Thinking that our world monoculture seems to be drifting into maladaption, I’ve wondered how to get folks to care more about making their culture adaptive.
Robin, the genocide in Gaza has shown the world that the powerful in the west have been abusing their power. They're waging war, committing genocide, imposing austerity measures on their citizens and lying about all this.
If this isn't a good reason for the rest of us to punch up and create a system that's more peaceful and just, I don't know what is.
We can't afford this kind of greed, brutality and environmental destruction.
If everybody can punch as they wish without censure, then ONLY the powerful can punch, because the weak lack the power to fight back. Your advice, if followed, would be helpful to those who wish to commit genocide, and harmful to those being genocided.
Your broader problem is you're taking power as a normative good. Truth and fairness (rewarding those who cause good for others, punishing those who cause harm for others) are normative goods. Power is a means to an end, and valuing it over truth and fairness is the MO of evil regimes.
This is a problem that modern society has no answer to: What should happen when powerful group A clashes with much weaker group B, and group B controls an asset considered highly valuable to group A.
Prior to 1900 or so the answer was simple and decisive: Group A wipes out group B (or forcibly assimilates it). European settlers vs. native Americans, for example. Many Americans now regret these actions, but at the same time they live on the land that was co-opted so in a real sense they benefit from the gains of that genocide. In fact we are free to take an enlightened moral stance on this issue now only because all such dilemmas are safely behind us, already decided in our favor. Notably we don't see many Americans giving their land back to the native tribes.
The Israelis are in the unfortunate position of grappling with this problem now. How *should* it be solved in a morally enlightened way? Nobody ever talks about this.
Your point would be stronger if the people of Gaza hadn't elected a government party which was founded specifically to exterminate the Jews.
When the Germans elected Nazis to the Reichstag in 1933, they thought they were voting for socialism, and the Nazis only got 1/3 of the vote; and they only got that much because the Germans thought that only the Nazis could stop the communists. And Hitler could never have gotten the Enabling Act through, by which he gained the power of a dictator, without his alliance with the Catholic Church. Most Germans never favored the Nazis, and the Germans never supported the extermination of the Jews. Hitler kept it secret from them to the very end.
Whereas the majority of Palestinians in 2006 voted either for Hamas, or for some other party that openly planned to exterminate the Jews. The Palestinians have supported eliminating Jews from the Levant for decades, according to various polls; and their plans for elimination never mentioned deportation, which would be logistically impossible.
Remember that scene from October 2023 where Hamas fighters drove a Jeep through the streets, showing off the dead body of a young woman they'd murdered, and the crowds around them were all cheering? That would never have happened in Nazi Germany. The hatred of the German citizenry for Jews was never that great.
So why was it right for us to bomb the Germans, who never even meant to exterminate the Allies; but wrong for Israel to bomb the Palestinians? Or was that a mistake? Should we have had mercy on the Germans, and let them continue their war? My own mother almost died in the bombing of Dresden, but I still won't call that bombing evil.
Your plea for peace in our time is the same plea that let World War 2 happen, and precisely the sort of maladaptive value, grounded in the privilege of living in a wealthy country whose neighbors are not trying to kill you, that Robin keeps talking about. On the day that a nuclear device explodes in Tel Aviv, I hope you remember your part in it.
If you /actually cared/ about the lives of people in the Middle East, you'd be pointing your finger at Iran, the UAE, and Qatar, not at Israel, and certainly not at "the powerful in the West", who never wanted any part of this war.
The Jewish requested please let us move to "Palestine" to escape the German Holocaust. (We want to return to the home "Our God gave us"). The Muslims were reluctant. The British encouraged the move. The Zionist's promised to be good neighbors. Menachem Begin plotted and planned. Read all about it in the Yale Law archives, Balfour Declaration and letters of promise from hopeful survivors of Nazi Germany. The pleas do not match the history on the ground in Gaza.
