I think the "Voice" proposal is catastrophically dangerous and I sincerely hope the Australian electorate votes it down (I intend to vote "no" from London).
Jun 18, 2023·edited Jun 19, 2023Liked by Helen Dale, Lorenzo Warby
This is unbelievably good. Every word written about the academy is true. The modern academy has some major problems. That said, there are good people within it - and it still serves some useful purpose. But it needs some reform.
The defining moment of the failure of the modern academy has been its collusion with public school system bureaucracies to create SOGI policies that explicitly hide material information about children from their parents. It is outrageous, and as parents are finding out and realizing what has happened, the burgeoning parent revolt is only going to grow. It is really quite incredible that academics and the school system would have believed that ordinary parents would ever accept such a thing. Perhaps some of them intuited it, as these policies, while technically public, have never really been publicized to parents.
Yes. All university Education Departments and Faculties should be closed. It has always been a fairly intellectually bankrupt discipline, and has become a completely bankrupt and toxic one. The elevation of pseudo-expertise that the Theory-drunk have pursued has produced precisely the failure of the modern academy you allude to.
Of course, that much of the mainstream media either ignores, misleads or lies about such matters is part of the reason they think they can get away with it.
I don't have personal experience with the 2020s faculties of education, but I did do a lot of reading into post modern works in the early 1990s, a few years after I graduated. I was still connected to the university world, and kept hearing about it, and was curious. In the stuff I read, it was littered with words like 'praxis', 'hegemony', and 'hermeneutics'. It was mostly sophistry and gobbledegook, and I assumed no one would take it too seriously. Was I wrong. This nonsense took over, and here we are. Its clear that many or most arts and humanities faculties have been taken over by this crap, as demonstrated by the Grievance Studies affair. I also think the concept of Idea Laundering is very valid, and thus many of these faculties are actually intellectually and morally bankrupt.
Another great essay Lorenzo, thanks. This concept of 'self deception' intrigues me. I know you have pointed out the benefits in previous essays but I can't help but think in beings as self consciously aware as us, whether or not it is a necessary corrective. That too much self awareness has a tendency to paralyze action. In a world as complex as is, where the options for action are so vast there must be a mechanism that allows us to turn off conscious awareness and act. That 'self deception' is an effect of this process.
The thing is, academia/universities are a conundrum for society. They are totally necessary and also simultaneously, a liability. As a university graduate (engineering) I would not be who I am (or have had the success I have had) without a university education. For professional training, they are irreplaceable. Yet all the criticisms enumerated in this essay are valid. I wear my university sweatshirt, with the name boldly displayed, proudly, but also with an awareness of the trouble within the broader institutions. The best observations from the essay are that those in commerce and industry are at least as smart as those within the academy, and that only people with the direct responsibility to actually make things work, truly know what is going on.
I expect that engineering, more than the other STEMs will be the last to fall, if it ever does. Its the one discipline where facts and outcomes genuinely matter. Empiricism rules, and problems need to be solved. Plus engineers are smart and sometimes pretty ornery when they want to be.
The other point about engineering is that it naturally attracts males, despite feminist attempts to make the engineering population 50-50 M/F which will never happen. Because men are definitely less agreeable than women, engineers will always be harder to push around intellectually, hence my comment about being ornery.
I wanted to come back to your point, which is good. Universities do a few things, including undergrad education. As Jordan Peterson has pointed out, it is likely this aspect of the academy will go into decline. Credentials aside, if you actually want to learn something general you absolutely do not need to go to university today. And if university means getting a useless degree in grievance studies at a cost of 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars, well, that is just economically unsustainable, both for the individual and society overall. I am currently teaching myself C++ coding, totally possible today with on-line sources. Many general subjects can be learned on line today, at modest (or no) cost.
