War

The eight phases of the Song of Roland in one picture; illustration by Simon Marmion from an illuminated manuscript of the Grandes Chroniques de France (15th century), currently preserved in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia

Stolen entire from Essays in Idleness by David Warren.

The task of war

One does well to examine the Song of Roland (the French, XIth century, chanson de geste) before jumping to conclusions about war. I particularly recommend Scott Moncrieff’s translation (1919), which had an introduction by G. K. Chesterton that has been anthologized elsewhere. He neither glorifies nor condemns war, and actually, neither did Roland in the “splendidly inconclusive conclusion.” War contains both good and evil characters and events, and is never finished in this world. Any final victory must wait patiently on God. So long as there are insane barbarians (the present regime in Iran offers an unambiguous example) they will have to be fought. It is inappropriate to “make peace” with such a vicious and deceitful enemy. And when there is fighting, there are casualties. The Lord — and Christ is not a milquetoast — does not require us to omit this task, and did not condemn it in His Bible. Those who fight for the right, deserve honour; those who insist on “peace, peace” regardless of circumstances are cowards who deserve contempt.

It is sad that there are people, even Catholics, who don’t understand this.

Probably should go read the Song of Roland (translation by Jesse Crosland), but I probably won't because it is 78 pages long. 

Water

An Engineering Student's Notes, Technical, Philosophical and Otherwise by John Richards

JMSmith talks about clams and education and included this from the above book:

“I am beginning to think that water-craft, that is, human craft on the water, is much the same as it is in animals. It is absorbed in an insensible way throughout a term of years, or a lifetime, and is not a specific thing to be learned, like building houses or shoeing horses. A kind of second nature. Put a water-skilled man on a steamer, a ship, in a boat, on a raft, or a life buoy, it is all the same. He knows the traits and trends of the water, and how to keep on the surface of it. Geometry, dynamics, mechanics, or even a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, will do him no more good than a heathen’s talisman, unless he has been trained to the water, on and in the water.” - John Richards, An Engineering Student’s Notes, Technical, Philosophical and Otherwise (San Francisco: Industrial Publishing, 1904), p. 155. 

Arthur Schopenhauer

How Intelligent People Deal With 'Idiots' – Schopenhauer's Philosophy
Thought Architect

The video in my previous post on the subject disappeared, so now we have the long form video. 25 minutes of droning is a little long for my taste, but watchya gonna do?

Thinking

When The Smartest Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer Finally Snapped
Thought Architect

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) was a German philosopher. He seems to have an even more pessimistic view of people than I. Or maybe his village was inordinately full of stupid people. Or maybe intelligence is not a survival trait. Or maybe cooperation is more important for survival. People who stand out, especially those who make themselves noticed, tend to get hammered down.

Long form video: How Intelligent People Deal With 'Idiots' – Schopenhauer's Philosophy

The first honest American president

United States President Donald Trump shows an interior rendering of the new White House ballroom in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on October 22, 2025 [Aaron Schwartz/EPA]

I am not sure I appreciate what this guy says, but I can't say he's wrong either:

The first honest American president by Eric Reinhart

Trump’s shameless corruption is not a deviation from American history but its fulfilment.

Every era of American government has had its scandal. Trump’s innovation is to make scandal itself a governing philosophy. Although it is tempting to see the Trump regime’s corruption – its open profiteering, its use of the state as an instrument of vengeance and self-enrichment – as a perversion of American democracy, the truth is more unsettling: it’s a mirror. The difference between Trump’s era and those before it is not the presence of corruption, but its visibility and the nation’s collective incapacity to feel scandalised by it.

For decades, corruption in the United States was moralised as a deviation from an otherwise legitimate system. From the rail barons and company towns of the 19th century to the revolving door of Wall Street and Washington in the 20th and 21st, American capitalism has always depended on the conversion of public office into private profit. When politicians became lobbyists and habitual inside traders, when corporations wrote legislation, when government bailouts were given to bank executives and political donors, when hospital executives grew rich on public subsidies while their workers and patients sank into precarity, the mechanisms of corruption were disguised as professionalism, efficiency, or expertise. The neoliberal order taught us to equate virtue with success and to see moral worth in market value.

