In 2020 I read the book The Fourth Turning, by Strauss and Howe. It has fundamentally changed my perception of everything, especially around “the arc of history”. Like you say, I too believed that we had escaped history to move forever forward, improving and solving all problems as we go. I’m a technologist; it fits very naturally with my skill set and the work I do.
But after reading that book, it opened my eyes much more to the cycles of history, and to the limitations that human nature, time and death place on our ability to perfect ourselves and our society.
I’m still optimistic though. Giving in to despair or nihilism is the worst thing we can do in my opinion.
The Fourth Turning didn't resonate with me as much as the Ages of Discord. That's just me. Put Discord on the list. I've never been a fan of Ray Dalio, so only book I read of his was most recent: "The Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail."
You gotta understand that he's worked with the Chinese since 84, and sent his kid there for high school. Meaning I think he shows an unfortunate bias that way. Still interesting concept, to me anyway.
Clicked the [Like] button, but wished for a [Love] button.
“The realization has already dawned: politics is not a game; politics is about power, and power is based on violence. Politics is actually a matter of life and death.”
Earlier in the piece…
“Eventually the better angels of his nature would triumph and War would fade from the earth – along with Famine, Pestilence, and, perhaps in time, even Death.”
The lesson here is that those subscribing to this world view that our better angels would triumph is only we could correctly, this time, implement the socialist global order… will always accept copious human misery and death (of others of course) to achieve their version of benevolent dystopia. Putin is really not too different than the globalists. See Trudeau for example. He called in the military to crush his opposition to his goal of taking territory. Putin sees Ukraine as his territory for the taking. Trudeau sees the territory of the suburban and rural working class as his for the taking.
Jordan Peterson does a good job talking about the baked-in malevolence of human nature. There are very few angles out there. And those that protect an angelic image to the screen and page are likely filled with the darkness of the devil.
Look at the actual origins of liberalism, the WEIRD* social form.
1000+ years ago, the Frankish-manorial gene pool used power, which was derived from superior social technologies (Constitutional law, literacy, market economics, outbreeding and the nuclear family, higher IQ and "openness" in personality, scientific and technological advances, representative governance, "democracy") to dominate and marginalize the more "wild" Celtic/Border Reiver, Slavic and Roman gene pools, as well as Arabs/Berbers and Mongolian Hordes.
The English Civil War (1600s), the US Revolutionary War, the US Civil War are typical examples of the need for violent suppression of competing gene pools by actual liberal civilization, or the assertion of dominance by the elements of liberal society that were most advanced into WEIRD archetypal psychology over the rest of society.
The loss of such ability/willingness to dominate is characteristic of ILLIBERAL postmodernists/neomarxists.
IF you can't even correctly define the problem, you aren't going to be able to fix it.
"The loss of such ability/willingness to dominate is characteristic of ILLIBERAL postmodernists/neomarxists. "
Either I do not understand you point here, or I disagree completed.
The fundamental basis of classic liberalism is individual rights and liberty.... very limited government as the loss of individual rights and liberty tends to increase proportionately with the size and scope of government. The collective large government power play in the guise of "liberalism" is in fact, iliberalism (why does Substack.com exist?) In Europe they have succeeded in flipping this definition, but the Europeans are routinely confused about the real meaning of political terms.
TY for creating "The Upheaval". I was surprised to read Bruni's comments and then shocked at my naïveté for not realizing the stateless elite zeitgeist had migrated so far in thinking human nature had put aside the darker manifestations of how we are wired. Germany has surprised to the upside, but I suspect there may be more downside turns before this phase of the crises turns to the next. I agree that Putin started writing his last chapter with the decision to invade but likely does not see his Lear moment it coming. In the meantime, let's hope he does not give up on the belief Ukraine can be defeated without razing its cities. I'd be interested in your thoughts about how -- if at all -- this crisis ripples through the dynamics of The Upheaval as you have framed. In particular, the tech and finance sectors seem to be both important actors in the authoritarian-liberal democratic ideological competition, and yet at home in the US they give the impression of buying into the "evolved" reading of human nature. And some of the same cohort also appears to resonate with the seductive illusion of safety and stability at small cost of some liberal values. Perhaps global businesses -- with focus on tech and finance -- will find themselves in an ideological vise tightening faster than expected that demands a choice of with which side they will align.
re: "... tech and finance sectors seem to be both important actors in the authoritarian-liberal democratic ideological competition..."
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comment:
The totalitarians in tech-media/finance are POSTMODERN/NEOMARXIST ILLIBERALS whose rise was the result of the disruption of legacy hierarchies of curated expertise (the legacy sense-making system) as the disrupted information-attention ecosystem made possible the chaotic/disordered flow of information around curated hierarchies.
The crucial point is that the traditional-legacy-classical liberal sense making system (which I think most people here see as "conservative" in the USA) doesn't have anything to offer that will fix the problem of fragility to disruption.
Just hoping that some kind of magic is going to return western civilization to a better past is itself a dangerous delusion.
All of the infantile blah blah-isms will eventually get punched in the face by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Whoever thought that the 21st Century should have a pass on the vagaries of the human condition - otherwise known as reality - in fact as well as in force.
Add to the hierarchy of needs the one where humans constantly pursue a place on the human dominance hierarchy. It is a much better life to rule rather than to be ruled.
Look at the data (Pinker for instance). Compare life conditions for the poorest 50% of people (especially planetwide) now vs 50 or 150 or 500 years ago.
The data indicates that everybody has a "much better life", even if perceptions about what that means are, paradoxically, below reality. ("progress" discombobulates perceptions formed at previous levels in the hierarchy! plus: "systems colonize lifeworld" - Habermas)
Agree. But much of the measure is relative to extremes unfortunately. However, the cost inflation of housing... and in some places healthcare..Healthcare... these are truly making a case for bottom up criticism.
You seem out of touch on this. The cost of housing in many places is taking much more than 50% of discretionary income. Housing cost have escalated much greater than the rate of inflation and wage inflation. Are you a NIMBY?
I've been in the timber industry, worked in lumber mills/yards, as well as "fine woodworking" (architectural woodwork) and residential construction.
I've seen millions of acres of timber burn to crisp in recent years, due to "bad forest management".
Most of the western nation forests need to have about 80% of the trees thinned to restore the ecosystem to a fire-resistant state similar to what it was before 1900. That thinning could produce vast amounts of lumber that could be used to vastly increase construction and vastly lower the prices of homes for poor and working people, including homeless people, and create a LOT of jobs.
Mortgage bankers and the lumber and construction industries probably don't like the idea of lower housing costs, and there are a lot of politicians that would refuse to halt the scams of lobbyists and professional-certification professional rackets so it could happen.
Ok, so you are yet another example of the problem that many people tend to irrationally fixate on NARRATIVES and look for data to cherry pick that fits such narratives.
You responded with mostly irrelevant, incoherent comments (and now reactionary fluff) to the following:
"Compare life conditions for the poorest 50% of people (especially planetwide) now vs 50 or 150 or 500 years ago."
Pinker's data shows that something like a planet-wide poverty rate of 80% 100 years ago has declined to about 10%.
Are you actually aware of that kind of data?
