It is interesting how inescapable hierarchy is - even for the egalitarian left, a hierarchy has to emerge of which groups are more equal than others in order to even begin to marshal their preferred policies and people into place, and then help the vanguard march down the path to utopia.
If modernist/progressive elites believed in equality wouldn't their art reflect this in the form of social realism? Communists rejected modernism as decadent. The top living artists today are Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, whose work deals in emptiness and irony.
There are Hierarchies and Hierarchies... Complex societies presume administration, but how far-reaching and total should the grip of these administrations be? When someone in the City of London is making decisions for isolated communities in the North of England, therein lies the battleground.
Ellul's "The Technological Society" is still one of the best analyses of the annihilation of a society made for humans and it's replacement with a society, if one can call it that, made for technology.
Unfortunately it was written in a post-war, industrial-age context. Essays like yours are in the same spirit but with an eye on current events. Much appreciated.
This is really spectacular and thanks for unpacking this. At the center of all of this, I suspect, is an essential disagreement over anthropology: what is a human being and what is he for? Without an understanding of this we know nothing of human nature and, accordingly, are unable to establish what it is that constitutes human flourishing.
You say, "The truth, in my view, is that it is in part precisely an unrestrained lust for change in the name of progress that got us into our current civilizational mess in the first place." Totally agree. But the dual-use nature of technology - that it can be used for good or ill - means that we must know in some sense what constitutes the "good". The problem with untethered progress is that the ultimate destination and reason for it are ill-defined. Musk's neuralink may eventually connect brains to AI, but it may also transform the lives of quadriplegics. Can we distinguish the desirability of one over the other? Not in the absence of a common vision of the human good.
Even establishment conservatives have lost sight of the distinctions between RW Progressivism and conservatism itself. The recent uncomprehending reaction of National Review to the viral sensation Anthony Oliver ("Rich Men North of Richmond") was, I think, suggestive along similar lines to the point you're making here. I had a few thoughts about that event that are overlapping in some ways with your thinking here.
I teach philosophy and government to high schoolers. One of the things we talk about repeatedly is how our politics has become theological. All of our political debates really hinge on the question you asked: "what is a human being and what is he for?" If I know your answer to that question, I can predict 90% of your political positions.
I love this comment and it is so very true. The American founding documents were grounded in a very conscious set of assumptions regarding human nature, createdness, and happiness being inseparable from virtue. We are swimming in a very different set of assumptions now, and the political and cultural dissonance is largely between those who operate with ancient assumptions regarding human nature, and those who believe in the infinite malleability of human beings.
The Enlightenment is built on a Judeo-Christian (or at least monotheistic) metaphysical framework and is pretty nonsensical without it: if you don't have a creator, who gave you those rights? Burke articulated this best 300+ years ago. Patrick Deneen fills that role today. The 20th century provided ample evidence that rationalist atheism is philosophically incompatible with universal human rights. As N.S. Lyons says, the most egregious human abuses were perpetuated by an unbounded faith in progress.
Practically speaking, Locke's and Mill's value-neutral-state was always an illusion. A society without some shared definition of "good" implodes. I bought a sign from an Amish woodcarver in PA a couple of years ago: "Liberty unbounded leads to senseless muddle." An Amish man with a high school education understands something which escapes nearly all of our intellectuals today.
Hasnt that always been the case though? With that in mind, I would offer up another binary categorization thats becoming more relevant: those that believe in God and those that dont.
That is actually the binary that predicts about 90% of your political positions, since most of politics lies downstream of the question "what is the nature and purpose of man?" And that's a theological / philosophical question.
Historically, Americans often disagreed about specific religious practices, but in the big picture, WASP political culture was philosophically homogenous. We basically all agreed on "ends" and we argued about "means". (The one exception to this was the slavery issue -- and look where that got us.) The "culture war" is an attempt by the Left to assert a new answer to that question: "what is the nature and purpose of man?"
On a practical note on the human devious nature - when a technical improvement is presented using dis-information and deception, then we have to deal with a foul play. Nowadays, a gadget for surveillance is presented as a safety device, a vaccine already produced for a year or so is presented as a just happening novelty. It has been done and it will be done at a larger scale.
I would also add that encryption is sold as a way to keep your information safe, but it's predominate effect is to obscure the data harvesting activities being done by the apps running on your phone. I've run the experiments. ~30% of my cell phone data plan is being used by apps for surveillance and ad-serving. Or, rather, it was when I actually installed apps on my phone. Now I only use my browser. I recommend Brave. It's not perfect, but by filtering a lot of the ad surveillance, it has the happy effect of extending your battery life.
"But the dual-use nature of technology - that it can be used for good or ill - means that we must know in some sense what constitutes the "good". I think the key insight is that technology is not dual-use: it pushes society towards certain paths and not others.
And it's not based upon personal choice (we're not given any choice anyway at the individual level anyway: some new technology lands, and if someone holds back, they are left behind).
Well, I don't think it is technology that possesses the agency and the choice. Human beings are doing the choosing. We all have agency. It is an unavoidable fact that since the dawn of time our tools have been used for both good and ill and always according to the choices made by their wielders. These remarks, from the post linked to below are in regard to AI, but I think similar inclinations surround many technology discussions:
"The question of intelligent agency quietly inhabits much of our cultural discussion surrounding AI. The embedded but unspoken premise is that human beings are mere passive observers of something proceeding according to its own intent. There is a curious emphasis on what AI might do, with little discussion about what human beings themselves are doing."
"Well, I don't think it is technology that possesses the agency and the choice."
The claim is not that technology has the agency itself, it is that its presence and capabilities influence what the humans do. The sea doesn't have agency either, but people living near it will be more likely involved in maritime trade and fishing than those living in the desert.
A person's decisions are not chosen equally likely from considering every single option. They are shaped by what's available, what it makes easy, what it makes difficult, what other people have already chosen and so on.
In other words, human agency operates in an environment, which is shaped by the technology, tools, constrains combined with natural human proclivities and things like culture.
Tools make some things more likely, or easier. Weapons favor war, for example. Cars mean highways, noise, and air pollution. AI favors outsourcing thinking and making control easier.
If we chose not to go that way, through our agency, it would be not merely by making such a choice, but by making such a choice against the path of least resistance created by the presense of AI.
But the truth is: nobody will ask us to make any choice. The marker doesn't care for our opinions (and can make us lust over every BS through marketing and advertising, or force feed it to us), the opinions of individuals against AI will be ignored, and the political parties are working to give politicians more power, meaning they will welcome AI tools to that effect.
As for Joe Average? It will never be a real choice. At best it would be a very hard sacrifice (like chosing not to have a mobile phone at all today - it would mean you're automatically cut out from your friends regular mode of communication and coordination, reduce your employment options, limit your choice of other devices and banks you can use, and so on).
You are right to highlight the onerous impositions placed on us by technology. But such impositions don't mean we don't have real choices, only that the choices are perhaps not particularly to our liking. By eschewing smartphones we may be inconvenienced, or put out of steady contact with our friends. But perhaps we should choose friends who are not devotees of dehumanizing conveniences. I don't disagree with the gist of your concerns. I think it was McLuhan who said "we shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us". I take your point to be along those general lines. But I can only say that while technology will almost certainly bring unhappy effects in its wake, in some contexts it may also bring life and human thriving. I myself am a kind of cyborg, who is only still alive because of technology innovation combined with skilled improvisational marathon surgery. I expect that AI will introduce very dumb and unhelpful dynamics, and yet it may also accelerate and improve such things as early medical diagnosis, which may in turn save lives. That is the kind of thing I mean by "dual use". I don't blame technology for its role in social pathologies for the same reason I don't blame guns for gun violence: It is people who are pulling the trigger. We should seek more wisdom and apply it, even when such wisdom puts us uncomfortably out of the mainstream.
Finding a new N.S. Lyons piece in my daily Substack inbox is a present!
I love this article. What frosts me with respect to the mischaracterization of political groupings is the slippery nature of those supporting the group ideas but claiming independence in thought, views and ideas. It is like they root for the Yankees and own season tickets to the games because it is expected in their social circle, but root for the S.F. Giants in private. It is inauthentic, hypocritical and I don't think we should give anyone a pass for that type of behavior.
But back to the topic at hand. I think N.S. covered this point, but I think it is key. Progress and the related increase in overall prosperity that derives from progress requires ingredients that technology threatens to undermine. We are seeing clear proof of this today and WRPs are demonstrating a great big pile of lacking wisdom in their eagerness to discount it. I think they end up with a nerdy God complex and lose perspective for the combination of system stability and the gauntlet of mental, emotional and psychological development... the actual path they benefitted from to arrive at their leadership position in technological achievement. Musk has the perspective... it is why he lives in the US and does not try to accomplish what he is doing in South Africa.
