And Remember Having Crossed It
A consumer puts ego first – a fanatic puts obedience to code ahead of real people and situations – But a citizen thinks and acts and learns as they go, so they (we all) can keep doing better
Hey Folks!
I’m still running well behind (by my own screwy standards). Took almost a week off my usual reading chores, and now I have several hundred essays to catch up on, before I can feel up to date again (hence the slightly staler-than-usual referents, in today’s “This Wonky World” section, below. Also, yes, the next episode of “Conditions Are Always Impossible” is coming soon – Ian and I are both still eager (wish I’d recorded our last half a dozen phone-calls, they’d all be fine shows), but I’m still just sorting a pile of tech issues and practical nonsense (moving my digital life from Mac to PC – yet again – sigh).
Also – a crucial note for all readers (new readers especially). Please ignore the estimated time to read! First, because I append a huge collection of links to every essay (often longer than the piece itself), and secondly, because I like to add pretty or funny photographs, to break-up the pieces into tasty chunks.
When I just say it clearly this will sound ridiculously obvious, but the fact is, a whole lot of people who try to teach things to others, forget what it was really like when they didn’t know those things themselves. They don’t remember the many gathered clues that finally made the insight click for them, or that their friend needed a very different set of clues, before they finally got-it also.
The grandest version I ever heard of this problem was from Gopi Krishna’s fine book “Kundalini” – in which he said that one of the strangest things about achieving enlightenment, was that once you had, it was almost impossible to believe that everyone else hadn’t also become enlightened, simultaneously. That is, things which had seemed completely baffling and impenetrable, suddenly seemed so clearly self-evident that it didn’t even really make sense, that they wouldn’t be universal insights.
My memory seems to be a bit unusual (extra-packed, if not outright cluttered). I suspect this may be one consequence of my screwy commune/cult upbringing. People who are powerless and surrounded by empowered psychopaths often become especially observant, as a natural form of defence. I have even seen some studies suggesting the roughly ten percent of a primate band who we might classify as ‘depressive’ in terms of their very different cluster of behaviours from the others, confer a survival value advantage on the group as a whole, by their far more subtle and far greater level of vigilance. Mind you, I should also note that primatologists say all kinds of things that we really want to be true – and I try to discount anything which tempts like this, by at least fifty percent (if not much much more), just to reduce the easy sucker-leverage we otherwise offer, to the manipulative and mercantile world.
The point is, I actually treasure my memories of ignorance in all kinds of areas, because these memories keep on acting as helpful sources of clues, for others who have not yet found their key.
What really frustrates me (VERY far from enlightened, though I most certainly am) is that so few people seem interested in learning EVERYTHING these days. Please don’t misunderstand – I’m not trying to pretend we must (or even can) be polymaths, in this age of mind-boggling complexity and specialization – I’m just saying almost everyone has some lines inside their head where they say – and past this point, I just really don’t want to know at all. Which is to say, we have normalized delegation in ignorance.
If I didn’t find myself surrounded by people who claim to be things like Socialists and Christians, I wouldn’t find this so troubling. Freedom does allow for foolishness and ignorance of many kinds, after all. But principle and cause – DO NOT. We are in fact a culture which has so deeply capitulated to consumerism and ego, we even consume those greater-than-us things which were always clearly meant instead to consume US (and in so doing, strengthen-us and give us deeper meaning in a greater story).
Not trying to be overly dramatic here – and in fact, this is a perfect spot for me to offer an important opening ‘crossing’ I can describe clearly, though many of my friends have yet to make it (which makes me lonelier – but also makes them much sadder and more frustrated with the world, than they need be).
Moral suasion is a fundamentally dishonest style of argument – because it begins from the idea that we have the definite and final story about the moral weight of the world, and others should not just consider our witness and evidence, but adopt our conclusions (a strange kind of arrogance, for a world this fast moving, various and complicated).
Most often we do this by trying to prove the essential bad or goodness of one thing, by associating it with something else which we assume to be a referent of common moral value (positive or negative).
‘Leftists’ did a whole lot of sputtering “But Donald Trump” and “Puh-Ih” (no one pronounces his “T” anymore, in heroic protest, it seems) as if that was some kind of a logical argument (rather than an expensive taxpayer-funded government-subverting fraud). That plaint is now largely replaced by non-stop apoplectic calls of “Musk!” (which I’m sure both Trump and Musk find amusing, effective and exactly as hoped).
People on the right do the same kind of thing by describing stupidities in public policy as “Marxist” – not because this link is very strong or useful in terms of description (especially when the modern public actually hasn’t got any clear referents about Marxism at all in their heads), but rather because they know it reliably implies bad-wrong icky foreignness, to their favourite audience. Soviet repression. (yes, way-bad)
I saw a very sharp columnist on the right talking about Chris Hedges recently (and noting he liked to read him regularly, as do I, as a rebel originally from the opposite pole) and he helped me finally realize where it is that Hedges often leaves me cold – despite my deep admiration for him, as a truly outstanding human being. He remains the only genuine Christian pastor Marxist reporter that I know of – and he does as good a job as anyone could, of proselytizing for the best of the first two traditions. Problem is, that often comes at the expense of the third (Pullitzer notwithstanding).
I’ll go one step further (out of fondness for him, and trying to learn from great efforts). I would say it is his great Christian heart which compels him to witness poverty and war, and to work with the lowest in society. He ran a drama program in a prison for many years – helping inmates not just learn from the great enduring epics (Greek Dramas resonated especially well, for many), but also create and feel part of culture.
