Pop Culture

 It is taking a while for parity to come to pop culture.  I wonder if this is the war the Pagans missed when Catholics came for them in the dark ages?

Right now I'm still thinking about the role media (and pop culture gatekeepers) play societally.  In particular I'm thinking about the Chiefdom polity size split between war chiefs and religious/moral chiefs. Why do societies need moral gatekeepers?  I suspect big societies do.  We had religion for a while.  But governmental pacing and leading of religion means we've left the sweet spot where society was equally balanced between secular moral chiefs and religious moral chiefs.  And, we're clearly seeing Media (and academia) trying to take the role of the new moral chief.

Too True

 I suspect the only way to get peace for the next half century is for the majority of countries to split into collectivist and individualist nations.

For example this cartoonist was fired for this and other Covid cartoons.

Meme

 

Sins

I wonder how productive this functional definition of sin is:

"Sin is that which destroys or erodes correct meta-narratives".

That would separate out things which simply erode group boundaries from that which destroys authenticity and authority.

 

Civil War Splits

 I just have to say that my decades old prediction of US civil war is now pretty accurate.  About 3 or 4 years ago I updated it a bit to suggest that any conflict should follow the standard weak empire evolutionary track. That's where a nation with too large of a de facto boundary fractures. The fracture typically produces two distinct states. Although during the fracture period more than that number of states may spring up, but over time, they coalesce or evaporate away.

Here's Tim Pool now discussing these issues based on a recent survey (of unknown quality) saying that around 40% of both Republicans and Democracts think it would be a good idea for the US to split into Red and Blue countries.

I think the spectre of a Trump 2nd (3rd) term would freak a lot of people out. This is especially true if he finally has a political machine and can pull the type of authoritarian BS that Biden's controllers can.  Do you think the left wouldn't want to split if Trump purges the military, disbands the FBI and "builds it back better"? And then purges some of the judiciary due to various hyped up issues and "suddenly opened skeletons in the closet"?

Personally, I think figuring out the city state influence problem is the major issue.  How do you keep city states from controlling urban states? You can remove the cities to some non-contiguous blue zone. Then the real cost of resources and labour could shoot up, providing equitable control between commoner classes and elite/coordinator classes.  Coordinator centers would then have to go to small rural cities. Over time the same problems would emerge, but at least for a while issues would "flatten out". Horizontal or flat networks are good for a time, but not for a long time, and not during times of nasty military threats.

RESONANCE

One thing that will likely energize this split is the fact that many progressives want "America" to cease so that it can be recreated.  This is probably an artefact of Hegellian dialetics.  The radical left has made most of its culture war progress since the 90's by redefining terms. Thus, why not "redefine" your nation's name?

Once you do this, you have a clean Taliban-level break from cultural history. You can exclude anyone you want as an "other" and sacralize the allies/identities you want.

The only problem, is sometime the other side agrees to this. This produces a pyrrhic victory. Your side gets what it theoretically wants, but it looses what it oft-time really wants - power over their foes.

Here's a twitter post with a racial progressive calmly espousing the end of America.  I can't see many right wingers disagreeing with her. "Let's divide the country and you can do whatever racial things you want - we'll focus on equality of opportunity and equality under the law."

"Still Saveable" Dynamics

 Evangelical Wokeism presents endless opportunities for analysis from a science of religion lens. One interesting dynamic is the observable tendency for radical progressives to tolerate Taliban like extremists while loathing center right conservatives.  Why?

Universalizing religion affords a potential answer.

I'll start with a case study to make parallels more obvious.

PARALLEL

Mormonism is a pretty pluralistic religion. This doesn't mean Mormon parents are happy to let their kids be best friends with a boozer or sexter.  Like many high-cost religions, Mormons can be pretty tribalistic when it comes close associations. But, they are also famous for never getting offended when people reject their beliefs.  While this may come from its high percentage of return missionaries who are very well versed in rejection, this trait has theological resonances.

When someone rejects Mormonism, Mormons tend to think "well they'll just accept it later once they have the full picture".  They often reason that the person is just clouded due to circumstances arising from a fallen world.  Mormon temple work backs this meme up. Everyone is afforded an opportunity for necessary acceptance rituals. 

WOKEISM

So is the reason many progressives, especially evangelical wokeists, are happy with Taliban-based diversity in their neighbourhood, but aghast at truck driving conservatives due to a Mormon like assumed universality?

If only that Taliban had a good chance to hear the wonders of diversity, they'd accept it.  Just let them live here for a few years, and maybe their oppressed upbringing can be partially cleansed?  In other words, the group I'm talking about believes BIPOC rejection of woke tenets is due to environmental issues, not due to open-eyed choice.

On the other hand, evil conservatives have seen enough to make informed decisions, and they have purposefully rejected progress.  In Mormonism, this type of sin is reserved to a very very few who have a sure knowledge of Gospel truth and then purposefully reject it as per the devil.

CONCULSION

Purposeful religious rejection vs environmentally biased rejection may explain the confounding observation that many Wokeists abhor conservatives mild sins while tolerating horrendous 3rd world BIPOC sins.  The former is purposeful and done knowingly.  The latter is done unwittingly and is environmentally caused (ultimately by the devil of white supremacy and patriarchy).

Of course one could also just say that conservatives are heretics while 3rd world BIPOC intolerants are just pagans. This sort of gets at what is happening. But, I don't think the explanation is deep enough.

8646

 

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” - C.S. Lewis

Alberta's likely fate as the teachers association leaders decide it must combat Jason Kenney's culture war strategy by moving far left in this culture war in order o keep balance and raise 'moral kids'.  The Orange bubble reasoning is that anything else is "hate".

Good people get led astray into landscape traps that suit their moral-political and quasi-religious biases. That's why Jonathan Haidt's old paper on the fallacy of rational based decision making was so seminal.

Woke Authoritarianism eventually runs into Wokish Equity

 

Does Pan-nationalism Foster Sub-nationalism?

