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Cultural equivalent of Keynesian aggregate demand fueling by building “infrastructure” of roads and bridges nobody needs. Because the point is seeking meaning through building not the building itself.
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yeah I think any "movement" big enough to leave a trace will contain fakes and waste, sometimes even a lot of them...there's a certain aestheticization of Chunky World which is inevitable but isn't core, y'know?
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"World"-yness: A sense of oneself, or one's project, as "realistic" and "normal". Central not peripheral. Balanced not eccentric. Universal not parochial. Objective not partisan. Fact-heavy, opinion-light. Aspiring to represent "the whole world".
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You turn to "world-yness" when you get the feeling of seasickness from too much *imbalance* and you want something steady and grounded. The party's been too wild and you want to sober up. You want "back to basics", maturity, reality, an unclouded view. The original, not a riff.
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There's a trend of wanting the "world"-y thing now and starting to grope towards it, because times are weird and scary. There are a lot of ways to go "back to basics" though, and a lot of opportunities for people to articulate their own versions of what "basics" are.
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I think we agree about everything except whether or is primarily a cope theater or primarily adaptive Putin is exhibit A for cope theater. Make Russia RelevantAgain by crudely bludgeoning Ukraine into submission. Very macho, entirely maladaptive.