I think that universities were originally founded (in association with monasteries I expect) to protect and support smart people who otherwise would not survive in the real world - due to maybe social awkwardness, physical weakness or other characteristics. The top of society recognized the need for their ability to think, to help them solve complex problems. So they build universities to protect and support them. In a sense, you could say it was an early welfare scheme for intellectuals.
They were founded at the beginning of the expansion of literacy, which was a function of the expansion of the urban commoner classes as river and sea trade expanded, as windmills and other new technologies and agricultural practices changed the economy, and so forth.
Literacy was a characteristic of success, not weakness and failure.
People in the merchant/urban commoner classes that were more literate (and numerate) had more wealth and thus also had children that survived better than the peasantry. After 100s of years, the gene pool changed (bubonic plague probably disproportionately reduced the poor classes).
See Henrich's WERID model of the origins of modernity, and Gerhard Lenski's ecological-evolutionary theory.
Very powerful and interesting; thank you! The section discussing the way busing weakened black kids' connections to middle class black role models reminded me of something that doesn't get enough discussion. Some call it "mismatch theory." The idea is that elite universities are so desperate to get black faces that they let in kids who aren't qualified to do the work there. Those kids end up transferring from high-paying career tracks (like STEM degrees, pre-med, etc.) to becoming art or English majors. If they'd gone to State U, they'd have done just fine in the STEM programs and we'd have many more black doctors, engineers, etc. State U prepares you for State Med School just fine, and you can have a successful, lucrative life. I believe there to be much wisdom in mismatch theory, both from what I've read and from my own experience. I did well on the SAT and several people tried to push me to leverage my disabilities, first-gen student status, and desire to study mathematics despite being a girl (gasp!) to go somewhere more prestigious than State U. Very glad I didn't; with a lot of hard work I did fine at State U (mostly B's). I would not have done fine somewhere that every classmate took calculus in high school, had PhD parents, or otherwise were competitively advantaged over me any more than already was the case. (I would almost certainly have a degree in studio art instead of mathematics.)
Ah, progressive "compassion." Whatever would oppressed minorities do without it?
There's actually a lot of evidence for what you're saying, although it is peculiar to the US. Australia and the UK, where university entry is based solely on high school results, has less of an issue.
That said, many Aborigines admitted to Australian universities do disastrously badly, as they're often allowed in with lesser results than people of any other ethnicity. It doesn't "show" in the data as Australia's Aboriginal population is very small.
Yep, that was observed decades ago (by what we now call "heterodox", dissenting, social scientists) during one of the eras when affirmative action was under active debate.
The hysterical, radical extremists on the cultural-left were obsessed with increasing non-"white" college admissions to elite institutions, and mostly ignored "lower" tier public state institutions (at that time). But working class non-"whites" actually got far more benefit from the lower tier institutions (even with skyrocketing student loan debt).
Glenn Loury has explained that the "bias" (victim) narrative is bad for people disadvantaged by social injustice in comparison to the "development" narrative.
The cultural, "woke" left is so invested in, and dependent on (to the point of gross corruption), the "bias"/victim narrative that they are unable to pivot to the more beneficial "development" narrative.
I think this piece encapsulates the balance between liberalism and conservatism that is nonexistent in the political space today. Particularly on the issue of black politics and social issues.
Dr. Rev. Cornel West famously accused Obama, and the black professional and elites classes in general, of being sell outs several years ago, and instead of dealing with what West actually said, the black elites assassinated West's character via vicious, nasty, appalling personal attacks.
There is all sorts of other evidence makes clear that "race" as a topic isn't actually about "race", it is about RACE GRIFTERS seeking to expand their social status, power and wealth.
John McWhorter recently talked to Glenn Loury on their podcast about a book McWhorter wrote some time ago about a midwestern, industrial town were NONE of the major indicators of "structural racism" existed in any significant way, but local black activist culture, led by a notorious RACE GRIFTER posing as a "civil rights" guru, was still corrupt and dysfunctional.
Self-correcting feedback loops and incentive structures on what is now called the "woke" "left" have been deeply broken for a long time.
