This is a powerful analysis of the current diplomacy that disregards negotiations in international politics as a viable option. As a result, Trump occasionally appears to be a reasonable politician, because he seems to be the only leader who “wants” peace. It is interesting to investigate how the dichotomy of good and evil is also present in arts (literature, opera), permeating the consciousness of people, primarily in the west, at a much more deeper level than politics.
I have an hypothesis on this subject. I believe the root cause is comfort. I shall explain. While we are engaged in a serious struggle for survival we do not have the luxury of complacency or stupidity. This is as true of individuals as it is of states. In the beginning each state has a lot of important decisions to make that will decide the direction of the nation for generations to come. As each decision is made, each successive leader has fewer important decisions to make. The state then goes on to thrive or to fail based on these decisions. Failure may mean the dissolution of the state but it could also mean that the state has to take another approach and adapt. Success, however, means that all one has to do is keep going in the same direction. As there are fewer difficult decisions to make with each generation, the people are increasingly unable to make these difficult decisions and lose the ability to discern when a change of course is required. Our success stupefies us. Our survival is no longer contingent on our ability to make sound decisions but rather on our adherence to the smart decisions made in the past. As a result each generation gets increasingly ideological and disconnected from reality. Today we see the end product in leaders and populations that behave with institutional suicidal tendencies. They are no longer asking what is the smartest thing to do now but are involved in a debate about what was done in the past to achieve greatness, as though conditions have not changed and we can just repeat decisions of the past to gain the results of the past.
The comfort that we have achieved through sacrifices and hard work of the past therefore has dulled our wits to the point that we are now unable to do that hard work, think those difficult thoughts, or make those tough choices. Our leaders become more corrupt, stupid, and incompetent, because they are accurately reflecting the people themselves.
And not surprisingly, speaking about statistically improbable levels of overrepresentation, or obvious and omnipresent clan-like ethnic favouritism, are completely forbidden in these societies. In some it’s even illegal to point this out. That some are hoarding power.
Also known as Manichaeism, this glorious struggle between good and evil was identified long ago as an early, Christian heresy. Arguably, Manichaeism is also the US state religion.
Even before: Manichaeism is a type of Zoroastrianism. Combined with the teleological and universalism of Judaeo-Christian religions, that is the root of Marxism and liberalism.
Thank you, Glenn, for this sharp and comprehensive analysis. As I read it to my wife, even she for a moment, was able to leave her typical thinking pattern and see that our thinking here in the west is often flawed and self aggrandizing. One shouldn’t, perhaps, so much blame the people for this but more the media and the upper echelons which tirelessly spread the lies.
Wars, once started, are always worse when democracies are involved; Kings, dictators have the authority (power) to start and stop when they sense that they have lost. Leaders of democracies must generate sufficient fear or animosity to gain the requisite support for their military endeavors; once turned on, they are difficult to turn off, unless sufficient losses generate changes in public sentiment. Vietnam came to an end when the body bag count reached certain levels. That is why we fight proxy wars. The MIC prospers and someone else pays the human cost. The EU MIC is weak, so the EU leadership needs to generate fear and loathing in order to gouge further financing from the populace. The US operates by convincing our population that we operate from positions of moral superiority and assistance. The MIC prospers while millions have died, but not Americans. Think how things might have been had had 9/11 resulted in 3 millions casualties instead of 3000. Americans might have awakened and ask what we were doing in West Asia to generate such hatred of us. Instead we let our government kill a couple of million more Arabs for Israel. I have no sympathy for the Europeans. You cannot cheat an honest man. The Europeans thought they were playing us; they were the ones being played. The entire western world is being played by the Oligarchs of Davos and the WEF. Maybe collapse/reset is the only hope.
Brilliant piece, perhaps because it reflects so much of my own take on the West. I would attribute the “ideological fundamentalism” to the dualist worldview in Christianity and Islam, and possibly Judaism(?).
Whereas the Chinese worldview is holistic. It’s not about going to some transcendental state (“heaven”) but making the world better for all peoples. That’s the focus of Confucianism.
