(from <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/characters/nm0000323" rel="nofollow">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/characters/nm0000323</a>) one of my favorite movie quotes:<p>Bruce Wayne : Criminals aren't complicated, Alfred. Just have to figure out what he's after.<p>Alfred Pennyworth : With respect Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man that <i>you</i> don't fully understand, either. A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So, we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never met anybody who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.<p>BW : So why steal them?<p>AP : Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.<p>So, how do you deal with such man?<p>BW : The bandit, in the forest in Burma, did you catch him?<p>AP : Yes.<p>BW : How?<p>AP : We burned the forest down.
On the surface it seems pretty simple- the end of history utopianism of the '90s has mutated to the end is near dystopianism. There are no shortage of statistics explaining why the standard of living for the average American has dropped off, sometimes sharply, compared to that era. Hence accelerationism is now king.<p>For a good analysis for why both the far right and the far left are unhappy (more so than in other ages, at least), there's this article on neoreaction, which became vogue to talk about in 2013 before the present dominant political trends: "Shedding Light on the Dark Enlightenment" by Rick Searle at the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies (<a href="https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/more/searle20131202" rel="nofollow">https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/more/searle20131202</a>)
I think the verbiage is misleading and inflammatory. "Need For Chaos" can more reasonably be understood as "desire for change" when the individuals see no actual path for that change to occur.<p>Calling it a "need for chaos" further alienates those whose very alienation is the cause of the phenomenon on display. Better to use more neutral language that doesn't inflame the population being observed or bias those doing the observation into further perpetuating an "us vs them" mentality.
> 40 percent concurred with the thought that "When it comes to our political and social institutions, I cannot help thinking 'just let them all burn' "; and 40 percent also agreed that "we cannot fix the problems in our social institutions, we need to tear them down and start over."<p>Hard not to sympathize with this perspective when:<p>- The people running the country lie us into an unending, ruinous war with help from the establishment media, and no one is held to account.<p>- The people running the country demolish the economy with unsustainable debt-driven speculation, and no one is held to account.<p>- The people running the country openly associate with a convicted trafficker of children, who conveniently dies in prison before naming any names and while the cameras were "inoperable" and the guards asleep and his cellmate transferred out at just the right moment, and (just wait for it!) no one is held to account.<p>"Let them all burn" may not be the right answer, but at the very highest levels our political and social institutions are rotten to the core.
> 24 percent agreed that society should be burned to the ground<p>Haven't read the actual paper, but does anyone know what response percentages one would expect from a "normal" population?
I've had my share of NFC at times. I was an idealistic Young Pioneer (not that different from Boy Scout). But I got disillusioned, and became an idealistic hippie immigrant.<p>Then I got disillusioned again, and went punk/metal. Megadeth's "Addicted To Chaos" was my favorite song for a while. Plus Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Butthole Surfers, Judas Priest, Turbonegro, Marilyn Manson, etc. But still, I did a PhD and played in academica for a while, so I was arguably just posing.<p>Now, it's not so much that I have NFC. I'm just not at all optimistic about the future. But not like it was during the 60s-80s, when nuclear holocaust seemed all too likely. Now it's mostly the slow slide into an ~unlivable climate. And all the social breakdowns that will come with that. And given that I'll be dead, it's not such a big deal, personally.
Exactly. Trump is one of these people, which is why they love him so much. That he is in a position of such great responsibility is incredibly dangerous.
And why not? The entire political process is kabuki interspersed with conversations with important donors and lobbying groups that actually establish policy.<p>Nihilism isn't the answer, but neither is demanding a particular kind of we're-all-professionals kabuki without any real change. Flipping over tables is at least something.