You off the grid rebel! You must pay your dues, collecting water is illegal, and hook to the power grid because we say so.
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I think you’re right about this. But it may reflect more those who are doing the discussing than the population at large.
Voting patterns are interesting. The U.S. was incredibly divided in 1968. Four years later, Nixon won in a major landslide. Reagan’s landslide re-election in 1984 did not look likely in 1982. Tom Nichols (his book, Our Own Worst Enemy, I highly recommend) wrote about his “Archie Bunker” father who said during the 2012 election between Obama and Romney that the country would be in good shape with either as president because both were “good men at heart.”
A lot of this is gerrymandering - which encourages “safe seats,” partisanship and, ultimately, cost-free radicalism. I’d be willing to bet that redrawn maps - by an AI or group of bipartisan experts on voting or both - would do more to calm our politics than people think.
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Can’t be off the grid if you are posting things on a bodybuilding forum, lol
And some of these people will say America is a terrible nation instead of kissing the Statue of Liberty’s ass and saying thank you for subsidizing and supporting my existence by providing free housing, free food, free medical care and the opportunity to attend school all the while being asked for nothing in return but that make you make something of yourself one day.
Although weird, I’m glad such a person is capable of having sympathy.
See, if you were more experienced at life you would notice that they want sympathy for themselves.
I called it weird, but it is somewhat flattering.
Very, very, very, few people are actually off the grid in this world anymore for sure.
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You’re flattering them, they’re patronizing you.
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Is there anywhere in the U.S. one can even disappear to anymore? I was talking to someone about this the other day. I figure there’s gotta be some places in Alaska you could go to and most likely never see anyone, but where else? I thought maybe if you pick the right spot deep in the desert in AZ or NV you could maybe hide pretty well. Google says somewhere in Yellowstone is the most remote place in the lower 48 but being that it is a national park, I feel like you couldn’t guarantee no gov. employee would disturb you at some point, even if unintentionally.
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Not when it ultimately matters very little. The federal government is far too powerful and involved, and the Executive Branch is far too powerful and involved in that. Unless, by “redrawn maps,” you include the possibility of carving out separate countries.
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I would keep elite overproduction-induced competition in mind. That’s part of our current problem. Properly incentivized, I could envision a group of elites in a variety of fields/industries deciding that there is another path to power other than stoking political animus.
The intro to Max Tegmark’s Life 3.0 is interesting in this regard. He’s writing about AI and posits a superintelligence that develops algorithms that do essentially the opposite of what social media algos do (the AI promotes patience and partnership over conflict and controversy). I’ll note that seeing Apple’s VisionPro demonstration a few days ago helped reinforce my conviction that the social media era and its algorhythmic discontents are coming to an end.
Anyway, Tegmark is telling a story, but it’s a compelling one - and one that I think the average American who doesn’t want to be angry all the time might embrace.
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I don’t think I want that.
So, the elite would possibly have even greater control over society?
I understand not wanting to be angry all of the time, but I don’t see many positives coming from folding to the elite…regardless of how well they’re able to camouflage their control…
Can you elaborate on this? Are you suggesting technocracy?
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Actually to tackle this issue of perma-anger first requires currently-forbidden intellectual discussion and then harsh measures which I believe the average, mushy-headed American can’t handle.
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And the problem with that is recognizing who genuine intellectuals are. You have Sowell, and whether I agree with him all of the time or not, I can admire, appreciate and accept he is well educated, intelligent and a true intellectual. Then you have the so called intellectuals like X Kendi who, in spite of their college degrees (crap like gender studies or African American studies), come across as not very knowledgeable or intelligent and rather weak when it comes to emotional IQ. But guess who is influencing American society more?
At different places I’ve worked they have done diversity and implicit bias training. The people running these trainings will often quote Kendi or Robin Di Angelo among others of that ilk. You would think they were quoting Aristotle or something. They never quote Sowell or Glen Loury or anyone else who hasn’t bought into the narrative.
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Only in the sense that the technology has to be either transparent or inherently irresistible (i.e., addictive). We’re in an increasingly tech-enabled world and AI is going to make sure of it.
I was really taken by Apple’s Vision Pro demo the other day. I’ve long looked for the Next Big Thing to replace social media and the divisiveness it engenders. Apple’s Vision Pro is the best example of where we go next that I’ve seen. And while it’s drawn criticism for being relatively “anti-social” technology, I think it might be a necessarily “counter-social”.
I don’t think positive algos can out addict us compared to negative algos. But with an assist from the occasional “hypnotic” like Vision Pro, I can envision a tech-enabled alternative that is more bliss-topian than dystopian.
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I honestly think a lot of the anger is recreational. David Frum, a Canadian conservative, made the point in a recent interview that the strong, silent, taciturn American male type is a very specific development stemming from the Great Depression and World War 2. He points out that if you read American literature before the Great Depression - and, in many ways, after WW2 - you are confronted with an emotionalism that would ordinarily be attached to European or Latin American authors.
Tom Nichols (anti-Trump conservative) gets at a lot of this in his book Our Own Worst Enemy. A lot of folks are bored and tired of just being regular grownups holding down jobs and raising families and instead want to be members of the Justice League.
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Good point. I think a lot of American’s concepts of history are pretty short-sighted, and most are unaware of things like this.
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I recommend the book The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols on this. Goes into good detail on why this is an issue (even more so now then when it was published 5 years ago)
Amazon.com: The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters eBook : Nichols, Tom: Kindle Store
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