The big tool which (an awareness of, without a slavish dedication to) Marxism confers, which some on the right overlook (too caught-up in the fun of the totalitarian-evil implications) is “Cui Bono” (who profits?) coupled with an understanding of capital which even top capitalists incorporate to this day.
To be super clear – I’m not trying to say my friends on the right ought to read more Marx – nor to excuse the worst of Soviet times – I’m just saying they should recognize – a whole lot of people who actually are Marxist in some way (not at all the empowered tyrannical conformist dolts, they so justly enjoy insulting, with that association) were serious economic populists LONG before the ‘tea party’ movement ever got started.
They may still lack a practical program, but they understood the fight and had the enemy sussed-out a century ago. That’s a deep tradition from which all can learn.
I must also note some very big hope on this front – Matt Stoller (essential reading, on the latest in monopolists shenanigans) has a new piece to which I’ll link below, showing that the new administration which is tearing-up so much of the corrupted old rule-book, is actually in complete agreement with Lina Khan’s approach to anti-trust (and Vance personally has a superb record in the house, of working cross-party to stand up for the little-guy, against monopolist interests).
So there you go – not everything which came from left ideas was crap – and not everything the new team is doing is disruptive – what do you know – both teams wrong again! (as so often – sigh).
But of course, both teams would actually be partially right (even, dare I say it, cooperating), if they weren’t relentlessly insistent on using moral suasion (ickyness and sport-conflict, for the emotional thrills), and could therefore far more easily recognize the absolutely huge overlap of principle, in so many of their ideas and causes. (I swear, half the conflicts are about logical operations on language – that is pure symbol fights, which never come anywhere near to touching hard reality on either side).
Here’s an exercise my left, right and neutral friends can all do. Just try to imagine for one instant what would have been socially and politically possible – a full generation ago, if the energy of the “Occupy” movement and the energy of the “Tea Party” movement had come together in a massive nation-wide city and country popular front?
Just imagine if we’d been working on low-pollution prosperity ever since then, truly ended the cold war so we could realize an infrastructure renaissance, prized free speech and fertile cross pollination of ideas (less factionalism ALWAYS means more creativity, which also absolutely always translates into prosperity, in some form or other).
Then please remember that this whole century has instead been devoted to war, state repression of individual rights, and bankers taking an ever bigger skim off the entire economy, by loaning us back money that we should have taxed from them to pay for services which they demanded and used in the first place. That is, for decades, compounded, our fundamentally gutless and corrupt western governments – of ALL PARTIES – have been steadily transferring the commons – those public resources which people on both left and right absolutely need, to be able to innovate and solve their own community problems, despite the monopolist behemoths crowding-out new growth in every field – into private hands, where they can no longer serve such crucial social purposes, but only fatten the portfolios of psychopathic rent-seekers. No fresh leaves, old dead roots.
We could have had that – and we did this instead, with all that effort and all those years.
Mind you – I should also note a very creepy reality which has stuck in my head ever since I read “The Strange Death of Liberal England” by George Gissing – which talks about how rapidly and completely British culture transformed between the “long” nineteenth century and the onset of world war one.
He added hugely to my understanding of the suffragettes – the Pankhursts (mother and two daughters) were prominent leaders of the movement. Distinctly upper-class (when class was even more stark and inflexible than now, by far). One daughter dropped out of the publicity crusade altogether, to work with the poor and suffering directly (including prostitutes, which was considered especially scandalous) – and she was then sidelined by her famous mother and sister – made the black sheep – really just for showing genuine Christian charity and dedication – but in so doing, also besmirching their cool bourgeois power-branding!
So yes, the contradiction between feminists who simply wanted the right to do more good things, and the feminists who were making a play for a cut of (what they openly and correctly decried as corrupt) power, goes back long before the latter-day excesses. Mind you, the fine genuine aspirations were always there, too. (Moral suasion wants us to simplify – and instantly lose half the clues we could be learning from – resist – keep thinking, or you’re going to mostly miss it, when others are sincerely trying – or failing!)
We do not now talk about the syndicalist movement (even on the left), but they were once giants in terms of organizing the skilled trades (and worthy of study for that alone). Almost halfway between medieval guilds, and the more familiar post war union movement. The crucial thing at the time was that they weren’t just internationalists, strongly opposed to conflict with other workers, they were (unlike almost any collection of workers in the modern system) indispensable to every kind of industry.
The clue Gissing gave me, which I have been unable ever to forget, is that a huge London march of Suffragettes and Syndicalists – TOGETHER – was planned for September of 1914. My fellow book nuts will remember that the first world war began with “The Guns of August” (Tuchman, must read!)
Yet another time when two forces for change might have united to balance one another and state power (and possibly even restrained the depraved murderous war-madness, which was instead set in motion).
Can I say there is any clear evidence that the rulers of Europe decided they’d rather burn the whole world than lose control of it? Nope – stupidity and complexity together, actually do cover it adequately. On the other hand, the government did use the army against Syndicalists and Unionists both, so it would be naive to assume they were entirely incapable, by reason of demonstrated moral restraint.
For any on left or right who might shrug and so-what the first world war, as just a foolishness or reject degraded modern incarnations of feminism or unionism, and with that rejection, discard the whole line before, please study just a little bit about the world that war smashed forever. It isn’t that there weren’t many problems (and aspirations also, which are very familiar to us, to this day). The things the west had before the first world war, but has not ever enjoyed since, were belief, enchantment and purpose. Almost unimaginably greater personal range, too (I keep running into historical people who combined things like painter – architect – lumberjack and farmer, and yet felt themselves entirely normal).
What was destroyed was an age when even cruelty, was at least personal, and what was ushered in, and has ruled us all ever since is the age of the machine, the bureaucracy, the algorithm which you aren’t allowed to see, but must still obey whenever it tells you to sacrifice – because they say it’s best (and who are you to question them, anyhow?)