Smith makes one final, excellent, and fairly novel point in his 2nd edition of "Nationalism".  Growing trends towards pan-nationalism may be engendering ethnie based energies, such as Quebec separatism, Basque & Catalon independence, and perhaps even Red Blue divides in the States.

Since I tend to favour homestatic views of human psychology (i.e. we feel most comfortable with a certain base level of 'stimulation' on a variety of proximate needs), this idea makes sense to me.  If we have a 'nationalism' meter which is calibrated, gene-culturally, based on a number of large-group tendencies, then perhaps shifting to a larger group orientation encourages us to thing smaller-group on some other orientations?

Phrased differently, our tendency for a certain level of 'nation state-ism" can either be made up of a current nation state orientation or a more pan-national one complimented by a more 'tribal' (ethnie) one.  For instance as Canada becomes more multi-cultural and pan-national, its people identify more and more with their heritages and less and less with a mythic Canadian identity.  As Trudeau and other hyper-globalists say, Canada (and UK, etc.) have no distinct cultural identity.  We are amalgams of different identities who are unified by progressive multi-cultural foci.

IMPLICATIONS

There are obviously some HUGE social and political implications here.  As nation states become passe, we should see a lot more ethnic and pseudo-ethnic focus.  Thus you get a resurgence of Black American myths, but you also get rich white liberals imagining themselves as an ally group which is clearly distinct from their non-allying peers.

This is really interesting.

We get classic tribalism re-emerging, but we also get the development of new theory or quasi-religion based groups.  This explains why things like vaccine mandates now become a very clear demarcation point for a whole host of other culturally identifying positions.  Groups are in a hyper-demarcation process.  Thus you get the tattoo groups and the anti-tattoo groups.  No one is planning any of this, it just feels right to have a new level of "uniqueness" and group affiliation to your identity.  Nation based assimilation is now super passe.  The lack of enthusiasm with the Olympics exemplifies this.  Many people don't want woke members of their nation to win, others don't want conservative members of their nation to win (or even play).

I suspect the nation state is over and done with.  But, I think it is very unlikely that pan-nationalism / globablism will be able to fill the void.  Sure you'll have super-zealous progressive globablist making costly commitment display "for humanity".  Progressive wokeism, may even be able to congeal enough of a cultural identity to make this feasible. But if it does this, it will have to do it at the level of religion and not secular governance.  Climate change, save the whales, and every other common pool problem are good-enough as costly commitment display markers, but sacrifice for these tropes doesn't have the adaptive group conditions necessary to make things work at a more practical (and secular) level.

Not Unique

 The authoritarian dynamics of the Soviet Union and Maoist China were not unique. They're a secular-progressive version of the famous Catholic Inquisitional periods. 

The main idea is that situations are so severe drastic norm compliance rules are justified.  Well, not just justified - required for proper life functions.

I suspect we would have seen similar behaviours emerge during pre-axial ages as populations tried to appease various gods "to make things right". 

    "Hey Zoraster, you better leave that offering when you walk by the temple, because if not, we'll have to report you.  We're all in this together.  14 days to appease the gods.  It's just a small little thing."

I suspect most of the Covid rules are more akin to token appeasing shamanism that good science. But, then again, how you look at such question is entirely dependent upon whether you're analyzing things at a population level or individual level.  On an individual level, almost no Covid rules make sense.  On a population level, most anything that creates a sense of importance makes sense (regardless of its non-social factuality).

Australian Officials Issue Soviet-Style COVID Broadcasts: Begin Turning in Your Neighbors Now

https://www.westernjournal.com/australian-officials-issue-soviet-style-covid-broadcasts-begin-turning-neighbors-now/?utm_source=parler&utm_medium=westernjournalism&utm_campaign=parler

Public "Health" Lock Downs

 How long until gun violence results in public health lockdowns?  Not long is my guess...

https://www.foxnews.com/us/washington-dc-murders-surpass-coronavirus-deaths-july

Accurate Assessment

 I hate to say this is accurate, but....  when too many stars align, power grabs become way too easy.  It's a proof of the truism "We're all serfs now"

Social Cohesion Capital Leeches

 You can either view most pop media as a new de facto, inquisitional type of priest class, or simply as social cohesion capital leeches.

I suspect the true believers are more the priest class type. Rachel Maddow and most BLM komissars come to mind here. Stetler, Cuomo and others seem to me more the leech type.  Pelosi and most Establishment types strike me more as grand inquisitors who do it for the power and sheer joy of power exercise.  True Stalinist personality types, who are at best rationalizing things 'for the greater good' as per most modern movie arch villains.

The leeches worry me the most.  You can't get rid of the spread of true believers and power hungry inquisitors.  Once you get too many leeches though, things fall apart quickly.  Social cohesion capital is a very slow renewing resource - akin to coal & oil.  You don't get it back in a generation. And once the civil wars get going and you fall down polity sizes (i.e. down to a lower adaptive group level of societal organization), you don't claw your way out of it easily.  How long did it take the Egyptians to get back on their feet after their post-kingdom collapse?  The Mayans?  The western Romans?  The eastern Romans?  It's something to look at.

The US got back on their feet after their Revolutionary civil war, and their 1860's civil war.  But, they had space to expand.  Right now they're in a much different space.  WHile some may see it as globalist growing pains, I tend to see it as empire collapse pains.  Time will tell which it is. Most of the markers strike me as growth of two new and distinct sub-contintental nations.  The tearing down of old national symbols, the growth of new national anthems, new meta-narrative histories (1619 project), the xenophobic rejection of competing ethnies, and the desire for new rule of law, all strike me as the hallmarks of nationalism.  These tendencies may be clothed in globalistic rhetoric, but I think its specific type of globablism is more akin to "expanding the size of one's dominion (and hence power)" more than it is true globalism.  The infighting between the religiously committed globablists and the "BLM" nationalistst will be interesting to see.   How that turns out will depend on how a power hungry figure like Pelosi, who in many ways resembles a cowardly version of Constantine, plays out.  Unfortunately, I don't see her or most like her as having any real moral backbone. Hence I think they will destroy, but won't have the insight to make it a creative destruction as per Constantine.

