These four eras – mass politics, post-politics, antipolitics and hyperpolitics – “are not just concepts,” Jäger says, “they have some empirical data behind them. ‘How institutionalised is society?’ is basically a question of, how does civil society look? How are membership organisations looking? What are the affiliations, what are the types of bonds that people have? That’s not very difficult to quantify. You can look at union membership, you can look at church attendance, you can look at less overtly political forms of belonging. The political axis is more difficult to measure, but not impossible – namely, how many people attend elections, how many people strike, how many people engage in political violence, how many people engage in political communication, write letters to editors or now post online?”
Fantastic read following the Guardian’s encapsulation article.
As someone’s who’s lived through the recent history covered, and struggled to summarize how we got here and what we should do, this gave me hope for the future and an idea of how to move forward. And the fact that Jager was born in the 90s makes me feel even more hopeful. (Less desolate is perhaps more accurate, while sitting in the Omni-shambles.)
Read the book, would recommend. Its a quick read. While his nomenclature is clunky (post politics vs anri politics? Come on) the idea that we are in a time period of both tightened politics but also stunted and hollowed out political institutions has a lot to it.
Could it just be as simple as people not understanding how the mechanics of a complex democratic state work, nor understanding how they can influence it in a meaningful way? And that the movements we see are manifestations of that lack of education and understanding?
In the US, we had (and still have) people in unions who voted for free trade without realizing the side effect of that policy is off-shoring manufacturing. They complain that Clinton signed the US accession into NAFTA after the fact (once they saw what it meant), but at the time were unwilling to accept a candidate further to his left as president.
Currently, we have people in the US complaining that they "didn't vote for" the policies that Donald Trump was quite clear about while campaigning.
I can't help but wonder if all of the dislocation we're experiencing comes down to something simpler than some sort of historic analysis - along the lines of the world's (and societies') having become too complex for a critical mass of people to understand. We can argue about the root cause - have our educational systems or cultural expectations of individuals or ideologies failed - but when I (at least) look at it that way, a lot of things start to make sense.
>all of the dislocation we're experiencing comes down to something simpler than some sort of historic analysis - along the lines of the world's (and societies') having become too complex for a critical mass of people to understand.
...to understand and manage. Nobody knows what to do, because nobody has experienced it before, and there are no historical precedents to draw upon.
We were hunter-gatherers in small groups for 97% of our existence (99.4662489% if you count all of the genus H0mo)
>...to understand and manage. Nobody knows what to do, because nobody has experienced it before, and there are no historical precedents to draw upon.
And yet the systems we've constructed have rules and appear to allow a large majority to survive in numbers our hunter-gather ancestors would have been unable to conceive. Even accounting for unintended consequences, the people who built these systems do understand them.
Many more people (who didn't build these systems) do understand how these systems work and are capable of doing quite well within them. Quite a few of those who do understand it are working to leverage their understanding to benefit themselves at all costs, without thought of those they may be harming. Everyone else who understands it are trying to improve things, but that critical mass of people who do not understand these systems are uncomfortable with any change since that usually equates with worse outcomes (at least temporarily) for them.
The most recent ironic outcome from all of this (at least in the US): reduced use of fossil fuels due to cost due to an unnecessary war started by a candidate that a critical mass of people selected as their president because he promised to reverse efforts to reduce the use of fossil fuels.
>Even accounting for unintended consequences, the people who built these systems do understand them.
I disagree with this premise. The systems we live under weren't built by a person or a few people or a group of people. Especially a person or a few people or a group of people looking out for others and wanting to build something in which everyone can live and move forward.
>I disagree with this premise. The systems we live under weren't built by a person or a few people or a group of people. Especially a person or a few people or a group of people looking out for others and wanting to build something in which everyone can live and move forward.
Systems of international treaties, international organizations, national constitutions, bodies of national and local law (and in some cases religious law), organizations of businesses (and how they interact - governed by legal and economic systems), organizations of families, sports leagues, etc, etc. All of these (and more) are conceived by individuals or groups of individuals and they evolve over time in response to any number of circumstances (some external to the human experience and others internal to the human experience) through the action by individuals (whom presumably do understand those systems) and the willingness of other individuals to accept those evolutionary changes.
A growing number of people are able to operate (to varying degrees of success) within these systems to achieve their goals. However, there is a critical mass of people (particularly visible in democratic societies) who are not able to achieve their desired goals (or perceive their goals to be thwarted by these systems) and how we bring them into these systems (if they are eventually willing to join in) without wrecking it for everyone else for whom those systems are working is the challenge.
But who am I, after all, but someone with an internet connection?
AwarenessMassive | 5 hours ago
These four eras – mass politics, post-politics, antipolitics and hyperpolitics – “are not just concepts,” Jäger says, “they have some empirical data behind them. ‘How institutionalised is society?’ is basically a question of, how does civil society look? How are membership organisations looking? What are the affiliations, what are the types of bonds that people have? That’s not very difficult to quantify. You can look at union membership, you can look at church attendance, you can look at less overtly political forms of belonging. The political axis is more difficult to measure, but not impossible – namely, how many people attend elections, how many people strike, how many people engage in political violence, how many people engage in political communication, write letters to editors or now post online?”
