Why the world seems to be changing for the worse

 

about a "dead mall" theme; related article and photo credit

A recent video brought up an interesting and promising line of consideration, why the world seems to be changing for the worse.  It's here, under the title "Does Anyone Else Feel Like Everything Has Changed?"

It would be simple enough to just blame the internet, wouldn't it?  The author cites three book references as a completely different range of answers, in relation to broad patterns in society playing out.  A main theme, or maybe the overall main theme, was that cycles occur in society in such a way that resets tend to occur, which typically aren't positive and low-impact forms of transition.  Societies collapse a bit, from time to time, with that even following regular patterns and time cycles.  Maybe this is about the cycle form he was discussing, or maybe a different version instead.

This idea is familiar.  I studied the philosophy of history in a philosophy class, even though my professor in that class wasn't introducing or presenting the subject, and dissuaded me from researching and writing about it.  Why?  It had been "debunked" as a meaningful pattern and trend.  People had wanted to apply a human lifespan sort of theme to societies evolving and eventually coming to an end, but in trying to apply filtering, looking for preset patterns, they extracted what they sought from what could easily have been random sets of circumstances (the confirmation bias idea).  Or so that "debunking" went; let's dig a little deeper into it all.

It all started with medieval Islamic philosophers, or at least that was my understanding.  Ibn Khaldun was quite influential, here presented as the Wikipedia level summary of main ideas:

Perhaps the most frequently cited observation drawn from Ibn Khaldūn's work is the notion that when a society becomes a great civilization, its high point is followed by a period of decay. This means that the next cohesive group that conquers the diminished civilization is, by comparison, a group of barbarians. Once the barbarians solidify their control over the conquered society, however, they become attracted to its more refined aspects, such as literacy and arts, and either assimilate into or appropriate such cultural practices. Then, eventually, the former barbarians will be conquered by a new set of barbarians, who will repeat the process.

I took it as less clear why this happened, that he was mostly identifying what he regarded as a common and repeating trend, which he offered some explanation for, but never really clearly resolved in terms of cause and effect, or even experienced forms.

It's interesting trying to find that reference that a Western citation about the philosophy of history doesn't mention anything outside of European contributions.  It's as if Ibn Khaldun hadn't developed the main starting points, observations based on clear cycles in regional history, as he presented it all.

My own guesses about why this would occur, surely of marginal value, kept changing over time.  I suppose a more natural starting point, from where I've left the ideas, is how and why it was "debunked."  Broad societies must begin and end, and there must be common patterns in forms in the middle?  The problem is that if you start with assumptions about the patterns you are looking for it's quite possible, even likely, that you will sweep complex inputs and effects together in ways that really make no sense.  Time-frame can shift quite a bit, and definitions of a society, or empire, and so on.  Philosophers can end up collecting together all sort of ideas, starting points, argument forms, transition patterns, end-points, and so on, and then eventually it can lose too much cohesiveness, and become meaningless.

I suppose all of this applies as a critique of what that Youtube content producer was summarizing, of what he was reading about, in terms of cycles of history.  One early and main point was that on about an 80 year cycle periods of disruptive war occur, which looking back really seemed to map well to experienced history, at a glance.  Only at a glance though; he was mapping out main periods of disruption backwards from WW 2 (or really forwards to get there, but it worked out the same), landing on mid to late 19th century events as the prior disruption point.  That only works by jumping over WW 1 as a significant event, which of course is absurd.  It was significant.

Since I'm not going to set all this aside as irrelevant, looking for clear and repeating patterns where none occur, I'll treat these patterns of history repeating itself in this way as real, and speculate as to whether they might occur, and why.  To be clear this step doesn't completely work; I can't support it.  But we also can't effectively set aside ideas that haven't really been fleshed out and considered, so let's go there next.

Cycles of history

The idea is that a society or civilization starts in a relatively chaotic state.  Maybe that's related to the downfall of a prior civilization, or maybe that input cause and conditions don't really matter.  In this state societal forms are not clearly defined and rigidly enforced, kind of like the romantic American "wild west" notion; things go as they happen to go.  We don't seem to have walked off the map just yet; this kind of status must be a real thing, if a bit rare, in comparison with ongoing replacement of more orderly, older, previously well defined societies, with clearly identified social roles, public institutions, central government, laws, infrastructure development, well organized trade, and so on.  All of that develops organically, for a set of relatively obvious reasons.  Those structures are effective, and as they serve purposes they become reinforced, with later decline and disruption a related separate subject.

In the Islamic model, the patterns Ibn Khaldun was observing, a literal overthrow of society by barbarians kept occurring.  It sounds like the end of the Roman Empire, doesn't it?  That just took a long time, and happened in stages, over very long periods of gradual decay and secondary transition.

Let's skip ahead.  If we assume this all makes sense, our focus now is going to be on why an organized society might stop working, not to what extent the consistent whole cycle occurs, or about the first two thirds of the transition.  And one might stop working for completely different reasons.  Maybe it's that eventually external barbarians get conditions right to successfully overthrow that organized society.  Maybe it's internal instead; this consideration seems more interesting.

The societal structures themselves tend to eventually evolve to be ineffective and unstable, it seems.  Maybe it doesn't matter why, and it's only a matter of time before internal and external causes and conditions change, really for complex reasons.  Ibn Khaldun's model proposed an external factor as a main cause, again that barbarians eventually took over, but the sense comes across that internal factors were also critical (maybe explicit in his detailed work; I didn't get too far with literature review).  It has been 16 years since I wrote that paper, to be clear, which I would've read a half dozen sources to support, so all of this isn't a claim that I'm remembering it well, or ever was a solid reference on that work myself.

Related to speculation about internal factors, why did the British Empire come to an end?  That's seems like a fairly clear and modern example.  At the beginning of the 20th century it was expansive and strong, and by the middle it was over.  The whole colonial era ended; it seemed that it was mostly just that, in that case.  If it's that simple "real historians" could probably identify that the writing was on the wall going into that century.

I've considered lots of other guesses, over time (not so much about the British Empire, but in general).  It seems possible that societal structures become rigid over time, and their failure to be able to change can't enable them to be relevant in changing external conditions.  Or maybe it's as simple as something like the unequal distribution of wealth being reinforced over time, that eventually the other 99% of the population aren't going to have it.  Infrastructure burden could add up; as societies develop better and better central supports, roads, institutions, social protections, complex tax structures, laws, etc., eventually these could add more and more burden to be supported by the whole of society, and would be difficult to maintain over time.  In the "wild west" example there barely were any laws, the opposite untenable status, but if you add too many laws and protections, and keep on adding them, eventually some sort of unsustainable tipping point would probably arise.  It's this theme that I'm going to develop most.

There's lots more I could add across levels of this range, but let's move on to pursue that one direction, assuming that society gaining order and structure can be problematic.  That isn't a claim that this would have to be a main cause, but I'm going to discuss it as if this were so, it will seem implied.  I don't mean it that way, but developing the ideas is going to require setting aside continual framing discussion.  Here I'm going to take this in an unusual direction, not looking for aspects that I see as decay later on (eg. infrastructure burden, rigid social practices, economic transitions), but instead consider how developing societies seem to be different from more developed examples, to start from what changes earlier on in the process, especially related to general feel and perspective.

Evolution of developed societies

We don't need to go back to the wild west or dark ages to examine first hand how chaotic, undeveloped, less structured, less economically developed societies differ from the opposite extreme.  I was in Cambodia the day before yesterday, at time of this initial draft writing, and I live in Thailand, and as I see it those two examples populate the less developed spectrum that we can examine now, as two distinct stages.  Then the US and Europe span the opposite side of the spectrum.  Obviously this is going to overweight my own interpretation; that's how speculative, extended, first-hand observations would have to go.

Cambodia is chaotic; no doubt about that.  I've been to Siem Reap twice (where the ancient temples are, Angkor Wat and such), and Phnom Penh once (the capital), but this was my first visit to Poi Pet, a border town set up mainly as a gambling resort.  It was amazing how development is happening so partially; individual roads, houses, and shops seemed half-finished, most of them.  Cleared out vacant lots are interspersed with developed areas.  Factors like municipal water quality and sewage system support tend to improve over time, along with roads and rail systems.

