One of the very things culture does is give people the complex web of experiences, rituals, habits, tendencies, ideas, and values that allow for the communication of complex and subtle concepts and intuitions. It also helps to bind people together and facilitate harmonious action and feelings. If you want to get particularly optimistic, its mankind’s path to truth, beauty, and communion with the divine.

By contrast, consuming products together isn’t much of a culture. Even if the people you consume together with have different color skin.

It also received some support by western technology companies who were keen to assist such movements, at least in the early days. If you’ll remember the news and interviews at the time, the Arab Spring was “the thing!” that made Twitter/Facebook/Etc not just a place for talking about Kayne West or baby pictures. It was going to “change the world/make the world a better place.”

I get that corporations want bland atomized consumers to juice bottom lines. I’m not sure why we would want that.

I am not sure we want that either but it is happening in the global market so it must be profitable.

And it still seems kind of hard to tell what is effective Islamism versus just chaos.

1. For avoiding institutional decline, Insiders could try sticking up for their institutions, for a change, especially to the deranged nihilists on their own side. “If you guys are telling me Oberlin is a hotbed of latent racism and intolerance, then I guess it must be; here’s space for a Minorities Only lounge and some salaried positions where you can help us police microagressions among incoming freshmen after you finish your Communications degree” is not a viable long term strategy for protecting institutional integrity and performance.

2. You say neither side can implement an effective reform agenda. Does this have to be so? I would say that part of the problem is that selective institutions have had ideological conformity built (in many cases surreptitiously) into the selection criteria, resulting in a severe lack of diversity of thought which both further estranges the insiders and outsiders but also makes it appear as if the choices are between leadership by milquetoast neoliberals or the nihilism of the Occupy crowd. Isn’t GMU part of a project to change that? Or, to look at it a different way, Donald Trump doesn’t have what you would call a “reform agenda,” but he does have two rather specific policy proposals upon which to judge his performance as an executive: 1) build a wall to restrict unauthorized Hispanic immigration and 2) eliminate Muslim immigration. Regardless of the wisdom of those two proposals, his Outside supporters could clearly judge him on his implementation (or failure to do so) of those two policies. The Reagan Administration might qualify as a successful Outsider campaign that implemented some meaningful (mostly tax) reforms, as another example.

3. I’m not sure I’m as pessimistic about the situation as you and Gurri seem to be. As a libertarian, I think many of the formal, legal, institutions that make up this country’s government are either useless or downright pernicious and the worst that happens is that they lose all authority but hang around as zombie bureaucracies, sucking up resources and accomplishing nothing. We already have some of these and it isnt’ the end of the world. We already waste tons of resources; wasting some more won’t worsen the situation too badly.

Of course I wouldn’t want to live under it. It’s the kind of thing low IQ clannish peasant trash come up with when they start taking the Koran at its word. It’s a worldview though, you can’t say they didn’t have ideas and policies they didn’t want to implement.

The real shocker with the Arab Spring is that western elites actually thought they were going to result in “progressive Islam religion of peace democracy great wow!”. That was criminally retarded. Especially since Bush had just tried to do that in Iraq recently.

When I see the Arab Spring I see an example of global elite incompetence. To get from that that middle class white people in the west shouldn’t act as a check on our clueless elite is idiotic.

I get that corporations want bland atomized consumers to juice bottom lines. I’m not sure why we would want that.