Apprenticeships, connections to the land, the irreplaceable emotional support of healthy extended families and yes, even for an atheist I have to say shared (and sincere) belief in a greater being, uniting all of us in one story – every one of these has been a loss so vast in scale and so total, that we don’t even know well-enough now to mourn, only that we have huge gaping holes inside us, we cannot fill
And if there is any territory where I feel certain that my friends on left right and middle can come together, it is the territory of purpose, hope and enchantment, a shared story of greater meaning. (Again, please don’t get all mixed-up at the level of competing texts – I mean here, the function).
Now – to return once more (unfairly, but I swear, to respectfully learn from an unusual life) to Hedges, the reason I do read him regularly, and have for literally decades now, is that when his reporter-head is informed by his Christian heart and his Marxist analysis, but not overwhelmed by the impulse to thump the suasion pulpit (soapbox), he has very rare humane insights into the true shape of modern life at the bottom.
To be fair to him and you, I have to make my own bias clear (apologies, for those who’ve heard it). I have a naturally artistic/romantic mindset and grew up in a commune – but that commune turned into a demented cult, filled with abuse, powered by ‘moral’ suasion and conformity – later, I decided I needed a practical trade, so that I could make whatever sort of art I wanted, instead of chasing a fickle (often stupid) market.
I remain an atheist (though not the scornful dogmatic narcissist, that term now so often implies), but still, I can only thank divine fortune for the early gifts of my incredible wife, and a hard-science trade! (one saved my heart and soul, and the other, my brain!)
The best thing about repairs is that it either works – or it is a clear and unambiguous fail. No amount of smooth-talking bullshit will ever hide malfunction, or make it somehow an acceptable outcome – and I say this as a guy whose invoices were legendary for detail – because as my master taught me, when I was his apprentice – “no one can ever thank you for what they don’t even know you did for them.”
Just to be super-clear – what I was doing wasn’t seeking praise, but giving them more satisfaction for the same price. (Audiophile psychology is a whole funny subject unto itself – another time, I promise).
Here’s a simpler version we’ve all felt – sometimes attention itself, even critique, is flattery, right?
As a history nut (and refugee from the left that used to seem like home) it has always seemed blindingly self-evident (uh-oh) that the best way to take clues from every smart thinker, is to examine their utility – what work can they do in the world? (and also at what cost?). That’s why I’m so obsessed with the one tiny margin-note quote I know from Wittgenstein “Don’t think of the meaning – think of the use!”
It isn’t that meanings aren’t important – life is brain-bustingly complex, we need simplified stories to make any sense of anything. Almost as a scaffold, on which to hang our awareness and lives. So yes, it definitely counts, what kind of stories we choose (or perhaps even more often, stumble into) as we go.
BUT – staying at the story level (as many urban credentialed do – working with abstractions and symbols their whole lives, and getting ever more professionally deformed by that limitation) means we become vulnerable to all kinds of problems which have to do with logical operations on symbols, not reality. Lost in the map, blind to the territory.
I have even argued repeatedly (though won few over, I’ll confess) that post-modernism is self-evidently weak and completely useless as any kind of a foundation, because a critique is simply not a plan.
Oops – think I just spotted one of my own subtle moral suasion assumptions – I assume everyone else also knows that a plan is required for any serious coordinated effort to make things better, where a critique is for lining the birdcage, tomorrow morning.
And then I have to challenge myself once more – because with so many less music critics, fewer people now come to shows, which means musicians get less work – even if the critics are often ignorant blowhards! (see how fast, trying to morally simplify even a bad review, can go south?)
What I should really say about Post modernism is that as someone who grew up in a cult, I recognize right away that it also smells like (and works like) a cult. But again, lest that seem another imprecise moral-suasion framing (or nothing but my own personal bad experience), I mean that in a strictly functional sense. There are unquestionable figures, orthodox texts and enforced group behaviours, priestly hierarchies, sacred rituals (that look arbitrary if not bizarre, to outsiders) and the widespread repression and ostracism of all heretics – all of the key cult ingredients are there in plain view.
You certainly can (with a lot of work) trace a line from certain Marxist ‘tendencies’ (factions) down to Marcuse and Foucault and many others – but that’s actually superfluous to the error, which is even more fundamentally in the malign (and unproductive) structure, rather than the informing text.
I’m not even saying that link is an error, technically, just – think of the use of all those furious unionists – who have such a long history of courage and organization on behalf of the forgotten, against the greedy – not as opponents, but as yet un-won allies in a citizen-forward popular front (and verse visa!)
For my friends on the right, who can’t figure out why I spend so much time trying to address people on the (fake) left, who still don’t want to stop yelling long enough to consider the nature of the structural evil on their own team, which in every possible way accelerated the demand for radical change – it is because I still remember being a symbol-person – feelings first (too much ego, too little thermodynamics) before I had that hard-science toolkit to measure effects and results, rather than aspirations and words.
And on the other side, for my dear leftist pals who now give me the side-eye and doubt my sincerity, just for even having so many friends on the right I can only remind you of that popular slogan of the 60s. “The only thing required to go from being a progressive to a reactionary is to keep thinking the same way, without ever changing.” This inversion has caught up to you, through no fault of your own (being determines consciousness) – the rule is, we must keep the heart steady, the mind must GROW!
I must return again to a distinction I’ve drawn a few times recently, because it applies here in spades. It isn’t about the informing text or idea, it is about the spirit, principles and energy which is applied.
“Ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it”. Consumerists (ego and need-first) are simply not adequate to this moment, whether they are filled with international humanism or the holy bible.
CITIZENS – who are at least striving to be more realistic (and thus more useful) over time, can take almost any route in, and ultimately find themselves contributing to a project of greater general benefit.
I am tempted to contrast the kind of people who make urban farms to provide low cost vegetables (and provide incredibly valuable nature experience for youngsters) with those who throw soup at paintings. One only is helping the environment, the other is servicing their ego like any other dogmatic cultist.
And for those of my atheist friends who too often and easily conflate cults with religions, this is a great place for me to draw another key distinction, which fairness absolutely demands.
The point about submission to a religion, as distinct from a cult, is that you are transcending a mere ego in one case, to participate in a larger narrative. In the case of a cult (and I apologize, to those who this offends) members are almost always participants, in order to gain the unwholesome authorizations and surrenders of responsibility, which are almost universally conferred. A degraded facsimile, at best.
My friends on the right will know what I’m talking about right away – the character is a meme and a cliche both – the bug-eyed, spittle-flecked apoplectic face of a “leftist” protester screaming abuse to a point you fear for their metabolism, rather than letting an invited speaker address those who would rather gather to listen and exchange ideas, than merely emote in a distinctly sub-articulate primate way.
Again – the ‘reasoning’ behind such activity is beside the point – what they are doing is insisting – I know better for all of us, and I should be allowed to disrupt things that others would like very much.
Doesn’t matter if they’ve got Marcuse or Dianetics in their back pocket (or the new testament, for that matter) – the point is really – don’t be a selfish asshole – show respect for others, no tantrums, please.
So – why am I really anti-tribalist? This angle angers almost all of my friends (who, like most humans, feel most comfortable in a tribe, even if it is realy just a diffuse electronically mediated cultural idea of a tribe) at least a little bit. I can understand being upset by my constantly busting-up cathartic orthodoxies they were rather enjoying, but no one should mistake my perception of personal duty for mere fiestiness.
What makes this post tribalist view seem like self-evident enlightenment, from my screwy perspective? Honestly folks, it doesn’t come from the hard-knocks side at all, or from reason, it comes from saving grace.
It is approximately impossible to describe how lonely it is to be excommunicated, unless you’ve felt it. I sometimes joke that I come from a lost civilization, and though it was a micro-culture, it was the whole world of my early life, there were no other standards by which to judge, and all of it is now so completely gone (and repudiated, by painful testimonies) as to almost seem a ghastly hallucination, rather than real experienced history, from which many lessons should be learned (cautionary side).
What really surprised mixed-up teenage cult-escapee me, was that the world was not in fact full of all those bad outsider nonbeliever people who mean harm in every case. I certainly encountered many creeps, for whom I was in no way prepared (clueless is an understatement, by orders of magnitude), but I received great kindnesses for no reason from so many, that I remain deeply grateful to this day.
Some were people who were deeply imbued with religious spirit, some with worker solidarity and aspiration, some saw science as the only way forward for mankind, and some insisted art and enchantment were all that really mattered.
I agree with all of them, deep in my heart. I don’t care if they seem contradictory, because I take and respect them all as icons of aspiration toward our finer human capabilities, not sources of inflexible dogma. Spirit, not letter – and surely our own personal pantheon of great spirits cannot be properly honoured, by any less effort than this.
Which brings me to one last crucial crossing, in terms of thinking and awareness.
I mentioned before how witnessing so much mistreatment of children, gave me a strong pro-kid anti-parent bias, for many early years – but I was taught a new perspective when I lived downstairs from a single mother with a teenager! Likewise, I began with a strong worker bias (rather than the worker heart, which I still retain – sans dogma) and was later taught to see more by a boss who absorbed losses in his company himself (sold his Cessna, even) rather than lay-off workers, in slack times.
But that’s still a very crude sort of expanded insight – and I still insist that retail is not just tedium (though that is almost always an aspect) it is also a useful social laboratory, for anyone clever enough to pay attention over time.
One of the most popular stupidities on the left is the idea of false-equivalence. The idea that any boss would be as good as any other boss, because the point is just to have someone BE boss – cash that cheque and occupy that role.
But anyone who has worked any place where they have experienced several different kinds of boss in a row, knows for sure that this is complete nonsense. Management isn’t a role, it’s a function, and whether or not the person chosen can properly perform the function, really is the only crucial point.
My wife served even more time in the ranks of retail than I did (I was often seconded to education for a few years, before returning to the retail service-bench again). She was the one who first suggested this nugget of wisdom to me “I don’t want a nice boss. I just want a fair boss. Even if they are a total dick.”
Of course it is best if you have someone who is nice, and on top of what’s going on in the whole workshop, and completely fair-minded about employees, and safety conscious – who can still pay enough attention to the efforts of their team, to notice when they are doing excellent work, and reward that extra dedication with consideration (respect).
But if you can only have the very last part of that, and not the others, you’re still three-quarters there.
Here’s why this (too) is functional, rather than a matter of content, dogma or text. If you work in a place where doing good work counts, you are motivated to do good work, and that makes the work feel more worthwhile, and makes you feel less like a sucker, for showing up and doing it.
When excellence is the standard, you also get cooperation and sharing of expertise, so that all can help each do better work, and feel better about the way they spend their day. More sense of agency, less feeling of being leashed.
A boss doesn’t have to be nice, for that work culture to emerge, because that work culture serves the work itself, just as surely as the workers. Makes them look good to superior managers (and/or landlords, shareholders, investors, etc), and makes the whole shop run more smoothly. Trust me, you get a lot fewer headaches and mental-health days, when work isn’t something you deeply hate resent or dread.
