If wishes were horses etc. Full disclosure: I'm NOT riding.
But what I wish for is someone--an American--to as clearly lay out for us and our "lived experience" what you--using Matt Goodwin--have laid out for the UK experience. I discovered in the year of Brexit as a visitor in England that there was a general willingness to "ask the Yank" both about Brexit AND Trump. In those always delightful and sometimes overly earnest discussions, I discovered in England what I know to be true in America: "Urbans" are NOT the same people as "Non-urbans" even though they sport the same passports. What I heard in London that year, was decidedly NOT what I heard elsewhere in my travel around England. [PS: The Londoners I talked with were decidedly REMAINS]
I don't have stats to "back up" my gut, BUT....speaking very generally (and generously, I think):
"Elites" are Urbans and decidedly NOT in tune with Non-urbans. And the bureaucracy (capital "B"?) that runs the US is just as clearly--and intentionally--out of touch with all those whose credentials vary from (and aren't "up to") those of the Elites and their Bureaucrat toadies. IMO.
Again thanks for all you (and Lorenzo Warby) do to keep lights burning.
I've been collecting pop-culture, mass media and more esoteric, subcultural (mostly not academic) references to this for years (across the left-right spectrum and beyond). I got interested in "social change" theories as a kid reading the Whole Earth Catalog (late 1960s-70s), but took a detour studying eastern mysticism (Shi'ism and variants) for several decades.
There are a lot of perspectives, including evolutionary psychology, and one of the more well known ones is the psychological "stage theory" of Robert Kegan. (which left-postmodernist delusionals like Nora Bateson lump with Darwin as "nazis").
David Chapman, AI/software developer (MIT PhD) is an interpreter of Kegan:
The basic idea is that technological disruption and postmodern social conditions (the suburban consumer economy) have caused the high-social-trust social institutions and modes of awareness that are the foundation of modern-rational systems to begin to fail.
The hierarchies of curated expertise that modern-rationalist systems are built on are in crisis because they did not evolve to be anti-fragile to the information glut caused by networks that bypass curated hierarchies. The social effect is a "crisis of meaning" in mass culture because of a lack of effective "sense making". The social control function of "Blue Church" (Jordan Hall) institutions is part of the failure. The PMC (Ehrenreich), the primary upper middle class, college educated, establishment functionaries are desperately making absurd excuses for their role in the failure, embracing increasing authoritarianism, corruption, censorship and promoting even the most idiotic forms of regime propaganda (see Hotez vs RFK, Jr. for the most recent example).
Postmodern relativist claims that both modern rationalism and mythic religion are "absolutist" erode social trust in institutions that are already in crisis, spiraling into dysfunction and corruption, etc. Global-finance elites and media-tech oligarchs pour fuel on the fire, pushing the system toward Neo-Feudalism (Kotkin), authoritarianism and totalitarianism.
Here is another model that does predict an eventual end of the crisis:
re: David Ronfeldt's TIMN model of social change
(Ronfeldt recently joined substack)
disruption -> disintegration -> regression to ideological tribalism -> reintegration at a higher level / social form
... At first, when a new form arises, it has subversive effects on the old order, before it has additive effects that lead to a new order. Bad actors may prove initially more adept than good actors at using a new form — e.g., ancient warlords, medieval pirates and smugglers, and today’s information-age terrorists being examples that correspond to the +I, +M, and +N transitions, respectively. As each form takes hold, energizing a distinct set of values and norms for actors operating in that form, it generates a new realm of activity — for example, the state, the market. As a new realm gains legitimacy and expands the space it occupies within a social system, it puts new limits on the scope of existing realms. At the same time, through feedback and other interactions, the rise of a new form/realm also modifies the nature of the existing ones.
Bateson, daughter of the famous anthropologist Gregory Bateson, step daughter of Margaret Mead, is a good example of the fringe that overlaps postmodern counterculture with academia.
She is so deep into posmodern relativism, anti-colonialism and multi-culturalism that she sees all "rational" science as inevitably leading to "fascism".