I've seen housing prices in desirable areas with expanding economic opportunity increase drastically/catastrophically from the perspective of working and lower-middle class people for 50+ years.
My (adult) kids are dual citizens, USA/Spain. So, they have access to "European-nationalized" type health care, which is very similar to USA healthcare, on average, for "free", with much less of the bureaucratic bs* and private equity scams in USA healthcare. (we have had "good", above average, employer provided, USA health insurance for decades, costing me something like $50,000 over the years in premiums, but I got switched to a crappy medicare plan after retiring. need to switch.)
I think though that all of us have some need for a level of confidence that we are seen by our family and peers as being at least equal in hierarchy. We will burn with some resentment if lacking self confidence in that. It is probably biological in the need for survival. If rejected by the tribe we would more likely die or be killed. We are really pack animals and it is a common trait of the pack to cull out the weak. I think if we understand and accept that, then the only debate is the integrity and morality in each of us in the pursuit of a position on the hierarchy. There is a path that the underdog can take... fly below the radar, work hard, be good and kind.
Humans are highly social, but not "pack animals" per se.
It is shocking that Darwin had extraordinary insight* about how evolution resulted in altruistic social cooperation, but his insights are not commonly known.
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* Peter Richerson (UC Davis) quotes Darwin (as an example of group selection hypothesis and the neurobiology of sympathy in "primeval times"):
"It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over other men of the same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and
[->] sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good,
would be victorious over most other tribes, and this would be natural selection (178-179)."
The idea that humans are like canine pack animals is wildly nonconformant with actual evolutionary theory about the eusociality of humans. The greatest human achievement in biological evolution was the adaptation of parochial altruism*, so the people that are usually "culled" from the herd are non-cooperators.
See Bowles (ULAM lectures, Santa Fe Institute) on the how evolutionary theory explains that humans are both "Rambo and Mother Teresa".
Put it on list as well. But this part? "and our capacity to internalize social norms so that acting ethically became a personal goal?"
Wasn't the an Ancient Greek who held a lamp goin' around looking for an honest man, I think it was? People I "hear" about and "acting ethically" don't seem to match up. But I'll look into the book when I'm looking for something upbeat, so there is that.
You need to be able to understand how people use terms like "ethics" to mean different things in various contexts. Meaning isn't usually static and fixed.
The issue is "what is reality"? That is the theme in the three most recent posts by N.S. Lyons, and the actual title of one of those three posts.
Your feelings about the issue are of secondary relevance to everyone except yourself and maybe some researcher trying to understand psychology/sociobiology.
Interesting. For the last five or six decades, i took the path of the underdog, tho didn't know it.
Self-confidence? Never saw much-a that. I guess that may be why I look at the self-confidence of the Millennials and Zoomers incredulously. But if You say it LOUD enough, You may convince others, if not Yourself, right? Didn't see much in the way of being equal in the hierarchies I found myself in, and am full-a gratitude for that now. But that's just me.
Whatever. You either have a plan or you're part of a plan. In the tribe you follow the plan. Some of us, however, chafe under authority. But, while we're all trying to sort out our place in the paradigm - stay hydrated & nourished, mobile & alert and be very, very wary of the Virtuous Planners trying to feed us road apples. They are legion.
Didn't Chomsky debunk Maslow? Or was it Clare Graves? Both? Or was it George Lakoff that debunked Chomsky?
In any case, by the end of the 1990s, Robert Kegan & Co. made clear that Maslow's model was incomplete to fully understand postmodern social conditions (complexity, relativism).
By extension, the postmodern-left elites/PMC, also misunderstand postmodern social conditions because they live in an ideological echo chamber, desperately competing in a system of conformity they hope will continue to make them useful to the global elite.
So many delusions, so little time: Biological sex isn’t real; you can spend your way to economic success(30 trillion debt); “leading from behind”; no fraud in elections, etc
I appreciate the article but I think this really goes against reality. Judging a military campaign on 3 days is again judging things in the lightning fast days of the modern world where humans expect everything now. The Iraq war campaign took 3 weeks to take Baghdad. The West was going to align but that was to be expected. I don't think Putin thought they were going to come in and he'd be hailed as a hero. He wanted to take the Eastern part of Ukraine because he needs to maintain a buffer for missile location to Moscow. I wholeheartedly disagree with the notion that this will bury Russia and all this other ho hum Western imperialist rhetoric because it is more of the same that was said in years past. The hope is to put Putin into a quagmire like Afghanistan while weakening the Russian state. That may be true but this move is the pivot to Asia. It solidifies the end of the uni-polar world into a defined multi-polar world. Notice India and China have not denounced Putin as they know they are next on the chopping block of neoliberal expansion (it's not reported in media but people in Southeast Asia know what's going on with their politics as the NGO's are fully entrenched and flipping their nations politics to pro nationalism to fend off China. Also note, it's not ok to be pro nationalism in America unless it's a liberal-left brand but that's besides the point because anyone paying attention recognizes that the inner party is who really makes decisions and the outer party is the one who makes those decisions palatable to the rest of the left out public). The move by Putin is a definitive signal that the Eurasia landmass is now closed and the West is now entrenched in the West. That's the new world and will be so for the foreseeable future because while this posturing is going on in Europe, the pivot to Asia has already begun.
Good stuff, multi - polar will be better than the monster America has become: political Gnosticism of imperial liberalism (Patrick Deneen, The post liberal order substack). Yes?
Mearsheimer, in a talk he gave to a UK group a few days ago, states again what he stated in 2015. Putin's goal is not to occupy or defeat Ukraine, but to destabilize it to the point it no longer conceives a NATO base as necessary. The attention of a united Europe doesn't change the fact that a noose has been quietly tightening around Russia since America made clear NATO was coming to Ukraine and Georgia in 2008. Russia is getting older and will likely- like us all- be growing poorer. I think they saw now as the time to poison the well of Ukraine. If nothing else, they needed to show China they're a worthy partner against hegemony. I'm a proud American, but I think you're missing the trees for the fog when you say that Putin is living in a dream world. Then again, I could be completely wrong. A broken Russia, however, should be more to be feared than a confident one in my opinion. Regardless, and I forget where I heard this, but the overriding lesson of this conflict is about us in the West. This conflict is about ending a weak and diseased unipolar world order, rather than being about the viability of successfully invading Ukraine. Russia probably loses more folks to suicide in a year than they've lost in this skirmish so far. They need self respect more than life.
I agree with you on Russia's calculus and feelings about their situation. I just think they badly underestimated the challenge they would face in Ukraine, and now they look weak. Which is a dangerous situation for us all.
What challenge? In 5 days they have surrounded the Army in Eastern Ukraine, taken Kiev and have Ukraine sitting for talks "abetted" by Macron? Sorry what challenge? Locals throwing Molotov cocktails and using free AK47s to set up a PR stunt for the Right Sector. Wake up
Mearsheimer also makes the case that they allowed the first two rounds of NATO expansion without making a fuss, even though it contradicted what the West promised Russia when the Soviet Union ended. I almost never look at mainstream news but the news I'm getting shows them dominant in Ukraine with a 3 mile convoy of weapons and tanks coming for ground attack.