White Guilt is one of the great natural resources of our time, it is bottomless, malleable and very lucrative—it sort of functions as a Church, feeding millions while also minting a priesthood who sell atonement and indulgences. It serves too many functions, including as a moral architecture or lodestar, for it to die off anytime soon.
Jun 18, 2023·edited Jul 8, 2023Liked by Lorenzo Warby
For the past few years (ever since they seized the means of cultural production), I've been fascinated by the Jungian shadows of our postmodern Theorists, the first of which is how they see and show themselves as atheist intellectuals when they are so obviously a dogmatic priesthood.
Also, there is a mile-wide chasm between their strongest sales pitch and credential—a Platonic or fundamentalist egalitarianism that acknowledges no limits and is sold as a healing balm to soothe all emotional wounds (esp of the sacred Marginalized)—and their constant sweaty striving to ascend the social pyramid. To me it reads as: "I've spent my whole life in the library studying, I got the best grades at the best schools, I try to be published and cited and want nothing more than tenure and maybe a book deal and an NGO perch—but all in the name of Equality!"
And this too rhymes with the obvious tension (hypocrisy? self-delusion?) that's always been embedded in the Marxist vanguard: for supposed saviors of humanity, these people do seem intensely misanthropic, and for supposed apostles of Egalitarianism, these people can never stop telling us all what to say, do, think, believe, in their eternal quest to be crowned omnipotent philosopher-kings.
It seems that humanity can and will never be rid of meddlesome priests, and the pattern holds the same from Ancient Egypt to modern Karenville: moral entrepreneurs who claim to be servants and altruists with a special connection to God and a bulletproof morality, who turn out to be somehow even more power-mad than the politicians.
Or, as usual, Mencken said it best: "The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve."
In the early 1970s 31% of UK housing was social housing. This routinely favoured the Labour Party which always offered lower rents. Thatcher sold off the social housing stock and this broke the vicious circle. In the 21st century Labour has become dependent on the migrant vote (25% of British children are now born to migrants). In the USA the Democrats are even more dependent on the ethnic minority vote (almost 90% of black vote is Democrat).
The problem confronting conservatives is that to capture the ethnic vote they must make large concessions that do not accord with conservatism. US democracy is inherently unstable because the dominance of one group leads to the oppression of another.
This problem can only be reset by a party that is prepared to do the unthinkable such as selling off social housing. In the modern USA the only way for conservatives to live in a conservative country is secession.
In the near future the US will continue fighting a race war where one set of racial groups obtain ever more concessions. In the very long run (50-100 yrs) the groups will evaporate after all practical concessions have been obtained. This will not be stable - some villain will import 40m people from China to create a new power base.
It is interesting to reflect that the political parties are only interested in power. They will do anything for votes. The leaderships see themselves as separate from society.
This is very insightful. I would add one further observation, in trying to explain why nothing works properly under a progressive regime. Its core ideology is the rejection of precedent, leaned behavior, historic customs, past wisdom - basically, all authority. All authority, leading back to ‘the Authority’ is suspect at best, and generally to be ignored. This applies to social norms, but spills over into other parts of life. This exacerbates the gulf between the thinkers (generally left wing) and the doers (generally conservative) so for instance we have green energy policies that deliver a clean environment, but are totally unworkable in practice. Not sure where this is going, but it won’t lead to a harmonious or efficient social order.
Thank you. I wonder if there’s two themes to pursue here, as to why we discard past wisdom and what goes wrong when we do. This has practical consequences, not just moral ones where society becomes more and more fractious. In Britain we cannot maintain our roads or water supplies, let alone build new railways, or even new tanks and warships, and everything Government touches becomes more expensive and less efficient.
Why we discard past wisdom is something of an underlying, rather than explicit, theme of the essays. What goes wrong when we adopt pathological attitudes to information is a more explicit theme.
