We can't reverse this trend, because it has served as the cultural identity of American conservatives since the Vietnam days of hard hats versus doves. It will always be about rugged individualism and toughness for American conservatives. It is hardwired into their DNA and is expressed through their politics as an inevitable downstream c…
We can't reverse this trend, because it has served as the cultural identity of American conservatives since the Vietnam days of hard hats versus doves. It will always be about rugged individualism and toughness for American conservatives. It is hardwired into their DNA and is expressed through their politics as an inevitable downstream consequence. Hard hats, war hawks, ditto heads, tea baggers, MAGA. The line of evolution is so clear. This is why these people don't see wealth inequality or social inequality as a problem. They have no empathy for others. They just want to tell people that they should accept inequality as a consequence of personal action, because in their head institutionalized injustice doesn't exist. American conservatism since Vietnam can basically be boiled down to social indifference as an identity marker.
The whole rugged individualism is such BS, frankly. It is the province and mindset of the truly clueless.
Are there some (US) people around who could survive if you dropped them in the middle of nowhere? A few, maybe. Even trained survivalists would have a hard time without having some starting gear and clothing to start with... clothing and gear that they (in all likelihood) did not make.
I used to watch a show called Alone (not sure if it is still running).
TBH, it was a fairly boring show. It mostly consisted of watching people slowly starve to death while on the way to a psychological collapse from being... you guessed it, alone.
In all of the seasons I watched, I do not think anyone lasted the entire time--but luckily it was a last man standing contest.
Even small injuries (by modern standards)could take you out of the contest (and not because they forced you out, but because you could not actually survive and you sat-phoned for them to come save you).
A majority of people simply collapsed psychologically--particularly those with families. They literally could not handle being alone. It destroyed them.
And most of the contestants were actual survivalist types,
It WAS pretty educational though--about some survival things, but mostly about human psychology.
Most humans handle isolation VERY poorly. As Aristotle observed in his Politics--man is a political animal--by which he means that our need and desire for community/socialization is innate and central.
That is why there was so much resistance to lockdowns and the closing of social spaces--because the digital space pales in comparison--it does not actuallymeet the needs of people for socialization nearly as well as being in the company of actual people.
The survivalists from Alone would have done better than the average person--usually because I suspect they tend to be more introverted, thus their social requirements are lower (but still extant).
Of course the irony is most of them would do horribly on a two-week Outward Bound program. For all their love of yeomanry, they are very dependent people.
There is a preference (for evolutionary reasons), among human males, for physical toughness and this is seen as equivalent to or superior to mental toughness--if mental toughness is even considered.
Which is interesting, because in most high end military training (like SEALS or special forces) the objective is to test the mental toughness of the candidate. You can reach THAT breaking point more quickly and easily than the physical breaking point, in most cases.
Lawyering is inherently corrupt--because the central activity of a lot of law (as practiced) is the manipulation of the law or of circumstances so as to avoid punishment... or to write/rewrite law so as to make that avoidance more difficult (thus requiring an intimacy with the corruption of principle and of language).
Ideally we should expect more, but that is an ideal and rarely achieved.
We can't reverse this trend, because it has served as the cultural identity of American conservatives since the Vietnam days of hard hats versus doves. It will always be about rugged individualism and toughness for American conservatives. It is hardwired into their DNA and is expressed through their politics as an inevitable downstream consequence. Hard hats, war hawks, ditto heads, tea baggers, MAGA. The line of evolution is so clear. This is why these people don't see wealth inequality or social inequality as a problem. They have no empathy for others. They just want to tell people that they should accept inequality as a consequence of personal action, because in their head institutionalized injustice doesn't exist. American conservatism since Vietnam can basically be boiled down to social indifference as an identity marker.
The whole rugged individualism is such BS, frankly. It is the province and mindset of the truly clueless.
Are there some (US) people around who could survive if you dropped them in the middle of nowhere? A few, maybe. Even trained survivalists would have a hard time without having some starting gear and clothing to start with... clothing and gear that they (in all likelihood) did not make.
I used to watch a show called Alone (not sure if it is still running).
TBH, it was a fairly boring show. It mostly consisted of watching people slowly starve to death while on the way to a psychological collapse from being... you guessed it, alone.
In all of the seasons I watched, I do not think anyone lasted the entire time--but luckily it was a last man standing contest.
Even small injuries (by modern standards)could take you out of the contest (and not because they forced you out, but because you could not actually survive and you sat-phoned for them to come save you).
A majority of people simply collapsed psychologically--particularly those with families. They literally could not handle being alone. It destroyed them.
And most of the contestants were actual survivalist types,
It WAS pretty educational though--about some survival things, but mostly about human psychology.
I wonder how they did in the pandemic lockdown.
Most humans handle isolation VERY poorly. As Aristotle observed in his Politics--man is a political animal--by which he means that our need and desire for community/socialization is innate and central.
That is why there was so much resistance to lockdowns and the closing of social spaces--because the digital space pales in comparison--it does not actuallymeet the needs of people for socialization nearly as well as being in the company of actual people.
The survivalists from Alone would have done better than the average person--usually because I suspect they tend to be more introverted, thus their social requirements are lower (but still extant).
And yet they all cash their social security checks.
Of course the irony is most of them would do horribly on a two-week Outward Bound program. For all their love of yeomanry, they are very dependent people.
It takes a Unibomber to be a rugged individualistic reactionary crackpot able to live off the land even if he needed the USPS to get his jollies.
Yes, they might be taken aback to find that proximity to a Walmart isn't an inalienable right.
There is a preference (for evolutionary reasons), among human males, for physical toughness and this is seen as equivalent to or superior to mental toughness--if mental toughness is even considered.
Which is interesting, because in most high end military training (like SEALS or special forces) the objective is to test the mental toughness of the candidate. You can reach THAT breaking point more quickly and easily than the physical breaking point, in most cases.
Lawyering is inherently corrupt--because the central activity of a lot of law (as practiced) is the manipulation of the law or of circumstances so as to avoid punishment... or to write/rewrite law so as to make that avoidance more difficult (thus requiring an intimacy with the corruption of principle and of language).
Ideally we should expect more, but that is an ideal and rarely achieved.