I like the spirit of this piece, Michael! I would replace “laugh at” with “recognize the absurdity” and “see the imperfections” about our selves (and others). Whatever shaves off a bit of the hubris/arrogance is a good thing overall!
Michael, I agree that being comfortable laughing at ourselves is critical, though one cited example complicate the insight. Being willing to confront mistakes is at the heart of what is implied by laughing at ourselves. That is essential to growth and learning.
Yet, President Trump is one of the most prolific examples of a fundamental refusal to do so. Instead, his approach is to never admit you were wrong. When confronted with obvious contradictions, attack and discredit. Deny. Absolutely never laugh at yourself when you can deflect to others and call them names.
While I agree that focus on every little banal issue feeds the problem, letting insignificant events distract from the true issues, that is his strategy and many fall into the trap.
I disagree on some policy decisions, but my fundamental issue with the current leader of the free world is his absolute inconsistency with my core values to admit when Past Me was wrong, listen to various points of view, and be willing to learn and grow. He is the polar opposite, and unfortunately merely one exceptionally prominent, influential example of the antithesis of your insight. While I get your point from the reaction to politics perspective, I belief inclusion as an example weakened the argument without confronting the contradiction it highlights.
I totally get that, but here’s the rub: what I see is that too many people rightly see his bad behavior, and yet they end up using it as an excuse to do the same thing. I’ve seen people use the justifications of his being an asshole to be an even bigger asshole. His illogic to be more illogical. All I want them to do is be better than Trump, but because they can’t laugh at it, they end up becoming it.
Put another way, take everything you see in Trump and just don’t do that thing. The ability to laugh is even more critical with someone like Trump, a single person, because if he can steal that from you… That’s actually kind of funny. 😏
I definitely agree with the normalization being a significant downstream problem, and that's where I also hit a values discrepancy. The only person we can truly change is ourselves. Plus, if there's one thing we can all agree on, no one can out Trump Trump
I could make the same argument about the current trajectory of the other party; but what good does rhetoric accomplish unless there is a neutral majority to persuade? If we have reached a point of factionalism in which we no longer share social objectives, there will be no room for compromise. Hard to know, because there are more declared "independents" than ever. But are they really independent? And if they are, are their goals any more in line with the limitations of human nature than the strident partisans? Again, very hard to know.
Funny that this should show up in my feed. I just watched a podcast with Neil deGrasse Tyson, and that's exactly what he said. It impressed me that he had made it a mission in his life to make the world a better place, not just as an educator and a scientist, but with humor. He had some pretty funny things to say about black holes. But at the end, the lesson was clear: Laugh more. Laugh at yourself, your ego's tendencies, and in general. It made me think: in the outrage economy, have we indeed become too serious?
I undoubtedly return to the Stoic "Memento Mori" at every opportunity. How can you be miffed, disgruntled, angry, sad, or, for that matter, ecstatically joyful, knowing your death is imminant? "Relax, we're all gonna die." Now, I'll admit that's extreme. Maybe there's some subtle variant?
As to mentioning Dickwad Drumpf's name? Yeah, at every mention a Devil's imp gets its horns, (and an angel gets dipped in acid and dies). So, refrain from using that asshole's name.
Great to hear and that’s a good point. Everyone wants to hijack your emotions. One of the cores of Mixed Mental arts is recognizing that we are emotional with a small bit of logic. Jonathan Haidt described it was an emotional elephant and a logical rider. Too many people are trying to get the elephants to stampede.
A small number of people who want to hijack your emotions are trying to sell you something; but most are hijacked themselves, and want to share the misery so they feel some camaraderie. Not that it really helps in the long run. But it's hard to pull yourself out of quicksand when you're already neck deep.
I appreciate the point you’re landing. Society- social media as a whole- could use a mega dose of this.
That said, what steps or practices do you apply in your life that prevent such a perspective from becoming tyrannical to the extent it might drive one toward nihilism?
That’s a fantastic question and one, now, I wish I had included.
First, I don’t think there’s a binary, and I’m certainly nihilistic about some things' meaning; I really, frankly, don’t care. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t care or am irreverent (if you saw that essay above) to everything.
The way I describe it is that I’ve decoupled from many things and I have a series of guy wires holding me up. This structure is simpler and can withstand a whole lot of weather rather than a cobweb of values.
That doesn’t mean I can’t change those wires, but I can just whilly nilly hack one away like we sometimes see in the NPC Meme “I support the current thing” (which is kind of funny). I first have to establish a new anchor and then transition, as I did on my theological adventure.
