#thewest — Public Fediverse posts

stead of piggy backing off other folks' posts (and pissing everybody off) i guess i should just try to articulate cold

on hanson and all the attention she's getting, folks reevaluating, pegging her for potential prime minister etc

think it fair to ask how much of trumpism's about trump? folks look at the mess and the pattern they see is the party and the base, the democrats in disarray, and figure it's about trump, his personal appeal (as distinct from his 'agenda') and figure on his having a kind of messianic charisma

nothing new in this (re flyover country ect) but as with hanson i reckon it fair to lay it square at the feet of the failings of our norms and institutions in so far as what we've been promised (how we've been given to understand the substance of those norms and institutions) and what they've delivered in the round

#meltingpot #westernCulture #theWest #ausPol #hanson

Rethinking the narrative of progress - ‘doing loss’ in present society

How can Western modernity come to grips with loss if its promise of progress has been stripped of its credibility? Andreas Reckwitz, 2023:

"The losses — both those already experienced and those anticipated in the future — can no longer be rendered invisible so easily; they are growing in numbers, and the attention paid to them is growing, too."

"In late modernity, we thus see both an escalation of loss and a growing awareness of loss: from climate change to the losers of modernization, from collective traumata to regressions... the present-day political field turns out to be an explosive experimental space for dealing with negative events."

"The promise is no longer about progress but about the illusion of regaining what has been lost:
To face the truth with open eyes and make loss, the experienced and the anticipated a legitimate and crucial topic of debate does not necessarily weaken democracy but could strengthen it."
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Andreas Reckwitz, The Challenge of Loss , LA Review of Books, 2023
https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/the-challenge-of-loss/
#progress #TheWest #modernity #loss #experiences #consumption #more #expectations #nostalgia #anger #deindustrialisation #environment #EcoGrief #DoingLoss #PublicHealth #ClimateBreakdown #extinction #trauma #violence #populism #TruthTelling #democracy #stability