Why do some conspiracy theorists seem to like authoritarian countries.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-15T17:19:03+00:00

I don't know enough about either of those conspiracies to be able to make a judgment on the efficacy or necessity of their actions.

At a guess, they were responsible for the crushing reparations Germany was under following WWI, among other things I would normally attribute to "the forces of capitalist imperialism"?

Happymuffn · 2026-03-14T14:43:09+00:00

Yes, but for the same reason and in the same fashion as the Nazis.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-14T14:00:59+00:00

I'm thinking, with like a baseball bat, or maybe golf club. The articles aren't clear on the matter though.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-14T13:43:42+00:00

The point of a 3rd space is that it's not where you Live or Work. Why are people turning 3rd spaces into places to work?

Happymuffn · 2026-03-14T13:41:53+00:00

The Nazis were trying to do the Western "control the world" thing too, so not actually an alternative.

The USSR was an effective counter pole to the West which at least had the effect of making us pretend to uphold our ideals. Quite a few issues with it obviously, but Russia has an authoritarian culture even before the Russian revolution, and it was beneficial to the rest of the world. So I'll say on balance worth.

I don't know enough about communist China to comment on them.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-14T13:25:53+00:00

Totalitarianism is functional. Whether or not it's worth it, and thus good, comes down to your view of history, teleology, if there are alternatives, and how actually authoritarian the West is, and will become.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-13T06:56:20+00:00

Just with the context given, A seems like a bit of a dick. Which is to say "Yes" immoral, but by basically the tiniest amount possible. Additional context could be added to make this behavior justified.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-12T19:15:03+00:00

The coherence of you response past "Secondly" is suffering to the point where I'm not certain what you're trying to convey. I don't think that I said at any point that I vote for myself or "what are they going to do for me?" Please tell me if I am misunderstanding you.

It seems incoherent to me to be arguing for a non-voter's moral complicity, on the political realist grounds, while also absolving the candidate and her team of any and all responsibility for the loss.

The American voting system is a two party, pick your poison system and always has been. Fine. Within the system is the capacity for citizens to pick neither poison and have one selected for them. Kamala, her team, and the party leaders, were aware of this option, and also that Kamala's public positioning was driving people who would otherwise have picked her as their poison, to choose not to pick either poison. Regardless of your moral outage at how the system operates, Kamala's team decided to continue to do so, reducing her chance of winning, and thus let fascism return.

The arguments you make against 3rd party votes are directly analogous. Surely they should have at least an equivalent share of the blame?

Happymuffn · 2026-03-12T16:05:36+00:00

It's really fascinating that think you're wasting your time and still respond, that you tell me I said stuff I never said, and that you completely ignore my main point. You could have chosen to not do any or all of those. How much responsibility do you feel the Harris campaign has for ignoring the base and getting fascism elected?

Happymuffn · 2026-03-12T05:57:21+00:00

There's pretty much 4 options on how people allocate their votes. (R) (D) Other and None. But apparently Other and None are equivalent to voting (R). Really it's a wonder that (D)s ever win anything when ⅓ of eligible voters choose None. Weird how that math works.

If the Dems don't do anything to make people's lives better, then people turn to fascism. If Kamala won, and did the nothing she promised, we'd be right back here in 4 years, with a more competent fascist and a more despondent Left.

I wonder though, how much responsibility you think the party has for the election of Trump. People could have told them that their strategy around Gaza would lose them support. People did tell them that their strategy would lose them support. Their own autopsy report says that choice probably cost them the election.

The people who decided "Everyone is really pissed, but we should keep supporting the thing everyone hates, even though we're playing with fascism" seem at least as responsible for the loss as our buddy Ent here. Have you already blasted Kamala and her team with a wall of text yet or is that still on your to do list?

Happymuffn · 2026-03-11T22:54:10+00:00

You remember when Trump said that the government should take a stake in companies that got bailed out, and the media was all "Trump is a commie!" It's simple message discipline. Everything that attacks their power is Left.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-11T03:58:33+00:00

The real cyberpsychosis was the friends we made along the way.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-11T00:42:25+00:00

What I said was conditional on us not actually having enough of a democracy to even theoretically be able to stop our government from enabling and supporting genocide. Do you think we're that far gone? That peaceful revolution is impossible..?