The decay in state capacity is particularly striking in the UK (the same has not happened in Australia, for instance). 40 years in the EU did not help.
The Roman Empire experienced a decay in state capacity as a result of the interaction between the decline in trade revenue and a massive increase in bureaucratisation. With the decay of the road network being its most obvious manifestation.
It seems human activity does not scale well. Village community trust seems to lose transparency once the ' trader' takes the item to the next village....
I heard this a while ago- " you can sell almost anything in the free marketplace so long as it is Mason approved ( I mean legal). If it doesn't work out for you, don't ever forget that YOU bought it!"
My father-in-law worked with victims of Hansen’s Disease - leprosy. One of the side effects of the disease is the loss of feeling. Imagine the damage a person could do by continuing to walk on a broken ankle or by placing a hand on a hot stove. We need feedback loops to keep us alive and healthy.
Government and doting parents can create a sort of moral leprosy by trying to ameliorate all pain - relieving children and adults of the necessity to deal with the consequences of their own actions.
I think the "Voice" proposal is catastrophically dangerous and I sincerely hope the Australian electorate votes it down (I intend to vote "no" from London).
This is unbelievably good. Every word written about the academy is true. The modern academy has some major problems. That said, there are good people within it - and it still serves some useful purpose. But it needs some reform.
The defining moment of the failure of the modern academy has been its collusion with public school system bureaucracies to create SOGI policies that explicitly hide material information about children from their parents. It is outrageous, and as parents are finding out and realizing what has happened, the burgeoning parent revolt is only going to grow. It is really quite incredible that academics and the school system would have believed that ordinary parents would ever accept such a thing. Perhaps some of them intuited it, as these policies, while technically public, have never really been publicized to parents.
Yes. All university Education Departments and Faculties should be closed. It has always been a fairly intellectually bankrupt discipline, and has become a completely bankrupt and toxic one. The elevation of pseudo-expertise that the Theory-drunk have pursued has produced precisely the failure of the modern academy you allude to.
Of course, that much of the mainstream media either ignores, misleads or lies about such matters is part of the reason they think they can get away with it.
On the intellectual bankruptcy, see: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14736316/
I hear ya.
I don't have personal experience with the 2020s faculties of education, but I did do a lot of reading into post modern works in the early 1990s, a few years after I graduated. I was still connected to the university world, and kept hearing about it, and was curious. In the stuff I read, it was littered with words like 'praxis', 'hegemony', and 'hermeneutics'. It was mostly sophistry and gobbledegook, and I assumed no one would take it too seriously. Was I wrong. This nonsense took over, and here we are. Its clear that many or most arts and humanities faculties have been taken over by this crap, as demonstrated by the Grievance Studies affair. I also think the concept of Idea Laundering is very valid, and thus many of these faculties are actually intellectually and morally bankrupt.
Another great essay Lorenzo, thanks. This concept of 'self deception' intrigues me. I know you have pointed out the benefits in previous essays but I can't help but think in beings as self consciously aware as us, whether or not it is a necessary corrective. That too much self awareness has a tendency to paralyze action. In a world as complex as is, where the options for action are so vast there must be a mechanism that allows us to turn off conscious awareness and act. That 'self deception' is an effect of this process.
The thing is, academia/universities are a conundrum for society. They are totally necessary and also simultaneously, a liability. As a university graduate (engineering) I would not be who I am (or have had the success I have had) without a university education. For professional training, they are irreplaceable. Yet all the criticisms enumerated in this essay are valid. I wear my university sweatshirt, with the name boldly displayed, proudly, but also with an awareness of the trouble within the broader institutions. The best observations from the essay are that those in commerce and industry are at least as smart as those within the academy, and that only people with the direct responsibility to actually make things work, truly know what is going on.
Minor quibble: all sorts of professional training (and training in general) exists outside of formal higher education.
True, and its really valuable for sure. Although for engineering, at the level you need to become a P. Eng, you pretty much need a university degree.