This stuff isn't easy to achieve and it is a slippery slope back down once the stability and paths are lost. It comes down to the simple explanation of human capability. High human capability has enabled the US to pull the rest of the world forward in astounding technological progress. But we are in decline.
I have hired probably over 100 people in my 40+ years of corporate management experience. There are a subset of qualities that make a quality employee. There are two domains: hard skills and soft skills. The former can often be taught depending on the job. The latter often cannot... at least cannot very easily.
The latter, in my experience, is basically a test of relationship capability. There is a likeability factor (and attractiveness certainly helps)... but there is that related aspect of being a normie... being psychologically and mentally whole and stable. Being able to communicate well with everyone, and to
Tech=enabled modernity is screwing this all up. The younger job candidates have terrible soft skills. Many more of them are high maintenance. And they are also lacking hard skills and the work ethic to get them.
My experience with these shapes my political views and why I am really worried about the direction of the country. I believe we have harmed, and are harming, children who then cannot function well enough as adults. They lack resilience, they lack coping skills, they lack relationship skills, they are not psychologically nor mentally whole... they are not ready for work. They are certainly bright and more knowledgeable about the world... more tech-savvy. But they struggle to apply these gifts in productive ways.
Given the choice to deal with more of them in the workforce, I am looking for software and robotics solutions instead. But then, who will invent and make the software and robots? And without career paths, what will happen to the mental and psychological state of the average human? How will we maintain the fantastic bar of human capability that got us to this point of such marvelous technological advancement.
The RWPs need to reach a bit deeper in their deep-thinking on this subject. Foundational stability that includes the traditional values that conservatives support isn't any impediment to progress, it is a requirement.
As a young, high-maintenance individual, do you ever think that the kind of jobs that require such a degree of soft-skills and high-skills might themselves be part of the issue? Here is what I am thinking. It is true that, in general, the young are significantly less formed in virtue (that is, how to be human). I think, however, that the kind of "high-achievement" jobs which you speak of and actively work in may not contribute to human formation. The jobs are demanding, precisely because they are not contributing humanity but rather sucking it into the corporate machine. In one sense, the young can't contribute because the jobs are, in some way, intrinsically soul sucking. Perhaps they are sensitive because they sense that something is foul.
I mean this more as a thought experiment than as an actual diagnosis. For reference, I am college-educated man who works residential. I have severe struggles with anxiety, which prompted me to not seek further education or a "better" job. But I love working with my hands on real stuff which produces a real product.
I don't think I'm entirely wrong in my assessment, but I am also aware that resentment can run really, really deep. It is a force which can vitiate one's perspective, so I post my comment for the sake of--further discussion.
I think the key is to really understand yourself. To know what activities motivate you to action. To develop the mindset of a producer... someone that works at things that provide value.
Young people emerge from a life experience of being cared for with the cost of being dependent on adults. They naturally strive for independence, but that independence comes with the cost of learning to be self-sufficient in care. Being handed that challenge is difficult and can result in anxiety. But there is no cake and eat it too in this world. You are either self-sufficient and independent, or you are not but you are dependent and give up your rights to the freedom you think you must deserve.
I think there are two generational challenges with your generation today. First, the modern career world is much more complicated and fast-paced today. Second, young people have had fewer life-challenges that help them cope with anxiety over the steep mountain climb required to get to a place that feels like a good life. Compounding that challenge is a society that more often today delivers instant gratification. What young people miss is that life is a constant climb up the mountain (developing life-wisdom and skills along the way)... that nothing really good is quick or easy unless you are just lucky... but even luck can be transitory.
The first step is to understand things like "like working with my hands on real stuff that produces a real product.", and then start thinking about the types of jobs and careers that fit this need and that motivate you. Then pursue a job in that area and start growing knowledge and skills in that domain. Then at some point start your own business doing what you love.
Your anxiety will never leave because it affects everyone. The key is to learn to control it from messing up your decision-making capability required to build a good life. Life is a climb... it does not just happen to people despite what the Internet seems to show.
RWP’s suffer the same arrogance as the left progressive: vain, their education and intelligence dulls them, they loose feel and suppleness. How can’t you learn from the past; They are doomed before they start.
“ What does education often do? It makes a straight ditch of a meandering brook.” Henry David Thoreau
Our author says hierarchy versus egalitarianism. We could also say modern versus post modern. At least the RWP’s believe in human intelligence, the progressive left are fully bereft, we have no agency, nihilistic sameness .
Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned us that the path we were on (are on) “will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events.”
N.S. LYONS!! I'm more than willing (depending on the price) to subscribe to your Substack. When I try I only receive opportunities to download the Substack app. which, I have no interest in. You might note that I'm using Diamond Boys "reply" to attempt to reach you because despite numerous attempts to reach Substack there has been no response and my "comments box" remains blocked on the roughly half-dozen Substack subscriptions I pay for.
Some distinctions you elaborate about political beliefs and values (especially between libertarians vs RWP) including: proper aims of state; consequentialist beliefs; faith in rationality) illuminate, I think, the recent conflict in the covid-policy dissident community about the proper basis for condemning lockdown policies following Bret Weinstein's Tucker Carlson interview.
Weinstein is a well-known covid-policy-critical commentator. Following his interview some dissidents circulated his tweets showing he endorsed (for quite a long time) lockdown policies. He responded that he is now a critic of lockdown policies. Among dissidents a conflict arose related to the question of: What Precisely Was Wrong with State Lockdown Policies in 2020-2021? Two clear camps could be observed.
Lockdowns-Were-A-Technical-Mistake (this position was attributed to B Weinstein).
These dissidents argue that what went wrong was the quality of the policymaking processes. That is, they argue the policy processes were poor, in, among other things, that they omitted consideration of important social costs from school closure, business closure, nursing home policies excluding families from seeing loved ones, etc. They want us to avoid such disasters in future by improving the technical quality of policy processes.
Lockdowns-Were-A-Moral-Mistake
These dissidents argue that what went wrong was that state actors (public officials) possessed and used power to achieve a "health benefit" that would (according to them) only be achieved by deploying these repressive tools. These dissidents believe the only way to avoid such disasters in future is to alter state structures and processes so that public officials do not have the power to deploy such policies (irrespective of how much health benefit they calculate they can produce for society). I think many in this camp would argue that the lockdown policies were immoral because they deprived individuals of the latitude to determine how they would deal with the risks deriving from the circulation of a novel virus.
NB. I don't mean to suggest Weinstein is rightwing tho. I doubt he would claim such a label.
I appreciate your clarification of left-wing and right-wing, but I still wish we could get rid of it altogether. Most idea have no idea how to apply it properly, so it ultimately takes away more than it gives in any conversation.
Where people sat during the French Revolution isn't a useful sorting mechanism today. At all.
It would need to be a spectrum since there’s a place in the middle where hierarchy is accepted when it’s useful and rejected when it’s harmful. The Left tends to reject even good hierarchy and the Right tends to defend even bad hierarchy. Each gives fuel to the other’s propaganda.
"It would need to be a spectrum since there’s a place in the middle where hierarchy is accepted when it’s useful and rejected when it’s harmful."
Yes. And it was accomplished in 13th century France under St. Louis IX. See Andrew Willard Jones', "Before Church and State." Jones' primary argument is "...that the Middle Ages were neither religious nor secular because the religious and the secular are two features of a single construction: the modern Western social architecture of 'Church' and 'State'.... The Middle Ages had...a different vision of the cosmos." (Quote from the Introduction, page 4.) The modern vision is Hobbesian, one of primordial violence. In the Middle Ages, peace was the primordial condition and violence was a sin.
The construct of Louis IX's sacramental kingdom was to unite the spiritual and the temporal, in what was called "the business of the faith and the peace." There was no inherent tension between the spiritual and the temporal, because both were aiming for the same end: maintaining the business of the faith and the peace. The temporal "were brought up into and fulfilled in the spiritual, and so essentialist divisions between the temporal and the spiritual dissolve." (Page 22)
When conflict arose, i.e., violence against the faith or the peace, the spiritual and the temporal often worked together to restore the peace. There was a hierarchy, but the concept of sovereignty did not exist. The hierarchy existed to maintain the faith and the peace, not to gain power. As often as not, if there was a conflict between the king and a peasant, the king's appointed examiners ruled against the king, and sometimes the king himself ruled in favor of the peasant to restore the peace.
Of course, this post does not do justice to either Jones' book or the remarkable kingdom of Louis IX. There is a lot to learn from our pre-Enlightenment ancestors. In my opinion, our best hope in these dark times is a return to a civilizational foundation that we are all made in the image of God, and the primordial condition of man is peace, not violence.
Wendell Berry has said a similar thing: hierarchies are inevitable. The food chain is one. But they can be divided into just and unjust, and it's the latter that should be resisted. The "Left' errs when it thinks that all hierarchies are unjust.
