On 27/03/2021 05:17, 6+Cola wrote:
>   I am not religious. If we are to be "preserved" we will have
>    to do it ourselves.
>
>    And NOBODY "has the answers" because humans are an
>    erratic, illogical, congnitive-dissonance-loving species. There
>    are eight billion notions about how things should be -  and a
>    new eight billion tomorrow. Human societies are a sort of
>    perpetual kludge, BARELY working, but there's no other way.

People misquote the corollary of Darwin's evolutionary notion. It is
less the survival of the fittest than the elimination of the bottom
useless one percent.

 From Nature's perspective, nothing matters except that the species
stumbles through childhood and puberty, and makes it into the bushes for
the crudest form of sex imaginable.

>
>    Weirdly, even ancient societies with NO grasp of how the
>    universe worked STILL tended to persist, indeed often
>    became successful. That means something, but I'm not
>    sure what. Is a good collective lie more important than
>    The Truth ???

Very much so. Given that the above criteria are all that matters, a big
all powerful sky fairy with awesome powers who wrote a book of moral
behaviour oddly suited to the cohesion of large societies in an emerging
agrarian age, was bound to get to be wise rulers' favourite state religion.

That it has collapsed in a post industrial one, is not surprising.

Your comments on 'political math' too are cogent: in an age of universal
franchise and the equivalence of voters, to leave actual rulership to
the whim of 'οἱ πολλοί' is simply unthinkable for any emergent
oligarchy.

The natural tendency of such an oligarchy is to control all aspects of
public communication that it can, to first of all suppress any idea that
  the system that allows them to exist at all, needs modification.

Instead the invention of a Punch and Judy show, where you are restricted
to voting for Punch (Donald Trump) or Judy (Hilary Clinton) and every
utterance is backed up by cynical market research to see which
particular utterance has public traction, so that they can build an
emotional and political narrative of 'nationalism,' or 'liberalism' to
disguise what is really going on - the usurpation of all powers by the
oligarchy itself, not for the purposes of governing the nation, but to
preserve the current ruling oligarchy. And pay off the very few members
of society it actually needs - and as I pointed out, with mechanisation,
only the technocrats are useful.

Liberalism is an adapted Marxist creed that appeals to the educated
technocratic middle class, as it panders to their fondness for feeling
intellectually superior and their emotional emptiness resulting from a
lack of religion. So Moral Causes have great political traction.

Which is why it has abandoned the blue collar worker to the dustbin of
history and is engaged in destroying all opposition to what was once
known colloquially as 'the Man' ..

It doesn't matter who you vote for, the Government always wins...because
they are the ones with their fingers up the bottoms of Punch, as well as
Judy.

Without an external existential crisis like the Cold war or WWII there
is nothing for Government to do. Except feather its nest and ensure its
own existence.

Darwin rules, even in an oligarchy.

The internet must be controlled for 'all the right reason' - can't have
people talking about anything other than the faux issues of social
justice, climate change, and gender politics - that are used to create
an *impression* of lively democratic debate by 'informed' people on
'serious issues'.

British parliament spent ten times as much time debating the morality of
fox hunting, than it did debating on whether or not to enter the Iraq
war, based on forged documentation.

Go figure.


--
The New Left are the people they warned you about.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05