By contrast, a “nice” boss, who wants to be friends with everyone, but inevitably has a clique of favourites, and confuses things which are strictly work matters, with their own feelings about them, creates an almost completely random system of reward and punishment. Excellence is irrelevant, because it earns you no more respect than sloth and gossip (and OMG, once that shift happens, a whole department full of experts can indeed turn into a region of petty fiefdoms, all working at cross-purposes).
The absolute biggest mistake the (I insist, fake) “left” has been making for decades now, is to pretend that intention and feeling are entirely sufficient, and no reference to the practical is ever required.
Nope – feedback is crucial to every system, one could even argue that it is the destruction of citizen awareness and political feedback (substitution of consumer for citizen mindset), which has brought the western world itself to such a sorry state (again, I’m talking function – UTTERLY BROKE, that is – and we’ve been killing kids hopes for generations, already, and just pretending that’s somehow reasonable).
But I’d have to say the biggest mistake I see on the right (where almost all of the humour and most of the hopeful thinking about the future also, now definitely lives), is to confuse logical error on the left, with the absence of genuine aspiration. I know the code looks so messed-up (and agree, in many ways) but I swear that the key to bringing people together (yes, popular front, yet again) is FUNCTION-first.
Involvement in the actual, not the symbolic. In the gardening (and the shovelling of shit). Because it is in the mundane but real, life-centred effort, that we all rediscover enchantment. (not punishing re-education toil, I mean participation in community)
And if your purpose here isn’t enchantment (as reward for responsibility, awareness and participation – and just keeping on damn-well trying to learn and do better, no matter how frustrating life gets), please stop for a moment and ask yourself clearly – what is your purpose instead, then?
Again – this will sound idealistic as can be, but I’m after dead-practical function, and I’m serious.
We either work the line of love, or we’re heading for every trap known to human beings for millennia, without any hope of rescue. Not saying that the right sense of cause and dedication will keep you out of trouble – quite the contrary, in my experience. But what it WILL do (uniquely) – is make the struggle worth it.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Now, before I get into the main body of “This Wonky Week” I want to call special attention to two especially strong and sharply relevant essays.
One of my favourite ideas from math, which is also great for thinking about other things, is “Reductio Ad Absurdum.” An old fashioned method of proof, where instead of contradicting an idea immediately, you follow the natural conclusions of that idea, to the point where they become reduced to an absurdity. Same thing Socrates did so beautifully. Not contradicting people with his own ideas, but helping to show them in their own terms of reasoning, how their conclusions would inevitably hit a giant error, which proved the whole path there was wrong.
Some courageous feminists pointed out generations ago that the west had already developed a strange aversion to family bonds, much more pronounced than the simple effects of the industrial-urban surge, breaking up what had been extended families in less fast changing times and places. A weird and outright anti-love bias, in fact.
Even though one of the clearest indicators of human happiness is having strong family, friendships and love in your life.
But the particular conclusion which has been striking me as shockingly absurd, and thus calling into question the whole path there for several decades, is the popular leftist feeling that humans are a plague on the earth. Locusts, instead of essentially divine individual beings with some role to play in a greater and more important story.
The fact that this fundamental revulsion for human beings as a whole, is often found in people who also loudly proclaim themselves to be ‘anti-racist’ is just a further absurdity. Anyone who studies our history knows that the claim that the poor are out-reproducing the food supply goes back to people like Thomas Malthus, who worked to justify the brutal actions of the very first entire-nation-exploiting corporations in the world! (ah, the glorious cultural innovations of the mother empire).
I put it to all of my sincere and concerned leftist friends. By the time you agree with Malthus, you can’t claim to be for workers, for the poor, or anti-racist. You have found yourself on the side of most foul monopolists in history, which means we must all have taken a very wrong term, quite some time back!
And then I found this truly bracing essay – a very serious and useful challenge, even for my fellow atheists. Am I making the error I just spent the whole essay above, challenging, by using Malthus for foul association? (I say no, pro-human isn’t bias)
Or is it really much simpler than that, and way up at the level of function once again, only spiritual function?
This piece about importantly different types of evil is brilliant and frighteningly relevant. Do you care about the fate of the world? You need this in your head.
And here’s another one which deserves thinking about, though it will challenge many – much more about the contrast of the “long nineteenth century” with the bloody twentieth (just now ending at last?)
“...The 125 years between the French Revolution in 1789 and the outbreak of WWI in 1914 was later described as the “Long Nineteenth Century.” The phrase recognized that to speak of “the nineteenth century” was to describe far more than a specific hundred-year span on the calendar; it was to capture the whole spirit of an age: a rapturous epoch of expansion, empire, and Enlightenment, characterized by a triumphalist faith in human reason and progress. That lingering historical spirit, distinct from any before or after, was extinguished in the trenches of the Great War. After the cataclysm, an interregnum that ended only with the conclusion of WWII, everything about how the people of Western civilization perceived and engaged with the world – politically, psychologically, artistically, spiritually – had changed.
R.R. Reno opens his 2019 book Return of the Strong Gods by quoting a young man who laments that “I am twenty-seven years old and hope to live to see the end of the twentieth century.” His paradoxical statement captures how the twentieth century has also extended well past its official sell-by date in the year 2000. Our Long Twentieth Century had a late start, fully solidifying only in 1945, but in the 80 years since its spirit has dominated our civilization’s whole understanding of how the world is and should be. It has set all of our society’s fears, values, and moral orthodoxies. And, through the globe-spanning power of the United States, it has shaped the political and cultural order of the rest of the world as well.