I agree, it's an elegant summary. We probably also should since "Right wing" has been so relentlessly villainized by popular media and academia. Egalitares vs Hierarchs just sounds cooler too.
I used to think this, and have a friend who constantly rails against this claiming that people are actually in a multi-dimensional space. But now I believe it is in fact useful and correct.
You do though, have to clear away some historical fluff and misleading notions that the left/right dichotomy initially appears to entail:
1. The right is not the opposite of the left. The Left is people who, essentially, care a whole lot about politics because they believe in the unconstrained vision of human nature. They sat together because they found in each other the same passion. The right (small r) is everyone else. The right is therefore not defined by any particularly deep or coherent philosophy, but more like an absence of leftism.
2. The "far right" (Nazis) are in fact the far left, as the name of the party makes clear and as becomes obvious the moment you bother watching any of Hitler's speeches. The Nazis have been placed on the right by left-wing academics and journalists in order to protect themselves, basically through sheer force of Goebbels-style repetition, but it's not aligned with any historical evidence. This realisation immediately eliminates any talk of horseshoes and other confusions that arise from trying to interpret a far left party as the opposite.
For an explanation of why the difference is truly one-dimensional, see Conflict Of Visions by Thomas Sowell, which is distantly alluded to in the text.
As you say, it is an outdated concept. However, the real challenge to that paradigm is not from the RWP but from the populists. RWP is Nerd Central while populism is and has been for at east 150 years, a mass movement and not just in the US. Populism has always had a Janus profile with both a Right aspect and a Left aspect. The last person to successfully fuse those aspects was William Jennings Bryan-he of the Cross of Gold and the Scopes prosecution. Perhaps Huey Long could have continued the fusion had he not been assassinated. He was said to be one of the only two people that FDR actually feared.
I see Trump trying to recreate the fusion. His peeling away of the working class (and not just the whites) away from the Democrats and combining it with rural America is in the grand tradition of fusionist populism. The flip side is the increasing identification of the suburbs with the corporate oligarchs. Viewed from this perspective, J D Vance is probably the logical successor.
Perhaps not, but it aligns excellently with the left and right brain and how they perceive the world. If you have not read Iain McGilchrist's "The Master and his Emissary", I can't recommend it enough. While he doesn't make many overt, direct parallels to modern Western politics, they cannot be ignored. Too deep to elaborate in this comment, but at least check out a good introductory video of him explaining the fundamental differences.
Thanks! It's on the reading list. Looks like there is an audio book version, would you recommend it for listening? I try to avoid listening to scientific literature. I can't tell how technical the book is...
What precisely is the inherent tension between the RWP and the true conservative if as you say, the latter would agree exploring the stars would be “cool” and the former could agree that there are some core human values and needs worth conserving? I believe a fair number of RWPs would agree that things like community, truth, morality, family etc are fundamental goods.
It's a matter of priorities and what one considers the highest good. A RWP may value such things, but would an RWP be willing to accept slower "progress", including a limit on technological change, in order to preserve community or family life? If yes, they probably are not a RWP. Similarly I may find space exploration cool, and consider the urge to explore a natural human one, but don't think achieving space empire should be our foremost goal, to which other goals and values are subordinated. Instead I'd see such a civilizational flourishing as an outcome necessarily built on what that civilization had managed to *preserve* successfully - but that's because I'm conservative.
Agree although I think what is getting in the way is the idea that progress must be "slowed" in some intentional, artificial way to keep apace with humans or even stay a few steps behind them. What the RWP, along with the transhumanists, either ignore or give lip service to in order to quiet the critics, is that it's not about "slowing down" or remaining 21st century cave dwellers out of willful ignorance. It's about taking the time to determine whether not something is truly necessary - putting technology through an ethically rigorous process. With the exception of this fantastic analysis, right now all I see is caricaturing. Where is the Hippocratic oath of AI? Someone said in an earlier comment this may be a disagreement on anthropology. Agree totally. Unfortunately some in this RWP tech movement see the anthropocene as necessarily on the decline. How can you argue with people who may actually be engineering their own demise for some lofty idea of superhumanity merged with AI?
Fair enough - ordering of priorities differ. But one could believe, as I do, that for most practical purposes the conservative goals and the RWP goals are aligned. People, at societal scale, cut off from community/family/faith etc cannot sustainably produce great work and then devolve into entropic forces like wokism, exactly as your blog has argued! So a long term thinking RWP needs to preserve the same goods that the conservative wants to! Where/when does this instrumental alignment most break down?
Well I think a point of virtuous moderation must be possible that strikes the right balance: adaptable enough to change to survive, conservative enough to preserve what works and what is foundational. This would require rejecting either extreme. I think a progressive mentality becomes a real problem when it becomes "progressivism" - a conscious or unconscious ideology that the new and the future will always be better.
Yes, unless those things constrain their desire for technological advancement. I think that is the point and their mistake. Ideally those things are considered by the RWP as foundational to progress. That realization is why someone like Musk is more successful.
The question his essay got me asking was: Is what is good always what is efficient? Because technological progress is always concerned with efficiency.
So RWP may put up with families raising and educating children because no more efficient model exists, but once one does the family goes away.
It's an undependable morality based on any one technic's ability to reduce human labor cost. Very dangerous. I think Lyon's is right, any kind of long term alliance with RWP is probably not possible.
" I believe a fair number of RWPs would agree that things like community, truth, morality, family etc are fundamental goods."
Many wont agree that, or only agree in the most abstract terms: check the Rationalist circle's discussions, and the conclusions and vibe there for an example. Or transhumanism. Or how "effective altruists" perceive these things.
Also, even when they agree, it's one thing to agree "in principle" with them, while being in favor of, and an active actor in, technological, medical, social, political, educational, and other changes that obliterate those "fundamental goods".
When you say "restrained vision" you mean "constrained vision", right? This is Sowell's concept which I think is still the closest to reality and better than the egalitarian/hierarchical concept.
The idea that the left is defined by lack of or disgust towards hierarchy is not true, in my view. The left loves hierarchy:
- In the 20th century they didn't want truly collective ownership (anarchism) but rather state ownership of all things. The state is inherently hierarchical.
- In the 21st century they don't want racial or sexual equality, they want a hierarchy of oppression in which straight white men are worse than gay white men, who are worse than white women, who are worse than black women.
It is if anything the RWPs who (despite MA's manifesto) do not seek hierarchy. They may recognise openly that there are differences between people and things, but this is merely recognition and not a statement of how things should be.
Sowell's analysis is closer to the mark: people with the unconstrained vision (the left) believe in a wide span of human nature, in which some people are further along the path to perfection than others. People with the constrained vision believe the span of human nature is narrow, and thus that there aren't big differences in quality nor potential between people. Sowell has demonstrated convincingly that every other difference flows from this one, which is why in practice people still talk about the left vs right: it is indeed a one dimensional difference.
"It is if anything the RWPs who (despite MA's manifesto) do not seek hierarchy. They may recognise openly that there are differences between people and things, but this is merely recognition and not a statement of how things should be."
Of course they do. Even more so than the Woke. It's just that in their case it's not some cultural hierarchy supposedly correcting "past wrongs", like having POC and LGBTQ on top, whites below, white straight men at the very bottom, etc, but a fascist style extension of corporate rule across society. If possible with them as CEO-Kings too.
The brutal fact of human existence is that each individual life is bracketed in time by an abyss. For most human societies across all our history this inescapable and foundational truth has operated as an attentional guide rail: being finite, each must confront the goodness - or lack thereof - of his particular individual life. No philosophical sophistication is required to sense that this confrontation has a fundamentally ethical character; is my life fulfilling its moral possibility? One does not need to believe in God or define God or believe your or anyone else's definition of God to experience the weight of this responsibility. The mature parts in each of us confront this responsibility every day. The immature parts of us will do anything to look away.
Although I am far from a progressive, there is much to admire about progressivism. It attacks the ossified complacency of the social systems in which it appears. It insists on asking: who is suffering unnecessarily? It is restless; it forces us to look at the gaps. But as an answer to the individual moral challenge of living a good life neither Right-Wing nor Left-Wing Progressivism addresses the individual's terrible burden: you can no more make yourself good, kind or decent by adopting a policy stance than you can buy your way out of purgatory with a credit card. Neither sending men to Mars and beyond nor sawing off the long legs of the privileged answers the terrible moral questions of today, of right now, in our conduct with our fellows.
Kudos once again to N.S. Lyons for this sobering reminder of what it means to be human.
Lots of connections here to Eastern Orthodox theology, which never fully adopted the dualism of Plato of the rationalism of Aristotle. These were imported to Roman Catholicism by Augustine and Aquinas and the rationalism only intensified with the Reformation's focus on the written word ("sola scriptura") over personal experience. The idea of theosis, still preserved in the East, was completely lost post 1517 in the West.