This is why I am torn on this. I despise what Putin is doing, but it's clear that the "unipolar world order" he's fighting is a "weak and diseased" one, as you said. The flaw of that order is the original lie of the world, that humans are perfectible. But since people are sinful, absolute power does corrupt, and being the sole superpower has rapidly made us decadent authoritarians in just a few decades. We're so convinced of our Enlightenment liberal superiority (Francis Fukuyama told us so) that no competing tradition or narrative or God can be tolerated.
So I hope the war ends rapidly, and I'm not sure I have a strong opinion about who wins (as if anyone really wins in a war like this.) I'm incredibly impressed with President Volodomyr ("I need bullets not a ride") Zelenskyy -- the hero no one predicted him to be. I am impressed with the US and allied response; apparently the Biden team actually had a plan for a change. However, the "liberal world order" needs to be acknowledged as dead, and I am less convinced than N.S. Lyons that our leaders are really willing to do that. They will take the wrong lessons from a Russian retreat, and continue their quest to secularize, Westernize, and homogenize the world.
After all, once you've been "Enlightened" or "woke", leaving others in darkness would be a sin.
That seems overwrought and somewhat confused. Postmodernists and neomarxists (ILLIBERALS) have made dangerous inroads into the social institutions that rest on a foundation of Enlightenment values because those "classically liberal" institutions are FRAGILE TO DISRUPTION. Specifically to disruption of the information-attention ecosystem by network technology and the resulting moral decline.
So, what is needed is a transformation to a meta-rational civilization that is anti-fragile to postmodern disruption. Such a civilization would not need to constantly engage in missionary/Hegelian projects, rather it would act constructively to support cultural evolution (toward classical liberalism and then meta-rationalism) where doing so has value, meaning and purpose for a given population, and it is feasible.
(Some populations are genetically unsuited to classical liberalism because of the history of inbreeding in their gene pools, and their resource base is inadequate, for instance, so they are not going to be able to sustain industrialization internally, at least in the short run.)
I've also read the WEIRDest People in the World (as you apparently have), but I think we took opposite lessons from it. :-)
My belief is that Enlightenment liberalism (a state which maximizes individual liberty and remains neutral on questions of values) is untenable from the beginning. I am not alone in this, Patrick Deenen has written about it. Oren Cass does as well. My favorite is Ryszard Legutko (see my comments below) since he participated in his country's (Poland's) transition from communism to liberalism, and thus has had a first hand view of both systems up close.
The gene pool argument holds little weight with me, since culture appears to swamp genes in terms of societal outcomes. (Witness Indian immigrant children's success in America, or Muslim immigrants lamenting their children's Western behaviors.)
Can you give me an example of a liberal institution that would be "anti-fragile to postmodern disruption"?
re: "Patrick Deenen ... Oren Cass ... Ryszard Legutko ..."
Never heard of them. People have been criticizing Enlightenment liberalism/modernity since its beginning, including the counter-Reformation (including Spanish Absolutism), Rousseau's romanticism, fascism, marxism, and on and on.
Patrick Deneen is influencing me greatly. His recent substack piece on the Russian invasion is rooted in a very antique explanation. He reviews the German American philosopher Eric Voegelin. I find it simple, Gnosticism, the belief that truth is discernible, mankind is able to fathom the Devine, is the order of the day. This Gnostic certainty lead to the fascism and communism of the 20the century and is with us today in what Wesley Yang coined “the successor ideology “. Professor Deneen calls it political Gnosticism of imperial liberalism. I suppose Putin calls it “an empire of lies”. Gnosticism is in opposition to the Augustinian notion of a fallen world and the city of God to follow. I do not cotton to the notion of an afterlife but I see the Augustine tradition leading to humility about what people are able to achieve in this world. The gnostic belief in perfectibility is pure arrogance, stupid and a death knell every time, every way.
You also do not understand population genetics or cultural evolution!
The cases of Indian or Muslim immigration (or most other non-Europeans) have little or nothing to do with the origins of modernity. Modernity did not evolve in India or in the Islamic world.
Even the "white" Celtic/Appalachian gene pool in the USA has retained a lot of pre-liberal characteristics.*
Most successful immigrants to the West were already partly westernized (ironically because of colonialization), and are usually the better educated, more wealthy, higher IQ members of their gene pool.
In places where there are pockets of ultra-traditional immigrant culture there is a high level of resistance to assimilation to modern-liberal values.
The evolutionary origins of modernity were over 1,000 years ago, not in Poland after WW2!
As discussed previously (see my posts A Tentative Ranking of the Clannishness of the “Founding Fathers” and Flags of the American Nations), the ancestors of the people that live in these areas came from certain, more aggressive peripheral areas of the British Isles. In the case of the settlers of the Tidewater and the Deep South, the Cavaliers, their ancestors hailed from southwest England. The founders of Greater Appalachia were the descendents the aggressive Border Reivers of the rugged English-Scottish border area.
Your belief is incoherent. Enlightenment liberalism created the modern world. It is not neutral on questions of values, AT ALL! It rejects most of the values of mythic civilization and pretty much all of the "magical" values of tribal cultures.
"Liberal" institutions are not anti-fragile to postmodern disruption, meta-rational institutions will be (theoretically).
There are proto-meta-rational groups, experimental, such as Game-B (Jim Rutt) that have proven to be anti-fragile to vicious assaults by "woke" creepy-crawly mobs.
I agree with a LOTTA what You said, M. Villanueva. One thing I hadn't realized until this morning is that there are a lotta unexpected reasons for the decadence of the West. Or, more specifically, the U.S.
It was actually 40 or 50 years ago that white people decided they needed to reclaim the high moral authority they lost when America admitted it was racist via the civil rights movement. White people from the left. Those on the right were (and still are) unregenerated perverts, right?
Funny how those on the left would base their high moral authority on the claim that blacks were so inferior that they couldn't POSSIBLY (italics) compete with whites without affirmative action. I thought the rapid plunge to mediocrity was something that started last decade. Learn something new...
JT, I agree that it is ironic that despite admitting and gradually atoning for its original sin, our mostly white overclass is obsessed with flaggelating the rest of us for it apparently eternally. You would like either Patrick Deenen or Legutko (I forget his first name, but the book is Demon in Democracy). Both can be summarized as: liberalism consumes itself.
Societies develop from shared culture, values, philosophy, religion, language... lots of shared bonds. But Enlightenment liberalism seeks to "liberate" people from constraints, whether in law, religion, tradition, family, culture, or now, even biology. It can't stop until it dissolves every bond that holds its own society together. Rene Girard and a few others were ignored Cassandras; most of us (incl me) thought they were kooks until recently. Having burned through 2000 years of cultural inertia, the West is now reaping the whirlwind.
A philosophy who's only commandment is "do as thou will until someone else's nose begins" doth not a society make.
But I may have left a wrong impression: I'm pretty much a total ignoramoose. It was only with my recent retirement that I looked into anything other than just surviving. So I'm glad You added a few details. I had no idea who Deenen and Legutko were. I added these to list:
The Demon in Democracy
The Cunning of Freedom
Why Liberalism Failed
TY for tips. However, I've accumulated too many books, so I never buy a new one until the day I plan to start reading it. And I just bought the book by Robert Kagan because it was on sale. Mebbe in a few days. TYTY again.
