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Thanks jpc. Been busy and, in any case, have little other to add than what's been said already. Glad to see the forum is still going strong.
Criticism of Israel is very triggering generally, and I was schooled at a time when the wisdom orthodoxy was to understand and intrinsically oppose totalitarianism (so the mid to late C20th). The Holocaust is an important learning tool for this, although the opening up of the archives from the USSR meant that it receded as the only body of knowledge. There are many studies - Arendt and Frankl for example - that were born of an effort to understand what goes on during totalitarian governance that are invaluable. Sadly, this is now of a previous time and the ideologicalisation (the reduction of the citizenry to chattel status) of society is now the current thing. That's why the last sentence of my previous post resonated.
Events in the USSR and Nazi Germany are not at all the only examples of "mass formation psychosis" but they are both closely documented and took place in modernised societies. We don't have as much detail of what happened in PRC or Cambodia (or indeed the Aztec empire) so these two are particularly prominent in the literature. I think of Israel as another human culture and community subject to the storms and shallows of history. Their exceptional days are in the distant past. They're people just like the rest of us and react in the same way according to a given situation.
I would say, too, that the widespread introduction of women into academia, and the close study of the patterns of domestic abusers, produced very revealing information on criminal practices on the macro political stage. Why people behave in ways that seem unthinkable is a problem that many find impossible to grasp or accept as real. We're finding out that women are just as prone to abusive habits as men (take what happened in Abu Graib) as they're thrust into the tooth and claw of the natural world. This should point to the fact that it is not men or women that are the fundamental factors of abuse, but defective individuals whose inclinations are magnified by the power to stream others into collaberation.
I posted a video of a conversation between Pageau and Boghassian that points to a conceptual structure that offers an explanatory solution - the possibilities of a particular cosmology (be it transcendent or materialistic). Take for example the use of sandflies on puppies - this would be impossible and appear monstrous for normal people but is routine in certain scientific circles, and is well documented for those that have the stomach for it.
What may seem impossible to a normal human being (like the commission of callous cruelties and sadism) is valorised in certain frameworks of thinking as empowering. This is why the notion of a "mind virus" caught on. I think that this "mental realm of possibility" is a very important point that is, unfortunately, rather vague to commonsense as it is prior to its awareness given it supplies its assumptions. While the wicked do suffer a debuff on their intelligence and talent due to the effects of wickedness, they do have the advantage that their behaviour is difficult to recognise given it is considered so stupid that it is disregarded as an explanation.
This anti-totalitarian disposition in Western liberal democratic thought is why Jordan Peterson (though I know that some find him tiresome) became a significant person - he was closer to the centre of gravity of the greater body of the people. That centre of rotation has been moving from the centre which is why we're experiencing increasing instability. The plate spinning of human civilisation is becoming unmanageable - so many plates with haphazard forms. Peterson was also schooled according to the anti-totalitarian mission which is why he took such a counter-intuitive stance (in career terms) when it came to the ideological "rectification" of Canadian academia. He should be given a break. While not perfect, he makes a contribution in elucidating and revalorising healthy and functional patterns of behaviour.
Anyway, there's a tldr contribution for yah. Hope you're well and sure it'll be grand.
READ MORE: Israel’s top court rules ultra-Orthodox Jews must be drafted
