SHALL WE PLAY A GAME? (pt.2 of 3)
Part 1 of this article introduced the Zero State (ZS) and its philosophical foundation. Now Part 2, below, will begin to outline some “Breadcrumbs and Rabbit Holes”, which is to say ideas and links which you may use to begin to chart your own path into the expanding world of ZS, if you so choose…
2. Wyrd & Fyrd = Reality & Balance
“Don’t you think the world’s greatest game artist ought to be punished for the most effective deforming of reality?”
Moving beyond our philosophical underpinning, next we must understand how that logic applies to everyday-life distinctions and situations. In short, we need a quick, principled, and consistent way to know “What is the Social Futurist position on this issue?”. The bottom line is that we seek functional solutions in any given situation, which means prizing balance and empirical evidence over extreme ideological fantasies of the Left, the Right, or coming from any other quarter.
The common thread uniting Radical Centrism, Social Futurism, and the Zero State is an insistence upon intelligent, functional balance between contrasting factors. Intelligent balance is a virtue because it is functional, while systemic imbalance is always eventually dysfunctional, no matter what short-term advantages it may bestow. For example, “Wyrd” and “Fyrd” are concepts that ZS borrows from the ancient Anglo-Saxon worldview, meaning “destiny” and “community” (or perhaps “idealism” and “pragmatism”) respectively, and the ZS ethos is to balance these complementary impulses toward idealism and pragmatism in a single dynamic that we call “Rebis”.
This idea of functional balance is no “pie in the sky” abstraction, but is critical to understanding contemporary politics and society, on a pragmatic level. We are confronted by an epidemic of professional liars and the wilfully ignorant, who collectively encourage imbalance and deform reality to suit their own short-term needs, at our expense and risk.
Without a doubt, the most notable criminal in this regard is notorious US President Donald J Trump. Trump is the worst because not only will he happily endorse the most extreme and divisive Right- or Left-wing views while not actually believing in (or understanding) any coherent political philosophy at all, but he also readily and repeatedly desecrates all notions of truth or reality for his own selfish ends, while displaying neither insight nor self-awareness. The man is useful as a living, breathing symbol of everything that Social Futurism stands against (even if he has the one redeeming feature of being ironically “honest” – or at least transparent – about his wilful disregard for anything we’d consider a virtue, where other politicians try to hide their disdain, manipulations, and other failings).
ZS is part of Social Futurism, and thus also part of Radical Centrism. As we work toward a transcendent human future, we must stand against imbalance and the deliberate deformation of reality by opportunists and parasites. With that in mind, let us now turn our attention to practical matters, in Part 3 of this series.
For more Breadcrumbs & Rabbit Holes see Part 3 of this article.
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