Had a little thought. We tend to characterize ideologies in internal (“subjective”) or external (“objective”) terms, but in practice work with them in intersubjective ways, where the first class citizen is the directed ideology pair like (capitalism, communism).
-
-
Example 2, (socialism, capitalism), (socialism, libertarianism) X1: compassion, Y1: greed X2: community, Y2: selfishness Example 3 (libertarianism, socialism), (libertarian, capitalism*) X1: individualism, Y1: bureaucracy X2: innovation, Y2: cronyism * capitalism in practice
Show this thread -
This intersubjective approach to ideological self-definition is pragmatic, operationalizes and weaponizes attribution error at scale, successfully casts all failures as aberrations caused by the vices of others, and ensures you never have to admit you’re wrong about anything.
Show this thread -
Ideology, like love, means never having to say you’re sorry. Example: when market failures happen through distortions/ externalities, capitalists blame state institutions, libertarians blame cronyism, socialists blame greedy individualism. Nobody has to accept any blame.
Show this thread -
Note what happens in such discourses. Specific problems are plausibly everybody’s fault and therefore nobody’s fault. Nobody has to change behavior, everybody gets to preach at everybody else, recommending specific moral evolutions to them from vice to virtue.
Show this thread -
Trick to breaking out of these patterns is to ignore analyses that do not center specific behaviors of named people. When you do that, it will turn into a game of no-true-Scotsman. Pick 2 of 3: a name, an ideology, responsibility for a problem
Show this thread -
If you ditch ideology, you’ll at least find someone to hold accountable within your means. Not vote for them, not work with them, not buy their stuff etc. This is what cancel culture clumsily tries to do, except via mob judgment contagion rather than actual distributed judgment.
Show this thread -
Everybody was all bullish on ideologies a few years back, and many people wanted to work on them, innovate on them, etc. Now everybody is sick of them, and tries or pretends to be above them. But they aren’t going anywhere. Good time to invest actually.
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
@threadreaderapp unroll if you would be so kind - Show replies
New conversation -
-
-
Reasonable necessity is always reusable as virtue signalling while visible incentives must remain reluctant
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.