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0 pointsJumpinJack_Cash2mo ago0 comments

> > the US erupting into a civil war within 5 years, as they seem somewhat to have lost touch with reality.

When your material needs are satisfied then only ideological battles remain to be won.

And having lots of material stuff you have plenty to throw at the enemy.

It's already happening. People are willing to forego their material needs and harm the country and themselves to 'own' and defeat the other side.

The only hope is that the ideological wars become so scattered and around so many topics and centers of power that it's not 70m people vs. 70m people or that the ideological wars are slow that people realize that they come with a loss of quality of life and material wealth and rebalance towards the latter instead of pursuing the 'owning the other side' doctrine

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whimsicalism2mo ago

I think effectively all empirics go against this notion, the only real counterexample I can think of is the Troubles. People living comfortable lives don't want to die and the ideology usually routes around that: look how morality has been evolving wrt the notion of 'sacrifice for the common good' - and we expect people will sacrifice their lives for their perception of the common good? doubt it

JumpinJack_CashOP2mo ago

> > People living comfortable lives don't want to die

Trump is the prime example , why did he decide to abandon the lifestyle afforded by his 500 million dollar net worth to pursue a job where 27% of his predecessors where shot at? Abandoning comfortable life to risk death.

Why don't rich celebrities quit after the first death threat letter, when they already have a huge bag of money?

The material wealth at the extremes is a recipe for unstable and unpredictable behavior , not for calm and collected behavior. People engage in ego battles and fall in love with their ideas and are willing to go to war for them as in a world of abundance they are the only thing that matters in order to 'win'.

The most abstract things (interest rates ring a bell) become personal because ideas about them were conceived in self reflection during the infinite hours of thinking and wondering free time afforded by material abundance, killing off ideas becomes akin to killing part of self and becomes unacceptable to the ego.

This Is true for individuals and countries alike.

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

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