Doom and Gloom and Alexander Dugin

Aleksandr Dugin

Introduction to a post by JMSmith about Alexander Dugan:

Alexander Dugan is a Russian political philosopher and alleged Rasputin to Vladimer Putin.  You may recall that Dugan’s daughter was not long ago killed by a car-bomb, likely planted by Ukrainian assassins.  I have not read any of Dugan’s books—and I understand they are effectively banned in this sweet land of liberty—but I did recently read the transcript of an interview with the man.

Dugan is a man of the right who promotes what he calls the “fourth political philosophy.”  He argues that Modernity produced three political philosophies—Liberalism, Communism, and Fascism—and that Liberalism emerged from their contest triumphant because it is the most thoroughly modern of the three.

. . .

Dugan’s fourth political philosophy has no name because it remains a work in progress, . . .

The rest of his post is a little too esoteric for me. Dugan, or Dugin, depending on who you ask, it one of Vladimir Putin's advisors. Putin, the President of Russia, recently met with American President Donald Trump in Alaska. I've never heard of this Dugan before, so I go looking around and found this tidbit on Goodreads:

“What we are against will unite us, while what we are for divides us. Therefore, we should emphasise what we oppose. The common enemy unites us, while the positive values each of us are defending actually divides us. Therefore, we must create strategic alliances to overthrow the present order of things, of which the core could be described as human rights, anti-hierarchy, and political correctness – everything that is the face of the Beast, the anti-Christ or, in other terms, Kali-Yuga.” ― Alexander Dugin

Whoo-boy, that's a different take on things, but what is this Kali-Yuga?  Google's short answer is:

The Kali Yuga is the fourth and current epoch in the Hindu cycle of ages, characterized as the "Age of Darkness" or a period of moral decline and spiritual deterioration, leading to increased conflict, vice, and a decline in human virtues and lifespan. It is also known as the age of the demon Kali, and is characterized by societal breakdown, diminished intellect, and a focus on superficiality, though some interpretations suggest the end of its cumulative negative aspects is near.

Kali, you may remember is the demon being worshipped at the climax of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom:

Kali Ma Scene | Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1994)
Ultimate Action Movie Club

Well, that's encouraging.

New America?

Curious article from Russia:

The ideology behind the ‘New America’ is more dangerous than it looks by Artyom Lukin

He mentions several people, most of whom I have never heard of, so I asked Google about them and here are Google's summaries, listed in order by year of birth:

Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti (1876 – 1944) was an Italian poet, editor, art theorist and founder of the Futurist movement. He was associated with the utopian and Symbolist artistic and literary community Abbaye de Créteil between 1907 and 1908. Wikipedia

Carl Schmitt (1888 – 1985) was a German jurist, author, and political theorist. Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. An authoritarian conservative theorist, he was noted as a critic of parliamentary democracy, liberalism, and cosmopolitanism. Wikipedia

Leo Strauss (1899 – 1973) was an American scholar of political philosophy. He spent much of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students and published fifteen books. Wikipedia. No relation to Levi Strauss.

Nick Land (1962 – ) is an English philosopher best known for popularising the ideology of accelerationism. His work has been tied to the development of speculative realism, and departs from the formal conventions of academic writing, incorporating unorthodox and esoteric influences. Wikipedia

Marc Lowell Andreessen (1971 – ) is an American investor, entrepreneur, and software engineer who has made significant contributions to the internet. He co-authored the first web browser to display graphics, Mosaic, while working at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in the early 1990s. Wikipedia

Curtis Guy Yarvin (1973 – ), also known by the pen name Mencius Moldbug, is an American far-right political blogger and software developer. Wikipedia

Blake Gates Masters (1986 – ) is an American venture capitalist, author, former political candidate, and conspiracy theorist. Wikipedia

Anduril Industries, Inc. is an American defense technology company that specializes in autonomous systems. It was cofounded in 2017 by inventor and entrepreneur Palmer Luckey and others. Anduril aims to sell to the U.S. Department of Defense, including artificial intelligence and robotics Wikipedia

The author, Artyom Lukin, an associate professor of international relations at Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, Russia. 

Moscow, Portland, Vladisvostok

Vladivostok is 4,800 miles away from me over the the north Bering Sea. Moscow is 5,300 miles away over the North Pole. Vladivostok is 4,000 miles from Moscow.

Esoteric Trumpism

Found this on RT. It's like nothing else I have read about Trump. It seems philosophical. I've included the first few paragraphs so you can get a taste of it.

