of the Chinese nation.
To ensure that the restart will proceed smoothly and extend into the future, we must begin by looking back on the path we have travelled, and must unwaveringly push forward the new age of reform and opening. On this front, we must bravely advance, and cannot be satisfied with half-measures. Next, we must settle our minds and proceed calmly with the task at hand. As the goal of the “first one hundred years” approaches conclusion, we should pause for a moment, sum up our experiences and lessons learned, and look for laws and patterns that will create the conditions as we take up the sprint toward the “second hundred years.”
— Yuan Peng
Christ, apo, if one were to read just your half of the exchange, they'd think I only said things like 'science can't explain feelings.' I half-think you do think that's all I've said.You really believe your own bullshit don't you. You haven't produced a coherent argument as yet. But you want to make that problem mine. — apokrisis
I just found it funny that I had paid some special attention to exactly that as a historical dynamic. Hegel is (in)famous for his dialectical claims about the German state representing an end to history to the degree that it had achieved a natural rational order - a state of Enlightened self-governing.
Neoliberalism felt it had achieved the same natural enlightened state of arriving at the end of history - at least according to Fukuyama.
So the question arises what is the true dichotomy that human history keeps trying to resolve in a synergistically valuable fashion? That was my research topic.
Clearly it is in some sense the balance between the forces of labour and capital - to follow the Marxist analysis. Or free competitive action within the cooperative space of a collective market - the neoliberal story perhaps.
My own answer is thermodynamic - the basic view of natural systems. Humanity stumbled on a fossil fuel bonanza that could be harnessed by industrial age machinery. If we learnt to think like machines - form a mathematical level of semiosis with "reality" - then we could burn through this bonanza at an exponential rate. — apokrisis
You are against such totalising, even when it is a well proven success. You try to dismiss it as "pragmatic", as if being useful is a dirty word. You will blather on about poetry or feelings or other tribal artefacts of the anti-totalising brigade.
It's funny. Proper metaphysical strength Peircean pragmatism offends the objectivist and the subjectivist alike.
But that is because they are happiest trapped in that Cartesian dialectic. If its dichotomistic inconsistencies were resolved, they would no longer have anything to write poems about, or realist polemics about.
You are down that dark hole. I can hand you the ladder out but I can't make you climb. You have to want to leave the angry gloom that is the anti-totaliser's fate. — apokrisis
You are against such totalising, even when it is a well proven success. You try to dismiss it as "pragmatic", as if being useful is a dirty word. You will blather on about poetry or feelings or other tribal artefacts of the anti-totalising brigade. — apokrisis
If someone posts a bunch of pictures of them doing skateboard tricks. And then I say, looks like you've been photographing yourself doing skateboard tricks!! And then they say: 'oh you think I've been doing skateboard tricks do you?" then my response is: yeah....? And then they say 'you think I'm doing Rodney Mullen type skateboard tricks do you?!' I'd say 'No, I never brought up Rodney Mullen, I brought up the tricks you were doing, that you posted pictures of, why are you bring up Rodney Mullen?'That's exactly what I spent my three month lockdown sabbatical on - researching a defence of Hegelian history! — apokrisis
Instead, a pragmatic/semiotic view - a form of life view - would argue that both "the world" and "the self" are the two halves of a joint construction. And progress lies in constructing the better total model. They are not separate exercises. The problems of modern life lie in the way they got disconnected pretty fast after a moment of unity in the Enlightenment. Scientism and Romanticism began the business of "othering" each other in an unhelpful way.
Fetishising either the self or the world is the mistake. We need to be consciously engaged in a co-construction of these aspects of being alive and mindful. [Insert all the usual utopian visions of that here.] — apokrisis
He said, knowing the right way to spend a Saturday was, of course, relieving the growing pressure of a system-in-a-vacuum, by compulsively describing it to others. Scan the available threads and choose a receptive one. Saturdays. He was on the wrong side of 1/mounting-irritability-due-to-others-incorrigibly-failing-to-properly-contextualize-according-to-the-triadic-system and the storm clouds looked real bad this time. Past memories of having the wrong vibe at barbecues howled at his heels. Could people sense it? The system shuddered in its casing 'why aren't you explaining me online!!' He imagined a gallery of Peirce and people he knew in biosemiotics being like hey man why were you in on this if you weren't ready to post about it on the forums. He looked at the rose in the glass cake-case: wilting. It was time to come back.One way to spend your Saturdays. — apokrisis