The Crisis of Purpose

I. Introduction

I am not a man well-schooled in philosophy. I’ve read some philosophical works, and found myself more interested in them than I had been previously, when I dismissed them as a lot of noise. But while I may know more of it than the average modern westerner, I’ve only just tasted some of it, so I’m always reluctant to engage in it personally. With that in mind, here goes.

For all its strengths and progress, the Western world seems to be lacking in some fundamental way. That’s a very broad statement. I know plenty of people who would say that no, actually, it’s not lacking in anything, and many more who would concede that there is something lacking, but say that the sense that something is lacking is actually simply a universal human condition. To the first I would say, alright, then stop reading here. If you are actually completely satisfied with the current direction of Western civilization, I’m not here to convince you otherwise. To the second, I would say that perhaps it is a universal human condition, but if this is so,  there cannot be a universal solution to it, since we are all bound within certain currents of history, what works for one population cannot work for another. Western civilization is bound within a certain broad current, and I am primarily concerned with the West.

So, let us accept a couple of underlying assumptions before moving on: There is something lacking in the modern West (that may or may not be part of a broader human problem, which nevertheless requires a uniquely western solution), and in this writing I am primarily concerned with addressing this lack in a historically western context. Further, I think the case can be made that this lack is more than a purely abstract concept or spiritual malaise. I believe this lack has real-world consequences for political cohesion and vision, which in the long run can cause some very real problems.

II. The Heart of Our Worldview

When speaking of something as broad as the “West”, which can of course within itself contain a number of contradicting, competing currents, you have to get down to a very basic level to see what binds the broader structure together. Prior to the fall of Christianity, the assumption was something more along the lines of ‘The universe is vast, ordered according to the Divine, and given meaning by God.’ This was replaced by nihilism, the underlying assumption that the universe is vast, indifferent, and meaningless. Western philosophy and culture, such as it is, can be understood as a grappling with or reaction to this worldview. We’ve made some progress, but we have not yet overcome the nihilism at the heart of our culture.

There have been a few ways of attempting to deal with this:

1. Since rationalism was the implement that seemingly killed Christianity, and Science was a powerful tool that we had used to overcome nature (deadly for millenia, much more manageable now) there was serious intellectual momentum to use these tools to construct a new worldview. But rationalism and science cannot give meaning or purpose. They are simply powerful lenses through which to view the world that lead to greater understanding of it, and have their limits.
2. Christianity still exists. But for the most part, it is not at all similar to the Christianity that lay at the heart of the west for centuries. Most Christians are not really ‘Christian’ in the sense that they have the Divine at the heart of their worldview. They are modern, with nihilism at the heart of their worldview, with a bit of Christian paint slapped on to give them a sense of identity. There are fringes and cults of Christianity that do try to grapple with the worldview problem. However, even this can be considered a type of reaction to nihilism. “I fear an empty, meaningless universe, so I explicitly reject it and turn to the Divine” is, at its heart, fundamentally different from a worldview that doesn’t even dream of nihilism, and has God at its heart.
3. The modern view, which essentially acknowledges nihilism, and says that you must find or create your own subjective meaning.

The problem with finding or creating your own subjective meaning is that not everyone is capable of doing this. To be perfectly frank, many probably don’t NEED to do this, as well. Contemplating meaning and purpose is not something that everyone feels drawn toward. Many simply lack the imagination. This is not meant as an insult. But it seems that the more intelligent and thoughtful one is, the more one is likely to grapple the nihilism at the heart of the Western worldview, and the more necessary it becomes to construct or find meaning in response to it. And since leadership in all arenas of life – spiritual, political, etc – is usually correlated with intelligence, this can become a vital problem for civilization. Nihilism, when confronted, and the confrontation is inevitable for the thoughtful, can lead to an intense depressive state if meaning cannot be constructed, and a lack of vision. A depressive elite with a dearth of vision is not a healthy place for a civilization to be. Or, at least, we can agree that it is probably not optimal.

Confronting nihilism is not something that ONLY the intelligent have to worry about, of course. But generally, it has more consequence when they do.

III. The Problem with Constructing Meaning

Modern culture has a corrosive effect on any attempt to construct meaning. This is a natural consequence of living in a society that has nihilism at its heart. Anything can (and will) be deconstructed. It takes insight, thoughtfulness and dedication to construct meaning that can withstand the critique of modern living.

There are individuals who are capable of tacking nihilism on their own, creating their own cosmic context, and overcoming nihilism without outside influence. And furthermore, there are those who, although they cannot construct meaning on their own, can cast about the wider culture, filter out the corrosive effects of modern society, and through a sort of loose collaborative effort come to a sense of meaning.

These are not most people. I would say that the first type is very rare indeed, and the second type not quite as rare but still very uncommon. But most (even though they may be intelligent) need guiding, mentorship, some sort of institution, some structure, some context in order to overcome nihilism. They need a bridge, but the problem is that our modern political circumstances deprive us of the tools needed to construct this bridge, namely filtering and coercion.

The modern state, reacting to the fragmentation of meaning with the advent of nihilism, created a sort of uneasy middle ground for thought. You are allowed to construct meaning on your own, but you are not allowed to force that meaning on anyone else. This sounds good in theory. But the problem is that in our modern culture of deconstruction, ‘no force allowed’ came to mean that you could not effectively propagate meaning.

Meaning – a coming to terms with and overcoming of nihilism – is the basis for much of culture. But we could have hundred, even thousands of different competing cultures, and all perhaps may have different ideas of meaning at their hearts. The state has decided that it must be a neutral actor in this situation, and not advocate one culture over the other (at least, that is what it thinks it is doing in theory. In reality, I think it is very much biased towards a certain sense of meaning and culture, but that’s not the point of this writing.) Because it is ostensibly ‘neutral’, and because any powerful institution is eventually going to have to deal with the demands of the state, much of our public space is devoid of culture and meaning. Moreover, a sense of politeness and ‘getting along’ means that even in areas where the state does not enforce this ‘neutrality’, methods for advocating for a particular type of meaning are considered poor form.

The problem with this is that if constructing meaning requires institutions, and the state forces all institutions into neutrality, then for many there is no path to meaning. The only ones that are capable of constructing meaning are those who go to the extreme of building institutions outside the purview of the state, which, in this age, implies a certain degree of animosity towards it. In the name of enforcing ‘neutrality’, the state actually lends incredible power to those who oppose it.

The problem is that meaning, for many, must be built up by a slow process, during which time they have limited contact with the corrosive effects of critiques of that meaning. Not that they must be shielded completely from outside ideas, it is simply that any truly worthy sense of meaning takes a lot of time to fully communicate. The less familiar you are with a certain worldview, the more likely that a facile or simplistic criticism can change your mind on it, or simple social pressure can get you to abandon it.

That is the world we live in now: People search for meaning, and the world is not devoid of explanations. But because the state enforces neutrality, free speech laws ensure that no filters can be put up, and a cultural zeitgeist of nihilism means that any forays into any type of meaning quickly encounter the corrosive effects of facile, simplistic critique. Unfortunately, in an environment like this, where greater meaning can be difficult to establish, the neutral middle ground seems to default to hedonistic materialism, which is its own way of dealing with nihilism – “There is no greater meaning, so why not maximize your happiness?”

Some might say that people are freely choosing hedonistic materialism. My point would be that people are not actually being offered much of a choice. To learn of a sense of greater meaning requires a certain degree of isolation and institutional support that one can only get nowadays by, maybe, joining a monastery. My point would also be that a lot of people probably don’t really want the choice. Many people are clearly dissatisfied with the hedonistic materialism that society defaults to. They would probably have preferred to have been raised in a somewhat isolated community that tried to impart its sense of meaning into them. A community that had the power to erect filters and the ability to build a bridge from nihilism to meaning. But this sort of isolation is impossible, this level of control is forbidden, and honestly, good mentors are scarce.

IV. Fanaticism

I mentioned before that the state empowers those who oppose it, because the ones that have the will to defy state power, built institutions outside its scope, and force a certain level of filtering and control on their societies have the ability to impart meaning, and thus have a certain attraction that the modern state simply cannot offer.

However, these sort of societies and organizations do not always have to be violent, or even extremist sects. The problem is that the level of state intrusion today means that those that have the will are likely to be violent or extremist. But there are organizations founded in the past, like the Amish, that offer up a more palatable example. The Amish even afford their children an opportunity to sample modern life, and most Amish children return to the fold.