Trump

Why Donald Trump is a mystical figure of historic proportions by Constantin von Hoffmeister

For his supporters, Donald Trump is a bulwark of traditionalism and a champion of ‘America First’. For his detractors, he is a disruptive, deceitful agent of chaos. But a more philosophical approach frames him as a key figure in an eldritch struggle with deep-seated forces of decay.

Esoteric Trumpism is a profound, almost mystical interpretation of Donald Trump’s political journey, situating him not merely within the framework of contemporary politics but as a figure of cosmic and world-historical significance. This interpretation posits that Trump’s rise and continued influence reflect deeper metaphysical catalysts at play in the twilight of Western civilization, as predicted by the historiographer Oswald Spengler in the 1920s and 1930s.

According to Spengler’s cyclical theory of history, every great culture passes through stages of growth, flowering, and decline, ultimately transforming into a civilization. A civilization, in Spengler’s view, is the final, ossified stage of a culture – marked by materialism, a dystopian government apparatus, and stagnation – where the original creative spirit has faded. In this phase, democratic institutions begin to decay, leading to the rise of autocratic leaders, or Caesars, who assert their will as the last defenders of the civilization’s final flickers of vitality. Trump, in this narrative, appears as a Caesar of the West, struggling against the forces of chaos and entropy that threaten to engulf the remnants of the culture’s achievements. 

The Swamp, in the context of Esoteric Trumpism, eclipses its conventional political metaphor as a term for entrenched, secretive, and subversive agencies. Instead, it takes on a life of its own, representing a primordial, chthonic entity whose tentacles have reached into the heart of American power. This is no mere political quagmire – it is an ancient force, predating the Republic itself, fueled by what can only be described as eldritch energies. Trump’s wrestle against this dark presence is painted in Lovecraftian tones, where the stakes are not just electoral victories or policy changes but the very soul of the nation. His presidency becomes a metaphysical battle, with Trump cast as a modern hero who, like Spengler’s envisioned Caesars, refuses to capitulate to the rot that envelops his civilization. Each executive order, every political maneuver, is understood as an audacious attempt to dismantle this machinery of the Great Old Ones that has operated unseen for centuries. Trump’s defiance is portrayed as a courageous, almost tragic stand against the inevitable. He fights not for personal gain but to stave off the encroaching darkness that looms over the West.

 

The Six Rules of Sewage

The Rules of Sewage opens like this:

Imagine you have two cups. One contains the purest, clearest, most wonderful water possible. The other, raw sewage. When you mix the two, you get sewage. The same for a cup of sewage and a pitcher of water, or a barrel of water. Regardless of the size of the pure water container, the sewage contaminates it.

He takes this idea and applies it to people's character and comes up with six excellent rules. 

Via Bayou Renaissance Man

 

The Real World And The Narrative World

Cool Matrix-like vision of the Earth

The Real World And The Narrative World by Caitlin Johnstone makes some interesting observations about reality. Well, the first half of her essay is pretty clear. She kind of wanders off into la-la land at the end, but hey, we all like to dream, don't we?

Theology

The Spanish Inquisition
JMSmith put up a post a few days ago that has ignited a firestorm of comments. Okay, maybe not a firestorm, but my pithy little comment has been overwhelmed by the dozen or so wordier responses. Anyway, these guys (they sound like guys) are tossing around some weird words:

• Converso - A converso was a Jew who converted to Catholicism in Spain or Portugal, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries, or one of his or her descendants. The majority of Spain's Jews converted to Christianity as a result of the pogroms in 1391.
• Samizdat - the clandestine copying and distribution of literature banned by the state, especially formerly in the communist countries of eastern Europe.
• Optimismus ist feigheit (German) - Optimism is cowardice (English) - “The danger has become so great for everyone, every class, every people that it is pitiful to lie to yourself. Time cannot be stopped; there is no wise repentance, no wise renunciation. Only dreamers believe in ways out. Optimism is cowardice." - Oswald Spengler (1880 - 1936) was a German historian. . . . Spengler's model of history postulates that any culture is a superorganism with a limited and predictable lifespan  [and ours is due to collapse].
• Bonald - Louis de Bonald (1754 - 1840) was a French counter-revolutionary philosopher and politician. Big supporter of the Catholic church and a virulent anti-Semite.

Belief

Map of Superfund sites as of October 2013. Red indicates currently on final National Priority List, yellow is proposed, green is deleted (usually meaning having been cleaned up).