Yep, and that is probably something like 0.01% of the population?
But the "woke" cargo cult zombies are coming for STEM, so some new arrangement is probably going to be needed for standards to be upheld.
Yes, very possibly. Hard to say what's going to happen with engineering.
I expect that engineering, more than the other STEMs will be the last to fall, if it ever does. Its the one discipline where facts and outcomes genuinely matter. Empiricism rules, and problems need to be solved. Plus engineers are smart and sometimes pretty ornery when they want to be.
The other point about engineering is that it naturally attracts males, despite feminist attempts to make the engineering population 50-50 M/F which will never happen. Because men are definitely less agreeable than women, engineers will always be harder to push around intellectually, hence my comment about being ornery.
I wanted to come back to your point, which is good. Universities do a few things, including undergrad education. As Jordan Peterson has pointed out, it is likely this aspect of the academy will go into decline. Credentials aside, if you actually want to learn something general you absolutely do not need to go to university today. And if university means getting a useless degree in grievance studies at a cost of 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars, well, that is just economically unsustainable, both for the individual and society overall. I am currently teaching myself C++ coding, totally possible today with on-line sources. Many general subjects can be learned on line today, at modest (or no) cost.
I think that universities were originally founded (in association with monasteries I expect) to protect and support smart people who otherwise would not survive in the real world - due to maybe social awkwardness, physical weakness or other characteristics. The top of society recognized the need for their ability to think, to help them solve complex problems. So they build universities to protect and support them. In a sense, you could say it was an early welfare scheme for intellectuals.
They were founded at the beginning of the expansion of literacy, which was a function of the expansion of the urban commoner classes as river and sea trade expanded, as windmills and other new technologies and agricultural practices changed the economy, and so forth.
Literacy was a characteristic of success, not weakness and failure.
People in the merchant/urban commoner classes that were more literate (and numerate) had more wealth and thus also had children that survived better than the peasantry. After 100s of years, the gene pool changed (bubonic plague probably disproportionately reduced the poor classes).
See Henrich's WERID model of the origins of modernity, and Gerhard Lenski's ecological-evolutionary theory.
Makes sense. Oxford was operating as early as about 1100 per Wikipedia.
Very powerful and interesting; thank you! The section discussing the way busing weakened black kids' connections to middle class black role models reminded me of something that doesn't get enough discussion. Some call it "mismatch theory." The idea is that elite universities are so desperate to get black faces that they let in kids who aren't qualified to do the work there. Those kids end up transferring from high-paying career tracks (like STEM degrees, pre-med, etc.) to becoming art or English majors. If they'd gone to State U, they'd have done just fine in the STEM programs and we'd have many more black doctors, engineers, etc. State U prepares you for State Med School just fine, and you can have a successful, lucrative life. I believe there to be much wisdom in mismatch theory, both from what I've read and from my own experience. I did well on the SAT and several people tried to push me to leverage my disabilities, first-gen student status, and desire to study mathematics despite being a girl (gasp!) to go somewhere more prestigious than State U. Very glad I didn't; with a lot of hard work I did fine at State U (mostly B's). I would not have done fine somewhere that every classmate took calculus in high school, had PhD parents, or otherwise were competitively advantaged over me any more than already was the case. (I would almost certainly have a degree in studio art instead of mathematics.)
Ah, progressive "compassion." Whatever would oppressed minorities do without it?
There's actually a lot of evidence for what you're saying, although it is peculiar to the US. Australia and the UK, where university entry is based solely on high school results, has less of an issue.
That said, many Aborigines admitted to Australian universities do disastrously badly, as they're often allowed in with lesser results than people of any other ethnicity. It doesn't "show" in the data as Australia's Aboriginal population is very small.
Yep, that was observed decades ago (by what we now call "heterodox", dissenting, social scientists) during one of the eras when affirmative action was under active debate.