Are you pretending that there was a time before 1000 BCE when there were no Jews in that area? And are you forgetting that nearly all of the Jews who moved to Israel between 1880 and 1989, did so not because they were fleeing Nazis, but because they were fleeing from Arabs and Muslims, who, starting at the beginning of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, expelled the Jews from nearly every country in the Middle East and North Africa? https://justiceforjews.com/facts-figures Are you forgetting that it was the Arab League, not the Jews, who started that war?
Not that any of this is relevant anyway! How would things Menachem Begin did in the 1940s excuse the 2006 election of Hamas, or the October 6 invasion?
"Gaza has shown the world that the powerful in the west "
Gaza is further west than the people it has a problem with.
"
If this isn't a good reason for the rest of us to punch up"
It is clearly a profoundly bad reason for Gazans to punch up. They punched up and look what happened for it. If they hadn't punched up, a lot fewer of them would be dying.
"and create a system that's more peaceful and just, I don't know what is"
Which of "...white, men, bosses, extroverts, cisgender, rich, and old" do you identify as? I don't even disagree with your point. But the argument you've presented seems too self-serving to be persuasive to anyone that may happen to identify as any of the opposites of your list.
The underlying justification of allowing down groups to coordinate but not up groups is because people perhaps mistakenly believe that these groups get less attention to their interests paid than would be socially optimal. For example, in 18th century Europe, the social structure was clearly unfair and biased in favour of the nobility. The common people are not worth more than the nobles, but them coordinating among themselves would move society closer to what is optimal. So most of us think it is good for the Kommon people to coordinate, but not the nobles. Of course, the biggest controversy is whether these groups are actually disadvantaged compare to the social optimum, but you do nothing to address this argument in your post.
I may be the reader most-sympathetic to your views, Robin, and even I think you went too far this time. You could object to the taboo on "punching down" by critiquing how it's usually applied, and questioning whether the definitions of "down" and "up" are honest, or just another abuse of words by the left to pretend they're doing the opposite of what they're actually doing. But actually punching down seems to me like something that should be strongly discouraged.
IMO while you have your finger on something here, much of your diagnosis and premises are wrong. Partly (entirely?) because you seem to be taking pains here to make your assertions completely independent of political divides.
To the extent we have a monoculture, it is one of leftist elites.
In fact, said leftist elites have NO such compunction as you suggest to “punch down” against anyone or any group on the right, and in fact they do so all the time.
[See Obama, Barack “bitter clingers” (“they cling to their guns and their religion”); Clinton, Hillary “basket of deplorables”.]
What they will not do is “punch left” against those perceived (and perhaps historically accurately) to have less power.
I submit this is largely for virtue signaling reasons amongst left elites who “know” that they have and will maintain their power.
And partly it is because - for politicians at least - they know they must fear being “primaried” in elections where the median Democrat primary voter is so far to the left of the median general election voter.
And of course there are many reasons for *that* which do relate to your maladaptive culture points, surely.
But your “punch up/down” framing is not accurate.
Or rather, it is false framing. Those who are religious or merely moral realists have usually had such views, and perhaps still do, true. But the moral relativists who dominate the left monoculture you describe merely use that framing for their own ends, but the framing does not actually describe the behavior of the monoculture.
What "leftist elites"? The elites who run our country are the billionaires, and most of them are right wing. They are constantly punching down by pushing for lower taxes, less environmental and safety regulation, fewer worker protections, less welfare, longer copyright terms, binding arbitration, anti-right-to-repair, anti-net-neutrality, and so on. Nearly every right wing platform plank is a form of trying to hurt the poor, the worker, the consumer, or the other.
“The elites who run our country are the billionaires, and most of them are right wing.”
😂😂😂
Thank you for the good laugh.
Yes, our monoculture is clearly one of right-wing billionaire elites, trying to hurt the worker and the consumer.
And these right-wing billionaires have succeeded wildly over the last 10, 20, … 50 years, as U.S. workers and consumers are far worse off than they used to be.
Utter nonsense. Punching down on racists, transphobes, Christian zealots, homophobes, and the like is ALWAYS a good thing. And honey, the results of the most recent elections clearly demonstrate that it’s the right who is too far right for the median general election voter. The ONLY reason Trump won his last election was because of anti-incumbent sentiment due to the fact that Biden’s plan to deal with inflation didn’t happen fast enough. That, and the fact that tens of millions of Democratic voters stayed home out of protest over the Democrats’ support for Israel in light of Israel’s disproportionate response to the horrific attack on Israelis and/or because Harris was selected without a primary.
