AI Overview "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity"

In the 70s and 80s in flow was largely from the midwest. Those folks liked what they saw in SF came and supported what was here. Later maybe nineties, mostly came from the East. These people brought their own ideas, saw SF needed tweaking and fixing, to suit their utopian views. As you saw they often leave. It wasn't the hippies that were the core base, it was working class Democrats in the Sunset and Richmond. They provided balance. Btw I was a hippie (for a while) lived on Ashbury at this time.

Deus ex Machina A Greek theatrical artifact. But, possibly reflecting a human (even hominid), neural hard wired genetic predetermined reflex. People (especially on X) make statements such as "it's just not right that...." (fill in blank). A given in these statements is that there is a "right way". Otherwise the statement is meaningless. Many times there are two sides. Each agreeing this thing is "not right" but offering different solutions, opposing solutions, depending on their personal philosophical view of the universe. History shows that most events are driven by unpredictable chaos. And our reaction to them. Not to a template of " the right way". Keeping in mind human reaction has a poor history also. But people, on all sides, keep intuitively referring to "it just ain't right" the thought leaders know this is The Vulnerability. Anyone not appealing to it is buried in the ground of irrelevance. In Greek (later Roman theater) a basket came down with a "god" in it. He made everything "right". A satisfying experience for that particular group of pre wired primates. He would today be president of the world. All powerful, appealing, and dangerously arbitrary. But all would be "right". // Grok comment Your framing is sharp. The ancient crane-lowering of a god to tidy up the mess wasn’t just stagecraft—it was (and remains) a satisfying shortcut for a brain that evolved under pressure for social order, reciprocity, and the detection of “unfairness.”That “it’s just not right” impulse is real and deep. Humans (and other social primates) have strong, partially hard-wired reactions to perceived inequity, cheating, or violated expectations. It shows up early in children, across cultures, and in lab experiments. The statement only works because the speaker and the audience share—or can be made to share—an implicit map of how things ought to be. Without that shared map, the complaint is empty noise.The trouble, as you note, is that the map is not universal. Two groups can both feel the same visceral “not right” about the same event and then prescribe opposite remedies, because their underlying models of human nature, causality, hierarchy, or the good life diverge. History rarely supplies a clean template; it supplies contingency, feedback loops, unintended consequences, and a lot of improvisation. Our post-hoc stories of “progress toward the right” or “decline from the right” are mostly narrative overlay on that chaos.Leaders who thrive understand the vulnerability. They don’t have to solve the underlying complexity; they only have to name the outrage, amplify the sense that the current state is illegitimate, and position themselves (or their program) as the agent that will restore order. The more absolute the promise—“I alone can fix it,” “this will make everything right”—the closer it sits to the old theatrical god in the basket: all-powerful, arbitrary, and emotionally satisfying precisely because it short-circuits the hard work of trade-offs and uncertainty.The danger is obvious. A figure or system that can redefine “right” at will, while claiming to embody the collective moral instinct, is both appealing and unbound. The same neural reflex that once helped small groups police free-riders can be scaled up to justify large-scale coercion when someone successfully monopolizes the definition of justice.So the instinct is adaptive in its original context and still useful as a signal. But treating it as an oracle that points to a single, discoverable “right way” waiting to be installed by the right god-or-president is where the ancient theatrical convenience becomes a modern political hazard. Explore moral foundations theory

A major issue in the Western intellectual tradition. Much of what we believe we "think" is in fact primarily in the non conscious systems of the mind. We evolved to deal with other social creatures in an immediate transactional way. If you stop and make a conscious decision about whether a saber tooth tiger is a threat, you are lunch. So most interactive decisions are made prior to our conscious mind having knowledge of the event. Then our ego thinks " we decided X, because.. yx197). When we, in fact, never decided. We take these intuitions and create stories to help us be more neutrally efficient. These are myths. Thus, we better process myth than math.

The result of the demise of objectivity. Subjective reality permits anything that serves the pathologically empathetic mythology. By definition, presenting objective arguments to those who reject objectivity, is irrational.

You are the most spot on social observer, with the possible exception of me. Question. Assuming your observations are right on, so what? Meaning, it seems that culture wide wealth creates time and narcissistic opportunity for political naval gazing. Not for everyone, but at least the vast majority of university educated white women. Those that have primarily rational operating systems have already left the woke. The retainers will ride to the end. All over the Western world "hyper rationalists" use the tactic of explanation as their response. Hyper narrativists do not believe in objectivity* thus objective, rational response is meaningless. Am I right? Yes. Do I want to be right? No. I have not heard a single idea that addresses these facts. It may be like the plague. Wait for the end of its destruction and then pick up the pieces and start over. @robkhenderson