A good analysis from Dr. Diesen. I wonder if symbolic logic could portray the current situation between NATO and Russia, starting with the following simple binary logic of two possible opposite actions...
Russia attacks the West; Russia submits to the West.
Then a more complex analysis adds quaternary modifications to the two binary actions...
Russia does not attack the West; Russia does not submit to the West.
A verbal exposition of the possible four actions looks like the following...
1. Russia attacks the West. = Russia uses military force to reestablish the Soviet empire.
2. Russia does not attack the West. = Russia does not use military force for any reason.
3. Russia submits to the West. = Russia allows the West to enlarge NATO.
4. Russia does not submit to the West. = Russia uses military force to resist the West enlarging NATO.
Action #4 is logically not the same as Action #1, and the two should not be conflated. Also note that Actions #2 and #3 involve lack of military action by Russia, but they are not necessarily the same in terms of desired Russian outcomes. The major problem is that the mindset of Western ideological fundamentalists deals in hysterical caricatures and paranoid projections of the future, as well as having their moral sanctimony overwhelm their intellectual capacities. Thus NATO and the West in general refuse to see the difference between Actions #1 vs #4, and Actions #2 vs #3.
Ideology convinces the public? There's no real comparison of different systems of government going on here. Sloganising with terms like democracy and authoritarian rule is not a serious deployment of ideological discourse, it projects vague emotive notions by selective reference to and even invention of 'facts' about Us and Them. Not serious ideology or democracy either.
The ideology element is about adversaries being "evil". About relocating an interest issue to the moral sphere.
There is nothing moral in interest strifes among coutries. Each behave in more or less the same way, as Diesen emphazises in the end of the essay. But in this case the collective west brings over the issue almost to a religious dimension – "we" are always good, whatever we do, and our adversaries are always evil, whatever they do.
Interesting observations brought together around a strangely formulated concept. Expressing 'us vs them' as Ideological fundamentalism? Don't expect we'll find anything ideologically fundamental there or anything fundamentally ideological. Us vs them is primeval and almost pre-cognitive. In a conceptually and institutionally elaborated world it is bound to be expressed in differentiated though overlapping ways, including the recourse to notions like 'democracy' vs authoritarian rule. But although that opposition draws on political concepts which could be called ideological, they're not deployed in coherent ways or even correspond to actual states of affairs. Instead, you can say whatever you like about Them, and pretend whatever you like about Us, undermining any pretended ideological basis for the opposition. So the fundamentalism here is only superficially ideological. Because the attempt to mobilise large indirectly associated groups requires appeals which include terms loosely defined enough to be widely shared.
Huh? You've overgeneralized Dr. Diesen's main thesis to where it is so vague as to be both unimportant and nonactionable. Note that overgeneralization is a logical fallacy. He didn't do it, you did it.
The issue is not simply 'us vs them', the issues are why there is violent irrational hatred (instead of just normal opposition) from one side, what are their motivating principles (which ideology among many possible ideologies), how such principles are wrong, and what is a better alternative that was abandoned but worked well in the past.
Of course this article is just a first pass at bringing all these items to the reader's attention. For more depth, a much longer exposition would be required that's not well suited to this venue.
This is an exceptional substack. Thank you. As it is the Full Moon in Libra--the sign or peaceful relationships--opposite the sun--the sign of Me, Me, Me--Fundamental Idealism is genuinely Aries; and the people wanting to live their lives in peace, is totally Libra!
We tend to get the leaders we deserve. Perhaps it's the education, the fast food, the all pervasive tech or perhaps we in the west are heathens without any religion.
There seems to be an epidemic of so called ADHD, we can't think beyond the latest propaganda trigger. We are 'sheep'.
This is a powerful analysis of the current diplomacy that disregards negotiations in international politics as a viable option. As a result, Trump occasionally appears to be a reasonable politician, because he seems to be the only leader who “wants” peace. It is interesting to investigate how the dichotomy of good and evil is also present in arts (literature, opera), permeating the consciousness of people, primarily in the west, at a much more deeper level than politics.
The Us and Israel are two nuclear armed nations threatening to bomb Iran….over nuclear weapons.
No Trump doesn’t want peace.