William Ruckelshaus, a big-time government bureaucrat, passed away a few days ago. He came to fame heading the EPA. Reading the Wikipedia article about him, I came across this quote:

I've had an awful lot of jobs in my lifetime, and in moving from one to another, have had the opportunity to think about what makes them worthwhile. I've concluded there are four important criteria: interest, excitement, challenge, and fulfillment. I've never worked anywhere where I could find all four to quite the same extent as at EPA. I can find interest, challenge, and excitement as [board chair of a company]. I do have an interesting job. But it is tough to find the same degree of fulfillment I found in the government. At EPA, you work for a cause that is beyond self-interest and larger than the goals people normally pursue. You're not there for the money, you're there for something beyond yourself.

At first, I thought this was great. His description of what makes a job worthwhile is spot on. And in general, I think the EPA is a good idea. Too many people were dumping really nasty shit all over the place. But when you start getting into cases, well, it gets a little fuzzy as to just what is 'nasty'.

He banned DDT, which I thought was good. Then I read that he thought global warming was a real problem and I realized that belief is double edged sword. If you believe in a cause, you will fight for it, regardless of whether your cause has merit or not. Of course, the deciding whether a cause has merit or not is also generally a matter of belief.

I try to avoid the global warming issue because the discussion has become completely political. The fight is now between true believers on both sides. I doubt you could find a set of data that both sides would agree on. I suspect that people are arguing about this issue, not because this issue is of paramount importance, but because people like to fight and since we aren't engaged in a great big military conflict (also known as war), they look around for lesser issues to fight about.

Via Indy Tom

Quote of the Day

King Louis XVI of France is led to the guillotine, Jan. 21, 1793

 “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” - Voltaire

Adaptive Curmudgeon changed his tagline and explains why. It's worth reading. I do wonder if we have a real problem though. There is lots of noise on the internet, but how many people subscribe to that noise? I like to think that most people have real lives and don't have time for the nonsense that is flowing over the optic fibers. On the other hand, people who listen to the noise are more likely to vote, so we they might be driving us to hell.

Glenn Arbery has a related post about the relations between politics, education and culture.

P.S. Voltaire died in 1778, a few years before the French Revolution got started in 1789.

Death & Sleep

(Pseudo) Peanuts Life & Death

I started reading Fall by Neal Stephenson a few weeks ago. A big part of the story is what constitutes consciousness. When you are awake, you are conscious, when you are asleep, you are not. Dead to the world is a common way of describing sleep. I feel like my life has been continuous, but every time I fall asleep, I lose a bit of continuity.

It's only really a problem if you are trying emulate a mind with a computer. Theoretically, if you could create a digital mind, you could replace memories and the digital person would never now. Problem is could you really model a human mind with a computer? Maybe, but I think it is still a long way off. I suspect there may be thousands of layers of complexity and we have only scratched the surface. We may understand what we have found so far, but our understanding has now revealed another layer of complexity underlying what we have found. We will keep digging, but it's going to take some serious effort for a long time before we are able to accurately model a human mind.

The Half Bound World

The Baroque Cycle

Looking for anything about the computing machine I encountered in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, I came across this wonderful essay by John Derbyshire.

Link of the Day

Depiction of Ulfilas or “Wulfila” preaching to Gothic Warriors

Is There a Point to Life? Excellent explanation of Marxism and modern politics in general. Via Dustbury. I would have stolen the whole thing, but I'm not up to reformatting a dozen paragraphs this morning, so I just stole a picture from another site.

Update May 2026. The original rottenchestnuts.com has gone away and been replaced by some kind of bullshit. Fortunately, The Wayback Machine has a copy, so I replaced the dead rotten chestnuts link with one to The Wayback Machine.

Dishwasher

Our dishwasher started making stinky smells, stinky like in burning electrical insulation. Well, this can't be good. It could be that some electrical component had failed and replacing the offending part may fix it. Or it could be that some other component, like the motor, has developed a problem that caused the suspect component to fail, in which case we won't really have fixed the problem and it will recur in short order. So if the motor is suspect, then we could replace the motor, but the motor for this 25 year old dishwasher runs $450. Okay, we're not going to do that.

Frigidaire Gallery Dishwasher

Thursday we made a return trip to Hutchins TV & Appliance and picked out a new dishwasher. Yesterday a couple of guys (Jerrod and Michael) from Portland Installation came by and swapped out the old one for the new. Dishwasher was $640, installation was $140.