The hysterical, radical extremists on the cultural-left were obsessed with increasing non-"white" college admissions to elite institutions, and mostly ignored "lower" tier public state institutions (at that time). But working class non-"whites" actually got far more benefit from the lower tier institutions (even with skyrocketing student loan debt).
Glenn Loury has explained that the "bias" (victim) narrative is bad for people disadvantaged by social injustice in comparison to the "development" narrative.
The cultural, "woke" left is so invested in, and dependent on (to the point of gross corruption), the "bias"/victim narrative that they are unable to pivot to the more beneficial "development" narrative.
And that is tragic, sad, grotesque and appalling.
I think this piece encapsulates the balance between liberalism and conservatism that is nonexistent in the political space today. Particularly on the issue of black politics and social issues.
Dr. Rev. Cornel West famously accused Obama, and the black professional and elites classes in general, of being sell outs several years ago, and instead of dealing with what West actually said, the black elites assassinated West's character via vicious, nasty, appalling personal attacks.
There is all sorts of other evidence makes clear that "race" as a topic isn't actually about "race", it is about RACE GRIFTERS seeking to expand their social status, power and wealth.
John McWhorter recently talked to Glenn Loury on their podcast about a book McWhorter wrote some time ago about a midwestern, industrial town were NONE of the major indicators of "structural racism" existed in any significant way, but local black activist culture, led by a notorious RACE GRIFTER posing as a "civil rights" guru, was still corrupt and dysfunctional.
Self-correcting feedback loops and incentive structures on what is now called the "woke" "left" have been deeply broken for a long time.
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/roots-partisan-divide/
imprimis. hillsdale. edu /roots-partisan-divide/
White Guilt is one of the great natural resources of our time, it is bottomless, malleable and very lucrative—it sort of functions as a Church, feeding millions while also minting a priesthood who sell atonement and indulgences. It serves too many functions, including as a moral architecture or lodestar, for it to die off anytime soon.
You are correct, sir!
https://www.forbbodiesonly.com/moparforum/attachments/you-are-correct-sir-jpg.642148/
Hi-OOO!
MORE COWBELL!!!
MORE CARNAC!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76wzA2A2T1Q
For the past few years (ever since they seized the means of cultural production), I've been fascinated by the Jungian shadows of our postmodern Theorists, the first of which is how they see and show themselves as atheist intellectuals when they are so obviously a dogmatic priesthood.
Also, there is a mile-wide chasm between their strongest sales pitch and credential—a Platonic or fundamentalist egalitarianism that acknowledges no limits and is sold as a healing balm to soothe all emotional wounds (esp of the sacred Marginalized)—and their constant sweaty striving to ascend the social pyramid. To me it reads as: "I've spent my whole life in the library studying, I got the best grades at the best schools, I try to be published and cited and want nothing more than tenure and maybe a book deal and an NGO perch—but all in the name of Equality!"
And this too rhymes with the obvious tension (hypocrisy? self-delusion?) that's always been embedded in the Marxist vanguard: for supposed saviors of humanity, these people do seem intensely misanthropic, and for supposed apostles of Egalitarianism, these people can never stop telling us all what to say, do, think, believe, in their eternal quest to be crowned omnipotent philosopher-kings.
It seems that humanity can and will never be rid of meddlesome priests, and the pattern holds the same from Ancient Egypt to modern Karenville: moral entrepreneurs who claim to be servants and altruists with a special connection to God and a bulletproof morality, who turn out to be somehow even more power-mad than the politicians.
Or, as usual, Mencken said it best: "The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve."
Meanwhile Juneteenth is Validated
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12207611/Multiple-people-shot-Illinois-shopping-mall.html
This is probably my favorite of all that you have written. Well done!
I think you may want to move from Conservatism to Reaction.
Of course you’re reacting- a long list of reactions, in fact 20 some essays.
I’ll issue standard racist Disclaimer: NO.
And no further than No.
