What's that? Heights? From before your question.
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The purpose of the group is not to instrumentalize the members towards economic efficiency, but to support the members of the group, purely because they are members of the group. By virtue of being members of the group, they have a value beyond the exclusively economic.
To go to your example of nepotism: this too can be turned on its head. While it can be frustrating to be in a group in which one does not benefit from nepotism, at the same time, institutions such as family farms or family businesses are essentially nepotistic in nature. I don't see anything morally wrong about passing a business down to one's offspring. Further, such businesses tend to be organized in such a fashion as to prioritize values beyond the purely economic, i.e. they often behave in a more moral fashion in their interactions with the wider society than more "meritocratic" bureaucracies such as large corporations (which as we know, are easy prey for psychopathic subversion).
Of course on the other hand you have "family businesses" that really are purely psychopathic (looking at you, Rothschilds). So as with everything, these questions are not black and white: specific conditions are key to determining right and wrong.
I appreciate this post and line of thinking. It comes to my mind that if things become "mechanical", what had started as a success is likely to falter.
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On the other hand, I don't care about local cultures and ethnicities, because the real question is about a human being's spiritual development, or in more down-to-earth terms his or her "maturity" or "ability to think for himself" or "ability to take responsibility", as Joe put it. That's so much more important than anything else!
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[...] Culture is not your friend, and hatred is hatred, no matter which side of the fence it comes from.
Take the gun, leave the canoli. Cultural appropriation by another term could be flattery.
Hatred probably needs to be countered by rationality, or else.
The other part of Inquorate's post:
I think you missed the point I was making. The social and cultural engineers, the ones that make sure no strong masculine role models are on tv, the ones that ensure the confused and belittled have a voice, but the sensible and intelligent don't.. those people, would love to have us doing exactly what you're doing, Joe.
I'm going to guess he's referring to:
@Joe, "...holiday with a nice tan. Then again, maybe that's a sign of 'white guilt' or a 'self-hating white person', ya know, showing off that your skin is less white than it was before. Paleface would probably agree."
I think he's saying that using the terms like that, even though it's in a kvetching kind of joking way, gives it more standing, airing, and in a way can be playing into the plans of the sociologist types who may have mapped it out as a stratgem. However, how to defuse such terms may best be done with ridicule and scorn.
I think a direct line of refutation to such engineered culture is precisely that -- it did not develop organically to support carrying capacity in the group. Simply stating it.
@Inquorate would you concede that there might be a nuance to culture, that there may be valuable things, and that to decry it as you've done twice now is like "throwing out the baby with the bathwater"?
[[Terence McKenna's Disillusioned Perspective on Mass-Consumerist Culture. "We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow.".]] I mistook him for the LSD guy, Leary.
