Quite the tour de force! Our capacity for self-deception is awesome, and to understand it in ourselves and others absolutely crucial. And you are right in pointing your finger at the rationalists as well here.
While the "false consciousness" tale popular among Neo-Marxists can be very dangerous, I suppose they were onto something initially, and these hyper-norms sort of get uploaded to the Freudian super-ego, but we are often just not aware of this at all. It *is* possible though to transcend it, through self-work and honest feedback, and often personal crisis. It's the only way not to get sucked into a spiritual wasteland of captivity to evil, or, if you prefer, the worst kind of evolutionary dead-end.
Conflict theory tied to conspiratorism: Marxism in a nutshell.
Racism started as a way for Muslims to justify systematically enslaving fellow children of Allah, hence involved both anti-white and anti-black racism. It is a way of mobilising our groupishness, of which there are many and many folk do for many reasons.
Great looking article Lorenzo! I will read it fully after i write this comment -for a reason.
There is definitely a positive something going on. ESP or some sync level. Many substack writers i follow keep saying that their work is being copied, or 'I just wrote about that- you must be reading my mind!". But whose ideas are they? are we not just sharing more honestly now?, seeing the similar patterns and focused on a more singular primary goal?
Maybe this is how we will stop these anonymous psychopaths, by being honest sharing humans.
If lots of clever folk are thinking about the same problem at the same time, congruent responses are to be expected. See the very famous examples of Darwin and Wallace on natural selection or Newton and Leibniz on calculus.
That's certainly a factor - an idea is 'in the air' so to speak, and attracts independent attention from minds primed by experience and interest, which - if motivated alethiologically - will tend to converge on similar conclusions. I've had this happen in my professional life as well as here on Substack.
At the same time I've also had it happen that I've written about things that are much more out of left field, weird topics that aren't a major focus of discourse, that it just came into my head out of nowhere to write about. Only to find later that someone else was writing about a similar idea around the same time.
Given the conceptual difficulties of localizing mind and consciousness (even under the assumption of material emergence, it's far from clear *where* the mind is located), I tend to remain agnostic on the question of subjects such as ESP or psi.
Love the piece. I love reading about evolutionary reasoning of the way things are.
I do wonder about the creation of the special category of "hyper norms" as a bit of special pleading in favor of explaining the particular destructiveness of our moment, but agree with the idea that it has been incentivized by the lack of disincentives.
Yes, there is a danger that the concept of hyper-norms could be used in a special pleading way.
I read H L A Hart’s ‘The Concept of Law’ many years ago, so have not been citing it because I would need to re-read it to be confident in any such citation.
The work which really enabled me to get a useful grasp on norms is Cristina Bicchieri, ‘The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms’ (2006) and her ‘Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure and Change Social Norms’ (2017). She develops her analysis rigorously, based in part on behavioural lab work.
I was struck by how “free floating” moral norms seem to be in her analysis. Which I now see as a strength rather than a weakness. (For instance, Westerners tend to be more moral in labs than in real life; foragers less moral in labs than in real life: the latter live far more in a world of connections, the former behave differently when on display.)
The use of moral claims to dismiss concerns about structure is a pattern that, once you are alerted to it, keeps popping up. So I am confident the notion of hyper-norms is onto something, but agree one has to be careful in the use of it.
I really like the use of evolutionary reasoning in this piece. So fascinating. I am the world’s worst liar, as we’ve discussed privately, but I can deceive myself - we all can.
I just keep getting more impressed with the quality of discourse on Substack. This article was deep and intense. I wonder why this kind of deep discourse isn’t occurring on university campuses. Not really. We all know why.
One of the reasons I commissioned the essays from Lorenzo is as a response to the extent to which universities have become nonsense factories. And, to be fair, I'm a practitioner who left the academy (I used to be a tutorial fellow at Oxford), while Lorenzo has bounced in and out of the academy over many decades.
The problem of the dopey university has become pervasive, and, frankly, Lorenzo and I back ourselves to do better.
To riff on another comment concerning ideas 'in the air', one of them that a lot of us are talking about is the ersatz academy. Academe has become stifling. The smart minds, the brave ones, the interesting ones, the principled ones, and the creative ones are all getting pushed out. What's left behind isn't worth salvaging and probably can't be in any case.
Yet the essential functions of academia must be fulfilled. I believe they will be, here and in other places. There are real questions about how we can leverage Substack and other platforms to build out a fully functioning intellectual and educational apparatus, and it won't happen overnight. But to me at least it's clear where the energy is flowing to.
Feb 24, 2023·edited Feb 24, 2023Liked by Helen Dale, Lorenzo Warby
A good analysis of what is happening within Western society. I emerged from it thinking that it had dealt convincingly with the emptiness of modern social philosophy.
The analysis can be simplified by the simple dictum that "Politics is Power". As Cicero told us, religion is the tool of the state to unify the people behind its power. The Romans had the Imperial Cult then Christianity, Pagans elevate their tribal god, Muhammed had Islam, Russia had Orthodox Christianity then Marxism, the British Empire had Protestantism etc.
What we are witnessing is a West that has grown socially divided and feeble after 75 years of hegemony. It is now beset by enemies. The enemies within need help from outside. The outside enemies nurture the enemies within. The objective of the outside enemies is to create anarchy and weakness, the objective of the enemies within is to create anarchy and revolution.
These are the power structures that are in play:
Outside the Western Alliance:
The imperial powers: Russia, China
Within the Alliance:
EU, USA
Philosophies inside the West:
The Postmarxists - these are the new form of Trotskyism/International Socialism/Communism/ Socialism. Communitarians are also postmarxist now.
The new National Socialists such as multinational corporations, International Banks and the Corporate Foundations (Soros, Kellogg, Ford, Rockefeller, Gates etc) - these believe that Corporate structures and their "enlightened" oligarchy can rule.
The state philosophy of Russia and China (analogue of state religion) is the new National Socialism.
The new National Socialism is winning because it owns the mass media. Those corporate bosses are looking forward to a new world order in which there are no borders so that money, goods and people can flow freely around the world. They will use any tools at their disposal including BLM, LGBT movement etc. as their foot soldiers. The wealth of China means that the corporate bosses are actually working in the interests of China, many are even owned by China.
We are witnessing the steady fall of the Western Empire. The Romans felt the same way when their empire fell.
I am always somewhat wary of applying historical analogies too closely. For instance, CCP China strikes me as being more Second Reich in its international dynamics than Third Reich. Yes, it is institutionally more similar to the Third Reich (but all Marxist polities are, though the use of markets and commerce by the CCP intensifies the similarity).
