Extremism as a "metric". To understand if society is "doing a good enough job"

1 points by mobileturdfctry 301 days ago | 2 comments

I've been thinking a lot about politics recently. As I'm guessing a lot of you all might be as well.

A lot of what I read online tells me that most people treat far-right (and other) extremism as an unnatural phenomenon. But the more I think about it I am starting to think it's a very natural phenomenon.

Does it strike you that what we're currently experiencing is a systematic loss of faith in humanity and its institutions? Does that just mean these people were born with, or derived these feelings from nothing? Or are they just like the rest of us who ended up "on the short end of the stick" in life?

I think what could follow from this reasoning is that extremism in a society could be used as a metric for us all, collectively, to understand whether or not we're "doing a good enough job" for our fellow citizens and humanity in general?

jfengel 300 days ago |

If it's a metric, then it's an easily gameable one. Any gripe can be elevated to an existential crisis, and you win.

We are, without doubt, "experiencing is a systematic loss of faith in humanity and its institutions". I believe that this loss is manufactured, at least with respect to the right wing: people have been repeatedly told that they have grievances, and that they're all the fault of minority groups.

It doesn't mean that they don't also have genuine grievances. It just means that, if I'm correct, then the things that trigger the extremism metric are not the grievances that actually matter.

I could be wrong about that; maybe it's just a coincidence that there is massive right-wing media infrastructure that has been repeatedly called out for falsehoods. It could be that they are, perhaps despite themselves, documenting genuine failures.

But overall, no, I don't think that extremism makes a good metric. It's a purely one-sided metric; it cannot take into context anybody else's grievances or the actual magnitude of theirs. It's merely a squeaky wheel getting grease.

mobileturdfctry 297 days ago | |

This could have some merit. I do question, though, why someone would spend time gaming a system when they could be living their lives and enjoying their families and friends and other things that life has to offer? Could you see yourself doing that? Or perhaps your life is already rich enough that you couldn't imagine wasting your time on something like that? The point is it seems there is a threshold, below which extremism seems to thrive.

I do agree that people with real mental health issues, who only want to see death and destruction of the people and world around them might think it would be fun, but I'd argue that those people wouldn't be very effective at achieving that goal.