There's a great book called The Unintended Reformation by Brad Gregory that chronicles the rise of nominalism and rationalism in the West. If you can get through it, Iain McGilchrist's work on this is also remarkable. Dense though -- I'll be honest, I haven't successfully tackled Matter With Things yet. Brad Gregory is a lot easier to read.
McGilchrist’s first book (TMAHE) took me a few years to get through, but it was worth every minute. The world has never looked the same, and never will. One of the obvious takeaways from reading McGilchrist is the discovery that entire realms of human experience sit right in front of us - all the time! - and yet they are easily, casually negated by the rational framework we are most accustomed to using when we moderns try to “understand” something. When I read about Andreesen’s manifesto I hear something creepy or maybe stunted in its notion of what a human life is for. I wish I had another word, but it’s as if our natural aspiration for the sacred has been twisted into the pursuit of something completely vapid. I like progress. I think there are probably times when technologists generate something genuinely sublime. (I am a technologist, for what it’s worth.) But the realm of virtualized things is a weak soil for human flourishing. I cannot imagine a healthy society in which technical progress is the highest goal. In fact, it seems horrifying.
wow. after reading Andressons manifesto, with all of it’s inherent contradictions, my first reaction was: “like Marxism, only a really smart person could believe something so stupid”.
after the disasters of the 20th century, and especially in light of the current failures of Liberalism in the 21st century, it seems pretty clear to me that the only way we even have a decent future is to find some sort of balance between humanity, nature and technology. (by humanity, I am including things like religion, art human nature etc).
the genius of the founding fathers of the Constitution was in seeking a similar, legal balance between branches of governments as well an awareness of human nature. I realize that we are pretty far off from having a come to Jesus moment concerning this issue, but I think it’s high time for other public figures, intellectuals, writers etc to lay the groundwork going forward.
hopefully we can do that before, as in Dune, we must fight a holy jihad against the Machine Gods...
"Certainly the general vision offered by the RWPs is still genuinely a much more attractive alternative to the dystopia offered by the Woke left"
It's a worse version of the same dystopia. Just instead of 67 genders, there will just be some single neutral sexless (and sensual-less) gender, artificial wombs, and state or corporate-run child upbringing according to rationalist principles. Plus eugenics. Plus the dictatorship of the techno elites.
I see your point - and I accept that you might be right - but the big difference between the egalitarian dystopia and the hierarchical dystopia is not merely aesthetic. The promotion of the principle of equality to the apex of human values leads to - as history has generously shown - murderously tyrannical regimes. Equality, in the end, can only be coerced. The promotion of competence/invention to the apex of human value structures leads to an ugly but less intrinsically violent social system in which, basically, the people at the bottom of the hierarchy are disenfranchised and possibly mistreated. I personally much prefer the dystopia of neglect to the dystopia of terror.
I think the problem with places like USSR was that it was too hierarchical (Stalin and party leadership having absolute rule over "peasants" for example), than that it was too egalitarian. If it was actually egalitarian people would also have equal power to the leadership, in other words, a full true grass-roots democracy. USSR turned that way because the initial egalitarian attempt (from self-organized workers) was hijiacked by a strictly hierarchical Bolsevik party (in USSR history those are the February Revolution vs the October "Revolution"). So the issue wasn't that people had to share the country's assets equally, but that a small minority of party leadership got to dictate the sharing and keep all the power for itself (no egalitarianism there at all).
That's a moot point though, since neither the modern woke care for egalitarianism and equality, nor the tech overlords care for competence/invention. Those are just things they pay lip service to.
The woke want an ideological rule where they get to be arbiters of ethics, as something to help propel their career and social status, or as a psychological mechanism (peer pressure, since those things are in vogue, plus the right to feel "hollier" than others). There's also no stopping to the progress they want. Anything that stands in the way of "progress" (traditional human relationships and social structures for example) must go. Including any traditional ethics and limit (the invididual is king, they should be able to do whatever they want).
The tech overlords (whether right-wing or woke) want to expand their rule, and technology in their case is used as a weapon for ruling over people. Technology not as in some betterment of life, in accordance to human values, but as a means to rule, measure, impose power, micro-manage humans, and in the end even replace them and discard them. Similar to the woke, anything that stands in the way of "technology" (traditional ethics, non-tech mediated human relationships and social structures for example) must go. Including humanity itself, which is seen as an anachronism (transhumanism).
Both are perfectly capable of a "dystopia of terror". Terror is more about giving some absolute power, than about their ideology. Being shot or punished or cancelled for not being woke enough, is not that different than being shot or punished or cancelled for not being in favor of the glorious future the tech bros have in store for you ("you'll own nothing and be happy").
Another great article, thank you. I hope you explore hierarchy a little more. Which relates to class and class systems.
My personal bugaboo these days, something at first I noticed in personal experience and then gradually became aware through reading has been picked up by many and for well over a century (!) - is the way reductive materialism dominates most world views these days in both East and West. (China, for example, although very different in many ways, seems as materialist-driven as any growth-obsessed Western nation from the birth of the Industrial revolution up until today.)
The great irony about the materialist view is that not only does it regard all life as a mechanical, and therefore lifeless, process but also, under the guise of hard-headed realism above any mental or imaginary nonsense, essentially takes refuge in an abstract conceptual construct which is all materialism is. This worldview boils down to word salad - whose lettuce turns to mush when subjected to the heat of any genuine insight.
Which relates back to hierarchy and class. They can be discussed in abstract, marxist terms but the actual subject matter involves living, dynamic, human relationship. For example, there is no such thing as equality and those who try to impose it onto real, living people end up creating totalitarian tyranny. This is not an original insight by any means but it is surprising how few of the modern technocracts, including RWPs in your article, understand this. The excerpts from the manifesto at the top of the piece are very revealing. For such high IQ people who feel authorized to reconfigure Nature to their own superior purposes they are surprisingly ignorant of how nature, aka reality, works.
For equality is an abstraction too, of course. No two people are in the same place with the same form, perspective, thoughts and feelings; some are beautiful, some not; some are intellectually gifted, others not; some are large and strong, others not; some enjoy high social status, others not and so on ad infinitum. One of the most universal perceptions all humans share is the immediate evaluation of everybody else's relative status or particular qualities which set them apart. Class systems are not abstractions imposed from above or outside or fashioned from abstract theory - though some no doubt tinker - rather a matrix of living, dynamic human relationships most of which arise naturally from human nature itself, be they in small tribes in the Amazon telling stories around the fire at night or in large complex urban societies gazing at flickering screens as they elbow their way through streaming crowds on streets and subways on their way to work.
Any attempt to eliminate hierarchy-class is fool's gold. It is an under-appreciated element in all societies. More importantly, perhaps, any attempt to steer humanity's course following a chart composed of concept-driven abstraction is doomed to founder on the rocks of reality, who can be a hard mistress!
One thing I would note is that while I think the overall thrust is well formed, it seems to me that though the sources of nihilism are pervasive and numerous in our current culture, one of the largest contributors is that we do not have a frontier currently. There is nothing left to find, no more wilderness to chart and tame. The proportion of the society that would even WISH to engage in such an endeavor is perhaps smaller than ever, but it has serious downstream effects. The expansion into space will seriously, perhaps even permanently, remove these constraints on the human spirit. The other problems may remain, but I think its a vital step, especially if we must go on having progress as the polestar whether we like it or not
But... haven’t human societies flourished at many points in history without even the hint of the possibility of a frontier to conquer? Or have they required a frontier? (Of course frontiers do not necessarily require open geography; scientific discovery is a kind of a frontier. So is entrepreneurial endeavor.) Does a human society require a frontier - of some kind - to thrive?
fair question, I don't have a compelling response other than to say it certainly feels like it, but maybe that's my years of progress-brain training speaking!
Thanks for your reply. This is one of those questions that I might be wondering about for a long time. In Paul Johnson's "A History of the American People" he argues that the New World was, for Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries, a kind of frontier that pulled forth the most ambitious, driven, imaginative and bold innovators and explorers. It's a really interesting question. Thanks for posing it.
It is interesting how inescapable hierarchy is - even for the egalitarian left, a hierarchy has to emerge of which groups are more equal than others in order to even begin to marshal their preferred policies and people into place, and then help the vanguard march down the path to utopia.
If modernist/progressive elites believed in equality wouldn't their art reflect this in the form of social realism? Communists rejected modernism as decadent. The top living artists today are Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, whose work deals in emptiness and irony.
There are Hierarchies and Hierarchies... Complex societies presume administration, but how far-reaching and total should the grip of these administrations be? When someone in the City of London is making decisions for isolated communities in the North of England, therein lies the battleground.
Ellul's "The Technological Society" is still one of the best analyses of the annihilation of a society made for humans and it's replacement with a society, if one can call it that, made for technology.