Yet, when one looks at the international politics, the Second Reich analogy seems stronger. First, because any military confrontation is likely to be navally centred. Second, because the CCP wants Power dominance rather than territorial expansion. Third, the foreign policy adventurism is driven more by concerns for regime stability than explicit territorial objectives.
As for the Roman analogy, the comparison really is with the Christianisation of the Empire over the C4th and C5th, where the analogy is very strong. The West still has such an operational advantage over potential opponents that we are well before Adrianople (378) demonstrated that Rome had lost its operational advantage. (A fatal flaw, as demonstrated in the ensuring almost 10 decades, as Roman soldiers were much more expensive to put into the field.)
I doubt any analogy between “woke” capital and either Fascism or National Socialism because of the lack of the fetishising of the military (including as a model of political action) that is such a distinctive manifestation of fascism in all its forms. That it is a form of oligarchy seeking normative dominance is clearly true.
Martin Gurri is particularly useful on how the online mobs of identitarian cancel culture are a useful mechanism for elite dominance. Elite racialisation is always an divide, favour-and-dominate strategy, and that particularly applies to “woke” racialisation.
I was in the west of China just pre-COVID and there were clear signs of fetish. Western commentators have got China really badly wrong.
Special, heavily armed, military platoons wearing entirely black uniforms and crash helmets were marched at double time around towns such as Kashgar. Loud music was played from police vans throughout the night. Houses were being demolished in large numbers and new buildings offered to Han Chinese. The objective was intimidation and dispersion of local people to other parts of China. Had I been a Uyghur I would have been very afraid.
China lays claim to the whole South China Sea. All the way to Indonesia. It is establishing military bases in the Spratly Islands between Vietnam and the Philippines. This is not a minor territorial claim. It has annexed Tibet despite its historically autonomous status.
What do you think defines Chinese and Russian kleptocracy, they have both abandoned communism?
I agree with you about the racialisation of politics.
Russia has officially abandoned Communism. The regime is increasingly Orthodox. Putin has nationalised corruption and runs a spectacle-for-domestic-consumption foreign policy. Timothy Snyder is very good on this. (Even if his Trump comments are overdone.)
The CCP has not ideologically abandoned Communism. Creating an inherent tension between its economic growth and the still Leninist Party. How strong the analogy with NEP Soviet Union is we are yet to see. Given that their NEP has now been running for over 40 years.
And the Second Reich was highly militarised and produced the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Which is why the Second Reich analogy is not comforting, as it used Weltpolitik to try and paper over the tensions between the structure of the regime and the implications of economic development.
So, I don’t see Russia and China as quite the same. But that might matter less than it appears.
You might be interested in Bloomberg's assessment of the rise of the Chinese oligarchy:
"Heirs of Mao’s Comrades Rise as New Capitalist Nobility"(Bloomberg Archive https://archive.vn/1FIxo )
China made the direct transition from communism to national socialism without Yeltsin's democratic interlude. The Russians had a bumpier ride.
Your reference to Brest-Litovsk is slightly confusing, I had always seen it as a way of getting the Russian front settled so that Germany could turn its attention to the Western Front, where it was losing as tank warfare grew. The similarity of National Socialist states to all pre-democratic states such as the Second Reich is a good point. Imperialism (Weltpolitik) is a particular hazard of empires :)
Returning to the original point: how much is the social unrest in Western states due to outside interference? (Ownership of media, financing of internationalist groups etc) Is the two trillion dollars of offshore China Sovereign Fund being spent politically to create anarchy?
The Brest-Litovsk point is that the Second Reich was also territorially expansionist if given the opportunity. The difference is that territorial expansion was the central project of the Third Reich, hence it plunged Europe into war in less than 7 years. Hence I am leery of Third Reich analogies.
That China is seeking to maximise its influence by various means is very clear. Australia has been dealing with that relatively well, Canada relatively badly. How much it is fostering political polarisation, not sure. Russia certainly seeks to, but with what success is much more doubtful.
Feb 28, 2023·edited Feb 28, 2023Liked by Lorenzo Warby
I thought you would be in bed by now. I have just started the day and am avoiding filing a bunch of leases and other papers :)
I agree that we should be leery of Third Reich analogies. Even if China has summary executions, harvests organs for transplant from the executed and clearly engages in ethnic cleansing, the use of the Third Reich will drag the debate down to whether China is truly genocidal. For me the big issue is that it is a capitalist oligarchy like Russia and the whole world before Tom Paine (my hero).
What term should we use for a state that still has the trappings of communist ideology but is really just an old fashioned case of rule by the rich and powerful? Mussolini made this transition and called it fascism. Hitler admired it and made it his own philosophy. But, as noted above, national socialism, fascism, nazism have connotations that distract from the categorisation.
Very insightful. I feel that you have articulated the cognitive processes behind the collapse of complex societies most astutely. Perhaps with this understanding we can salvage our own. To comment on some of my favorite quotes:
"Feminism functions as the networked social aggression of highly educated/credentialed women."
Indeed, and it does feel very aggressive. I abhor aggression, but very much feel that it should be direct if employed. Perhaps this is only because such circumstances would play to my strengths, but I think that there are structural advantages to this as well. Aggression is anti-social and interferes with cooperation on a structural level, so it seems like occult aggression that can't be addressed directly would be the most caustic to social cohesion.
"Homo sapiens: the ape that murdered its way into niceness. The human condition in a nutshell."
This dynamic burned deep into our psyches is the driving force behind karma in my estimation. It is a real force that I believe emanates from this fundamental truth.
Social corrosion leading to social collapse is absolutely one of my motivating concerns in writing these essays. In later essays I will explore the foundational lie of feminism (that the liberation of women required a special ideology) and its implications.
I have recently become somewhat enamoured of C-dramas, as they can be both great stories and very intelligently done. (I only bother with those which are non-historical or set before 1800, to avoid the propagandising.) The difference between the karmic cultures of Asia and the one-life cultures of the Middle East and its religious colonies (which includes the entire West) becomes very clear in fantasy tales. (I particularly recommend ‘Love Between Fairy and Devil’, available on Netflix, to see this.)
But you can also see the difference in their philosophies. Even though China is a profoundly meritocratic, and so historical, culture, while India is a profoundly hierarchical, so mythic, culture the difference between them as karmic cultures compared to Middle Eastern monotheism and “one shot” European/Mediterranean paganism is quite clear.