She extolled the possibility that feminist Islam (?) would triumph over colonialist western "white male" rationalism.
So, for people like Bateson, the actual children of the 1960s intellectual counterculture that are in the left-postmodern relativism camp, irrationality, incoherence and logical contradictions are not a bug, they are features.
And they do not see the irony that they are serving the cause of promoting the "woke" luxury-digital-gnosticism of globalist elites and corrupt corporate oligarchs.
That last story is a real hoot. (You can look that one up in your handy book of American idioms.) We have basically the same problem(s) over here. It would be nice to have a parliamentary system, though, b/c our 2 aging heavyweight parties are floundering, and no one with the necessary political talent, grounded point of view and ca$h is emerging to change the game.
You are under the impression we don't suffer the same? Helen made the point a couple of years ago that the Conservative & Unionist Party has swallowed whole all other political traditions over here. The Labour Party is only electable if it presents as a pale shadow of the CUP; when it has a fit of Corbynism or similar we see it for the barking wibble it is and won't go near it. But we still fall for the CON in Conservative. There was a moment after Brexit when things might have recovered but UKIP imploded when Farage bailed rather than build a broad-based populist party that would represent the true English conservative/liberal political tradition. The party had it all in embryo; but it needed someone of stature to kick it into shape. Farage might have been that man but he proved to be a manqué instead. There is no-one in English politics with the actual chops to carry the majority, I'm afraid.
Well, with all due respect, maybe you should re-read my 3rd sentence. Though I must admit that I pay only scant attention to the fine print iof your struggles on the other side of the pond, I also don’t imagine you’re running a scorecard for the ongoing welterweight bout between Gavin Newsom (gov of Cali, my locale) and Ron De Santis, erstwhile GOP wannabe presidential candidate and governor of Florida. Anyway, what I am most in favor of is popular sovereignty, and so Brexit, for better or worse, serves as a good example of that and an oddly gratifying thumb in the eye of our international jet-set corporate overlords, neo-something-or-other political spin doctors, etc.
As an American independent liberal, uncaptured by woke-ism but definitely not a right-winger, what I would like to see over here is a new third party that could successfully win a few seats in congress and therefore play a tie-breaking/ ‘king-maker’ role. That seems like an attainable goal, but the surfeit of cash hoarded by the two established parties makes it a daunting challenge. While there is definitely ideological room available, a charismatic leader will be needed to have even a distant shot at success. Still, if someone can rise to the occasion, there may be hope. Americans quite often vote for presidential candidates w/perceived ‘outsider’ credentials and status - true of Trump, Obama (1st term), Clinton (1st term), and Carter in the post-war era. Unfortunately they all seem to ultimately cave to party and moneyed-interest pressures.
FWIW, .There is significant issue-overlap here of a similar kind to what was mentioned in the review. Both Trump and Bernie Sanders were opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed multinational trade deal Obama helped cook-up, and I was happy when Trump withdrew the US from it. ( I was much more of a Sanders than Trump fan, but he at least got that right.) You guys had Brexit going on around the same time, but Helen Dale, being an Aussie, may have stronger recall of it. The dangerous and objectionable thing about it was it’s elevation of corporations to potential equivalence of sovereign nations by virtue of provisions for arbitration in trade disputes between nations and corps. It would have officially ushered-in the corporatization of the Pacific rim nations. No thanks! The bastards may win in the end, but us other bastards are not going down without a fight.
If Matt Goodwin realised WHEN HE WAS WRITING there was a gargantuan error, the obvious thing to do is bin the first twenty pages and start over. Then there is this sort of thing being caught in the editorial process. By now anyone writing in this area is going to be aware of 'Lah, lalah, lah, lah' before they even hover their fingers over the Home Keys surely?. There is no point to writing otherwise; and what you are left with is wasting trees on a vanity project.
Titter (another one for you).
Thank you for posting this.
If wishes were horses etc. Full disclosure: I'm NOT riding.