Nationalism as a result of Sufficient Internal Migration?

How did nationalism and nation states arise? Smith's standard text "Nationalism" presents the standard historical and anthropoligical views.  He even mentions kin-based biology and gene-culture co-evolution. Too bad he, like most historians and anthropologists dismisses it.

But, like all good books, most rewards come from the muses they inspire rather than the direct knowledge they impart.  Smith's brief description of Gellner's 1960's - 19080's theory of nationalism was one such muse for me.  From what I understand, Gellner's nationalistic origin theory is abased on reconciliation between an urbanizing proletariat and established urbanites (elites & proletariat).  When combined with a literate society, coordination took the form of nationalism and nation states.

From a gene-cultural multilevel selection lens, this actually seems OK.  Could sufficient migration levels within a loosely coupled ethnie during a religoius-political Great Awakening cycle produce an adaptive group and moral Big Brother (List & Pettit type) that was happy to stick to fixed boundaries?

I suspect internal migration, not based on expansionist conquest might be key.  Seeing loosely coupled people as part of the same adaptive group would require some sort of meta-narrative bind.  I'd suggest Scott Atran's work on religion makes sense here.  You need some quasi-factuals to bind people and serve as low cost commitment displays.  These would also serve as a guide to understand the moral Big Brother, provided of course you had a sufficiently primed cultural background to correctly do so.

The missing piece is non-expansionist tendencies....

Could this be where progressive religion comes in?  For instance, early Christianity seems to have made hay with the idea of Salvation and universalized divinity.  Everyone is a son of God. Everyone can be saved.  By treating others as yourself (or at least not like chattel) you then save yourself.  While this ideology eventually turned into imperialism, I would suspect it started out very pluralistic.  I also suspect this general class of cultural proclivity is highly adaptive as it sets up selection for higher levels of organization.

The problem comes from Progressivism's Pandora's box.  One everyone is seen as human as your in-group, then there's not much stopping you from destroying other groups for their own liberation. I think we're in that phase right now. That's the neo-catholic idea I discussed the other week.

The piece that needs explaining is why the first nations would remain internally focussed.  I suspect the answer is in "just the right levels of internal migration relative to cultural disparities".  This seems akin to the very narrow solution space 1970's group selection needed to operate within in order to be theoretically possible.  I believe D.S. Wilson showed that this very narrow, improbable, solution band is actually where groups reside.  My guess is that some fitness (wealth) transfer from governments or elites back to commoners is part of the stabilizing solution. And, that pluralistic tendencies combined with just the right amount of inward focus caused by narrow-band migration levels produce the necessary solution space for non-expansionist Nationalism.

But I could be wrong.  However, while improbable, it just feels right for some reason....

The Protestant revolution did something 

Moralized Quasi-religious Politics

 It's nice seeing smart thinkers finally coming around to fuller understandings of how politics has now been infused with religion - specifically the next great evolution in world religion, Wokeism.

Destabilization is often a feature not a bug

 

Destabilization often isn't a problem - it's a feature. You just have to look at it from the right lens, and over the right time frame.

Think Mao, Stalin, Luther, Constantine, AOC, BLM,

https://www.revolver.news/2021/07/south-africa-riots-looting-critical-race-theory/

Nation Building - By Splitting US' Old Weak Federal 'Empire'

 The latest book Ive been reading on nationalism is Anthony Smith's 2nd Edition of Nationalism.  I like it a lot more than Hazony's Virtue of Nationalism.  But, the two are very different beasts. 

Here's a quote from Smith that makes me think that the fracturing of America down tribalized political lines is not a simple flash in the pants idea...

"The nation, in the eyes of nationalists, can be described as a community of history and destiny, or better, a community in which history requires and produces destiny - a particular national destiny.  This idea of destiny carries far more emotional freight than notions of the futures....  For nationalists, the nation's destiny is always glorious, like its distant past; indeed, the golden past, hidden beneath the opporessive present, will shine forth once again, through the regeneration of the tru spirit of the nation by the yet unborn."

In evolutionary language, Smith is describing a grand (moral) meta-narrative.  More specifically, I think, it is a grand meta-narrative quasi-fable that also encodes the 'scripture' necessary for List & Pettit moral Big Brother alignment.  That is to say, the stories nationalists tell about their nation contain enough moralized "data points" for the emergence of a strong Big Brother group agent.  If you don't understand the cultural milieu in which the stories are situated you probably won't pick this up.

I suspect this is what is happening with the Democratic Black nation in the States.  They are heading down the road of nation building within the US' imperial carcass.  That is the deep reason you see Trumpists labelled as insurrectionists and deplorable 'others'.  It's not just superficial racism (equity).  It's part of the evolutionary process of weak empire splitting. 

In fact, the more I read in Smith, the more the US' current politicalization reminds me of Protestant Catholic splits in the1600's.  There Protestants created a new meta-narrative fable out of the ashes of imperial-Catholic feudal empires.

Eating Their Own Just Means You Need a "Unifier"

 The study of the use of Christianity to win ancient Rome's intra-elite conflict is very apropos today.  The big lesson is that Constantine, an outsider from Britain, used Christianity to purge his political opposition and filter out the elite classes by taking advantage of a Great Religious Awakening cycle and turning it into a politicized inquisition.

Thus when you see Woke groups devour their own, don't get cocky, it just means that someone will soon figure out how to become a unifier in chief, taking the opportunity to bring various sects / cults together along a strategic path of their own choosing.  The politicalization of Christianity (in its various political epochs) went the same way

Implications of our new Compliant Natures

 Gene-culture dual inheritance theories suppose that stabilization to major polity size changes occur as a result of stabilized gene-cultural traits.  In other words, Scots accept English rule once enough fiercely independent people get selected out of the population (due to war) and a critical mass of more compliant traits stabilize in the population.  Stabilization may occur just on the cultural level. But long term polity size stabilization usually requires a decent amount of selection at the genetic level (i.e. a sufficient frequency of "agreeableness" genes (or at least the genes which directly or indirectly correlate with agreeable personalities) in the population).