Unfortunately it was written in a post-war, industrial-age context. Essays like yours are in the same spirit but with an eye on current events. Much appreciated.
This is really spectacular and thanks for unpacking this. At the center of all of this, I suspect, is an essential disagreement over anthropology: what is a human being and what is he for? Without an understanding of this we know nothing of human nature and, accordingly, are unable to establish what it is that constitutes human flourishing.
You say, "The truth, in my view, is that it is in part precisely an unrestrained lust for change in the name of progress that got us into our current civilizational mess in the first place." Totally agree. But the dual-use nature of technology - that it can be used for good or ill - means that we must know in some sense what constitutes the "good". The problem with untethered progress is that the ultimate destination and reason for it are ill-defined. Musk's neuralink may eventually connect brains to AI, but it may also transform the lives of quadriplegics. Can we distinguish the desirability of one over the other? Not in the absence of a common vision of the human good.
Even establishment conservatives have lost sight of the distinctions between RW Progressivism and conservatism itself. The recent uncomprehending reaction of National Review to the viral sensation Anthony Oliver ("Rich Men North of Richmond") was, I think, suggestive along similar lines to the point you're making here. I had a few thoughts about that event that are overlapping in some ways with your thinking here.
https://keithlowery.substack.com/p/what-is-there-to-conserve
I teach philosophy and government to high schoolers. One of the things we talk about repeatedly is how our politics has become theological. All of our political debates really hinge on the question you asked: "what is a human being and what is he for?" If I know your answer to that question, I can predict 90% of your political positions.
I love this comment and it is so very true. The American founding documents were grounded in a very conscious set of assumptions regarding human nature, createdness, and happiness being inseparable from virtue. We are swimming in a very different set of assumptions now, and the political and cultural dissonance is largely between those who operate with ancient assumptions regarding human nature, and those who believe in the infinite malleability of human beings.
The Enlightenment is built on a Judeo-Christian (or at least monotheistic) metaphysical framework and is pretty nonsensical without it: if you don't have a creator, who gave you those rights? Burke articulated this best 300+ years ago. Patrick Deneen fills that role today. The 20th century provided ample evidence that rationalist atheism is philosophically incompatible with universal human rights. As N.S. Lyons says, the most egregious human abuses were perpetuated by an unbounded faith in progress.
Practically speaking, Locke's and Mill's value-neutral-state was always an illusion. A society without some shared definition of "good" implodes. I bought a sign from an Amish woodcarver in PA a couple of years ago: "Liberty unbounded leads to senseless muddle." An Amish man with a high school education understands something which escapes nearly all of our intellectuals today.
There's a substack artist who uses Soviet style propaganda images to highlight this contradiction: https://restorationbureau.substack.com/p/season-one-archive You might like him.
Hasnt that always been the case though? With that in mind, I would offer up another binary categorization thats becoming more relevant: those that believe in God and those that dont.
That is actually the binary that predicts about 90% of your political positions, since most of politics lies downstream of the question "what is the nature and purpose of man?" And that's a theological / philosophical question.
Historically, Americans often disagreed about specific religious practices, but in the big picture, WASP political culture was philosophically homogenous. We basically all agreed on "ends" and we argued about "means". (The one exception to this was the slavery issue -- and look where that got us.) The "culture war" is an attempt by the Left to assert a new answer to that question: "what is the nature and purpose of man?"
On a practical note on the human devious nature - when a technical improvement is presented using dis-information and deception, then we have to deal with a foul play. Nowadays, a gadget for surveillance is presented as a safety device, a vaccine already produced for a year or so is presented as a just happening novelty. It has been done and it will be done at a larger scale.
I would also add that encryption is sold as a way to keep your information safe, but it's predominate effect is to obscure the data harvesting activities being done by the apps running on your phone. I've run the experiments. ~30% of my cell phone data plan is being used by apps for surveillance and ad-serving. Or, rather, it was when I actually installed apps on my phone. Now I only use my browser. I recommend Brave. It's not perfect, but by filtering a lot of the ad surveillance, it has the happy effect of extending your battery life.
"But the dual-use nature of technology - that it can be used for good or ill - means that we must know in some sense what constitutes the "good". I think the key insight is that technology is not dual-use: it pushes society towards certain paths and not others.
And it's not based upon personal choice (we're not given any choice anyway at the individual level anyway: some new technology lands, and if someone holds back, they are left behind).
Well, I don't think it is technology that possesses the agency and the choice. Human beings are doing the choosing. We all have agency. It is an unavoidable fact that since the dawn of time our tools have been used for both good and ill and always according to the choices made by their wielders. These remarks, from the post linked to below are in regard to AI, but I think similar inclinations surround many technology discussions:
"The question of intelligent agency quietly inhabits much of our cultural discussion surrounding AI. The embedded but unspoken premise is that human beings are mere passive observers of something proceeding according to its own intent. There is a curious emphasis on what AI might do, with little discussion about what human beings themselves are doing."
https://keithlowery.substack.com/p/pretense-and-confusion
"Well, I don't think it is technology that possesses the agency and the choice."
The claim is not that technology has the agency itself, it is that its presence and capabilities influence what the humans do. The sea doesn't have agency either, but people living near it will be more likely involved in maritime trade and fishing than those living in the desert.
A person's decisions are not chosen equally likely from considering every single option. They are shaped by what's available, what it makes easy, what it makes difficult, what other people have already chosen and so on.
In other words, human agency operates in an environment, which is shaped by the technology, tools, constrains combined with natural human proclivities and things like culture.
Tools make some things more likely, or easier. Weapons favor war, for example. Cars mean highways, noise, and air pollution. AI favors outsourcing thinking and making control easier.
If we chose not to go that way, through our agency, it would be not merely by making such a choice, but by making such a choice against the path of least resistance created by the presense of AI.
But the truth is: nobody will ask us to make any choice. The marker doesn't care for our opinions (and can make us lust over every BS through marketing and advertising, or force feed it to us), the opinions of individuals against AI will be ignored, and the political parties are working to give politicians more power, meaning they will welcome AI tools to that effect.
As for Joe Average? It will never be a real choice. At best it would be a very hard sacrifice (like chosing not to have a mobile phone at all today - it would mean you're automatically cut out from your friends regular mode of communication and coordination, reduce your employment options, limit your choice of other devices and banks you can use, and so on).
You are right to highlight the onerous impositions placed on us by technology. But such impositions don't mean we don't have real choices, only that the choices are perhaps not particularly to our liking. By eschewing smartphones we may be inconvenienced, or put out of steady contact with our friends. But perhaps we should choose friends who are not devotees of dehumanizing conveniences. I don't disagree with the gist of your concerns. I think it was McLuhan who said "we shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us". I take your point to be along those general lines. But I can only say that while technology will almost certainly bring unhappy effects in its wake, in some contexts it may also bring life and human thriving. I myself am a kind of cyborg, who is only still alive because of technology innovation combined with skilled improvisational marathon surgery. I expect that AI will introduce very dumb and unhelpful dynamics, and yet it may also accelerate and improve such things as early medical diagnosis, which may in turn save lives. That is the kind of thing I mean by "dual use". I don't blame technology for its role in social pathologies for the same reason I don't blame guns for gun violence: It is people who are pulling the trigger. We should seek more wisdom and apply it, even when such wisdom puts us uncomfortably out of the mainstream.
Finding a new N.S. Lyons piece in my daily Substack inbox is a present!
I love this article. What frosts me with respect to the mischaracterization of political groupings is the slippery nature of those supporting the group ideas but claiming independence in thought, views and ideas. It is like they root for the Yankees and own season tickets to the games because it is expected in their social circle, but root for the S.F. Giants in private. It is inauthentic, hypocritical and I don't think we should give anyone a pass for that type of behavior.
But back to the topic at hand. I think N.S. covered this point, but I think it is key. Progress and the related increase in overall prosperity that derives from progress requires ingredients that technology threatens to undermine. We are seeing clear proof of this today and WRPs are demonstrating a great big pile of lacking wisdom in their eagerness to discount it. I think they end up with a nerdy God complex and lose perspective for the combination of system stability and the gauntlet of mental, emotional and psychological development... the actual path they benefitted from to arrive at their leadership position in technological achievement. Musk has the perspective... it is why he lives in the US and does not try to accomplish what he is doing in South Africa.
This stuff isn't easy to achieve and it is a slippery slope back down once the stability and paths are lost. It comes down to the simple explanation of human capability. High human capability has enabled the US to pull the rest of the world forward in astounding technological progress. But we are in decline.
I have hired probably over 100 people in my 40+ years of corporate management experience. There are a subset of qualities that make a quality employee. There are two domains: hard skills and soft skills. The former can often be taught depending on the job. The latter often cannot... at least cannot very easily.
