emotionally appreciating grand political visions

posted on 2021-12-09

it is useful to build an intellectual understanding of what makes people defend the three grand political visions to emerge from the 20th century — liberalism/capitalism, socialism/communism, and nationalism/fascism.

that said, i believe it is also neat and good for perspective to be able to appreciate why people are emotionally attached to those visions; here is how i've built those appreciations for myself.

i can emotionally appreciate socialism/communism as presenting a romantic vision of building a world together. socialism really pushes the idea of collaborating, of emancipating people from automated nonhuman systems and devices and letting them take control of their world and build their future together. it's a very fraternal vision, and that's a profoundly appealing aspect.

i can emotionally appreciate nationalism/fascism as the promotion of the tribe; when reframed in term of subculture groups that i do feel a strong kinship to — such as channer culture or weeb culture — i'm strongly able to relate to nationalistic ideas of preserving a purified community, insulated from outside cultural influence.

and, i can emotionally appreciate liberalism/capitalism as the system that ruthlessly satisfies humans. in this sense, commodification is a very "humanity fuck yeah" idea: whatever the universe has in store for us, we will be able to assimilate it and make it easily accessible to the masses, and we will instrumentalize its forces and processes ever for the maximization of demand satisfaction, no matter how weird or individualistic it gets.

posted on 2021-12-09