The strain of the neoliberal movement that crystallized in the 1990s out of these ideas marked the rise of a new fusionism. While the original fusionism of the 1950s and 1960s melded libertarianism and religious traditionalism in the style of William F. Buckley and the National Review, the new fusionism defended neoliberal policies through arguments borrowed from cognitive, behavioral, and evolutionary psychology and in some cases genetics, genomics, and biological anthropology. The phenomenon was apparent as early as 1987 to conservative historian Paul Gottfried. Whereas older conservatives may have used a language of religion to back up claims about human differences, Gottfried noted that they had begun to use disciplines like sociobiology in order to “biologicize” ethics, in the words of E.O. Wilson.

Contrary to claims that recent years have seen a decisive repudiation of neoliberalism by right-wing populists, it is this strange new coalition that underlies in part the ascent of today’s global right. In its ranks we can count not only a host of bit players—the likes of Murray Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and Peter Brimelow—but some of the right’s ringleaders: Steve Bannon, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk. (Gottfried, for his part, has been a “reluctant mentor” to Unite the Right’s keynote white nationalist in Charlottesville, Richard Spencer.) In many ways, ideas like Murray’s are the glue holding the whole edifice together. Over the past two decades, the self-avowed libertarian’s melding of genetic pronouncements with bootstrapping family-values talk has served as the bridge spanning divergent factions of the racialist right, from its IQ-obsessed, DEI-hating Silicon Valley wing to its white nationalist fringes.

In other words, this new right does not really reject globalism but advances a new strain of it—one that accepts an international division of labor while tightening controls on certain kinds of migration. It assigns intelligence averages to countries in a way that collectivizes and renders innate the concept of “human capital.” It appeals to values and traditions that cannot be captured statistically, shading into a language of national essences and national character. The fix it finds in race, culture, and nation is but the most recent iteration of a pro-market philosophy based not on the idea that we are all the same but that we are in a fundamental, and perhaps permanent way, different.

Quinn Slobodian, Free Markets and Fixed Natures

(No, I don't think WW3 is coming anytime soon, the meme is just funny)

That said, fuck US militarism

Hello, tech support? Yeah I ordered segregation but it came with a hierarchy of superiority and inferiority. Can you please help me fix this?

With all due respect, what does philosophy have to offer to Black women? It’s not obvious to me that philosophy has anything special to offer Black women today. I make this provocative claim to shift the burden to the discipline to explain why it is good enough for us; we should be tired of always having to explain how and prove that we are good enough for the discipline.

Anita L Allen

Western philosophy offers very little in ways to ease the lives of people, especially oppressed people. Partly because of how inaccessible it is, partly because of how theoretical it is, disinterested in lived experiences and subjectivity of the cultures. It tries to be or pretends to be above cultural variance but is hopelessly trapped by its own myopic vision of possibilities of thought-action dual:

One such assumption within Western philosophy is that philosophy is a propositional discipline that aims at the establishment of true doctrines. But such a conception of philosophy has not been dominant in all philosophical traditions. In the Chinese tradition, the notion of philosophy as aiming at the establishment of true doctrines (a Truth-seeking paradigm) has historically been superseded by the notion of philosophy as a way of life (a Way-seeking paradigm).

Such a Way-seeking paradigm can also be found in Buddhism. It is a religious and philosophical tradition that focuses more on practice than on doctrine. In religious studies, a distinction is made between orthodoxic religious traditions that put an emphasis on correct belief in theological and philosophical doctrines, and orthopraxic ones that emphasize correct practice. Buddhism stresses orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy. It is therefore characterized by a kind of spiritual pragmatism that is intensified in Zen. As the thirteenth-century Japanese Zen master Dogen wrote, “a Buddhist should neither argue superiority or inferiority of doctrines, but only be mindful of authenticity or inauthenticity of practice.”

As Pierre Hadot has argued, in ancient Western philosophy such a Way- seeking paradigm was common. Philosophy was practiced by the ancients as a form of áskesis—a practice of continual self-overcoming and self- transformation. With the rise of Christianity in the West, philosophy became an orthodoxy, a quest for correct doctrine. Philosophy was no longer practiced as a way of life because the Christian way of life was already established as the only true one. Philosophy became a theoretical practice aimed at the justification of the revealed truths of Christianity. In the Chinese tradition, the reverse occurred: Truth-seeking philosophies (such as the Mohists for example) were relegated to the countercultural margins of the tradition.

Andre van der Braak, Nietzsche and Zen

welcome to rail reality

Post by Amtrak on TikTok via Masha @ The Polls!!!!

Usually companies making memefied ads is awful as fuck but this made me laugh

Truly nothing wilder to me than seeing that people have Patreons for their ai "art" slop

Good Sunday.

The rise of furries, therians, and otherkin in modern alternative spaces can be directly attributed to the rise of modern Christian nationalism and humanism, which stands in direct opposition to integration and association with the natural and animal world. Whereas in the animistic past, association with fellow animals was commonplace, modern white Anglo-Saxon Protestantism sees nature as a thing to dominate, and totemism and druidry as Satanic.

Not endorsing this theory, but a fascinating thought

People Are Being Involuntarily Committed After Spiraling into ChatGPT Psychosis
Article, Comments

Fascinating