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" But how can a philosophy that is taken to its own furthest extent no longer be itself?"
Conservatism taken to it's furthest extent isn't itself either. No change in status quo, no challenge to conventional orthodoxy and we are all still living in a flat earth, Galileo still in jail. Push change for change sake and destroy long standin…
" But how can a philosophy that is taken to its own furthest extent no longer be itself?"
Conservatism taken to it's furthest extent isn't itself either. No change in status quo, no challenge to conventional orthodoxy and we are all still living in a flat earth, Galileo still in jail. Push change for change sake and destroy long standing traditions as extremes of liberalism does and you end up in a bad place as well, but both of these examples are extremes. The push and pull between reasonable conservatism and reasonable liberalism is what pushes us forward in a messy yet postive arc. Replacing either with the extremes isn't a good option.
This is probably true, and approximately what I was trying to get at in the last paragraph. It may be that neither can moderate itself, and so needs the other. I think it would be reasonable to posit that in recent times conservatism degenerated too much, allowing liberalism to run out of control, and what we need is a better balance.
When I read people getting all warm and fuzzy and nostalgic about the decline of “traditions”, I think, “Well, what would my life have been like if the influence of those traditions had NOT declined?” (I’m a 70 year old white gay male, raised in a conservative household in Dallas, Texas, with a working dad and stay at home mom. The Southern Baptist Church was the ruling NGO setting the local and regional traditions and social mores. ) ANSWER: I’d be dead, or in prison, or at best, living a lie, constantly in fear. My life would have been crushed. Most people would react with revulsion to my presence. So, I’m perfectly OK with the big brutal state saying to people, no, it’s NOT OK to beat up gay people, deny us housing or jobs, etc. When I read about conservatives whining about the decline of their traditions, I think, “Walk a mile in my shoes, dude—you might change your mind”.
And, when people moan and groan about the current state of liberal societies or the “horrors” of neo-liberalism, I think, “Wait a minute, are you blind? Are you not aware of how human life has materially improved world-wide, how much poverty has diminished in the 21st century? It’s practically a miracle.”
Although I’m basically a Sam Harris/Richard Dawkins atheist, I firmly believe, with Jonathan Haidt and others, that evolution has pretty much hard-wired the need for religion into human societies. I’m reading Deneen’s The Failure of Liberalism, and find it dismayingly compelling. (I might add that most of the criticisms of Fukuyama in the above essay come directly from Deneen.) I also grew up thoroughly grounded in Christian tradition and the nuclear family, and all of its values, which gave me an enormous advantage in life, which I fully acknowledge. I didn’t grow up in a hollowed out world with few churches and it’s just everyone all alone with our smart phones. But, when I read paeans to conservatism and tradition, I consider them thoughtfully, and conclude, “Nah—I don’t buy it.”
But I’m also freaked out by what’s happened to woke left, the Successor Ideology, the Elect, the Cathedral, etc., and think that phenomenon is the sad attempt of a secular society to fill the “God-sized hole” that evolution has tragically left us with. But it is NOT, repeat NOT a phenomenon of liberalism—it’s a quasi-religion, a new church, and anti-liberal. Which is why I subscribe to Substacks such as this one.
The best society is one where Galileo is not in prison and there are no Inquisitions, or Gulags, a MODERATE, liberal society subject only to slow “piecemeal social engineering” a la Karl Popper.
I would be perfectly content living in a liberal society you describe as an ideal. But I think the question is whether that is actually sustainable - or if as soon as one group (who claims all they want is a neutral state) gains sufficient power they will invariably act to impose their vision of the good on the rest of society. Certainly this was the case in your youth as you describe it, and is the case now for others. Is this inevitable? Is liberal neutrality a myth? If not, how can it be maintained? If it can't be maintained, what is the next best alternative? Those are the questions here that I think are most critical. If you find Deneen compelling, then you already see the problems as I and others are wrestling with them.