Accomplished-Law-652 | 4 hours ago
Here's an interesting review of the book:
We Are All Politicized, But We Are All Individuals » Arts of the Working Class
SmileSagely_8worms | an hour ago
Fantastic read following the Guardian’s encapsulation article.
As someone’s who’s lived through the recent history covered, and struggled to summarize how we got here and what we should do, this gave me hope for the future and an idea of how to move forward. And the fact that Jager was born in the 90s makes me feel even more hopeful. (Less desolate is perhaps more accurate, while sitting in the Omni-shambles.)
Death_and_Gravity1 | 5 hours ago
Read the book, would recommend. Its a quick read. While his nomenclature is clunky (post politics vs anri politics? Come on) the idea that we are in a time period of both tightened politics but also stunted and hollowed out political institutions has a lot to it.
Salt-Resident7856 | 4 hours ago
Does the Anti-politics draw on George Konrad?
CatSamuraiCat | 3 hours ago
Could it just be as simple as people not understanding how the mechanics of a complex democratic state work, nor understanding how they can influence it in a meaningful way? And that the movements we see are manifestations of that lack of education and understanding?
In the US, we had (and still have) people in unions who voted for free trade without realizing the side effect of that policy is off-shoring manufacturing. They complain that Clinton signed the US accession into NAFTA after the fact (once they saw what it meant), but at the time were unwilling to accept a candidate further to his left as president.
Currently, we have people in the US complaining that they "didn't vote for" the policies that Donald Trump was quite clear about while campaigning.
I can't help but wonder if all of the dislocation we're experiencing comes down to something simpler than some sort of historic analysis - along the lines of the world's (and societies') having become too complex for a critical mass of people to understand. We can argue about the root cause - have our educational systems or cultural expectations of individuals or ideologies failed - but when I (at least) look at it that way, a lot of things start to make sense.
DanoPinyon | an hour ago
>all of the dislocation we're experiencing comes down to something simpler than some sort of historic analysis - along the lines of the world's (and societies') having become too complex for a critical mass of people to understand.
...to understand and manage. Nobody knows what to do, because nobody has experienced it before, and there are no historical precedents to draw upon.
We were hunter-gatherers in small groups for 97% of our existence (99.4662489% if you count all of the genus H0mo)
CatSamuraiCat | an hour ago
>...to understand and manage. Nobody knows what to do, because nobody has experienced it before, and there are no historical precedents to draw upon.
And yet the systems we've constructed have rules and appear to allow a large majority to survive in numbers our hunter-gather ancestors would have been unable to conceive. Even accounting for unintended consequences, the people who built these systems do understand them.
Many more people (who didn't build these systems) do understand how these systems work and are capable of doing quite well within them. Quite a few of those who do understand it are working to leverage their understanding to benefit themselves at all costs, without thought of those they may be harming. Everyone else who understands it are trying to improve things, but that critical mass of people who do not understand these systems are uncomfortable with any change since that usually equates with worse outcomes (at least temporarily) for them.
The most recent ironic outcome from all of this (at least in the US): reduced use of fossil fuels due to cost due to an unnecessary war started by a candidate that a critical mass of people selected as their president because he promised to reverse efforts to reduce the use of fossil fuels.
DanoPinyon | an hour ago
>Even accounting for unintended consequences, the people who built these systems do understand them.
I disagree with this premise. The systems we live under weren't built by a person or a few people or a group of people. Especially a person or a few people or a group of people looking out for others and wanting to build something in which everyone can live and move forward.
CatSamuraiCat | 13 minutes ago
>I disagree with this premise. The systems we live under weren't built by a person or a few people or a group of people. Especially a person or a few people or a group of people looking out for others and wanting to build something in which everyone can live and move forward.
Systems of international treaties, international organizations, national constitutions, bodies of national and local law (and in some cases religious law), organizations of businesses (and how they interact - governed by legal and economic systems), organizations of families, sports leagues, etc, etc. All of these (and more) are conceived by individuals or groups of individuals and they evolve over time in response to any number of circumstances (some external to the human experience and others internal to the human experience) through the action by individuals (whom presumably do understand those systems) and the willingness of other individuals to accept those evolutionary changes.
A growing number of people are able to operate (to varying degrees of success) within these systems to achieve their goals. However, there is a critical mass of people (particularly visible in democratic societies) who are not able to achieve their desired goals (or perceive their goals to be thwarted by these systems) and how we bring them into these systems (if they are eventually willing to join in) without wrecking it for everyone else for whom those systems are working is the challenge.
But who am I, after all, but someone with an internet connection?
Hideo_Kojima_Jr_Jr | 3 hours ago
anton is a mensch