Two books which explore these differences are Thomas McEvilly’s magnum opus, ‘The Shape of Ancient Thought’ which, while showing that Greek and Indian philosophy were both far more similar, and far more mutually influenced, than is usually acknowledged also shows the very different trajectories.
Basically, the philosophy of the karmic cultures tends to head inwards into consciousness, while the Greek and derivative philosophies evolve into a more outward-from consciousness direction. Something most exemplified by Descartes’s “cogito ergo sum”. A good introduction to the difference is Amaury de Riencourt, ‘The Eye Of Śiva: Eastern Mysticism and Science’.
Your erudition is pretty astounding. Regarding karma I have to clarify that I use the term in a very peculiar way that I didn't specify. As something of a materialist (who nonetheless appreciates the splendor and knowable depths of what can emerge from 'mere' material) my conception of karma is worldly. I think what goes around comes around because human beings are driven to make this reality. Some escape this fate, but the fact that some billionaires are looking into buying themselves doomsday bunkers tells me they're afraid that they won't, and I think this might be related to the origins of our species.
A useful discussion of why meritocratic cultures generate historiographical cultures and hierarchical ones generate mythic cultures is Donald E. Brown, ‘Hierarchy, History & Human Nature: the Social Origins of Historical Consciousness‘. That the politics of the transformational future theologises history based on identity hierarchies is why it is so prone to producing cartoon or caricature (i.e. mythic) history.
Rene Girard famously argued that human society was based on a foundational murder. It turns out, our emergence as a species, as Homo sapiens, was likely based on generation after generation of foundational murders. On this hypothesis, we are the most gracile species in the genus Homo because we had less need of facial robustness to ward off blows and instead there was more selection for emotionally expressive faces to intensify cooperation. Less reactive aggression and more effective proactive aggression meant that we are the only species of Homo left standing.
Girard also argued for the importance of mimetic desire. It also turns out that we are the most imitative primate, engaging in much more complete imitation of our conspecifics than chimpanzees do. This aids both learning and cooperation, but can obviously have runaway effects. Especially in circumstances of high levels of efficient self-deception and/or poor levels of consequences feedback. Such as social media generates.
I don't understand this comment. Are we not beyond generalising about people, individually or on mass because of their birth nation? Talking about this county and that county seems a bit nieve at the stage of The Game. I can tell you are way smart, so this is not a poke. This is a serious question from me.
That Russian culture, particularly literature, has a pessimistic quality is surely hard to deny. I wasn’t disagreeing, just light-heartedly suggesting that it is something a Russian might be particularly inclined to notice.
Lots of info packed into that comment, thanks! I'd never even considered the contrast between meritocratic and hierarchical. In my mind, a meritocratic society will enjoy a much higher standard of living in the long run, but will also end up hierarchical because of innate differences. This is the balance that I think we need for today, organic hierarchy that emerges from merit, but I don't necessarily like merit as a concept because it implies a moral quality that I don't think is structural. I also don't think it is necessarily wrong for people to choose those they have social obligations to over more 'competent' candidates when they're employing their own capital, which isn't meritocratic, but it is human. It only becomes disgusting when allocating state funds, which is why I think there is an imperative to limit the size and scope of the state as much as possible. It turns natural human tendencies into intractable moral hazards at every turn, then, within these massive bureaucratic ecosystems mimetic desire drives the normalization of dizzying levels of waste, fraud, and abuse.
It seems to me that the key enabling structural component is isolation from consequence, which also seems to be related to the elimination of tests of character in favor of tests of hyper-norm fluency. It follows that a functional elite - in the sense of an elite which is resistant to the siren song of hypernormativity - must involve tests of character, and must be continuously exposed to consequence for error.
Rotating our perspective on contemporary society, the manipulable wokeists have themselves provided an invaluable character test. By viciously attacking noticers, cancelling conscience-speakers, disemploying those who refuse to participate in their many obvious lies, they have involuntarily highlighted a potential intellectual elite class who have passed through a grueling character test. Passing that test demonstrates that they are willing to risk everything, and sacrifice it if need be, for the sake of what they perceive to be true and just. While the potential elite currently lacks institutional power, they are gathering cultural power at a remarkable pace.
That dynamic is just a sort of historical dialectic. An interesting question for the successor institutions will be how to formalize tests of character, without the tests becoming so formal that they are too easily gamed. And related, how do we ensure that as people rise in society they are more, rather than less, exposed to the consequences of their mistakes?
"Moreover, as political conservatism correlates highly with the personality trait of conscientiousness"
No. Conscientiousness correlates slightly with political conservatism, r < .3. Yes, the evidence for such a relationship is robust and well-established, yet no social scientist familiar with statistics or the scientific literature would call this a large or high correlation.
I say this as someone who is more than willing to criticize the psychology of the modern left:
In my opinion the worst thing about the Woke is that they play fast and loose with the facts, and spin the truth to tell their story. Please, *please* don't do that.
Good catch. I was relying on second-hand report and didn’t check myself: almost always a mistake. It will be corrected when Helen is actually in front of a computer.
One of the things that has long bothered me is not having access to the academic paper circuit, where you present papers and get feedback. The great think about serialising something online like this is you get feedback.
Any decent discovery procedure or mechanism has to include error detection.
Having now done said checking, including that there is good evidence of a genetic component in political differences, it makes the point about one group/set of types attempting to displace another rather clearer.
It also enabled me to finally track down a critique of Moral Foundations theory that I had read online, then couldn’t find again. So, double win. Ta.
This is part of the reason I'm serialising Lorenzo's book. When I wave it in front of my agent, I'll be able to tell him that the bulk of the fact-checking has been done on substack.
This whole essay is brilliant, particularly with regard to the issues in academia. I hadn't thought of conscientiousness as being a more conservative trait, but it makes sense. I thought the line, "Feminism functions as the networked social aggression of highly educated/credentialed women" really rings true. I see it a lot in the Uni I work for. The abject viciousness masquerading as concern for equality in various parts but especially within the institution's "Women's Network" has been shocking, but it serves a purpose. It scares off any dissenters and creates more social power for the bullies (even if said bullies still can't define what men and women are).
They create problems in order to exert control, make themselves seem important, irreplaceable even, get onto committees and make sure their cv looks nice and fat for any future promotional bid.
I overstated the case on conscientiousness (see comment by Apple Pie and my response).
On feminism and aggression, as is often the case, once a useful framing is presented to you, or pops into your head, a lot of phenomena can suddenly make a great deal more sense.
The foundational lie of feminism is that you needed a special ideology to liberate women. This is nonsense. No special ideology was needed to abolish slavery, get rid of laws against Jews and Catholics, provide adult suffrage, achieve civil rights, get rid of laws against homosexuals.