The final essay will be an Action Plan. I do not find Mencius Moldbug aka Curtis Yarvin persuasive.
Yesss.... here’s one
Return power to democracy
That will mobilize the people
As it did in Iraq in 2005
Russia 1917 (France’s plan, Ludendorff topped the French)
Peru 1980
France 1789
Greece and Athens periodically
We mustn’t forget interwar Germany ...
And American Colonists offered democracy by Pitt in the 7 years war with some unexpected permutations following.
The return of democracy that is POWER to the people is very likely as our results above , and should be factored in desirable or not, good luck. <
(I have trouble stomaching Yarvin myself, he works best as Defector not counselor).
Yep.
In the early 1970s 31% of UK housing was social housing. This routinely favoured the Labour Party which always offered lower rents. Thatcher sold off the social housing stock and this broke the vicious circle. In the 21st century Labour has become dependent on the migrant vote (25% of British children are now born to migrants). In the USA the Democrats are even more dependent on the ethnic minority vote (almost 90% of black vote is Democrat).
The problem confronting conservatives is that to capture the ethnic vote they must make large concessions that do not accord with conservatism. US democracy is inherently unstable because the dominance of one group leads to the oppression of another.
This problem can only be reset by a party that is prepared to do the unthinkable such as selling off social housing. In the modern USA the only way for conservatives to live in a conservative country is secession.
In the near future the US will continue fighting a race war where one set of racial groups obtain ever more concessions. In the very long run (50-100 yrs) the groups will evaporate after all practical concessions have been obtained. This will not be stable - some villain will import 40m people from China to create a new power base.
It is interesting to reflect that the political parties are only interested in power. They will do anything for votes. The leaderships see themselves as separate from society.
This is very insightful. I would add one further observation, in trying to explain why nothing works properly under a progressive regime. Its core ideology is the rejection of precedent, leaned behavior, historic customs, past wisdom - basically, all authority. All authority, leading back to ‘the Authority’ is suspect at best, and generally to be ignored. This applies to social norms, but spills over into other parts of life. This exacerbates the gulf between the thinkers (generally left wing) and the doers (generally conservative) so for instance we have green energy policies that deliver a clean environment, but are totally unworkable in practice. Not sure where this is going, but it won’t lead to a harmonious or efficient social order.
Well put.
Thank you. I wonder if there’s two themes to pursue here, as to why we discard past wisdom and what goes wrong when we do. This has practical consequences, not just moral ones where society becomes more and more fractious. In Britain we cannot maintain our roads or water supplies, let alone build new railways, or even new tanks and warships, and everything Government touches becomes more expensive and less efficient.
Why we discard past wisdom is something of an underlying, rather than explicit, theme of the essays. What goes wrong when we adopt pathological attitudes to information is a more explicit theme.
The decay in state capacity is particularly striking in the UK (the same has not happened in Australia, for instance). 40 years in the EU did not help.
The Roman Empire experienced a decay in state capacity as a result of the interaction between the decline in trade revenue and a massive increase in bureaucratisation. With the decay of the road network being its most obvious manifestation.
https://lorenzofromoz.substack.com/p/downward-resilience
" Ideas need to be tested."
Yes!!!. For how long? And decided by ???.
It seems human activity does not scale well. Village community trust seems to lose transparency once the ' trader' takes the item to the next village....
I heard this a while ago- " you can sell almost anything in the free marketplace so long as it is Mason approved ( I mean legal). If it doesn't work out for you, don't ever forget that YOU bought it!"
Or something like that...
My father-in-law worked with victims of Hansen’s Disease - leprosy. One of the side effects of the disease is the loss of feeling. Imagine the damage a person could do by continuing to walk on a broken ankle or by placing a hand on a hot stove. We need feedback loops to keep us alive and healthy.
Government and doting parents can create a sort of moral leprosy by trying to ameliorate all pain - relieving children and adults of the necessity to deal with the consequences of their own actions.
Nicely put.