Covid lockdown compliance has sown us just how compliant modern populations are to hitherto egregious authoritarianism.  It's hard to imagine a 17th century Scot agreeing to Sydney's "only one person can leave the house each day" policy.  Nor can one imagine 1940's American's agreeing to universal mask mandates for an illness with a 0.002% fatality rate for 20-49 year old folk.  The Swedish epidemiologist responsibilty for that country's voluntary restriction strategy was stunned at how easily people across the classically liberal world went along with Covid authoritarianism.  I have to say, it stunned me as well.  You think there would have been at least a few spectacular immolations as crazed individuals were fined and jailed. Indeed, the most chilling part of Covid is the awareness that 1930-1950 illiberalness wasn't an aberration.

Indeed, I think it is safe to assume that Covid compliance suggests that the gene-cultural traits required for a new level of governmental authoritarianism are broadly prevalent in Western society.  Some countries, like the US, remain uncertain, but that is likely a function of US's de facto status as a dual confederacy under a dying weak federal empire.

This has some major implications.  It means that the next polity shift, presumably into pan-nationalism, is more ready than almost everyone supposed.  Meme's like "there is no planet B", and "we're all in the climate fight together", have unexpectedly fertile ground upon which to play and evolve.

But the gene-cultural shifts which enable higher polity size changes don't unidirectionally produce benevolent governances.  Indeed, I'd suspect that insight into the "progressive" world's compliance means that a both good AND foul intentioned authoritarians will use newfound population level compliance traits for rather nefarious ends.

This seems to be the fear of "Great Reset" folk.  There is a real fear that a Trudeau fop will pull a Covid lockdown for "climate change" or some other pan-national issue.  The goal may be good. But it will be hard to disentangle moral intent from its illiberal smokescreens. "We'd love for you to all travel to the polls to vote, but because of Climate, you'll all have to do it from home.  And trust us on the results... We know BIPOC folk don't have tech access, so we'll just have to excuse some equity corrected fudges..."

In fact, I'd imagine there are hundreds of ways authoritarians will leverage newly discovered compliance limits.  The "my body my choice" wall is basically broken.  Adult seatbelt laws come to my mind as where this line first died.

Indeed, I wonder if in 20-50 years we might not look back on Nazi Germany, Communist Russian, and Maoist China as the first big signals into a new era of compliance enabled authoritarianism.  If so, Orwell's ideas of pan-national leagues "newspeaking" draconian policy changes at the drop of a hat isn't so far away.  You'll just believe it is for the greater good.  Most of those who would see otherwise are probably genetic relics who are only partially able to overcome the cultural pressure put on them to shut up.  But, even if their resistance comes through on occasion, the social platforms they need to be heard are locked up.  Even physical "town squares" are now locked up and permitted according to "right think" identities.  Proud Boys (or equivalent) can't protest, because "safety"! You know what Antifa (or equivalent) will with your identity-based instigation. It's your own fault for being so extreme!

Weak Empire Splits

 For a couple of years I've been mentioning how the United States, as a de facto weak empire is ripe for a split to smaller polities.  This is exasperated (facilitated?) by a rapidly growing population, increasing levels of diversity, tremendous draws on social cohesion capital, and a very long de facto border (due to foreign entanglements).

This survey seems to suggest the idea is getting more and more likely. 

A read through some liberal Mormon blogs got me convinced that fairly educated professor types have absolutely no inclination to compromise with respect to governmance and political morality.  Neither do Trumpers.

Other than very dramatic policy swings from one administration to another (like disbanding the FBI to purge it, then recreating another one every election swing), there really is no alternative.  You are going to have to kill one side to silence them.  The right currently thinks this is exactly where Biden's military purge, "extremist" databases and "Great Reset" are headed.  The racist anti-white genocidal language doesn't help much.  The other side is convinced Trumpists are authoritarian Nazi's who are only be held back by media righteousness and social peer pressure.

The only way to let each side be themselves is to split the country apart.  The best bet here is to produce two voluntary confederacies.  This would require some state border re-alignments.  For instance, eastern Washington, Oregon and north East California would go Red.  Parts of Arizona and New Mexico and maybe Colorado would go blue.  The rest is easy to figure out.

I'm afraid that is the only viable pluralistic option there is.  Neither side is willing to be subject to the rules of the other.

This stat shows how close to reality this likelyhood now is

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/shock-poll-two-in-three-southern-republicans-want-to-secede-from-the-united-states/

A Fairly Accurate Assessment

 Here's a fairly accurate assessment of how half the country feels about politics - The establishment has taken over all governance and governance related institutions and have openly subverted the most patriotic into a de facto serf class.  It seems far fetched, but matches my read on these folks, and my read of the cultural traps and cycles which are unfolding

I think I've had discussions w/enough Boomer-tier Trump supporters who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent to extract a general theory about their perspective. It is also the perspective of most of the people at the Capitol on 1/6, and probably even Trump himself. 1/x

— MartyrMade (@martyrmade) July 8, 2021

 I think I’ve had discussions w/enough Boomer-tier Trump supporters who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent to extract a general theory about their perspective. It is also the perspective of most of the people at the Capitol on 1/6, and probably even Trump himself. 1/x 

 Most believe some or all of the theories involving midnight ballots, voting machines, etc, but what you find when you talk to them is that, while they’ll defend those positions w/info they got from Hannity or Breitbart or whatever, they’re not particularly attached to them. 2/x 