I found it sad to read the way you have uncritically swallowed and here recycle the hysterical war propaganda being pushed by the media. This tragic war in the Ukraine has had one of its intended effects, which is scratch an American conservative and you will find the old messianic belief in American global supremacy. Who lead the charge for the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and many other places? Not the Woke, but the Conservatives! So when things started getting really tough for the new Woke regime in the USA with the Covid threat, once handy, now done and exhausted, policies all in ruins and the country turning against them with the mid-terms looming, what to do? Well why not a nice little war, fought not by the US but by some heroic proxy in a far off country, with, of course, massive American funding and support? So, let’s provoke the Russians into starting it, and then watch the Conservatives forget about everything (the lockdowns, the Afghanistan disaster, the failed vaccines, critical race theory, the Canadian truckers, the Jan. 6 political prisoners, Wokeness everywhere, etc) and just roll over, convulse with war hysteria once again, and basically fall into line.
Let’s just think a bit more critically about what has happened in the Ukraine.
Ukraine was part of Russia or the USSR for centuries. Indeed Kiev Rus was for a long time the very heart of Russia. The Ukraine established by Lenin and which became independent when the USSR collapsed was a rather artificial multi-ethnic country with a very large Russian minority. After it became independent Ukraine and Russia coexisted in a friendly fashion with very close links between their populations. This was dramatically changed when the US backed and supported the coup in 2014 resulted in an anti-Russian and pro-American regime. This resulted in the Russians grabbing the Crimea, but the Crimeans were almost entirely Russian and clearly supported this. Eastern Ukrainian provinces, also Russian populated, revolted and became quasi-independent. This culminated in both parties agreeing to the Minsk agreement.
What happened then? Well the Ukraine regime increasingly became a corrupt kind of client state of the US state department with extremely close links with the Democrats and particularly close financial links with the Biden’s. The Ukrainians encouraged by the State Department walked away from the Minsk agreement and refused to implement it. The Ukrainians with covert US encouragement started increasingly talking about joining NATO, which would essentially give the US the right to station American troops and advanced weaponry, including nuclear, in the Ukraine. The US also recently started huge amounts of advanced weaponry to the Ukraine. Was Putin wrong to be worried? Just go take a look at a map, and you’ll see why. Try this mind experiment. If the Germans in 1941 had started their invasion from the Ukraine’s borders instead of midway through Poland, the USSR would have been gone before winter. Germans would have occupied right up to the Urals, stripping the USSR of almost all its population and industry. This fear still dominates Russians today.
There is no doubt Putin wanted to negotiate. He made offer after offer and his one and only unconditional demand was a guarantee that Ukraine not join NATO. What was the American response? Contemptuous dismissal, with “Of course we don’t intend Ukraine to join NATO” but a point blank refusal to give any such guarantee. Would anyone with any sense believe that? That is what caused the decision to invade and try to forcibly neutralize Ukraine. There is no way Putin wanted it. It is well known that he is cautious and very risk averse, and this is a hugely risky option that could easily backfire catastrophically. In addition, it will mean massive economic pain for Russia.
And what has been the reaction of many Americans, and particularly Conservatives? Incandescent rage! How dare Putin try and take our little client state away from us! The Democrats and the Woke have always hated Russia under Putin (far more than China, which they don’t really mind at all; indeed they rather admire the Chinese model). Why? Perhaps because Russia is capitalist, socially conservative, and patriotic and likes being that way? Worst of all, since Putin took over and stabilized the country, Russia has been doing very well economically and socially. And it serves as an example for other anti-Woke deviants, like Hungary and Poland. The Woke hate Russia for this – it seems to stand for everything the Woke hate and detest! Hence, their desire to destroy Russia and their rage that their new little anti-Russian client might be taken from them.
So I’m sorry to have to write this, but it is the stupidity and greed of the American imperialists both of the current regime and the mainstream Conservatives who share much of the culpability for this war. And I have no doubt that Biden and the Democrats refusal to simply give the garauntee that Ukraine would not join NATO would have been well aware what the consequences would be, and that they wanted it to divert from their failures. And let’s face it, they were right, it has worked and spectacularly so. This also has bigger significance. This is the way Conservatism will die – no, is dying! Not from weakness, but from stupidity!
I'm pleased to see you describe my thoughts about delusional thinking so eloquently. Humans are human and will do horrible things for horrible reasons. We can culturally transform, as is illustrated by the west's evolving attitudes about race and sexual preference. Perhaps we can transform the world. But we are far from there now. Well written and well thought out
So many of my friends, largely progressives, actually believe in "the right side of history" and its teleological march to a perfection. In other words, they believe their philosophies to be, somehow, beyond nature and beyond history.
The Brunis of the world don't get that their incredulity is a terrible indictment on their deepest beliefs. We shall see whether any real changes occur in their world view or whether they will go back to exactly what they were with all the confidence that they possessed.
Rereading this post 33 months later, in December 2024, the arguments have overwhelmingly not held up to date. The delusions turned out to be those of the neoconservative NATO expansionists. Jack Matlock, former US Ambassador to the USSR, turned out to offer the correct assessment in February 2022: "Obviously, there would have been no basis for the present crisis if there had been no expansion of the [NATO] alliance following the end of the Cold War, or if the expansion had occurred in harmony with building a security structure in Europe that included Russia.” The upheaval and embarrassing incompetence of American leadership continue unabated.
In 2020 I read the book The Fourth Turning, by Strauss and Howe. It has fundamentally changed my perception of everything, especially around “the arc of history”. Like you say, I too believed that we had escaped history to move forever forward, improving and solving all problems as we go. I’m a technologist; it fits very naturally with my skill set and the work I do.
But after reading that book, it opened my eyes much more to the cycles of history, and to the limitations that human nature, time and death place on our ability to perfect ourselves and our society.
I’m still optimistic though. Giving in to despair or nihilism is the worst thing we can do in my opinion.
Look at what happened to the nihilists in the movie The Big Lebowski. Nihilism is exhausting.
lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVCtkzIXYzQ
"Yeah, well that's just your opinion man. (Big Lebowski)"
The fourth turning is interesting. Consider Turchin's "Ages of Discord" which is a more sophisticated analysis of historical cycles.
The Fourth Turning didn't resonate with me as much as the Ages of Discord. That's just me. Put Discord on the list. I've never been a fan of Ray Dalio, so only book I read of his was most recent: "The Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail."
You gotta understand that he's worked with the Chinese since 84, and sent his kid there for high school. Meaning I think he shows an unfortunate bias that way. Still interesting concept, to me anyway.
Clicked the [Like] button, but wished for a [Love] button.
“The realization has already dawned: politics is not a game; politics is about power, and power is based on violence. Politics is actually a matter of life and death.”
Earlier in the piece…
“Eventually the better angels of his nature would triumph and War would fade from the earth – along with Famine, Pestilence, and, perhaps in time, even Death.”
