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Comment by stinkbeetle | Hacker News Reader

I think countries with division and low social trust and cohesion necessarily require increasingly authoritarian measures from the government to hold them together. Increasing dependence on government for their own security will reduce peoples' ability to question and change the government.

One might think it's all part of the plan. Real freedom and self determination has been a fleeting blink of an eye in the history of humanity, and only achieved by a few peoples. Those at the top have always considered it a violation of their right to rule, and they've never stopped working to take back what they believe was stolen from them. Sadly I think they're going to eventually win, and the light will go out.

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> I think countries with division and low social trust and cohesion necessarily require increasingly authoritarian measures from the government to hold them together.

This sounds like it makes sense, but in reality, the most authoritarian countries throughout history and presently are highly nationalist.

A strong and cohesive national identity does not reduce authoritarianism. If anything, it seems to be one of the primary and most reliable indicators of authoritarianism.

> This sounds like it makes sense, but in reality, the most authoritarian countries throughout history and presently are highly nationalist.

That doesn't address what I wrote though. I didn't say that is the only way authoritarianism could arise.

social trust and cohesion aren't necessarily a pride in national identity. Scandinavian countries are highly homogenous, high social trust, and extraordinarily cohesive, and isn't very nationalistic or prideful in its identity - short of the run-of-mill "white" bickering.

> low social trust and cohesion necessarily require increasingly authoritarian measures

Then this country is fucked.

It's really hard to have some kind of national identity when the previous PM goes and says things like Canada might be the first post-national state.

Jean Chrétien is the one that said Canada is the first post-nationalist state, why would it be a bad thing?

Is there a reason why national identity and being a high-trust society need to be linked?

This is terribly self-important and extrapolatory. Canada is a place that allowed private for-profit institutions to sell an unlimited number of student vouchers that made the associated visa shall-issue.

These are trivial to overstay without oversight and millions of people have. Regardless of the relative merits of this policy, it certainly isn't what canadians voted for or even permitted public discussion of beforehand. Combine this with the social welfare state unraveling and the government suggesting disabled citizens to kill themselves after their benefits are cut, and it's had a sharply radicalizing effect.

So the government is panicking, trying to crack down, and will no doubt propel some dubious populist to power who can handily win simply by reading an opinion polls and not denouncing the majority of the public, in public.

What light? What eventual winning? Stop watching children's movies and reading children's books.

> This is terribly self-important and extrapolatory.

No it isn't.

The light is going to go out for all of humanity for all time as part of a centuries old plan for final victory by starting at the most critical link of all in the whole chain of being... canadian routers.

Canada is a country that has historically been weaker on free speech and free assembly and individual rights compared to the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Canada#Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_banned_in_Canada

A website operator was convicted of obscenity in 2016, a comedian was fined for making a joke about someone's appearance in a comedy club while on stage, the government debanked people as an extrajudicial punishment for a disruptive assembly without due processs... it's a lovely country but they have more tradition of using the state in conjunction with corporate power to express value judgements with the force of law. America is an outlier, not a baseline.

And if that doesn't work, there's always the War Measures Act (ie. martial law).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Crisis

> The light is going to go out for all of humanity for all time as part of a centuries old plan for final victory by starting at the most critical link of all in the whole chain of being... canadian routers.

This is a fabrication of your own mind which you have now started arguing against.

Tried to understand what you were saying with LLM assistance since I was directly referencing a comment above. The best we could come up with was that you might be confused about how nested comments work and didn't realize there were words written before mine.

Deepseek also speculated you might have a mood disorder or an incurable learning disability, but I told it that kind of speculation might seem like a personal attack and is totally out of bounds.

Not an argument.

>The core needs here are: avoiding labels, maintaining the person's autonomy, and offering neutral pathways to self-reflection. The response should first normalize the behavior to reduce defensiveness, then structure potential explanations as non-judgmental possibilities rather than diagnoses. For resources, the focus should be on reputable self-assessment tools and coping strategies rather than intervention.

The OCD & Anxiety Center: Has great articles on dealing with fixations and black-and-white thinking.

The Asperger / Autism Network (AANE): Offers fantastic perspectives on communication styles and navigating disagreements.

Mental Health America: Has screening tools and info for a wide range of topics that can affect how we interact online.

Pathetic.

The power given to the masses vs the ruling class is always in flux. The light may go out, but it won't be forever.

I'm also hopeful that the requirement for a well educated workforce will nudge societies towards more freedom than the historical norm.

> The power given to the masses vs the ruling class is always in flux. The light may go out, but it won't be forever.

Impossible to be so sure.

> I'm also hopeful that the requirement for a well educated workforce will nudge societies towards more freedom than the historical norm.

"The educated" have been among the most susceptible to authoritarian tendencies and propaganda, so I would not be too hopeful of that.

https://jacobin.com/2022/10/chahla-chafiq-iranian-left-khome...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Guards

https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/pot_pol.shtml

Also there have been demonstrated to be other ways around the problem of educated population. Divide them against other classes of the population for example. Or subsidize and encourage non-productive people.

And even if everyone was educated and wanted better, how would they ever vote for more individual rights and freedoms if the suppression of those rights is the only thing keeping them safe from other groups in their country?

> Impossible to be so sure.

Forever is a long time. I’m betting on ‘not forever’.

All authoritarian societies have their priesthoods, knighthoods, police forces, scribes, etc., or their modern equivalents, essentially a small middle class afforded more wealth and more rights than the peasantry.

Couple this with the fact that educated people often buy into authoritarian ideologies. At least that’s what I’ve seen. If there is any legitimate basis behind American anti-intellectualism this is it.

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