All rulers of any society have an interest in manufacturing consent because the great mass of people can see only the trees and not the forest. Therefore, on the topic of 'satisfaction with government', public opinion polls may or may not be a reliable metric. The disparity between China and the U.S. could be due to the different ways each group of elites manufacture consent within their respective populations. The major difference is that China is conspicuously a ‘one party’ system. I can imagine that people living in China are incentivized to ‘approve’ of their leaders so that Big Brother doesn’t notice them. Whereas in the U.S., the elites may or may not care about such things. They might only care in terms of how public opinion manifests into action.
But there are less cynical reasons each population is different − namely, culture. Beyond racial differences, the Chinese, much like the Soviets of old, want to outwardly project a unified, well-functioning society when compared to the ‘less historically developed’ Western liberal democracies. Chinese people are taught and expected to be “Pro-China” their entire lives. Their society is filled with positive nationalist propaganda, while the “freedom loving” Western populations are filled with ‘anti-Western’ propaganda which the elites have fostered due to their own machinations.
I say all this to further a point already made − democracy is simply a sham. Especially in post-industrial societies, the ruling class will manipulate the masses as it sees fit, to achieve its own ends. Are the Chinese satisfied with their government? Or, has the Chinese government baked a certain level of satisfaction into the cake? Alternatively, has the U.S. baked a certain level of 'dissatisfaction' into its cake? The short answer to last two is: 'yes'.
And finally, to reinforce the larger point... the difference here definitely isn't "liberalism" versus "communism" versus "fascism", etc. All these systems can essentially produce similar results when the rubber meets the road. The real variable of consequence is the elites, because they typically have both the will and the means to alter the structure if need be. I doubt Larry Fink, Bill Gates, Soros & co. ever said, "I have to achieve this goal because the forces of liberalism are acting upon me!", or "I can't do this because liberalism says I can't". The system, or the structure, is just a like a protocol or process they have to use to get from point A to point B. Over time, they certainly change it to suit them. Sometimes they just circumvent it entirely and the illusion is removed temporarily. But their ultimate destination is determined by their desire.
Interesting. On the issue of Chinese public opinion, I suspect that the Chinese view the ruling party as the embodiment of the country itself. To feel dissatisfaction towards the government would be tantamount to a rejection of the nation.
I wonder if public opinion polling on local politics would show greater dissatisfaction?
Most people don't care about any visions. People who expect something like this from the average consumer probably only interact with students and Internet shitposters. The majority of the population thinks of politics as they think of football. "My club good, your club bad". I don't know how this is in the Anglo-Sphere but e.g. in Switzerland the negative visions have always been the strongest. See James Schwarzenbach's Initiative or Blocher's Anti-EU campaigns, etc.
I have always been fat 'cept for a short time after I lost ~50 kilogram by running regularly. Then I hanged myself at age 23 and got forcibly institutionalized. The medication made me indifferent and tired, I gained it all back then. At thirty, I had a born-again experience and my behavior changed radically, so that I lost about twenty kilograms. Now I lost some more, but for my old weight I'd need to lose another twenty kilograms.
I only live because of my faith anyway, which is no longer as strong as it was in the beginning. The Church was disappointing, and theology is opinion (Vox Day) often put forth as a kind of dogma.
I wrote this because we _need_ eugenics so that mentally ill, hunched back, ugly and fat losers like myself are spared existence. Were I still an atheist, I'd try to get to Belgium or somewhere else to die via lethal injection or barbiturates.
Here I was positively surprised that Joel Davis would rather die for something greater (the nation in this case) than to get ahead in life. However, what you pointed out regarding a kind of leftist bias I see as well.
Democracy is to be rejected. While in one of Joel's streams "Owen" did remark that classical liberals actually did not support voting because of their suspicion that the people would only vote for, in Owen's terms, "retarded s***", the Catholic or Christian argument is even stronger.
Gómez Dávila saw in democracy the tendency to replace God with Man and concluded that all political errors stem from theological ones.
Like Donoso-Cortes and de Maistres, he was a true reactionary. I'll end with some of his escolios:
Believe in God, trust in Christ, look with suspicion.
Observing life is too interesting to waste time living it.
Depopulate and reforest—first civilizing rule.
The problem is not sexual repression, nor sexual liberation, but sex.
No beneficiary of slaves is supporter of birth control.
Modern society is abolishing prostitution through promiscuity.
The believer is superior to the nonbeliever because unbelief is a solution whereas faith is a problem.
Eugenics appals those who fear its judgment.
We live because we do not view ourselves with the same eyes with which everybody else views us.