The latter, in my experience, is basically a test of relationship capability. There is a likeability factor (and attractiveness certainly helps)... but there is that related aspect of being a normie... being psychologically and mentally whole and stable. Being able to communicate well with everyone, and to
Tech=enabled modernity is screwing this all up. The younger job candidates have terrible soft skills. Many more of them are high maintenance. And they are also lacking hard skills and the work ethic to get them.
My experience with these shapes my political views and why I am really worried about the direction of the country. I believe we have harmed, and are harming, children who then cannot function well enough as adults. They lack resilience, they lack coping skills, they lack relationship skills, they are not psychologically nor mentally whole... they are not ready for work. They are certainly bright and more knowledgeable about the world... more tech-savvy. But they struggle to apply these gifts in productive ways.
Given the choice to deal with more of them in the workforce, I am looking for software and robotics solutions instead. But then, who will invent and make the software and robots? And without career paths, what will happen to the mental and psychological state of the average human? How will we maintain the fantastic bar of human capability that got us to this point of such marvelous technological advancement.
The RWPs need to reach a bit deeper in their deep-thinking on this subject. Foundational stability that includes the traditional values that conservatives support isn't any impediment to progress, it is a requirement.
As a young, high-maintenance individual, do you ever think that the kind of jobs that require such a degree of soft-skills and high-skills might themselves be part of the issue? Here is what I am thinking. It is true that, in general, the young are significantly less formed in virtue (that is, how to be human). I think, however, that the kind of "high-achievement" jobs which you speak of and actively work in may not contribute to human formation. The jobs are demanding, precisely because they are not contributing humanity but rather sucking it into the corporate machine. In one sense, the young can't contribute because the jobs are, in some way, intrinsically soul sucking. Perhaps they are sensitive because they sense that something is foul.
I mean this more as a thought experiment than as an actual diagnosis. For reference, I am college-educated man who works residential. I have severe struggles with anxiety, which prompted me to not seek further education or a "better" job. But I love working with my hands on real stuff which produces a real product.
I don't think I'm entirely wrong in my assessment, but I am also aware that resentment can run really, really deep. It is a force which can vitiate one's perspective, so I post my comment for the sake of--further discussion.
I love this comment. Thanks.
I think the key is to really understand yourself. To know what activities motivate you to action. To develop the mindset of a producer... someone that works at things that provide value.
Young people emerge from a life experience of being cared for with the cost of being dependent on adults. They naturally strive for independence, but that independence comes with the cost of learning to be self-sufficient in care. Being handed that challenge is difficult and can result in anxiety. But there is no cake and eat it too in this world. You are either self-sufficient and independent, or you are not but you are dependent and give up your rights to the freedom you think you must deserve.
I think there are two generational challenges with your generation today. First, the modern career world is much more complicated and fast-paced today. Second, young people have had fewer life-challenges that help them cope with anxiety over the steep mountain climb required to get to a place that feels like a good life. Compounding that challenge is a society that more often today delivers instant gratification. What young people miss is that life is a constant climb up the mountain (developing life-wisdom and skills along the way)... that nothing really good is quick or easy unless you are just lucky... but even luck can be transitory.
The first step is to understand things like "like working with my hands on real stuff that produces a real product.", and then start thinking about the types of jobs and careers that fit this need and that motivate you. Then pursue a job in that area and start growing knowledge and skills in that domain. Then at some point start your own business doing what you love.
Your anxiety will never leave because it affects everyone. The key is to learn to control it from messing up your decision-making capability required to build a good life. Life is a climb... it does not just happen to people despite what the Internet seems to show.
https://socialmisfit.substack.com/p/it-is-a-climb-not-a-privilege
RWP’s suffer the same arrogance as the left progressive: vain, their education and intelligence dulls them, they loose feel and suppleness. How can’t you learn from the past; They are doomed before they start.
“ What does education often do? It makes a straight ditch of a meandering brook.” Henry David Thoreau
Our author says hierarchy versus egalitarianism. We could also say modern versus post modern. At least the RWP’s believe in human intelligence, the progressive left are fully bereft, we have no agency, nihilistic sameness .
Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned us that the path we were on (are on) “will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events.”
N.S. LYONS!! I'm more than willing (depending on the price) to subscribe to your Substack. When I try I only receive opportunities to download the Substack app. which, I have no interest in. You might note that I'm using Diamond Boys "reply" to attempt to reach you because despite numerous attempts to reach Substack there has been no response and my "comments box" remains blocked on the roughly half-dozen Substack subscriptions I pay for.
D.B. THANK YOU FOR USE OF YOUR "REPLY".
Hi Mike, where are you trying to subscribe from, a computer browser or mobile? If the latter, try on a computer at https://theupheaval.substack.com/
😉
Some distinctions you elaborate about political beliefs and values (especially between libertarians vs RWP) including: proper aims of state; consequentialist beliefs; faith in rationality) illuminate, I think, the recent conflict in the covid-policy dissident community about the proper basis for condemning lockdown policies following Bret Weinstein's Tucker Carlson interview.
Weinstein is a well-known covid-policy-critical commentator. Following his interview some dissidents circulated his tweets showing he endorsed (for quite a long time) lockdown policies. He responded that he is now a critic of lockdown policies. Among dissidents a conflict arose related to the question of: What Precisely Was Wrong with State Lockdown Policies in 2020-2021? Two clear camps could be observed.
Lockdowns-Were-A-Technical-Mistake (this position was attributed to B Weinstein).
These dissidents argue that what went wrong was the quality of the policymaking processes. That is, they argue the policy processes were poor, in, among other things, that they omitted consideration of important social costs from school closure, business closure, nursing home policies excluding families from seeing loved ones, etc. They want us to avoid such disasters in future by improving the technical quality of policy processes.
Lockdowns-Were-A-Moral-Mistake
These dissidents argue that what went wrong was that state actors (public officials) possessed and used power to achieve a "health benefit" that would (according to them) only be achieved by deploying these repressive tools. These dissidents believe the only way to avoid such disasters in future is to alter state structures and processes so that public officials do not have the power to deploy such policies (irrespective of how much health benefit they calculate they can produce for society). I think many in this camp would argue that the lockdown policies were immoral because they deprived individuals of the latitude to determine how they would deal with the risks deriving from the circulation of a novel virus.
NB. I don't mean to suggest Weinstein is rightwing tho. I doubt he would claim such a label.
I appreciate your clarification of left-wing and right-wing, but I still wish we could get rid of it altogether. Most idea have no idea how to apply it properly, so it ultimately takes away more than it gives in any conversation.
Where people sat during the French Revolution isn't a useful sorting mechanism today. At all.
I think we could probably just describe "left" and "right" with the egalitarianism vs. hierarchy spectrum.
It would need to be a spectrum since there’s a place in the middle where hierarchy is accepted when it’s useful and rejected when it’s harmful. The Left tends to reject even good hierarchy and the Right tends to defend even bad hierarchy. Each gives fuel to the other’s propaganda.
"It would need to be a spectrum since there’s a place in the middle where hierarchy is accepted when it’s useful and rejected when it’s harmful."
Yes. And it was accomplished in 13th century France under St. Louis IX. See Andrew Willard Jones', "Before Church and State." Jones' primary argument is "...that the Middle Ages were neither religious nor secular because the religious and the secular are two features of a single construction: the modern Western social architecture of 'Church' and 'State'.... The Middle Ages had...a different vision of the cosmos." (Quote from the Introduction, page 4.) The modern vision is Hobbesian, one of primordial violence. In the Middle Ages, peace was the primordial condition and violence was a sin.
The construct of Louis IX's sacramental kingdom was to unite the spiritual and the temporal, in what was called "the business of the faith and the peace." There was no inherent tension between the spiritual and the temporal, because both were aiming for the same end: maintaining the business of the faith and the peace. The temporal "were brought up into and fulfilled in the spiritual, and so essentialist divisions between the temporal and the spiritual dissolve." (Page 22)
When conflict arose, i.e., violence against the faith or the peace, the spiritual and the temporal often worked together to restore the peace. There was a hierarchy, but the concept of sovereignty did not exist. The hierarchy existed to maintain the faith and the peace, not to gain power. As often as not, if there was a conflict between the king and a peasant, the king's appointed examiners ruled against the king, and sometimes the king himself ruled in favor of the peasant to restore the peace.
Of course, this post does not do justice to either Jones' book or the remarkable kingdom of Louis IX. There is a lot to learn from our pre-Enlightenment ancestors. In my opinion, our best hope in these dark times is a return to a civilizational foundation that we are all made in the image of God, and the primordial condition of man is peace, not violence.
Another for the reading list. Thank you.
Finally, a fellow follower of New Polity.
Yes! But the 1,000+ footnotes per issue are daunting. They’ll never be accused plagiarism!