What you do need a special ideology for is to motivate and coordinate aggression. As the Transcult is presently demonstrating.
This explains why I was so pissed off at some major feminist (I forget who), whom I heard by accident (I was a paid usher, not an attendee) in Madison in 1976. I immediately & permanently became an anti-feminist.
Do be aware that there will be some he's missed (ie the more recent ones), but that he continues to update forthcoming essays in light of people's comments. Relatedly, if I'm able to place the essays in book form with a publisher, they will be published in corrected form throughout, with acknowledgements (handles are acceptable; Lorenzo has already written a corrected follow-up thanking a smart bloke who calls himself "Rooster Luggage" on Twitter).
I've noticed that the hypernormative tend to be neurotic and anxious, like amateur getaway drivers revving their engines as the rest of the guys rob the bank. The strain of self-deception--cognitive dissonance--is the price they pay for constantly policing their own self-image while stealing from the virtue bank.
Eventually, I'll work this metaphor out to include the entire criminal justice system but not tonight.
Re: the reference to beta males conspiring to murder alpha males - would you have a reference for this evolutionary insight?
I seem to remember that it is possible that just as different reproductive strategies (apologies to be heteronormative, Helen!) pay off for human beings (traditional marry, settle and raise kids models representing an optimal approach for beta males, while high status, high earning/wealth alpha males pursue multiple partner strategies - either sequentially or concurrently - to maximise genetic distribution).
This might suggest that far from being extinct - alpha males continue to exist within human society.
A different route to the same conclusion might be identified by looking at optimal survival strategies in resource scarce and resource rich societies and environments.
The very cooperative strategies that you disdain might be key to survival in settler or marginal societies. Hence the enduring appeal of communitarian approaches in fishing communities or Scandinavia/northern Canada etc. Theodore Zeldin described the differences in social structure (primogeniture vs equal distribution of assets among offspring, matriarchal vs patriarchal structures etc) as predictors of political alignments compellingly in the 1990s - taking France (obviously) and Spain/Italy as his models. This was before more recent political realignments, natch.
If this was possible - and I appreciate that this runs counter to your far more developed/refined approach - might it not be possible to believe that the current liberal/reactionary cultural struggle is a struggle between different groups within society seeking to maximise economic returns by defining the boundaries of acceptable behaviour within different habitats. (This might seem a little Marxian for you - I found discussions about intra-elite competition during the English Civil War compelling! Luckily for capitalism, London bankers and the gentry defeated the aristocracy….)
Just as cultural preferences for monogamy could be understood as beta females and males raising the opportunity costs of partner poaching - or on a more mundane level our relative social preferences for honesty in economic transactions and legal penalties against fraud or theft.
High trust societies seem to perform better economically, if I briefly link back to social relations.
The more interesting question is how alpha males and females can ensure social compliance from poorer members of society following the collapse of traditional religion.
Apologies if this all seems too relativistic/abstruse!
The alpha males killing off beta males is Richard Wrangham’s hypothesis, and one of his articles on it is in the references. Remembering he is writing as a primatologist, so alpha male has the primate meeting of the term.
He is trying to explain why Homo sapiens are equal with chimpanzees in proactive aggression but the lowest of the apes (by quite a way) in reactive aggression. They are different brain circuits, so if the beta males (using proactive aggression) combined to kill off the alpha males (those with the most pronounced reactive aggression) the former would be maintained but the latter would be systematically selected against.
As Will Storr points out, we do indeed keep producing alpha males, though at quite low rates. They have a technical label: serial killers.
You raise points well worth considering. Haven’t read Zeldin, but he seems to be arguing very similarly to Emmanuel Todd, who overstates his thesis a bit (and uses rather too much psychoanalytical language: fortunately that is a dispensable gloss) but makes a powerful argument for family structures mattering in ways that seem rather congruent with Zeldin’s argument as you state it.
And yes, I do believe different elites use different strategies. We can see a control-of-discourse-legitimacy strategy being used quite strongly at the moment. And yes, what fills the normative/motivational gap with the collapse of traditional religion is a big question. Especially with the collapse of its congregational aspect.
James Lindsay argues that the Rousseau—>Kant—>Hegel sequence set up pouring what previously had been taken to be the spiritual realm into the social/conceptual realm. I think he is very much onto something there.
As for single-spouse marriage, that was Christianity sanctifying the Roman synthesis. Now, it seems to be about the elevation of the important of human capital in the prospects for children, and single-spouse marriage produces higher levels of investment in children than does polygyny, unsurprisingly.
Also, my final point about single-spouse marriage increasing investment in the human capital of children, that may in part explain why the upper half of society is sticking to the marriage strategy quite strongly, while single parenthood is becoming more and more common in the lower half of society.
Why does conservatism correlate strongly with conscientiousness? I've heard this argument before but never quite understood it. Does it refer to 'small c' social conservatism, or being on the political right in general?
It is a weak correlation that I exaggerated in my original post. But conservatives focus on structure, on making things work, hence there is some correlation with conscientiousness. The stronger correlation is a negative one with openness, which also goes back to an affinity to structure. Conservatives tend to like things to be predictable and persistent, hence tend to be low on openness, on “let’s explore new things and new ways of doing stuff”.
Conventions are descriptive norms is all I was trying to say.
I meant obscured in the sense of hidden. Being so conscious of being conscious doesn’t get in the way, it makes gaming norms easier by blocking realisation of the full gamut of our own motives.
Quite the tour de force! Our capacity for self-deception is awesome, and to understand it in ourselves and others absolutely crucial. And you are right in pointing your finger at the rationalists as well here.
While the "false consciousness" tale popular among Neo-Marxists can be very dangerous, I suppose they were onto something initially, and these hyper-norms sort of get uploaded to the Freudian super-ego, but we are often just not aware of this at all. It *is* possible though to transcend it, through self-work and honest feedback, and often personal crisis. It's the only way not to get sucked into a spiritual wasteland of captivity to evil, or, if you prefer, the worst kind of evolutionary dead-end.
Conflict theory tied to conspiratorism: Marxism in a nutshell.
Racism started as a way for Muslims to justify systematically enslaving fellow children of Allah, hence involved both anti-white and anti-black racism. It is a way of mobilising our groupishness, of which there are many and many folk do for many reasons.
Great looking article Lorenzo! I will read it fully after i write this comment -for a reason.