First priority with my wife was that the new dishwasher should match the refrigerator we bought a couple of months ago. Friends of ours bought a Miele dishwasher because it's the 'best', and the price shows it: $1,500. No thanks, I don't need some overpriced, over-gadget-ified European fashion piece. Plain old 'merican fashion is good enough for me.

I do like the handle on the Frigidaire, it's just a very smooth curve. Some appliances these days go for the industrial style with big squarish brackets holding the handles. Cool until you run into one with your hip.

Style seems to be about the only feature that is different on the dozen or so dishwashers Hutchins had on display, which shouldn't be too surprising since most of them are all made by the same company. Our old Kitchen-Aid dishwasher was made by Hobart, the commercial food equipment company. They got out of the consumer end of the business a few years ago. Now Kitchen-Aid, Kenmore, Whirlpool, Jenn-Air, Maytag and IKEA are all made by Whirlpool.

Jerrod gave me a brief overview of the features and controls. Because it's new and modern, the dishwasher has a little display (the green number 30 in the picture above), that shows things like status messages and how much time is left on this wash cycle. Normal wash cycle now runs for over three hours! I don't think our old one ran for more than an hour, but then I never timed it. It might have run for six hours, but I kind of doubt it. I think I probably would have noticed if it was running all frigging day long. Jerrod tells me that dishwashers now have a soak phase. They spray the dishes with water and then just let them soak for a while to loosen any crusty bits. I suppose this is in the name of energy efficiency, and I guess that's okay.

Once we open it up and start loading it we notice a couple of things that we might should have noticed in the store, not that it would have made any difference, since all the machines seem be made in the same pattern, even the Miele.  The door is taller, so when it is open it sticks out farther into the room, which means it blocks the aisle more than the old one did. The door is taller because the tub is larger, which means the lower rack is lower which means you have to bend over farther to reach it. The racks seem flimsier, but plastics have improved in the last 25 years, so maybe they will be okay. Now that I think about it, maybe taller is better. Loading dinner plates AND tall glasses in the old machine required a certain amount juggling to get everything to fit and let the upper spray arm spin freely.

We are planning on remodeling our kitchen sometime in the near future. The biggest problem is that the cheap lacquer finish on the cabinets absorbs water, so everywhere that people have regularly touched the cabinet doors, the finish has turned into a kind of gray goop. Refinishing would solve that problem, but we've been here 25 years and my wife wants a new kitchen. I mean, all her friends have new kitchens and she's feeling a little pressure.

If we go ahead with remodeling the kitchen, I am thinking we need to raise the dishwasher by about a foot., just to make access easier. Unfortunarely, we would then lose two feet of counter space. The space under the microwave is kind of cramped, so could combine the two appliances into one stack so we wouldn't be losing any prime counter space, but the dishwasher really needs to be near the sink, so we are going to be interrupting the counter. Bah. Maybe we need an elevator for the dishwasher so we could raise to a convenient height for loading and unloading and lower it when we need the counter space. Gah, that sounds like a Japanese solution. This is America, why don't I have enough counter space in my kitchen?

P.S. After we bought our refrigerator, we stopped by Lowe's for something and since refrigerators were on our mind, we took a look at what was on offer. Geez, they must have had a zillion. Made me glad we went to Hutchins. Too much freedom of choice can be overwhelming. The selection at Hutchins was entirely adequate for my purposes and it freed me from too much freedom.


Devo - Freedom Of Choice DEVO's Freedom of Choice (link goes to original, un-embeddable, video) mentions

In ancient Rome
There was a poem
About a dog
Who found two bones
He picked at one
He licked the other
He went in circles
He dropped dead

So what was the poem?  A post on StriaghtDope points us to Burdian's Ass.

Intellectual Phase Locking (12:00)

Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion BANNED TED TALK
Rupert has some interesting ideas. If the data he sites are real, then there is some real funny business going on. On the other hand, no one seems to have any explanation for any of these things, and even if they do there doesn't seem to be anything to be done about, or with, it. Maybe his comments will provoke someone to look a little deeper into these things, and perhaps someone will gain some insight and we will make a great leap forward in our understanding of how the universe works. Or maybe not. Meanwhile we can continue to slog along with our mechanistic view of the universe.
    Reminds me of Plato's view that our perception of reality is akin to watching shadows on the cave wall, or the philosophy of Ibn Sina who had a similar view.