The lesson here is that those subscribing to this world view that our better angels would triumph is only we could correctly, this time, implement the socialist global order… will always accept copious human misery and death (of others of course) to achieve their version of benevolent dystopia. Putin is really not too different than the globalists. See Trudeau for example. He called in the military to crush his opposition to his goal of taking territory. Putin sees Ukraine as his territory for the taking. Trudeau sees the territory of the suburban and rural working class as his for the taking.
Jordan Peterson does a good job talking about the baked-in malevolence of human nature. There are very few angles out there. And those that protect an angelic image to the screen and page are likely filled with the darkness of the devil.
Look at the actual origins of liberalism, the WEIRD* social form.
1000+ years ago, the Frankish-manorial gene pool used power, which was derived from superior social technologies (Constitutional law, literacy, market economics, outbreeding and the nuclear family, higher IQ and "openness" in personality, scientific and technological advances, representative governance, "democracy") to dominate and marginalize the more "wild" Celtic/Border Reiver, Slavic and Roman gene pools, as well as Arabs/Berbers and Mongolian Hordes.
The English Civil War (1600s), the US Revolutionary War, the US Civil War are typical examples of the need for violent suppression of competing gene pools by actual liberal civilization, or the assertion of dominance by the elements of liberal society that were most advanced into WEIRD archetypal psychology over the rest of society.
The loss of such ability/willingness to dominate is characteristic of ILLIBERAL postmodernists/neomarxists.
IF you can't even correctly define the problem, you aren't going to be able to fix it.
"The loss of such ability/willingness to dominate is characteristic of ILLIBERAL postmodernists/neomarxists. "
Either I do not understand you point here, or I disagree completed.
The fundamental basis of classic liberalism is individual rights and liberty.... very limited government as the loss of individual rights and liberty tends to increase proportionately with the size and scope of government. The collective large government power play in the guise of "liberalism" is in fact, iliberalism (why does Substack.com exist?) In Europe they have succeeded in flipping this definition, but the Europeans are routinely confused about the real meaning of political terms.
* the evolution of WEIRD culture, modern rationalism/classical liberalism, explained:
https://weirdpeople.fas.harvard.edu/
TY for creating "The Upheaval". I was surprised to read Bruni's comments and then shocked at my naïveté for not realizing the stateless elite zeitgeist had migrated so far in thinking human nature had put aside the darker manifestations of how we are wired. Germany has surprised to the upside, but I suspect there may be more downside turns before this phase of the crises turns to the next. I agree that Putin started writing his last chapter with the decision to invade but likely does not see his Lear moment it coming. In the meantime, let's hope he does not give up on the belief Ukraine can be defeated without razing its cities. I'd be interested in your thoughts about how -- if at all -- this crisis ripples through the dynamics of The Upheaval as you have framed. In particular, the tech and finance sectors seem to be both important actors in the authoritarian-liberal democratic ideological competition, and yet at home in the US they give the impression of buying into the "evolved" reading of human nature. And some of the same cohort also appears to resonate with the seductive illusion of safety and stability at small cost of some liberal values. Perhaps global businesses -- with focus on tech and finance -- will find themselves in an ideological vise tightening faster than expected that demands a choice of with which side they will align.
re: "... tech and finance sectors seem to be both important actors in the authoritarian-liberal democratic ideological competition..."
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comment:
The totalitarians in tech-media/finance are POSTMODERN/NEOMARXIST ILLIBERALS whose rise was the result of the disruption of legacy hierarchies of curated expertise (the legacy sense-making system) as the disrupted information-attention ecosystem made possible the chaotic/disordered flow of information around curated hierarchies.
The crucial point is that the traditional-legacy-classical liberal sense making system (which I think most people here see as "conservative" in the USA) doesn't have anything to offer that will fix the problem of fragility to disruption.
Just hoping that some kind of magic is going to return western civilization to a better past is itself a dangerous delusion.
All of the infantile blah blah-isms will eventually get punched in the face by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Whoever thought that the 21st Century should have a pass on the vagaries of the human condition - otherwise known as reality - in fact as well as in force.
Add to the hierarchy of needs the one where humans constantly pursue a place on the human dominance hierarchy. It is a much better life to rule rather than to be ruled.
Look at the data (Pinker for instance). Compare life conditions for the poorest 50% of people (especially planetwide) now vs 50 or 150 or 500 years ago.
The data indicates that everybody has a "much better life", even if perceptions about what that means are, paradoxically, below reality. ("progress" discombobulates perceptions formed at previous levels in the hierarchy! plus: "systems colonize lifeworld" - Habermas)
Agree. But much of the measure is relative to extremes unfortunately. However, the cost inflation of housing... and in some places healthcare..Healthcare... these are truly making a case for bottom up criticism.
incoherent
You seem out of touch on this. The cost of housing in many places is taking much more than 50% of discretionary income. Housing cost have escalated much greater than the rate of inflation and wage inflation. Are you a NIMBY?
Just so anyone else reading this understands how NIMBYism actually evolved and how it functions in worst-case scenarios:
https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/
I've been in the timber industry, worked in lumber mills/yards, as well as "fine woodworking" (architectural woodwork) and residential construction.
I've seen millions of acres of timber burn to crisp in recent years, due to "bad forest management".
Most of the western nation forests need to have about 80% of the trees thinned to restore the ecosystem to a fire-resistant state similar to what it was before 1900. That thinning could produce vast amounts of lumber that could be used to vastly increase construction and vastly lower the prices of homes for poor and working people, including homeless people, and create a LOT of jobs.
Mortgage bankers and the lumber and construction industries probably don't like the idea of lower housing costs, and there are a lot of politicians that would refuse to halt the scams of lobbyists and professional-certification professional rackets so it could happen.
Ok, so you are yet another example of the problem that many people tend to irrationally fixate on NARRATIVES and look for data to cherry pick that fits such narratives.
You responded with mostly irrelevant, incoherent comments (and now reactionary fluff) to the following:
"Compare life conditions for the poorest 50% of people (especially planetwide) now vs 50 or 150 or 500 years ago."
Pinker's data shows that something like a planet-wide poverty rate of 80% 100 years ago has declined to about 10%.
Are you actually aware of that kind of data?
I've seen housing prices in desirable areas with expanding economic opportunity increase drastically/catastrophically from the perspective of working and lower-middle class people for 50+ years.
My (adult) kids are dual citizens, USA/Spain. So, they have access to "European-nationalized" type health care, which is very similar to USA healthcare, on average, for "free", with much less of the bureaucratic bs* and private equity scams in USA healthcare. (we have had "good", above average, employer provided, USA health insurance for decades, costing me something like $50,000 over the years in premiums, but I got switched to a crappy medicare plan after retiring. need to switch.)
https://metarationality.com/post-apocalyptic-health-care
I have seen a lot of people killed by doctors in the USA because of medical errors.
Generally true. I'm an outlier, because I prefer to work as the underdog. That's just me.
I think though that all of us have some need for a level of confidence that we are seen by our family and peers as being at least equal in hierarchy. We will burn with some resentment if lacking self confidence in that. It is probably biological in the need for survival. If rejected by the tribe we would more likely die or be killed. We are really pack animals and it is a common trait of the pack to cull out the weak. I think if we understand and accept that, then the only debate is the integrity and morality in each of us in the pursuit of a position on the hierarchy. There is a path that the underdog can take... fly below the radar, work hard, be good and kind.