In my day job, I find this all the time, where people are just measuring the wrong things and thinking it’s important. One way to find out otherwise is to ‘stop caring’ and see if anything happens. You’ll be amazed at how little feedback you’ll get trimming away ‘cares.’
But the main element here is to find out what really matters for you, your family, and your goals. I still care about politics. I’m still active in writing about it, thinking about it, and voting, but I also laugh my ass off at how absurd we’ve made it and how pompous and self-righteous so many have become about it.
More than anything, though, the ability to laugh is one of the fastest ways to show the Emperor has no clothes, and keeps you from risking acting on others’ behalf as an NPC:
Thank you for your thoughtful response. Like you, I’ve also noticed an addiction to the propositional tyranny alive and well in the workplace (ie. we can measure it; therefore, it’s important, so we’ll track activity against this metric). A serious contemplation of your piece on ignorance begetting confidence would serve many well.
On your practical advice to stop caring and see what happens…I find this immensely valuable and analogous to the minimalist practice of boxing things up and if they go a certain period of time without use- donating, repurposing, or recycling.
OK, just finished reading that! Nicely done, sir. I coulda saved myself some ink last night if I had just waited until I read your magnum opus.
It reminds me of this old chestnuts:
“I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”
― Mark Twain
“Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.”
― Horace Mann
I also think it might be worth exploring the polar disparity between Seneca's description of Vatinius' approach to compensating for his physical deformities, and how Karl Marx chose to deal with his own physicality and personality defects. On top of which I think there may be some merit to this biochemical source of human misery:
Also worth asking is what the hell happened to Ryan Holiday? If a deliberate piss-taker like Donald Jehosephat Trump is enough to smash your inner stoic, how sincerely do you believe your own borax?
Unfortunately, I think most people avoid thinking about uncomfortable subjects; not only because they lack the ability for mocking their own dubious assertions of the past, but also because there are strong taboos against examining moral relativism and the tribal instinct.
Even libertarians are susceptible to this constraint, and often fall back on "First Principles" as if life would be great if we could just return to the good old 1990s. I agree, that would be idyllic; but we cannot go backward in time. The pendulum must reach the apex of polar insanity before it loses momentum, and begins its long journey toward the antipode of counter-insanity. Luckily, most of the intervening historical arc is relatively enjoyable!
Pardon my carelessness for posting after only reading 25% of this, but I'm tired and my brain is full tonight; I will finish reading tomorrow. I don't like to read your posts unless I can devote the proper attention.
Still, I wanted to run something by you, because I think we think a bit similarly. I have trained my brain to enjoy learning [or being wrong] as much as I enjoy dispensing knowledge to others [or being right, at least temporarily]. In the same way a light bulb enjoys being lit in either polarity. Most neurotypicals are polarized like LEDs, and only enjoy the dispensing-knowledge polarity--which of course reinforces social status, affirms bonds with allies, and staves off anxiety. Thus they miss out on both the agony of moral ambiguity, and the joy of discovering surprising connections; but more importantly, they "miss leg day" at the gym. Critical thinking is not an innate measure of intellect genetically determined. It is a mental habit that must be trained like the body. To begin cultivating this habit, I recommend a small book by Alan Watts called The Wisdom of Insecurity, which [like many short books that get right to the point] had an outsize impact on my own development.
As an example of how I've become accustomed to thinking differently, I sometimes ask people if they've noticed the uncanny similarities between Trump and FDR, just to see how they respond. It's something that occurred to me only a year or two ago, because I'm not a political tribalist. But I never get positive engagement from this query, which is interesting. By which I mean not necessarily agreement, but even a willingness to debate. And I don't even intend to make this comparison as a defense of Trump; if anything, more of an indictment of FDR. But both men were as polarizing as bleu cheese, in their own way. It's hard for most folks to discuss either president without a primarily emotional framing, rather than a mere assessment of their achievements and shortcomings. People react as if I offended them, or as if they can't believe I'm allowed to walk the streets without a legal guardian. It's a very odd reaction for a question that in my mind is an anthropological curiosity.
For instance, if most Americans visited Rwanda, we would be hard pressed to discern meaningful differences between Hutu and Tutsi; but it's not too surprising that to them it's deadly serious. After all, the nature of primordial resource conflicts between neighboring tribes suggests that we carry innate predilections to invent minuscule differences between in-group and out-group members of our own species, so that we can alleviate the cognitive dissonance of wanting to dispossess them of their land or resources merely because we can no longer coexist for more mundane logistical reasons. So on some level we can reach back to that old tribal filing system to understand that it need not be rational outside the tribe. And yet few among us can step out of our own milieu, even hypothetically, to ask ourselves where we are equally arbitrary. And more importantly, if such distinctions are serving a useful purpose, or are merely old habits we haven't reconsidered in light of contemporary constraints.
