We Are Not Saved

I recently read American Carnage, the story of the development of the Republican Civil War and the events which led to the current political crisis. While reading it I was struck by a question, not why is this happening now, but rather why isn't it always this way? I think I have the answer to that question and it involves nationalism, wars, immigration and most of all the sayings of the Pashtun.

From the perspective of our system of government there are a lot of deviations currently going on. Many of them are being normalized. In the based we could correct deviations by means of amending the Constitution, but that no longer seems possible. Meaning we have largely decided to normalize them and hope that they're improvements, or at least not the kind of thing that is going to make the entire structure crash. As you might imagine I have my doubts that this is even possible.

This is the monthly episode where I review all the books I read over the past month. This time I'm mixing it up by doing very short reviews of some while doing longer reviews of the others. Here's a list of the books I mention: Extremes by Various The Lazy Dungeon Master by Michael Shea Blood Song by Anthony Ryan The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master by Michael Shea Once Upon a Time in Russia by Ben Mezrich The Iliad by Homer Don't Sleep There are Snakes by Daniel Everett American Carnage by Tim Alberta

All more enlightened forms of government require certain institutions and customs in order to function. Democratic capitalism doesn't work without strong contract enforcement and low corruption for example. Is it possible that there are institutions and customs yet (or about) to be discovered and implemented which would make communism work. If so would that be enough to "save" humanity? Perhaps, but there's a lot of things working against that idea as well.

I recently read an article titled How I Almost Destroyed a £50 million War Plane and The Normalisation of Deviance. In this post I examine the idea of deviance and what it means to normalize it. The article most examined it from the perspective of smaller systems, but I'm interested in what it looks like if we take the concept and apply it to society as a whole.

Following up on a previous post I discuss the possible rise of a new civic religion, starting with some stories about how what people feel comfortable signaling support for has changed. Historically replacing one religion with another civic or otherwise has been accompanied by bloodshed and no small amount of violence. Will this time be similar?

My book reviews for the month of July (along with one podcast). The Blade Itself (1 of 3 First Law Trilogy) Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics Fall of Civilizations (Podcast) The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing Wild at Heart Revised and Updated: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul (Religious) A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumphs

Like many people the 50th anniversary of the first man on the moon is an opportunity for retrospection, and the thing that jumps out to me and to everyone is the fact that after Apollo was over we haven't been back. What does that mean for the future of space exploration, and particularly colonization, given that if colonization isn't in our future then we're going to go extinct sooner or later and probably sooner. If we assume that something resembling Moore's Law, also affects space exploration what does that tell us about when we might reach certain celestial bodies?

In a continued attempt to drill down into cultural evolution, I examine whether, in addition to cultural evolution, if there's a separate phenomenon which deserves the label memetic evolution. I conclude there is a phenomenon, but that a better label for it is "memetic accumulation" and that there are some worrying things happening with the speed and diversity of this accumulation.

I recently read the book Alone, by Michael Korda. It was about the opening months of World War II, and he said that at the time the French had the reputation as the world's preeminent military power. This obviously turned out to not be the case, but in the past they had been. Is there anything where we're overemphasizing our view of the past, and overlooking that what might happen in the future will almost certainly be completely different. I think there is...