With each succeeding generation our leaders appear to become more stupid, corrupt, ignorant, inarticulate and incompetent.
Why is this?
I have an hypothesis on this subject. I believe the root cause is comfort. I shall explain. While we are engaged in a serious struggle for survival we do not have the luxury of complacency or stupidity. This is as true of individuals as it is of states. In the beginning each state has a lot of important decisions to make that will decide the direction of the nation for generations to come. As each decision is made, each successive leader has fewer important decisions to make. The state then goes on to thrive or to fail based on these decisions. Failure may mean the dissolution of the state but it could also mean that the state has to take another approach and adapt. Success, however, means that all one has to do is keep going in the same direction. As there are fewer difficult decisions to make with each generation, the people are increasingly unable to make these difficult decisions and lose the ability to discern when a change of course is required. Our success stupefies us. Our survival is no longer contingent on our ability to make sound decisions but rather on our adherence to the smart decisions made in the past. As a result each generation gets increasingly ideological and disconnected from reality. Today we see the end product in leaders and populations that behave with institutional suicidal tendencies. They are no longer asking what is the smartest thing to do now but are involved in a debate about what was done in the past to achieve greatness, as though conditions have not changed and we can just repeat decisions of the past to gain the results of the past.
The comfort that we have achieved through sacrifices and hard work of the past therefore has dulled our wits to the point that we are now unable to do that hard work, think those difficult thoughts, or make those tough choices. Our leaders become more corrupt, stupid, and incompetent, because they are accurately reflecting the people themselves.
Thank you; that’s something upon which to reflect and to consider.
Because some of them are. But not all, for example FDR and Obama.
A joy to read as always and satiating to the mind and liberating to the soul. A gift to critical thinkers.
Ideology is an extension of avarice – its recent prevalence is due to a certain ethnic group having gained extreme wealth and inordinate power.
And not surprisingly, speaking about statistically improbable levels of overrepresentation, or obvious and omnipresent clan-like ethnic favouritism, are completely forbidden in these societies. In some it’s even illegal to point this out. That some are hoarding power.
Brilliant Glen - keep going, you ARE having an impact.
Also known as Manichaeism, this glorious struggle between good and evil was identified long ago as an early, Christian heresy. Arguably, Manichaeism is also the US state religion.
Even before: Manichaeism is a type of Zoroastrianism. Combined with the teleological and universalism of Judaeo-Christian religions, that is the root of Marxism and liberalism.
Thank you, Glenn, for this sharp and comprehensive analysis. As I read it to my wife, even she for a moment, was able to leave her typical thinking pattern and see that our thinking here in the west is often flawed and self aggrandizing. One shouldn’t, perhaps, so much blame the people for this but more the media and the upper echelons which tirelessly spread the lies.
Wars, once started, are always worse when democracies are involved; Kings, dictators have the authority (power) to start and stop when they sense that they have lost. Leaders of democracies must generate sufficient fear or animosity to gain the requisite support for their military endeavors; once turned on, they are difficult to turn off, unless sufficient losses generate changes in public sentiment. Vietnam came to an end when the body bag count reached certain levels. That is why we fight proxy wars. The MIC prospers and someone else pays the human cost. The EU MIC is weak, so the EU leadership needs to generate fear and loathing in order to gouge further financing from the populace. The US operates by convincing our population that we operate from positions of moral superiority and assistance. The MIC prospers while millions have died, but not Americans. Think how things might have been had had 9/11 resulted in 3 millions casualties instead of 3000. Americans might have awakened and ask what we were doing in West Asia to generate such hatred of us. Instead we let our government kill a couple of million more Arabs for Israel. I have no sympathy for the Europeans. You cannot cheat an honest man. The Europeans thought they were playing us; they were the ones being played. The entire western world is being played by the Oligarchs of Davos and the WEF. Maybe collapse/reset is the only hope.
Brilliant piece, perhaps because it reflects so much of my own take on the West. I would attribute the “ideological fundamentalism” to the dualist worldview in Christianity and Islam, and possibly Judaism(?).