Another thing I've noticed is how normal people really don't like ambiguity about ANY important topic, as much as they hate being wrong. Just like people tend to hate push-ups if they're not in the habit of doing push-ups. Unfortunately, being a robust critical thinker necessitates a massive and ever-growing mental folder marked "INDETERMINATE"...because that's life, I'm afraid. If we are honest with ourselves, it is never an easy task to differentiate open-mindedness from moral relativism. But without being able to consider such ambiguities, we may miss out on key insights, such as the possibility that political alignment may need to shift with the tenor of the times. Each political "tribe" answers certain questions [or social-cohesion challenges] better than others; but no tribe has all answers for all times. If it did, the others would atrophy and disappear. It is also an uncomfortable thing to consider that once sufficient contempt enters a relationship, it may be beyond repair. Or the method of repair may come at an unthinkable cost. But students of history are not unfamiliar with the fact that all civilizations encounter such tribulations in cyclic fashion.
OK, I'll give my jaws a pause now; looking forward to finishing your article tomorrow...
I like how you described training to be right instead of avoicdance of being wrong. That’s been my take. I’m OK with being wrong because that helps me become more right. My reward isn’t be infallable in my rightness but being adaptable in my wrongness. (this might need to be a whole new essay)
Excellent comment! I completely agree that humans as a species emphasize finding differentiation over similarities. Often attributed to our tribal nature, your Hutu and Tutsi from the POV of an American highlights the exact issue. The closer our identity and sense of belonging lies with one group, the more susceptible we are to focusing on differences.
I created a youtube video on this exact phenomenon in the whole Bad Bunny Super Bowl outrage, and then broke down his show and the Turning Point USA counter programming. Focused on the lyrics and meaning, I concluded that Kid Rock and Bad Bunny's closing songs were nearly identical in meaning and even mixing the lyrics, it was indistinguishable which came from which.
We need to take a moment to pull ourselves outside the situation and try to look for similarities. It would be incredible if we could fight the control of differentiation and emphasize understanding.
Thank goodness! I knew there were a handful of people out there who can relate to the persistent friction of trying to maintain some objectivity when the world goes kookoo. I think a good "First Principle" is that tribalism and arbitrary in-group/out-group criteria were features, not bugs, of social organization. Which is why I think Machiavelli is both as relevant and as despised today as he was in his own time.
The operative question, then, is not whether humans should merely "evolve" beyond superficial categories of self-segregation; but WHEN and WHY it might be necessary to revert to our "primitive" modes of behavior [circling the wagons]. Otherwise we risk making the same error that Francis Fukuyama did in confidently equating the fall of the USSR to the "end of history".
I can think of numerous examples in recent decades, in which large groups of humans have collectively chosen to revert to barbaric behavior. Surely this is strategic, at least for the elites in those populations. Or if it isn't, it's worth exploring how elites become delusional to the point of acting against their own interests. But I'm less interested in the behavior of SOCIAL elites, who are somewhat conflicted because they must appear to share the values of commoners in order to avoid arousing negative attention. I'm much more interested in POLITICAL elites, who are more cunning and deliberate, and more insulated from social consequences. When the political elites seem to behave in ways that undermine the security of their own families along with everyone else's, that strikes me as a worthy investigation. Of course, I could be misreading their 20,000 ft view of the landscape, which is also worth investigating.
I like the spirit of this piece, Michael! I would replace “laugh at” with “recognize the absurdity” and “see the imperfections” about our selves (and others). Whatever shaves off a bit of the hubris/arrogance is a good thing overall!
Awesome. Many ways to skin this cat, to your point.
Michael, I agree that being comfortable laughing at ourselves is critical, though one cited example complicate the insight. Being willing to confront mistakes is at the heart of what is implied by laughing at ourselves. That is essential to growth and learning.
Yet, President Trump is one of the most prolific examples of a fundamental refusal to do so. Instead, his approach is to never admit you were wrong. When confronted with obvious contradictions, attack and discredit. Deny. Absolutely never laugh at yourself when you can deflect to others and call them names.
While I agree that focus on every little banal issue feeds the problem, letting insignificant events distract from the true issues, that is his strategy and many fall into the trap.
