191–200 of 600 posts
"...All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.... ...Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their minds, a…
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Interesting the way that you group "not very smart" and "girlfriendless" with "delivery rider" as if being a gig worker makes you some kind of undesirable loser. Nice casual elitism.
If a job can be done by a starship robot then it's not much of a job then is it? In the short term it's more productive and admirable than being unemployed but in the long run it won't be much different.
> Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice This fact has been the downfall of every utopian ideology, and ignoring creates a vacuum that fascist regimes readily fill. I wonder what…
The counterpoint is that regional support for the Nazis generally indicates the opposite. Their weakest electoral performance was in the West and South, which generally was the wealthiest and most liberal part of Germany. By contrast their base of support was the Prussian hinterlands which was already the most militaristic part of the country to begin with, as well as having a weak region economy. I think it’s under-…
Under-appreciated today, well-known at the time. See the beginning of "Triumph of the Will".
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Kids just don't know any better. I would imagine that those who actually spent some of their childhood in a war zone would have a very different perspective. What's toxic is when grownups end up glorifying war or thinking of it as a solution to hard problems.
Eh, war is simply fun. It’s appealing to males in particular, and our testosterone tends to lock in the intoxication. There’s a reason that Battlefield is one of the most successful gaming franchises of all time, and that it’s very hard to find any videogame that doesn’t involve some kind of warfare. (There are dozens of wonderful counter examples: Minecraft, celeste, undertale, sim city, stardew valley. But for ever…
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> Eh, war is simply fun. It’s appealing to males in particular, and our testosterone tends to lock in the intoxication. There’s a reason that Battlefield is one of the most successful gaming franchises of all time, and that it’s very hard to find any videogame that doesn’t involve some kind of warfare. I think there is an argument to be made that Battlefield doesn't involve any warfare.
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Edit: Your reply is dead so I can't reply to it, but you're heading in the right direction to observe that the behaviors people actually seem to have evolved to prefer include those such as eating, resting and listening to stories.
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And the saying “Good times create weak men”. And it’s true. You often see a growing discontent among wealthy societies where everything is taken care of. People need purpose in what they do and “my purpose is to fight for the survival of my country” is a pretty compelling one to many people.
> wealthy societies where everything is taken care of. Which ones would they be? The one that I live most of my time in, Norway, does not seem to have growing discontent, yet it is quite definitely closer to "everything is taken care of" than others, such as the UK, where "growing discontent" seems to be a thing. So unless you can name those that "You often see" I don't think the idea can be taken seriously.
The mass shooting and terrorism rate there increasing seems like a reasonable counter to that idea. Along with steady suicide rates despite massively increasing spending on it.
I think he highlights some fundamentally toxic aspects of human nature with this bit: “The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do.” The engineer in me wishes we could substitute the soldiers with construction workers or something, but I can’t deny enjoying war games growing up. These da…
The answer to this is sports. War is competition through violence. When you remove the violence you get peaceful competition. It satisfies the tribal urge to fight things different than you, but also encourages healthy behaviors. Respect for your opponent. Accepting loss. Recognizing your weaknesses and working to improve them.
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A big part of early 20th-c. sociology was specifically concerned with their equivalent of "elite overproduction". The problem as they saw it was not so much "losers" in anything like an objective sense, but aspiring elites who viewed themselves as oppressed losers out of a misguided sense of entitlement.
> aspiring elites who viewed themselves as oppressed losers out of a misguided sense of entitlement. Yep, sounds like the disaffected white males who kill others or themselves in droves, despite often having better conditions than (less aspirant/entitled) non-white males.
> clumsy writing of Mein Kampf, Mein Kampf is clumsy but offers real insights into propaganda. He really thought about it. He clearly understands the value of propaganda in the war: "propaganda demands the most skilled brains that can be found." When Hitler talks mass psychology and propaganda, he says something very insightful even if it's inconvenient to hear for some. He calls masses feminine. When he talks to his…
Was Hitler particularly good at that, or did he just have a desperate audience? The usual downfall that people point to with autocratic governments is that their leaders think they're in touch with their citizens but are really a million miles away.
His chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels was really good. Goebbels made propaganda that was way subtler than Hitlers. Nazi cinema created expensive movies under Goebbels until the end. Nobody sees them today but they are very subtle and clever in a way they build a sentiment. Not at all like the short clips they show you.
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The answer to this is sports. War is competition through violence. When you remove the violence you get peaceful competition. It satisfies the tribal urge to fight things different than you, but also encourages healthy behaviors. Respect for your opponent. Accepting loss. Recognizing your weaknesses and working to improve them.
I'm with you in the abstract, but where I live there's toxic culture around sports that made it unpalatable for me as a kid. Back then what turned me off was belligerent parents on the sidelines yelling at the children, but the symptoms actually go way beyond that one little thing. (Conflating excellence with dominance is another example.)
I was rather fond of practicing team sports as a kid, but I found the culture off putting for the same reasons
Some people just can't behave, adults weren't even much better than your regular kid