@DavidSalo "We did not consider politics."

I think I may be at the very early stages of detecting the formation of a hint of a clue as to the source of this controversy.

#WakingThought: we need to prioritise value over purpose.

People conditioned to believe in the supremacy of purpose can be led to do awful things with no perspective on their own intrinsic worth, and the intrinsic worth of others.

Only when value is established can purpose do its work.

@AskTheDevil That last bit of advice, yes!

Ha ha!

It turns out that people who are that wired for control are pretty easy to frazzle.

In my repressive boys-only high school, there was a rule that my hair wasn't allowed to touch my collar, ears or eyebrows. (My profile pic shows how well that stuck.)

I got a step cut into my hair because, why not? All of a sudden I was faced with a new rule: also no steps. The rationale given to me what that hair shouldn't be that big a deal.

Even as a teenager I could see that the adults, and the system, had turned hair into a control issue, and were blaming me for it.

This is a parable.

@Wbtphdjd It always jars me out of whatever flow was being generated.

Speaking and writing tip: saying "myself" when "me" would fit comes across as contrived, insecure and impersonal.

In our world of electronics, I often find myself thinking about how we're moving electrons around the planet.

We are importing and exporting subatomic particles of matter from (nearly) everywhere to (nearly) everywhere.

It's even more true if we extend this notion to radio-waves.

It's fascinating to think about the physical ways we're operating as a borderless collective already.

@Flyingdutchman696 I agree with this. And it needs to be presented as a power move: "Every conversation I've had with this man has been an entirely fruitless, and -- let's be honest -- painful experience. I believe in freedom and democracy, and I simply don't believe those are up for debate. My time would be much better spent doing the actual work it takes to lead."

@corlin We need a full-scale recalibration of work, value and the whole economy.

We cannot survive the widening gap between rich and poor -- the extremes have never been more extreme. What people are doing to be (and stay) rich is so unsustainable it is simply unconscionable.

UBI experiments speak directly to the technology that is disrupting everything we thought we knew about how things remain in balance, and the trajectory of life.

Human have made ourselves dispensable.

#metacrisis

@weirdfizz @99reasons4truth I've never had that, and, uh, I'm not about to start now.

I believe that there are truths beyond pure subjectivity. That is to say, for example, there are ways humans respond to things which transcend our own peculiar cultural conditioning(s).

But I also believe that people are predisposed to impose supposed objectivity in ways which end up benefitting them.

Everyone who invokes some kind of "universal narrative" is in extreme danger of being manipulative or coercive.

The people who do this without awareness of this danger are especially dangerous.

@Graci Apparently Elon Musk is a genius only at making *everyone* feel anxious, threatened and angry.

@InUnfunky That 2nd image gave me a fraction-of-a-second urge to rejoin X-Twitter just so I could fav and rt it.

@foxxy It's so weird how otherwise chauvinist men suddenly flex all their brave egalitarian muscles when a social concern singles them out.

@dw98439 It's sort of beside the point, but I love that he gets to be anonymous because of his country's privacy laws.

His motives are unclear -- for example, whether he did this out of morbid fear of Covid-19, or to prove a point about the unseriousness of anti-vaxxer claims.

But whatever it is, his willingness to be medically examined has given science a gift.

@corlin I have a list of topics I want to research into podcast episodes, and this conversation touches on nearly all of them.

Wisdom
Value
Mutuality
Faith (whatever this means to people)
Power

I appreciate the idea that wisdom requires constraint. As pointed out, this a key the piece that is missing in our current cultural climate. It shows up in our stories (great power, great responsibility), but lack of restraint is the obvious root of the financial crisis of 2008, as just one example.

@corlin Watching now -- this thing about a mechanistic view of reality is what I woke up thinking about this morning.

When we humans see cause-and-effect in linear and predictable ways when they aren't as predictable as assumed, we get ourselves into significant psychic tangles.

I've witnessed how people speak with a kind of candid, rational superstition. Surprisingly, this phenomenon exists within many paradigms, including ones that have conventionally spoken directly against superstition.

@Kaysymmetry It is still a used and recognised term, but I see it most often called "forced conversion."

That gets closer to the mark.