I disagree on some policy decisions, but my fundamental issue with the current leader of the free world is his absolute inconsistency with my core values to admit when Past Me was wrong, listen to various points of view, and be willing to learn and grow. He is the polar opposite, and unfortunately merely one exceptionally prominent, influential example of the antithesis of your insight. While I get your point from the reaction to politics perspective, I belief inclusion as an example weakened the argument without confronting the contradiction it highlights.
I totally get that, but here’s the rub: what I see is that too many people rightly see his bad behavior, and yet they end up using it as an excuse to do the same thing. I’ve seen people use the justifications of his being an asshole to be an even bigger asshole. His illogic to be more illogical. All I want them to do is be better than Trump, but because they can’t laugh at it, they end up becoming it.
Put another way, take everything you see in Trump and just don’t do that thing. The ability to laugh is even more critical with someone like Trump, a single person, because if he can steal that from you… That’s actually kind of funny. 😏
I definitely agree with the normalization being a significant downstream problem, and that's where I also hit a values discrepancy. The only person we can truly change is ourselves. Plus, if there's one thing we can all agree on, no one can out Trump Trump
I could make the same argument about the current trajectory of the other party; but what good does rhetoric accomplish unless there is a neutral majority to persuade? If we have reached a point of factionalism in which we no longer share social objectives, there will be no room for compromise. Hard to know, because there are more declared "independents" than ever. But are they really independent? And if they are, are their goals any more in line with the limitations of human nature than the strident partisans? Again, very hard to know.
I agree.
Funny that this should show up in my feed. I just watched a podcast with Neil deGrasse Tyson, and that's exactly what he said. It impressed me that he had made it a mission in his life to make the world a better place, not just as an educator and a scientist, but with humor. He had some pretty funny things to say about black holes. But at the end, the lesson was clear: Laugh more. Laugh at yourself, your ego's tendencies, and in general. It made me think: in the outrage economy, have we indeed become too serious?
That's awesome. I also just watched Project Hail Mary (also read it) and I love your last name.
I should see Hail Mary. Everyone says it's great. On my to-do list.
It’s solid. Book is better but… I wish Straz had her full baddassery from the book. Gossling did a servicable job. Lots to cover in 2.5 hrs.
The books are usually always better. I just ordered it. It's your fault. LOL.
lol. Let me know how it goes!
We're so fortunate, being allowed to live in a clown world ...
How weird is that your daugther is percosiouly reaching 6" precociously at 13 already ??? ...
Right!
I undoubtedly return to the Stoic "Memento Mori" at every opportunity. How can you be miffed, disgruntled, angry, sad, or, for that matter, ecstatically joyful, knowing your death is imminant? "Relax, we're all gonna die." Now, I'll admit that's extreme. Maybe there's some subtle variant?
As to mentioning Dickwad Drumpf's name? Yeah, at every mention a Devil's imp gets its horns, (and an angel gets dipped in acid and dies). So, refrain from using that asshole's name.
Agree on the stoics. That last part is also quite funny!
You always make me think, which is hilarious. Everyone else just wants me to feel—and I mostly feel like shit.
Great to hear and that’s a good point. Everyone wants to hijack your emotions. One of the cores of Mixed Mental arts is recognizing that we are emotional with a small bit of logic. Jonathan Haidt described it was an emotional elephant and a logical rider. Too many people are trying to get the elephants to stampede.
A small number of people who want to hijack your emotions are trying to sell you something; but most are hijacked themselves, and want to share the misery so they feel some camaraderie. Not that it really helps in the long run. But it's hard to pull yourself out of quicksand when you're already neck deep.
Misery loves company.
Yes, it certainly does!
I appreciate the point you’re landing. Society- social media as a whole- could use a mega dose of this.
That said, what steps or practices do you apply in your life that prevent such a perspective from becoming tyrannical to the extent it might drive one toward nihilism?
That’s a fantastic question and one, now, I wish I had included.
First, I don’t think there’s a binary, and I’m certainly nihilistic about some things' meaning; I really, frankly, don’t care. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t care or am irreverent (if you saw that essay above) to everything.
The way I describe it is that I’ve decoupled from many things and I have a series of guy wires holding me up. This structure is simpler and can withstand a whole lot of weather rather than a cobweb of values.
That doesn’t mean I can’t change those wires, but I can just whilly nilly hack one away like we sometimes see in the NPC Meme “I support the current thing” (which is kind of funny). I first have to establish a new anchor and then transition, as I did on my theological adventure.
