Western Values revisited

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We live in an ever changing world where the narrative has been hijacked by those espousing conservative values.

The new right which is championed in the US, Europe and even in South America has called for the protection of western values. Preaching to a population with little critical knowledge of their own history they become sponges for conspiracies and half-truths.

An antidote is to this type of thinking is to understand what exactly western values are....

This video provides a simple and humorous introduction to those sitting on the fence

Sorry if I will skip the video as have things to get on with, but I will reply by saying that I like traditional ways.. The older ways of doing things BUT this does not mean I want to embrace all of those ways. I like tradition for the uncomplicated simplicity of it and I see where modern trends are going (Which have often been tried in the past before and failed leading to the internal downfall of civilisations ad empires), and modern trends over time don't work and are collapsing the good things which do work.

So I am one who has the "Rolls Royce" traditional concept of thinking. A company that was not pioneering in any way if one looks at their cars from the past. A company that took what they knew worked the best mechanically and electrically etc, and added some luxury and by using this approach made some of the best luxury cars around.

Now I have self learned to adopt this approach in my hobbies of model railways and of bicycles. I have been there and done that and tried a bit of everything in the past, and I have learned from it what works. What is an un-neccessary gimick and what does not work, and thus I have recognized full well the marketing approach which is only designed to keep selling more products un-neccessarily so, and I have turned against modern advancements (Mostly past failures re-invented for the purposes of financial reward), and stuck to what I know will work.

I can therefore point the cyclist towards a bike that they can live with for many years to come, and can give the railway modeller some tips on which approach to take to have fun in the hobby without un-neccessary expense as I have learned both the hard way and the good way of what works well as it is, and what is just going to cost more money to maintain, keep and own.

I like this Rolls Royce simile.
Rolls Royce used the best of the already established technology. They did not try to force others not to explore other options. Neither did they claim everything was better before cars were invented. They just chose not to experiment themselves.

They found what works the best and used it.

The old Great Western Railway company here in the UK was like that where in their earlier days they were at the forefront of what was modern technology and they travelled to many countries if a new invention was made just to see it in action, but as time progressed they learned what works the best and standardized their designs and parts so many different locomotives could be made sharing the same standard parts. They were said to be "Old fashioned" compared to other companies but they had already been through that phaze and learned through their mistakes, so their "Old fashioned" locomotives were ones which could outperform many others and had greater overall success. So successful, that even after the railways were nationalized in 1948, locos such as their Castle Class (Express passenger locomotives) continued in production almost until Britain gave up on steam. British Railways did come out with their own standard designs which tried taking the best technology from the previous companies put together which had some success (Not immediately as they did have a few initial design faults to overcome), but some of the Great Western loco designs continued. It was a case of using the most appropiate design for the use intended.
British Railways did have to in one case keep some elderly 1870's locos (Not Great Western) working right up into the late 1950's to work a certain line which had curves that only those elderly locos could manage so it was a case of trying things out to see which worked the best.
Great Western Railway only ever made one pacific loco (4-6-2) called "The Great Bear" but they found it to not warrant the extra coal grate area so they kept to the 4-6-0 or smaller designs for express passenger work, and they developed a way to enhance the Walshchaerts valve gear to come out with locos that despite their smaller size, were more powerful than other much larger steam locomotives. When their Castle class was first introduced, they were so impressed in the USA with the ability to do this that arrangements were made to borrow one, and it was out performing locos twice the size and yet generally used less coal. Technology was shared a lot between countries and companies in those days and they did help each other. Their castle class was the first ever locomotive booked to run in a timetable touching speeds over 100mph while on a daily express service (Weekdays) known as "The Cheltenham Flyer".

