Dear Shadi, whether what you have been experiencing is a situation of cognitive dissonance or paradoxical inconsistencies, I see you smarter than getting stuck in this rut; just some more authenticity and responsibility (nothing pejorative meant or said from higher ground; for this I kick myself every time of every day). West or no West, Muslims & Arabs are in deep sheet; real solution is impossible at this stage, whether the West helps them or otherwise, even if the West become Muslim then there is still no prosperity for Muslims & Arabs, but they will 100% stop blaming the West.
You realise all this very well, as far as I can see.
the premier software engineering ability of america means it will be durable with significant world impact for a long time. we invented the teenager, cool and fun in the 50s and still have cultural capacity. software has been like a resource curse that flooded wealth and eased industrial obsolescence, sooner or later the downsteam economy must be reconstructed and modernized, nativists, technicists, state-capacitists and abundancists are clamoring if not moving in that direction. yet more contingent items are changing, the western hegemony is already over and the associated western secular free world paradigm is teetering. when BRICS output surpassed the G7 the west became an economic minority hegemony, an oxymoron. military capacity is shifting decisively in two directions: a duopoly of american and chinese near earth orbit command systems and a demographic and geopolitical preponderance of large middle income countries. in response western policy has turned more and more against development - sanctions, bans, tariffs and secessionist destabilization and wars against large countries. the capacity of that policy decreases by the day. with or without missiles good luck stabilizing a shrunken high tariff bloc against a vibrant world trade among a rising middle class of countries. sooner or later Europe and America will bite the bullet and reengineer domains to again compete in global markets, and the crutch of interventions will become unneeded as well as infeasible. there is strong impetus toward an hegemony of major powers, amalgamation of states, and wielding near orbit command responsibly to secure trade and internet. the western secular liberal paradigm exists as like minded and like employed colonies in most countries, the deflation of this paradigm is unmooring these colonies and opening possibility for broader political unity around national ecomodern development. the tradition of separation of church and state manifests now as neutrality toward ethics. the combination of ethical neutrality plus governance stratum gave us woke, which is a warning and indicator that elements of the western liberal paradigm are incapable and hazardous. a paradigm of ethical neutrality cannot confront the multiplying choices of advancing software, CRISPER and many more to come. for social institutions to catch up with galloping software the practitioners in many domains must be bolstered with a positive perspective toward the human journey to make decisions that are more and more put in their hands by software. the senior ethic systems - major religions and materialism - have evolved over millennia to encode thinking and ritual that favors the human journey. Ethic systems function as complex systems including national cultures that convey practice and emotion to raise children and bolster adults toward the human journey, and they evolve through demographic selection - the more effective ethic systems create a larger number of stable children that reproduce. to manage the hazards and make software modernization comprehensive the western secular neutral ethics must be replaced in public policy with mechanisms that favor a plurality of pro human journey paradigms. in 1994 tariq ramadan proposed ethic councils composed of religious and non religious experts in each domain to recommend controls on emerging technology with ethical implications. we can maintain freedom of expression for all in algorithms. but policy in the age of software modernization must do better than the naive secularism.
Shadi, thank you for sharing this excerpt. Your final thought in the passage is the most illuminating: “And there were few things more American than wishing and wanting America to be better than it actually was.”
The question of “better” highlights the limitations of propositional or civic nationalism: what is “better”? According to whom? I’m American, and I would prefer a conception of American-ness that is rooted more deeply than self-directed criticism over the issues of the day. Am I incorrect? To whom can we defer to resolve such disagreements?
One advantage that the MAGA cohort has (despite its many tactical weaknesses) is that it recognizes the magnitude of these disagreements in a way that mainstream liberalism would like to brush aside.
Some people (including many in the American intellectual elite) believe that identification with and affinity for the United States is contingent. I believe it’s axiomatic. Life is not a high school debate competition. My affinity for the United States is not derived from my evaluating a list of pros and cons. I suspect that almost no one in the world determines their prime group affinity through such an exercise. My parents were born here, I was born here, I will die here, and that is more than enough for me to have unqualified appreciation for Independence Day.
I believe that the tension between axiomatic and contingent American affinity will grow exponentially stronger in the next decade. I haven’t a clue how to resolve it.