In order to escape the default of hedonistic materialism of modern life, perhaps there needs to be more like the Amish. Not necessarily religious, but worldviews and constructions of meaning that build institutions outside of the domain of the modern state, which would impose disintegrating neutrality upon them. The problem is that things like this cost a lot of money, which requires ever-deeper levels of participation in the modern state.

Those who are capable of constructing meaning for themselves – and those who succeed in becoming wealthy – should consider the creation of institutions outside the purview of the state that can teach their worldview. These individuals, who are capable of constructing their own meaning in the face of corrosive effects of modern life, should do their best to help guide those who are not quite as capable. All this implies a certain degree of fanaticism, but it’s better than going it alone.

 

 

Trump’s Advantage

This election cycle has been the most interesting I’ve experienced in my lifetime, and I suspect that’s true for those much older than I am, as well.

What’s really interesting is how much it defies the conventional wisdom of US politics. Normally people are resigned to the idea of “money wins”, but Trump, and to a lesser extent Sanders, have been defying this rule. To a shocking degree, in some cases. What is it that makes Trump so cost-effective in the primary?

Part of the explanation probably lies with his policy stance, although I don’t think that can possibly explain all of it. Trump’s policies are an eclectic mix of left-wing and center-right ideas that, when taken as a whole, don’t really completely please anyone. He probably gets the most credit on the immigration issue, where he’s the only candidate who seems willing to insist on border enforcement, a popular issue.

Is it his bombastic personality? Probably a bit. American politicians seem to face some odd social pressures. Something has to explain how they come across as so plastic and fake. I’ve seen corpses with more personality than your average mainstream US politician. Trump, bombastic and ridiculous as he might be, comes across as much more authentic. This can probably be attributed to his speaking style, which is very off-the-cuff, and at times feels more like a conversation or a stand-up act than a speech.

But I don’t think Trump’s ascendancy is all Trump. I think we’ve been bought to where we are by decades of poor government.

What makes people trust a government? Two big factors must be the perception of competence and benevolence. The American government, after World War Two, was probably perceived as being decently competent and benevolent. I wasn’t alive back then, I’m only guessing from what I’ve read, but it seems likely. I think the US government held on to this perception for quite a while.

In fact, the first big cultural moment that caused people to lose confidence in the government, the first crisis, was the Vietnam war. The inability of US firepower to decimate jungle guerrillas made the government seem incompetent, and the focus on overseas atrocities by national counterculture movements made it seem malevolent.

The moon landing probably salvaged the government’s image of competence. But the image of government benevolence was irrevocably shattered, and nothing ever really restored it. I remember growing up in an environment of deep contempt for the national government that went far beyond an attitude of healthy skepticism of politicians. Presidential candidates were assumed to be inveterate liars at best, frothing lunatics at worst. It didn’t help that national-level politicians seemed to be completely unaware of this attitude, and seemed to assume that they had the moral authority to be ranting about things like “New World Order”.

But one thing that was assumed was their competence. In fact, if anything, some viewed national politicians as hyper-competent. The TV show  “The X-files” probably did a good job of capturing the feel the average American had for our federal government. Sure, on a low level, there might be good people doing their jobs, like the show’s protagonists. And in a few episodes, there were even a few high-ranking officials that were decent people, just trying to do their job and figure out what the hell was going on. But the higher up you went in the government hierarchy, the more likely you were to begin running into malevolent authority figures. But, significantly, these authority figures were all hard men, often military or ex-military. Quiet, too. Secretive. Entirely capable of massive, complex conspiracies and cover-ups.

It seemed that Americans, although they suspected that the federal government was malevolent, were willing to accept this as long as they were competent, as well. In fact, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that some people seemed to take a perverse sort of pride in this. We may be ruled by liars and snakes, but by God, they’re the best damn liars and snakes that history has ever seen.

The next two presidencies would shatter that illusion.

Whatever else you want to say about George W Bush, it seems almost certain now that he’s going to go down in history as one of the worst American presidents to ever be elected. His opportunistic initiation of the second Iraq War, and his administration’s clumsy attempts at strategy, quickly destroyed any sense of unity the country had after 9/11, and seriously damaged the perception of government competence.

People voted for Obama because he essentially promised a restoration of government benevolence. Obama would have been best served by withdrawing from the middle east in general, and investing in some moralizing domestic project, something on the order of the moon landing, in order to increase public confidence in government competence. Instead, he bombed even more countries than Bush had, seemed to double down on the frankly retarded vision of US-inspired democracy in the middle east, and led an economic “recovery” that consisted mostly of people who had lost jobs going back into much lower-paying ones. The democratic party had always been perceived as the more benevolent political party. Very few people believe that anymore.

Like Vietnam, we had been through a long, disastrous war that ultimately did more harm than good. Unlike Vietnam, we had no massive symbol of government competence and capability, such as the moon landing, to restore public faith. Public approval rates of the federal government are at historic, miserable lows. The government is largely perceived as both malevolent and incompetent.

If national, establishment politicians gave a damn about public opinion in the slightest, they would have offered up serious candidates on both sides of the aisle. I’m thinking maybe a steely-eyed former general from the republican who would vow to bring our entanglements in the middle east to a successful close, or a liberal who promised to focus on domestic issues from the democrats. What did they give us instead?

On the republican side, they fielded a bunch of has-been clowns and seemed to be putting all their money on Jeb Bush, of all people, while on the democratic side, they pretty much promised Hillary Clinton the nomination, the politician who has done more to steer Obama toward an aggressive foreign policy than any other, whose policies are essentially indistinguishable from a neoconservative, America’s currently most-hated political faction.

In such an environment, to nominate two dynasty candidates was a sign of incredible contempt, or tone-deafness. Either the mainstream national politicians of this country don’t give a damn about public opinion, or they are so ridiculously isolated from reality that they actually thought these two were perfectly acceptable choices to offer. And then the pundits began to speak, and the breathtaking ignorance was just unbelievable. I remember being floored, absolutely floored, by early announcements by supposed ‘experts’ that Jeb would be popular. How in the world could you possibly believe this?

It became crystal clear. We didn’t live beneath a benevolent, competent government. We didn’t even live beneath a X-files, malevolent, competent government. We lived beneath a malevolent, incompetent government. Our favored candidates were a chubby-faced stuttering jackass that seemed more appropriate as a librarian than a president, or the single most hollow woman I have ever seen in politics. Their minions were not rugged shadow government officials, but pathetic paid media worms so completely detached from reality, fat, soft little men advocating for wars they wouldn’t last two seconds in. Not only were our leaders malevolent and incompetent, they were completely detached from reality.

That’s what set the ground for Trump and Sanders. Trump’s bullying of Jeb Bush was the most engaged I’ve ever seen people be in politics. And as vicious as Trump was on the national stage, online, things were even more (hilariously) cruel. It was not uncommon to see comments like “I hope Jeb kills himself” with the replies being something along the lines of “Oh please oh please oh please”. And the more the pundits have screeched against him, the more people have love him. Pundits can no longer make a valid claim that they can predict or shape opinion, and people love watching these sad little maggots squirm.

Trump is not some sort of political genius. Our current political class is just retarded. They don’t know how to govern, and what’s worse, they no longer even know how to win. That’s why Trump has been so cost-effective against them.

I don’t know if Trump will make it to the White House, or if he does, if he will be able to restore some of the government’s reputation for competence and benevolence. And who knows. Maybe once in power, Hillary will reverse her entire history and become a benevolent, competent governor.

But we better hope the next president is, at the very worst, simply mediocre. Anything less than that and the next step to discontent is to begin talking about secession.

 

 

Wealth Distribution Legitimacy

Without getting into criticisms of distribution models, almost everyone can agree that wealth is better when it is more equitably distributed among the members of a population. Without going to the extreme and saying that it must be distributed completely equally, it’s generally recognized that the richer the average person is, the better off things are for everyone, and that extreme wealth in the hands of only a few while everyone else lives in poverty is an extremely unstable situation. The problem is that a wealth distribution system must be not just somewhat equitable, but legitimate. Legitimacy is no small problem. Legitimacy is, in short, the consent of the masses to your rule. Without it, your options for maintaining government narrow to methods based on violence and fear.

For example: the method of paying wages for labor is a distribution system for wealth that has a lot of legitimacy baked right into it. Ideally, you are paid more the harder you work. It has a lot of associated supporting ideology about the virtue of labor, and generally, everybody agrees that it’s fair that the people who work harder should get paid more. Of course, wages for labor does not necessarily always work out best on its own. There are many tools with which to suppress wages, some of which will make the distribution scheme seem less legitimate, and also similar methods for raising wages beyond what might be considered legitimate as well.