“Utter nonsense. Punching down on racists, transphobes, Christian zealots, homophobes, and the like is ALWAYS a good thing.”
Dude, it’s nice that you admit you are an unrepentant hard leftist.
But your screed in fact is explicitly *agreeing* with my claim that the leftist elite monoculture has no problem at all “punching down” at those on the right.
We thank you for your support… and for making our point much better than I was able to do myself.
“…if that kid is now a teen attacking with a knife, the adult should fight back.”
Sure, but how did such behavior get to this point? Here I quote you again:
“…if a toddler kicks and punches the legs of standing adult, that adult shows confidence via an amused grin and not punching back.”
Therein lies your error. *Appropriate* correction starts at the earliest age possible, and indeed such correction may entail physical violence. The job of parents is to stand in the place (mirror norms) of society. In the case of the toddler, a good spanking may be in order, which is preferable to being laid out cold in a public forum later in life, or in your example shot dead in a knife attack.
Rather than "our world monoculture seems to be drifting into maladaption", we should consider the possibility that it is on an adaptive peak and is held there by stabilizing selection.
Consider Hox genes, for example. Those are very widespread - but we don't worry about them drifting into maladaptation because they have no competition. Global shared culture - to the extent that it exists at all - could be similar to that. We ought to be able to distinguish between "stabilizing selection" and "memetic drift" pretty easily.
What about the fact that we are approaching peak human? Doesn't that indicate maladaptation? For modern humans, perhaps, but that doesn't mean that culture or the ecosystem is in trouble. We know where the missing human reproductive resources went. They went into propagating culture and cultural artifacts such as machines. When considering adaptation, one must ask: who benefits? The rise of the machines is obvious. We are not the only stewards of culture on the planet anymore.
I highly doubt that anytime soon "up" groups will start promoting themselves. first of all, as of now, they really are already highly promoted and them being "up" is still a promotion of itself. in perspective, many things can go as you say, but my question is what time period were you thinking? also, I think people in general lack organization to notice this global change of "up becoming the new down" quickly enough. and while I don't think I know any historical examples (are there any?) I expect people to start acting only when that change already came. in theory, the smaller the group, the easier it is to notice beforehand and take action. however, the smaller the "up" group, more powerful it is and as long as capitalism exists those people are untouchable.
and I don't think "up" groups can develop such loyalty as "down" ones.
loyalty to "down" groups comes from groups being "down".
feeling even somewhat oppressed automatically raises your sympathy towards people, who may have been in a similar situation. actually oppressed groups always form a strong community for pretty obvious practical reasons, but also to share the experience, have someone to trust and genuinely feel safer. but when we are talking about groups, who simply encounter some inconveniences (introverts, etc.), this is still applicable, only to a lesser extent obviously. for example, as an introvert, you probably had unpleasant encounters with extroverts. in said moment even subconsciously labeling someone as extroverted and yourself as introverted brings you closer to your group, as you are having negative feelings brought to you directly by someone being extroverted.
"up" groups are usually either too large or too powerful (talking about religion, race, class), to form a community, strong enough to make action, because as of now they don't need one.
surely, billionaires have some form of a community and a little but do care how their fellow rich people are doing, because, similar to my previous point, it all comes down to "whatever is happening to them can happen to me" bringing people closer to each other. a position of power gives people enough confidence and peace to not seek any connection to their group or there's simply no common ground firm enough to build loyalty on. "we are both very rich" versus "we are both very oppressed", I think it's clear which one is more bonding. at the end of the day it's people of your group who you are loyal too. loyal people -> community -> ability to take coordinated action.
from what I've seen, "up" groups don't feel any loyalty towards their group unless there's some aggression towards their group (in most cases specifically from the oppressed/opposed group). but because of how it's not systematic and more of a rare situation, it's not enough.
so I think it's natural and very unlikely to change that "down" groups more often have loyal members. I also think that it's going to take real long until "down" groups can threaten "ups" even a bit. think about for how long toddler has been kicking the legs and look where are we now. every oppressed group is fighting for quite some time yet it's still one step forward and immediately one step back.
liked your points) and honestly didn't plan to write this much...