There is definitely a positive something going on. ESP or some sync level. Many substack writers i follow keep saying that their work is being copied, or 'I just wrote about that- you must be reading my mind!". But whose ideas are they? are we not just sharing more honestly now?, seeing the similar patterns and focused on a more singular primary goal?
Maybe this is how we will stop these anonymous psychopaths, by being honest sharing humans.
by the way, i just wrote this-
https://justindaws.substack.com/p/conscious-bias-lost-in-discrimination
If lots of clever folk are thinking about the same problem at the same time, congruent responses are to be expected. See the very famous examples of Darwin and Wallace on natural selection or Newton and Leibniz on calculus.
That's certainly a factor - an idea is 'in the air' so to speak, and attracts independent attention from minds primed by experience and interest, which - if motivated alethiologically - will tend to converge on similar conclusions. I've had this happen in my professional life as well as here on Substack.
At the same time I've also had it happen that I've written about things that are much more out of left field, weird topics that aren't a major focus of discourse, that it just came into my head out of nowhere to write about. Only to find later that someone else was writing about a similar idea around the same time.
Given the conceptual difficulties of localizing mind and consciousness (even under the assumption of material emergence, it's far from clear *where* the mind is located), I tend to remain agnostic on the question of subjects such as ESP or psi.
Love the piece. I love reading about evolutionary reasoning of the way things are.
I do wonder about the creation of the special category of "hyper norms" as a bit of special pleading in favor of explaining the particular destructiveness of our moment, but agree with the idea that it has been incentivized by the lack of disincentives.
In any case you got a new sub.
Thanks for the sub!
Yes, there is a danger that the concept of hyper-norms could be used in a special pleading way.
I read H L A Hart’s ‘The Concept of Law’ many years ago, so have not been citing it because I would need to re-read it to be confident in any such citation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Concept_of_Law
The work which really enabled me to get a useful grasp on norms is Cristina Bicchieri, ‘The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms’ (2006) and her ‘Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure and Change Social Norms’ (2017). She develops her analysis rigorously, based in part on behavioural lab work.
I was struck by how “free floating” moral norms seem to be in her analysis. Which I now see as a strength rather than a weakness. (For instance, Westerners tend to be more moral in labs than in real life; foragers less moral in labs than in real life: the latter live far more in a world of connections, the former behave differently when on display.)
The use of moral claims to dismiss concerns about structure is a pattern that, once you are alerted to it, keeps popping up. So I am confident the notion of hyper-norms is onto something, but agree one has to be careful in the use of it.
I really like the use of evolutionary reasoning in this piece. So fascinating. I am the world’s worst liar, as we’ve discussed privately, but I can deceive myself - we all can.
I just keep getting more impressed with the quality of discourse on Substack. This article was deep and intense. I wonder why this kind of deep discourse isn’t occurring on university campuses. Not really. We all know why.
One of the reasons I commissioned the essays from Lorenzo is as a response to the extent to which universities have become nonsense factories. And, to be fair, I'm a practitioner who left the academy (I used to be a tutorial fellow at Oxford), while Lorenzo has bounced in and out of the academy over many decades.
The problem of the dopey university has become pervasive, and, frankly, Lorenzo and I back ourselves to do better.
To riff on another comment concerning ideas 'in the air', one of them that a lot of us are talking about is the ersatz academy. Academe has become stifling. The smart minds, the brave ones, the interesting ones, the principled ones, and the creative ones are all getting pushed out. What's left behind isn't worth salvaging and probably can't be in any case.
Yet the essential functions of academia must be fulfilled. I believe they will be, here and in other places. There are real questions about how we can leverage Substack and other platforms to build out a fully functioning intellectual and educational apparatus, and it won't happen overnight. But to me at least it's clear where the energy is flowing to.
A good analysis of what is happening within Western society. I emerged from it thinking that it had dealt convincingly with the emptiness of modern social philosophy.
The analysis can be simplified by the simple dictum that "Politics is Power". As Cicero told us, religion is the tool of the state to unify the people behind its power. The Romans had the Imperial Cult then Christianity, Pagans elevate their tribal god, Muhammed had Islam, Russia had Orthodox Christianity then Marxism, the British Empire had Protestantism etc.
What we are witnessing is a West that has grown socially divided and feeble after 75 years of hegemony. It is now beset by enemies. The enemies within need help from outside. The outside enemies nurture the enemies within. The objective of the outside enemies is to create anarchy and weakness, the objective of the enemies within is to create anarchy and revolution.
These are the power structures that are in play:
Outside the Western Alliance:
The imperial powers: Russia, China
Within the Alliance:
EU, USA
Philosophies inside the West:
The Postmarxists - these are the new form of Trotskyism/International Socialism/Communism/ Socialism. Communitarians are also postmarxist now.
The new National Socialists such as multinational corporations, International Banks and the Corporate Foundations (Soros, Kellogg, Ford, Rockefeller, Gates etc) - these believe that Corporate structures and their "enlightened" oligarchy can rule.
The state philosophy of Russia and China (analogue of state religion) is the new National Socialism.
The new National Socialism is winning because it owns the mass media. Those corporate bosses are looking forward to a new world order in which there are no borders so that money, goods and people can flow freely around the world. They will use any tools at their disposal including BLM, LGBT movement etc. as their foot soldiers. The wealth of China means that the corporate bosses are actually working in the interests of China, many are even owned by China.
We are witnessing the steady fall of the Western Empire. The Romans felt the same way when their empire fell.
I am always somewhat wary of applying historical analogies too closely. For instance, CCP China strikes me as being more Second Reich in its international dynamics than Third Reich. Yes, it is institutionally more similar to the Third Reich (but all Marxist polities are, though the use of markets and commerce by the CCP intensifies the similarity).
Yet, when one looks at the international politics, the Second Reich analogy seems stronger. First, because any military confrontation is likely to be navally centred. Second, because the CCP wants Power dominance rather than territorial expansion. Third, the foreign policy adventurism is driven more by concerns for regime stability than explicit territorial objectives.
As for the Roman analogy, the comparison really is with the Christianisation of the Empire over the C4th and C5th, where the analogy is very strong. The West still has such an operational advantage over potential opponents that we are well before Adrianople (378) demonstrated that Rome had lost its operational advantage. (A fatal flaw, as demonstrated in the ensuring almost 10 decades, as Roman soldiers were much more expensive to put into the field.)
I doubt any analogy between “woke” capital and either Fascism or National Socialism because of the lack of the fetishising of the military (including as a model of political action) that is such a distinctive manifestation of fascism in all its forms. That it is a form of oligarchy seeking normative dominance is clearly true.
