Hannah Arendt Center Amor Mundi

> But the platforms enabling this activism have also shown a disconcerting indifference to these struggles. After all, their priority is to keep users engaged – to keep us clicking, scrolling, and reacting. This drive for engagement has often led to the commodification of activism, reducing profoundly personal and political struggles to hashtags and trend cycles. Yes even HackerNews Which i really love. Discussion is great but short-lived on to the next best thing. Designed to keep us moving and prevents us from being contemplative and forming groups that can address the problems of modern society. We need to move away from these systems that are designed around trends. Discussion needs to be threaded by topics that need addressing and stay relevant until there is a a resolution or choice-point. But its hard when our society is built around these structures. I don't see a way out at the moment. BTW. Thanks to the author that posted this. This topic has been on my mind as well. Ill keep it archived for future reading, when we find ourselves in a authoritarian state that's much worse than it is now. If anyone has a links to organizations that are focused on combating our current social and political trends, post them. I have been looking at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities[0] as of late, looking into ways I can help create a new world with others who care about humanity. Hannah Arendt was a American author that wrote about totalitarianism during WWII.…

> corruption is actually considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we" are winning and "they" are losing. I think the end goal is domination. From https://mastodon.social/@JuliusGoat/109551955251655267 : It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied. It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination. It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect. It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point. For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest. https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/hypocrisy-and-fascism-2018-08-12

There is also a good review in the Financial Times which emphasises Stalin being well read. My favourite was 'On a book about the English Civil War, he made a mark comparing the Puritan chaplains of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army with the political commissars of the Soviet Red Army.' This is apparently a popular comparison and Putin is a Cromwell fan too. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/af83a4c8-966a-4bcc-8fb… (amp link hopefully avoids paywall) and https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/stalin-hitler-and-cromwell-and-the-pol… for a Stalin/Cromwell comparison.

It's mentioned at the beginning of the article, but Vaclav Havel's "Power of the Powerless" and particularly its parable of the greengrocer is worth a read: https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-power-of-the-powerless-vaclav-have…

For anybody looking on, this sort of Big Lie behavior is extremely common in the US these days. All that crazy stuff Europeans are seeing with JD Vance and Trump's Greenland behvaior is what everyday Americans experience on a wide range of topics. Having somebody link to a source that directly refutes their own claims, while acting indignant, is something I've experienced multiple times in the past week! It's quite shocking. When the Trump administration went so hard on open lies that are directly contradicted by videos we all saw of ICE events, it was vice-signaling that started even greater amounts of bearing false witness. Openly lying seems to signal "in-group" status these days, like the sign in the green grocer's shop[1]. Get people to lie about the evidence they see with their eyes, and the become completely controlled, because to do so is to have total subservience to their master. No more eyes or ears except for those of their master. People that used to have values slowly abandon them, all in service to the lie that they are living. "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." That is the state of the US at the moment. I have hope that we can return to our former sanity, or at least ensure that the reigns of power are in the hands of normal, centrist people instead of the extreme fringes, but it is in no way certain. [1] As Carney recently referenced from Vaclav Havel; here's a recentish essay on…

Nope. These days, most of it is "flood the zone with crap" stuff (1) that's wrong on even a quick inspection, not to mention contradictory to the rest of the crap. It's almost refreshing to see a good old-fashioned well-constructed propaganda edifice, and not a big pile of crap, one that that aims to get people to believe in something rather than nothing at all. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/on-fake-hannah-arendt-quotations-2024-… https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8220792-the-point-of-modern-propagand…

Oikos is a good one. Leftists who favor unrestricted immigration claim that conservatives who oppose it are motivated by xenophobia, when in fact it is oikophilia. https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/oikophilia-2020-01-29

related: https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/hypocrisy-and-fascism-2018-08-12

As a recovering reader, I'm partial to Albert Einstein: “Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.” https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/albert-einsteins-thoughts-on-thinking-…

This is in contrast to Victor Havel's essay on Communism, "The Power of the Powerless". Everyone except the boy in this story is Havel's green-grocer, who puts up a sign he doesn't believe in because that's how the incentives are aligned. Havel says that the only real solution is to not live a lie; it will probably result in more hardship for you, but it is the only way to avoid losing your humanity. [0] https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-power-of-the-powerless-vaclav-have…

Are you kidding? Universities have been kowtowing to politics for decades now. The latest example: https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/mit-disinvites-a-climate-scientist-202… Conservatives finally just woke up about it.

I am a liberal, and you also sound liberal, I am critiquing you from the context of seeing you as a trench mate in our impending civil war. I hope you understand that appeals to "racism" aren't winning you many friends. It's an absolutist position that ignores significant nuance and context, and worse it alienates moderates. Our founding fathers did better than those before them and deserve some credit for that. You are using today's morals to judge yesterday's actions with little reference to context. Were you in their positions, I doubt you could have done better. Their foundation is what gave you the privilege of judgement your post betrays. I would be surprised if you can give me a cogent history lesson, but I will listen to you tell me how European democracies were started. I think America and France shares significant philosophical heritage. I think you are denying the amount of time and effort it takes philosophy or culture to permeate an aristocracy. I am admittedly fairly ignorant in the area, I am open to listening. You can talk about American persecution of indigenous Americans compared to Europe, but Nazi Germany saw what Americans did and wanted to push eastward into slavic land in the same way Americans pushed westward. Quite literally Hitler wanted to do what Americans did to native Americans to Slavs, literally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum. So that idea of enlightened "high minded" Europe falls quite a bit short, particularly in the context…