For much of the modern world, the idea of labor is so intimately associated with getting paid that it can be easy to forget that ‘wages for labor’ is actually a tying together of two separate schemes, wealth and work distribution. There ARE distribution methods where these two distribution schemes are NOT tied together. Historically, slavery would be a good example. Here, wealth distribution is not at all tied together to labor distribution. Instead, the slave’s ‘wages’ essentially go to an intercepting parasite class, the slaver. Often in history, slavers began as part of an aristocratic warrior class. This might have served as a form of legitimacy justifying slavery of those they had conquered. The problem is that an aristocratic warrior class could often degenerate into a purely parasitical decadent class with long peace, robbing the system of legitimacy.

Obviously, slavery is a system the modern world has largely given up on. We rely much more on wages for labor as a wealth distribution and work distribution system in one. Of course, this is not our only form of wealth distribution. One other form of wealth distribution is welfare for the unfortunate. Its legitimacy is based off the moral notion that we should help those in need, and is unconnected from the actual work these people do. It is basically wealth distribution on the basis of sympathy, rather than work.

Another wealth distribution system is presented as a type of investment in a person. For example you may justify wealth distribution to the less needy on the basis of sympathy for the unfortunate. Or, you could justify it on the basis of investment. You could say, “We should feed, clothe, educate and tend to the children of the poor, not necessarily out of sympathy for them, but because taking care of them in this manner is much more likely to make them productive future citizens.” One can most often see this morality at work when discussing education benefits. It can be used to justify the same kind of programs as distribution by sympathy, but it has a much different rationale. It is basically distribution on the basis of future potential, or investment.

These three different moralities behind wealth distribution have, thus far, combined to make life in the west much more comfortable than it has been in the past. There have been failures. Appalling failures. And the legitimacy of these systems have often been called into question. But in general, life in the past 100 years has been a vast improvement over the rest of history.

The problem rapidly approaching us, however, is something that challenges all three wealth distribution systems: automation.

Automation has been with us for quite some time, basically acting as a productivity amplifier. At first, this was a boon, because we were operating under a scarcity economy – demand always outstripped production. There were always hungry, unclothed people – and more importantly, they were hungry and unclothed simply because there was not enough food or clothes, not because of any failure of the distribution systems. Then, as automation increased worker productivity even more radically, negative effects became more apparent – low wages as labor became less necessary, the cultivation of a consumerist culture to increase demand. We have been living with these problems for a century or more, of course.

The new automation problem is that we are approaching a level where human labor can be cut out of the equation entirely. Previously, the argument could be made that while automation might consume hard-labor, repetitive jobs, in the course of increasing production, it would inevitably create more jobs that required a finer, human touch (retail, for example.) Automation, machines, were stupid, essentially. Like a bull, you could train to plow a field, but you couldn’t exactly get him to tend the pumpkin patch.

The problem is that the next generation of machines are going to be exactly that fine-grained and intelligent. With each successive improvement, they are going to get better and better. We are essentially going to have an influx of machines that have all the capabilities and benefits of having slaves, with none of the moral worries.

Why does this challenge the three distribution systems?

Consider wealth distribution on the basis of labor. Once they design a robot that can do your job, the cost of that system is inevitably going to fall. Your wages, as a consequence, will inevitably drop. Eventually, the cost of the system is likely to get so low that no humans are going to be able to compete. And this isn’t going to be happening in just one sector of the economy. This is going to be happening in nearly every sector. We will see a massive spike in unemployment, and the wages of those still working will drop sharply. A few sectors where automation faces unique challenges may survive with vastly reduced wages.  Essentially, wealth distribution via labor is going to fail because of a shortage of work to be done. We can’t all service the machines, especially considering that can be automated as well.

To stall this, you can probably expect governments to adapt measures to provide incentives not to automate. Probably more than a few governments are going to go overboard with this. They’re going to do this because wealth distribution on the basis of labor is the foundation of modern industrialism. It is one of the pillars of the modern world. If it goes away, we’re well and truly in uncharted territory.

But how moral is that, really? Surveys indicate that most Americans hate their jobs.
Does it really make sense to have someone continue to flip burgers, for example, when we have a machine that can do it cheaper and more effectively, when they hate flipping burgers anyway, all so we have a justification to hand them their wages? We may be well-adjusted to it, but we are asked to give up an awful lot of our lives to do tasks that we simply tolerate so we can have the money to live. It may be moral to have such a system when that’s the only way to get the work done. Is it really moral to have such a system when we have machines that can do the work for us? All so we can continue to use the legitimizing system of wages for labor? Wouldn’t it be better to let the machines do the work, and find some other wealth distribution system? It seems to me that, under a sane system, we would be celebrating each labor-saving device, instead of bemoaning the job loss it’s going to result in.

Now, consider wealth distribution on the basis of investment. The challenge faced by this system is obvious. Wealth distribution on the basis of investment is based off the idea of investing in people so they might become productive in the future. When most of the work is done by machines, what production are we expecting our investment to pay off in? One could say that we’d still need people to design the machines. Yes, this is true – but not everyone is intelligent enough to do this. Perhaps we could expect people, not bound working eight hours a day, to become much more artistically creative, productive in that way. Perhaps a cultural explosion will be the fruit of our labor-saving devices. I personally think that not everyone is a creative type, and we’re going to have a lot of people in a lot of psychological angst, feeling deprived of purpose and usefulness. And even these jobs are eventually going to face a challenge as our machines become much more intelligent themselves. However, humanity might eke out a few centuries with machines handling hard labor and humans doing design or artistic/creative work.

Wealth distribution on the basis of sympathy faces probably the least challenge from the rise of automation. In fact, it seems likely that wealth distribution on the basis of sympathy is likely to thrive as more and more people are put out of work by the rising tide of automation. I can only ask: Is that really the future we want? A future where the majority of humanity are seen as victims to be pitied? Where you are born into a world where misfortune is not only seen as common, but is actually the sole reason for distributing wealth? Such a world sounds downright medieval and a little sick, to me. Not to mention that sympathy has limited ability to invoke legitimacy past a certain point. You can be sympathetic to the hungry poor. Can you really be sympathetic to someone who has middle-class amenities and comfort? Distribution on the basis of sympathy may legitimize wealth distribution on a large scale, but only up to the edge of poverty – any more, and there’s not really much to be sympathetic to, is there?

Rather than relying on these three wealth distribution systems for legitimacy, perhaps we should try to come up with new ones.

 

 

 

 

How Much of What We Do Is Merely Biological?

Humans have some prepackaged biological urges that we have in common with animals. By “urge”, I mean merely a mechanism that is mostly automatic. It’s not a result of careful calculation. The most universal urge is most likely fear, or to be more specific, terror – that jolt of adrenaline and horror we get when confronted with something dangerous to us. We’ve most likely all experienced it at least once in our lives. There are other urges, like hunger, or sexual urges to mate. We recognize these urges as ones we share with animals. It would be reasonable to say that we consider them a less complicated form of thinking – primal urges, basically mechanical reactions related to reproduction and survival. And the difference between ourselves and the animals is that we recognize that most, if not all of their mental activity is consumed by these primal urges.

Humans have access to a more complex plane of mental activity, what we consider higher-order thought. Things like language, morality, philosophy, law. We tend to think of these things as separated from biological urges. We tend to think that this plane of thought is controllable, in a way that the primal urges are not. If someone swings a hammer at your head, you can’t stop yourself from feeling fear. But on the higher planes of thought, many people seem to think that there is no comparable situation – we wouldn’t suddenly change our morality on, say, killing innocent people simply because of the circumstances we find ourselves in.

We know, though, that this isn’t exactly true. We know that there are biological components to language, a sort of prepackaged brain hardware for processing speech. If we didn’t have this brain hardware, we wouldn’t have the type of speech that we have. And we can recognize that some of the basis of our cooperative societies is probably founded in biological urges that steer us towards altruism to the in-group as a means of group survival. It does seem like most of us are biologically programmed to love our family, and to seek out friends and help them, and this may have been an important feature in the founding of our earliest societies. So we can accept that there are, perhaps, a few things in our higher-order plane of thought that have their roots in what we’d recognize as biological urges.