Martin Gurri is particularly useful on how the online mobs of identitarian cancel culture are a useful mechanism for elite dominance. Elite racialisation is always an divide, favour-and-dominate strategy, and that particularly applies to “woke” racialisation.
https://www.discoursemagazine.com/culture-and-society/2023/01/18/the-fifth-wave-twittermania/
I was in the west of China just pre-COVID and there were clear signs of fetish. Western commentators have got China really badly wrong.
Special, heavily armed, military platoons wearing entirely black uniforms and crash helmets were marched at double time around towns such as Kashgar. Loud music was played from police vans throughout the night. Houses were being demolished in large numbers and new buildings offered to Han Chinese. The objective was intimidation and dispersion of local people to other parts of China. Had I been a Uyghur I would have been very afraid.
China lays claim to the whole South China Sea. All the way to Indonesia. It is establishing military bases in the Spratly Islands between Vietnam and the Philippines. This is not a minor territorial claim. It has annexed Tibet despite its historically autonomous status.
What do you think defines Chinese and Russian kleptocracy, they have both abandoned communism?
I agree with you about the racialisation of politics.
Russia has officially abandoned Communism. The regime is increasingly Orthodox. Putin has nationalised corruption and runs a spectacle-for-domestic-consumption foreign policy. Timothy Snyder is very good on this. (Even if his Trump comments are overdone.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um-SEQDQidM
The CCP has not ideologically abandoned Communism. Creating an inherent tension between its economic growth and the still Leninist Party. How strong the analogy with NEP Soviet Union is we are yet to see. Given that their NEP has now been running for over 40 years.
And the Second Reich was highly militarised and produced the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Which is why the Second Reich analogy is not comforting, as it used Weltpolitik to try and paper over the tensions between the structure of the regime and the implications of economic development.
So, I don’t see Russia and China as quite the same. But that might matter less than it appears.
You might be interested in Bloomberg's assessment of the rise of the Chinese oligarchy:
"Heirs of Mao’s Comrades Rise as New Capitalist Nobility"(Bloomberg Archive https://archive.vn/1FIxo )
China made the direct transition from communism to national socialism without Yeltsin's democratic interlude. The Russians had a bumpier ride.
Your reference to Brest-Litovsk is slightly confusing, I had always seen it as a way of getting the Russian front settled so that Germany could turn its attention to the Western Front, where it was losing as tank warfare grew. The similarity of National Socialist states to all pre-democratic states such as the Second Reich is a good point. Imperialism (Weltpolitik) is a particular hazard of empires :)
Returning to the original point: how much is the social unrest in Western states due to outside interference? (Ownership of media, financing of internationalist groups etc) Is the two trillion dollars of offshore China Sovereign Fund being spent politically to create anarchy?
The Brest-Litovsk point is that the Second Reich was also territorially expansionist if given the opportunity. The difference is that territorial expansion was the central project of the Third Reich, hence it plunged Europe into war in less than 7 years. Hence I am leery of Third Reich analogies.
That China is seeking to maximise its influence by various means is very clear. Australia has been dealing with that relatively well, Canada relatively badly. How much it is fostering political polarisation, not sure. Russia certainly seeks to, but with what success is much more doubtful.
I thought you would be in bed by now. I have just started the day and am avoiding filing a bunch of leases and other papers :)
I agree that we should be leery of Third Reich analogies. Even if China has summary executions, harvests organs for transplant from the executed and clearly engages in ethnic cleansing, the use of the Third Reich will drag the debate down to whether China is truly genocidal. For me the big issue is that it is a capitalist oligarchy like Russia and the whole world before Tom Paine (my hero).
What term should we use for a state that still has the trappings of communist ideology but is really just an old fashioned case of rule by the rich and powerful? Mussolini made this transition and called it fascism. Hitler admired it and made it his own philosophy. But, as noted above, national socialism, fascism, nazism have connotations that distract from the categorisation.
On territorial expansion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_South_China_Sea#/media/File:Claim_the_territory_of_the_exclusive_economic_zone2023.jpg
Very insightful. I feel that you have articulated the cognitive processes behind the collapse of complex societies most astutely. Perhaps with this understanding we can salvage our own. To comment on some of my favorite quotes:
"Feminism functions as the networked social aggression of highly educated/credentialed women."
Indeed, and it does feel very aggressive. I abhor aggression, but very much feel that it should be direct if employed. Perhaps this is only because such circumstances would play to my strengths, but I think that there are structural advantages to this as well. Aggression is anti-social and interferes with cooperation on a structural level, so it seems like occult aggression that can't be addressed directly would be the most caustic to social cohesion.
"Homo sapiens: the ape that murdered its way into niceness. The human condition in a nutshell."
This dynamic burned deep into our psyches is the driving force behind karma in my estimation. It is a real force that I believe emanates from this fundamental truth.
Lorenzo is asleep at the moment (he's in Australia) but will no doubt respond once he wakes up.
Social corrosion leading to social collapse is absolutely one of my motivating concerns in writing these essays. In later essays I will explore the foundational lie of feminism (that the liberation of women required a special ideology) and its implications.
I have recently become somewhat enamoured of C-dramas, as they can be both great stories and very intelligently done. (I only bother with those which are non-historical or set before 1800, to avoid the propagandising.) The difference between the karmic cultures of Asia and the one-life cultures of the Middle East and its religious colonies (which includes the entire West) becomes very clear in fantasy tales. (I particularly recommend ‘Love Between Fairy and Devil’, available on Netflix, to see this.)
But you can also see the difference in their philosophies. Even though China is a profoundly meritocratic, and so historical, culture, while India is a profoundly hierarchical, so mythic, culture the difference between them as karmic cultures compared to Middle Eastern monotheism and “one shot” European/Mediterranean paganism is quite clear.
Two books which explore these differences are Thomas McEvilly’s magnum opus, ‘The Shape of Ancient Thought’ which, while showing that Greek and Indian philosophy were both far more similar, and far more mutually influenced, than is usually acknowledged also shows the very different trajectories.
Basically, the philosophy of the karmic cultures tends to head inwards into consciousness, while the Greek and derivative philosophies evolve into a more outward-from consciousness direction. Something most exemplified by Descartes’s “cogito ergo sum”. A good introduction to the difference is Amaury de Riencourt, ‘The Eye Of Śiva: Eastern Mysticism and Science’.