Thailand already doesn't follow zoning restrictions, not forcing business, residential, industrial, and agricultural areas to be zoned in isolated sections, but Poi Pet was that much more chaotic, just absolutely random.  Which seemed fine, interesting and not unpleasant, after the initial shock of the differences wore off.  They don't use traffic lights, stop signs, or roundabout style intersections, they just sort it all out on the fly.  That was different.  Traffic is chaotic in Bangkok too, with road designs and intersections a bit of a mess, but not like that, there are traffic lights and roundabouts. 

Poi Pet actually looks like rural Thailand, like Sa Kaeo or Lop Buri

Backing up a bit, I was considering all of this from a different perspective in relation to Thailand very recently.  My wife and I visited a somewhat chaotic local market built in an open space under an elevated highway in Bangkok, along a railroad.  It was just set-up stalls in an open space, with a food court area across the tracks that was just another blank area filled in with booths / stalls for vendors (including makeshift kitchens), and flimsy tables and plastic chairs as the seating area.  I loved it; I won't make a secret of that tone.  If such a place seems dirty or rough edged it can be off-putting, but I found this place to be well organized, clean, and inviting.  Of course Americans would be divided on that; it would have to be completely unfamiliar to most.

that outdoor food court; the market section is across a set of railroad tracks

The one part that really stood out to me is hard to describe, the feel.  It was positive, loud and vibrant, but also relaxed and open.  Literally loud; music was playing a bit too loudly, which comes up a lot in different contexts in Bangkok, even out in the country here sometimes.  Chaos can have a rough feel, but this included enough order.  The food was good too, but I guess that could've went either way.  Was it safe; was there higher foodborne illness risk than in a US restaurant?  Probably, but I've lived in Thailand for 15 years, eating in food courts regularly, in different forms, surely at least 1000 times, and I've never became sick from one.  I've only had full-blown food poisoning twice, both times in Korea instead; probably just bad luck, that.  I've experienced less minor stomach distress here than in the US, but not much in either place, less than once a year; maybe I've been lucky.

Such a place could not exist in the US.  The closest one would come might be the stalls selling food in a public fair environment, or food trucks are closing in on somewhat related forms.  Let's pause there a second; doesn't the recent existence of food trucks offset the broad pattern I described earlier, how controlled, limited, restricted conditions evolve over time, not new forms that limit prior restrictions on social controls and protections?  Maybe, but it could be that the exception proves the rule, somehow.  Or maybe it's about cracks forming in the rigid social structures in the US, compensating for the one-way development of oppressive levels of order.  Or maybe food trucks are too good an idea to oppress, and they were naturally going to move from industrial site lunch support to become mainstream.

a predecessor to the mall form, a Chinatown style market area, here in Ayuthayah

It's not just that one example, related to disorder and more chaotic forms being common in Thailand.  Street food is a main theme everywhere, and you can't cook and sell food from a steel table welded to the side of a motorcycle in the US, or from a cart that you push around.  Old style markets are often just large empty buildings, or just open spaces, as in that highway / rail line example.  Taxation burden is lower, infrastructure development and spending is lower, and social protections are far more limited.  The government provides moderate quality health care for low cost, maybe with "moderate" a generous assessment for quality range, but beyond that people are mostly on their own.  Cohesive family structures fill in the rest, and in general it works out, just not in every case.

Certifications of all sorts, for companies and individuals, are limited as requirements.  I think this example holds more meaning and runs a lot deeper than it might seem at first.  To be a masseuse in Hawaii my wife would need to take a one year training course, and here in Thailand whatever background you have is enough, down to almost none.  Engineers aren't really registered here; maybe some function gets lost along the way for not having those restrictions, beyond just adding clutter of extra paperwork and fees.  I don't see restrictive levels of training and certification in the US as a mostly positive context though; to me it often evolves to be just as wasteful as it is functional.

The feel is something else, to keep returning to that.  I found that market and food court area to have a dynamic but relaxed feel, in a sense that doesn't map to other places very well in the US.  To be clear I'm from the East Coast, rural Pennsylvania, and I've only lived back in Honolulu for two months this year, two months ago now, so I'm more familiar with Thailand and local culture than my own native version.  It really does work to map the absolute chaos we experienced in Cambodia as the next step in the same direction.  And per one visit to Europe--very long ago, so again very limited input--it also works to map a higher level of order, restriction, narrower social expectations, and general quiet to European cultures, in comparison to the feel of the US. 

It might seem like I'm heading towards a claim that European cultures really should become unstable, if a pattern of normal chaos to order and then downfall typically occurs.  I'm not saying that.  Obviously somehow most European cultures have evolved to very stable forms, and a range of positive outcomes.  A European from any given place might vehemently argue against that, experiencing what they interpret as broad social changes over the past 20 years, seeing it all as unstable and inclined towards further and faster change, but that would probably depend on individual perspective and degree of optimism.

I don't have enough experience to really map out such range of ideas, but here I'm using stability and order in narrow, limited senses.  You can act out in unconventional ways in the US and it's fine, a normal part of that culture.  You can even pitch a tent and live on the street, and that's a main social trend right now, along with "van life," living in a car or larger vehicle, not only due to restrictive financial necessity.  In Thailand there are much narrower and more developed social expectations, related to roles and forms of expression, but in terms of what society restricts, across other levels and scopes, things are much more open.  Even the laws are a bit optional in many cases.  I could develop that theme quite a bit, but it's as well not to, to leave that as an unsupported assertion.

All this isn't really "hanging together" as much as it might, is it?  The general thesis here is that order increases as societies develop, with restrictions bringing positive change and also limitations, offsetting personal options, and impacting the free and open feel experienced by individuals.  It's largely about what I've experienced and felt, more than examples that highlight how it's all necessarily so.  Honolulu is a much cleaner, more organized, structured place than Bangkok, and Poi Pet is further towards noise and chaos.  Along with the benefits of adding to order something gets lost.  This later "collapse of society" theme seems to be something else, about negative patterns in pushing on and on, so that in some limited senses too much could get lost along the way.  I think the two themes do connect.

One might automatically assume that the structuring increases safety, that it's not just illness from eating bad grilled pork satay that's a risk, but that factors like crime should gradually decrease.  Oddly it doesn't work out that way.  Crime seems to relate to social forms and patterns that absolutely do not map to development level or average income level.  Bangkok is much safer than Honolulu, which is much safer than the average mainland US city.  Level of corruption also seems to be an unrelated secondary factor, loosely pairing with general decline as societies become more organized and developed, but it also seems possible that the corruption could also just become more organized and developed.

A long term pattern of decline

That context mapping seemed like it might never end, didn't it?  Let's jump ahead again, back to this idea of whether or not the US really is shifting in form now, perhaps in a way tied to general decline.  I could write this out as a carefully developed, supported, step-by-step explanation of patterns I think might be occurring, but that would take 10,000 words instead of a few hundred.  I'll need to just say what I think, without explaining it in such a careful way.

I think a few main causes are occurring that end up shifting the form and feel of US culture, with real negative impact for people on the wrong end of these patterns:

-economic shift:  the late-stage capitalism theme, a form change combining with other transitions, a shift from manufacturing to service based economy, and so on.  Cost of living increases undermine the practicality of sustaining manufacturing and labor intensive agriculture, and then service based work conducted with more employee protections works out to not be so much more ideal.  I think housing and real estate being used as an investment base is a main cause of many problems now, but that's too much of a tangent to develop here.

-economic decline:  a natural development of lower prosperity as economic development changes form and in a sense also stops, really one part of the first pattern.  Standard of living is still much higher in the US than in Thailand, and certainly than in Cambodia, but for many that's declining, while those other countries still experience generally positive changes.  I'm from the "Rust Belt," and my own industrial engineering career ended essentially when it started, so I get it how local economy and job-sector impacts play out.

-increased wealth inequality:  this part is complicated.  It seems as if a middle class develops as countries develop, and then later that trend can reverse, shifting back to most people being rich or poor.  Some European countries seem to have intentionally countered that, setting up institutions and processes to even it all back out.

-internet influence:  social forms moving online, and changing as a result.  This is not the same kind of thing as the rest, since it has only came into being over the past 20 or so years.  I'll add a lot more about forms of this factoring in, because it seems like some interesting changes are occurring.  A lot of the underlying patterns may stay the same without that input, with it just speeding up some transitions.

