Happy birthday, fadingembers.

This is pretty mind blowing. Finding even one of the lost parts of Homer’s cycle would be nuts. I’m excited for the discoveries and all the gaps in our records we can fill in.

There’s a general category of government oppression, which has existed for as long as governments have existed, and then there’s the political concept of fascism.

I think Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism is the best introduction to fascist philosophy. Here are his 14 points summarized by Wikipedia

1. “The cult of tradition”, characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.

2. “The rejection of modernism”, which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.

3. “The cult of action for action’s sake”, which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.

4. “Disagreement is treason” – fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.

5. “Fear of difference”, which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.

6. “Appeal to a frustrated middle class”, fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.

7. “Obsession with a plot” and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society. Eco also cites Pat Robertson’s book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.

8. Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak”. On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.

9. “Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy” because “life is permanent warfare” – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to not build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.

10. “Contempt for the weak”, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate leader, who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.

11. “Everybody is educated to become a hero”, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, “[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.”

12. “Machismo”, which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold “both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality”.

13. “Selective populism” – the people, conceived monolithically, have a common will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he alone dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer represent[ing] the voice of the people”.

14. “Newspeak” – fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

On top of a depressed economy from endless war and poor management of state funds, the details of the lives of nobles started to get published for just anyone to read which was unprecedented. Although no single thing can be attributed to causing the revolution, I think that just learning about how the nobility lived really put a difficult situation over the top for them.

Companies actually factor in the fines for breaking the law in their accounting. Ford calculated that it would be more profitable to release a vehicle which was known to be deadly since being found guilty for negligence (if it got that far) the fine the corporation would have to pay would be covered by the profit from selling the dangerous vehicles.

This could actually happen soon. Outside of office use most casual users in younger generations are using laptops. Desktops are getting to be more niche and associated with computer builders and power users. As Windows gets shittier, Linux gets easier to use and customize, and desktop use shrinks to just enthusiasts, we could very well see Linux on the majority of desktops.

Glad we’re on the same page. I’m even using the phrases “taught” and “learned” very generally. We have obviously not yet figured out how to successfully impart these pro-social values universally. Pending the utopian future, I’ll be ok with the early form of a system most of us want to work and are prepared to work on in the absence of hegemons and class distinctions.

Thanks for the opportunity for some positive clarifications. Neo-feudalism or warlordism is the inevitable fate of capitalism if nothing is done. I support that something can indeed be done if we are prepared to implement socialist systems. I only mean to say that whatever form these systems take is going to be highly compromised compared to the form they may eventually take with further development, especially considering that defense must be a consideration immediately post-capitalism. When I say “development” regarding people I certainly don’t mean in any way biological or eugenic. I am talking about the building of our collective wisdom which is our true human strength. Optimally, everyone will understand why it’s a bad idea to use violence for selfish ends and for that reason would choose to abstain because what can be yielded through pro-social means will be universally understood as obviously better for all. I think this is something to be taught and learned by all people rather than something we might evolve somehow to believe.

I already think that humans killing humans is unnatural since every I account I’ve read indicates there is a massive mental cost to doing this, the alternative being to depersonalize or dehumanise which is a different cost to mental and social health. I think the main reason violence is happening now at such a scale is because of the momentum of the kind of societies established in Europe whose successors today today can project their violence on a scale never before seen. Without this specific cultural force and knowing that it’s possible for such a cultural force to be built, I think we will have a much better idea as to how to avoid it and why we shouldn’t have things like nobility, race, or allow any disproportionate power anywhere. Hopefully we get rid of the concept of hierarchy altogether and live more naturally. I think all this is possible for humans to do but I can’t be sure of the path or the timeline.

This is interesting to bring up because I’m coming from about as opposite a point of view as I can. Capitalism contains in itself the seeds of its own destruction which is as clear today as it was in the nineteenth century. It inevitably trends toward the centralization of power and the most any government has ever been able to do about that is slow it down or reverse it temporarily. For the last few decades the global nature of capital has made it a supernational force which is above regulation, even determining who is allowed into government at all throughout much of the world. Either Capitalism will end when the winners close the door behind them and some kind of neo-feudalism on a world scale will happen or the infrastructure supporting Capitalism will collapse prior to that point. Capitalist Realism is absurd unless one has been conditioned to assume it as self-evidently the best possible system which can exist and actively dismiss any criticism of any kind of economy at all.

