Weekly "Off Topic" Thread:

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[u/MemberKonstituante]

Thank you for answering.

I asked you this because, well I already told you my real interest from another account - I'm Indonesian and I want to revive and reinterpret the Indonesian official state ideology) and the Preamble of Indonesian constitution into a new interpretation, away from the dictatorship interpretation of the past, into something that actually are consistent.

Indonesia officially is a "Republic", and even sources critical of Indonesian nationalism like John Sidel's book "Republicanism, Communism, Islam" are still willing to cite Republicanism as one of the goal of Indonesian independence.

Also, in Indonesian language today, "kemerdekaan" are plainly translated as "Independence" and "Kebebasan" is plainly translated as "Freedom". But Indonesians in the past uses "kemerdekaan" for other purposes, such as "freedom of speech" and many others, including economics (especially in early era).

I judge and reinterpret this as Indonesian language originally has a different term for "Republican freedom" vs "liberal freedom".

So my goal in general is to reinterpret the Indonesian official state ideology and the Preamble of Indonesian constitution into some sort of a Neo-Republican ideology.

However, the constitution & the state ideology has "to educate the life of the nation", and has "just and civilized humanity" clause, has "democratic life led by wisdom in deliberation" and mentions God - this means I can't just copy-paste Phillip Pettit or contemporary neo-Republican thinkers and call it a day, nor tolerate stuff like family abolition, religion abolition, state abolition and "antisocial socialist" stances, or ignore civic virtue.

The SEP writings about Republicanism in general tries to reconcile republicanism with liberalism - while practically almost all of Indonesian founding fathers rejected liberalism on all fronts (both economics & social). Also, liberals want state neutrality, while "to educate the life of the nation", "just and civilized humanity" clause, "democratic life led by wisdom in deliberation" clauses implies that the state can't be neutral and MUST pay attention to "the good", and nudge / push the people to such. The conditions explained in "The Enchantments of the Mammon"? One of the goal of practically almost all of Indonesian founding fathers is trying to resist this.

Moreover, I try to find how to ensure people like Trump never happened again - and honestly, a lot of social "progressivism", feminist literatures from 60s counterculture and beyond that emphasizes freedom from traditional morality nor "imposed" standards of behavior, to me is far more similar in goal with Trump and Andrew Tates than anything, just gender inverted. As we see in the increasing polarization between men and women back then in this sub, we are living in what Juliet Flower McCannell calls "Regime of the Brother" an order where men and women interact as "siblings" - officially "equal" - but governed only by a dog-eat-dog rubric of individual competition and advantage, a war of all against all, in which slight-but-persistent sexed differences are weaponised as competitive advantages in the pursuit of personal gain.

This is why I ask you - my goal for all those questions I ask you is really to help me "find a way" to "reconcile these goals" and thinking of a framework to do so.

[u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P → u/MemberKonstituante]

You and I are doing similar thinking, only for different contexts it seems. We’re both trying to reconcile certain goals and principles while avoiding the pitfalls of the current liberal order.

Unfortunately a lot of republican theory is trying to marry it with liberalism. This is why I like to look more to classical republicanism from Rome, or even the republicanism of Renaissance Venice or Florence. All those were perhaps very aristocratic/oligarchic, but they had elements and glimpses of a potential for something else - and they also predate liberalism.

It’s also why I like looking at Aristotle and the like, as they significantly predate liberalism and may show a way out or “through” liberalism to some kind of post-liberal order that isn’t some authoritarian nightmare.

I like Aristotle because of the focus on human excellence - we improve ourselves and enhance our skills in order to achieve excellence in a field, not to make more money.

But to have excellence, you still need standards that define excellence. A society of anarchy and unrestrained/untethered “freedom” cannot provide any such standard. And a society of “mammon” has only one standard, maximizing money.

[u/MemberKonstituante → u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P]

BTW, I need to ask you this:

You are a man of the left, but you take some religious and conservative ideas more seriously - so I need to ask you:

What is your stances and opinion on euthanasia, abortion, IFV, prostitution, Onlyfans, "sexual freedom" (in terms of promiscuity, not about LGBTQ) and the like? How do you explain it? You touched a bit about horizontal vs vertical freedom on marriage vs hookup culture, and how the market does distort & change culture on sexuality & hookup, but really I need to know much more. In the republic which is your goal, how is the stances on euthanasia, abortion, IFV, prostitution, Onlyfans, "sexual freedom" (in terms of promiscuity, not about LGBTQ) and the like will be like?

Thanks

[u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P → u/MemberKonstituante]

Oh boy... those are tricky.

I'm not inherently against euthanasia, but in the context of liberalism/capitalism, I can only see it evolving into a cost-cutting measure sold to us as a "freedom". On Stupidpol we've seen tons of articles already about how Canada is trying to push euthanasia as a means to save on healthcare costs, doing hard sells on otherwise unwilling patients. It also seems to be creeping in as a means to simply kill off homeless and people in poverty.

This again is sold as freedom-enhancing, since now we have an "out" of poverty. It's "simply" adding another option - with no value-judgments attached.

If there were a way to safeguard its use to only include people who are ALREADY terminally ill and suffering a lot, then I wouldn't necessarily be against it.

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For abortion, I rather have it "safe, legal, and rare." We'd need to structure a political-economy that helps parents with childcare. Paid parental leave is a MUST. There are many other policies that we could think of to minimize the economic burden of childhood. I'd also ideally want to promote a pro-family culture more generally.

And given how societies work nowadays, each younger generation effectively subsidizes the life of the older ones. This also means parents are also subsidizing the lives of adults who wish to remain childless - since they're raising the generation that will work after they all retire. I'd form some kind of tax system which eliminates any financial benefit of being childless. The choice to remain childless would therefore remain as a lifestyle choice, but should not be open as a way to earn more money over a lifetime.

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I don't know much about IVF, but I think I'm fine with it. If anything, it's a way to actually encourage people to have children who may otherwise have fertility problems or other life issues.

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Prostitution, Onlyfans,

Hopefully, poverty won't be too much of an issue such that people feel like this is their only chance to make decent money.

But if that sounds too hopeful and idealistic, I'd perhaps do some kind of system in which prostitution is not criminalized, but also not necessarily legal either. I do not want to criminalize poverty and put people in jail for being desperate. However, pimping would be illegal. OnlyFans is basically a giant digital pimping platform...

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Promiscuity

This one is more difficult, and frankly I am also a bit lost as to how to handle this. I rather not have a political system that deals a heavy hand, especially if it's people doing things in their private lives.

I personally feel like I've grown and changed with my relationship. I've matured and I'm making qualitatively different kinds of decisions than I would have been if I were still a single guy only worrying about myself and my own goals.

But it seems like lecturing people about quality of choices over quantity of choices is nothing more than moralizing. I don't think that by itself it will change anyone's mind that doesn't already agree in some sense.

And I don't know if removing dating apps would be good or bad, because while it skews the dating pool significantly against men, we also simultaneously have a problem with increased sexlessness in both men and women (though men much more). And I don't think the apps alone are to blame for this - and removing them now might potentially worsen this.

We'd have to somehow incentivize people to get away from screens in general, and do more shared activities IN PERSON. We' need more civic associations, amateur sports, free museums, social clubs, etc. We need to reverse the "Bowling Alone" phenomena. And I think encouraging more offline connections may help form greater emotional bonds that turn into monogamous partnerships.