-reduced general health in the US:  the result of a number of factors.  Again, it's something else, probably not closely related to the rest.  Or maybe it is tightly linked, and eating mass-produced processed foods instead of local, natural foods pairs with these other trends.  Either way I'll set this part aside.  Mental health issues are even trickier; those causes and effects must mix, but I won't treat those here much either, beyond limited and not overly meaningful overlap with one internet experience example.

The third part about wealth inequality ties back to part of what I attributed Ibn Khaldun as saying, right, a progressive, natural change that becomes untenable?  Perhaps unfairly connected, since that part was my interpretation or even extension of his points, more than I remember it being directly received ideas.  There is a lot to unpack related to all of these, but I want to focus on the internet form change instead of the rest.  I don't think it's more primary than the rest, but some really interesting social changes are occurring.

Internet context changing social forms and experiences

On the one hand I think this is as much a factor as all the rest related to a general impression that "things are changing, and not for the better."  Then on the other I also suspect that the forms of changes, the specific patterns, were already happening to some extent, and the online forms are just speeding up other transitions, or helping separate and problematic conditions combine together.  

dead mall interest (related Youtube channel, Reddit discussion group):  this subject combines interest in culture changes, economic shifts, and a change in media consumption and online discussion.  People interested in this topic must embrace experience of nostalgia, to some extent, with the content producers describing their own interest as documenting recent history, what malls were like in the 80s and 90s, since many are now closing.  This isn't included as an example of "things are getting worse;" shopping form changes are more complicated than that.  It could be interpreted that way, but a more common take is that online shopping and popularity of smaller retail centers were the main causes.

Again in popular interpretation malls ending is an aspect of "late stage capitalism," a broad category subject which would mean completely different things to different people.  The dystopia theme is interesting too though, referenced in Reddit groups like Dystopian Future, and Idiocracy.  I don't love all the main aspects of general Reddit subculture, but right now it does seem more interesting and effective for following these subject interests than most Facebook groups, which seem to age out of active and focused topic participation faster.

more novel and impactful changes:  I recently saw a video about Tik Tok viewers mimicking Tourette's syndrome behavior, picking up verbal expression "tics."  I've been exploring how other mental health conditions have also become popular, especially how people are copying the form of Dissociative Identity Disorder in intentionally  developing "tulpas," secondary internal personalities.  What's all that about?  I'm really not even going to address it here, except to guess that this is all a very extreme example of what is already unusual and potentially impactful enough, that online group identification has shifted to take on more and more extreme forms over the last half dozen years.  

Real life experiences are becoming marginalized, with online associations taking on greater and greater importance.  You can't really "catch" mental illness though online social exposure, I don't think, but social experience and general mental health can change.  This seems like a symptom that is probably hard to fully place.

that tulpa group I had mentioned:  this group is about people imagining secondary internal personalities into existence, essentially mimicking dissociative identity disorder.  In this case it's more odd that the practice itself exists than the group; of course if people take up such an uncommon interest association with others might be seen as positive.  I don't see it as different than participation in a group about running, for example, except maybe that online group association itself is being carried to extremes. 

Given other focus here on societal level decline and groups identifying with dislike of some common theme one might look for some related pattern of meaning in this example.  It's not about that.  It definitely seems to represent an unconventional take on reality, and a new form of adjusting internal experience, but it's not really negative, just quite unconventional, as some of these other examples are.

Let's go further, onto other examples.  I'll add links to these, since my own exploration of these themes has largely occurred online, and these examples help show what I mean in relation to form and context.

Theo Von comedian podcast:  it's normal for people to watch podcasts or comedy content, but this Reddit group is for self-identification as a fan of Theo Von.  The Youtube channel has 1.2 million followers, and discussion group 40k, so that many take self-association the next step.  I'm not saying that this is bizarre behavior, or negative in any way, but a decade ago people identifying through being a fan of a comedy related podcast would've been relatively unthinkable.  15 years ago podcasts hadn't happened yet, in this modern form.  

Taken alone this has nothing to do with the general decline of society, or individual lives having less meaning, but some related patterns could add up in negative ways.  The existence of media or performing arts stars is definitely not new, but this form is, and somehow personal identification patterns also seem to be.  That part is going to connect more in an unusual form later on.

Joe Rogan Reddit sub:  this group has nearly 800,000 members that generally discuss Joe Rogan's podcast (the main such channel), towards the main end goal of tearing Joe Rogan apart, ridiculing him.  They could still be fans, but the group purpose is not support, or shared positive interest.  I'm not even sure that makes sense now, never mind however many years ago, before recent cultural changes that embrace new forms of negativity became common.  

they love to photoshop Joe to make him look tiny, which is funny

Some background from foreigner / expat experiences in Thailand might help inform what is going on.  Initially, visiting as tourists or new to living in Thailand, people experience a "honeymoon period," very positive about how different the culture is, the food, general look, ways people smile a lot and interact positively, and follow different customs.  Then later negative experiences accumulate, and at some point they feel compelled to changing over to disliking Thai culture.  In the middle it can be awkward, trying to balance perspective on some aspects being positive and others negative.  Positive things can have a negative side, or the opposite, but things need to break cleanly in one main direction or the other; people are wired to like or dislike things, to see them as essentially good or bad.

I think with Joe Rogan there had always been an everyman appeal, as an actor who was relatable, a comedian with a normal outlook on things, and a fight fan.  Then as Joe Rogan became wealthy and drifted further into conservative ideology it all came apart, and disliking him for being wildly successful acted as a cause.  Covid and the political divide have become two main points of separation in society, and it seemed like those alone were also primary causes.  Joe emphasized risks in vaccination, echoing conservative talking points, and then when he contracted covid he underwent tens of thousands of dollars worth of advanced treatments steps, which few followers could afford.

Better Bachelor, men's "not dating" themed group:  I guess this is a moderate derivative of MGTOW, men going their own way, a movement for men to self-identify as not dating.  This is particularly interesting to me, again for being a sort of backwards or reversed interest form, a group shared interest in not doing some particular thing.  Again I don't see this as problematic or extremist, it's just an odd social identification, to identify as not dating.  You can just not date.  I see this as a follow-up to extreme forms of feminism rejecting a lot of what can be associated with masculinity, or the patriarchy, so perhaps this is in part a negative reaction to a separate negative reaction.

Then there is also a rejection theme or broad dislike here in these topics I can't completely place in terms of common ground.  The culture war is one thing, but this is about men and women rejecting dating, sex, and any pair bonding (including an opposite feminist variation), previously fundamental practices and forms of self-identification.  It's unusual.

fasting; another atypical interest:  I've become a bit active in a fasting group recently; it's odd that social identification could occur around the idea of taking breaks from eating.  It's not so much a social activity.  Taken alone that's not at all negative, but the cumulative effect of splintering personal interests replacing "real life" social contact could become problematic, especially if shared dislike becomes a main theme, as in these other cases.  

In recent discussion it was brought up how odd it seems that some people react so negatively to other people not eating, as if it's a critique of their own lifestyle choices, more specifically that of eating every single day, which is quite natural.  These interests immediately move on to self-definition and in-group issues, even when that doesn't seem to be a necessary step.

anti-woke entertainment media commentary:  Nerdrotic, this example, or this more mainstream Critical Drinker channel is probably better.  This is really unusual, that a sizable set of media commentary channels has gained significant following by criticizing mainstream movie and television content for being "woke," liberal and progressive in forms seen as negative.  Most of these channels were conventional critic or commentary themed, but the opportunity to gain a much broader following for zeroing in on this one culture war based theme caused them to isolate that one topic, and essentially exclude all others.  Here again it's a case of people self-identifying not in terms of how they define themselves, but as associated with others who dislike the same things, which is odd to me.

The idea of "hate-watching" television shows and movies comes up, not just this critique, for a large following to actively pursue and express dislike for media content, but that many people who self-identify as disliking some entertainment media forms do continue to watch it.  Why?  I suppose it ties to the political divide / culture war in the US, to both liberals and conservatives making it a personal interest and pass-time to critique the other extreme.  People who hated Trump ended up hearing a lot more about Trump than people who were more neutral about him, surely.