The spirit of the Long Twentieth could not be more different from that which preceded it. In the wake of the horrors inflicted by WWII, the leadership classes of America and Europe understandably made “never again” the core of their ideational universe. They collectively resolved that fascism, war, and genocide must never again be allowed to threaten humanity. But this resolution, as reasonable and well-meaning as it seemed at the time, soon became an all-consuming obsession with negation.”
Here’s that very hopeful evidence I mentioned above – some righteous projects really are shared! (yay)
Greg Lukianoff is a genuine free speech hero – ‘cause he’s doing it properly (principle first and always). His ideas aren’t just hopeful, they are battle-tested!
Matt Taibbi is one of the best writers in journalism (journalists in writing?) Smart and perceptive, witty and purposefully irreverent, too. He’s also faced truly unhinged abuse for reporting which, in another age, would have surely won him a pullitzer! (I still shiver, when I think of Stacy Plaskett!)
Thing is, when you go after someone who is smart and principled, with corruption and deceit – they go to work – and you (mass censorship advocates) have officially earned yourself a very serious opponent (and we the people, a real hero).
Here’s one more very useful piece of clear evidence (of so many, over the last few years). You can hate JD as much as you like – but he was making a serious point about Europe, which tribalists ignore to our great common peril.
Racket News - The Library - Timeline of Foreign Censorship
It isn’t just that vastly and wilfully stupid public policy made the kids who went through Covid lockdowns eight IQ points poorer (on average). We messed them all up so badly psychologically, that many will never fully recover (a theft of health and pleasure in life on an unprecedented scale, here – and if you don’t think that’s criminal, stop calling yourself humane!)
Here’s a sharply drawn contrast from a leftist, which might be useful to my friends on the new right – Caitlin won’t quite say it, but I will – real leftists are your natural allies – the fakes are the enemies of the working class – which means a common challenge for the sincere left and right together – don’t despise your allies! Only when you can work with them, and they get their shit together enough to ally with you also – will WE win!
Nothing built on the policy of oligarchs can possibly be any more solid than feedback-blocking idealism was – the people need to triumph over all of the monopolists and manipulators, before we can call anything a victory – that’s the big fight, worth big effort.
“…Liberals hate socialists for the same reason socialists hate liberals: because socialists are the thing liberals pretend to be. Socialists stand for truth, justice, peace and equality while liberals only pretend to stand for these things, and they both know it. Liberals know their favorite political party supports war, militarism, oligarchy and inequality and is rife with power-serving corruption, and socialists know it too, so they can critique these dynamics in ways that have the unpleasant sting of truth.
Liberals don’t mind it when some dopey right winger criticizes their ideological faction, because the rightist has no idea what they’re looking at and offers up the dumbest and least relevant criticisms imaginable. When a socialist critiques that same faction they do it in ways the liberal knows are true, and it causes the liberal to experience cognitive dissonance. If you love AOC it’s not going to bother you when a rightist calls her a woke commie terrorist lover, but someone to the left of you pointing out the various ways she serves the ugliest aspects of the US empire will grate against some of your most deeply treasured belief systems.
Most liberals secretly hate socialists more than they hate rightists, because while rightists attack their political agendas, socialists attack their egos. They expose core identity structures for the sham that they are. Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable, and nobody enjoys feeling like they’ve been exposed as a phony.
That’s what liberal left-punching is really about. It’s not about “political pragmatism” or any of that nonsense. It’s petty, vindictive egotistic meltdowns dressed up in reasonable-sounding words. It’s never anything nobler than that.
And because she is so sharp and clear and principled, a couple more
Here’s brilliant elder statesman of international reporting Patrick Lawrence, with an absolutely superb correction to the wild panic (and media lies) in reaction to Vance’s Munich speech (just in case you think Taibbi’s youth or temper, motivated his take)
My regular readers will have heard me mention Africa regularly (unlike our politicians). Here’s an African take on the big international thing which is really going on, which is completely unlike our (blinkered) western view, and yet absolutely understandable in every way, by our own ethics and aspirations.
“...Notable side-note – “Band-Aid” imagery painted on Africa by the West in the past decades has been responsible in framing Africa as a high-risk investment space. While aid and charity have amounted to roughly $120-$150 Billion annually since 2010, over $200 Billion worth of resources are extorted annually of the continent, often without paying taxes or customs, resulting in a $80 Billion net loss annually. One could ask is it the West aiding Africa or Africa aiding the West?”
And here’s another take on the difference between “good intentions” and truly effective results
“Despite billions of dollars spent on economic assistance, most of the countries receiving US development aid remained mired in poverty, repressions, and dependence.”
Such a viewpoint can hardly be dismissed as a fringe sentiment smacking of parochialism. (In the United States, imperialist sentiment is often synonymous with supposedly principled internationalism.) The less rosy side of the aid industry has been shored up by such trenchant critiques as Dambisa Moyo’s, whose Dead Aid (2009) sees the $1 trillion in development aid given to Africa over five decades as a “malignant” exercise that failed to reduce poverty or deliver sustainable growth. She caustically remarks that, “Between 1970 and 1998, when aid flows to Africa were at their peak, poverty in Africa rose from 11 percent to a staggering 66 percent.” Aid, far from being a potential solution, has become the problem.
The report card of USAID has not improved. One of the notable features of the aid racket is that much of the money never escapes the orbit of the organisational circuit, locked up with intermediaries and contractors. In other words, the money tends to move around and stay in Washington, never departing for more useful climes. A report by USAID from June 2023 noted that nine out of every ten dollars spent by the organisation in the 2022 fiscal year went to international contracting partners, most of whom are situated in Washington, DC. USAID funding is also very particular about its recipient groups, with 60% of all its funding going to a mere 25 groups in 2017 alone.”
