[FRIAM] capitalism vs. individualism

[Prof David West]

Glen writes:

"And I've heard people talk about *engaging* with Trumpists and  trying to tease apart whatever good or bad the ecology associated with Trump has done or not done. But I fail every time I try. How do you crack open that layered chitin an Ismist accretes around their self without killing them?"

Perhaps it is my training as a cultural anthropologist and ethnographer, but I have no trouble productively engaging is "ismists" of all persuasions, often in the same day. As an anthropologist I am pretty much an absolute cultural relativist and abhor ethnocentrism. Also, I would not presume to attempt to "crack open that layered chitin" of another until and unless I had shattered my own shell.

davew


On Mon, Nov 11, 2019, at 8:00 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> On 11/11/19 10:40 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > Stopping behaviors that are counterproductive is different from promulgating a prescriptive ideology.   The point is to open up space for what might work, and that which has yet to be falsified.  The Trumpism behaviors are not drawn from a complex data set.
> 
> Maybe not. But *how* do we open up that space for people who are dead 
> set for Trump, against someone like Bill Weld or Joe Walsh? By the same 
> token, how could we have opened things up for the Bernie Bros who were 
> so against Clinton? Or the coming nastiness between whichever D's make 
> it to the primaries?
> 
> I mean, if ranked choice were more widespread, that alone would help a 
> lot. The tendency to -isms is canalized by over-zealous reduction. My 
> self-ascribed Christian neighbor (who doesn't seem to be a follower of 
> Christ, but whatever) once gave me a book with a title like "Jesus: 
> Insane, Liar, or God." The idea being that the 3 ideas were mutually 
> exclusive. When Dave points out that membership in his set of 
> disgruntled people isn't crisp, he's only reiterating the thread topic: 
> how to integrate -isms. I made my lame attempt to talk to my neighbor 
> about the Axiom of Choice, modal logics, etc. ... and of course failed 
> utterly. And I've heard people talk about *engaging* with Trumpists and 
> trying to tease apart whatever good or bad the ecology associated with 
> Trump has done or not done. But I fail every time I try. How do you 
> crack open that layered chitin an Ismist accretes around their self 
> without killing them?
> 
> -- 
> ☣ uǝlƃ
> 
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