[FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme

[Steven A Smith]

Marcus/Eric -


Great observations, both.   I think this cuts to (part of) the heart of 
the matter.


I just recently watched "Glass Castle" (current run at Violet Crown) 
with Woody Harrelson playing the role of a fairly intelligent (his 
daughter, the memoirist characterizes him as brilliant) but highly 
dysfunctional father of 4 who himself has (mostly/almost) escaped the 
small Appalachian coal-mining town he was raised in by an acutely 
abusive mother and an apathetic/dysfunctional father and greater 
community.   The family lives a vagabond life with Harrelson's character 
(Rex) leading them on an alternatingly merry and curiosity-driven chase 
through skipping out on bill collectors and trying to find the "next big 
opportunity" and "escape the forces out to repress us!".    It is (IMO) 
a great story of a nearly effective attempt (by the parents) to 
escape/transcend their own dysfunctional roots and the mostly effective 
experience of the children escaping their own (passed down a generation) 
from that half-functional platform.


I also picked up (at a "tiny library" in a neighborhood) a copy JD 
Vance's "Hillbilly Legacy", a memoir written by a 31 year old Harvard 
educated lawyer, now living happily (and presumably functionally) in San 
Francisco with his wife and child(ren?), but still quite attached 
emotionally/romantically to his own roots in Appalachia (a small KY coal 
mining town) and the Rustbelt (Middletown OH, aka MiddleTucky) where all 
of his family and most of his childhood friends still live and vote for 
and continue to support Trump.


The common thread is the abject hopelessness that surrounded the people 
locked into those environments by circumstance, including lack of 
perspective to "just leave".   Vance credits his Grandparents who raised 
him most of his life for having had enough perspective to shield him 
from the worst of that and to encourage/help him "just leave".   His 
chronicle (I also listened to an NPR book interview when it came out 
maybe a year ago) includes feeling that he had "done everything in his 
power to waste his life up until about 18 years old" and looking at his 
cohort and family, might use the term "but for the grace of God, there 
go I".


My Pollyanna (a fairly significant player in my personal Pantheon of 
Personalities which helps me cope with the kinds of Cosmic Ennui and 
Existential Angst that comes with trying to be a thinking/caring person 
in these hyper-connected, seemingly chaotic times) has me looking for a 
"bright side" of all of this.


I particularly want to call out the following quote from Marcus:

    /A healthy society is one where individuals can mature to the point
    they can begin to doubt the meaning in their own anxiety (whether by
    themselves, with their shrink or their spiritual authority) and make
    it to the next day. /

and offer a rewording (my words are _underlined_) or expansion:

     "/whether with themselves, their shrink, their spiritual 
authority,/ _or their community of emergently self-enlightened people_"

     and

     "/and make it /_beyond_/the next day/ _and into a new era of 
contagious enlightened self-interest_"

I hope that if we can ever get through this acutely dark/inverted time 
that we can follow some of the example of Nelson Mandela in his 
perspective and leadership out of the centuries long oppression of his 
people that was most recently exhibited as Apartheid. Obviously that 
moment was only a partial antidote, as too many of the original problems 
linger or arise again.   But I *think* it was a better solution than to 
the similarly genocidal/punative response many of his people were 
calling for when the descendents of their Colonial Overlords finally fell.

I heard recently a quote from Barbara Boxer as she left the political 
stage after many decades:
     "No victory is final"

This underscores why we are dealing with the rise of 
white-supremacy/nazi/confederate/kkk, gender oppression,  and many other 
battles presumed to have been won.   This moment (in most places) is 
nothing like the conditions of the antebellum South, nor the era of 
Nazi/Fascist power in Europe, but there are clearly strong echoes.   
Such things *might* be suppressed temporarily by force, but ultimately 
those kinds of behaviours/activities dissipate through healing and 
enlightenment much more than regulation/punishment/suppression.

my $.02,
  - Steve

On 8/16/17 9:10 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> Eric writes:
>
>
> < It is not so far from Nietzche’s notion that “God is dead” creates a 
> problem for people, and they will face a fork in the road in how they 
> try to deal with it. >
>
>
> Yeah, it is probably nothing new that is happening nor a new 
> interpretation.  Institutions of various kinds can give individuals a 
> role to play and guidelines for conduct, but a highly interconnected 
> population with a complex economy will stress these institutions and 
> reveal their limitations.   Meanwhile, only exceptional and delusional 
> individuals can really make a convincing case (esp. to themselves) 
> about their unique value either coupled-to or uncoupled-from from 
> institutions. However, I fear the stakes are pretty high now -- the 
> contagion of people going bonkers could be fast with social media.   A 
> healthy society is one where individuals can mature to the point they 
> can begin to doubt the meaning in their own anxiety (whether by 
> themselves, with their shrink or their spiritual authority) and make 
> it to the next day.
>
>
> Marcus
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Eric Smith 
> <desmith at santafe.edu>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 16, 2017 6:56:23 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme
>
> > Their desperation and rage just comes from a feeling that they can't 
> confront, that they just don't have much to offer.
> >
> > Marcus
>
> Reading this, I feel like you could found a new generation of 
> something that is like existentialist philosophy but equally-well 
> political theory.
>
> It is not so far from Nietzche’s notion that “God is dead” creates a 
> problem for people, and they will face a fork in the road in how they 
> try to deal with it.  Maybe even, considering the currents running 
> through European and particularly German society at the time he was 
> writing (and that he specifically wrote about), driven by concerns 
> based on similar observations.
>
> It strikes me that this is an available point of view for almost any 
> person.  Granted, the distribution of rewards and frustrations differs 
> from person to person and also from region to region, and that 
> matters.  But the black box (black hole?) of how minds form characters 
> and orientations in response to streams of these things draws from an 
> immense and to me-obscure range of inputs.
>
> Makes me wonder,
>
> Eric
>
>
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