 Here are the facts – actual, confirmed facts – that shape their perspective: 1) The FBI/etc spied on the 2016 Trump campaign using evidence manufactured by the Clinton campaign. We now know that all involved knew it was fake from Day 1 (see: Brennan’s July 2016 memo, etc). 3/x 

 These are Tea Party people. The types who give their kids a pocket Constitution for their birthday and have Founding Fathers memes in their bios. The intel community spying on a presidential campaign using fake evidence (incl forged documents) is a big deal to them. 4/x 

 Everyone involved lied about their involvement as long as they could. We only learned the DNC paid for the manufactured evidence because of a court order. Comey denied on TV knowing the DNC paid for it, when we have emails from a year earlier proving that he knew. 5/x 

 This was true with everyone, from CIA Dir Brennan & Adam Schiff – who were on TV saying they’d seen clear evidence of collusion w/Russia, while admitting under oath behind closed doors that they hadn’t – all the way down the line. In the end we learned that it was ALL fake. 6/x 

 At first, many Trump ppl were worried there must be some collusion, because every media & intel agency wouldn’t make it up out of nothing. When it was clear that they had made it up, people expected a reckoning, and shed many illusions about their gov’t when it didn’t happen. 7/x 

 We know as fact: a) The Steele dossier was the sole evidence used to justify spying on the Trump campaign, b) The FBI knew the Steele dossier was a DNC op, c) Steele’s source told the FBI the info was unserious, d) they did not inform the court of any of this and kept spying. 8/x 

 Trump supporters know the collusion case front and back. They went from worrying the collusion must be real, to suspecting it might be fake, to realizing it was a scam, then watched as every institution – agencies, the press, Congress, academia – gaslit them for another year. 9/x 

 Worse, collusion was used to scare people away from working in the administration. They knew their entire lives would be investigated. Many quit because they were being bankrupted by legal fees. The DoJ, press, & gov’t destroyed lives and actively subverted an elected admin. 10/x 

 This is where people whose political identity was largely defined by a naive belief in what they learned in Civics class began to see the outline of a Regime that crossed all institutional boundaries. Because it had stepped out of the shadows to unite against an interloper. 11/x 

 GOP propaganda still has many of them thinking in terms of partisan binaries, but A LOT of Trump supporters see that the Regime is not partisan. They all know that the same institutions would have taken opposite sides if it was a Tulsi Gabbard vs Jeb Bush election. 12/x 

 It’s hard to describe to people on the left (who are used to thinking of gov’t as a conspiracy… Watergate, COINTELPRO, WMD, etc) how shocking & disillusioning this was for people who encourage their sons to enlist in the Army, and hate ppl who don’t stand for the Anthem. 13/x 

 They could have managed the shock if it only involved the government. But the behavior of the corporate press is really what radicalized them. They hate journalists more than they hate any politician or gov’t official, because they feel most betrayed by them. 14/x 

 The idea that the press is driven by ratings/sensationalism became untenable. If that were true, they’d be all over the Epstein story. The corporate press is the propaganda arm of the Regime they now see in outline. Nothing anyone says will ever make them unsee that, period. 15/x 

 This is profoundly disorienting. Many of them don’t know for certain whether ballots were faked in November 2020, but they know for absolute certain that the press, the FBI, etc would lie to them if there was. They have every reason to believe that, and it’s probably true. 16/x 

 They watched the press behave like animals for four years. Tens of millions of people will always see Kavanaugh as a gang rapist, based on nothing, because of CNN. And CNN seems proud of that. They led a lynch mob against a high school kid. They cheered on a summer of riots. 17/x 

 They always claimed the media had liberal bias, fine, whatever. They still thought the press would admit truth if they were cornered. Now they don’t. It’s a different thing to watch them invent stories whole cloth in order to destroy regular lives and spark mass violence. 18/x 

 Time Mag told us that during the 2020 riots, there were weekly conference calls involving, among others, leaders of the protests, the local officials who refused to stop them, and media people who framed them for political effect. In Ukraine we call that a color revolution. 19/x 

 Throughout the summer, Democrat governors took advantage of COVID to change voting procedures. It wasn’t just the mail-ins (they lowered signature matching standards, etc). After the collusion scam, the fake impeachment, Trump ppl expected shenanigans by now. 20/x 

 Re: “fake impeachment”, we now know that Trump’s request for Ukraine to cooperate w/the DOJ regarding Biden’s $ activities in Ukraine was in support of an active investigation being pursued by the FBI and Ukraine AG at the time, and so a completely legitimate request. 21/x 

 Then you get the Hunter laptop scandal. Big Tech ran a full-on censorship campaign against a major newspaper to protect a political candidate. Period. Everyone knows it, all of the Tech companies now admit it was a “mistake” – but, ya know, the election’s over, so who cares? 22/x 

 Goes w/o saying, but: If the NY Times had Don Jr’s laptop, full of pics of him smoking crack and engaging in group sex, lots of lurid family drama, emails describing direct corruption and backed up by the CEO of the company they were using, the NYT wouldn’t have been banned. 23/x 

 Think back: Stories about Trump being pissed on by Russian prostitutes and blackmailed by Putin were promoted as fact, and the only evidence was a document paid for by his opposition and disavowed by its source. The NY Post was banned for reporting on true information. 24/x 

 The reaction of Trump ppl to all this was not, “no fair!” That’s how they felt about Romney’s “binders of women” in 2012. This is different. Now they see, correctly, that every institution is captured by ppl who will use any means to exclude them from the political process. 25/x 

 And yet they showed up in record numbers to vote. He got 13m more votes than in 2016, 10m more than Clinton got! As election night dragged on, they allowed themselves some hope. But when the four critical swing states (and only those states) went dark at midnight, they knew. 26/x 

 Over the ensuing weeks, they got shuffled around by grifters and media scam artists selling them conspiracy theories. They latched onto one, then another increasingly absurd theory as they tried to put a concrete name on something very real. 27/x