Via Dennis.

The best advice on Twitter trolls was written by al-Ghazali in the 11th century

Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī c. 1058 – 1111

Stolen from Sarah Kendzior because it's really great and I forgot where I saw it and I just spent the last hour looking for it. 

As I posted on Twitter earlier today, the best advice I’ve seen on dealing with Twitter trolls comes from the 11^th century Sufi philosopher al-Ghazali and his text “Ayyuha l’Walad”. Al-Ghazali anticipated our social media problems by 1000 years.
By al-Ghazali’s definition, there are four types of Twitter trolls. Below: a description of the trolls, and his advice on how to deal with them.
Type 1: Jealous haters. Advice: “Depart from him and leave him with his disease.”

Then know that the sickness of ignorance is of four sorts, one curable and the others incurable. Of these which cannot be cured, [the first] is one whose question or objection arises from envy and hate, [and envy cannot be cured for it is a chronic weakness] and every time you answer him with the best or clearest or plainest answer, that only increases his rage and envy. And the way is not to attempt an answer.
One hopes for the removal of every enmity
Except enmity arising from envy.
So you must depart from him and leave him with his disease. Allah the Exalted said, “Withdraw from whoever turns away from our warning and desires nothing except the present life.” And the envious, both in all he says and in all he does, kindles [a fire] in the sowing of his deed: as the Prophet said, Allah bless him and grant him peace, “Envy eats up excellences as fire eats up wood.”

Type 2: “Well, actually” Twitter. These folks come sliding in your mentions pretending to be experts on that which they are not. Ignore them too.

The second, whose weakness arises from stupidity, and he also is incurable. As ‘Isa said, upon him be peace, “Indeed I did not fail in bringing the dead to life, but I failed in curing the stupid.” And he is the man who has busied himself in seeking knowledge a short time and has learned something of the sciences of the intellect and of the sacred law, and so he asks questions and raises objections in his stupidity before the very learned one who has spent his life in the sciences of the intellect and the sacred law, and so this very stupid fellow does not know, And thinks that what is obscure to him is also obscure to the highly learned; and since he does not think this much, his question arises from stupidity, and you must not attempt to answer him.

Type 3:  People who ask you for information they can find on Google, then don’t believe the facts that they find. They’re hopeless. Ignore.

And the third is one who is seeking guidance and whatever he does not understand of the speech of the great ones, he lays to the defects of his own understanding and his question is in order to seek benefit; but he is dull and cannot arrive at the truth of things. You must not attempt to answer him also, as the Prophet, Allah bless him and give him peace, said, “We, the company of the prophets have been commanded that we speak to the people according to their understanding.”

Type 4: This troll is not really a troll at all. They are asking you questions which may be annoying, but are asked in good faith. It is worth engaging with this person.

But the sickness which is curable is that of the intelligent and understanding seeker of guidance, who is not overcome with envy and anger and the love of worldly vanities and wealth and honor, but is seeking the straight road; and his questions and objections do not arise from envy and a desire to cause trouble and to make trial. And he is curable, and it is permitted to attempt to answer him—nay, it is necessary.

That’s it! Follow al-Ghazali’s advice, and spare yourself a lot of online misery. Sometimes the best social media tips come from the 11^th century.

Via Dustbury.

3 Pillars of Civilization

I read something not too long ago about how the government and business form the basis of civilization. Government levels the playing field, or at least sets some rules, that allows businesses to operate. Government keeps the pirates out of the marketplace, punishes thieves, and collects taxes to pay for these "services". Governments can be democratic, autocratic, socialist, corrupt, or honest. Businesses will adapt to survive. With "bad" governments, some businesses may be crushed while others are given licenses to print money. With "good" governments, all businesses are free to compete on their merits.

On top of this we have civilization: art & science. It takes a certain amount of surplus to fund things like music, painting and microbiology studies. Having an organized society is one way to generate a surplus.

There is a third element that is necessary for a civilization to flourish and that is indoctrination. It comes under a variety of names: education, brainwashing, socialization, cultural conditioning. It gives people the basic behaviors that allow them to interact with other people in their society.
Reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic are a step up from this.

This is why converting the Mid-East to democracy is going to take a long time. Those people are still living in the Middle Ages. Bringing them into the present is not something can be done overnight. We will be lucky if it can be done in a hundred years.