I buy the argument that up punching down would generally be adaptive, but every once a while it goes completely off the rails which is why the taboo against it now exists. I don't know how to resolve that dilemma.
Though the world is drifting towards monoculture, we are still divided into subcultures; and that is *good*, because it enables natural-selective pressure to bear upon and improve culture. In this rivalry of subcultures we should not favor the underdog, less successful ones; Natural Selection is favoring the more powerful, more successful ones, and that generates important information in the natural process of cultural improvement. A cultural critic should be willing to criticize the “down” subcultures for their defects (which are certainly present, accounting for their “down” status); and, in criticizing the “up” subcultures, should be careful not to object to the very features that contribute to their success.
I think group loyalty is intrinsic, no? Even if someone comes across as an individual, they are likely parasocial to some set of ideals or algorithmic preferences. These are what drive their actions.
I have recently been reading "The Origin of Politics" by Nicholas Wade. One of the claims in the book is that in order for civilizations to grow beyond a certain size, it is essential for them to overcome the instincts of tribalism built into humans. Both religion and nationalism have been used to that end, the first by setting a higher authority than the family/tribe and the second by redirecting tribal affiliation to the nation. If this theory is correct, and these bonds and weakening due to cultural drift, it seems possible that a reversion to tribalism and the incessant warfare between tribes is a likely outcome. Thinking about US politics over recent years seems to support this claim. If so, an important step to correcting maladaptive cultural drift could be reaffirming loyalty or a sense of belonging to the nation.
I would also suggest that folks not lose sight of the fact there are very often members of an 'up' group who are in conflict with other members of the same or similar 'up' group(s), "allies" in their terminology, using the "down" group(s) as human shields.
Worst thing I've ever read
Robin, the genocide in Gaza has shown the world that the powerful in the west have been abusing their power. They're waging war, committing genocide, imposing austerity measures on their citizens and lying about all this.
If this isn't a good reason for the rest of us to punch up and create a system that's more peaceful and just, I don't know what is.
We can't afford this kind of greed, brutality and environmental destruction.
I didn't say not to punch. I just said not to asymmetrically pressure some groups to not punch.
If everybody can punch as they wish without censure, then ONLY the powerful can punch, because the weak lack the power to fight back. Your advice, if followed, would be helpful to those who wish to commit genocide, and harmful to those being genocided.
Your broader problem is you're taking power as a normative good. Truth and fairness (rewarding those who cause good for others, punishing those who cause harm for others) are normative goods. Power is a means to an end, and valuing it over truth and fairness is the MO of evil regimes.
This is a problem that modern society has no answer to: What should happen when powerful group A clashes with much weaker group B, and group B controls an asset considered highly valuable to group A.
Prior to 1900 or so the answer was simple and decisive: Group A wipes out group B (or forcibly assimilates it). European settlers vs. native Americans, for example. Many Americans now regret these actions, but at the same time they live on the land that was co-opted so in a real sense they benefit from the gains of that genocide. In fact we are free to take an enlightened moral stance on this issue now only because all such dilemmas are safely behind us, already decided in our favor. Notably we don't see many Americans giving their land back to the native tribes.
The Israelis are in the unfortunate position of grappling with this problem now. How *should* it be solved in a morally enlightened way? Nobody ever talks about this.
Your point would be stronger if the people of Gaza hadn't elected a government party which was founded specifically to exterminate the Jews.
When the Germans elected Nazis to the Reichstag in 1933, they thought they were voting for socialism, and the Nazis only got 1/3 of the vote; and they only got that much because the Germans thought that only the Nazis could stop the communists. And Hitler could never have gotten the Enabling Act through, by which he gained the power of a dictator, without his alliance with the Catholic Church. Most Germans never favored the Nazis, and the Germans never supported the extermination of the Jews. Hitler kept it secret from them to the very end.