Puritanism is the attitude that befits the decent man in the world today.
In the end, there is no area of the soul sex would not succeed in corrupting.
Sexual promiscuity is the tip society pays in order to appease its slaves.
Prayer is the only act in whose effectiveness I trust.
The two most pressing problems of the contemporary world: demographic expansion and genetic deterioration are unsolvable.
Liberal principles prevent the solution of the first, egalitarian ones that of the second.
The people with whom we speak every day and our favorite authors cannot belong to the same zoological species.
The recluse is humanity’s delegate to what is important.
We spend a life trying to understand what a stranger understands at a glance: that we are just as insignificant as the rest.
The being one finds oneself to be is also in the end a stranger to us.
The modern world will not be punished.
It is the punishment.
The modern world demands that we approve what it should not even dare ask us to tolerate.
The democratization of eroticism has at least served to show us that virginity, chastity, purity, are not bitter and morbid old maids, as we believed, but silent vestals of a pure flame.
The price for absolute freedom is boundless vulgarity.
Prayer, war, tillage are manly occupations.
Man’s three enemies are: the devil, the state, and technology.
In spiritually arid centuries, the only man to realize that the century is dying from thirst is the man who still harnesses an underground spring.
Man’s full depravity does not become clear except in great urban agglomerations.
The sight of the modern world is so repugnant that ethical imperatives are becoming certainties in the indicative for us.
Perception of reality, today, dies crushed between modern work and modern entertainment.
AA currently writing a piece that explores the negative vision through a vitalist lens. Nietzche is commonly misconceived as a positivist, with a somewhat positive stance. That is a false assertion. If anything his view is that of a vitalist. The concept of the "Noble Savage" comes to mind that through the power of the fist and will the "great men of history" take power before any theory/idealist fornication takes centered stage. A kind of active nihilism or religious/aggressive fervour. I agree the negative vision is the way through vitalist lenses.
I have felt repelled by right-wing thinkers who behave like left-wingers in very specific way, to push 100% all the time, and not feel a yearning for the "grill pill". It might be a mirage for someone like me -- the happy life of no theory, no rank politics, no post-modern bs. But I can see it maybe would be nice.
All rulers of any society have an interest in manufacturing consent because the great mass of people can see only the trees and not the forest. Therefore, on the topic of 'satisfaction with government', public opinion polls may or may not be a reliable metric. The disparity between China and the U.S. could be due to the different ways each group of elites manufacture consent within their respective populations. The major difference is that China is conspicuously a ‘one party’ system. I can imagine that people living in China are incentivized to ‘approve’ of their leaders so that Big Brother doesn’t notice them. Whereas in the U.S., the elites may or may not care about such things. They might only care in terms of how public opinion manifests into action.
But there are less cynical reasons each population is different − namely, culture. Beyond racial differences, the Chinese, much like the Soviets of old, want to outwardly project a unified, well-functioning society when compared to the ‘less historically developed’ Western liberal democracies. Chinese people are taught and expected to be “Pro-China” their entire lives. Their society is filled with positive nationalist propaganda, while the “freedom loving” Western populations are filled with ‘anti-Western’ propaganda which the elites have fostered due to their own machinations.
I say all this to further a point already made − democracy is simply a sham. Especially in post-industrial societies, the ruling class will manipulate the masses as it sees fit, to achieve its own ends. Are the Chinese satisfied with their government? Or, has the Chinese government baked a certain level of satisfaction into the cake? Alternatively, has the U.S. baked a certain level of 'dissatisfaction' into its cake? The short answer to last two is: 'yes'.
And finally, to reinforce the larger point... the difference here definitely isn't "liberalism" versus "communism" versus "fascism", etc. All these systems can essentially produce similar results when the rubber meets the road. The real variable of consequence is the elites, because they typically have both the will and the means to alter the structure if need be. I doubt Larry Fink, Bill Gates, Soros & co. ever said, "I have to achieve this goal because the forces of liberalism are acting upon me!", or "I can't do this because liberalism says I can't". The system, or the structure, is just a like a protocol or process they have to use to get from point A to point B. Over time, they certainly change it to suit them. Sometimes they just circumvent it entirely and the illusion is removed temporarily. But their ultimate destination is determined by their desire.
Interesting. On the issue of Chinese public opinion, I suspect that the Chinese view the ruling party as the embodiment of the country itself. To feel dissatisfaction towards the government would be tantamount to a rejection of the nation.
I wonder if public opinion polling on local politics would show greater dissatisfaction?