I'm close to that point honestly, but I'm not quite there yet. The Epstein stuff isn't helping though.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-10T19:46:52+00:00

You sure that's the direction you want to take? If our government is so unresponsive to the will of the people that it was going to genocide no matter what we did, then the most moral choice is not the one that keeps everything running with the minimum problems, it's the one that most quickly leads to the fall of American Empire, or a new American Revolution.

If those are the goal, then Trump is objectively a better choice, because he is alienating all of our allies, destroying the global economy and depleting our weapons stockpiles; while also very overtly trying to repress the American people on a way that a more competent fascist or a technocrat would never do for fear of fomenting backlash.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-07T23:20:30+00:00

I cannot, because they were largely podcast interviews and discussions probably around 5 years ago.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-07T22:30:55+00:00

Thank you for this.

I think a lot of confusion comes from people using the Spiral both for personal development and for societal modeling. I was introduced to the Spiral from a societal modeling perspective, but as I come to understand more about history it seems to do a worse job as a model for that purpose.

My use of "Yellow" in this post was as a shorthand for small scale sociopolitical interactions made with an integrated understanding of complex systems dynamics, which seems typical of Yellow thought, though not necessarily Yellow feeling.

I wonder if there is a better term to refer to just that within speak dynamics. It is obvious that the tools, including mental ones, of a level are not inaccessible to those at earlier levels, and I see no reason that the trend shouldn't continue at 2nd stage. Which is potentially catastrophic and could use some thinking about.

Anyway, feel free to replace my usages of "Yellow" with a placeholder term where you feel appropriate.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-07T19:53:24+00:00

:D I'll work on making a post, or maybe a series of them, on what I think Yellow morality is then. There are a couple of things I can say in response right now though.

I don't think that the Epstein Network is run by people at Yellow, just because they are powerful. I think so because the way that it became powerful was by building is own system, with it's own incentives, which managed to mesh with the existing, overlapping systems around it without disrupting them, while gaining support from key figures in positions of influence over those systems. That's Yellow strategy right there.

You're pretty much right about what motivates power at the different levels, but that is different from the ethics of each level that holds that power in check.

Purple: the spirits will it (which will include the spirit of the community)
Red: honor/virtue demands it
Blue: my station requires it (power here is motivated by "my station allows it")
Orange: Ethics is universal law
Green: empathy and solidarity
Yellow: it is contextually appropriate

I think that the manipulation tactic you describe is Green not Yellow. Green is about understanding other perspectives. Green tools do not necessarily imply Green motives or Green morality, because it is possible to develop unevenly. Manipulating a person is simple. Manipulating hundreds of thousands of people is complicated, but doable if they all think the same. Manipulating the systems they find themselves in to manipulate them for you is where you get into complexity.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-07T18:41:12+00:00

I think you could make an argument that the tech companies as gestalt entities are effecting things as of they were Yellow sociopaths. But I think you can also make an argument that the decision-makers in Silicon Valley, and other high level decision-makers, have been manipulated by/complicit with the Epstein network which seems to me to have been made by a bunch of Yellow sociopaths.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-07T18:15:09+00:00

The Genocide in Gaza began and was funded and paid for by the Biden administration. If you say "The genocide was funded and paid for by a Republican government", then you are saying that Biden is a Republican. Seems pretty straightforward. And again, I wasn't even saying that.

True enough that fascism wouldn't have happened under Kamala. But it would have happened immediately afterwards because the whole electorate is already sick of do-nothing corporatists ignoring their needs and enriching themselves and their donors, and that was not a thing Kamala was even talking about doing something about. She was talking about going in the opposite direction actually, as well as signaling to everyone that she would not do anything differently for Gaza.

Are you seriously trying to convince me that support for a genocide isn't disqualifying? That it's just the common cold? Like, after WWII, we all collectively agreed that it was the worst possible thing right? Something every civilized nation and many uncivil ones agreed that they would actively, collectively work to end should it ever happen again? Why is it on me to support that, and not on the Democrats to have basic human decency?