Whereas the majority of Palestinians in 2006 voted either for Hamas, or for some other party that openly planned to exterminate the Jews. The Palestinians have supported eliminating Jews from the Levant for decades, according to various polls; and their plans for elimination never mentioned deportation, which would be logistically impossible.
Remember that scene from October 2023 where Hamas fighters drove a Jeep through the streets, showing off the dead body of a young woman they'd murdered, and the crowds around them were all cheering? That would never have happened in Nazi Germany. The hatred of the German citizenry for Jews was never that great.
So why was it right for us to bomb the Germans, who never even meant to exterminate the Allies; but wrong for Israel to bomb the Palestinians? Or was that a mistake? Should we have had mercy on the Germans, and let them continue their war? My own mother almost died in the bombing of Dresden, but I still won't call that bombing evil.
Your plea for peace in our time is the same plea that let World War 2 happen, and precisely the sort of maladaptive value, grounded in the privilege of living in a wealthy country whose neighbors are not trying to kill you, that Robin keeps talking about. On the day that a nuclear device explodes in Tel Aviv, I hope you remember your part in it.
If you /actually cared/ about the lives of people in the Middle East, you'd be pointing your finger at Iran, the UAE, and Qatar, not at Israel, and certainly not at "the powerful in the West", who never wanted any part of this war.
The Jewish requested please let us move to "Palestine" to escape the German Holocaust. (We want to return to the home "Our God gave us"). The Muslims were reluctant. The British encouraged the move. The Zionist's promised to be good neighbors. Menachem Begin plotted and planned. Read all about it in the Yale Law archives, Balfour Declaration and letters of promise from hopeful survivors of Nazi Germany. The pleas do not match the history on the ground in Gaza.
Are you pretending that there was a time before 1000 BCE when there were no Jews in that area? And are you forgetting that nearly all of the Jews who moved to Israel between 1880 and 1989, did so not because they were fleeing Nazis, but because they were fleeing from Arabs and Muslims, who, starting at the beginning of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, expelled the Jews from nearly every country in the Middle East and North Africa? https://justiceforjews.com/facts-figures Are you forgetting that it was the Arab League, not the Jews, who started that war?
Not that any of this is relevant anyway! How would things Menachem Begin did in the 1940s excuse the 2006 election of Hamas, or the October 6 invasion?
"Gaza has shown the world that the powerful in the west "
Gaza is further west than the people it has a problem with.
"
If this isn't a good reason for the rest of us to punch up"
It is clearly a profoundly bad reason for Gazans to punch up. They punched up and look what happened for it. If they hadn't punched up, a lot fewer of them would be dying.
"and create a system that's more peaceful and just, I don't know what is"
No amount of punching, up or down, creates peace.
Which of "...white, men, bosses, extroverts, cisgender, rich, and old" do you identify as? I don't even disagree with your point. But the argument you've presented seems too self-serving to be persuasive to anyone that may happen to identify as any of the opposites of your list.
The underlying justification of allowing down groups to coordinate but not up groups is because people perhaps mistakenly believe that these groups get less attention to their interests paid than would be socially optimal. For example, in 18th century Europe, the social structure was clearly unfair and biased in favour of the nobility. The common people are not worth more than the nobles, but them coordinating among themselves would move society closer to what is optimal. So most of us think it is good for the Kommon people to coordinate, but not the nobles. Of course, the biggest controversy is whether these groups are actually disadvantaged compare to the social optimum, but you do nothing to address this argument in your post.
I may be the reader most-sympathetic to your views, Robin, and even I think you went too far this time. You could object to the taboo on "punching down" by critiquing how it's usually applied, and questioning whether the definitions of "down" and "up" are honest, or just another abuse of words by the left to pretend they're doing the opposite of what they're actually doing. But actually punching down seems to me like something that should be strongly discouraged.
IMO while you have your finger on something here, much of your diagnosis and premises are wrong. Partly (entirely?) because you seem to be taking pains here to make your assertions completely independent of political divides.
To the extent we have a monoculture, it is one of leftist elites.