I have not read the referenced book, so I’ll address the general idea I got from the wikipedia summary. It is absolutely true that there have been models for settled society which were vastly superior in terms of average quality of life than anything based on European Feudalism, including Capitalism. There are clear examples from history and existing today (The Zapatista movement is a favorite of mine). The issue is that these cultures don’t exist in a vacuum and can only exist for as long as they don’t have to contend with an amount of violence which threatens to supersede their sovereignty, and collecting the volence to wield themselves undermines the pro-social nature of their own society. The power of global capital has been wielded with impunity for the last few centuries directly undermining many of the pro-social societies. Many of these societies collapsed not because they failed their people but because they failed to defend them. If they had changed fundamentally to repel violence, they would have lost their society in doing so anyway. In 2024 technology and the centralization of wealth to a few places on the planet has made it possible for a few people to run a global empire, and everyone on earth must deal with this reality in some way. Either they conform to it or resist it, but they must deal with it. I don’t like the nature of the system that we live in but as long as it is possible to inflict the will of power using violence and there are people around who are willing to believe that people wielding power like this are legitimate, we will continue to have this problem.

I’m not even arguing that this scale of violence is natural. Like agriculture itself, it developed gradually by complete accident. For most of human history the level of violence one needed to prepare for was vastly different in different parts of the world, allowing for many of these societies to flourish without worry. In 2024 everyone is vulnerable to capital. After capitalism, we could have a socialist system we developed intentionally which hopefully covers all the important variables this time but most likely our intentions will meet with millions to billions of people testing the new system in all kinds of ways the designers could never have predicted. We could also simply have warlordism, as there would still be plenty game theory types feeling obligated to take everything they can get before they get overrun by not growing fast enough from the myriad others thinking exactly the same thing. My preferred end to history is a series of autonomous communities run democratically with no violence whatsoever, but we have a lot of development to do as a species before we can settle into that.

Option 1 is something we haven’t been able to figure out since agriculture went mainstream thousands of years ago despite the average person desiring it for the entire period of time. Option 2 helps some people deal with this system the way it is right now when it would be excessively difficult otherwise. Maybe Option 2 won’t be as important once this system collapses, maybe it will become more important. It would be nice if we could eventually figure out Option 1, but Option 2 is helping a lot of people right now. In fact, there are plenty of people who wouldn’t be able to work toward Option 1 without that aid of Option 2 regardless that the cause and solution to the problems addressed by Option 2 are only relevant to this system we live in now.

Archive can be spotty depending on factors I’m not completely aware of. It didn’t work at all on my Windows PC but works fine on my android phone and Linux laptop. I am not a skilled enough tech person to figure out how why Windows won’t play nice with archive.

There are steps to piracy which cost time and effort. For most of the media I consume that time and effort cost is significantly less than the time, effort, and capital I would need to invest in a paid service. However, the time, effort, and capital I spend to play videogames has been less than piracy would cost for me for decades. Being able to effortlessly get those games running on a mobile steamdeck is orders of magnitude cheaper than what it would have cost me to set everything up myself even if I’m not paying for software and my costly version wouldn’t be nearly as smooth. This quote would be true enough even if a counter-example didn’t exist, but Steam and GOG are pretty clear demonstrations of the kind of service the average person is satisfied with even if they still have some real issues.

This is more like smacking a warhead with a hammer until it blows like in Loony Tunes. It is a shockingly suicidal decision with predictable results. He’ll be in debt for the rest of his life and should be thankful the Tolkien estate didn’t have him flayed for his impudence. Learning about how out of touch with reality the author is does make me curious how unhinged his book might be, though. If it turns out to be “The Room” of lotr fanficfiction I’d like to see it fan canonized just to spite the most litigious family in literature.