Humans are highly social, but not "pack animals" per se.
It is shocking that Darwin had extraordinary insight* about how evolution resulted in altruistic social cooperation, but his insights are not commonly known.
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* Peter Richerson (UC Davis) quotes Darwin (as an example of group selection hypothesis and the neurobiology of sympathy in "primeval times"):
"It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over other men of the same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and
[->] sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good,
would be victorious over most other tribes, and this would be natural selection (178-179)."
The idea that humans are like canine pack animals is wildly nonconformant with actual evolutionary theory about the eusociality of humans. The greatest human achievement in biological evolution was the adaptation of parochial altruism*, so the people that are usually "culled" from the herd are non-cooperators.
See Bowles (ULAM lectures, Santa Fe Institute) on the how evolutionary theory explains that humans are both "Rambo and Mother Teresa".
Or:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11559910-a-cooperative-species
Put it on list as well. But this part? "and our capacity to internalize social norms so that acting ethically became a personal goal?"
Wasn't the an Ancient Greek who held a lamp goin' around looking for an honest man, I think it was? People I "hear" about and "acting ethically" don't seem to match up. But I'll look into the book when I'm looking for something upbeat, so there is that.
[Edit: Ooops. TYTY, M. Pierce. ]
You need to be able to understand how people use terms like "ethics" to mean different things in various contexts. Meaning isn't usually static and fixed.
The issue is "what is reality"? That is the theme in the three most recent posts by N.S. Lyons, and the actual title of one of those three posts.
Your feelings about the issue are of secondary relevance to everyone except yourself and maybe some researcher trying to understand psychology/sociobiology.
Hm. [Edit: Oh! Timelag.]
Interesting. For the last five or six decades, i took the path of the underdog, tho didn't know it.
Self-confidence? Never saw much-a that. I guess that may be why I look at the self-confidence of the Millennials and Zoomers incredulously. But if You say it LOUD enough, You may convince others, if not Yourself, right? Didn't see much in the way of being equal in the hierarchies I found myself in, and am full-a gratitude for that now. But that's just me.
TY for writing. M. Lee.
Whatever. You either have a plan or you're part of a plan. In the tribe you follow the plan. Some of us, however, chafe under authority. But, while we're all trying to sort out our place in the paradigm - stay hydrated & nourished, mobile & alert and be very, very wary of the Virtuous Planners trying to feed us road apples. They are legion.
lol. TY.
Me? Just plain weird, I know that much. Never had a tribe. Decided having a plan isn't for me anymore. That's just me.
Virtuous Planners were one-a the BIGGEST surprises I found in my studies. Never would-a thunk it. "Legion." :)
Didn't Chomsky debunk Maslow? Or was it Clare Graves? Both? Or was it George Lakoff that debunked Chomsky?
In any case, by the end of the 1990s, Robert Kegan & Co. made clear that Maslow's model was incomplete to fully understand postmodern social conditions (complexity, relativism).
By extension, the postmodern-left elites/PMC, also misunderstand postmodern social conditions because they live in an ideological echo chamber, desperately competing in a system of conformity they hope will continue to make them useful to the global elite.
Putin apparently forgot about both Russia's (1990s) AND the USA's (2000s) bad military performances in Afghanistan!?! Bizarro.
So many delusions, so little time: Biological sex isn’t real; you can spend your way to economic success(30 trillion debt); “leading from behind”; no fraud in elections, etc
But none of that is related to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And you'd better not say it is you bigot. :-)
Why did you pick Vincent van Gogh?
I appreciate the article but I think this really goes against reality. Judging a military campaign on 3 days is again judging things in the lightning fast days of the modern world where humans expect everything now. The Iraq war campaign took 3 weeks to take Baghdad. The West was going to align but that was to be expected. I don't think Putin thought they were going to come in and he'd be hailed as a hero. He wanted to take the Eastern part of Ukraine because he needs to maintain a buffer for missile location to Moscow. I wholeheartedly disagree with the notion that this will bury Russia and all this other ho hum Western imperialist rhetoric because it is more of the same that was said in years past. The hope is to put Putin into a quagmire like Afghanistan while weakening the Russian state. That may be true but this move is the pivot to Asia. It solidifies the end of the uni-polar world into a defined multi-polar world. Notice India and China have not denounced Putin as they know they are next on the chopping block of neoliberal expansion (it's not reported in media but people in Southeast Asia know what's going on with their politics as the NGO's are fully entrenched and flipping their nations politics to pro nationalism to fend off China. Also note, it's not ok to be pro nationalism in America unless it's a liberal-left brand but that's besides the point because anyone paying attention recognizes that the inner party is who really makes decisions and the outer party is the one who makes those decisions palatable to the rest of the left out public). The move by Putin is a definitive signal that the Eurasia landmass is now closed and the West is now entrenched in the West. That's the new world and will be so for the foreseeable future because while this posturing is going on in Europe, the pivot to Asia has already begun.
Good stuff, multi - polar will be better than the monster America has become: political Gnosticism of imperial liberalism (Patrick Deneen, The post liberal order substack). Yes?
Mearsheimer, in a talk he gave to a UK group a few days ago, states again what he stated in 2015. Putin's goal is not to occupy or defeat Ukraine, but to destabilize it to the point it no longer conceives a NATO base as necessary. The attention of a united Europe doesn't change the fact that a noose has been quietly tightening around Russia since America made clear NATO was coming to Ukraine and Georgia in 2008. Russia is getting older and will likely- like us all- be growing poorer. I think they saw now as the time to poison the well of Ukraine. If nothing else, they needed to show China they're a worthy partner against hegemony. I'm a proud American, but I think you're missing the trees for the fog when you say that Putin is living in a dream world. Then again, I could be completely wrong. A broken Russia, however, should be more to be feared than a confident one in my opinion. Regardless, and I forget where I heard this, but the overriding lesson of this conflict is about us in the West. This conflict is about ending a weak and diseased unipolar world order, rather than being about the viability of successfully invading Ukraine. Russia probably loses more folks to suicide in a year than they've lost in this skirmish so far. They need self respect more than life.
I agree with you on Russia's calculus and feelings about their situation. I just think they badly underestimated the challenge they would face in Ukraine, and now they look weak. Which is a dangerous situation for us all.
What challenge? In 5 days they have surrounded the Army in Eastern Ukraine, taken Kiev and have Ukraine sitting for talks "abetted" by Macron? Sorry what challenge? Locals throwing Molotov cocktails and using free AK47s to set up a PR stunt for the Right Sector. Wake up
Troll. What information is there to support your assertion that Russians have "taken Kiev"???
Mearsheimer also makes the case that they allowed the first two rounds of NATO expansion without making a fuss, even though it contradicted what the West promised Russia when the Soviet Union ended. I almost never look at mainstream news but the news I'm getting shows them dominant in Ukraine with a 3 mile convoy of weapons and tanks coming for ground attack.
