Poligofsky
Not quite half-way through Ken Wilber’s A Post-Truth World. I find it both interesting and frustrating.
The Integrationist theory lumps cultural attitudes into “stages”, each named with colours: orange, amber, red, green. I find these arbitrary. It also posits an evolution process model. Green is the second highest, before “integral”. Orange is rougly globalist neocon; amber is enthno-nationalist conservative; red is narcissistic individualist; green is collective progressivism. Kinda.
Poligofsky
I personally think a lot of this is spurious. Although I am inclined to agree that post-modernism went too far (almost from day one), and was mostly bullshit.
The fact is that social power is distributed according to a mathematical power law. However you name these socio-political perspectives, they are not part of a process of evolution. Those that came later may have more insights, or be better at sophisticated use (and abuse) of language and rhetoric. But it’s mostly just elites competing.
Poligofsky
We are all overwhelmed by the complexity of the world. Some of us pine for a time when things were more stable. When we could learn enough, by adolescence, to navigate both the material and social worlds.
The former requires real knowledge of the world, and practical skills. The latter involved adopting a shared bullshit story, enough to demonstrate tribal affiliation, obedience to power, and achieve status.
But competition led to new bullshit stories. Now we are all beset by endless b.s.
Poligofsky
Even before political correctness, the problem with green philosophy is rooted in post-modern belief of the arbitrariness of truth. Or the complete non-existence of empirical truth. Truth is a political construct. Which opens the door to any competing belief system to assert itself, including its superiority to any other truth. Post-truth itself attempted to be the final word, but its hypocrisy was its undoing.
Trump is anti-green. He appeals to red/orange/amber mostly for that reason.
Poligofsky
The writing is not great. He repeats himself constantly. He uses certain words and phrases from his system as if he’s a saleman making a pitch. He loves to say “aperspectival madness”.
He makes a reasonable, if disjointed and poorly evidenced, critique of the failures of the “green” movement. (Again, this is not just “environmentalism”, but it includes elements of it.) He points out how greens set the stage for their own failure through political correctness and having no sense of humour.
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