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Apr. 16th, 2017 01:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionThe Americans 5.1-2
To recap the show's theme: Individualism and collectivism are warring forces, and neither is identical with the needs of any human or group of humans, paradoxically, since we all thrive only when both our belonging and our physical needs are met. Individualism is winning because technology is making physical needs amply and consistently meetable in a way they never were in the past. It addicts you by letting you experience a bit of this unprecedented satiety then withholding any more until you follow its instructions - which are whatever your brain tells you you need to do to get more of the same. Collectivism can only respond (beyond increasingly futile attempts to sabotage distribution or supply) by breakoff threats, which are less effective because there aren't many "stages" of belongingness like there are of appetite satisfaction. If no breakoff occurs, despite threats, when you indulge in (e.g.) level 2 satisfactions you'll then try level 3 and etc. So (e.g.) capitalism's plentiful choices and amounts of purchasable food exert a constant, tractor-beam like pull. Its ability to overmeet basic needs makes it an ever-present pest.
Those raised collectivist are hurt badly when torn directly out of belonging, as compared to the vague malaise of those raised individualist, but the intermediate step of separating nuclear families from the larger tribe is more achievable, since collectivism's main weapon is indoctrination of children via their dependence on parents. You will have a stronger response to the thought of their being removed than toward anything else. So individualism, once anyone is sufficiently drawn into primal needs-meeting, coopts this main weapon of its opponent by making the strayer's children complicit in protecting them from being cast out by the collective. In times of plenty allegiance to the collective thus weakens all 'round. The West wins the Cold War via the gradual percolation of Western luxuries (presumably including the luxury of not having as many children as possible) into the Soviet Bloc. Collectivism can only be sustained via constsnt and intense privation - the sort last encountered by Russians during World War 2, the last time the two big -isms were at peace with one another (because at war with a toxic strain of nationalism, a local hybrid of those -isms).
Can principled people come up with some other way than these two nasty ones? The show implies not, or anyway not yet. Individualism's victories have consolidated collectivism in opposition to it, which has in turn sped up individualism's investment in developing new and potent loyalty-hacking luxuries. Everyone's doubled down on a rhetorical level even as they increasingly doubt the justice of their own side, making it difficult to even remember what one's principles, as compared to allegiances, originally were or should now be (thus making each approach fascism/nationalism, the artificial and indefensible need to belong to an arbitrarily defined huge group, rather than a community of all sentient beings or a species or a family). Is there an endgame-tending arms race characteristic of this conflict that can be abstracted away from the Cold War?
Terrorism/counterterrorism is at least another example, I suppose - there, too, loyalty to one's group becomes more intense even as that group becomes more fragmented, diluted and/or hypocritical. There may be plenty of ways to reach stable compromises between what's owed to individuals and to groups, but when no one's thinking clearly none will be on the table. And none of us were thinking clearly to begin with, since all of this stuff is based in urges. Thought exists, but is a weaker, janitorial force. The characters are frequently unhappy about what they're doing but they're mostly still doing it. The few that wake up longer than momentarily (e.g. Nina, William, and Oleg and maybe Stan at present) are marginalized or eliminated.
That's all pretty macro, but it explains what's being done with the bugs etc. It isn't that America's sneaking crop-destroying bugs into Russia on a literal level, it's the luxuries and luxury-mindedness being imported alongside US grain. Note how the seethingly anti-capitalist boat person nonetheless begs those doggy bags, how Paige and Oleg are being controlled (by opposite sides!) by threats to their parents etc. Everything happening either fits the luxury-swamping paradigm or the escalation one.
To recap the show's theme: Individualism and collectivism are warring forces, and neither is identical with the needs of any human or group of humans, paradoxically, since we all thrive only when both our belonging and our physical needs are met. Individualism is winning because technology is making physical needs amply and consistently meetable in a way they never were in the past. It addicts you by letting you experience a bit of this unprecedented satiety then withholding any more until you follow its instructions - which are whatever your brain tells you you need to do to get more of the same. Collectivism can only respond (beyond increasingly futile attempts to sabotage distribution or supply) by breakoff threats, which are less effective because there aren't many "stages" of belongingness like there are of appetite satisfaction. If no breakoff occurs, despite threats, when you indulge in (e.g.) level 2 satisfactions you'll then try level 3 and etc. So (e.g.) capitalism's plentiful choices and amounts of purchasable food exert a constant, tractor-beam like pull. Its ability to overmeet basic needs makes it an ever-present pest.
Those raised collectivist are hurt badly when torn directly out of belonging, as compared to the vague malaise of those raised individualist, but the intermediate step of separating nuclear families from the larger tribe is more achievable, since collectivism's main weapon is indoctrination of children via their dependence on parents. You will have a stronger response to the thought of their being removed than toward anything else. So individualism, once anyone is sufficiently drawn into primal needs-meeting, coopts this main weapon of its opponent by making the strayer's children complicit in protecting them from being cast out by the collective. In times of plenty allegiance to the collective thus weakens all 'round. The West wins the Cold War via the gradual percolation of Western luxuries (presumably including the luxury of not having as many children as possible) into the Soviet Bloc. Collectivism can only be sustained via constsnt and intense privation - the sort last encountered by Russians during World War 2, the last time the two big -isms were at peace with one another (because at war with a toxic strain of nationalism, a local hybrid of those -isms).
Can principled people come up with some other way than these two nasty ones? The show implies not, or anyway not yet. Individualism's victories have consolidated collectivism in opposition to it, which has in turn sped up individualism's investment in developing new and potent loyalty-hacking luxuries. Everyone's doubled down on a rhetorical level even as they increasingly doubt the justice of their own side, making it difficult to even remember what one's principles, as compared to allegiances, originally were or should now be (thus making each approach fascism/nationalism, the artificial and indefensible need to belong to an arbitrarily defined huge group, rather than a community of all sentient beings or a species or a family). Is there an endgame-tending arms race characteristic of this conflict that can be abstracted away from the Cold War?
Terrorism/counterterrorism is at least another example, I suppose - there, too, loyalty to one's group becomes more intense even as that group becomes more fragmented, diluted and/or hypocritical. There may be plenty of ways to reach stable compromises between what's owed to individuals and to groups, but when no one's thinking clearly none will be on the table. And none of us were thinking clearly to begin with, since all of this stuff is based in urges. Thought exists, but is a weaker, janitorial force. The characters are frequently unhappy about what they're doing but they're mostly still doing it. The few that wake up longer than momentarily (e.g. Nina, William, and Oleg and maybe Stan at present) are marginalized or eliminated.
That's all pretty macro, but it explains what's being done with the bugs etc. It isn't that America's sneaking crop-destroying bugs into Russia on a literal level, it's the luxuries and luxury-mindedness being imported alongside US grain. Note how the seethingly anti-capitalist boat person nonetheless begs those doggy bags, how Paige and Oleg are being controlled (by opposite sides!) by threats to their parents etc. Everything happening either fits the luxury-swamping paradigm or the escalation one.