That last example went through an odd inversion in my own case.  Like anyone else I was concerned about how Trump leadership would go, and for being more liberally inclined dislike for some range of factors entered in quickly.  But within the first year it was clear that following the story-line sides wasn't going to help, what he said day to day, so I avoided that news, which was easier to do for living in Thailand.  A Canadian co-worker found it all very entertaining and compelling, even for being less involved as an interested party, so he kept on filling me in on it all.

Mr. Ballen story channel, and associated Reddit group:  this channel is pretty good, so again the point here isn't passing negative judgment.  "Mr. Ballen" tells spooky stories, about ghosts, accidental deaths, or crimes and such.  He has nearly 7 million subscribers, which I think is up from about a million a year ago; it's a subject that draws considerable interest.  People self-identify as fans of the channel and stories, which is fine.  Then for essentially all of these Youtube channels they would now offer Patreon options to contribute, and merchandise to wear related clothing.

Think back to how people really loved, and to an extent self-identified, with mainstream comedy shows in the past, at the end of the last century, with Cheers, then Seinfeld, then Friends.  It's not completely different, but because such a large proportion of the country was on that same page even if the online channels had supported discussion and self-identification then it wouldn't have worked in the same way.  I think there is a lot more there to consider and explore.  It's almost as if a vacuum in personal meaning or identification is playing out, more than these directions are drawing people in.  Or maybe it's only that three main network television channels have been replaced by literally countless other media selections, and somehow embracing that media consumption interest leads to self-identification of a different form.

I'm not claiming that I'm separate from that, that I don't experience it too.  I tend to explore media types and themes, interested in the ideas and formats, but it's not so different than sticking to a few for longer.  I attribute that to being slightly socially isolated related to living as a foreigner in another country, and to parenting demands limiting my real-life social development, tied to being coupled with that other factor.  Maybe to some extent it's just generally how things go now, that parts of most lives are lived online, and it's not all going to map back to what one might see as previous conventional life practices (dating, exercise, cooking, etc.).

What is different from earlier mainstream media following related to this trend?

This I seemed to pass over quickly in that earlier mention; maybe more is going on here to consider.  I think a few key differences come up related to finding a comedy show experience very important and meaningful and instead identifying as a fan through these extra formal channels.  To be clear I think that this earlier trend laid the groundwork for what we now experience, that association as a tv show fan isn't a completely unrelated and inconsistent experience.  Liking a comedian or K-pop star isn't so different than following a sports team or musician in the past.

One difference has been the degree of shared experience dropping out.  With three main television channels in the US in the late 20th century, and a lot of focus on sports events, people were experiencing a lot of the same things that many others were.  Now that's not nearly as true.

I think "real life" still playing a main role in life experience at the end of the 20th century was also completely different.  It's all too easy to put online content consumption the center of one's life now, with "water cooler" discussions replaced by online commenting.  It doesn't even need to center on one show or theme; combining interest in sports, television show media, movies, and informative content could make watching shows--consuming content--seem like a diverse activity, when in a deeper sense it's really not.  Or the same applies to social media participation, in a different sense.

A lot gets made of how social media participation is now designed to reinforce further participation, how alerts and activity steps trigger some internal brain reward chemical release (popular interpretations of brain chemistry processes aren't a personal interest).  Of course that's probably at least partly real.  In simpler terms social media participation and media consumption can be very habit forming, and these previously unheard of types of self-identification connections can be one result.  I'm not sure to what extent it's important that self-identification with personal dislikes has increased so much.

I agree with common assessments concluding that self-definition and locating self-value in social media experience and "success" could be problematic.  It's artificial, and unlikely to generally carry over directly to real life experience.  If it's a direct means to an end, eg. product marketing, then that may not be accurate, but related to packaging and re-locating conventional life experience into these forms is something else.  Then of course a grey area comes up; "influencers" see themselves and their reach as the marketed product.  For someone working in the modeling profession the connection is just as direct; they are clearly marketing themselves.

The theme of liking to hate things seems new.  It seems a secondary effect from how narrow and somewhat artificial social group self-definition occurs, tying back to themes like the US political divide.  As I explore some of these themes I've mentioned online I tend to often be rejected by groups for not being central enough to their shared interest form.  For example, I run, for four years now, but I don't approach running in the right way to have a valid and shared opinion in many online groups.  I'm not wearing a watch that tracks distance, pace, and heart rate.  I do explore and adjust training parameters (distance, pace, use of rest breaks, etc.), but not in the right forms, not according to common trends.  People in the groups don't necessarily hate me for that (the starting point here), but I'm not one of them.

Things can get a little strange related to social identification around these following themes.  To be seen as a true fan of Theo Von, for example, you might be expected to feel a certain way about Brendan Schaub or Bobby Lee, fellow comedians he is friends with, or to share perspective on their life events.  It maps back to how people always experienced real life very locally, but now it's not that, in this form.

Conclusions

I've followed a few threads here that don't necessarily tie together, really letting the conventional social trend patterns beyond online group exposure and self-identification largely drop towards the end.  I didn't explore economic patterns nearly as much as I see those as primary causes.  As an industrial engineer the decline of manufacturing in the US took on a unique level of personal importance, also as a resident of the US "rust belt."  My original home area, Western PA, is economically decimated by this transition pattern, and I'm separated from my family now because it's not practical for me to live and work there. 

I think decline is occurring in the US, and elsewhere, for many reasons, and sweeping the causes together as mostly connected probably doesn't work.  It's not happening in Thailand in the same sense; the economy is generally ok, personal life experiences seem generally positive, real-life social ties are persisting, crime isn't increasing, there is no drug epidemic or homeless problem, poorer urban area decline and gang participation never took on the same forms, and so on.  The wealth divide isn't really resolving here, but it's also not getting worse.  There have been exactly two public shootings in Thailand, the second this year, and the first in early 2020; some of these negative trends seem to be able to spread.  Or maybe it's that the causes are just running behind in timing, but also occurring.  I suspect that the "retail apocalypse" will occur here too.

Politics are just as problematic as in the US, just in a different form, which hasn't generated a related culture war.  Some would contest that, based on clear examples of why exactly that type of opposition is happening, but to me it hasn't entered everyday consciousness to the same extent, or transitioned to two opposing story lines.  It's more just that the country isn't ran well, and that democracy isn't working.

One might naturally wonder if Thais will experience most of those same patterns as in the US over the next 20 years, if they aren't just behind in some unavoidable societal and social transitions.  Maybe.  To be clear they have their own separate problems to deal with; it's not some sort of utopia.  The onset of dystopia just seems a lot more limited, so far.  To me--and this is just my own speculation, to be clear--the culture war in the US seems partly artificially maintained, by a divide in media reinforcement, which is surely complicated.

It would be interesting if someone as familiar with European cultures as I am Asian societies would break down how the range of related themes have impact there, or aren't relevant.  I've not really filled in my credentials as an Asian culture specialist, have I?  I live in Thailand, and we travel a lot, and I have friends in and from other countries; that's about it.  It's interesting having kids who are half Thai, because they absolutely and completely "get" local culture, on a level I probably never can.  It seems awkward for them to explain it to me, but they do try, if I ask specific enough questions.  As of right now they are in Honolulu, attending school there, so we've switched it back to me explaining their other cultural experiences.

with local family and a friend there

All of this is quite speculative, open to refutation.  It's the kind of thinking out loud in writing that will probably become clearer as I continue to consider these ideas for a few more years.  Or maybe I'm making next to no sense, and will continue to not.  Thoughts, feedback?  Generally informal writing like this doesn't turn into a discussion; just asking.

as a parent I have to be optimistic, and prepare them for a world that will keep changing

Jordan Peterson on the Bible as the basis for modern worldview

 

Jordan Peterson recently made an interesting claim in a Joe Rogan podcase video that the Bible is really such a foundational work that to a limited extent Western literature and general perspective itself is based on it.  Maybe.  It takes some doing to get to why he's saying that, in order to evaluate it.  Or maybe it doesn't really work to evaluate it, but doing the framing part is still interesting.

He outlines the main direction as follows, in the first words in that video:

"if categories just dissolve, especially fundamental ones, then the culture is dissolving, because the culture is a structure of categories.  That's what it is.  So in fact culture is a structure of category that we all share.  So we see things the same way, so that's why we can talk.  I mean not exactly the same way, because then we'd have nothing to talk about.  Roughly speaking, we have a bedrock of agreement.  That's the Bible, by the way."

