> Begin forwarded message: > > From: friam-ow...@redfish.com > Subject: what other subject is there this morning > Date: November 9, 2016 at 9:15:37 AM EST > To: desm...@elsi.jp > > Your email addresss was not recognized as a subscriber to the FRIAM > list. It's possible you are subscribed under a different address. If > you would like to send emails to the list from this email address, > please send an email to friam-ad...@redfish.com with a list of emails > that you would like to be permitted. Sorry for the hassle but we're > trying to prevent spam emails from getting on the list. Thanks. > > > > I think the engine underneath the rejection of Hillary is that people = > look at her and see a face that they think believes itself better than = > them and that looks down on them. For people who were already under the = > power of resentment, that sets it on fire and opens this thing that is = > weirdly borderline with hatred. All the other stuff, news items or = > whatever, is just opportunistic window dressing that gets recruited = > after the fact as rationalization. Nobody cares about emails. If that = > hadn=E2=80=99t been available, it would have been something else. What = > they care about is indulging in rage at being =E2=80=9Cdisrespected=E2=80=9D= > .=20 > > I acknowledge the sophistication as well as the goodness of the Dalai = > Lama, and I defer to the willful positivity of the Buddhists who have = > been thinking about this systematicaly for nearly a thousand years, and = > I understand that they know things I don=E2=80=99t know. But I also = > work with primatologists, of which anthropology is a sub-discipline. = > The meanness of chimpanzees is probably retained from the recent = > ancestor, and it isn=E2=80=99t that far below the surface in humans. = > Whatever it is about social status, that gets wrapped up in the phrases = > =E2=80=9Clooking up to=E2=80=9D or =E2=80=9Clooking down on=E2=80=9D is = > big in us like it is big in them. Humans on some occasions have other = > layers of culture that put some checks on it, but that superstructure is = > not all that robust. I am not compelled by the Dalai Lama=E2=80=99s = > interpretation (for which I am nonetheless grateful) that this is about = > the loss of feeling needed. It is much meaner and more primitive than = > that; it is the resentment of feeling looked down on. =20 > > But now we have trouble. Americans seem to have a kind of negligent = > optimism that the mechanisms of democracy will still be there as a path = > to backtrack from mistakes they didn=E2=80=99t escape before. But the = > keys to everything have just been given to a strange hodge-podge of = > people, to none of whose members are the mechanisms of democracy = > anything particularly desirable. They are merely obstacles to their own = > small and predatory ambitions. I don=E2=80=99t take for granted that = > there will be mechanisms of backtracking the next time a calendary cycle = > rolls around. > > The motive power here is the power of resentment, at the bottom. But = > mechanisms matter too, and individuals matter. A few articles here and = > there seem to me to capture large chunks of this in a way that seems = > coherent and clarifying. > > There are architects like Newt Gingrich, as he is called out in the = > article from (2012) =E2=80=9CLet=E2=80=99s just say it: the Republicans = > are the problem=E2=80=9D. There is a systematic effort on all fronts = > all the time to dismantle the institutions of democracy to capture = > spoils in a competition. The method, for me, is best brought into = > clarity in the Malcolm Gladwell parable on David and Goliath, about the = > girls=E2=80=99 basketball team that won without particular skill by = > implementing the full-court press on every play of every game. Gladwell = > dwells on this as an honorable strategy because it employs conditioning = > as the thing that can be bought with discpline when there isn=E2=80=99t = > native talent. He comments, obliquely, that the teams of more skillful = > girls who were beaten in games were annoyed at being beaten by a = > full-court press. He doesn=E2=80=99t develop this, but I think it = > matters. For the skilled girls, they were in a _game_. The point of = > winning was to be a reward for being good at the play of the game. = > Their upset was that suddenly there was no game any more, there was no = > skill, there was no aesthetic to be aspired to or served. Winning = > became its own currency separate from whatever art the game had been = > meant to enable. The story has both sides, and there is credit due both = > where Malcolm calls it and where he bypasses it. But the analogy to me = > here is what happens when winning is separated from the game=E2=80=99s = > having a purpose in doing something else, which one might call = > =E2=80=9Cbigger=E2=80=9D. In basketball, the bigger thing was the = > cultivation of an art. In politics, it is the preservation of a = > society. > > We have seen the full-court press. It is middle-American right-wing = > talk radio. It is the constant campaign of hysteria, over everything, = > everywhere, all the time, that Paul Krugman notes over and over in his = > columns. It is the congress=E2=80=99s commitment to demolish = > everything, to obstruct and to block everything. Because there is = > nothing they are trying to build or to accomplish, there is no currency = > with which to negotiate with them. Where there are no values, there is = > no foundation for rules of play. It is the district gerrymandering, and = > the voter disenfranchisement acts of closing polls and DMVs in southern = > states. These things work. Once a democracy is dismantled, the tools = > to oust the ones in power can only come from outside. But where is = > =E2=80=9Coutside=E2=80=9D when the keys to everything are handed over at = > the level of a country. > > There are those who aren=E2=80=99t =E2=80=9Carchitects=E2=80=9D, like = > Gingrich, but rather these skinny venomous little blonde women who come = > out of the woodwork to fill local roles, or minor con men like Paul = > Ryan, or various slimy and disgusting and yet dangerous things like Ted = > Cruz. > > I feel like these are the machery that channels the motive power of = > resentment and enables it to do things. The machinery matters, but if = > the motive power of resentment were not there, the machinery would have = > nothing to drive it or flow through it. Conversely, as long as the = > motive power is there, there are always architects and local operators = > who can come in and try their hand at machinery, and a kind of Darwinian = > dynamic will filter out the ones that succeed. > > Under the power of resentment, there is no choice so mean, or so stupid, = > or so self-defeating that people cannot be led to make it. The ones who = > thought this was a good idea will plough themselves under as fast as = > they take down others, but there is no value in looking forward to that = > in vengeance. Facts matter in the real world of cause and effect, but = > in the choice world of resentment, they are beside the point. People = > under the power of resentment are unreachable in all those terms; they = > have shifted into a different space. > > Somehow that is what we have to deal with. Any pleasure or luxury in = > analysis or speculation is no pleasure now. There is just what options = > are left. I do think that the mistake was, and will continue to be, not = > finding ways to stop the growth of resentment. A line in one of the = > English-language translations of the Dao de Jing goes =E2=80=9CThe wise = > rule by emptying hearts and stuffing bellies.=E2=80=9D I won=E2=80=99t = > claim to understand what original Chinese political theorists intended = > this to mean, but I do think the failure to take seriously the need to = > stuff bellies (and the more subtle and perhaps honorable human needs for = > safety, fulfillment, and freedom from want) hasn=E2=80=99t been taken = > seriously enough, for decades now, by any of those who were comfortable. > > Now that all the keys are in the hands of the predators, we have fewer = > tools to work with than we had before. It would have been good if the = > sense of urgency to stop the undermining and the feeding of resentment, = > which I think Bernie felt and tried to speak for though without a = > serious plan to deal with the complexity of the mess, had weighed on = > more people before. But we are where we are now, and the question is = > what can hold off or reverse the coming active damage from here. > > > > > > > >
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