I understand why this post is so largely unupvoted.
Firstly, it looks like it suggests the idea that individual politicians who represent countries don’t make any significant special impact, which if of course wrong. Also people might say that you are mixing two different things: war on cancer is not a war while war in Ukraine is very real, even though it happens to be not on the grounds of America or EU. But your post explains that this is a totally different kind of comparison.
Secondly, most lesswrongers don’t seem to care about Russia and Ukraine anymore since nuclear war is obviously delayed.
In any case, I some ideas in the post and in the comments interesting.
Nobody’s in charge, and still things somehow get going. Things that happen because many people think they will actually happen.
Let’s take Russian political system, for example. Many people in the West think that Russian political system is an incredibly terrible dictatorship that inherits directly from USSR.
This is true in general, but not true in particular.
First of all, modern Russian political system does not inherit from the Soviet one.
After the fall of USSR in 1992, many Russian people got caught in a false dichotomy which stated that only one of the 2 scenarios can happen:
Russia is a strong mighty dictatorship, feared and respected by the rest of the world. It also has great science, art and culture.
Russia is an anarchist piece of nothing, powered by “democratic” values, despised by everyone. It has no science, no art and no culture.
It’s a false dichotomy, of course. The 1990s weren’t such a bad time, too, though it obviously was a time of chaos, anarchy and destruction of moral values which used to be proclaimed widely (including altruism and progressivism, too). Business developed, and there were attempts of building a democracy (good ones, too). But many people do live in the paradigm of viewing the destruction of USSR as a tragedy, and this thinking pattern is important.
Putinism was born on the verge of the millenium as a drastic attempt to “undo the damage”. Therefore it is not based on any certain ideology. The core of it is grabbing on every “strong-looking” and “patriotic-looking” idea since ever. Communism? Let’s take some! Monarchy? Why, that’s good! Christianity? Looks fancy, give me more of this shit! Soviet Marxism, Atheism and Progressivism? We got a corner for those! Ancient pagan traditions? Why, they’ll fit somewhere too!
Putinism is pure conservatism for the sake of conservatism itself. Unlike other forms of conservative, it is not spoiled by any actual system of beliefs. I’ll put it this way: putinism is not a belief-in belief, it was born as belief in the belief-in-belief. Putin himself is not the inspirator of this but a product. Try to imagine that in your head, then go on.
But dressing up as a dictatorship is not the same thing as being a dictatorship. This is the key point. Putin started by selling an image of dictatorship to people who were tired of democracy which turned out to be anarchy. That’s it.
Putin did start his career by closing down the independent media which was mocking him agressively. But then he didn’t proceed with this policy. The dressing-up was done, he could get to business now.
Apart from this Russia still did have some democratic institutions ready for application. They still existed for sure until February 24th, though in a limited way. It is just the majority knows nothing of them. The majority expects Putin to be a dictator, and so he behaves like a dictator, making majority even more sure that he is one. Same way the West used to grab on old Soviet paradigms, calling Russia “an aggressor”, therefore Russian government tries to behave like that, making Western media even more confident.
By the way, the “aggressor-like” pretense was primarily directed at the Russian population—probably because a Strong Dictatorship would behave like that.
There’s nothing so “special” or “inhumane” in that which has to be explained by genetical/cultural impatience and aggressiveness of Russian people—this one is a statement especially funny to see on a website like Lesswrong. Just normal development of a country in specific conditions which has lead to… this.
All the role-play lead to the war which is a huge role-play too. Nations are putting on their century-old clothes (it’s just that Russia took the German costume this time).
And eventually—I strongly agree with you—this has to stop. It has to stop right now. There must be a way for de-escalation.
God damn it, I’m always forgetting that “there must be a way” doesn’t necessarily mean “there is a way”.
Apart from this Russia still did have some democratic institutions ready for application. They still existed for sure until February 24th, though in a limited way. It is just the majority knows nothing of them.
Could you be more specific? When journalists are getting shot and political opponents poisoned, how specifically does this “image of dictatorship” differ from true dictatorship, and where are the “democratic institutions” hiding?
About the things that you’ve mentioned—yes, he’s been doing that since the very beginning. I see that as a part of keeping his image.
As far as I know, even though in the modern world democracy often goes along with human rights and freedom of public speech and other things, it isn’t necessarily defined by them.
When I mentioned democratic institutions, I meant the institutions through which the government can reply to the needs of the people, like the administrative (!!!) courts, or local small town and neighbourhood parlaments, or special development programs. Some oppositioners do use them as a way to influence the government and make the lives of ordinary people better. They target mostly economical questions and public services improvement (like the “CityProjects”) and other things. I do respect those people, they’ve made a lot of good impact.
By democracy I mean the fact when people can discuss questions which are really important to them, like the wage sizes or the public services or education or other things like that with the government and work out solutions for those problems together.