In fact, said leftist elites have NO such compunction as you suggest to “punch down” against anyone or any group on the right, and in fact they do so all the time.
[See Obama, Barack “bitter clingers” (“they cling to their guns and their religion”); Clinton, Hillary “basket of deplorables”.]
What they will not do is “punch left” against those perceived (and perhaps historically accurately) to have less power.
I submit this is largely for virtue signaling reasons amongst left elites who “know” that they have and will maintain their power.
And partly it is because - for politicians at least - they know they must fear being “primaried” in elections where the median Democrat primary voter is so far to the left of the median general election voter.
And of course there are many reasons for *that* which do relate to your maladaptive culture points, surely.
But your “punch up/down” framing is not accurate.
Or rather, it is false framing. Those who are religious or merely moral realists have usually had such views, and perhaps still do, true. But the moral relativists who dominate the left monoculture you describe merely use that framing for their own ends, but the framing does not actually describe the behavior of the monoculture.
What "leftist elites"? The elites who run our country are the billionaires, and most of them are right wing. They are constantly punching down by pushing for lower taxes, less environmental and safety regulation, fewer worker protections, less welfare, longer copyright terms, binding arbitration, anti-right-to-repair, anti-net-neutrality, and so on. Nearly every right wing platform plank is a form of trying to hurt the poor, the worker, the consumer, or the other.
“The elites who run our country are the billionaires, and most of them are right wing.”
😂😂😂
Thank you for the good laugh.
Yes, our monoculture is clearly one of right-wing billionaire elites, trying to hurt the worker and the consumer.
And these right-wing billionaires have succeeded wildly over the last 10, 20, … 50 years, as U.S. workers and consumers are far worse off than they used to be.
Utter nonsense. Punching down on racists, transphobes, Christian zealots, homophobes, and the like is ALWAYS a good thing. And honey, the results of the most recent elections clearly demonstrate that it’s the right who is too far right for the median general election voter. The ONLY reason Trump won his last election was because of anti-incumbent sentiment due to the fact that Biden’s plan to deal with inflation didn’t happen fast enough. That, and the fact that tens of millions of Democratic voters stayed home out of protest over the Democrats’ support for Israel in light of Israel’s disproportionate response to the horrific attack on Israelis and/or because Harris was selected without a primary.
“Utter nonsense. Punching down on racists, transphobes, Christian zealots, homophobes, and the like is ALWAYS a good thing.”
Dude, it’s nice that you admit you are an unrepentant hard leftist.
But your screed in fact is explicitly *agreeing* with my claim that the leftist elite monoculture has no problem at all “punching down” at those on the right.
We thank you for your support… and for making our point much better than I was able to do myself.
“…if that kid is now a teen attacking with a knife, the adult should fight back.”
Sure, but how did such behavior get to this point? Here I quote you again:
“…if a toddler kicks and punches the legs of standing adult, that adult shows confidence via an amused grin and not punching back.”
Therein lies your error. *Appropriate* correction starts at the earliest age possible, and indeed such correction may entail physical violence. The job of parents is to stand in the place (mirror norms) of society. In the case of the toddler, a good spanking may be in order, which is preferable to being laid out cold in a public forum later in life, or in your example shot dead in a knife attack.
Rather than "our world monoculture seems to be drifting into maladaption", we should consider the possibility that it is on an adaptive peak and is held there by stabilizing selection.
Consider Hox genes, for example. Those are very widespread - but we don't worry about them drifting into maladaptation because they have no competition. Global shared culture - to the extent that it exists at all - could be similar to that. We ought to be able to distinguish between "stabilizing selection" and "memetic drift" pretty easily.