Dear Shadi, whether what you have been experiencing is a situation of cognitive dissonance or paradoxical inconsistencies, I see you smarter than getting stuck in this rut; just some more authenticity and responsibility (nothing pejorative meant or said from higher ground; for this I kick myself every time of every day). West or no West, Muslims & Arabs are in deep sheet; real solution is impossible at this stage, whether the West helps them or otherwise, even if the West become Muslim then there is still no prosperity for Muslims & Arabs, but they will 100% stop blaming the West.
You realise all this very well, as far as I can see.
the premier software engineering ability of america means it will be durable with significant world impact for a long time. we invented the teenager, cool and fun in the 50s and still have cultural capacity. software has been like a resource curse that flooded wealth and eased industrial obsolescence, sooner or later the downsteam economy must be reconstructed and modernized, nativists, technicists, state-capacitists and abundancists are clamoring if not moving in that direction. yet more contingent items are changing, the western hegemony is already over and the associated western secular free world paradigm is teetering. when BRICS output surpassed the G7 the west became an economic minority hegemony, an oxymoron. military capacity is shifting decisively in two directions: a duopoly of american and chinese near earth orbit command systems and a demographic and geopolitical preponderance of large middle income countries. in response western policy has turned more and more against development - sanctions, bans, tariffs and secessionist destabilization and wars against large countries. the capacity of that policy decreases by the day. with or without missiles good luck stabilizing a shrunken high tariff bloc against a vibrant world trade among a rising middle class of countries. sooner or later Europe and America will bite the bullet and reengineer domains to again compete in global markets, and the crutch of interventions will become unneeded as well as infeasible. there is strong impetus toward an hegemony of major powers, amalgamation of states, and wielding near orbit command responsibly to secure trade and internet. the western secular liberal paradigm exists as like minded and like employed colonies in most countries, the deflation of this paradigm is unmooring these colonies and opening possibility for broader political unity around national ecomodern development. the tradition of separation of church and state manifests now as neutrality toward ethics. the combination of ethical neutrality plus governance stratum gave us woke, which is a warning and indicator that elements of the western liberal paradigm are incapable and hazardous. a paradigm of ethical neutrality cannot confront the multiplying choices of advancing software, CRISPER and many more to come. for social institutions to catch up with galloping software the practitioners in many domains must be bolstered with a positive perspective toward the human journey to make decisions that are more and more put in their hands by software. the senior ethic systems - major religions and materialism - have evolved over millennia to encode thinking and ritual that favors the human journey. Ethic systems function as complex systems including national cultures that convey practice and emotion to raise children and bolster adults toward the human journey, and they evolve through demographic selection - the more effective ethic systems create a larger number of stable children that reproduce. to manage the hazards and make software modernization comprehensive the western secular neutral ethics must be replaced in public policy with mechanisms that favor a plurality of pro human journey paradigms. in 1994 tariq ramadan proposed ethic councils composed of religious and non religious experts in each domain to recommend controls on emerging technology with ethical implications. we can maintain freedom of expression for all in algorithms. but policy in the age of software modernization must do better than the naive secularism.
Shadi, thank you for sharing this excerpt. Your final thought in the passage is the most illuminating: “And there were few things more American than wishing and wanting America to be better than it actually was.”
The question of “better” highlights the limitations of propositional or civic nationalism: what is “better”? According to whom? I’m American, and I would prefer a conception of American-ness that is rooted more deeply than self-directed criticism over the issues of the day. Am I incorrect? To whom can we defer to resolve such disagreements?
One advantage that the MAGA cohort has (despite its many tactical weaknesses) is that it recognizes the magnitude of these disagreements in a way that mainstream liberalism would like to brush aside.
Some people (including many in the American intellectual elite) believe that identification with and affinity for the United States is contingent. I believe it’s axiomatic. Life is not a high school debate competition. My affinity for the United States is not derived from my evaluating a list of pros and cons. I suspect that almost no one in the world determines their prime group affinity through such an exercise. My parents were born here, I was born here, I will die here, and that is more than enough for me to have unqualified appreciation for Independence Day.
I believe that the tension between axiomatic and contingent American affinity will grow exponentially stronger in the next decade. I haven’t a clue how to resolve it.