Conversation

CGP Grey has made a lot of good content, but the disappointment in his voice that the world cannot be perfectly aligned to a single system for _anything_, I find disheartening. The man's brilliant and yet by the end of so many videos, dejected due to the imperfections in what he thinks could be perfect.

I never really liked this view of the world. If a system can't apply well somewhere, trying to force it out of some interest in One System to Rule Them All will only result in greater discomfort for the humans that have to interact with that synthetic and unwelcome system. It's a lot like ecology in that way -- you can't just dump your waste in a river and expect the fish to be able to deal with it. They leave, they get sick, but the ecosystem is forever altered in a way that transcends just the contamination. It's a place that generations will not return to. Likewise, you can't just dump your cultural or social constraints on a people both unwilling and unprepared for it; even in the best of situations this will come at a cost to the general productivity of the existing systems in that area, if not bloodshed given extreme-enough impositions.

I don't quite know what else to put it on than the demographics changes that have taken place over the last 300 years, with urbanization leading to fewer and fewer children and the alteration of the perception of children, in general, from free labour to precious luxury. I think Zeihan's right about this point specifically -- smaller families and atomization makes for greater desire for belonging, and the modern ways in which we're trying to fill the demographic gaps on a social level aren't doing the job. They're the strawberry slushies of social belonging, to borrow from another contemporary, something that tastes far better than the real thing in the moment and yet has no long-term value and may even come with long-term risk.

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