What about the fact that we are approaching peak human? Doesn't that indicate maladaptation? For modern humans, perhaps, but that doesn't mean that culture or the ecosystem is in trouble. We know where the missing human reproductive resources went. They went into propagating culture and cultural artifacts such as machines. When considering adaptation, one must ask: who benefits? The rise of the machines is obvious. We are not the only stewards of culture on the planet anymore.
wtf
I highly doubt that anytime soon "up" groups will start promoting themselves. first of all, as of now, they really are already highly promoted and them being "up" is still a promotion of itself. in perspective, many things can go as you say, but my question is what time period were you thinking? also, I think people in general lack organization to notice this global change of "up becoming the new down" quickly enough. and while I don't think I know any historical examples (are there any?) I expect people to start acting only when that change already came. in theory, the smaller the group, the easier it is to notice beforehand and take action. however, the smaller the "up" group, more powerful it is and as long as capitalism exists those people are untouchable.
and I don't think "up" groups can develop such loyalty as "down" ones.
loyalty to "down" groups comes from groups being "down".
feeling even somewhat oppressed automatically raises your sympathy towards people, who may have been in a similar situation. actually oppressed groups always form a strong community for pretty obvious practical reasons, but also to share the experience, have someone to trust and genuinely feel safer. but when we are talking about groups, who simply encounter some inconveniences (introverts, etc.), this is still applicable, only to a lesser extent obviously. for example, as an introvert, you probably had unpleasant encounters with extroverts. in said moment even subconsciously labeling someone as extroverted and yourself as introverted brings you closer to your group, as you are having negative feelings brought to you directly by someone being extroverted.
"up" groups are usually either too large or too powerful (talking about religion, race, class), to form a community, strong enough to make action, because as of now they don't need one.
surely, billionaires have some form of a community and a little but do care how their fellow rich people are doing, because, similar to my previous point, it all comes down to "whatever is happening to them can happen to me" bringing people closer to each other. a position of power gives people enough confidence and peace to not seek any connection to their group or there's simply no common ground firm enough to build loyalty on. "we are both very rich" versus "we are both very oppressed", I think it's clear which one is more bonding. at the end of the day it's people of your group who you are loyal too. loyal people -> community -> ability to take coordinated action.
from what I've seen, "up" groups don't feel any loyalty towards their group unless there's some aggression towards their group (in most cases specifically from the oppressed/opposed group). but because of how it's not systematic and more of a rare situation, it's not enough.
so I think it's natural and very unlikely to change that "down" groups more often have loyal members. I also think that it's going to take real long until "down" groups can threaten "ups" even a bit. think about for how long toddler has been kicking the legs and look where are we now. every oppressed group is fighting for quite some time yet it's still one step forward and immediately one step back.
liked your points) and honestly didn't plan to write this much...
I buy the argument that up punching down would generally be adaptive, but every once a while it goes completely off the rails which is why the taboo against it now exists. I don't know how to resolve that dilemma.
Punching up ALSO periodically goes completely off the rails.
My interpretation:
Though the world is drifting towards monoculture, we are still divided into subcultures; and that is *good*, because it enables natural-selective pressure to bear upon and improve culture. In this rivalry of subcultures we should not favor the underdog, less successful ones; Natural Selection is favoring the more powerful, more successful ones, and that generates important information in the natural process of cultural improvement. A cultural critic should be willing to criticize the “down” subcultures for their defects (which are certainly present, accounting for their “down” status); and, in criticizing the “up” subcultures, should be careful not to object to the very features that contribute to their success.
I think group loyalty is intrinsic, no? Even if someone comes across as an individual, they are likely parasocial to some set of ideals or algorithmic preferences. These are what drive their actions.
I have recently been reading "The Origin of Politics" by Nicholas Wade. One of the claims in the book is that in order for civilizations to grow beyond a certain size, it is essential for them to overcome the instincts of tribalism built into humans. Both religion and nationalism have been used to that end, the first by setting a higher authority than the family/tribe and the second by redirecting tribal affiliation to the nation. If this theory is correct, and these bonds and weakening due to cultural drift, it seems possible that a reversion to tribalism and the incessant warfare between tribes is a likely outcome. Thinking about US politics over recent years seems to support this claim. If so, an important step to correcting maladaptive cultural drift could be reaffirming loyalty or a sense of belonging to the nation.
Or to God.
I would also suggest that folks not lose sight of the fact there are very often members of an 'up' group who are in conflict with other members of the same or similar 'up' group(s), "allies" in their terminology, using the "down" group(s) as human shields.
s/categorize/categorized