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SMiLes, i Listened to the 'Video' Summarizing
Western Values in Terms of Liberty, Specifically Freedom of Expression,
Capitalism, Belief in a Higher Moral Authority And Those Values Applied;
Along With Freedom of Religion As Well If That Works Out Okay too, and etc.,

Generally Speaking;
Yes, Only Generally
Speaking From my
Experience of 62 Years
Both VieWeD And Experienced iN Deed;

ValueS in the 'Western World' is A Change of A New
Car Every Three Years; Yes, While The Driver Finds

They Are Generally the Same; As the Cars Change

i Tend to Focus on the Driver and Leave the New Cars Behind;

Even Though, Technically, i Could Surely Afford to Buy A New One in Cash;

Although, It Would Have Been hard for my Father All The Way Until Death

With All His Loans And Incessant Consumerism; Indeed, Even though He

Retired At Full Pay From Being in Law Enforcement For the Previous 46 Years;

Rich Dad,

Poor Mom;

my Daddy Taught

me it Was All About the

Car; my Mama Taught me

It's All About The Driver;

It's True, i Am Tuned Like

(NAKED, Enough, Whole, Complete)

A Ferrari, All 12 Cylinders Embodied
in Autotelic Tune in Flow; Yes, FRiEnDS
With Gravity; A Feather, Even The Wind Free

Emotionally Regulating Sensory Integrating ThiS WaY;

Hehe, Even though my Last Weigh-in Was YeS WeLL Over
240 Pounds, Still Pumping up to 1520 Pounds Of Urethane
in Leg Pressing Way; HAha, Yes, Meanwhile my Honda Civic Going on

9 Years Old, Still Sips Gas; Another Metaphor For Western Civilization Values

Are, if Petrol Goes Up a Dollar, It's Expressed As Almost the End of the World;

(This Has Something to Do in the US West, About Folks Living Pay-Check to Pay-Check,
MaKinG 150-200 Thousand Dollars A Year, Recently Assessed Yes At A Whopping 52 Percent)

Another Metaphor Is, 'They Are Already Left Behind;' Sadly in Many Cases
my Peers Stuck in Battery Powered Walmart Carts As They Somewhere

Along the Line, Forgot to Move
And Rusted Away

That Way;

Lost, Still 'Lost
Boys' After the Glory
of Footballs Days Are Over...

(Actually Playing And Not Snoozing
on Mall Benches Behind NFL Big Screens)

As Indeed "Lord's of The Flies" Stuck
on Screens Way too Early Still Indeed; Yes,

We Focus Way too Much on 'the Car'

And Not Nearly Enough on the 'Drivers'

And as Far As Values of Religion Go; Particularly,
Christianity; We May Pay Lip Services to Words and Ignore

The Homeless Jesus on the Street Without Food And Barely Clothed;

For Indeed, Western Values Materially Reduce As 'Iain McGilchrist' Provides

A Deeper 'Spiritual View' Beyond Labels And Consuming Material Goods Indeed...

Yet Here's A Bottom Line, We aRe Still Free Enough to Set Ourselves Free, IF We Only Will...

i Rarely Spend Money Any More;

And i'm Richer Than i Ever

iMaGiNED; Including Mind Body
SPiRiT HeART And SoUL As Money And

Things is at the Bottom of my Value Pool...

It's Not An Empty Shallow World Anymore As i Lived

in That Same Exact Place i Live Now For Decades Then;

Values are Relative to How We Experience the World; No

Matter What Country
We LiVE iN, THeRE

Are People Valuing
HeLL and Heaven

And The In Between

Mostly Doing it Whether

They Realize WHere They Live or Not For Real Now...

Give me A Few Minutes, With Any Human, And Usually
i Will Intuit Correctly 'Where They Truly LiVE;' However, it

Can and Will Surely

Be Tricky Online hehe;

Generally Speaking, One May
Assess it Whether or Not 'They'
Use Language Still Beating A HeART Alive...

And Even Sadder, i Wager Most Folks Have
No Idea What That Even Means And Much of

Rest of This too...

Oh The Poverty

of Not Understanding

'The Driver' More Fully Deeper As Story Indeed...

Western Civilization; We Came, We Conquered; And

Generally Speaking We Still Get Lost From Even Being Fully Human...

And Again, i Venture, Very Few People Understand What Being Human Even is...

Sure,
Opinions

Vary; Depends
on Location, Location,
Location, So Much Deeper or Shallow Within...