 Media & Tech did everything to make things worse. Everything about the election was strange – the changes to procedure, unprecedented mail-in voting, the delays, etc – but rather than admit that and make everything transparent, they banned discussion of it (even in DMs!). 28/x 

 Everyone knows that, just as Don Jr’s laptop would’ve been the story of the century, if everything about the election dispute was the same, except the parties were reversed, suspicions about the outcome would’ve been Taken Very Seriously. See 2016 for proof. 29/x 

 Even the courts’ refusal of the case gets nowhere w/them, because of how the opposition embraced mass political violence. They’ll say, w/good reason: What judge will stick his neck out for Trump knowing he’ll be destroyed in the media as a violent mob burns down his house? 30/x 

 It’s a fact, according to Time Magazine, that mass riots were planned in cities across the country if Trump won. Sure, they were “protests”, but they were planned by the same people as during the summer, and everyone knows what it would have meant. Judges have families, too. 31/x 

 Forget the ballot conspiracies. It’s a fact that governors used COVID to unconstitutionally alter election procedures (the Constitution states that only legislatures can do so) to help Biden to make up for a massive enthusiasm gap by gaming the mail-in ballot system. 32/x 

 They knew it was unconstitutional, it’s right there in plain English. But they knew the cases wouldn’t see court until after the election. And what judge will toss millions of ballots because a governor broke the rules? The threat of mass riots wasn’t implied, it was direct. 33/x 

 a) The entrenched bureaucracy & security state subverted Trump from Day 1, b) The press is part of the operation, c) Election rules were changed, d) Big Tech censors opposition, e) Political violence is legitimized & encouraged, f) Trump is banned from social media. 34/x 

 They were led down some rabbit holes, but they are absolutely right that their gov’t is monopolized by a Regime that believes they are beneath representation, and will observe no limits to keep them getting it. Trump fans should be happy he lost; it might’ve kept him alive. /end  

Yoram Hazony's Virtue of Nationalism

 Hazony's main novel point in his book on Nationalism is the idea that the post 90's globalist ideology which is now wedded with Woke progressivism functions as an illiberal catholicism. Just like 5th, and 15th century Catholicism couldn't contemplate the non-ubiquity of its morals, globalist political Wokeism does the same.  There's simply no way there isn't a god, and there isn't anyway these aren't his judgments and precepts.  They're just too correct not to be. The arrow of progress is clear and only a fool, who would call the sun black, would disagree.

One of Hazony's challenges is his inability to reference cultural group selection. He argues that nationalism is the best unit of organization, but has to resort to handwaving to make his arguments.  Kingdoms are too dictatorial and warlike. Globalism is too over reaching and hence too authoritarian.  But, the only reason we're in this current state is because gene-culture evolution has temporarily positioned us here.

Near page 90 Hazony does try to address the "right size" issue using non-technical adaptive group logic.  Large groups must elevate ideology about the tribe.  Doing this requires tribes, and the individuals that make up tribes, to subvert their needs and desires for the large group's conformist ideology.  This is how the larger group orientation becomes adaptive.

The small group orientation, which he reduces absurdo to anarachy, is adaptive because individual needs are knowable. The people to whom you give quid pro quo loyalty to, can therefore repay you in kind. Inefficiency is small because of small world network dynamics (i.e. Everyone is part of a node where members are well known and association is voluntary.  Brokers connect to other nodes via scale-free patterns).

WHY DOES A LARGE GROUP ORIENTATION REQUIRE IDEOLOGY AS ITS CONFORMING PRINCIPLE

This of course begs the question why ideology is the necessary conforming principle (when existential physical threat is absent).  I suspect the answer, undoubtably, leads back to List & Pettit group agents.  

Before getting to group agents, it is certainly possible to say that ideology is likely to function as a costly commitment display.  Some views are certainly adaptive (think Christian inter-member charity). but other views are certainly irrational (at least superficially so, especially over short time frames and individual rather than population level aggregations).  Scott Atran's "In Gods We Trust" tends to this type of logic.  A little bit of counter-factualness mixed with the right balance of immediate/obvious adaptive benefit and long-term/obfuscated adaptive benefit produces an perfect cultural group evolution solution.

Hazony of course doesn't take this track.  That's fine.  This line of reasoning comes across as "just so" logical cherry picking.  Instead, Hazony suggests large group orientation and small group orientation revolve around two attractors: self-selecting anarchist-like groupings, and universalistic globalism which is morally authoritarinistic.

I'd tend to interpret these poles as strange attractors. That's basically how I operationalize the topology of cultural group selection.  But, this again begs the question why the large group orientation has to be both universal and ideological.

UNIVERSAL and IDEOLOGICAL

Hazony's answer seems to be that only ideology can bind non-related kin with no common heritage nor culture.  This is the standard lesson of French revolution curriculum and the standard logic of christian era monotheistic world religions.  But, such answers seem entirely unconvincing to me. Such answers are like saying a cold is sniffles rather than viruses.  So, what are some possible deeper reasons why the large group / universalistic globalism is so based in unquestionable moral universalism?

Hazony suggests that once you break down xenophobic tribal barriers, you tend to fall into an assumption that "everyone is human".  This seems demonstrably false.  One race may consider another race "human" but another "un-human".  Technological elitism justified this pretty well in the 17th to 19th centuries.

Rather, I suspect you need List & Pettit group agents (or equivalent) to explain what is going on with catholic universalistic progressive globalism.

Group agents emerge from random policy decisions. Individuals infer a moral interpretation of the group's decision in order to better predict future positions. Such a moral based heuristic is also exceptionally good at spotting freeloaders and edging the group and its members through Atran's religious like dynamics (which are of course very adaptive - see Atran and D.S. Wilson).  Exceptions to the group agent's morality are usually interpreted as a testing and purification processes.  Thus rather than causing cognitive dissonance, rebound to the inferred moral position actually strengthens commitment.  Rebound to slightly different positions is usually interpreted by individuals as an interpretational fault on their part.  Hence the need for the "right" level of ambiguity in the group agent's essence (think the Catholic mystery of the trinity, etc.).