You are absolutely right in questioning the sustainability of liberalism, and I wish I had a clue how to make the transition from an atomized society to one that has nourishing, non-governmental, not-too-tribal institutions that fuel civic virtue, which seems to be existentially threatened. How do you do that without religion or God? It’s a pretty good joke that if God exists, He created us with our defining characteristic—rationality—impotent to find any evidence for His (Their?🙄) existence! Even Sam Harris can’t seem to do without his crypto-Buddhist meditation rituals. I found Haidt’s Righteous Mind brilliant but very disturbing, but I think he’s right. Interesting that he is himself an atheist but attends a synagogue, which I hear is not unusual. But, I don’t think I could comfortably start attending the Methodist church again, no matter how many rainbow flags it flies, of my childhood, knowing that it’s foundational scriptures damn me. I’m supposed to ignore that? Every critic of liberalism I’ve read inevitably posits religion as a solution.
Liberalism is not anti-fragile to disruption. A new paradigm, beyond the entire left-vs-right narrative, that IS anti-fragile to disruption is what is required.
https://metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-bridge
Also:
https://rebelwisdom.substack.com/p/can-iain-mcgilchrist-reunite-science
And:
re: David Ronfeldt's TIMN model of social change
disruption -> disintegration -> regression to ideological tribalism -> reintegration at higher level / social form
https://twotheories.blogspot.com/2009/02/overview-of-social-evolution-past.html
---excerpts---
... At first, when a new form arises, it has subversive effects on the old order, before it has additive effects that lead to a new order. Bad actors may prove initially more adept than good actors at using a new form — e.g., ancient warlords, medieval pirates and smugglers, and today’s information-age terrorists being examples that correspond to the +I, +M, and +N transitions, respectively. As each form takes hold, energizing a distinct set of values and norms for actors operating in that form, it generates a new realm of activity — for example, the state, the market. As a new realm gains legitimacy and expands the space it occupies within a social system, it puts new limits on the scope of existing realms. At the same time, through feedback and other interactions, the rise of a new form/realm also modifies the nature of the existing ones.
... Societies that can elevate the bright over the dark side of each form and achieve a new combination become more powerful and capable of complex tasks than societies that do not. Societies that first succeed at making a new combination gain advantages over competitors and attain a paramount influence over the nature of international conflict and cooperation. If a major power finds itself stymied by the effort to achieve a new combination, it risks being superseded.
... A people’s adaptability to the rise of a new form appears to depend largely on the local nature of the tribal form. It may have profound effects on what happens as the later forms get added. For example, the tribal form has unfolded differently in China and in America. Whereas the former has long revolved around extended family ties, clans, and dynasties, the latter has relied on the nuclear family, heavy immigration, and a fabric of fraternal organizations that provide quasi-kinship ties (e.g., from the open Rotary Club to the closed Ku Klux Klan). These differences at the tribal level have given unique shapes to each nation’s institutional and market forms, to their ideas about progress, and, now, to their adaptability to the rise of networked NGOs.
...
---end excerpts---
The older I get, the more convinced I am that there are no ideological answers to these problems. There are only fallen, sinful people struggling with how to raise the next generation while trying to figure out the best way to deal with the specific problems their own time has presented.
For myself, I believe liberalism today is multiplying problems instead of solving them. It has lived out its time. The alternative is still taking shape, but it will not be secular, democratic liberalism. It will be, as R.R. Reno says, a "strong god" of some kind.
That is the voice of reason, perfect.
As for the strong God, we have gone to an extreme in putting humans as the center of everything, so it stands to reason we will swing back to the opposite, something outside of ourselves. I won’t see it, aged 58, not enough time, this mania will out last me. Profound stupidity is my future.
(sorry for the duplication)
https://rebelwisdom.substack.com/p/can-iain-mcgilchrist-reunite-science
Agreed. Even the progressive beliefs within liberalism gave us needed outcomes. African Americans were culturally oppressed for centuries in a liberal United States. Likewise for gays and lesbians, particularly gay men who faced threats of arrests and imprisonment well into the 1960s.