Most people don't care about any visions. People who expect something like this from the average consumer probably only interact with students and Internet shitposters. The majority of the population thinks of politics as they think of football. "My club good, your club bad". I don't know how this is in the Anglo-Sphere but e.g. in Switzerland the negative visions have always been the strongest. See James Schwarzenbach's Initiative or Blocher's Anti-EU campaigns, etc.
I listened to the debate and thought you had the better argument.
I have always been fat 'cept for a short time after I lost ~50 kilogram by running regularly. Then I hanged myself at age 23 and got forcibly institutionalized. The medication made me indifferent and tired, I gained it all back then. At thirty, I had a born-again experience and my behavior changed radically, so that I lost about twenty kilograms. Now I lost some more, but for my old weight I'd need to lose another twenty kilograms.
I only live because of my faith anyway, which is no longer as strong as it was in the beginning. The Church was disappointing, and theology is opinion (Vox Day) often put forth as a kind of dogma.
I wrote this because we _need_ eugenics so that mentally ill, hunched back, ugly and fat losers like myself are spared existence. Were I still an atheist, I'd try to get to Belgium or somewhere else to die via lethal injection or barbiturates.
Here I was positively surprised that Joel Davis would rather die for something greater (the nation in this case) than to get ahead in life. However, what you pointed out regarding a kind of leftist bias I see as well.
Democracy is to be rejected. While in one of Joel's streams "Owen" did remark that classical liberals actually did not support voting because of their suspicion that the people would only vote for, in Owen's terms, "retarded s***", the Catholic or Christian argument is even stronger.
Gómez Dávila saw in democracy the tendency to replace God with Man and concluded that all political errors stem from theological ones.
Like Donoso-Cortes and de Maistres, he was a true reactionary. I'll end with some of his escolios:
Believe in God, trust in Christ, look with suspicion.
Observing life is too interesting to waste time living it.
Depopulate and reforest—first civilizing rule.
The problem is not sexual repression, nor sexual liberation, but sex.
No beneficiary of slaves is supporter of birth control.
Modern society is abolishing prostitution through promiscuity.
The believer is superior to the nonbeliever because unbelief is a solution whereas faith is a problem.
Eugenics appals those who fear its judgment.
We live because we do not view ourselves with the same eyes with which everybody else views us.
Puritanism is the attitude that befits the decent man in the world today.
In the end, there is no area of the soul sex would not succeed in corrupting.
Sexual promiscuity is the tip society pays in order to appease its slaves.
Prayer is the only act in whose effectiveness I trust.
The two most pressing problems of the contemporary world: demographic expansion and genetic deterioration are unsolvable.
Liberal principles prevent the solution of the first, egalitarian ones that of the second.
The people with whom we speak every day and our favorite authors cannot belong to the same zoological species.
The recluse is humanity’s delegate to what is important.
We spend a life trying to understand what a stranger understands at a glance: that we are just as insignificant as the rest.
The being one finds oneself to be is also in the end a stranger to us.
The modern world will not be punished.
It is the punishment.
The modern world demands that we approve what it should not even dare ask us to tolerate.
The democratization of eroticism has at least served to show us that virginity, chastity, purity, are not bitter and morbid old maids, as we believed, but silent vestals of a pure flame.
The price for absolute freedom is boundless vulgarity.
Prayer, war, tillage are manly occupations.
Man’s three enemies are: the devil, the state, and technology.
In spiritually arid centuries, the only man to realize that the century is dying from thirst is the man who still harnesses an underground spring.
Man’s full depravity does not become clear except in great urban agglomerations.
The sight of the modern world is so repugnant that ethical imperatives are becoming certainties in the indicative for us.
Perception of reality, today, dies crushed between modern work and modern entertainment.
Floor mopped.
Certainly an interesting read full of insights and good book recommendations, thanks for the free post for cheap plebs like me, AA.
AA currently writing a piece that explores the negative vision through a vitalist lens. Nietzche is commonly misconceived as a positivist, with a somewhat positive stance. That is a false assertion. If anything his view is that of a vitalist. The concept of the "Noble Savage" comes to mind that through the power of the fist and will the "great men of history" take power before any theory/idealist fornication takes centered stage. A kind of active nihilism or religious/aggressive fervour. I agree the negative vision is the way through vitalist lenses.
I have felt repelled by right-wing thinkers who behave like left-wingers in very specific way, to push 100% all the time, and not feel a yearning for the "grill pill". It might be a mirage for someone like me -- the happy life of no theory, no rank politics, no post-modern bs. But I can see it maybe would be nice.
MCDP 1-1. Read it. Then read MCDP 6.