But what I wish for is someone--an American--to as clearly lay out for us and our "lived experience" what you--using Matt Goodwin--have laid out for the UK experience. I discovered in the year of Brexit as a visitor in England that there was a general willingness to "ask the Yank" both about Brexit AND Trump. In those always delightful and sometimes overly earnest discussions, I discovered in England what I know to be true in America: "Urbans" are NOT the same people as "Non-urbans" even though they sport the same passports. What I heard in London that year, was decidedly NOT what I heard elsewhere in my travel around England. [PS: The Londoners I talked with were decidedly REMAINS]
I don't have stats to "back up" my gut, BUT....speaking very generally (and generously, I think):
"Elites" are Urbans and decidedly NOT in tune with Non-urbans. And the bureaucracy (capital "B"?) that runs the US is just as clearly--and intentionally--out of touch with all those whose credentials vary from (and aren't "up to") those of the Elites and their Bureaucrat toadies. IMO.
Again thanks for all you (and Lorenzo Warby) do to keep lights burning.
I've been collecting pop-culture, mass media and more esoteric, subcultural (mostly not academic) references to this for years (across the left-right spectrum and beyond). I got interested in "social change" theories as a kid reading the Whole Earth Catalog (late 1960s-70s), but took a detour studying eastern mysticism (Shi'ism and variants) for several decades.
There are a lot of perspectives, including evolutionary psychology, and one of the more well known ones is the psychological "stage theory" of Robert Kegan. (which left-postmodernist delusionals like Nora Bateson lump with Darwin as "nazis").
David Chapman, AI/software developer (MIT PhD) is an interpreter of Kegan:
https://metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-bridge
The basic idea is that technological disruption and postmodern social conditions (the suburban consumer economy) have caused the high-social-trust social institutions and modes of awareness that are the foundation of modern-rational systems to begin to fail.
The hierarchies of curated expertise that modern-rationalist systems are built on are in crisis because they did not evolve to be anti-fragile to the information glut caused by networks that bypass curated hierarchies. The social effect is a "crisis of meaning" in mass culture because of a lack of effective "sense making". The social control function of "Blue Church" (Jordan Hall) institutions is part of the failure. The PMC (Ehrenreich), the primary upper middle class, college educated, establishment functionaries are desperately making absurd excuses for their role in the failure, embracing increasing authoritarianism, corruption, censorship and promoting even the most idiotic forms of regime propaganda (see Hotez vs RFK, Jr. for the most recent example).
Postmodern relativist claims that both modern rationalism and mythic religion are "absolutist" erode social trust in institutions that are already in crisis, spiraling into dysfunction and corruption, etc. Global-finance elites and media-tech oligarchs pour fuel on the fire, pushing the system toward Neo-Feudalism (Kotkin), authoritarianism and totalitarianism.
Here is another model that does predict an eventual end of the crisis:
re: David Ronfeldt's TIMN model of social change
(Ronfeldt recently joined substack)
disruption -> disintegration -> regression to ideological tribalism -> reintegration at a higher level / social form
https://twotheories.blogspot.com/2009/02/overview-of-social-evolution-past.html
---excerpts---
... At first, when a new form arises, it has subversive effects on the old order, before it has additive effects that lead to a new order. Bad actors may prove initially more adept than good actors at using a new form — e.g., ancient warlords, medieval pirates and smugglers, and today’s information-age terrorists being examples that correspond to the +I, +M, and +N transitions, respectively. As each form takes hold, energizing a distinct set of values and norms for actors operating in that form, it generates a new realm of activity — for example, the state, the market. As a new realm gains legitimacy and expands the space it occupies within a social system, it puts new limits on the scope of existing realms. At the same time, through feedback and other interactions, the rise of a new form/realm also modifies the nature of the existing ones.
...
Thanks for sharing. 👍
Bateson, daughter of the famous anthropologist Gregory Bateson, step daughter of Margaret Mead, is a good example of the fringe that overlaps postmodern counterculture with academia.
She is so deep into posmodern relativism, anti-colonialism and multi-culturalism that she sees all "rational" science as inevitably leading to "fascism".