But you are right, at a certain point the image of dictatorship becomes indistinguishable from the real thing. It’s probably happened now.
I understand why this post is so largely unupvoted.
Firstly, it looks like it suggests the idea that individual politicians who represent countries don’t make any significant special impact, which if of course wrong. Also people might say that you are mixing two different things: war on cancer is not a war while war in Ukraine is very real, even though it happens to be not on the grounds of America or EU. But your post explains that this is a totally different kind of comparison.
Secondly, most lesswrongers don’t seem to care about Russia and Ukraine anymore since nuclear war is obviously delayed.
In any case, I some ideas in the post and in the comments interesting.
Nobody’s in charge, and still things somehow get going. Things that happen because many people think they will actually happen.
Let’s take Russian political system, for example. Many people in the West think that Russian political system is an incredibly terrible dictatorship that inherits directly from USSR.
This is true in general, but not true in particular.
First of all, modern Russian political system does not inherit from the Soviet one.
After the fall of USSR in 1992, many Russian people got caught in a false dichotomy which stated that only one of the 2 scenarios can happen:
Russia is a strong mighty dictatorship, feared and respected by the rest of the world. It also has great science, art and culture.
Russia is an anarchist piece of nothing, powered by “democratic” values, despised by everyone. It has no science, no art and no culture.
It’s a false dichotomy, of course. The 1990s weren’t such a bad time, too, though it obviously was a time of chaos, anarchy and destruction of moral values which used to be proclaimed widely (including altruism and progressivism, too). Business developed, and there were attempts of building a democracy (good ones, too). But many people do live in the paradigm of viewing the destruction of USSR as a tragedy, and this thinking pattern is important.
Putinism was born on the verge of the millenium as a drastic attempt to “undo the damage”. Therefore it is not based on any certain ideology. The core of it is grabbing on every “strong-looking” and “patriotic-looking” idea since ever. Communism? Let’s take some! Monarchy? Why, that’s good! Christianity? Looks fancy, give me more of this shit! Soviet Marxism, Atheism and Progressivism? We got a corner for those! Ancient pagan traditions? Why, they’ll fit somewhere too!
Putinism is pure conservatism for the sake of conservatism itself. Unlike other forms of conservative, it is not spoiled by any actual system of beliefs. I’ll put it this way: putinism is not a belief-in belief, it was born as belief in the belief-in-belief. Putin himself is not the inspirator of this but a product. Try to imagine that in your head, then go on.
But dressing up as a dictatorship is not the same thing as being a dictatorship. This is the key point. Putin started by selling an image of dictatorship to people who were tired of democracy which turned out to be anarchy. That’s it.
Putin did start his career by closing down the independent media which was mocking him agressively. But then he didn’t proceed with this policy. The dressing-up was done, he could get to business now.
Apart from this Russia still did have some democratic institutions ready for application. They still existed for sure until February 24th, though in a limited way. It is just the majority knows nothing of them. The majority expects Putin to be a dictator, and so he behaves like a dictator, making majority even more sure that he is one. Same way the West used to grab on old Soviet paradigms, calling Russia “an aggressor”, therefore Russian government tries to behave like that, making Western media even more confident.
By the way, the “aggressor-like” pretense was primarily directed at the Russian population—probably because a Strong Dictatorship would behave like that.
There’s nothing so “special” or “inhumane” in that which has to be explained by genetical/cultural impatience and aggressiveness of Russian people—this one is a statement especially funny to see on a website like Lesswrong. Just normal development of a country in specific conditions which has lead to… this.
All the role-play lead to the war which is a huge role-play too. Nations are putting on their century-old clothes (it’s just that Russia took the German costume this time).
And eventually—I strongly agree with you—this has to stop. It has to stop right now. There must be a way for de-escalation.
God damn it, I’m always forgetting that “there must be a way” doesn’t necessarily mean “there is a way”.
Could you be more specific? When journalists are getting shot and political opponents poisoned, how specifically does this “image of dictatorship” differ from true dictatorship, and where are the “democratic institutions” hiding?
About the things that you’ve mentioned—yes, he’s been doing that since the very beginning. I see that as a part of keeping his image.
As far as I know, even though in the modern world democracy often goes along with human rights and freedom of public speech and other things, it isn’t necessarily defined by them.
When I mentioned democratic institutions, I meant the institutions through which the government can reply to the needs of the people, like the administrative (!!!) courts, or local small town and neighbourhood parlaments, or special development programs. Some oppositioners do use them as a way to influence the government and make the lives of ordinary people better. They target mostly economical questions and public services improvement (like the “CityProjects”) and other things. I do respect those people, they’ve made a lot of good impact.
By democracy I mean the fact when people can discuss questions which are really important to them, like the wage sizes or the public services or education or other things like that with the government and work out solutions for those problems together.
But you are right, at a certain point the image of dictatorship becomes indistinguishable from the real thing. It’s probably happened now.