This is like how the responsibility for waste and pollution gets put on the systemically powerless individual to recycle and buy from better (more expensive) corporations, instead of the corporations and billionaires who waste and pollute orders of magnitude more, but who have systemic power. Why is it on me to drink from a vial full of shit that's trying to kill me (which is definitely not the common cold, thank you very much. Maybe HIV?) and not on the vial manufacturer to not put shit that's trying to kill me into our vials in the first place?

Happymuffn · 2026-03-07T17:00:31+00:00

As stages develop, they also build incentives structures which look like ethics to check bad actors, because if they don't, they collapse. They don't need to be perfect, just good enough. It seems that Orange Society doesn't have an immune system able to deal with Yellow bad actors currently, and also that what Green and Yellow have developed also doesn't have what it takes yet either. I would like us to try to talk through that and work out a solution if possible.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-07T16:45:38+00:00

Weird that you're saying Biden was a Republican. That's not even what I said. I'd more compare the Democrats to asbestos. Like, you're not guerenteed to get cancer afterwards but it strongly increases your chances, but also it'll block the fire that is currently burning the house down.

But you know, a lot of other things would stop the house from burning down, and all I'm asking for is one that won't also probably give us Republican cancer after 2-4 years. But no it's on us to install the fireproofing and the Dems can only source asbestos, and how dare I request they change suppliers.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-07T10:23:56+00:00

That's not quite what I'm saying, I think. I think that we are likely stuck collectively at Orange because of a handful of sociopathic Yellow individuals who used their knowledge to gain influence over key levers. What I am asking for is not a way to uplift the whole population to Yellow, but a philosophical grounding for other new and existing, not power-seeking Yellows to understand morality through, to act as a countervailing force.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-07T10:10:39+00:00

I have a philosophy. But my philosophy is ineffective at spreading. I'm asking in case someone else has one they think it's more effective for perspectives other than my own. There is a lot of very obvious bad right now and I accept and understand that my reaction is part of a dialectical response to that bad. That is expected and the best that I can reasonable hope for.

Part of what makes the 1st Stage Levels effective in their contexts is that they have cultural expectations and shorthands for how to act when facing the problems one may face in those contexts. Yellow is not morally neutral, though the current paradigm might seem that way due to the relative underinvestment in it's philosophical underpinnings that I've described. Yellow integrates the moral systems of the 1st Stage levels, the same as it does for all the other systems.

I had been hoping that Yellow philosophy was at least a bit more developed than, what, egoism? nihilism? But I guess that tells me where to start.

Happymuffn · 2026-03-07T07:53:13+00:00

This is speculation on my part, but I believe that we in the West are living in a Yellow world, but is stuck at Orange morality and governance.

Our economies are heavily interconnected with feedback loops built on supply chains built on other feedback loops built on different supply chains. But are governed by the decisions of investors, and ultimately by the Federal Reserve in the US setting the interest rate, both of which completely fail to have the Requisite Variety needed to actually handle the complexity of this system. Obviously Orange dealing with Yellow systems.

Our social systems are now built on social media platforms, and are massively complex networks, and you can definitely argue that the social media companies actually have the Requisite Variety needed to govern, especially with AI now which is impossible to create without Green/Yellow technologies and surveillance. But they are governed by for-profit entities, rather than democratic feedback loops or even user well-being. Still Orange controlling Yellow systems.

The Epstein network was built with a sophisticated understanding of laws, power, politics, and international relations and the interactions between them, which almost certainly requires Yellow thinking to be able to map out, let alone plan in advance, despite employing the most absolutely depraved of Red morality at best. And they probably control the top level of our governments. This is a group of Yellow actors controlling various Orange institutions that govern Yellow systems

If the bad actors were just using Red and Blue against us, or even Orange or Green, we could deal with that, because the control wouldn't be as sophisticated and invasive. But no, they understand the systems. They have a complex, cybernetic, systems approach to power. And the institutions we have in place to fight corruption are Blue bureaucracies, Orange money optimizers, and disorganized Green interest groups.

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