Oh Yeah, And 'Jordan Peterson' is 'Hilarious,' Suggesting
Self-Esteem And Emotional Intelligence Doesn't Even
Exist As he Cannot Empirically Measure it And Materially Reduce

(He Has Positive Attributes too; It's Always A Mix, This Human Condition, indeed)

'Soul'

Enough

to Prove it Exists;

Here's A Hint; He's
Missing A Bit of Both;

It's Like A Small Dog Barking

Big And A Big Dog Who Is "Left Behind"...

In A Way, Jordan Peterson Reflects 'Modern Values'
of Western Civilization too; Create A Social Media Crisis

And

Cash-in...

Somebody Has to
Be Both 'Satan' And 'God' Indeed...

Most Everyone Indeed (Polishing My Horns too)..

---

Watched it and nothing surprising (also I'm quite familiar with both Douglas Murray and Nial Ferguson).

I notice a lot of people consider that John Stuart Mill captured most of the 'magic sauce' of the concepts and I've heard Jamie Wheal refer to positive-sum liberalism as the 'infinite game'. There is a mix of reasons why people don't adopt free market or other liberal values, most apparent is when there's such scarcity and poverty that it can't be managed but in other cases you have history, philosophy, etc. that's provided different shared fundamentals. I don't know what to say in the later case, on one hand countries have a right to their own experimentation with systems, OTOH it gets to be an issue if they're breaking basic human rights, in some cases we do have to keep pressure up when there are significant human rights violations but otherwise - while we can compete with said countries - we're better off not forcing their systems to be something different.

For Murray I remember he making his rounds on 'The Strange Death of Europe' and there was a lot of political activity in general (not just populist leaders being elected but a lot of fuel for Brexit) related to the handling of the migrant crisis and the war in Syria (maybe not as intense as other economic factors but close). Murray was making arguments that assimilation works when immigration is below a given percentage but past that you get enclaves that don't assimilate. This is where I do think the EU dealt itself some blows with it's handling of that situation and you see this issue in any country where the media and messaging systems have a cold war structure (eg. 'blue church') where the aim is to instruct people on what to think - they fall into the trap of attacking heterodox but otherwise sensible criticism and if anything do a great job of boosting the signal and credibility of whoever they're attacking when those attacks are just a litany of isms and phobias.

Fair enough, but the video was intended for people on the fence regarding the plight of western values in 2022 and who are novices over western history and philosophy. It's self-evidence you have a deep understanding of western philosophy. I must admit I was quite surprised over the influence of Murray and Ferguson. I assumed most conservative audiences were getting their information from Jordan Peterson, Tucker Carlson or Piers Morgan.

In a lot of ways Murray is an intellectual heir to Roger Scruton.

The interesting thing about Peterson though is he has nothing bad to say about indigenous cultures, he's close friends with a carver in a first nation tribe and has a lot of his woodworking throughout his house. His biggest gripe is how many people both miss the evils of communism and miss what aspects of culture act as a bulwark against creeping totalitarianism.

I certainly make a distinction between political and social conservatism and craftsmen who preserve a way of life or hobbies relating to traditions. My best friend for many years prior to getting married was a hobbyist metal worker who welded traditional European mythological creatures in iron. He made beautiful dragons, birds, crests etc..people paid him to make motifs out of wrought iron to put on their gates or in their homes.

Fascinating! I must admit Petersen is a very complicated individual. I dabbled in woodowork (I enjoyed the smell of varnish and the feeling texture of wood) but I'm afraid I didn't have the patience to persevere with the craft.

That is the danger in making assumptions about other people, particularly when said assumptions are based on the already skewed view from the media. Carlson is the most successful host on TV right now, and IIRC is audience is something like 3 million viewers, which leaves a whole lot of conservatives on the table getting their information from elsewhere.

I'm willing to listen to more conservative podcasters (I did try around the beginning of COVID) to get a balance of views from different perspectives toward current issues.

Kanye West has made a mockery of the whole left/right continuum and I can see from the reaction of left wing voices that many are on autopilot with the improvised labels they are coming up with.

with blind eyes defining the "opposition" was a good idea