But if we accept that the universe is mechanistic in nature, and it seems to be so for the most part, then the natural follow-through is that ALL of our higher-order thought is exactly as mechanistic, exactly as much of a biological urge as the primal urge of fear is. When we engage in what we consider to be complex arguments where our beliefs can be controlled and changed, we are actually doing no such thing – we’re merely fulfilling a biological urge, like that of mating. Every disagreement – be it legal, political, social, philosophical, cultural – springs forth from biology.

It seems difficult to believe, difficult even to grasp. But I’m not so sure it really is all that complex.

What do philosophical, moral, legal, cultural beliefs and the the resulting conflict between contradicting beliefs actually boil down to? Generally, you have a belief in a point – often a very simple point, take, for example, consequentialism, or the idea that what makes something a moral act is the ultimate consequences it has. That is actually a fairly simple, intuitive point. It may not agree with YOUR intuitions, but nobody can say it’s a super-complex idea. And yet books have been filled arguing for or against it. Because the other half of what makes for a moral argument is rationalization.

What is rationalization? Rationalization is the process by which we attempt to justify our beliefs to ourselves. It is probably the most fascinating human mental ability. Through rationalization, we take our intuitive beliefs and attempt to lay out a moral framework for them. In other words, we attempt to translate our intuitive beliefs – our intuitive urges – into an abstract, non-intuitive language. This translation from the intuitive to the non-intuitive may be the foundation for our belief in free will. We can recognize that our intuitions may not necessarily be strictly products of our free will. For example, I have an intuition that killing people is wrong. But I also know that this is probably not necessarily a conclusion I reached on my own – it is probably more instilled in me on a biological and cultural level. But if I rationalize it – if I come up with reasons WHY I think it’s wrong (reasons most likely based on my other moral intuitions) I can translate it from an intuition into a non-intuitive rationalization. Then, it seems to me more like a product of my own thought than a culturally-instilled belief and a biological urge, and I am under the impression that I have something approaching the concept of free will.

What is the purpose of rationalization, our ability to argue for our beliefs? Idealistically, we might say that it’s for the purposes of conversion. But we all know that arguments rarely result in one person changing their position, at least when the people try to convince each other that the other’s moral intuitions are wrong. And that makes sense – if a person’s moral intuitions are biologically mechanistic urges, similar to fear, you are not going to have a lot of luck getting him to abandon them. Any successful moral argument in a direct clash of values is going to have to perform a clever trick – you would have to rationalize why YOUR moral conclusions fulfilled your OPPONENT’S moral intuitions. It can be done – it has been done – but it’s a very rare magic. Most of the time people aren’t all that capable of telling what their opponent’s moral intuitions are, let alone communicating to them.

So if rationalization isn’t meant primarily as a form of conversion, what is it meant for? I think it’s meant primarily as a form of signalling, or communication – a way to signal those biologically similar to you that you have similar or identical moral intuitions. Why might that be important? Perhaps groups require a little bit of moral cohesion in order to function, a little homogeneity among the moral intuitions that people hold in order to really operate.  If you know that people hold the same moral intuitions as you, you can more reliably predict their behavior, and more readily trust them to have similar goals as you.

It is also important to note that while certain philosophical or moral intuitions probably do serve some sort of purpose in holding together group cohesion or enhancing group effectiveness, this does not necessarily need to be the case. Moral urges can even be harmful. I think you can generalize moral urges into nine categories:

1. Beneficial to individual, beneficial to group
2. Irrelevant to individual, beneficial to group
3. Harmful to individual, beneficial to group
4. Beneficial to individual, irrelevant to group
5. Irrelevant to individual, irrelevant to group
6. Harmful to individual, irrelevant to group
7.  Beneficial to individual, harmful to group
8. Irrelevant to individual, harmful to group
9. Harmful to individual, harmful to group

Rationalization usually has a very negative connotation, but I think skillful, effective rationalization is a sign of very high intelligence. In fact, I’d go so far to say that a lot of what we consider philosophy is just high-quality rationalization, less about the pursuit of truth and more about the effective rationalization of moral intuitions.

 

 

 

Free Will

The idea of “Free Will” can be a difficult one to pin down, and it seems like there’s an awful lot of disagreement over a term that’s so vaguely defined. What, exactly, does “Free Will” mean? What does it mean to say that something has free will?

Generally, when we say someone has free will, we mean they have the ability to choose. And not just choose, but choose in defiance of all outside influence. Often this is posed as a great moral dilemma, but to keep things simple, I’ll use the example of choosing between ice cream flavors. You could have been raised all your life to think that chocolate is the greatest flavor, but still choose vanilla in the end – this is what I like to call “social” free will, or,  the idea that no matter how deep the social conditioning, you can still choose to defy it. Or, you could have a very strong hunger for strawberry, but still in the end choose chocolate. This is “biological” free will, or, the idea that there is no one biological urge that sheer willpower cannot overcome.

The problem with both of these ideas is that the reality of social conditioning and biological urges tends to be simplified to downplay just how pervasive they are. Someone once gave me, as an example of the demonstration of “free will”, the fact that one of their friends had been pushed by their parents to become an engineer, but they had chosen to become an artist instead. Defying the wishes of their parents proved their capacity for free will.

But the reality about social conditioning is that it’s much, much more complex than simply “Your parents tell you what to do.” Her parents may have pressured her to become an engineer. But what about her friends? If you have a friend that’s an artist that extols the virtue of their craft, that’s social conditioning too. So is broader culture, which may romanticize the career of an artist, or glorify the idea of rebelling against authority figures, influencing people to defy their parents. All this is social conditioning, as well.

And then there’s the biological aspect as well. We’ve all probably felt the primitive flash of anger and imagined getting violent with someone who’s been frustrating us, particularly as children, and we’ve been able to resist that urge and calm ourselves down, so we may be sympathetic to the idea that there is nothing about our biology that we cannot defy. But biology works in a million more subtle ways than that. For example, the student who defied her parents to become an artist instead of an engineer may have inherited a number of biological traits that made engineering difficult for her. Let’s say that maybe, for genetic reasons, she lacked the ability to focus or was not able to understand abstract mathematical concepts. She might rationalize her idea to become an artist as a product of free will, but is it really? If she failed for biological reasons and was drawn to art as an alternative for social conditioning reasons, can we really call that “free will”?

I think the idea of free will is something humans came up with to describe a sort of happy, healthy balance. We are all essentially programmed, like a computer, by various biological and social factors, all interacting with each other. But we recognize it as unhealthy if someone has one overwhelming biological urge that controls everything they do, or if there is one social institution that has such a hegemony on society that they are the sole programmer of a person. “Free will” describes a happy state of balance between the various programming inputs on a human, so that no one factor sticks out, and all the background input sort of blends together into what you might consider your personality or identity. “Choice” is just a process of weighing all the different social and biological factors that might be influencing you at the moment. To the person who is in this state of happy balance, it feels like they are making a choice independent of all outside influence, because there is no one outside influence so overwhelming that it can be noticed among all the others. The outside influence is multifaceted, subtle, maybe even counter-intuitive, but it is there.

Because, ultimately, it’s difficult to see how we can reconcile the traditional idea of free will with what we know about the universe. We’re hardly masters of all knowledge, and there’s a lot we don’t know. But if traditional free will exists, that means certain arrangements of matter (that is, me and you) have the ability to act in defiance of all outside influence, which is a little like saying a rock can suddenly decide to stop obeying the laws of gravity. There’s a lot we don’t know about consciousness, but nothing about it suggests that we have the power to defy physics. If the universe is as mechanical as it seems to be, every action is predetermined, although it may never be possible to factor in all the preceding actions that influence the current action.Unless there is something about human consciousness that transforms entirely deterministic matter into something non-deterministic, which would be a very impressive trick.

Still, it seems very strange in some ways. When I go to pick out a book, it doesn’t feel like I’m making a predetermined choice. It feels like it’s very up in the air, like the idea is mine alone. Sometimes, maybe, I can point to biological or social factors behind my choice, but very often I can’t. It feels like the action is entirely mine, not something predetermined. I don’t ever go around saying “Well, all my actions are entirely the product of all preceding inputs”, everything feels like my choice. I might recognize that free will seems unlikely in the abstract, but I am unable to act as if I truly believe it doesn’t exist.  It seems like something very innately tied to our sense of identity leans heavily on the idea of free will. Which makes sense; without it, we’d be force to admit that all our actions are pretty much just an extension of the rest of the universe. But it still seems very odd that certain bits of matter in a deterministic universe would eventually arrange itself  in such a way that it would be capable of claiming that collectively, it was now non-deterministic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Morality Engine

This post by Slate Star Codex raises an interesting notion, and I suggest you read the whole thing to see their line of thought, but the brief summary is that the question is raised:

What if ideology (or, at least, certain ideologies) aren’t necessarily the product of intellectual introspection, but are rather some sort of mechanism that encourages group cooperation? What if ideologies – as well thought-out and interesting as they may seem – are largely a mechanistic process?