Wendell Berry has said a similar thing: hierarchies are inevitable. The food chain is one. But they can be divided into just and unjust, and it's the latter that should be resisted. The "Left' errs when it thinks that all hierarchies are unjust.
"Useful" versus "not useful" is one of those who? / to whom? questions, is it not?
Not exactly, because there's also the progressive vs convervative spectrum, and it's independent of that.
Perhaps the real fault line is "pro human" or "pro machine" in the end. The rest are just diversions on the road to each of those two options.
Hiers vs Eggs?
I agree, it's an elegant summary. We probably also should since "Right wing" has been so relentlessly villainized by popular media and academia. Egalitares vs Hierarchs just sounds cooler too.
I used to think this, and have a friend who constantly rails against this claiming that people are actually in a multi-dimensional space. But now I believe it is in fact useful and correct.
You do though, have to clear away some historical fluff and misleading notions that the left/right dichotomy initially appears to entail:
1. The right is not the opposite of the left. The Left is people who, essentially, care a whole lot about politics because they believe in the unconstrained vision of human nature. They sat together because they found in each other the same passion. The right (small r) is everyone else. The right is therefore not defined by any particularly deep or coherent philosophy, but more like an absence of leftism.
2. The "far right" (Nazis) are in fact the far left, as the name of the party makes clear and as becomes obvious the moment you bother watching any of Hitler's speeches. The Nazis have been placed on the right by left-wing academics and journalists in order to protect themselves, basically through sheer force of Goebbels-style repetition, but it's not aligned with any historical evidence. This realisation immediately eliminates any talk of horseshoes and other confusions that arise from trying to interpret a far left party as the opposite.
For an explanation of why the difference is truly one-dimensional, see Conflict Of Visions by Thomas Sowell, which is distantly alluded to in the text.
As you say, it is an outdated concept. However, the real challenge to that paradigm is not from the RWP but from the populists. RWP is Nerd Central while populism is and has been for at east 150 years, a mass movement and not just in the US. Populism has always had a Janus profile with both a Right aspect and a Left aspect. The last person to successfully fuse those aspects was William Jennings Bryan-he of the Cross of Gold and the Scopes prosecution. Perhaps Huey Long could have continued the fusion had he not been assassinated. He was said to be one of the only two people that FDR actually feared.
I see Trump trying to recreate the fusion. His peeling away of the working class (and not just the whites) away from the Democrats and combining it with rural America is in the grand tradition of fusionist populism. The flip side is the increasing identification of the suburbs with the corporate oligarchs. Viewed from this perspective, J D Vance is probably the logical successor.
Perhaps not, but it aligns excellently with the left and right brain and how they perceive the world. If you have not read Iain McGilchrist's "The Master and his Emissary", I can't recommend it enough. While he doesn't make many overt, direct parallels to modern Western politics, they cannot be ignored. Too deep to elaborate in this comment, but at least check out a good introductory video of him explaining the fundamental differences.
Thanks! It's on the reading list. Looks like there is an audio book version, would you recommend it for listening? I try to avoid listening to scientific literature. I can't tell how technical the book is...
What precisely is the inherent tension between the RWP and the true conservative if as you say, the latter would agree exploring the stars would be “cool” and the former could agree that there are some core human values and needs worth conserving? I believe a fair number of RWPs would agree that things like community, truth, morality, family etc are fundamental goods.
It's a matter of priorities and what one considers the highest good. A RWP may value such things, but would an RWP be willing to accept slower "progress", including a limit on technological change, in order to preserve community or family life? If yes, they probably are not a RWP. Similarly I may find space exploration cool, and consider the urge to explore a natural human one, but don't think achieving space empire should be our foremost goal, to which other goals and values are subordinated. Instead I'd see such a civilizational flourishing as an outcome necessarily built on what that civilization had managed to *preserve* successfully - but that's because I'm conservative.
Agree although I think what is getting in the way is the idea that progress must be "slowed" in some intentional, artificial way to keep apace with humans or even stay a few steps behind them. What the RWP, along with the transhumanists, either ignore or give lip service to in order to quiet the critics, is that it's not about "slowing down" or remaining 21st century cave dwellers out of willful ignorance. It's about taking the time to determine whether not something is truly necessary - putting technology through an ethically rigorous process. With the exception of this fantastic analysis, right now all I see is caricaturing. Where is the Hippocratic oath of AI? Someone said in an earlier comment this may be a disagreement on anthropology. Agree totally. Unfortunately some in this RWP tech movement see the anthropocene as necessarily on the decline. How can you argue with people who may actually be engineering their own demise for some lofty idea of superhumanity merged with AI?
Where is the Hippocratic Oath of medicine these days?
Fair enough - ordering of priorities differ. But one could believe, as I do, that for most practical purposes the conservative goals and the RWP goals are aligned. People, at societal scale, cut off from community/family/faith etc cannot sustainably produce great work and then devolve into entropic forces like wokism, exactly as your blog has argued! So a long term thinking RWP needs to preserve the same goods that the conservative wants to! Where/when does this instrumental alignment most break down?
Well I think a point of virtuous moderation must be possible that strikes the right balance: adaptable enough to change to survive, conservative enough to preserve what works and what is foundational. This would require rejecting either extreme. I think a progressive mentality becomes a real problem when it becomes "progressivism" - a conscious or unconscious ideology that the new and the future will always be better.
Bingo! Strike the right balance... adaptable enough to change to survive, conservative enough to preserve what works and what is foundational.
We must reject either extreme!
Yes, unless those things constrain their desire for technological advancement. I think that is the point and their mistake. Ideally those things are considered by the RWP as foundational to progress. That realization is why someone like Musk is more successful.
The question his essay got me asking was: Is what is good always what is efficient? Because technological progress is always concerned with efficiency.
So RWP may put up with families raising and educating children because no more efficient model exists, but once one does the family goes away.
It's an undependable morality based on any one technic's ability to reduce human labor cost. Very dangerous. I think Lyon's is right, any kind of long term alliance with RWP is probably not possible.
" I believe a fair number of RWPs would agree that things like community, truth, morality, family etc are fundamental goods."
Many wont agree that, or only agree in the most abstract terms: check the Rationalist circle's discussions, and the conclusions and vibe there for an example. Or transhumanism. Or how "effective altruists" perceive these things.
Also, even when they agree, it's one thing to agree "in principle" with them, while being in favor of, and an active actor in, technological, medical, social, political, educational, and other changes that obliterate those "fundamental goods".
When you say "restrained vision" you mean "constrained vision", right? This is Sowell's concept which I think is still the closest to reality and better than the egalitarian/hierarchical concept.
The idea that the left is defined by lack of or disgust towards hierarchy is not true, in my view. The left loves hierarchy:
- In the 20th century they didn't want truly collective ownership (anarchism) but rather state ownership of all things. The state is inherently hierarchical.
- In the 21st century they don't want racial or sexual equality, they want a hierarchy of oppression in which straight white men are worse than gay white men, who are worse than white women, who are worse than black women.
It is if anything the RWPs who (despite MA's manifesto) do not seek hierarchy. They may recognise openly that there are differences between people and things, but this is merely recognition and not a statement of how things should be.
Sowell's analysis is closer to the mark: people with the unconstrained vision (the left) believe in a wide span of human nature, in which some people are further along the path to perfection than others. People with the constrained vision believe the span of human nature is narrow, and thus that there aren't big differences in quality nor potential between people. Sowell has demonstrated convincingly that every other difference flows from this one, which is why in practice people still talk about the left vs right: it is indeed a one dimensional difference.
"It is if anything the RWPs who (despite MA's manifesto) do not seek hierarchy. They may recognise openly that there are differences between people and things, but this is merely recognition and not a statement of how things should be."
Of course they do. Even more so than the Woke. It's just that in their case it's not some cultural hierarchy supposedly correcting "past wrongs", like having POC and LGBTQ on top, whites below, white straight men at the very bottom, etc, but a fascist style extension of corporate rule across society. If possible with them as CEO-Kings too.
The brutal fact of human existence is that each individual life is bracketed in time by an abyss. For most human societies across all our history this inescapable and foundational truth has operated as an attentional guide rail: being finite, each must confront the goodness - or lack thereof - of his particular individual life. No philosophical sophistication is required to sense that this confrontation has a fundamentally ethical character; is my life fulfilling its moral possibility? One does not need to believe in God or define God or believe your or anyone else's definition of God to experience the weight of this responsibility. The mature parts in each of us confront this responsibility every day. The immature parts of us will do anything to look away.
Although I am far from a progressive, there is much to admire about progressivism. It attacks the ossified complacency of the social systems in which it appears. It insists on asking: who is suffering unnecessarily? It is restless; it forces us to look at the gaps. But as an answer to the individual moral challenge of living a good life neither Right-Wing nor Left-Wing Progressivism addresses the individual's terrible burden: you can no more make yourself good, kind or decent by adopting a policy stance than you can buy your way out of purgatory with a credit card. Neither sending men to Mars and beyond nor sawing off the long legs of the privileged answers the terrible moral questions of today, of right now, in our conduct with our fellows.