Your erudition is pretty astounding. Regarding karma I have to clarify that I use the term in a very peculiar way that I didn't specify. As something of a materialist (who nonetheless appreciates the splendor and knowable depths of what can emerge from 'mere' material) my conception of karma is worldly. I think what goes around comes around because human beings are driven to make this reality. Some escape this fate, but the fact that some billionaires are looking into buying themselves doomsday bunkers tells me they're afraid that they won't, and I think this might be related to the origins of our species.
A useful discussion of why meritocratic cultures generate historiographical cultures and hierarchical ones generate mythic cultures is Donald E. Brown, ‘Hierarchy, History & Human Nature: the Social Origins of Historical Consciousness‘. That the politics of the transformational future theologises history based on identity hierarchies is why it is so prone to producing cartoon or caricature (i.e. mythic) history.
Rene Girard famously argued that human society was based on a foundational murder. It turns out, our emergence as a species, as Homo sapiens, was likely based on generation after generation of foundational murders. On this hypothesis, we are the most gracile species in the genus Homo because we had less need of facial robustness to ward off blows and instead there was more selection for emotionally expressive faces to intensify cooperation. Less reactive aggression and more effective proactive aggression meant that we are the only species of Homo left standing.
Girard also argued for the importance of mimetic desire. It also turns out that we are the most imitative primate, engaging in much more complete imitation of our conspecifics than chimpanzees do. This aids both learning and cooperation, but can obviously have runaway effects. Especially in circumstances of high levels of efficient self-deception and/or poor levels of consequences feedback. Such as social media generates.
Dostoyevsky says in either The Brothers.. or Crime and punishment, that no significant change happens in the world without murder.
Such a Russian thought …
Sorry, I missed your meaning?
I don't understand this comment. Are we not beyond generalising about people, individually or on mass because of their birth nation? Talking about this county and that county seems a bit nieve at the stage of The Game. I can tell you are way smart, so this is not a poke. This is a serious question from me.
That Russian culture, particularly literature, has a pessimistic quality is surely hard to deny. I wasn’t disagreeing, just light-heartedly suggesting that it is something a Russian might be particularly inclined to notice.
Thanks for clarifying.
Yes. I guess nobody could blame Russian writers their pessimism. They have had quite a bad trot.
Lots of info packed into that comment, thanks! I'd never even considered the contrast between meritocratic and hierarchical. In my mind, a meritocratic society will enjoy a much higher standard of living in the long run, but will also end up hierarchical because of innate differences. This is the balance that I think we need for today, organic hierarchy that emerges from merit, but I don't necessarily like merit as a concept because it implies a moral quality that I don't think is structural. I also don't think it is necessarily wrong for people to choose those they have social obligations to over more 'competent' candidates when they're employing their own capital, which isn't meritocratic, but it is human. It only becomes disgusting when allocating state funds, which is why I think there is an imperative to limit the size and scope of the state as much as possible. It turns natural human tendencies into intractable moral hazards at every turn, then, within these massive bureaucratic ecosystems mimetic desire drives the normalization of dizzying levels of waste, fraud, and abuse.
Phenomenal stuff.
It seems to me that the key enabling structural component is isolation from consequence, which also seems to be related to the elimination of tests of character in favor of tests of hyper-norm fluency. It follows that a functional elite - in the sense of an elite which is resistant to the siren song of hypernormativity - must involve tests of character, and must be continuously exposed to consequence for error.
Rotating our perspective on contemporary society, the manipulable wokeists have themselves provided an invaluable character test. By viciously attacking noticers, cancelling conscience-speakers, disemploying those who refuse to participate in their many obvious lies, they have involuntarily highlighted a potential intellectual elite class who have passed through a grueling character test. Passing that test demonstrates that they are willing to risk everything, and sacrifice it if need be, for the sake of what they perceive to be true and just. While the potential elite currently lacks institutional power, they are gathering cultural power at a remarkable pace.
That dynamic is just a sort of historical dialectic. An interesting question for the successor institutions will be how to formalize tests of character, without the tests becoming so formal that they are too easily gamed. And related, how do we ensure that as people rise in society they are more, rather than less, exposed to the consequences of their mistakes?
Isolation from consequences is, indeed, a key feature.
"Moreover, as political conservatism correlates highly with the personality trait of conscientiousness"
No. Conscientiousness correlates slightly with political conservatism, r < .3. Yes, the evidence for such a relationship is robust and well-established, yet no social scientist familiar with statistics or the scientific literature would call this a large or high correlation.
I say this as someone who is more than willing to criticize the psychology of the modern left:
https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/are-the-woke-machiavellian
In my opinion the worst thing about the Woke is that they play fast and loose with the facts, and spin the truth to tell their story. Please, *please* don't do that.
Good catch. I was relying on second-hand report and didn’t check myself: almost always a mistake. It will be corrected when Helen is actually in front of a computer.
One of the things that has long bothered me is not having access to the academic paper circuit, where you present papers and get feedback. The great think about serialising something online like this is you get feedback.
Any decent discovery procedure or mechanism has to include error detection.
Having now done said checking, including that there is good evidence of a genetic component in political differences, it makes the point about one group/set of types attempting to displace another rather clearer.
It also enabled me to finally track down a critique of Moral Foundations theory that I had read online, then couldn’t find again. So, double win. Ta.
Okay folks, that change has been made.
Also, just bringing this comment I made elsewhere in the chat and dropping it here.
https://helendale.substack.com/p/self-deceptive-rationalising-moralisers/comment/13095387
Thank you! This feels like the *only* time anyone has ever reacted well when I pick one of their nits. I really appreciate this.
This is part of the reason I'm serialising Lorenzo's book. When I wave it in front of my agent, I'll be able to tell him that the bulk of the fact-checking has been done on substack.
This whole essay is brilliant, particularly with regard to the issues in academia. I hadn't thought of conscientiousness as being a more conservative trait, but it makes sense. I thought the line, "Feminism functions as the networked social aggression of highly educated/credentialed women" really rings true. I see it a lot in the Uni I work for. The abject viciousness masquerading as concern for equality in various parts but especially within the institution's "Women's Network" has been shocking, but it serves a purpose. It scares off any dissenters and creates more social power for the bullies (even if said bullies still can't define what men and women are).
They create problems in order to exert control, make themselves seem important, irreplaceable even, get onto committees and make sure their cv looks nice and fat for any future promotional bid.
I overstated the case on conscientiousness (see comment by Apple Pie and my response).
On feminism and aggression, as is often the case, once a useful framing is presented to you, or pops into your head, a lot of phenomena can suddenly make a great deal more sense.