The main thing, to start with, is to actually understand what values matter most and whether you’re actually measuring them properly: https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/understanding-success?utm_source=publication-search
In my day job, I find this all the time, where people are just measuring the wrong things and thinking it’s important. One way to find out otherwise is to ‘stop caring’ and see if anything happens. You’ll be amazed at how little feedback you’ll get trimming away ‘cares.’
But the main element here is to find out what really matters for you, your family, and your goals. I still care about politics. I’m still active in writing about it, thinking about it, and voting, but I also laugh my ass off at how absurd we’ve made it and how pompous and self-righteous so many have become about it.
More than anything, though, the ability to laugh is one of the fastest ways to show the Emperor has no clothes, and keeps you from risking acting on others’ behalf as an NPC:
https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/solving-narcissisism-and-npcs
Thank you for your thoughtful response. Like you, I’ve also noticed an addiction to the propositional tyranny alive and well in the workplace (ie. we can measure it; therefore, it’s important, so we’ll track activity against this metric). A serious contemplation of your piece on ignorance begetting confidence would serve many well.
On your practical advice to stop caring and see what happens…I find this immensely valuable and analogous to the minimalist practice of boxing things up and if they go a certain period of time without use- donating, repurposing, or recycling.
Thanks again! Excited to keep reading your work 🤜
Awesome. Thrilled to have you here and engaging.
👏🏻💯🎯😂
Great article, Michael. Laughing at yourself helps free the ego and see the world as it is (beautiful).
The world is beautiful isn’t it!
This is why I'm big on absurdism as a philosophy. It helps you to laugh about life. I even wrote something recently about the problem of humans.
OK, just finished reading that! Nicely done, sir. I coulda saved myself some ink last night if I had just waited until I read your magnum opus.
It reminds me of this old chestnuts:
“I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”
― Mark Twain
“Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.”
― Horace Mann
I also think it might be worth exploring the polar disparity between Seneca's description of Vatinius' approach to compensating for his physical deformities, and how Karl Marx chose to deal with his own physicality and personality defects. On top of which I think there may be some merit to this biochemical source of human misery:
https://www.amazon.com/Vessels-Rage-Engines-Power-Alcoholism/dp/0963024221/ref=sr_1_1?sr=8-1
Also worth asking is what the hell happened to Ryan Holiday? If a deliberate piss-taker like Donald Jehosephat Trump is enough to smash your inner stoic, how sincerely do you believe your own borax?
Unfortunately, I think most people avoid thinking about uncomfortable subjects; not only because they lack the ability for mocking their own dubious assertions of the past, but also because there are strong taboos against examining moral relativism and the tribal instinct.
Even libertarians are susceptible to this constraint, and often fall back on "First Principles" as if life would be great if we could just return to the good old 1990s. I agree, that would be idyllic; but we cannot go backward in time. The pendulum must reach the apex of polar insanity before it loses momentum, and begins its long journey toward the antipode of counter-insanity. Luckily, most of the intervening historical arc is relatively enjoyable!
Pardon my carelessness for posting after only reading 25% of this, but I'm tired and my brain is full tonight; I will finish reading tomorrow. I don't like to read your posts unless I can devote the proper attention.
Still, I wanted to run something by you, because I think we think a bit similarly. I have trained my brain to enjoy learning [or being wrong] as much as I enjoy dispensing knowledge to others [or being right, at least temporarily]. In the same way a light bulb enjoys being lit in either polarity. Most neurotypicals are polarized like LEDs, and only enjoy the dispensing-knowledge polarity--which of course reinforces social status, affirms bonds with allies, and staves off anxiety. Thus they miss out on both the agony of moral ambiguity, and the joy of discovering surprising connections; but more importantly, they "miss leg day" at the gym. Critical thinking is not an innate measure of intellect genetically determined. It is a mental habit that must be trained like the body. To begin cultivating this habit, I recommend a small book by Alan Watts called The Wisdom of Insecurity, which [like many short books that get right to the point] had an outsize impact on my own development.
As an example of how I've become accustomed to thinking differently, I sometimes ask people if they've noticed the uncanny similarities between Trump and FDR, just to see how they respond. It's something that occurred to me only a year or two ago, because I'm not a political tribalist. But I never get positive engagement from this query, which is interesting. By which I mean not necessarily agreement, but even a willingness to debate. And I don't even intend to make this comparison as a defense of Trump; if anything, more of an indictment of FDR. But both men were as polarizing as bleu cheese, in their own way. It's hard for most folks to discuss either president without a primarily emotional framing, rather than a mere assessment of their achievements and shortcomings. People react as if I offended them, or as if they can't believe I'm allowed to walk the streets without a legal guardian. It's a very odd reaction for a question that in my mind is an anthropological curiosity.