I'll start with a bit of an intro of Jordan Peterson's general perspective first, and get back to this.  I mentioned this video to an online friend who is into Christianity who responded that he wasn't interested because Jordan Peterson is not a reliable source (just not put that way).  There's something to that; I think a lot of what Jordan Peterson expresses is either meaningless or not informative without placing exactly what he is saying, or not saying, and why, with his normal form of expressing content not at all clear without that context.  So although it's all tangent I'll address that part first, then get on with looking at how the Bible really may or may not be the basis for a modern Western worldview.  

I've studied religion a little, even in a number of religion classes, but I'm not exactly an expert on the subject, it's just something I've already given some thought to.

Jordan Peterson versus the left

His conflict with "the left" came to head at the same time his popularity as a thought leader evolved, in relation to the gender pronoun issue.  More specifically, it was identified as something like illegal hate speech to not use preferred pronouns where he was living, in one part of Canada.  There are problems with that type of law, which he correctly identified.  And a general context problem with the use of diverse gender identification, which he also identified.  Then he does also go on to make criticisms and sweeping cultural identifications that don't make sense.  Let's start with those.

He consistently identifies a broad range of perspectives and directives as tied back to Marxists and Marxism.  Parts of it seem to work, it's just that the framing really doesn't, as if there is a unified far-left perspective that involves a lot of shared philosophical underpinnings and final conclusions.  The philosophical part is weak too; a far left perspective evolved a certain way, but not really based on those inputs, or at least not as directly as he explicitly links together.

It might work to say that perspective basis and positions on final issues might be generally common to a range that could be fairly identified as extreme left, but he just goes too far with the generalities.  It's probably because he is exposed to extreme versions, and within the academic environment what these derive from, in general, is more consistent and known.  But it's not really like that related to the average person who thinks that trans-gender individuals should or should not have equal rights.  They're not necessarily well read up on 19th and 20th century philosophy, or involved with the same degree of philosophical and psychological assumptions.  Some are extremists, sure, on both the left and right, and draw on ideas derived in lots of ways.  One could argue that their final positions and views are partial extensions of those earlier ideas, and the linkage doesn't need to be tight, and that's back to working better.

The starting point of rejecting mandated use of language works.  It's not problematic to restrict use of negative terms (the "n word," fag, and so on).  Telling people which words they need to use is a bit different.  If there was a distinct set of new gender pronouns being advocated that would at least be a more workable context, but the list of those expanded to over 50, and just kept changing and growing.  Tracking them and being responsible for use in every interaction was already impossible at that point, and it's not as if the numerous early versions were going to stay fixed.

If it had only related to that the subject wouldn't have drawn the attention it did.  Jordan Peterson next claimed that only a limited set of pronouns made sense in relation to being tied back to biological gender, which of course is a divisive and problematic position.   That issue never really gets settled, because people on both extremes keep redefining their position context and finer points, so they end up talking past each other.  

It doesn't work to say that biological gender identification is optional, or you end up with female powerlifters competing and breaking records who only identified as female for a matter of weeks prior, or maybe even only on that day.  It also doesn't work to say that gender identification needs to be tied only to genetic factors, because lots of other cases contradict that, and there has to be space for gender to be regarded as a social construct too, because of course it's partly that.  Leaving aside atypical biological conditions it's just not right saying that people can't change their personal identity because of some genetic biological context.  Of course they can.  It was this messy topic that made Jordan Peterson famous, as much as any other.

His core messages were never really mostly about that.  He is second most known for a self-development theme, encouraging people to set goals for themselves, to take responsibility for their lives, to start with making small positive changes in their life circumstances or self perception, to become aware of limitations they place on themselves, and so on.  His earlier academic work wasn't about either theme (political perspective and gender issues, or self-development).  He focused on two topics:  the basis for and experience of meaning, and how basic teachings and groundworks of psychological models fit together with biological and social inputs.  That second one tied to the gender issues.

So how did he ever become a spokesperson for the right wing?  The short answer is that this is wrong, and he didn't.  He opposes an extreme left / liberal set of ideas and positions, but for the most part doesn't support much that is associated with the right wing / conservative perspective, beyond not explicitly rejecting the alignment as much as one might expect for a professed "classic liberal."  Maybe self-development themes could link with themes about personal independence, and then it all connects, but it's a stretch.  I suppose the whole nature versus nurture / inborn characteristics versus social development set of themes does underpin positions he takes or opposes, which map to conservative themes in whatever ways.  It just doesn't work to connect it all together.  

When he debates liberal members of the media they are consistently attributing positions and claims to him that aren't accurate, so those interviews get bogged down in talking about rejecting what he doesn't actually say.  It's not worth watching more than one example of that, because there is limited positive content from either perspective (ideas actually asserted) to relate to or not relate to.

So how does Jordan Peterson go too far, what does he say that's not fair, or accurate?  He habitually categorizes positions and perspectives in broad, sweeping ways, so that most "leftists / Marxists" are making the same claims, based on the same foundational context.  Some of that may work as a generality for some people and positions, but it's just not how that really works, that you can paint a broad and general political perspective into such a limited and clear set of positions and assumptions.  That's partly what is going wrong with people identifying his ideas and position in relation to the right, or far right / conservative perspective.

Oddly that tendency and pattern tie back to what works well in his teachings.  You really can't easily pull apart what foundational thinkers like Marx, Nietzsche, Jung and Freud, and later French philosophers are saying, pinning each down to a half dozen core assertions and ideas.  They address complex divides in thought that only really make sense in relation to other sets of ideas they are building on, opposing, or responding to.  Sometimes parts of some models are very simple and clear, and then simpler summaries do work better.  

But the problem with saying that you can't extract complex teachings into a half dozen simple statements is that you need to do this to "work with" such ideas, unless you are able to take a graduate class that studies their work, and even then you tend to only focus on one text by one person.  So to a limited extent distilling Nietzsche down to a dozen "Nietzsche says..." statements misses what he is really saying, but at least it works with some ideas, it considers them.

The other part of problems with Jordan Peterson's thinking, besides overgeneralizing, and being judged for advocating ideas that he is really not advocating, is that he seems to get caught up in negativity that isn't really necessary, other aspects of the political divide, and the general downfall of society sort of themes.  Extreme personal difficulties could account for that, facing problems across a lot of scope as a main life theme, health issues and such.

On to the part about Christianity, which will tie back further to his general approach and thoughts on other broad patterns, but not to problems or criticisms with him, his statements, or his work.

Christianity / the Bible as a basis for Western perspective and society

This subject is good and sweeping, isn't it?  More context on JP's approach and perspective on things:  he sees legends and traditional stories as distillations of familiar narratives and old events that include life guidance, that set up a context for an individual worldview, and underpin it.  He uses the Pinocchio story to give the most detailed examples, but any hero's story will do to fill in the same pattern.  Let's start there.  

First let's be even clearer about what I've just claimed is his position:  these traditional legends may or may not be about people that did exist, but the stories are built out of other old stories and forms, including external details of activities (things added).  I think this part is right; extra interpretation and things added or taken away in retelling would change old story forms to borrow from or match other old stories.

The hero's journey (a broad and shared form) is that the central character is faced with some sort of external threat or demand, and needs to go on some sort of quest to resolve this, to seek something out, or finish a difficult task.  Then they undertake this, face extreme challenges, and question their own perspective, capabilities, and motivations, often making some sacrifice, finally accomplishing their goal and returning triumphant, and altered by the experience.  

Why these themes, what does it mean?  Lots of things, really.  It's a good story (a basis for one); that's part of it.  It's also a teaching about personal character, appropriate motivations, questioning assumptions and one's role in society, about transcending earlier self-definition and assumed capabilities, and contributing to society.  The bad characters, and their motivations and actions, represent what society intends to reject, and "quest" setbacks represent conventional pitfalls in self-understanding or development.  And it's also about other things, I suppose, but that works for a start.

Moral teachings are an important part too, about placing the good of others and the whole above your own.  That one theme repeats more than any other in a lot of story telling.  But why?  It's part of the basis for society itself, part of the fabric of what a collective of individuals is based on.  If everyone only acts for immediate and long term self interest then the institutions and broader goals suffer.  Societal level issues like global warming and national debt could never be resolved, because these relate to the interests of future individuals.  

