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Dec 19, 2022Liked by Matt Asher

Interesting article and a fun read. How do you tie context collapse to an inevitable dictatorship?

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Good question. For most people context collapse feels like chaos, disorder, even madness. The death of norms. Anyone gets to do anything whenever they want. Violet prisoners are let out to mix with the public. Kids are treated like adults, and vice versa. No separation between anyone or anything. The releasing prisoners thing in particular is a favorite tactic of communists: sow chaos, then claim only your strong governance can solve the problem. When people feel like the culture is getting away from them, when they see breakdown and rot, they're much more accepting of a strongman who says he will restore order.

The flip side of this is that subcultures that have maintained rigid context, like the Amish with their highly structured and insulated lives, maintain their societies without a dictator and with a high level of decentralization. Strict context contains and channels energy, so you get the order we humans naturally crave without it being violently imposed, at least not in Pinochet way.

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