To put things in simple terms, to abstract them:

Say that group A stands to benefit if they undertake action X – say, each of them will, if action X is undertaken, have a chance to receive five thousand dollars.

However, for action X to be pulled off successfully, it needs the cooperation and involvement of most members of group A. Let’s say, a member of group A will have to donate, on average, five hundred dollars. The problem here is that if every member of group A acts in naked self-interest, action X may not be pulled off successfully. The problem with that is, without centralized control, great communication, and direct order-giving, individual members of group A actually have very little motivation to pull their weight. The best bet, for an individual member of group A, is to not contribute to accomplishing action X at all, and just hope others pull some extra weight, so that you’ll get the five thousand dollars for essentially doing nothing. And it actually becomes a bad bet to contribute: If you contribute, you are five hundred dollars in the hole, and, not knowing how many free riders there are, you may well have wasted that money to accomplish nothing. Naked self-interest is simply not enough to benefit your group.

Wouldn’t it be interesting, though, if a system of morality sprang up that convinced most members of group A that action X was not only in their self-interest, but that it was morally wrong to fail to accomplish action X. Suddenly you find that most members of group A will coordinate with each other in an entirely organic manner, with little need for centralized control or communication. Not only that, but because now you have a reason to accomplish action X that is decoupled from the self-interest of members of group A, you may be able to pull off the impressive trick of getting members of other groups to fight for your own self-interest. Members of groups B, C, D may suddenly begin contributing to the cause of group A, despite the fact that action X won’t benefit them at all. Viewed from this angle, ideological morality is very powerful indeed.

And in fact, it lays the groundwork for more complex, intricate systems of morality. Groups whose self-interest do not necessarily harm each other could be bond together in ideology to benefit them both. For example, group A might convince group B to commit to their cause of action X on moral grounds, which benefits them, and group B might convince group A to commit to action Y on moral grounds, which benefits group B. As long as they’re both capable of this function of converting group interest into morality, and as long as both their populations are capable of moral reasoning, action X and action Y might form together into a new, more complex moral ideology.

Of course, this dynamic could introduce new problems. Which sort of group stands to benefit the most from this system? It would have to be a group that is:

1. Good at rationalizing how its own naked self-interest is actually morality-based.
2. Good at converting members of other groups to its morality system.
3. Not susceptible to morality systems itself, so members of the group won’t invest, and will instead ride off the efforts of converted members of other groups.

Any group, call them group Z, that met these three requirements would invest nothing, and instead reap the benefits of other groups being converted to the moral standards that benefit group Z. It would be a pretty impressive feat, regardless of how such characteristics might strike us as hypocritical. Let’s think. What might such a group look like in real life?

Disconcertingly, such a group appears to be similar to a leadership caste in many respects. Political leaders often mask their naked self-interest behind moral justification. They are often very skilled at converting people to this morality system. And they are often hypocritical, not subscribing to this particular moral system behind closed doors. It’s true, that not all leaders are like this, but a significant portion of them certainly seem to be. Could a certain type of leadership personality be something that exists as a sort of parasite on the advantages of morality-based group coordination?

We can wonder how such a system could have arisen, but it seems like it might be obvious. Morality-capable groups have a significant advantage over groups that can only see things in terms of their self-interest, in the form of organic and decentralized cooperation. The most successful groups of humans were probably those which were capable of morality. It may well be bred into us.

But being capable of morality is only one part of the equation to take advantage of the organic cooperation for group interest. You also, vitally, need to be capable of describing your self-interest in moral terms. Slate Star Codex, linked above, gives the example of rich people tending to believe in libertarianism, or Objectivism, or prosperity gospel. None of these ideologies nakedly espouses the idea that actions are moral because they are in rich people’s interests. Instead, they use reasoning, aesthetic, and abstract ideals to come up with a value system in which rich people’s best interests just so happen to be the moral thing. But these value systems didn’t just spontaneously evolve. They were usually the work of many very bright thinkers.

But what was going on in the mind of these great thinkers? Were they openly saying to themselves: “Here, I will now justify why my group’s self-interest is actually a moral necessity, so my group will flourish”? I don’t think so, necessarily. If they were thinking that, I don’t think it was on a conscious level. Maybe it is some sort of grand ego-defense mechanism that the bright are capable of: to create a moral system that justifies their place in the world in the midst of an amoral, unjustifiable natural universe. I can’t really claim to know what was going on in their heads, though.

But it does seem to me that we can say that morality-susceptible groups hold a distinct advantage over groups whose members act in perfectly rational self-interest. But in order for it to work, it seems like each group needs to meet two requirements:

1. The majority of its members must be morality-susceptible (can’t handle an overabundance of free riders)
2. There needs to be an intellectual class capable of converting the group’s self-interest into a moral system.

 

Circles of Care

It is natural for us, as human beings, to separate the world according to how we favor it– assemble it into a sort of hierarchy of categories we care about.

For most people, the circle of human beings they care about the most will be their family. You can make distinctions – people will probably care more about their immediate nuclear family than their extended family – but for now we will just make that general point. It seems like a reasonable assumption. In general, if you were forced to choose between saving the life your own child, or a stranger’s child, you would choose to save the life of your own child. In addition, it seems obvious why we would have developed this way – favoring your family in situations like that ensures that your genes are more likely to be passed on than the genes of strangers.

Beyond family there are friends. Again, it is not so hard to see why we may have developed for this to be so, when looking beyond sentiment, or wondering how that sentimental feeling may have been encouraged in our ancestors. Friends, while they are not necessarily our genetic kin, are a social advantage. Friendships can bind together families in alliances, or simply be a sort of social insurance policy, something you can rely on in situations where you might not otherwise survive, and in turn your friends can rely on you. All things considered, you would save your friends before you would save a random stranger from death.

Circles of care beyond these two begin to get more and more artificial. That is not to say that they can’t offer significant advantages, but rather that humans did not necessarily develop the inclination to support them beyond abstractions. Favoring our family is genetically bred into us. Favoring those who we have social ties with is bred into us. Favoring anything beyond that is, most likely, not necessarily bred into us, but rather culturally instilled – for example, humans do not have it ingrained in them to necessarily form nations as they are. One could make the argument that, given our capacity for such political abstractions as “the nation”, that we are, in fact, bred for this. It may be that we are in fact bred for political abstractions of some sort, but my point is that it might not be anything as specific as a nation. We can imagine ourselves as part of large political abstractions that are not the modern nation-state. (And in face, much of our history has been spent in large political abstractions that are not the modern nation-state.) However, one can’t really imagine not being part of a family, or of socializing with someone regularly without some friendly feeling.

Probably the most controversial circle of care is the one that has one foot in biological grounding and one in political abstraction: race. There seems to be some biological foundation for us caring more about our own race than others. While many may feel uncomfortable with saying that they’d save the life of a member of their own race before the life of another member, this biological favoritism manifests itself in other ways. For example, people mostly prefer to date within their own race, and while some of that may be attributed to cultural factors, this pattern holds true even in areas where there is very little pressure against miscegenation. There may have been some evolutionary pressure to give us ingrained inclinations to trust members of our own race more than members of another, or to care about them more. Perhaps, back before the advent of larger political abstractions, like nations, it laid the foundations for different tribes to cooperate with each other against a larger threat. It does often seem that the first steps towards civilization were made along racial lines, and among a people with an explicit racial identity. However, the idea of race often goes far beyond this, often incorporating various groups that are very genetically disparate.

Then there are the political abstractions, the circles of care completely removed from ingrained tendency, products of more intellectual thought rather than feeling. Political abstractions can move from very local (a township) to less local (a county) to national (a state) to supra-national (a confederation of states.) These circles often contain smaller ones within themselves (for example, township inside county inside state inside confederation) and, although they may not completely eat each other, there are various ideologies that emphasize loyalty to one level over another. For example, nationalism emphasizes loyalty at the state level, and in many cases has actually been very good at eroding the care people may feel to their more local circles. For example, the USA has been very good at fostering care at a state and federation level as opposed to more local levels. Because these political abstractions are just that, abstractions, they often seek to bolster themselves by merging one circle of care with another. For example, a nation may consider itself an ethnostate, or a religious state, or a monocultural state, in order to bolster the loyalty people have to that particular layer of care. And this can apply to circles of care at levels lower than the national – a town can consider itself to have an identity of belonging to a particular religion, race, etc.