The foundational lie of feminism is that you needed a special ideology to liberate women. This is nonsense. No special ideology was needed to abolish slavery, get rid of laws against Jews and Catholics, provide adult suffrage, achieve civil rights, get rid of laws against homosexuals.
What you do need a special ideology for is to motivate and coordinate aggression. As the Transcult is presently demonstrating.
This explains why I was so pissed off at some major feminist (I forget who), whom I heard by accident (I was a paid usher, not an attendee) in Madison in 1976. I immediately & permanently became an anti-feminist.
Short reminder that Lorenzo is in Australia, so he's asleep right now. However, this thread produced so many good comments he's gathered them up & responded to them here: https://lorenzofromoz.substack.com/p/self-deception-and-social-corrosion
Do be aware that there will be some he's missed (ie the more recent ones), but that he continues to update forthcoming essays in light of people's comments. Relatedly, if I'm able to place the essays in book form with a publisher, they will be published in corrected form throughout, with acknowledgements (handles are acceptable; Lorenzo has already written a corrected follow-up thanking a smart bloke who calls himself "Rooster Luggage" on Twitter).
I've noticed that the hypernormative tend to be neurotic and anxious, like amateur getaway drivers revving their engines as the rest of the guys rob the bank. The strain of self-deception--cognitive dissonance--is the price they pay for constantly policing their own self-image while stealing from the virtue bank.
Eventually, I'll work this metaphor out to include the entire criminal justice system but not tonight.
Interesting post.
Re: the reference to beta males conspiring to murder alpha males - would you have a reference for this evolutionary insight?
I seem to remember that it is possible that just as different reproductive strategies (apologies to be heteronormative, Helen!) pay off for human beings (traditional marry, settle and raise kids models representing an optimal approach for beta males, while high status, high earning/wealth alpha males pursue multiple partner strategies - either sequentially or concurrently - to maximise genetic distribution).
This might suggest that far from being extinct - alpha males continue to exist within human society.
A different route to the same conclusion might be identified by looking at optimal survival strategies in resource scarce and resource rich societies and environments.
The very cooperative strategies that you disdain might be key to survival in settler or marginal societies. Hence the enduring appeal of communitarian approaches in fishing communities or Scandinavia/northern Canada etc. Theodore Zeldin described the differences in social structure (primogeniture vs equal distribution of assets among offspring, matriarchal vs patriarchal structures etc) as predictors of political alignments compellingly in the 1990s - taking France (obviously) and Spain/Italy as his models. This was before more recent political realignments, natch.
If this was possible - and I appreciate that this runs counter to your far more developed/refined approach - might it not be possible to believe that the current liberal/reactionary cultural struggle is a struggle between different groups within society seeking to maximise economic returns by defining the boundaries of acceptable behaviour within different habitats. (This might seem a little Marxian for you - I found discussions about intra-elite competition during the English Civil War compelling! Luckily for capitalism, London bankers and the gentry defeated the aristocracy….)
Just as cultural preferences for monogamy could be understood as beta females and males raising the opportunity costs of partner poaching - or on a more mundane level our relative social preferences for honesty in economic transactions and legal penalties against fraud or theft.
High trust societies seem to perform better economically, if I briefly link back to social relations.
The more interesting question is how alpha males and females can ensure social compliance from poorer members of society following the collapse of traditional religion.
Apologies if this all seems too relativistic/abstruse!
The alpha males killing off beta males is Richard Wrangham’s hypothesis, and one of his articles on it is in the references. Remembering he is writing as a primatologist, so alpha male has the primate meeting of the term.
He is trying to explain why Homo sapiens are equal with chimpanzees in proactive aggression but the lowest of the apes (by quite a way) in reactive aggression. They are different brain circuits, so if the beta males (using proactive aggression) combined to kill off the alpha males (those with the most pronounced reactive aggression) the former would be maintained but the latter would be systematically selected against.
As Will Storr points out, we do indeed keep producing alpha males, though at quite low rates. They have a technical label: serial killers.
You raise points well worth considering. Haven’t read Zeldin, but he seems to be arguing very similarly to Emmanuel Todd, who overstates his thesis a bit (and uses rather too much psychoanalytical language: fortunately that is a dispensable gloss) but makes a powerful argument for family structures mattering in ways that seem rather congruent with Zeldin’s argument as you state it.
And yes, I do believe different elites use different strategies. We can see a control-of-discourse-legitimacy strategy being used quite strongly at the moment. And yes, what fills the normative/motivational gap with the collapse of traditional religion is a big question. Especially with the collapse of its congregational aspect.
James Lindsay argues that the Rousseau—>Kant—>Hegel sequence set up pouring what previously had been taken to be the spiritual realm into the social/conceptual realm. I think he is very much onto something there.
As for single-spouse marriage, that was Christianity sanctifying the Roman synthesis. Now, it seems to be about the elevation of the important of human capital in the prospects for children, and single-spouse marriage produces higher levels of investment in children than does polygyny, unsurprisingly.
Also, my final point about single-spouse marriage increasing investment in the human capital of children, that may in part explain why the upper half of society is sticking to the marriage strategy quite strongly, while single parenthood is becoming more and more common in the lower half of society.
Why does conservatism correlate strongly with conscientiousness? I've heard this argument before but never quite understood it. Does it refer to 'small c' social conservatism, or being on the political right in general?
It is a weak correlation that I exaggerated in my original post. But conservatives focus on structure, on making things work, hence there is some correlation with conscientiousness. The stronger correlation is a negative one with openness, which also goes back to an affinity to structure. Conservatives tend to like things to be predictable and persistent, hence tend to be low on openness, on “let’s explore new things and new ways of doing stuff”.
Matt Taibbi referenced a Twain story I was unfamiliar with, but reading it, it was a lovely fable about self deception in a group of people.
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1213/1213-h/1213-h.htm
Oh yes. Mark Twain was a genuine literary genius.
>will tend to supplant no clear analysis of social dynamics
typo? or just too big brain for me?
"no" -> any
A rhetorically effective theory will supplant no theory is the claim. That is, will win if there is no coherent competitor.
Ah, I see. Perhaps "lack of" or "absence of" might be clearer
>We not only developed conventions (we do something X way because other people do it that way), ___so descriptive norms.
"so" -> but? I don't quite understand
>Our gaming of norms can be obscured by the fact that we are far too conscious of being conscious.
obscured -> hampered, hindered?
Conventions are descriptive norms is all I was trying to say.
I meant obscured in the sense of hidden. Being so conscious of being conscious doesn’t get in the way, it makes gaming norms easier by blocking realisation of the full gamut of our own motives.