Whereas the Chinese worldview is holistic. It’s not about going to some transcendental state (“heaven”) but making the world better for all peoples. That’s the focus of Confucianism.
A good analysis from Dr. Diesen. I wonder if symbolic logic could portray the current situation between NATO and Russia, starting with the following simple binary logic of two possible opposite actions...
Russia attacks the West; Russia submits to the West.
Then a more complex analysis adds quaternary modifications to the two binary actions...
Russia does not attack the West; Russia does not submit to the West.
A verbal exposition of the possible four actions looks like the following...
1. Russia attacks the West. = Russia uses military force to reestablish the Soviet empire.
2. Russia does not attack the West. = Russia does not use military force for any reason.
3. Russia submits to the West. = Russia allows the West to enlarge NATO.
4. Russia does not submit to the West. = Russia uses military force to resist the West enlarging NATO.
Action #4 is logically not the same as Action #1, and the two should not be conflated. Also note that Actions #2 and #3 involve lack of military action by Russia, but they are not necessarily the same in terms of desired Russian outcomes. The major problem is that the mindset of Western ideological fundamentalists deals in hysterical caricatures and paranoid projections of the future, as well as having their moral sanctimony overwhelm their intellectual capacities. Thus NATO and the West in general refuse to see the difference between Actions #1 vs #4, and Actions #2 vs #3.
I doubt that there is any intellectual capacity left, if there was any. They talk but never make sense.
Absolutely excellent piece; I was working on a draft of something along similar lines, and you captured much of what I wanted to say.
Appreciated!
Ideology convinces the public? There's no real comparison of different systems of government going on here. Sloganising with terms like democracy and authoritarian rule is not a serious deployment of ideological discourse, it projects vague emotive notions by selective reference to and even invention of 'facts' about Us and Them. Not serious ideology or democracy either.
The ideology element is about adversaries being "evil". About relocating an interest issue to the moral sphere.
There is nothing moral in interest strifes among coutries. Each behave in more or less the same way, as Diesen emphazises in the end of the essay. But in this case the collective west brings over the issue almost to a religious dimension – "we" are always good, whatever we do, and our adversaries are always evil, whatever they do.
That is very ideological.
Interesting observations brought together around a strangely formulated concept. Expressing 'us vs them' as Ideological fundamentalism? Don't expect we'll find anything ideologically fundamental there or anything fundamentally ideological. Us vs them is primeval and almost pre-cognitive. In a conceptually and institutionally elaborated world it is bound to be expressed in differentiated though overlapping ways, including the recourse to notions like 'democracy' vs authoritarian rule. But although that opposition draws on political concepts which could be called ideological, they're not deployed in coherent ways or even correspond to actual states of affairs. Instead, you can say whatever you like about Them, and pretend whatever you like about Us, undermining any pretended ideological basis for the opposition. So the fundamentalism here is only superficially ideological. Because the attempt to mobilise large indirectly associated groups requires appeals which include terms loosely defined enough to be widely shared.
Huh? You've overgeneralized Dr. Diesen's main thesis to where it is so vague as to be both unimportant and nonactionable. Note that overgeneralization is a logical fallacy. He didn't do it, you did it.
The issue is not simply 'us vs them', the issues are why there is violent irrational hatred (instead of just normal opposition) from one side, what are their motivating principles (which ideology among many possible ideologies), how such principles are wrong, and what is a better alternative that was abandoned but worked well in the past.
Of course this article is just a first pass at bringing all these items to the reader's attention. For more depth, a much longer exposition would be required that's not well suited to this venue.
Valerie, perhaps you will be more content if I qualify us and them as the good guys and the bad guys.
This is an exceptional substack. Thank you. As it is the Full Moon in Libra--the sign or peaceful relationships--opposite the sun--the sign of Me, Me, Me--Fundamental Idealism is genuinely Aries; and the people wanting to live their lives in peace, is totally Libra!
We tend to get the leaders we deserve. Perhaps it's the education, the fast food, the all pervasive tech or perhaps we in the west are heathens without any religion.
There seems to be an epidemic of so called ADHD, we can't think beyond the latest propaganda trigger. We are 'sheep'.