One of the consequences of this education is my now somewhat advanced comprehension of the consequences of these flawed processes. Sometimes they crash and burn. Sometimes they limp along. Sometimes they create edifices of artifice that remain afloat buoyed by systems of blatant self-dealing, mass hysteria, pure stupidity, wishful thinking, co-dependence, petty vengeance, suspended disbelief or combinations of those plus damned statistics, lies, likes and retweets.
The most unnerving consequence is my logical decision to distrust democratic politics and institutions. That was somewhat easy given the absurdities of identity politics we suffer in these iterations of Culture War. But it has been difficult to reconcile with my civil libertarianism, Lockean views and dedication to public squawking. So, leaning back on my philosophical tendencies, I have engaged as a 'wry stoic & tactical epistemologist'. I mock what needs mocking from an historical perspective (though I'm no Churchill) and I spend a lot of time parsing arguments and providing disconfirmatory findings of fact, or at least of logic. The younger me would not like me, but he was living in the Infinite Library of Borges. (The truth is in there somewhere.)
Now that I'm unofficially a member of the Intellectual Dark Web, or like to consider myself that and two degrees of separation from Eric Weinstein, I have been a collector of arcane knowledge I feel is worth passing on. I feel this rather than think this because I truly cannot be held responsible for my inability to communicate it well. I can tell you it works (logically) for me, but so fucking what? We're still all going to watch Netflix as the apocalypse draws near. I want to chuckle as much as the next guy. But in the meantime, there's this bit of profundity from Vinay Gupta that I still have yet to fully decipher. But before I drop to the reveal, let me regale you with a piece of rap I wrote 28 years ago.
the problem i have is this - food in a box
as an urban dweller, skill seller
im marketable, size 10 in my socks
i can find anywhere anyplace to sell and be sold to
clothes off the rack fit
i got enough snaps to pick it up if i so desire
i say wrap it up homes, flash the card
get certified
(the hangers are wood, not wire)
so i step to the pad
quite happy - having hunted and gathered
new duds for the hoe down
so i go downtown and across the bridge
to my flat with the empty fridge
It was about my patent inability to cook, but to make more than enough money to run a household. In recognition of my urban dilemma, I went through stanza after stanza of exemplifying all of the things I could buy but not make. Clothes, food, companionship, and for the purposes of this discussion, politics.
i guess the problem i have is this - food in a box
sometimes if im critical i get political
and all riled up about an issue as old has the hills
i wait for the next senate bill
and hope my choice with a pipsqueak voice
call in to oprah and wait on the line
like this is democracy, dont worry be happy
got no ability to sway the senate my way
'cept once every six for two out of a hundred
did my mission get funded?
no tell me what to do till they pass the ballot box again
And to reiterate for the n'th time. My moral position on politics is The Abstention Principle. To wit.
A simple moral principle:
When a future change is framed as a problem which we might hope our political system to solve, then the only acceptable reason to talk about the consequences of failing to solve that problem is to scare folks into trying harder to solve it. If you instead assume that politics will fail to solve the problem, and analyze the consequences of that in more detail, not to scare people but to work out how to live in that scenario, you are seen as expressing disloyalty to the system and hostility toward those who will suffer from that failure.
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This works us directly into the first square in Vinay's presentation which is the quote which begins this post. “A situation becomes a crisis when it overwhelms the government’s ability to respond”. I assume that politics will fail to solve the problem, therefore I must analyze the consequences of that in more detail. Since I am on a Stoic track, I would learn to live without the illusion that I can change the world through democratic politics. Not that I would shutup.
What do you do, what happens to your citizenship if you find yourself facing a situation that overwhelms your government? That is the subject of Vinay's publication that I will link to
here. So the quick answer is: The failure of the state to do risk management returns risk to us. What if we could use (X, Y, Z) instead of the state for managing our risk? There are 175 slides. One day I'll find the accompanying narrative. Stay tuned.
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