culture war dynamics

what is the relationship between ideological commitment and status seeking? is an ideology a particular status game you've opted into? do people select the highest status ideology they can get away with? are they just two independent drivers of social behavior?

It would sure make things easy if this election were a simple contest of good versus evil. But this is the way of thinking that is tearing the world apart. Those who think that way always consider themselves to be members of Team Good, of course. If your opponent is evil incarnate, then any means to stop him are justified.

The problem with raging against the machine is that the machine has learned to feed off rage

I won’t play the game of denouncing or endorsing. The psycho-social patterning of “which side are you on” springs from one of the chief narratives of the mythology of Separation. It understands the world by simplifying it into a drama of good versus evil, and also simplifies the human beings who play roles in that drama into subhuman or superhuman ... See more

Donald Trump is an uncannily accommodating vessel for projection, good and ill. It occurs as something of a cosmic joke that his last name is “Trump,” which is the Joker in a deck of cards, a wild card, the card that can be any card. So it is that Donald Trump can be any character, whatever people hold him to be. This serves both to elevate him and... See more