Even more mundane restrictions on things like stealing also help establish societal order.  Proactive emphasis on themes like generosity work in a similar way, just from the other direction.  Self-sacrifice is a great example of extension of that kind of theme.  Minor norms would end up being swept in too, relatively value-neutral components that are still positioned as generally positive, something like urban versus rural living, or aesthetic themes.

So the old legends people accept and re-tell are really tied to a kind of meta-narrative, about underlying themes and conditions.  Tony Stark is doing what Beowulf had been doing, and these stories include life lessons.  Then it's interesting to consider if we are really soaking up that message; does anyone lead their own life differently because the Stark corporation moved on from selling defense goods, or because Tony risked his own life to defeat Thanos, and then actually did die?  Probably not really.  But that always had been part of the point.

The Bible is a lot more direct about this intention, or religion in general is.  You are supposed to learn from these examples and apply them.  Then in the end your own place in heaven is dependent on doing this, with it all taken in one way.  With religion taken less literally there probably is no literal afterlife like that, but we build up the reality we should be able to experience based on all our own actions, perspectives, life directions, and moral choices.

So far so good; Jesus and Moses and the rest are teachers of correct perspective and morality.  Jordan takes all this one step further in observations in that video, and it's an interesting step.  To him it's not just meta-narratives that "roll up" to a worldview and perspective context, we can apply all this to literature.  Shakespeare informs a lot of later story telling, both in form and content.  He asserts that the Bible was actually the first set of writings to be collected into a book, really more a set of books or a library, and the most disseminated early on in printing development, and the most influential in general.  Then from there he concludes that the Bible is the literal basis for Western perspective, related to that.

Does this work?  Kind of, or maybe not really, given probably only partially so.  Separating a Western and Eastern perspective alone may not work.  It would be necessary to consider the role of the earlier Greek thinkers in impacting Roman perspectives, and that of others, how these inputs built up and influenced later thinking.  To say that the Bible is the single primary cornerstone for a relatively unified cultural perspective goes a bit far.  But then Jordan is into sweeping statements and conclusions, and it also still kind of works.  

We would have to try to place access to the Bible by people other than priests throughout history, and the role of Latin in academic study and daily life across a range of centuries.  It doesn't help that Jordan Peterson is not really a historian, or an expert on literary history, and that the order of his specialization goes pretty far down a list to get to that range.  He's most trained in psychology, while also drawing on a good bit of philosophy, literature, and physical sciences for input.  Already that's kind of too much range.  Folding in the general anthropology scope of history of ideas and cultural evolution goes a bit far.

The Bible did have to be about as influential as any other single work ever created; how could it not be?  He's right that it's not really a unified, singular work, even beyond the division into old and new testaments.  It's just that last step, saying that the Bible grounds everything else, that seems to reach a little.  Breaking that apart into influences of the old and new testament and tracing both across sets of cultural forms would work better, in comparison with other inputs and conditions.

To me it's still well worth considering, even if the limitations in using imagination and intuition to flesh it all out means that won't get far.  Let's add one more consideration that frames what I mean:  to what extent have we received detailed, intact versions of early Greek philosophy, which could be a separate contender as a main influence in Western culture?  The timelines might be a little different; we think Plato lived from 428 to 348 BCE, roughly, and a 100 year history of culture he was building on still doesn't reach back to the early Bible age.  Egyptians had been around for a long, long time prior, but let's consider Greek philosophy anyway. 

Plato hung around; his writing we do have.  Socrates, his teacher, taught Plato, and Plato's work is considered to be based on that input, but we only have what Plato said about what Socrates said to go on.  Maybe a little of other references here or there, but nothing significant compared to Plato's accounts.  To be clear I'm basing these statements on only taking one undergrad class that reviewed Greek philosophy and pre-Socratic input, so probably one professor's input on that subject.  It could be wrong.  What I was taught could've been right and my memory and interpretation of it could still be wrong.  From what we studied of those pre-Socratic philosophers, of the teachings of 8 or 9 main figures, we only have a few fragments of statements or writing from each, a page or two of text worth in total.  It's not much.

Doesn't this support Jordan Peterson's ideas about the Bible being more primary, since "the trail goes cold" related to what we learn from those Greeks today at around 400 BCE?  Sort of, but also not really, as I see it.  Just because some ideas or texts are not available today doesn't mean that the ideas didn't have a lot of indirect impact 2000+ years ago.  Then we also still have a lot of writings from both Plato and Aristotle, which were also very foundational in our understanding of human reality, worldview, and perspective.  And of physical reality too; Aristotle didn't stop at philosophy.  It could work to try to compare the relative inputs of Plato and Aristotle as grounding Western perspective (as much as there is such a thing) in comparison or contrast with Biblical teachings, or to seek out dependency between the two.  I studied religion some in a degree program, and more philosophy, but nothing like that ever really came up.  It's too broad, too sweeping, and too difficult.  

It almost doesn't matter but let's check on Wikipedia's take on how old the Bible is:

Considered to be scriptures (sacred, authoritative religious texts), the books were compiled by different religious communities into various biblical canons (official collections of scriptures). The earliest compilation, containing the first five books of the Bible and called the Torah (meaning "law", "instruction", or "teaching") or Pentateuch ("five books"), was accepted as Jewish canon by the 5th century BCE. 

So someone inclined to believe Jordan Peterson (personally) and this interpretation could completely accept it, or based on their own biases could just as easily completely reject it.  Actually sorting through the ideas would be problematic; it would be a lot easier to draw on a personal bias against Jordan Peterson instead of making any start on that.  How could we evaluate the input of stories about Gilgamesh and Beowulf in comparison with those about Moses and Abraham, or the Greek gods?  It wouldn't really work to try.

I like that Jordan Peterson makes the attempt though, that he tries to connect the dots in such sweeping forms.  That's probably more about personal preference than whether it all works or not.  At the risk of over-generalization about two thirds of what Jordan Peterson says completely works for me, with a minority of the rest seeming less functional, or maybe even a bit wrong.  He keeps all the statements so general that it can be hard to really argue against one as wrong.  If he says "Nietzsche says (x)" there's a pretty good chance that Nietzsche really did express and intend what JP was talking about, but that his interpretation is open to being disputed, or more frequently too general to really see as right or wrong.  Then JP extends that to roll together parts of what a lot of people are doing for perspective or beliefs, and that part might not work either.

Nietzsche said a lot of things.  He was talking about a lot of broad patterns or specific aspects of human experience in a lot of different ways, but never in as cut and dried, bottom-up form as would be expected or familiar from other thinkers.  Kant was at the other extreme; her really explained what he meant, only stopping short of being able to pull together hundreds of ideas into a complete and unified system, but he did an insane amount of development work towards that, and others built on that later.  Nietzsche didn't do that; he expressed himself in isolated aphorisms and symbolic parables, which only sort of connected back up.

Conclusions, take aways

I think there is value in considering what Jordan Peterson says, but all that value drops out if you aren't already completely familiar with how he's placing background concepts and perspectives.  To completely get there someone would've needed to develop an interest in his presentation of earlier, better grounded ideas about meaning of life positioning or psychology basics, and get through a lot of his material, seeing how he uses concepts and expresses himself.  Just being conservative and liking most conclusions wouldn't be enough to help you really understand what he's saying about most topics.

It wouldn't hurt to be relatively familiar with the sources he's referencing, to help place how he is using ideas, and which parts he is adding.  I've read a lot of Nietzsche and studied his work in philosophy classes, and am familiar with some basics from Jung (another of his favorites), and am somewhat introduced to Piaget's work on development of perspective and reasoning forms.  What gets grouped together as later Continental Philosophy I'm less familiar with, Sartre and the rest, but I suppose I've had some exposure to that.  

Really when JP says "the Marxists say..." he's referencing his own collection and rejection of ideas tied to existentialism (more or less).  It's kind of a strange summary form but listing some basic principles helps define that:

Tenets of Existentialism

Existence before Essence:  people are born as a blank slate create essence through unique experiences

Impotence of Reason:  Passion and emotion

Alienation or Estrangement:  from Humans, human instructor, past/future, self nature, God (From God man has provided all answers through sciences)

Despair or Anxiety:  freedom to create decisions and morals based on evidence (experience) causes fear and anxiety

Nothingness or Death:  death hangs over all of us

Awful Freedom:  Awesome/ Awful

The Absurd:  Human tendency to search inherent value inability to find any

Cope:  Acceptance of absurd, religious, suicide

Bad Faith:  when individuals negate truth in an attempt to become a self they are not.