She extolled the possibility that feminist Islam (?) would triumph over colonialist western "white male" rationalism.
So, for people like Bateson, the actual children of the 1960s intellectual counterculture that are in the left-postmodern relativism camp, irrationality, incoherence and logical contradictions are not a bug, they are features.
And they do not see the irony that they are serving the cause of promoting the "woke" luxury-digital-gnosticism of globalist elites and corrupt corporate oligarchs.
how close is the connection between the 4 peoples described in your essay and the 4 described in Albion's Seed?
You've just given me an excellent idea for a piece. Thank-you!
That last story is a real hoot. (You can look that one up in your handy book of American idioms.) We have basically the same problem(s) over here. It would be nice to have a parliamentary system, though, b/c our 2 aging heavyweight parties are floundering, and no one with the necessary political talent, grounded point of view and ca$h is emerging to change the game.
You are under the impression we don't suffer the same? Helen made the point a couple of years ago that the Conservative & Unionist Party has swallowed whole all other political traditions over here. The Labour Party is only electable if it presents as a pale shadow of the CUP; when it has a fit of Corbynism or similar we see it for the barking wibble it is and won't go near it. But we still fall for the CON in Conservative. There was a moment after Brexit when things might have recovered but UKIP imploded when Farage bailed rather than build a broad-based populist party that would represent the true English conservative/liberal political tradition. The party had it all in embryo; but it needed someone of stature to kick it into shape. Farage might have been that man but he proved to be a manqué instead. There is no-one in English politics with the actual chops to carry the majority, I'm afraid.
Well, with all due respect, maybe you should re-read my 3rd sentence. Though I must admit that I pay only scant attention to the fine print iof your struggles on the other side of the pond, I also don’t imagine you’re running a scorecard for the ongoing welterweight bout between Gavin Newsom (gov of Cali, my locale) and Ron De Santis, erstwhile GOP wannabe presidential candidate and governor of Florida. Anyway, what I am most in favor of is popular sovereignty, and so Brexit, for better or worse, serves as a good example of that and an oddly gratifying thumb in the eye of our international jet-set corporate overlords, neo-something-or-other political spin doctors, etc.
As an American independent liberal, uncaptured by woke-ism but definitely not a right-winger, what I would like to see over here is a new third party that could successfully win a few seats in congress and therefore play a tie-breaking/ ‘king-maker’ role. That seems like an attainable goal, but the surfeit of cash hoarded by the two established parties makes it a daunting challenge. While there is definitely ideological room available, a charismatic leader will be needed to have even a distant shot at success. Still, if someone can rise to the occasion, there may be hope. Americans quite often vote for presidential candidates w/perceived ‘outsider’ credentials and status - true of Trump, Obama (1st term), Clinton (1st term), and Carter in the post-war era. Unfortunately they all seem to ultimately cave to party and moneyed-interest pressures.
FWIW, .There is significant issue-overlap here of a similar kind to what was mentioned in the review. Both Trump and Bernie Sanders were opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed multinational trade deal Obama helped cook-up, and I was happy when Trump withdrew the US from it. ( I was much more of a Sanders than Trump fan, but he at least got that right.) You guys had Brexit going on around the same time, but Helen Dale, being an Aussie, may have stronger recall of it. The dangerous and objectionable thing about it was it’s elevation of corporations to potential equivalence of sovereign nations by virtue of provisions for arbitration in trade disputes between nations and corps. It would have officially ushered-in the corporatization of the Pacific rim nations. No thanks! The bastards may win in the end, but us other bastards are not going down without a fight.
If Matt Goodwin realised WHEN HE WAS WRITING there was a gargantuan error, the obvious thing to do is bin the first twenty pages and start over. Then there is this sort of thing being caught in the editorial process. By now anyone writing in this area is going to be aware of 'Lah, lalah, lah, lah' before they even hover their fingers over the Home Keys surely?. There is no point to writing otherwise; and what you are left with is wasting trees on a vanity project.
Thanks for the kind mention, Helen :-)
You're welcome!