GROUP AGENT: EQUALITY & OPEN MEMBERSHIP

The question then becomes what type of group agent fits nationalism (ie. what are the group agent's primary moral properties & focus)?

I suspect the proper nation-state enabling group agent has two main moral characteristics

1. open membership (within reasonable bounds)
2. equality

Open Membership

Open membership based religions were a feature of the bronze and iron ages. No one batted an eye if you went to a city and made a donation to a certain temple. These temples weren't religion in our modern sense.  They were more like political-moral think tanks (i.e. Lincoln Foundation, or  Dems for Open Borders).  When the monotheistic religions emerged during the axial age, things changed.  Conversion was something more than acquiesce to a certain god's legitimacy and power (amongst a large pantheon of beings and competing meta-narrative fables).  Conversion entailed a new level of illiberalism.  It wasn't that your god was strongest and therefore had domination rights, it was that every other option was wrong and heretical to nature and logic itself.

This came hand in hand with a substantively different kind of proselytization.  You weren't just convincing opposing tribes of your god's legitimacy, and hence really just doing military diplomacy via meta-narrative and religious symbols. Rather, proselytization was about ensuring the right ideology was followed so damnation could be avoided.  Military politics was icing on the side.  Converted muslims could still rebel against a king. But rebelling against Islam was categorically different.  Religion supplanted governance as the prime organizing factor (they always lead and pace each other).

This meant that religious membership eventually evolved to be quite open.  Pretty much anyone could join Christianity. In practice I suspect there was actually a set of necessary but not sufficient factors that had to be met (i.e. 8 of these 10 factors or so and you were worthy to join).

So I assume the nation-state group agent emerged from this open membership morality. Anyone (within reason) that proclaimed a certain universalistic (moral) ideology was accepted. The French revolution just got rid of the supernatural element and added a secular one - liberte, egalite, fraternite.

Equality

The second moral group agent characteristic I think was needed for a nation-state turn was equality.  Just because you have a religion with open membership doesn't imply that all members are equal. Just think of the Roman Catholic church during the dark and medieval ages.

But equality doesn't imply some fantastical sort of progressive utopia (no rich or poor). Rather, I suspect it just means you are heavily biased to assume the range of behaviours you think are appropriate to people within your society also apply to those outside your society.  Thus, if you can take advantage of low IQ workers in your society you can do so to those outside. But while $2 an hour wages may be OK, slavery is not.  Bounds may be fuzzy, and may be coloured by perceived heritage and ideological sympathies, there are bounds.  (In general, I think such bounds tend to be aggregate sums rather than legalistic individual line items).

CONCLUSION

I think a nation state group agent that emerges giving prominence to two moral values of open membership and equality satisfy Hazony's ideas of Nationalism.  Nation states aren't just an inevitable balance point between anarchy and imperial authoritarianism.  Rather nation states are a product of a moral group agent based upon open membership and equality which occurs in a cultural group polity evolution landscape where hard borders are taken for granted.

Education as indoctrination?

 In the US, there's been a recent upsurge in opposition to Critical Race Theory, and to a lesser extent its parent theory, Critical Social Justice Theory.

The opposition basically boils down to this

Black Lives Matter activists and white supremacists shouldn't be employed in our schools for exactly the same reason.

— James Lindsay, intentionally unendurable intellect (@ConceptualJames) June 23, 2021

Education has now mostly completed its shift toward what history usually refers to as "citizenship" education. In these phases education takes on a substantial moral character. The late 1800's was one of the more dramatic examples of this cyclical shift. Protestants tried to remove the catholic nature of immigrants. The result was a focus on morality. Catholics, feeling the marginalization this brought with it, elected to separate from the public school system.

I expect we will see a similar shift in K-12 education. In Alberta you have teachers who refuse to teach the "white supremacy" of a right wing curriculum. You also have rural folk saying much the same thing with regard to woke progressive indoctrinal curriculums. Decisions will get made based on the relative strength of bureaucratic institutions (which are exclusively left wing progressive) and populism (which is the last bastion of center and conserverative power).

The evolutionary arrow suggests institutions will win.  The only question is whether their lack of magnanimity in cultural victory will cause as second great split in public education, like the late 1800's public - separate school system schism.  We have the tech to do this.  Homeschooling is always the system to look at in this regard.  I suspect we'll see teacher's unions and progressive controlled governments locking up homeschooling.  But, you may also see populist governments de-fanging union control by enabling alternative educational systems.

Political "Catholicism"

 This week I've been reading Yoram Hazony's "The Virtue of Nationalism".  He had an interesting term for Wokeism - he called it a type of anti-liberal catholicism.

His idea was that wokeism is at least as religious as any other conventional religion, has the same type of appeals to authority as any other religion, has the political desires of medieval catholicism, and has the same assumptions of universality as small c catholicism (it is all encompassing and nothing escapes it).

Looks like Tim Pool has an editor from the New York post on who is following the same line of reasoning.  Wokeism is a new political religious force that just assumes it is the only possible paradigm and all other perspectives are just wrong an sinful.

As you can see, this sets up a huge fight with America's protestant roots.  You don't have to go too far back (to the time of Kennedy) to remember how reviled papists were.

I'll have to see how this interview goes.  Tim Pool, tends to be a bit too non-academic for me to handle his long-form stuff...

America's Political Prisoners

 No more needs to be said.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/10/letters-from-a-d-c-jail/

The US is now a third world democracy at least in most places where things actually matter.

Back to Religion's Roots

I have just started reading Czachesz's article on the transmission of early christian thought in order to get some info on its parallels to Wokeism.

It's hard for us to remember that religion WAS NOT historically in control of a unified system of narratives, rituals, social life, philosophy, etc. This turn happened during the axial age (8th to 3rd century BCE). 