Doesn't sound so optimistic, does it?  Basically all fixed definition of human nature is rejected by existentialism (to the extent that it's all one thing, which wouldn't hold up), and the existence of God is rejected, and of rigid and meaningful social forms and societal norms.  So what's left?  A bunch of conventions, which can be changed, and a process of searching for more functional self-definition.  

Jordan Peterson doesn't care for all that because social conventions play a real role, whether we think of them as rigid and well grounded or not.  If you throw out the gender roles for men and women family structures are likely to become a lot less stable, and a real connection to biologically based natural tendencies gets tossed out with them.  

He talks more about the second point (connection between biology and conventional roles), but I think his concern is more the first, that men can become more feminine (or women more masculine, assertive and such), or people being gay can be completely accepted in a society, or trans-gender status can be, but if you lose all of it there are no broad social patterns to fall under.  That's not a problem, it's the social roles related to those patterns dropping out that is problematic.  Instead of kids growing up with a father and mother they could be raised by a group of ever-transitioning caregivers who may reject even the concept of pair-bonded relationships, between any defined or undefined genders.  That extends the problem a bit, because gay couples tend to embrace pair-bonding too, but rejection of social forms could lead to later extensions of rejections of social forms.  It's not really something I'm worried about; I'm trying to explain what I see as one part of Jordan Peterson's critique.

It's easy to see how this maps to conservative fixed adherence to past social definitions and roles, and liberal rejection of those in any strong form.  

Does this work, the broad project to criticize changes in perspective of social roles?  To an extent.  Is it a problem that people in the US now don't see gender roles in the same ways?  The culture is less unified than it could be, for sure.  70 years ago in the US "white culture" was fairly unified around the idea that black people are fundamentally different and inferior, and surely black people were a lot less certain of that.   Perspective was not unified. So there were just two cultures, right?  And related to shared perspective issues someone who believed that all "races" are equal would have had a lot of trouble talking to someone who thought that of course black people were fundamentally different and inferior.

It's not so simple mapping this to changes in gender role definitions, which are some fundamental categories.  Some people on the liberal side would feel that relatively rigid definitions of male and female should be "dissolved," just as a lot of people in the US felt that racism should be dropped, those categories dissolved, although some people still don't agree with that.

From a narrow, somewhat flawed perspective this would be all about rejecting trans-people's right to exist.  It's not about that, really.  It's about whether or not retaining some variation of traditional masculine and feminine identification should be important, if the concepts of mother and father should be retained, for example.  Some people would say no; a woman can be a father, and a man could make a great mother.  

I'm reminded of an ex-girlfriend telling me that I would make a great mother, because I was good with some maternal aspects of raising her daughter that she had trouble with (a little girl I loved very much).  Sometimes my daughter calls me mommy to make fun of this same set of ideas, because I empathize with her and care for her in ways a mother traditionally should instead.  I help her shower and get ready for bed every night, for example, even though of course at this point she needs no help, because she's 8.  It's a ritual role and activity, and her messing around until I start to get angry about that is part of the normal process.  Last night it was making a "beauty treatment mask" out of toilet paper, and often it's something about making potions.  I love those experiences; I value them.  Just not on days when I'm tired and in a hurry.

Moving back to the Bible, it's teaching people to live within social expectations through stories.  It's a little problematic that old testament versions are kind of dated, so people might get killed by stoning for relatively trivial offenses in stories, or slavery could seem normal, or whatever else they did or didn't object to as much 2500 years ago could come up.  The lessons about being empathetic and supporting others and society, even at the cost of sacrificing your own self-interest, would hold up better across time and shifting social norms.  It's all not as hard to sort out as what Nietzsche or Kant said, so there's that.

Jordan Peterson's statement that the Bible grounds a lot of modern forms of literature and worldview I see as partly right, maybe even completely right within the bounds of how he probably meant it.  If you look back through that list of ideas put forth by existentialism (in a crib-notes study guide reference form) it completely conflicts almost all of the assumptions the Bible starts from:  society and human nature are based on rigid, externally defined forms, there are clearly defined norms for right and wrong, self-determination relates to accepting these boundaries and acting within them, as externally directed, etc.  

So which set of ideas is wrong, or more right?  People make that selection in relation to assumptions, which are largely inherited, and often only develop them a little through internal review.  My own take might involve a bit more explicit review for being on that page (interested in this general subject), but in the end maybe I just fall back on what feels right to me to, in relation to which parts of the two sets of ideas I accept.  I suppose I merge them.  Or to give myself more credit I resolve some of the assumptions that lead to these contradictions at the level of assumptions instead of getting this far, on to different conclusions.  Something like "people are born with a blank slate" is just wrong, but it takes too long to unpack the two levels on which this is incorrect, about societal perspective being a framework and how genetics factors in.

Let's be clear, Jordan Peterson can accept that social roles and definitions, and moral norms, are all defined through an organic process of reason and natural evolution of forms, not through dictates from a real God.  This was really Kant's project, building it all up from reason, without any need for random and shifting external forms, which kind of didn't work.  Nietzsche felt that people were right at the cusp of completely rejecting a lot of prior norms, evolving past them, and that's not as much in contrast with thinking that relatively fixed social norms evolve through rational development as it might seem.  Nietzsche didn't see it all as rational in the same sense that Kant did, but it works out similarly enough anyway, that instead of a rational mapping process explaining it all, and then eliminating inconsistencies, we can experience a re-write of social forms through the input of greater vision, creativity, and self-awareness.  Nietzsche's ideas lead more directly to what JP's "philosophical opponents" take up than what he does.

Except those opponents, the modern "Marxists," kind of don't really exist.  People are certainly acting on continued ideas and forms from earlier Existentialism, but there are no "boogeymen" of people who really know what they are doing in proposing ingenuine and manipulative philosophical positions, and then also advocate flawed derived norms.  Some of the social forms probably are problematic, and ideas flawed, there is just no insidious conspiracy to push it all through as Peterson describes.  Maybe there might as well be; some Hollywood movies are still impacted as if there was.  

If you look long enough you could find academics with related positions to debate, but they aren't influential known figures, or people pulling the strings from the shadows, they're just college professors or authors.  Contemporary atheism has proven much more popular, related to selling books and drawing attention, and that's unrelated.

Related to how I personally place Christianity, I think what Jesus taught is what people need to hear, even though I've been influenced a lot more by taking up Buddhism.  Buddhism is too hard for almost everyone; it's a process of guided introspection that involves a number of components, different functional tools and contextual references.  There's no one clear and simple modern form to review and try to follow.  Christianity is better; the moral teachings are essentially equivalent, and they work.  

this role represents a part of Buddhist religion but to me the core meaning is something else

For people who absolutely need to get the rest sorted out Buddhism could be the best reference, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it.  Sometimes the shortest path seems long, and Buddhism really is a long path.  The goal of understanding and revising your own worldview wouldn't be for everyone.   There's a bit on one core component here that fills part of that in.

Can we put Jordan Peterson's assertion that the Bible underpins a modern Western worldview to use in any way?  Not really, I don't think.  Reading the New Testament helps identify what Jesus really taught, but getting through the Old Testament is all but impossible for almost everyone, regardless of what is or isn't in there, or how much filtering would be required to place the ideas.  It's still interesting to consider, for me, but I'm not sure how common that positive reaction to the idea would be.  Jordan Peterson's broader themes are more worthy of consideration, or early work on meaning and psychology basics, but as I've covered here I see it all as connected.

Talking to Bronislav Vinogrodskiy, the father of the modern Russian tea tradition

 

photo credit Suzana

So much interesting scope to uncover in this, even though I won't get to most of what we talked to Bronislav about, for the usual reasons, mostly that discussion covered a lot of scope.  Let's start back with who he is, and justify that claim related to him founding a national tea tradition.  I won't cite it here but in talking to a number of Russian contacts about tea themes that cultural transition role credit is always consistent.

