/lit/ - Literature

>>12447495
> If we don't know what we think and believe and why we do - we don't know why we behave the way we do.
exactly. in GITS, Kusanagi thoughtfully reflects on what it would mean to be 'a copy without an original.' if we knew that in some sense we were *all* like this, we might have a very different world. we might respect each other's illusions a little more than we do. but of course, in such a militantly driven world, one can wind up feeling steamrolled by Those Aren't My Illusions, This Is Real! and so on. it is hard to reason with angry mobs. hence Napoleon's solution: glorious golden eagles. that worked, but...

>Thus it is necessary to identify what we believe en masse, since that is where we get our thinking from - not from expert or specialist opinion.
very true. and the other question is: what happens when the mass is wrong? what happens when the experts and specialists are wrong? trust is a miracle. but these are complicated times. again, academics has completely imploded under this need to ground reality itself *in something.* it may not be possible to do this in the absence of something like virtue, which itself is always open to becoming draconian when essentialized. Confucius had no other suggestion for China than virtue, and when *that* didn't always work, you got Xunzi - not a bad look, by any stretch - and then Han Fei, who was also brilliant. Legalism is like Chinese Machiavellianism, and it's no wonder Xi Jinping likes him. but even then you're relying on terror.

Virtue is what is needed, but it's hard to come by. and also because there really are no experts or specialists in it. that's what makes it so hard.

>>12447498
i mean social justice wedded to neoliberal capitalism, the Pride flag flying atop Goldman Sachs. nothing is ever more diverse or inclusive than pure speculative capital itself, which is exactly my bone to pick with things as they are. transgendered bathrooms do nothing to change actual conditions of oppression in the garment district in Manila, but sweatshop workers don't cast votes for the DNC. as much as you could get away with killing millions in the name of the Revolution, you can basically semantically bludgeon your way into wealth distribution by leveraging progressive mythology to seize the means of production in the 21C, which are primarily media, academics, and corporate brands. you get exactly the Cathedral Moldbug wrote about. the real problem is that it isn't even *cynical* - just short-sighted. it's like people forget that it was economic and psychological dispossession that allowed Hitler to capture the imagination of Germany in the 1920s. you want a return of unironic fascism? moral posturing by corporations is how you get it. it's not enough to sell a razor blade: you basically have to sell indulgences as well, or a form of them. this kind of shit started the Thirty Years' War.