Really? No fuss in 2015 when Merkel went to Putin to smooth things over? Try reading non-western propaganda
Have you read Mearsheimer? His position has been marginalized by all in the west for decades. Those were his words
Troll
This is why I am torn on this. I despise what Putin is doing, but it's clear that the "unipolar world order" he's fighting is a "weak and diseased" one, as you said. The flaw of that order is the original lie of the world, that humans are perfectible. But since people are sinful, absolute power does corrupt, and being the sole superpower has rapidly made us decadent authoritarians in just a few decades. We're so convinced of our Enlightenment liberal superiority (Francis Fukuyama told us so) that no competing tradition or narrative or God can be tolerated.
So I hope the war ends rapidly, and I'm not sure I have a strong opinion about who wins (as if anyone really wins in a war like this.) I'm incredibly impressed with President Volodomyr ("I need bullets not a ride") Zelenskyy -- the hero no one predicted him to be. I am impressed with the US and allied response; apparently the Biden team actually had a plan for a change. However, the "liberal world order" needs to be acknowledged as dead, and I am less convinced than N.S. Lyons that our leaders are really willing to do that. They will take the wrong lessons from a Russian retreat, and continue their quest to secularize, Westernize, and homogenize the world.
After all, once you've been "Enlightened" or "woke", leaving others in darkness would be a sin.
That seems overwrought and somewhat confused. Postmodernists and neomarxists (ILLIBERALS) have made dangerous inroads into the social institutions that rest on a foundation of Enlightenment values because those "classically liberal" institutions are FRAGILE TO DISRUPTION. Specifically to disruption of the information-attention ecosystem by network technology and the resulting moral decline.
So, what is needed is a transformation to a meta-rational civilization that is anti-fragile to postmodern disruption. Such a civilization would not need to constantly engage in missionary/Hegelian projects, rather it would act constructively to support cultural evolution (toward classical liberalism and then meta-rationalism) where doing so has value, meaning and purpose for a given population, and it is feasible.
(Some populations are genetically unsuited to classical liberalism because of the history of inbreeding in their gene pools, and their resource base is inadequate, for instance, so they are not going to be able to sustain industrialization internally, at least in the short run.)
I've also read the WEIRDest People in the World (as you apparently have), but I think we took opposite lessons from it. :-)
My belief is that Enlightenment liberalism (a state which maximizes individual liberty and remains neutral on questions of values) is untenable from the beginning. I am not alone in this, Patrick Deenen has written about it. Oren Cass does as well. My favorite is Ryszard Legutko (see my comments below) since he participated in his country's (Poland's) transition from communism to liberalism, and thus has had a first hand view of both systems up close.
The gene pool argument holds little weight with me, since culture appears to swamp genes in terms of societal outcomes. (Witness Indian immigrant children's success in America, or Muslim immigrants lamenting their children's Western behaviors.)
Can you give me an example of a liberal institution that would be "anti-fragile to postmodern disruption"?
re: "Patrick Deenen ... Oren Cass ... Ryszard Legutko ..."
Never heard of them. People have been criticizing Enlightenment liberalism/modernity since its beginning, including the counter-Reformation (including Spanish Absolutism), Rousseau's romanticism, fascism, marxism, and on and on.
So what?
Patrick Deneen is influencing me greatly. His recent substack piece on the Russian invasion is rooted in a very antique explanation. He reviews the German American philosopher Eric Voegelin. I find it simple, Gnosticism, the belief that truth is discernible, mankind is able to fathom the Devine, is the order of the day. This Gnostic certainty lead to the fascism and communism of the 20the century and is with us today in what Wesley Yang coined “the successor ideology “. Professor Deneen calls it political Gnosticism of imperial liberalism. I suppose Putin calls it “an empire of lies”. Gnosticism is in opposition to the Augustinian notion of a fallen world and the city of God to follow. I do not cotton to the notion of an afterlife but I see the Augustine tradition leading to humility about what people are able to achieve in this world. The gnostic belief in perfectibility is pure arrogance, stupid and a death knell every time, every way.
You also do not understand population genetics or cultural evolution!
The cases of Indian or Muslim immigration (or most other non-Europeans) have little or nothing to do with the origins of modernity. Modernity did not evolve in India or in the Islamic world.
Even the "white" Celtic/Appalachian gene pool in the USA has retained a lot of pre-liberal characteristics.*
Most successful immigrants to the West were already partly westernized (ironically because of colonialization), and are usually the better educated, more wealthy, higher IQ members of their gene pool.
In places where there are pockets of ultra-traditional immigrant culture there is a high level of resistance to assimilation to modern-liberal values.
The evolutionary origins of modernity were over 1,000 years ago, not in Poland after WW2!
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* https://www.unz.com/jman/guns-violence-again/
excerpt:
As discussed previously (see my posts A Tentative Ranking of the Clannishness of the “Founding Fathers” and Flags of the American Nations), the ancestors of the people that live in these areas came from certain, more aggressive peripheral areas of the British Isles. In the case of the settlers of the Tidewater and the Deep South, the Cavaliers, their ancestors hailed from southwest England. The founders of Greater Appalachia were the descendents the aggressive Border Reivers of the rugged English-Scottish border area.
...
Your belief is incoherent. Enlightenment liberalism created the modern world. It is not neutral on questions of values, AT ALL! It rejects most of the values of mythic civilization and pretty much all of the "magical" values of tribal cultures.
"Liberal" institutions are not anti-fragile to postmodern disruption, meta-rational institutions will be (theoretically).
There are proto-meta-rational groups, experimental, such as Game-B (Jim Rutt) that have proven to be anti-fragile to vicious assaults by "woke" creepy-crawly mobs.
When the discussion is on political philosophy and you bring in a blockchain and cryptocurrrency evangelist, I'm afraid you've lost me.
Who is "bringing in a blockchain and cryptocurrency evangelist"?????
WTF are you even talking about?
https://jaymans.wordpress.com/about/
I agree with a LOTTA what You said, M. Villanueva. One thing I hadn't realized until this morning is that there are a lotta unexpected reasons for the decadence of the West. Or, more specifically, the U.S.
It was actually 40 or 50 years ago that white people decided they needed to reclaim the high moral authority they lost when America admitted it was racist via the civil rights movement. White people from the left. Those on the right were (and still are) unregenerated perverts, right?
Funny how those on the left would base their high moral authority on the claim that blacks were so inferior that they couldn't POSSIBLY (italics) compete with whites without affirmative action. I thought the rapid plunge to mediocrity was something that started last decade. Learn something new...
JT, I agree that it is ironic that despite admitting and gradually atoning for its original sin, our mostly white overclass is obsessed with flaggelating the rest of us for it apparently eternally. You would like either Patrick Deenen or Legutko (I forget his first name, but the book is Demon in Democracy). Both can be summarized as: liberalism consumes itself.
Societies develop from shared culture, values, philosophy, religion, language... lots of shared bonds. But Enlightenment liberalism seeks to "liberate" people from constraints, whether in law, religion, tradition, family, culture, or now, even biology. It can't stop until it dissolves every bond that holds its own society together. Rene Girard and a few others were ignored Cassandras; most of us (incl me) thought they were kooks until recently. Having burned through 2000 years of cultural inertia, the West is now reaping the whirlwind.
