and in the first one, a 50% chance that your declaration of war would be overruled by congress, to represent the peaceful nature of dEmOcRaCy
ive always kinda wanted to write a bit of an essay on the intense liberal ideology baked into almost every facet of the civ series (and not just its laughable 'government types'), but never quite got around to it. theres so much, down to how nomadic and non-urban peoples are 'barbarians' to be destroyed so their land can be properly tamed, to the linear flow of technological and social progress as represented by government-allocated beakers or whatever, to even just the conception of the city as the atomic unit of human societal organisation, etc etc etc. and of course the complete lack of any vision of the future or 'victory' beyond either military or soft-power conquest of the globe, or liberal democracy in space for no discernible reason, like it cant even conceive of any greater goal for humanity, like it might as well be francis fukuyamas civilization
I know the dogma for some people here is “politics always flows downstream to culture”
I think that's one thing that a lot of people really take too far, in the same way a disdain for "Great Man Thinking" can get taken too far to the point where people genuinely think that no individual leader can be important or have an outsized influence. Culture is shaped by politics and the ideological environment it's created in, but it also serves the same by spreading the ideas that made it. Like South Park didn't create edgy "the status quo is normal and good and completely apolitical and everything that seeks to change it is cringe politics and bad" chud thinking, but it certainly helped to teach that pre-existing ideological stance to a generation. Similarly, Civ didn't create its terminal lib-brain thinking, but it helped propagate it and teach it to a new generation of nerds.
I think its more likely that culture polishes a person who's shaoe us given by the material conditions of society. Like I don't think south park made anyone a reactionary, but it definitely made a bunch I'd people who were going to be reactionaries anyway into a specific brand of reactionary.
Oh no I am not saying it doesn't affect people's views and influence people. What I am saying is that reactionary media doesn't create reactionaries ex nilio, like if you see transphobic garbage and go "lol yeah that's right" you were already in a place where you find it acceptable to doubt the value of people to begin with. It's also all statistical in nature like the material conditions determine the likelihood distribution of ideological outcomes for a given population.
It is also definitely a reciprocal relationship where being materially more prone to reactionary ideology makes those cultural products more effective, which in turn leads ideologically radicalized people to reinforce the material structure. I just think the process starts at the material.
and in the first one, a 50% chance that your declaration of war would be overruled by congress, to represent the peaceful nature of dEmOcRaCy
ive always kinda wanted to write a bit of an essay on the intense liberal ideology baked into almost every facet of the civ series (and not just its laughable 'government types'), but never quite got around to it. theres so much, down to how nomadic and non-urban peoples are 'barbarians' to be destroyed so their land can be properly tamed, to the linear flow of technological and social progress as represented by government-allocated beakers or whatever, to even just the conception of the city as the atomic unit of human societal organisation, etc etc etc. and of course the complete lack of any vision of the future or 'victory' beyond either military or soft-power conquest of the globe, or liberal democracy in space for no discernible reason, like it cant even conceive of any greater goal for humanity, like it might as well be francis fukuyamas civilization
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I think that's one thing that a lot of people really take too far, in the same way a disdain for "Great Man Thinking" can get taken too far to the point where people genuinely think that no individual leader can be important or have an outsized influence. Culture is shaped by politics and the ideological environment it's created in, but it also serves the same by spreading the ideas that made it. Like South Park didn't create edgy "the status quo is normal and good and completely apolitical and everything that seeks to change it is cringe politics and bad" chud thinking, but it certainly helped to teach that pre-existing ideological stance to a generation. Similarly, Civ didn't create its terminal lib-brain thinking, but it helped propagate it and teach it to a new generation of nerds.
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I think its more likely that culture polishes a person who's shaoe us given by the material conditions of society. Like I don't think south park made anyone a reactionary, but it definitely made a bunch I'd people who were going to be reactionaries anyway into a specific brand of reactionary.
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Oh no I am not saying it doesn't affect people's views and influence people. What I am saying is that reactionary media doesn't create reactionaries ex nilio, like if you see transphobic garbage and go "lol yeah that's right" you were already in a place where you find it acceptable to doubt the value of people to begin with. It's also all statistical in nature like the material conditions determine the likelihood distribution of ideological outcomes for a given population.
It is also definitely a reciprocal relationship where being materially more prone to reactionary ideology makes those cultural products more effective, which in turn leads ideologically radicalized people to reinforce the material structure. I just think the process starts at the material.
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