I’m now up to eight energy analysts or journals in my in-box every day (covering all sides, but hard numbers people, not metaphor-wielding wishingists). Irina Slav comes from the side I am, as a leftist, broadly commended to disdain – petrochemicals. But as I have said before, I like reality, not gossip, and she is not only great at tearing apart much which is impractical (and thus in no way ‘solution’) she’s also wickedly funny, and insightful as can be. Lovely to read! (and not of the hive-mind, either - hooray!)
Haven’t you subscribed to Kitt Klarenburg yet? Can’t handle the truth, maybe?
‘Operation Gladio’ is the collective name for a notorious Cold War-era covert program whereby Anglo-American intelligence services and NATO, in conjunction with mafia elements and fascist paramilitaries, constructed a pan-European nexus of clandestine “stay behind” armed resistance units. Their ostensible purpose was to remain ever-poised to respond to potential future Soviet invasion. In reality, these guerrilla factions carried out false flag attacks, assassinations, robberies, mass casualty bombings, and other incendiary acts to discredit the Western left, while fomenting a “strategy of tension”. Their objective was simple:
“You were supposed to attack civilians, women, children, innocent people from outside the political arena. [This would] force the public to turn to the state and ask for greater security…People would willingly trade their freedom for the security of being able to walk the streets, go on trains or enter a bank. This was the political logic behind the bombings. They remain unpunished because the state cannot condemn itself.”
This candid explanation was provided by an Italian fascist, jailed for life in 1984 for a car bombing 12 years earlier that killed three police officers, and injured two. The attack was intended to be blamed on the Red Brigades, a left-wing militant group. This false flag’s unravelling played a significant role in subsequently blowing the Operation wide open publicly. However, three-and-a-half decades later, much remains unclear and uncertain about Gladio, and the evidential trail went cold long ago.
Perhaps the most striking feature of Operation Gladio is also its least well-known. The effort is typically understood and widely portrayed as a primarily CIA-led effort. In reality, Britain served as the inspiration, headquarters and training ground for all Europe’s “stay behind” secret armies throughout the Cold War, with MI6 taking the lead on arming these factions and directing their incendiary activities. This little-acknowledged history has enormous contemporary relevance, given London secretly continues to perpetuate the Gladio model overseas today.
Cynthia Chung (and her husband Matt Ehrett) are super productive sources of insight into all of the history behind the history we’re supposed to think about (propaganda)
“…In this course of its investigation, researchers at Fordham discovered that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the 138 terrorist incidents recorded in the USA between 2001-2012 involved FBI informants who played leading roles in planning out, supplying weapons, instructions and even recruiting Islamic terrorists to carry out terrorist acts on U.S. soil. Reporting on the Fordham study, The Nation stated:
“Nearly every major post-9/11 terrorism-related prosecution has involved a sting operation, at the center of which is a government informant. In these cases, the informants—who work for money or are seeking leniency on criminal charges of their own—have crossed the line from merely observing potential criminal behavior to encouraging and assisting people to participate in plots that are largely scripted by the FBI itself. Under the FBI’s guiding hand, the informants provide the weapons, suggest the targets and even initiate the inflammatory political rhetoric that later elevates the charges to the level of terrorism.”
Of course, this trend preceded 9/11 itself as we see in the case of FBI informant Emad Salem (formerly associated with the Egyptian Military) who recorded hundreds of hours of conversation between himself and his FBI handlers which were reported publicly by the New York times on October 28, 1993. Why is this important? Because Emad Salem was the figure who rented the van, hotel rooms, provided bomb-making instruction, tested out explosives on behalf of Mohammed Salamah and 15 other terrorists who carried out the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing which injured 1000 and killed 6 people.”
I used to think I wrote weird characters. But just how crazy are things in the minds of some real-world folks these days? – people, you just can’t make this stuff up!
I was very indignant when I read this headline – which is to say it is a great headline (effective at capturing a reader) turns out, it’s a great article, also
Canada Is Already America’s 51st State - on Aljazeera
Dennis Kucinich is a serious (principled) leftist of great character – he sees real hope here, and I agree. This is a moment for setting aside tribalism, and looking for shared wins, like few others in our living memory. (won’t be instant, restentment is real, but it must happen, for the full citizen activation our societal rebirth so clearly calls for).
And now to matters more cerebral – will AI mess up our ability to think, or improve it? (yes)
“…We can view this through the lens of one of the most cited papers in all psychology, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two,” which introduced the eponymous Miller’s law: that working memory in humans caps out at 7 (plus or minus 2) different things. But the critical insight from the author, psychologist George Miller, is that experts don’t really have greater working memory. They’re actually still stuck at ~7 things. Instead, their advantage is how they mentally “chunk” the problem up at a higher-level of abstraction than non-experts, so their 7 things are worth a lot more when in mental motion. The classic example is that poor Chess players think in terms of individual pieces and individual moves, but great Chess players think in terms of patterns of pieces, which are the “chunks” shifted around when playing.
I think the positive aspect for AI augmentation of human workflows can be framed in light of Miller’s law: AI usage is cognitively healthy when it allows humans to mentally “chunk” tasks at a higher level of abstraction.
But if that’s the clear upside, the downside is just as clear. As the Microsoft researchers themselves say…
While GenAI can improve worker efficiency, it can inhibit critical engagement with work and can potentially lead to long-term over-reliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving.
This negative effect scaled with the worker’s trust in AI: the more they blindly trusted AI results, the more outsourcing of critical thinking they suffered. That’s bad news, especially if these systems ever do permanently solve their hallucination problem, since many users will be shifted into the “high trust” category by dint of sheer competence.