Running parallel to political abstractions are cultural abstractions, circles of care for people who share the same history, historically instilled attitudes, and traditional ideas. There can be subcultures within a larger cultural umbrella (such as regional cultures of the same state) and broader, more vague cultures that encompass a humongous number of people (such as the idea of a European cultural umbrella.) Generally, the larger these abstractions are, the less basis they have in reality – the less actual shared history and tradition the people share. And it is important to note that the cultural circles are actually separate from the state – German culture and the German state do not encompass the same circles of care. This may have been more difficult to perceive in the past, when each state was highly associated with a singular culture, but the distinction is much more clear in these days, when multiculturalism means that each state may encompass several cultural circles.

Religion is a type of cultural circle all its own. It may be used to merely reinforce the identity and strength of other circles, or it may subsume the other circles within itself. For example, while, for some people, Christianity may just be a component of their national identity (which may also be bolstered by other facets of their national culture), it is also possible to imagine people for whom being Christian comes first, and who care more for Christians in other nations than they do for non-Christians in their own.

The broadest, most vague type of cultural circle is that of a “civilization.” It is here, generally, that the utmost limit of considering someone an ‘insider’ can be found. While different peoples within the civilization might consider each other ‘outsiders’ in various ways, almost everyone within the civilization considers people outside of it to be outsiders. It’s the demarcation line between the somewhat familiar and the alien. All circles of care that encompass parts of two different civilizations are going to be inherently tenuous and utilitarian in nature.

The multi-civilizational circles of care are generally defined by the relationship between the two cultures. First is the relationship between friendly or sympathetic cultures that do not clash on any major issues. Further beyond that is the relationship between hostile or contradicting cultures. And finally, the outermost limit of human care, is the true “Alien” circle – the relationship between a culture and an unknown culture. All of humanity is encompassed within these circles. Further still beyond that we can see the beginning of non-human circles of care, encompassing first pets, then domesticated animals, familiar wildlife, alien wildlife, and invisible wildlife.

There is an idea of moral progress, as presented by some, who seem to believe that moral progress is a great flattening of this hierarchy of empathy, that the general improvement in the quality of life is due, at least in part, to us breaking down these circles, and casting ever wider ones when it comes to people that we care about equally. Some of the more extreme say that all these circles and distinctions should be broken down, that we should care for a stranger halfway across the globe as much as we might care for our own mother (see the utilitarian Peter Singer). The more reasonable advocates of this theory might say that well, of course we are always going to care about our family and friends above anyone else, but we should do our best to knock down all other distinctions, like race, nation, religion or civilization. And the history of moral progress has been just that: the knocking down of distinctions between groups.

I’m not so sure that this is the case. I think the distinctions are still there, and most likely always will be. I think the story of moral progress has been one of learning to treat the outgroup with more fairness. It is moral progress to go from wanting to murder all your neighbors to wanting to throw a barbecue with them, but that doesn’t mean those neighbors are suddenly members of your family. I think trying to erase all the distinctions, trying to flatten the empathy hierarchy, is a very poor idea. If we try the full version, where we try to forge ourselves to be as sympathetic to a total stranger as we are to our own family, that seems cold and totalitarian. If we try to go with the more realistic version – where we recognize we will always care more about friends and family, but try to knock down all other distinctions – that seems like a recipe for a world that will revert to tribalism. Flattening all other steps of the hierarchy just means that people will cleave closer to their families. Trying to make us care as much about a stranger in a faraway land as a stranger in our own nation just means we’re not going to care about either of them all that much.

Mental Traps

What makes totalitarianism?

Social ideas can be powerful things, and useful for organizing the world. A social idea is any idea that has to do, primarily, with how humans relate to each other. Among social ideas, there is a certain class of idea that attempts to explain all of social reality. Call them reality-complete social ideas. (A theory about something limited-say, about how people treat each other under duress-would be a reality-incomplete social idea.)

Reality-complete social ideas, when they become popular, can become the animating force behind religions, nations, civilizations. But in order to be reality-complete, a social idea must re-interpret history through the narrative of the idea. For example, communism was a reality-complete idea. It effectively broke down all of history into different periods of development leading up to the advent of communism. Various different forms of racialism are reality-complete ideas, often portraying reality as a struggle between the in-group race and other races. Modern narratives about democracy can be reality-complete ideas, portraying history as a struggle towards more freedom and autonomy for the people. Libertarianism and attendant Objectivism are reality-complete ideas, portraying history as a long struggle between collectivism and individualism.

These reality-complete ideas hold a strong allure, especially for the intelligent. A romantic notion of intelligence is that we have it in order to pursue truth and rationality. In reality, that (limited) ability for humans to pursue truth and rationality is a side-effect of what intelligence was truly meant for, which is social maneuvering. Intelligence is not meant for rationality, but instead rationalization – the post-fact justification of beliefs and opinions that you arrived at by often non-cognitive means. Reality-complete ideas can find ground among the less intelligent, but by and large they are usually more skeptical of them, because they lack the intelligence to consistently defend their particular reality-complete idea in the face of criticism. Reality-complete ideas find their most fertile ground in the more intelligent, who are more capable of defending their positions and justifying their beliefs to themselves. The less intelligent will often not be so committed, especially if they are exposed to many competing reality-complete ideas.

Once a reality-complete idea has taken root in a number of intelligent minds, it can become a mental trap. What is a mental trap? A mental trap is when a reality-complete idea, among a social group, creates conditions that so reinforce itself that it is nearly impossible to break through. Normally, a reality-complete idea can be tempered by exposure to competing reality-complete ideas, or reality-incomplete ideas that contradict the narrative of the reality-complete idea. This leaves the intelligent person whose mind is occupied by the reality-complete idea to still have room for subtlety, nuance, and the capability to consider things from the point of view of others. A mental trap overrides these tempering factors.

For example, let’s consider a somewhat intelligent young man, Michael, who believes in reality-complete idea called A. Reality-complete idea A describes history as a struggle between Michael’s country, let’s call it Funland, its allies, and an international cabal of diamond smugglers. Now, as it so happens, Michael’s country does suffer a lot of political meddling on the part of fabulously wealthy diamond merchants. It would be a poor reality-complete idea if it didn’t reflect reality a little bit. Michael joins an online discussion group based around reality-complete idea A. (Maybe it’s not explicitly based around A, but it serves its purpose if it’s dominated by A-believers.) From here, the trap closes in on him. You can gain status in the community by thinking up clever arguments that justify A. Moreover, the most clever, effective arguments on behalf of A are quickly distributed. Rarely does a member of this community encounter an advocate of a competing reality-complete idea and not have an effective retort.

Enough time in this community, and Michael will become incapable of understanding why EVERYONE doesn’t believe in reality-complete idea A. What’s more, he’ll see advocates of competing ideas only in terms of how they can serve reality-complete idea A. And he’ll see people who advocate contradictory reality-complete ideas as complete monsters.

If you think I’m describing a process that happens to only an unfortunate few who stumble onto the path of being zealots, I’m not. It happens to almost everyone in the modern age. The internet makes it far too simple for somewhat intelligent people to fall into mind traps of various different reality-complete ideas. It makes it too easy for effective arguments on behalf of reality-complete ideas to propagate quickly. And the open nature of the internet makes it too easy for people to whip themselves up into a siege mentality by viewing the off-hand comments of people from contradicting reality-complete ideas. For example, consider idea A again. Let’s say that B is an idea that directly contradicts reality-complete idea A, let’s say it’s sympathetic to the diamond smugglers. Advocates of idea A can easily go to see the public communications of the advocates of idea B. Imagine that advocates of idea B have a forum, where they are accustomed to talking among themselves about how great idea B is. In one discussion, they talk about how idiotic A-idea advocates are. One cheeky rogue suggests they shouldn’t be allowed to vote. A-advocates can take this public communication back to their OWN community, and hold it up as an example of how dastardly B-advocates are, and use it to whip people into a frenzy of doubling down on the obvious correctness of idea A.

