antonomon

An essay on the global wave of anti-political anger

Unlike “anti-establishment” which a bit vague and overused to the point of meaninglessness, anti-politics describes a mood that doesn’t easily convert into governance. It’s a rejection and/or skepticism of politics as it exists to actualize people’s desires.

The essay documents three different examples of anti-politics historically:

- mass party radicalization after WW1 (rejection of the politics of consensus)

- forming a second culture outside of the state in Eastern Europe (viewing politics as a dead-end)

- today’s internet swarms (negating without a positive program) and the American case

Over a century ago, the world felt anxious and unsettled much like today

How an idea by philosopher Byung-Chul Han helps us reframe our world

As the Soviet Union fell apart, dissident writers in Central Europe came to power, but some had mixed feelings about their newfound purpose

As the Soviet Union fell apart, dissident writers in Central Europe came to power, but some had mixed feelings about their newfound purpose

Rereading Christopher Alexander's classic 1965 essay "A City Is Not a Tree" in the digital age

In his 2017 work Psychopolitics, Byung-Chul Han writes of how power today has grown reliant on manipulating psychological states, uniquely made possible by technologies of control. Its symptoms are of the mind, like burnout and diseases of despair, coupled with addiction and compulsion. Understanding psychopolitics helps us to reframe the time in which we live, where one’s mental state has become a leading place of conflict.

Very true. I like doing this as well. I think the path of least-resistance, sitting in our room, is actually the most harmful. Generative activity only happens when you're engaging with novelty and meeting others, even just in passing.

If you’re interested in reading about historic periods on the edge, times when people had to suddenly start over, then you may like this essay.

It's about the collapse of Austria-Hungary how and a generation of writers came to terms with having their whole world melt away.

In the past decade, the writer Simone Weil has grown in popularity and continues to provoke conversation some 80 years after her death. She was a writer mainly preoccupied with what she called “the needs of the soul.” One of these needs, almost prophetic in its relevance today, is the capacity for attention toward the world which she likened to prayer. Another is the need to be rooted in a community and place, discussed at length in her last book On the Need for Roots written in 1943.

You're eliminating all the nuance. Given that OpenAI effectively has a monopoly and is now suddenly being alarmist, makes it pretty clear this is "for their own gain." They have every incentive to to gatekeep the regulatory environment.

Contrary to the U.S. where they have their foot in the door and dominate, in the EU OpenAI has actively resisted regulation.

This inconsistency shows they just want regulatory capture and it's little more than just self-interest disguised as alarmism.

The New York World's Fair in 1939 promised a dream future unlike any other, but the consequences of its vision were buried beneath the spectacle.

Weekly review #5

Topics for this issue: "Storification" and the Abuses of Storytelling; Humanities on the Decline; and Why Writers Shouldn’t Worry about the Machines

Stories covered from the past week:

Tea with the Mujahideen, What Is "Hyperpolitics?", One Year of War in Ukraine, and a Murder at the Institute for Social Rejection

Based

Ever since it became a superpower, America has suffered from bouts of paranoia over its possible decline. But this time feels different.

Taken from Weekly Retrospective #1

"Jan 28th to Feb 4, 2023 — Introducing This Weekly; Mentions of Distress at Record High; Cold War Victory Syndrome; Weird AI Friendship Ads; and The Long 2010s."

A century ago, many different ideologies tapped into the locomotive as a metaphor in a struggle over the soul of the modern world.

The feeling of modernity, originally described by writers well over a century ago, is today shared by more people than ever.

Yeah, that’s a good point. Thanks for mentioning it

You can't say 1:1 directly that cheap credit = rise of Vanguard, but index funds have gotten really popular since 2008. The near-zero interest rate was the environment, and that environment was built on the Fed's policy goal of the Wealth Effect (belief of growth of assets boosts demand & spending). So, given that you could pretty much throw anything at the dart board among the giants and it would go up, indexes performed exceptionally well and capital poured into them. They were also initially seen as 'safer' post 2008 meltdown, but I think as the years passed it became less about this

But their growing concentration (esp. regarding Vanguard) has also worked to naturalize some of the largest companies as a 'group.' This kind of frame became sort of unavoidable amid all of them rising, so it's hard to separate the 'cheap money' environment from Vanguard's influence growing - especially since this macro environment also allowed for their entry into other ballooning assets like real estate w/ their ETF (which has been controversial)

The problem with this growing concentration is that, as Vanguard becomes a major holder of every top stock, then all those grouped assets are going to start moving more and more in lockstep the further the concentration grows. And that's less and less of a market to me, and more just a artifice unrelated to actual profitability. In all, this is another child of the post-Great Recession cheap money environment, although how directly you want to tie them together is debatable

While I try not to comment to 'defend my views' because it's a bit lame, I have to plainly say I am not "just opening my eyes to the huge role central banks play in the economy." I have been following markets many years, both as an investor and because I enjoy reading about economic history (also as part of my study).

My whole point with that sentence was - did you ever pay attention to a Jackson Hole conference before say 2022/2021, which was previously a relatively bureaucratic non-event? I certainly didn't, and now suddenly so many people around me were trying to trade it and the S&P500 moves 5% a day on it. That's the only point of that sentence, but you seem to be extrapolating much more from it... including whether or not I even deserve to write.

And are you really saying that not knowing of a Jackson Hole conference is indicative of 'not knowing anything about the past?' or whatever it is you meant there. Either way, that's just ridiculous gatekeeping of knowledge of financial markets and history based on a useless, pidgeonholed criterion - like whether or not someone is familiar with Jackson Hole.

If you didn't like the article, that's totally okay, but don't be so arbitrarily dismissive.

Regardless of Wolf Richter, the Wealth Effect is an actual philosophy tapped into by Ben Bernanke and others post-2009

In defending the Fed’s bond-purchasing plan late last year, Bernanke said that “higher stock prices will boost consumer wealth and help increase confidence, which can also spur spending. Increased spending will lead to higher incomes and profits that, in a virtuous circle, will further support economic expansion” (2011)

https://fortune.com/2011/04/21/wheres-the-wealth-effect/

It continuing unabated for 13 years is a historical anomaly, however

The old economic world may be leaving us, but its pathologies stubbornly remain.

A historian claims a unique theory called elite overproduction can predict social unrest. In Czarist Russia, it allowed for nihilism. In America, it's still unclear.

How collective forgetting became embedded in the internet and why battle lines are now drawn over who remembers what.

"There has been a decoupling of politics and the social bases that democracy traditionally relied upon. In postwar political science, it was taken for granted that politics always had to consider its social bases. Yet, since the 1970s, many of these same social bases have undergone a hollowing out in post-industrial democracies. One example is the decline of labor and its share of total economic activity. Another is the dealignment of social and economic class with its expected ideological and political preferences. The same applies to religion. Amid weakened social bases, electoral outcomes are much more volatile as those identifying as 'independents' become the plurality."

[...]

"With the hollowing out of social bases, political power obsesses more and more over its own reproduction. It may even confusingly start to view its own self-preservation as a social base in itself. In this environment, state capacity really suffers and it struggles to accomplish even the most basic of policy goals, as many are familiar with."

Why is it a psuedo problem? I deal with its effects every day. Your excessive aggression seems to be symptomatic of the anti-social, terminally online.

Lol wtf? Jesus christ, nevermind then.