Here is something which seems to be about creativity, but is also about deep culture and belief – fascinating stuff, well worth a read and think. (Might finally explain some very irritating ‘leftists’ to others)
“...But this essay isn’t about successfully creativity, it’s about the incredibly catastrophic damage done by frustrated creatives when they give up on their creative endeavours and consign themselves to an ordinary, clocking-in and paying the bills. For most people, the 95%, work is one of the four pillars of happiness- Faith (or life’s meaning), Family, Friends and Work are the key ingredients to living a happy fulfilling life. Not so the frustrated creative. For the rare and lucky few, the Gordon Comstock’s of this world, the selling out of creative ambition can at least be harnessed to a career or vocation which makes use of their creative abilities, but most jobs just aren’t like that. A frustrated artist in a supermarket may enjoy the task of arranging a stand more than stacking the shelves, but they still have to stack the shelves. Let’s face it, when Henry David Thoreau wrote “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation” he perhaps painted a little broadly with his brush- he wasn’t describing everyone, he was describing us, as a class.
And when frustrated creatives are consigned to a life or career which isn’t suited to their temperament and desires, the results aren’t good. A frustrated creative is like a psychic amputee, or victim of an industrial accident, limb atrophied and withered- they can still feel their limb, the perennial numb ache and occasional crippling pain, but whichever of the main professions- like Gordon Comstock- they’ve chosen as suboptimal compensation for giving up on the creative’s dream- academia, media or politics their worldview will all too often be afflicted jaded cynicism which naturally arises as a result of realising they will never be the next Ernest Hemmingway. It’s not quite as bleak as all that. In many ways STEM is better place, with better opportunities, for the tinkerer, than their garage. Those who teach Business & Economics can at least feel pride in creating the next generation of business leaders and entrepreneurs who will sustain and grow all of the prosperity of a society. But one can judge the social scientists by whether their work has been making the world a better place, and the humanities by whether they’ve done a good job of introducing the Western Canon, the great art, music, philosophy and literature of centuries, to a new generations of young minds
Many will baulk at this description, but they have to recognise that it’s a process, a software which has been running for multiple generations, as the denizens of Aesop’s Manger try to usher successive generations of kids who might have made it as creatives into careers as academics or journalists, or worse still, politicians or activists. The manifestation of this sickness can be judged by one simply criteria- do we seek to teach our children to be grateful and understand the world, or do we seek to teach them the world is a horrible dangerous place which drastically needs profound change?”
The Slow Erosion of Cultural Immortality - By Geary Johansen
I love Ted Gioia – one of Substack’s genuine superstars – and every bit of it earned with a generous spirit, seeker’s heart and deep reflective wisdom (and a hard-numbers awareness of thermodynamics, too! Super rare and useful combination)
“…I’ve spent much of my life in pursuit of flow.
I didn’t know anything about flow states when I was younger—I didn’t even know they had a name. But that didn’t stop me from chasing after them.
I felt them. That’s all that mattered
You’re in the flow when everything happens effortlessly. You don’t even think about it. You get caught up in an activity, and it seems so easy and natural.
This typically happens when you’re playing. That was how I first discovered the flow state. I felt it when I played in a game or sport, especially basketball in a fast-paced playground game.
When I was in the flow state, I could do things with ease that in other situations would seem impossible.
But I felt it even more intensely when I played the piano.
Once I discovered jazz, I was hooked on it. Something about musical improvisation seemed to amplify the flow state to rapturous levels. I got caught up in the music like I was a surfer riding a big wave.
When I was a teenager, one of the surf magazines published a short story about a wave that kept circling an island—it never broke on the shore. It just kept going round and round.
If a surfer got on that wave they could ride it forever. That’s what playing jazz felt like to me.”
Finally – here is a treat of both creative and spiritual value (assuming you see a clear distinction) ;o)
“...According to Taylor, the enchanted world had two primary features. First, it was “filled with spirits and moral forces, and…these forces impinged on human beings.” In addition to the usual workings of cause and effect, there were magical emanations—spells and curses that blessed or doomed us at a distance, auras that acted on us without touching us. Hauntings were common; there were portents and talismans and evil eyes. Second, meaning inhered in the world, not merely in its observers. It was not a product of human operations but a property of reality. “Power resided in things,” Taylor writes. A flower or a rock—these meant something, regardless of what we thought about them, regardless of whether we thought about them at all. But now that the old enchantments have become irrecoverable, now that bodies are constellations of atoms and mountains are heaps of molecules, meaning is an external imposition.
There are learned objections to Taylor's story, and to their number I wish to add an objection of a looser sort. I suppose I might call it a spiritual objection, a failure of fundamental recognition. Taylor writes gloomily, “the combination of Weberian rationalization and post-Galilean science, with the accompanying decline of religion, has left us with a world deprived of meaning, and offering no consolation.” What, I wonder, is he talking about? The world itself is a refutation. It is nothing but consolation. It is so much more beautiful than it has to be.”
Drat – now I’m thinking I should have found a way to work-in my favourite quote from my favourite thinker, from way back when “Liberal” wasn’t just genuinely aspirational, but darned near heroic.
“The man who knows only his own side of an argument, knows precious little of that.”
Also – for chums on right or left who are having a hard time distinguishing between the positive and negative spirit in the oldest deepest leftist traditions (both long present, all denials dishonest), I actually found the all-time best clear explanation already – not just instantly recognizable, even to the most skeptical, but downright exciting!
Enjoy! (seriously, this one is outstanding!)
https://paulsnyders.substack.com/p/the-distinction-not-clearly-made