What went wrong?

The book,"What Went Wrong" by B Lewis details how the Arab world rejected modernity because it thought its culture was superior to all, so it refused to learn from outsiders.

Sounds a lot like AmericanExceptionalism + MAGA

Introspection is necessary for growth. With introspection, age brings wisdom; without it one grows dumber with over time. This is true for individuals and true for nations.

Collectively our information is increasing while our understanding is decreasing. The Information Age has ironically made everyone dumber.

Ethics is a methodology.

Think of Ethics like the Scientific Method, but the questions are asked of oneself, and the means for testing are internal via introspection, and external by engaging in ethical debate and testing how well you can frame matters of harm/care and fairness/reciprocity.

The fundamental question of ethics is, “How would I like it if that was done to me?” Most of the friction surrounding ethical truth exists in the grey areas, where cultural figures who exert authority act in unethical ways while claiming moral authority.

Ethical introspection is required to evaluate matters of Authority/Respect, In-Group/Loyalty, and Purity/Sanctity (Moral/Cultural means of exerting social control). Ideas of Liberty/Freedom are often interwoven into cultural concepts and they divide along concepts of individual vs groupliberty/freedom.

Liberals and Conservatives differ on these moral metrics. Liberals tend to be better at deciphering ethical matters from moral/cultural ones; whereas conservatives tend to weight all the factors as equally important; defaulting to supporting the group/status quo. Liberals are good at questioning authority and optimistic about new mental models of the world. Conservatives are fearful of change, of new things, different people, ideas, etc. They like stability and fear change could disrupt the status quo, which even if not ideal, is preferential to unknown change.

Liberals are better at deciding on which groups to be a part of, and leaving groups that don’t align with their ethical compasses. Conservatives tend to mold their internal moral compass to align with their groups’ ideas of right/wrong.

Fascism is moralistic thinking that lacks ethical understanding. It’s all emotion, no rationality, and zero introspection. If there is a societal problem, then the fascist will find a scape goat for it.

Fascist are ultra-conservatives who are upset with the status quo, but instead of thinking about how we got where we are, or what “their side’s” part in the mess is, or how things could be reformed, they enter a “burn it down” phase, because they feel they have nothing to lose, and they want others to feel their pain. This leaves Liberals in the odd position of defending the status quo, or at least advocating for rapid reform, but not to burn it all down.

Our politics and mental models have to catch up with our technology, and fast! The internet and social media are good at destroying trust in institutions but bad at increasing understanding of complex social systems.