Kudos once again to N.S. Lyons for this sobering reminder of what it means to be human.
ironic that the woke left is powered largely by the tech inventions and capitulations of the RWPs. Twitter networked them and Google filters for them.
Lots of connections here to Eastern Orthodox theology, which never fully adopted the dualism of Plato of the rationalism of Aristotle. These were imported to Roman Catholicism by Augustine and Aquinas and the rationalism only intensified with the Reformation's focus on the written word ("sola scriptura") over personal experience. The idea of theosis, still preserved in the East, was completely lost post 1517 in the West.
There's a great book called The Unintended Reformation by Brad Gregory that chronicles the rise of nominalism and rationalism in the West. If you can get through it, Iain McGilchrist's work on this is also remarkable. Dense though -- I'll be honest, I haven't successfully tackled Matter With Things yet. Brad Gregory is a lot easier to read.
McGilchrist’s first book (TMAHE) took me a few years to get through, but it was worth every minute. The world has never looked the same, and never will. One of the obvious takeaways from reading McGilchrist is the discovery that entire realms of human experience sit right in front of us - all the time! - and yet they are easily, casually negated by the rational framework we are most accustomed to using when we moderns try to “understand” something. When I read about Andreesen’s manifesto I hear something creepy or maybe stunted in its notion of what a human life is for. I wish I had another word, but it’s as if our natural aspiration for the sacred has been twisted into the pursuit of something completely vapid. I like progress. I think there are probably times when technologists generate something genuinely sublime. (I am a technologist, for what it’s worth.) But the realm of virtualized things is a weak soil for human flourishing. I cannot imagine a healthy society in which technical progress is the highest goal. In fact, it seems horrifying.
wow. after reading Andressons manifesto, with all of it’s inherent contradictions, my first reaction was: “like Marxism, only a really smart person could believe something so stupid”.
after the disasters of the 20th century, and especially in light of the current failures of Liberalism in the 21st century, it seems pretty clear to me that the only way we even have a decent future is to find some sort of balance between humanity, nature and technology. (by humanity, I am including things like religion, art human nature etc).
the genius of the founding fathers of the Constitution was in seeking a similar, legal balance between branches of governments as well an awareness of human nature. I realize that we are pretty far off from having a come to Jesus moment concerning this issue, but I think it’s high time for other public figures, intellectuals, writers etc to lay the groundwork going forward.
hopefully we can do that before, as in Dune, we must fight a holy jihad against the Machine Gods...
"Certainly the general vision offered by the RWPs is still genuinely a much more attractive alternative to the dystopia offered by the Woke left"
It's a worse version of the same dystopia. Just instead of 67 genders, there will just be some single neutral sexless (and sensual-less) gender, artificial wombs, and state or corporate-run child upbringing according to rationalist principles. Plus eugenics. Plus the dictatorship of the techno elites.
I see your point - and I accept that you might be right - but the big difference between the egalitarian dystopia and the hierarchical dystopia is not merely aesthetic. The promotion of the principle of equality to the apex of human values leads to - as history has generously shown - murderously tyrannical regimes. Equality, in the end, can only be coerced. The promotion of competence/invention to the apex of human value structures leads to an ugly but less intrinsically violent social system in which, basically, the people at the bottom of the hierarchy are disenfranchised and possibly mistreated. I personally much prefer the dystopia of neglect to the dystopia of terror.
I think the problem with places like USSR was that it was too hierarchical (Stalin and party leadership having absolute rule over "peasants" for example), than that it was too egalitarian. If it was actually egalitarian people would also have equal power to the leadership, in other words, a full true grass-roots democracy. USSR turned that way because the initial egalitarian attempt (from self-organized workers) was hijiacked by a strictly hierarchical Bolsevik party (in USSR history those are the February Revolution vs the October "Revolution"). So the issue wasn't that people had to share the country's assets equally, but that a small minority of party leadership got to dictate the sharing and keep all the power for itself (no egalitarianism there at all).
That's a moot point though, since neither the modern woke care for egalitarianism and equality, nor the tech overlords care for competence/invention. Those are just things they pay lip service to.
The woke want an ideological rule where they get to be arbiters of ethics, as something to help propel their career and social status, or as a psychological mechanism (peer pressure, since those things are in vogue, plus the right to feel "hollier" than others). There's also no stopping to the progress they want. Anything that stands in the way of "progress" (traditional human relationships and social structures for example) must go. Including any traditional ethics and limit (the invididual is king, they should be able to do whatever they want).
The tech overlords (whether right-wing or woke) want to expand their rule, and technology in their case is used as a weapon for ruling over people. Technology not as in some betterment of life, in accordance to human values, but as a means to rule, measure, impose power, micro-manage humans, and in the end even replace them and discard them. Similar to the woke, anything that stands in the way of "technology" (traditional ethics, non-tech mediated human relationships and social structures for example) must go. Including humanity itself, which is seen as an anachronism (transhumanism).
Both are perfectly capable of a "dystopia of terror". Terror is more about giving some absolute power, than about their ideology. Being shot or punished or cancelled for not being woke enough, is not that different than being shot or punished or cancelled for not being in favor of the glorious future the tech bros have in store for you ("you'll own nothing and be happy").
Another great article, thank you. I hope you explore hierarchy a little more. Which relates to class and class systems.
My personal bugaboo these days, something at first I noticed in personal experience and then gradually became aware through reading has been picked up by many and for well over a century (!) - is the way reductive materialism dominates most world views these days in both East and West. (China, for example, although very different in many ways, seems as materialist-driven as any growth-obsessed Western nation from the birth of the Industrial revolution up until today.)
The great irony about the materialist view is that not only does it regard all life as a mechanical, and therefore lifeless, process but also, under the guise of hard-headed realism above any mental or imaginary nonsense, essentially takes refuge in an abstract conceptual construct which is all materialism is. This worldview boils down to word salad - whose lettuce turns to mush when subjected to the heat of any genuine insight.
Which relates back to hierarchy and class. They can be discussed in abstract, marxist terms but the actual subject matter involves living, dynamic, human relationship. For example, there is no such thing as equality and those who try to impose it onto real, living people end up creating totalitarian tyranny. This is not an original insight by any means but it is surprising how few of the modern technocracts, including RWPs in your article, understand this. The excerpts from the manifesto at the top of the piece are very revealing. For such high IQ people who feel authorized to reconfigure Nature to their own superior purposes they are surprisingly ignorant of how nature, aka reality, works.
For equality is an abstraction too, of course. No two people are in the same place with the same form, perspective, thoughts and feelings; some are beautiful, some not; some are intellectually gifted, others not; some are large and strong, others not; some enjoy high social status, others not and so on ad infinitum. One of the most universal perceptions all humans share is the immediate evaluation of everybody else's relative status or particular qualities which set them apart. Class systems are not abstractions imposed from above or outside or fashioned from abstract theory - though some no doubt tinker - rather a matrix of living, dynamic human relationships most of which arise naturally from human nature itself, be they in small tribes in the Amazon telling stories around the fire at night or in large complex urban societies gazing at flickering screens as they elbow their way through streaming crowds on streets and subways on their way to work.
Any attempt to eliminate hierarchy-class is fool's gold. It is an under-appreciated element in all societies. More importantly, perhaps, any attempt to steer humanity's course following a chart composed of concept-driven abstraction is doomed to founder on the rocks of reality, who can be a hard mistress!
This is a great analysis.
One thing I would note is that while I think the overall thrust is well formed, it seems to me that though the sources of nihilism are pervasive and numerous in our current culture, one of the largest contributors is that we do not have a frontier currently. There is nothing left to find, no more wilderness to chart and tame. The proportion of the society that would even WISH to engage in such an endeavor is perhaps smaller than ever, but it has serious downstream effects. The expansion into space will seriously, perhaps even permanently, remove these constraints on the human spirit. The other problems may remain, but I think its a vital step, especially if we must go on having progress as the polestar whether we like it or not
But... haven’t human societies flourished at many points in history without even the hint of the possibility of a frontier to conquer? Or have they required a frontier? (Of course frontiers do not necessarily require open geography; scientific discovery is a kind of a frontier. So is entrepreneurial endeavor.) Does a human society require a frontier - of some kind - to thrive?
fair question, I don't have a compelling response other than to say it certainly feels like it, but maybe that's my years of progress-brain training speaking!
Thanks for your reply. This is one of those questions that I might be wondering about for a long time. In Paul Johnson's "A History of the American People" he argues that the New World was, for Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries, a kind of frontier that pulled forth the most ambitious, driven, imaginative and bold innovators and explorers. It's a really interesting question. Thanks for posing it.