For context, Russians have drank tea for a long time.  I'll surely get the history and cultural context slightly wrong, which I covered further here, but my take is that consumption of herb teas (tisanes) is a longstanding tradition in Eastern Europe, and an old connection with China had developed tea interest.  Then a sort of difference of political views and reduction of trade volume with China led to Russians drinking more Sri Lankan tea.  So it was on a base of tea interest that a modern tea enthusiast movement developed, similar to but different in form in relation the US range of experience.  

Bronislav's personal context related to studying Chinese language and culture, and doing a lot of research, translation, and commentary based on Chinese philosophy and religion texts.  He's written many books on a diverse range of subjects along those lines, with special emphasis on Taoism and the I Ching, a very old practice of Chinese divination (fortune telling).  He also mentioned studying other broad schools of ideas in that discussion, which is part of what I won't describe in detail here; a partial summary is enough.  I'll speculate about that divination theme more at the end here, but to be clear I've not discussed that subject at length with him.  

So what he brought to Russia was awareness of a higher quality range of teas, and a tea club practice, which has taken firm root there, and extended into the presence of many such organizations and facilities.  It's not exactly like a Western cafe, and doesn't really fit well into any Western paradigm.  I suppose the main parallels would be drawn from Chinese culture and settings, which I'm really not familiar with.  In this talk he mentioned a bit more about that development step, the sharing between cultures.  Just not the details of the forms it took along the way, eg. moving from a social group or academic interest scope, onto being based in non-dedicated locations, then as new facilities forms, and so on.  

a Russian tea club (a Moychay hosted version, but there are others)

He explained that he saw helping develop an interest in tea, and practices related to drinking tea, as a sort of experiment in introducing an aspect of one culture to another, or sharing forms.  This leads directly to those religious / philosophical underpinnings, which also connect.  It brings to mind the tea ceremonial aspects that are slightly familiar in "the West" now, just perhaps expressed in a range of different forms.  The older Taoist-oriented Chinese form isn't as rigidly defined and orchestrated as the Japanese tea ceremony, which is more about adherence to physical forms and meditative approach than the tea itself (per my take, at least).

A couple of loose threads remain, right, beyond questioning those intermediate steps?  How did one person manage to make that much change?  How did it "scale up" from beginnings in the 80s / 90s to being more mainstream today; just how fast did it develop?  This summary covers a lot less than it points towards.  Bronislav has published a number of texts (in Russian though), and holds regular speaking or workshop events, and has lots of content on Youtube.  It seems likely that if Google can provide a rough translation for that video content, in subtitle form, it would make for the easiest access into some of the rest.

Let's back up to another starting point instead, to the introduction he gave us about his surroundings and his place in Russian tea culture, and about other interests.

Moychay's Amsterdam store; a Russian take on Chinese tea culture is extending to Europe now

Introduction and Tour

Bronislav gave us a tour of his workspace and personal space in Moscow, a great introduction to some different themes.  He has a very impressive jade collection; a lot of diverse pieces, that represent forms within Chinese culture that I'm not familiar with, in addition to some that did ring a bell.  His paintings are nice, some abstract, some interpretations of reality.  A collection of Chinese reference texts and a short summary of his own published works was especially impressive.  Then the context that really made it relatable is how grounded and pleasant he comes across, as very genuine.  

It would be easy to take yourself a bit too seriously given that context of chasing an extensive set of related themes like that, and past successes.  He's developing ideas and works that dig deep into a foreign culture, across academic and artistic scope, related to a set of developed life practices.  Maybe seeing that context as "grounded" seems out of place, in relation to the other points I just made, but to me it connected back to an ordinary if slightly unconventional experience of reality.

He played some flute and guitar, introducing music as a theme that's important to him.  To some extent we can all connect to that, just for most not extending to creating music.  Bronislav explained how it serves as a meditation form for him.

This connection between tea themes and other Chinese culture was especially interesting.  I've formally studied Chinese philosophy and religion related to Buddhism and Taoism, but the subjects don't directly overlap with Western categories.  It's all a practical guide to living, based on cultural forms and extended to perspective and practices that aren't similar to a more analytical Western tradition.  

To help place that, to me logic and reason have their limits, and parts of life experience we can only model and treat indirectly, or just go with.  I gravitated more towards Buddhism, which places introspection and atypical self-development at the center, versus Chinese thinking emphasizing culture-based forms more, or integration with complex systems found in nature.  It doesn't conflict as much as it might sound.  Confucian teachings emphasize learned practices but Taoism is about adherence to natural patterns.  It's one of two separate inputs to create Zen Buddhism, which first evolved as Chan Buddhism in China.  According to a Chinese philosophy professor Chinese people can freely alternate between those three main forms of ideology across phases of their lives (Confucian thought, Taoism, and Buddhism), taking up whichever one suits them best related to their current perspective.

From there, to me, the next step towards the I Ching and divination requires a bit of unpacking.  From the oversimplified Western perspective (as much as there is just one, which isn't how that really works), we can simply "throw out" I Ching based fortune telling, along with astrology, and still embrace the functional input.  I'll explain that further, but astrology I'll set aside here.  I've experienced that in two completely distinct forms in the past, and it seems to work better than it should.  Maybe that's only because observing generalities is functional, whether or not specific predictions are ever accurate.

Bronislav and I discussed more long-term patterns in cultural development in that first talk awhile back.  I don't want to go too far into summarizing his position or views, because very short discussions didn't give me significant understanding of those.  But obviously long-term cultural transition patterns do occur, and to the extent we can consider these, and draw on other observations about them, a different perspective on societal and cultural changes could open up for us.  It's a similar theme that astrology and I Ching predictions could "work" even if they "don't work."  Observing underlying patterns could be very helpful, even if picking out the next pattern to be most relevant isn't going to be accurately dictated by star positions or throwing dice.  Where astrology talks about perspective patterns (personality forms and choices in relations to circumstances), the I Ching discusses event patterns and perspective context more, about cycles of personal transition, how to react in steady states and times of transition.

The most natural take on what I'm saying is a bit too reductive, that it only works to consider forms of patterns.  How else could a few hundred words on a complex cultural tradition go?  To some extent the value really is in the details instead.  I'm tempted to describe more about that personal experience with predictive astrology, about two specific predictions about my own life that "came true," and two others that are still open, that may or may not.  This whole post lends itself to pointing towards saying more later, introducing themes that it doesn't develop, so that can leave off in the same form.

One interesting theme was how Russian culture embraced parts of Chinese tradition so quickly.  Even without Bron's input a range of answers come to mind.  One is that it didn't; for sure the average Russian doesn't drink Chinese tea now.  On the opposite extreme it was a time of national and cultural change (the 90s, right after the end of the Soviet Union), so that people were quite open to change and new perspectives.  Such themes would probably be especially attractive when they overlapped with existing forms of Russian culture, but built on and developed those.  Or even when they didn't; according to our guide in Murmansk--one of overall favorite contacts in visiting Russia--interest in traditional religion was renewed at that time as well, in orthodox Christian belief.

an Eastern Orthodox Christian church in Murmansk

Roman, our favorite guide there (with lots of travel photos in this post)

These discussions about tea, Russian and Chinese cultures, Chinese philosophy and modern culture transitions (both not really covered in this session), jade, and Bronislav's personal history were only an introduction.  In a sense I suppose that could've been interpreted as unsatisfying, but to me it was very interesting, and much appreciated.  It would be really interesting to hear more from other references from him, and his Youtube videos have been set up to auto-translate into an English language form.  

For the discussion time being a bit short we focused on introduction.  It would've been nice to also hear Bronislav's take on societal changes in relation to this pandemic.  Of course it's just bad luck and virus mutation causing it, but the past year and a half have been an unusual time of change.  Surely his perspective on how broad societal shifts work out is very interesting, especially in relation to how people tend to react to such circumstances.  Ancient Chinese philosophy and the psychology of dealing with personal stresses are two different things, but the overlap must be interesting, and probably quite informative.  His online content must have delved into that a good bit already; if I hear more in looking into it I'll check back in here about that.  For online references he posts on Instagram and has an independent web page, which outlines more on seminar events and such, and a Facebook page referencing some of the rest.

looking up related pictures brought up some nice memories

from this past weekend; not really intended as a political statement