For instance, if most Americans visited Rwanda, we would be hard pressed to discern meaningful differences between Hutu and Tutsi; but it's not too surprising that to them it's deadly serious. After all, the nature of primordial resource conflicts between neighboring tribes suggests that we carry innate predilections to invent minuscule differences between in-group and out-group members of our own species, so that we can alleviate the cognitive dissonance of wanting to dispossess them of their land or resources merely because we can no longer coexist for more mundane logistical reasons. So on some level we can reach back to that old tribal filing system to understand that it need not be rational outside the tribe. And yet few among us can step out of our own milieu, even hypothetically, to ask ourselves where we are equally arbitrary. And more importantly, if such distinctions are serving a useful purpose, or are merely old habits we haven't reconsidered in light of contemporary constraints.
Another thing I've noticed is how normal people really don't like ambiguity about ANY important topic, as much as they hate being wrong. Just like people tend to hate push-ups if they're not in the habit of doing push-ups. Unfortunately, being a robust critical thinker necessitates a massive and ever-growing mental folder marked "INDETERMINATE"...because that's life, I'm afraid. If we are honest with ourselves, it is never an easy task to differentiate open-mindedness from moral relativism. But without being able to consider such ambiguities, we may miss out on key insights, such as the possibility that political alignment may need to shift with the tenor of the times. Each political "tribe" answers certain questions [or social-cohesion challenges] better than others; but no tribe has all answers for all times. If it did, the others would atrophy and disappear. It is also an uncomfortable thing to consider that once sufficient contempt enters a relationship, it may be beyond repair. Or the method of repair may come at an unthinkable cost. But students of history are not unfamiliar with the fact that all civilizations encounter such tribulations in cyclic fashion.
OK, I'll give my jaws a pause now; looking forward to finishing your article tomorrow...
I like how you described training to be right instead of avoicdance of being wrong. That’s been my take. I’m OK with being wrong because that helps me become more right. My reward isn’t be infallable in my rightness but being adaptable in my wrongness. (this might need to be a whole new essay)
I think you've addressed this exact theme before, which is what initially magnetized my eyeballs...
Excellent comment! I completely agree that humans as a species emphasize finding differentiation over similarities. Often attributed to our tribal nature, your Hutu and Tutsi from the POV of an American highlights the exact issue. The closer our identity and sense of belonging lies with one group, the more susceptible we are to focusing on differences.
I created a youtube video on this exact phenomenon in the whole Bad Bunny Super Bowl outrage, and then broke down his show and the Turning Point USA counter programming. Focused on the lyrics and meaning, I concluded that Kid Rock and Bad Bunny's closing songs were nearly identical in meaning and even mixing the lyrics, it was indistinguishable which came from which.
We need to take a moment to pull ourselves outside the situation and try to look for similarities. It would be incredible if we could fight the control of differentiation and emphasize understanding.
Thank goodness! I knew there were a handful of people out there who can relate to the persistent friction of trying to maintain some objectivity when the world goes kookoo. I think a good "First Principle" is that tribalism and arbitrary in-group/out-group criteria were features, not bugs, of social organization. Which is why I think Machiavelli is both as relevant and as despised today as he was in his own time.
The operative question, then, is not whether humans should merely "evolve" beyond superficial categories of self-segregation; but WHEN and WHY it might be necessary to revert to our "primitive" modes of behavior [circling the wagons]. Otherwise we risk making the same error that Francis Fukuyama did in confidently equating the fall of the USSR to the "end of history".
I can think of numerous examples in recent decades, in which large groups of humans have collectively chosen to revert to barbaric behavior. Surely this is strategic, at least for the elites in those populations. Or if it isn't, it's worth exploring how elites become delusional to the point of acting against their own interests. But I'm less interested in the behavior of SOCIAL elites, who are somewhat conflicted because they must appear to share the values of commoners in order to avoid arousing negative attention. I'm much more interested in POLITICAL elites, who are more cunning and deliberate, and more insulated from social consequences. When the political elites seem to behave in ways that undermine the security of their own families along with everyone else's, that strikes me as a worthy investigation. Of course, I could be misreading their 20,000 ft view of the landscape, which is also worth investigating.