/lit/ - Literature

>>20544872
>>20544932
>they want a better percieved station in life, some want a crusade or purpose, some want to feel better about themselves by helping others, some want to feel better by appearing to help other
Some thoughts. Some of your examples are libidinal. Otherwise are more on the side of virtue, e.g., a crusade. The most "virtuous" impulses that our society is willing to entertain is the impulse to equalize everything. However, virtue by definition is anti-egalitarian. It demarcates between better and worse. This is an unstable moral tension. A society that tries to smooth out moral concerns in general will also have to smooth out the moral concern for itself. You can't care "too much", lest you become a Marxist-Leninist. This is also why I think Marxist-Leninists and other class-first leftists are increasingly being seen as "reactionary" from the perspective of the mainstream left. Virtue is seen as a right-wing drive, regardless if the ends are similar or the same.
>On the macro societal level, everyone being provided for to the extent that they are comfy and blissful is unsustainable, obviously, but the bigger problem I see is that no one really wants to be "equal" enough to keep everything from collapsing and no one will relinquish established rights or dispensation to meet that end
Agree on all ends. Talks about "rights" are so meaningless without the big picture of what we ought to strive for as a society, how we earned our rights, and what we need to do to sustain them (e.g. corresponding duties). Hell, America is founded on language like "rights endowed to us by our creator", yet we neither believe in the religious (God) nor the secular (Founding Fathers, WASP civic culture) interpretations of this anymore. It's a axiological void.
>The pro machine part, I'd think is more a need to be told what to do in absence of internal goals or a higher power of some sort
Before we psychoanalyze the regime, there's one element I forgot to mention. Peace and prosperity. The mechanistic Leviathan provides that in spades, which was the whole point of the original liberal venture. In other words, it's working as intended, to operate in lieu of humans to accomplish a certain goal for all humanity. The only problem is technical—which repairs do we make? Do we focus on creating wealth or redistributing it? For progressive liberals, it's a matter of choosing the right tool for the right time. Otherwise, the progressives, the ruling technocrats, and the Democratic Party are fundamentally in agreement.

(1/2)

Schmitt's friend-enemy distinction isn't even a novel concept—it was discussed to death in Plato's Republic and ultimately rejected as an insufficient explanation for justice. So what do we ought to consider in its stead? Unlike Schmitt, Hobbes does have an answer to this question in his Leviathan—the distinctions between groups are ultimately arbitrary material arrangements (nominalism). Thus, why preserve them? The only common goal that survives the nominalist razor is the desire to seek peace. Eventually, after surrounding our "rights" (the ability to do what whatever can please with their own powers) to the absolute sovereign, these arbitrary differences will level out, and peace can be achieved. It may be a gray peace, but it is better than death.

Is Hobbesian liberalism also nihilistic? Sure. Does managerialism obscure the centers of power through indirect government, as Machiavelli would have liked? Does liberalism have an uncomfortable relationship with power? OF COURSE. The Cathedral is supposed to run like an autonomous machine, distributing power evenly among the financial elites, who themselves can never be powerful enough to dominate the rest of the oligarchy, allowing the (a)political project can continue unabated for the time being. The whole point of liberalism is to cheapen the drive behind politics, to channel its thumotic energy into economic ventures because it is so destructive when it is unchained.

2/3

>>20463192
no that was me

>>20383648
Yes
>>20383740
Yes
>>20383748
Yes
>>20383755
Yes
>>20383788
Yes, Yes, Yes
>>20383803
Begone, Satan
>>20383812
No, No
>>20383814
Yes (of you, not collectivism)

>>20363791
Crypto-Chinese preaching Legalism a millennium too late, which also perfectly explains >>20363793
I can never thank the /lit/ anon that made this image enough

Right =/= Law, see The Myth of Natural Rights by L. A. Rollins

>>20291076
Behold, the Bugviathan, in its most honest and pitiable form!

>>20289242
Rousseau
bless the anon that made my favorite .gif of all time

>author is a woman
dropped
>author isnt white
dropped
>author is jewish
dropped

by these criteria, 90% of modern novels are disqualified, and yet few here will argue that such criteria aren't enforced by almost every one here for good reason...

i myself add the following criteria when choosing a book to read:
>author is born after 1920
dropped

>>19632274
Rousseau - Social Contract
Last tuesday

>>19532483

>>19332069
Sequel to thin air WHEN, Morgan? When!?!

I don't actually know anything about philosphy lol

Reading Gorgias, I found myself unconvinced by Socrates on why I should be moral. He seems to imply that I should be moral for my own sake, but that only seems to move the problem further down as that just puts morality into the realm of decision theory, and I can easily imagine doing something immoral if I knew that the payout would be worth it. It seems like you could finagle a justification for morality that isn't tied to the benefit it brings you by saying that the payout when cooperating is higher than when acting in a Nash equilibrium, but that also seems like it's more a matter of business than morality.

Is there anyone that directly addresses this problem?

>>18979529
Yes
>pic extremely related, without equal

Fuck society.

just read a bit where Buddha actually defines "sexual misconduct". he is not talking about masturbation. that makes things simpler. I think monks are probably supposed to abstain, but masturbation is not a bad-karma move in buddhism.

>>18874533
John Locke is just the tip of the iceberg. A great man. Truly.

>>18630922

>>18341996
The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom
>>18341835
Spring Snow

>>18229017

Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk)
Child of God (Cormac Mccarthy)
The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)

>>18214535
How did you find transporting, was it a good read? Me and a mate about to read it.

>>18214553
based Yukio.

So to avoid the thread circlejerking like it has 100 times over on this topic, I have a question for all the Conservatives on the thread:

Is aligning with China and pushing in the general direction of some form of NazBol the answer for the later 21st century? If yes, how would you keep the revolutionaries and the traditionalists in harmony? If no, what other options to you all think are viable?