People in the midst of a mind-trap see their reality-complete idea in everything. They are capable of spinning almost any event so that it fits the narrative of their idea. What’s more, they often operate under a siege mentality, seeing themselves surrounded by bloodthirsty opponents. This is what makes totalitarianism – for totalitarianism to work, you need an idea that reaches into every aspect of social relations, and you need a strongly motivated group of people who are capable of – independent of instruction – capable of seeing and rationalizing the idea’s narrative in any given situation. And most of all, these people need power. (Which most of them do not have.)

Reality-complete ideas can be dangerous, but I believe they are also necessary for the operation of any type of leadership caste or government. I plan on writing more on this thought in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mental Defenses Against Death

The massive, brutal reality of death is one that seems to lie so heavily on the human soul that significant portions of culture seem to center around attempting to deal with it. To accept the brutal nature of death is to accept that we live in a prison reality. All life and matter is just a thin crust on top of the huge, crushing inevitability of being erased from existence. And what’s worse, not only is life ended prematurely all the time, not only do we have no control over when it happens, but the extinction of life seems to be necessary for survival. Not only do we live with this huge, horrifying curse hanging over our heads, but we seem obligated to inflict it on others.

Humans can’t live contemplating this truth for very long. It’s a massive, crushing reality. It flattens everything, makes your whole world seem like a thin film over the void. You will begin to lose yourself, contemplating this brutal truth for too long. So we seek ways to step back from the totality of it.

The first step is simply to try to ignore it. Acknowledge these truths, yes, but don’t think about them too much. This is a thin defense, however. The more you see of death, the less you’re able to avoid thinking about it, and unless you’re devoid of imagination, this central horror of reality will always be threatening to take over your mind.

Next, you might reach for reasoning. You might say that before you were born you didn’t exist, and so you have already experienced the state of not existing and didn’t seem to mind it. So the period after your death, when you will also not exist, won’t be so bad. This is a step further than simply ignoring the issue, and a clever mental trick. You’ve already experienced the central horror of reality – non-existence – so it can’t really be that bad, right? But the fact is, there’s a big difference between never having existed at all, and, having existed, knowing you must go back to not existing. But this mental trick may be enough to hide the horror of death for some people.

For many more, though, it is clearly not enough. The next step may be to deny the reality of death completely, through the invention of an afterlife, or the idea of a cycle of rebirth. You can even perform another mental magic trick, and attack the horror of death head on, posing oblivion and annihilation as a welcome relief to the endless cycle of rebirth. The problem with this tactic is that it requires faith, and faith requires cultural cohesion. It may even be – although I can’t say for certain – that the long-term maintenance of faith requires more than simple cultural uniformity, it requires a certain level of violent enforcement of dogma. Perhaps any faith that does not have the cultural power to punish heretics is a faith that is already on a long retreat. Perhaps no amount of social pressure can protect the central dogma of faith from the long centuries of unpunished skepticism. Perhaps any faithful society, no matter how monolithic the faith, is on the road to losing it if they don’t punish apostates, even if it may take centuries to see the faith truly crumble.

Another way to attempt to deal with the horror of death may be to try to claim its power for yourself. This is a thread of thought that the modern west is mostly isolated from, but those in military service may be able to relate, and you can get a dim glimpse of the idea from reading some select military literature. To grapple with the idea of mortality from a distance is one thing, to be required to deal it is another. To deal death is to command an awesome power, far beyond mere destruction of bodies, and if you wield it enough, it can become a mental magic trick, a way to deny the horror of your own mortality. Your own mortality seems somehow less intimidating when you hold power over the mortality of others. This, when operating among masses of men, can lead to a culture of death worship. When I say worship, I don’t mean that the men will literally be building temples to death. Nor do I mean that they will necessarily venerate death as something holy. But they will be engaged in constant rituals that put death at the center. They will get up and run while singing chants about killing and being killed, much of their day will be spent practicing different methods of dealing death, and they will often be exposed to extremely graphic imagery involving death. Individuals may respond to this in different ways – one may even view this whole culture with a kind of ironic detachment – but the rituals will still be performed. You could say that every military operates under a culture of death worship to some degree. Death worship is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. It is merely another method by which those who live with violence can deal with mortality. However, the broader culture of death worship can go wrong. Just as a culture of even the mildly religious can produce, through some mechanism, cults, so the broader death worship culture can produce death cults, which can lose themselves to brutality.

So there are many ways to deal with the idea of death, both secular and religious. More than I’ve

named here, certainly, there are other mental loops and religious ideas about death. But this is the totalitarianism of death: So much of our human thought is based around cultural, philosophical and religious ideas that sprang up around death, and the logic that extends from these ideas. If you are a conservative, your ideas on a broad range of issues are likely to be informed by (in America, at least) Christianity, and a large part of the Christian ethos is based around the story they tell themselves about death. But because so much of our belief systems are built up around how we deal with death, fundamental disagreements between two belief systems can shake people to their core. Not all disagreements are fundamental disagreements. Christians can have a wide variety of disagreements with one another, some taken very, very seriously. Fundamental disagreements are those in which two incompatible ethical systems clash with each other. If two people agree that, say, crime is a problem, they can argue over the way to deal with it. However, if someone is trying to argue the same point with a mob boss, they may run into the fundamental problem of the mob boss thinking that crime is a good thing.

Fundamental disagreements like this, then, shake us to our core because they can ultimately feel like an attack on our mental defenses against the horror of death, the defenses that keep us sane and functioning. It may be in the interest of society, then, to minimize the contact people have with fundamental disagreements like this. It may be that a certain portion of the population can be allowed to toy with the intellectual idea of non-standard mental defenses against death. In fact, I think this sort of mental freedom and experimentation can be a good thing. But if the majority of the country is of christian faith, you may want to limit their exposure to things that challenge the idea of their faith. After all, we all have our irrational beliefs about death to keep madness at bay. But the average human being may not have the ability (or inclination) to keep shoring up these defenses when exposed to constant attack. Just because we have a certain portion of the population capable of reasoning and experimenting with different mental defenses against death does not mean the average man is capable of doing so. (And given the mental eccentricities associated with the intellectual elite, I’d question just how ‘undamaged’ they really are, experimenting with their defenses like that.) Take your average man, and constantly expose him to the idea that his fundamental beliefs about death are wrong, and he may not be so likely to accept new mental defenses, but rather to let a little bit of that madness-inducing horror into his soul. It may be mentally unhealthy to, however gently, expose the average person to the idea that their beliefs about death are mistaken.

Unity From a Security Perspective

For a long time, the general trend of history has been to gravitate towards larger and larger geopolitical entities, exerting a homogenizing influence on humanity. Where the human race used to be defined by thousands of different tribes, different cultural worlds, now we are defined by a mere few hundred states. Even a modestly-sized modern state can encompass more territory (and almost certainly more human beings) than the most expansive empires at the dawn of history.

It’s easy to see why this happened, from a security perspective. (Not to say that it was the only factor in consideration.) Simply put, all other things being equal, you are more physically secure as the citizen of a large empire than you are as the citizen of a small tribe. A hundred small tribes can be conquered piecemeal, while a state banded together from them all is much more difficult to subjugate. There were countervailing factors that might limit the extent of how beneficial it was to grow so large (it is not so easy to enforce your rule across large swathes of territory), but these countervailing factors were diminished by technology. And, at the same time, technology made it ever more beneficial to join together with a larger empire. Before the popularization of gunpowder and effective battlefield medicine, you could more certainly rely on skill at arms, knowledge of the terrain, or sickness to curb an expansive empire’s appetite. These are certainly still factors in war, but not nearly as much as they used to be. The point, though, is that the general trend has been that political unions have become, over the ages, much more appealing. And when you look at the given rationale behind historical political unions, preventing war and providing for a better defense are usually pretty high up on the list of reasons in favor.

This trend has been going on for so long that it’s almost as if it’s been bred into us. “Unity” is now more than just a means to a better defense, it’s an idea with vague positive connotations that is seen as an end in itself. Indeed, the idea of “unity” is now more than simply practical – it’s baked into numerous branches of ideology and spirituality with the name “universalism”, so much so that it’s almost odd for us to contemplate a non-universalist idea. The idea of unity has gained so much momentum that we seem to not have noticed that our original reasons for it barely exist anymore – that, indeed, some of our original reasoning behind unity now seems to dictate that it would be better to abandon our mega-states and exist as smaller political entities.

