I might wish there had been less of it, but only if it would have helped avoid a wide array of problems now. On the whole, a more robust mindset among western peoples today would obviate my concerns.

Then again, I don’t feel the need to argue against China on universalist, moralizing grounds, so I don’t need to make comparisons.

I genuinely can’t think of a purely logical/rational [never figured out the precise difference] ‘end’. Not even survival. The closest I could come, but not really rational. Instinctive. And not for everyone.

Everything that is rational or logical is so only as a testable means to an irrational, preferential end.

Granted, the question of what is an end and what is only a means to a higher end is kind of a turtles all the way down situation. And the actual end might be hidden from view.

Star Trek corrupted the minds of many, loved it though I did, in this case in the way the writers put the word “logic” into Nimoy’s mouth in often wrong, always inconsistent ways. How reason ended up with that fate, dunno.

But a parent has such control over a child. The school system has even more control. When the parents and the school system are on the same page, we have cultural conditioning, which is brainwashing.

No, I’m not saying all culture is brainwashing. I’m saying most culture is.

Even purely random information defeats brainwashing, if you expose the victims to it young enough. I’ve blown young people’s minds simply by mentioning facts that anyone who’s been around would be aware of. I didn’t even express an opinion, merely mentioned particulars in passing. I think I accidentally interfered with their brainwashing, and that’s fine.

http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2019/08/chinese-are-as-partisan-as-rest-of-us.html

Remember me of this excellent article by Joe Katzman:

(…)
“Not about being right, which is best described as “useful, to a point.” Aristotle noticed over 2,000 years ago that many people aren’t persuadable by logical arguments. So what’s the “feeling good” all about?

The right’s favorite mistake

Try this on for size:

People often take public positions in an attempt to increase their social status.

(…)
Where the meta-message inside political correctness is to override your own judgement, in favor of deliberately-shifting judgements from people with higher status.

(…)
Leftism isn’t a policy machine or an economic machine. Its economic results would tell you that much in a hurry. But the machine keeps running. Which means it must work for something. The correct question is: in what way does it work?

Analysis: Leftism is a status machine. A very, very successful status machine. Conservatives have lost status battle after status battle, often because they fought it as a policy battle. It rarely is.

That’s conservatism’s most consistent and most damaging mistake.

https://dailycaller.com/2018/01/13/how-to-trump-the-media-avoid-conservatives-biggest-mistake/

It’s what empire do.

In this we are no different from the many incarnations of China, or any other kindred, tongue, and people, except perhaps in the intensity of our sanctimoniousness and the depths of our legalistic attempts to cover our transgressions. One common expression of both that sanctimoniousness and that legalism is drawing a curtain of hypocrisy across our history and saying there is righteousness, now is evil.

This pretense, built on a firm foundation of sanctimoniousness and legally ratified piety, has been both a strength and a stumbling block for this people. From a sprinkling of exiles from a small damp island on a hostile shore, we have risen to dominate the Earth, a feat few have matched in the long reach of time. Pretense is one thread in the formula for American success and failure that led to the our fading unipolar moment.

We conquered before 1898 to get the brass ring. We conquered after 1898 to get the brass ring. In this the mystery of American behavior in the first half of the 20C is no different from the mystery of American behavior in the second half of the 20C nor American behavior in the 17C, the 18C, or the 19C. WWI made us the dominant power on the planet. WWII confirmed our dominance. Some of this was due to our raw power and brutishness. Some of this was due to the fact that we often believe our own pretense.

China, even under the PRC, has its own forms of pretense and its own forms of cruelty. The American has the scrappy underdog rising to face and defeat true evil despite the odds. The Chinese have the virtuous bureaucrat respectfully submitting a memorial to a less than virtuous leader and, more often than not, being killed for his efforts.

We have Batman, they have Zhuge Liang. Both superheroes of a sort, expressing the innards of their peoples. Will that ritual sacrifice summon the winds to stop the Joker? Will that batarang sink the fleets of Cao Cao? Is the view from the streets of Gotham better than the view from the Red Cliffs? Similarities and differences, virtues and vices will determine who will stand and who will fall.

We have the brass ring. China wants the brass ring. They can have it, if they can take it.

The establishment liberal who thinks themselves a citizen of the world and the conservative who longs for the virtues of the Old Republic have one thing in common. Though the cosmopolitan believes themselves a citizen of a better future and the localist believes themselves a citizen of a better past, if you drop them in the middle of any number of out of the way spots in the world, the denizens of that spot will only see an American, a citizen of the present. Depending upon what America they’re currently seeing, it won’t matter how woke the citizen of the world is about American blood guilt or how much the citizen of mom and apple pie wishes McKinley had just stayed home. They will reap what America has sown, whether with hospitality or with a bone-saw.

We see and draw sharp dividing lines between ourselves.

Foreigners see Americans.

It’s what people do.

Those attacking the protesters probably controlled and dominated by Red commissars.

Social intelligence helps average minds work together and thus pool their efforts for the greater good. For superior intellects, trying to work with the mundane can be limiting. But we still must interact with them. To me, such dealings are a problem to be solved, the same as I analyze and solve any other problem.

I rarely take anyone’s position on the issues of the day at face value. For most, such speech is just behavior, not the expression of thought. This is why persuasion by force of facts and reason rarely works. You can’t reason someone out of a position he was never reasoned into.