/lit/ - Literature

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>>What ifs that add nothing but fuel for speculative fiction and despair
>fear not, my fellow philosopher-historian. we can handle it. it helps us get to the root of the issue.
>>I'd argue that it's a desire for complete social equality and that's it
>social equality as a drive (or equity or whatever) doesn't make sense to me. it seems like a tertiary value. most of it seems to go away with all basic needs are met, with some disposable income and time to spare. even if I were a lazy resentful peasant who resented people who were wealthier than me, could that resentment be placated without equality? this is what I think the drive behind the welfare state and UBI is. taken to an extreme, if you gave him two Lambos and a mansion, I think he would be preoccupied too much with his belongings to care that the highest echelons of society have private garages with thousands of luxury cars, etc. perhaps a case can be made that, eventually, this will not be enough for the peasant, but then it becomes a game of whether the economy can grow fast enough to prevent a libidinal revolt. and maybe that can happen indefinitely, especially if we're able to become a galactic civilization. idk.
>if I can offer three preliminary principles for describing postliberal progressivism, liberalism, it's this: 1) it's always "pro-machine" (administrative-managerial-technocratic state); 2) it's always pro-desire (it can't be wrong); and 3) it's always anti-virtue (unnecessary, judgmental, fascistic). It may even be in that order from least to most importance, see how nobody was willing to advocate for abstinence or to campaign against obesity to prevent COVID. That seems to explain everything about clown world except for the emotional drive for identity politics.

I can understand how identity politics is an effective tool, at least for now, to prop up the system in favor the elite. But I can't understand what people see in them if they're supposedly only progressive and, at least not consciously, thinking about gibs like greedy goblins. Which means that identity politics is taking advantage of some residual "anti-progressive" spirit within us. Thoughts?