Consider the advent of nuclear weapons. The concept of “unity” had been going strong for centuries, at this point, so much so that the world after WW2 was completely under the sway of two massive empires with populations and territory unparalleled in history, the Russian and American empires. The Russian empire was in the grips of a heavy-handed universalist dogma that compelled it to spread its form of government across the globe and collect all converted territories into one massive political entity called the Soviet Union. The American empire was a bit less dogmatic about its own universalist ideology (liberal democratic capitalism), and didn’t insist on collecting all converts into one political entity on the map, but it seems obvious that Washington’s political authority, no matter what the map said, actually extended far beyond the borders of the United States itself.

Into this situation was introduced a new weapon so destructive that international politics, for fifty years, became a question of ensuring that it saw minimal use. We are all familiar with the arrangement reached – both the Russian and American empires vowed that if any portion of their extensive territories suffered a nuclear attack at the hands of the other, the leadership would escalate the situation so that both parties would be completely destroyed. And, in reality, at the height of the cold war, any nuclear weapon, detonated anywhere, by any political entity, probably would have ignited mutually assured destruction.

This, given the situation, was a good way to prevent the use of nuclear weapons: Ensure that their use had such a high cost that even the irrational would pause to use them. It did have a flaw – the more nations that obtained nuclear weapons, the higher the chance that a non-American, non-Russian political actor might use them, and thus drive the world towards Armageddon. Preventing the use of all nuclear technology whatsoever was unlikely, however, considering its potential benefits (peaceful power generation.) So the American and Russian empires, under the guise of internationalism, came up with a reasonable bargain for non-nuclear states: promise to never obtain nuclear weapons, and we will share civilian nuclear technology with you.

We lived out the cold war without either side launching any nukes, and the non-proliferation treaty has been (mostly) successful, so it’s assumed that what we did was enough. And with the Soviet Union gone, we seem to be at much less risk for total annihilation. But the risk of nuclear weapons hasn’t disappeared – the political situation has merely changed. Nuclear weapons are as destructive as ever, if not more so. And it’s worth considering the security implications for the constituent states of the two empires that were the main players of the Cold War.

First off, it’s worth wondering whether or not the strategy of mutually assured destruction really was all that effective, or if we were just lucky. We know now that there were several occasions where the nukes were almost launched, including one situation during the Cuban missile crisis where the judgment of one Soviet naval officer was all that stood between us and nuclear holocaust. If we really wanted to prevent nuclear annihilation, was it really best to have most of the nukes stockpiled in the hands of two massive empires in the grips of competing universalist ideologies? Was that really the most effective way to ensure the safety of the citizens? If the point of unity is defense, given the reality of nuclear weapons, is the best bet really to be the part of a massive empire that, in the event of a nuclear attack, is likely to be the target of thousands of nuclear weapons? Wouldn’t it actually be much better to live in a smaller, non-affiliated state? In fact, wouldn’t the best bet be to live in a smaller, non-affiliated state with nuclear weapons of its own? That way you would have a nuclear deterrent against conventional warfare, but in the event that the Soviet Union and the US did go to war, you wouldn’t necessarily be a target of nuclear strikes. It’s interesting that the US arranged economic and political pressure to prevent exactly this sort of political entity from emerging.

But even assuming that the Soviet Union’s satellite states and America’s protectorates did not exist – even assuming that the Cold War involved ONLY the USA and Russia as defined as political entities on the map – was it really in your best defense to be a member of one of those states? A lot of the political antagonism between the US and the USSR came from ideological differences. In the US, the main advocates of liberal democratic capitalism tended to be northeastern industrialists and their attendant political hangers-on. Consider, for a moment, if every state of the US, in addition to its own national guard conventional forces, had its own nuclear arsenal. Put yourself in the shoes of, let’s say, Wyoming. You’ve got a few hundred nukes of your own. You’re not actually all that concerned with the USSR invading, because you doubt they will bear the political cost of all their largest cities being annihilated simply to capture your territory. However, you are shackled to an imperial system where the most strident voices seem intent on antagonizing the Soviets. If a war does start, despite you not really caring for the imperial anti-communist slant, you’ll be vaporized along with the rest of them. At that point, isn’t unity a distinct disadvantage? And this holds true not just for the US. Under any large geopolitical system, nuclear weapons make unity neutral at best, in terms of maintaining territorial integrity and preventing outside political subjugation. In reality, unity would probably be a negative, because in reality large political systems tend to draw their leadership caste from a limited geographical area, meaning that shackling yourself to that system would shackle you to their ideological wars and get you vaporized on their whims. It is much better to strike out on your own and serve your own interests. It doesn’t matter how small the political entities are that you break the US up to, in fact. They could be very small – city-state small – but as long as they had their hands on enough nuclear weapons to nuke a few Soviet cities, the political cost of conquering them would be much higher than the benefits.

You might object, and say that defense is about much more than simple territorial integrity. Nuclear weapons might make very small nations punch above their weight level in terms of defending their territory, but unity still offers the benefits of a strong conventional military, and a strong conventional military is key to international influence. But what, exactly, is the nature of the influence a strong conventional military buys you in the modern era, with the responsibility of territorial integrity being held by nukes?

Can it gain you new territory? For the most part, no. A conventional military cannot gain you territory held by a nuclear-powered state, and most likely the political cost of conquering new territory will be too high, particularly if the non-nuclear state is closely allied with a nuclear state. New territory tends to be tenuous if militarily conquered, unless the occupants of the conquered territory are ethnically similar to the conquerors, and truly welcomes them. Otherwise you will probably spend a fortune holding on to a territory that is never truly yours.

Can it replace hostile foreign governments with sympathetic ones? A strong conventional military can topple the government of a non-nuclear foreign country. But, for the most part, it cannot ensure that the government that replaces it will be sympathetic. In fact, the invasion itself may make the replacement government much more likely to be hostile. And you do not actually need a military invasion to topple a hostile foreign government. Often you can rely on funding internal dissent.

Can it gain you new resources? Maybe. But it’s almost always cheaper to simply buy resources, rather than spend the money to wage a war for them.

Can it gain you international prestige? Maybe. It can certainly make others fear you. But that fear will fade quickly unless you prove that you’re willing to actually use your large military. So it would seem that a large military comes with another hidden price tag: You have an obligation to engage it in warfare just to prove that you’re willing to use it. And even then, a nuclear armed state will fear you significantly less. Can it impress others? It can, in two ways: through scientific and technical feats, and through impressive humanitarian service. However, impressive technology and humanitarian service do not actually need to be military in nature. We may always need rough men to deliver the humanitarian resources to dangerous areas, but a strong conventional military is not the only place that you can find rough men. And impressive technology does not actually need a strong conventional military to wield it. Remember, in the terms of the benefits of unity, “strong” translates to “more numerous.” You do not actually need a very large military in order to show off impressive offensive technology. In fact, a lot of technology seems geared towards making a larger military less necessary.

So what, exactly, are the benefits of having a stronger (larger) conventional military? What benefits does a larger military have that justifies the downsides of unity?

It gives you the ability to stop foreign wars – not necessarily wars on your own territory, but wars between two other countries. If you have a large, strong military, simply by promising to get involved in a war between two other countries, you can influence them not to go to war.

It gives you options. If you don’t want to invade someone, but, instead, want to blockade them, it helps – though it is not strictly necessary – to have a larger conventional military. If you want to enter someone’s territory to accomplish some (non-conquest) political objective, it helps – though again, it is not strictly necessary – to have a larger conventional military. Consider the scenario that a terrorist group, after bombing your capitol, takes refuge in a foreign nuclear-armed nation. You may not want to jump immediately to threatening the foreign government with a nuking in order to get them to arrest and extradite the terrorists. If you send in a small highly-trained team to arrest the terrorists yourself, you may get the foreign government to look the other way. Although, in this scenario, having a more numerous military is not actually necessary – simply having a small highly-trained unit is.

So, when we assume that defense of territorial integrity is largely taken care of by nuclear weapons, unity offers a distinct disadvantage by increasing the likelihood that you’ll be annihilated on the whims of someone’s ideology that you don’t necessarily agree with. To offset that, unity offers the remaining benefits for which a large conventional military is necessary, which boils down to: toppling hostile foreign governments (for which there is an alternative option), gaining resources (for which there is an alternative, less expensive option), making others fear you (assuming they are not nuclear states), and stopping wars between other foreign powers. So, if you really, truly just do not care about whether or not two foreign powers go to war, all that unity has to offer you is the ability to project fear. I’m not going to argue against fear. Having others fear you can be a very precious resource. But is it worth the price of permanent unity?