A philosophy who's only commandment is "do as thou will until someone else's nose begins" doth not a society make.
Interesting, M. Villanueva! Again agree.
But I may have left a wrong impression: I'm pretty much a total ignoramoose. It was only with my recent retirement that I looked into anything other than just surviving. So I'm glad You added a few details. I had no idea who Deenen and Legutko were. I added these to list:
The Demon in Democracy
The Cunning of Freedom
Why Liberalism Failed
TY for tips. However, I've accumulated too many books, so I never buy a new one until the day I plan to start reading it. And I just bought the book by Robert Kagan because it was on sale. Mebbe in a few days. TYTY again.
Professor Keenans substack is “the post Liberal order”
Ah. TYTY, RJF. May hafta add that to an ever-increasing list of people to tame my ignorance. TY again!
Again, this is overwrought and confused.
The problem is ILLIBERALISM.
I found it sad to read the way you have uncritically swallowed and here recycle the hysterical war propaganda being pushed by the media. This tragic war in the Ukraine has had one of its intended effects, which is scratch an American conservative and you will find the old messianic belief in American global supremacy. Who lead the charge for the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and many other places? Not the Woke, but the Conservatives! So when things started getting really tough for the new Woke regime in the USA with the Covid threat, once handy, now done and exhausted, policies all in ruins and the country turning against them with the mid-terms looming, what to do? Well why not a nice little war, fought not by the US but by some heroic proxy in a far off country, with, of course, massive American funding and support? So, let’s provoke the Russians into starting it, and then watch the Conservatives forget about everything (the lockdowns, the Afghanistan disaster, the failed vaccines, critical race theory, the Canadian truckers, the Jan. 6 political prisoners, Wokeness everywhere, etc) and just roll over, convulse with war hysteria once again, and basically fall into line.
Let’s just think a bit more critically about what has happened in the Ukraine.
Ukraine was part of Russia or the USSR for centuries. Indeed Kiev Rus was for a long time the very heart of Russia. The Ukraine established by Lenin and which became independent when the USSR collapsed was a rather artificial multi-ethnic country with a very large Russian minority. After it became independent Ukraine and Russia coexisted in a friendly fashion with very close links between their populations. This was dramatically changed when the US backed and supported the coup in 2014 resulted in an anti-Russian and pro-American regime. This resulted in the Russians grabbing the Crimea, but the Crimeans were almost entirely Russian and clearly supported this. Eastern Ukrainian provinces, also Russian populated, revolted and became quasi-independent. This culminated in both parties agreeing to the Minsk agreement.
What happened then? Well the Ukraine regime increasingly became a corrupt kind of client state of the US state department with extremely close links with the Democrats and particularly close financial links with the Biden’s. The Ukrainians encouraged by the State Department walked away from the Minsk agreement and refused to implement it. The Ukrainians with covert US encouragement started increasingly talking about joining NATO, which would essentially give the US the right to station American troops and advanced weaponry, including nuclear, in the Ukraine. The US also recently started huge amounts of advanced weaponry to the Ukraine. Was Putin wrong to be worried? Just go take a look at a map, and you’ll see why. Try this mind experiment. If the Germans in 1941 had started their invasion from the Ukraine’s borders instead of midway through Poland, the USSR would have been gone before winter. Germans would have occupied right up to the Urals, stripping the USSR of almost all its population and industry. This fear still dominates Russians today.
There is no doubt Putin wanted to negotiate. He made offer after offer and his one and only unconditional demand was a guarantee that Ukraine not join NATO. What was the American response? Contemptuous dismissal, with “Of course we don’t intend Ukraine to join NATO” but a point blank refusal to give any such guarantee. Would anyone with any sense believe that? That is what caused the decision to invade and try to forcibly neutralize Ukraine. There is no way Putin wanted it. It is well known that he is cautious and very risk averse, and this is a hugely risky option that could easily backfire catastrophically. In addition, it will mean massive economic pain for Russia.
And what has been the reaction of many Americans, and particularly Conservatives? Incandescent rage! How dare Putin try and take our little client state away from us! The Democrats and the Woke have always hated Russia under Putin (far more than China, which they don’t really mind at all; indeed they rather admire the Chinese model). Why? Perhaps because Russia is capitalist, socially conservative, and patriotic and likes being that way? Worst of all, since Putin took over and stabilized the country, Russia has been doing very well economically and socially. And it serves as an example for other anti-Woke deviants, like Hungary and Poland. The Woke hate Russia for this – it seems to stand for everything the Woke hate and detest! Hence, their desire to destroy Russia and their rage that their new little anti-Russian client might be taken from them.
So I’m sorry to have to write this, but it is the stupidity and greed of the American imperialists both of the current regime and the mainstream Conservatives who share much of the culpability for this war. And I have no doubt that Biden and the Democrats refusal to simply give the garauntee that Ukraine would not join NATO would have been well aware what the consequences would be, and that they wanted it to divert from their failures. And let’s face it, they were right, it has worked and spectacularly so. This also has bigger significance. This is the way Conservatism will die – no, is dying! Not from weakness, but from stupidity!
I don't believe I ever even took a position on the starting of the war in this piece, just for what it's worth.
I pray for Ukraine, and that Russia is quickly beaten back to its borders.
Even if our benighted betters in the liberal order thereby quickly retreat also to the boundaries of their prior delusions.
I'm pleased to see you describe my thoughts about delusional thinking so eloquently. Humans are human and will do horrible things for horrible reasons. We can culturally transform, as is illustrated by the west's evolving attitudes about race and sexual preference. Perhaps we can transform the world. But we are far from there now. Well written and well thought out
So many of my friends, largely progressives, actually believe in "the right side of history" and its teleological march to a perfection. In other words, they believe their philosophies to be, somehow, beyond nature and beyond history.
The Brunis of the world don't get that their incredulity is a terrible indictment on their deepest beliefs. We shall see whether any real changes occur in their world view or whether they will go back to exactly what they were with all the confidence that they possessed.
I'm a few days late getting to this piece and you probably could have been a little more discerning sifting through the waves of false reporting.
I keep thinking, since Brexit and Trump, that The Sensibles will eventually get it. They never do.
Some do, but even then, they usually have no incentive to protest or change anything.
But there are exceptions, anti-"woke" organizations are on the increase, and neutral platforms like substack, are flourishing as a place for dissent.
A mostly liberal, "diverse" group that is primarily focused on anti-"woke" thinking:
fairforall.org
Groups like that are basically spinoffs of the IDW (Eric Weinstein, Jonathon Haidt).
https://heterodoxacademy.org/our-mission/
Everything that Rises Must Converge. Only it doesn't.
Rereading this post 33 months later, in December 2024, the arguments have overwhelmingly not held up to date. The delusions turned out to be those of the neoconservative NATO expansionists. Jack Matlock, former US Ambassador to the USSR, turned out to offer the correct assessment in February 2022: "Obviously, there would have been no basis for the present crisis if there had been no expansion of the [NATO] alliance following the end of the Cold War, or if the expansion had occurred in harmony with building a security structure in Europe that included Russia.” The upheaval and embarrassing incompetence of American leadership continue unabated.