The yin-yang push pull is always important to the evolution of society. I'm a subscriber to the Golden Mean theory (thank you Aristotle) and we do flirt between passion and reason in our outlook and societies and best outcome generally has always been seeking the golden mean as the best way forward (or the grubby gray compromise if you'd prefer).
The real problem is when one side (or both) becomes too immobile. We're seeing a progressive left becoming distinctly immobile and inflexible in ways the liberal left was not in the 1990s (remember Bill Clinton and his New Democrats?)
The radical-extremist factions on the right are mainly NEO-CONFEDERATE and largely from the (historically inbred) Appalachian-Celt gene pool*.
Ultimately, beyond those lingering from the Civil War (1860s), their resentments are ancient and tribal.
"Classical liberalism" in medieval Europe required that ILLIBERAL tribes be violently suppressed.
That creates a contradiction in modern liberalism because to "regress" to the use of political violence in suppressing the remnants of the ILLIBERAL Celtic/Border Reiver gene pool is "not nice".
* https://colinwoodard.com/dna-study-confirms-american-nations-map/
DNA STUDY CONFIRMS AMERICAN NATIONS MAP
Published: 03-21-17
And sadly, the loudest voices today are the extremes (far left and far right), drowning out the push and pull that is needed between conservatives and liberals.
Maybe, instead, the answers lie outside of political theory or social philosophies.
Maybe we need to be fixed before we address those institutions, and maybe our lives are not governed by them, but are instead the governors of them. Maybe we're looking for god-like answers without looking for God. Maybe reason, science, and techne have subsumed reality--or even denied its existence.
Why is history an arc? Maybe, instead, it is a stair-step descent into individualist human anarchy, where everyone does what is right in his own eyes.
The idea of history as an arc traces back to Hegelian thought although there are roots in Christianity seeking an eternal truth in God and bringing man closer to God. But Hegel really outlined the concept of history as an inevitable arc towards an ideal outcome, although Hegel himself certainly wouldn't be a woke radical (I like to think). But this thinking heavily influenced the Marxists and the modern progressive mindset, that we're getting closer to a purer, best form of existence of man, ideally in a state freed from all the shackles of oppression in all forms (and this includes biology these days - see transgenderism). It explains why they are so ideologically rigid and opposed to compromise for they see it as reactionary and opposite the clear trajectory.
But is history as an arc only a foolish belief? Does history really march in a neat arc? Perhaps the arc is a byproduct of the explosive growth of the West following the Renaissance? When, for the first time in history, each subsequent generation had it "better" than the previous generation and the amount of science and knowledge exploded from generation to generation. One can see why you'd think there was an arc to history.
But the rest of the world, other cultures, including today, certainly don't march upwards in an arc. Nor did most of history. The singular thing about the Roman empire, for example, was despite approximately 500 years of Roman imperium, the quality of life at the beginning was remarkably the same as at the end. Very little new scientific discovery, little pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Roman building techniques improved in that aqueducts could be bigger and the arch vaulted bigger spaces and grandiose building projects were more commonplace, but the framework remained largely the same. There was no "arc of history" for the Romans.
But I like your comment that we're looking for godly answers without god. There's truth to it. The progressives seek an answer that could only be provided by God (such as what is justice?) yet man is distinctly not god. We are not and cannot be perfect and to implement a godly perfection on an imperfect species has only been catastrophic.
Dana, if you don't know anything about Orthodox Christianity, you should investigate it. You sound like you're looking for the missing link of Western religious thought. If you're interested, two good books are worth procuring from your library:
Common Ground - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25115.Common_Ground
Becoming orthodox - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/112690.Becoming_Orthodox
Neither is trying to convert you. They are both about how to understand Eastern answers to these sorts of big questions you're asking.
Thanks, Brian. I've not read these 2, but am familiar with Orthodox. My flavor of Christianity is a different one, but I do see truth in most all of them. For sure, I do know that my Redeemer lives.
I'll check them out--my reading list is getting quite long these days. That's the problem with reading these quality Substacks!