Not only the variety, but also the complexity of early Christian religion is highly perplexing. Most religions in Greco-Roman antiquity were cults, which can be basically described in terms of rites and institutions. Mythology was also important, but it was transmitted in a number of different ways (history, poetry, fine arts, etc.) rather than controlled by religious institutions. The interpretation of mythology, together with the discussion of the great issues of life, was outside the realm of religion. In early Christianity, in contrast, a single institution coordinated aspects of mythology, ritual, social life, philosophy and ethics.  - pp 66

Thus Wokeism is probably just taking us back to the roots of socio-political religion. It is not an aberration. It's the de facto way cults, temples, shamans etc. used to operate.

Right now we see a cultish explosion and people tend to think, "that can't be religion.... it doesn't have much supernaturalism to it".  Well, it certainly has a devil figure. Does it really need a fully embodied deity?  Will the quintessential BIPOC develop?

Other people see Wokeism's fragmented cults and think "that can't be religion.... it is not a formal institution".  Sorry, as I've said before, it seems like most ancient cults and chiefdom era temple-based groups weren't either.  They were more akin to political thought tanks that had a decent-enough influence on some of the populous to act like a CNN contributor.  They both spout some imaginary stuff, push a certain meta-narrative view, have specific views that can be modified or enlarged by the right "donation" or ask by the right sort of power figure.  Should they both have messaging that comes out on the "right side of history" they add to a meta-narrative cannon.  This cannon, should it resonate with larger cultural wells can then tweak that society's grand meta-narrative textural base.  For instance the addition of a Baal vs Elohim script. Or a 1619 counterfactual trope.

I'm looking forward to reading more...

Great Awokenings In Early China

 This last year or so I've been looking deeper into "Axial Age" transitions. 

Jespers was the originator of the Axial age transition. His theory was that something fundamental happened in governenance and religion around 800 BC to 300 BC to move societies to function more liberally.

Peter Turchin's crowd did a deep dive with the Seshat database to test this idea.  The conclusion was that there was no formal axial age transition.  Rather, various liberal principles came in and went away, in a variety of Kingdom age polities.  There was no evidence for a single phase change once a critical mass of liberalness developed.

The latest book I'm reading in this vein in Li Feng's Early China.  It time focus is on 2000BC to about 300 BC. This includes the Erlitou, Xia, Shang, Zhou and later dynasties.  If I'm remembering the details correctly, during the Xia and Shang eras a very strong kin based morality developed. New territory was awarded to family lineages. The meta-morality was the taking care of ancestral roots. Ancestral veneration was tied up in this. But is was a bit more than ancestral veneration - it was an expansionist morality that tied the adaptive benefits of familial lineages into a religious code and day-to-day moral compass. In some sense, to me it seems reminiscent of North American tribal societies where religion couldn't be separated out from wise behaviour and cultural narratives.

But, what's neat is how this morality was overthrown during the fall of the Western? Zhou empire. A growing abundance of elites and geometric realities of territorial expansion meant that family lineage based city state control could no longer provide the adaptive benefits necessary to "keep things in the family". Very quickly, a new morality emerged that eschewed ancestral line control. There was a huge shift to intra-elite competition. Quid pro quo alliances quickly dominated. These quickly devolved into outright war. The number of elite "families" shrunk.  But the weak empire didn't split neatly into two nearly equal halves (or so I think). 

It's hard not to see this shift from lineage veneration/morality as anything other than a Great Awakening.

The next major Awakening is the emergence of the Shin class.  This is basically the emergence of a middle-class.  This is where Confucius comes in.  It's hard not to see this as a solution to disparity between elite classes and commoner classes.  After the warring states period, I suspect the commoner class was depopulated and the elite class growth had stalled and shrunk.  According to Turchin, that drives up commoner's real wages.  That's probably why the middle class was able to emerge and gain power.

The main relevance of these things for today is how powerful Great Awakenings and their correlated social dynamics are.  I really see resistance to Wokeness akin to the futility of resistance to Roman era Christianity, or to pagan resistance to European Catholicism.

In some ways this is not at all bad. We definitely need some more equality in society. The Iron Rule of Oligarchies is only making this more true.  One just hopes that Woke extremists don't reproduce the follies of 1900's socialism. But I don't see that as likely.  Political leaders see the power of Wokeism and the opportunities for grift it affords and just can't keep their hands out of the cookie jar.  Thus Wokeism has emerged at the wrong phase in Turchin's secular cycles.  It has emerged during the climb to peak elite overproduction, not at its denouement. To me, that's a VERY bad sign.

Grand Narrative Truth Wars

 A few years ago I had a four part post on Grand Narratives (policy meta-fables).  Here's a great example of their memetic fitness issues.  Hannah-Jones is the founder and pusher of the 1619 trope (America's founding was fundamentally oriented and based on slavery and racism).

Ellen Carmichael

@ellencarmichael

I’m still marveling at the defense of Nikole Hannah-Jones over this tenure stuff. A core tenant of journalism should be, I think: “Don’t make stuff up,” and yet every historian actually trained on the topic she writes about said that’s exactly what she did.

There's obviously a lot of push back, and push forward, on this idea.  From a broader lens what is happening is a fight between meta-narrative truth and objective truth.  From some perspectives, meta-narrative (or in this case post-factual truth) is actually more accurate than objective truth. That's because meta-narrative truth encodes "balancing information" that insists interpretation done in modern contexts.

It's as if there is a complicated and subtle math function that most people will get wrong, in well known ways, when they try and use it. Objective fact leaves those issues for the user to worry about.  Grand Narratives (or post-factual truth) includes a bunch of "balancers" that ensure the average use of the complicated and subtle function will produce the desired result.

Another analogy is engineering.  Meta-narrative truth is akin to engineering a bridge to minimum strength standards by doing the minimum strength calc and then doubling its value. If the minimum strength function really produces a "minimum" strength number, then why double it? It is by definition illogical (assuming of course your minimum strength function is accurate).  That's the meta-narrative truth of 1619 and Critical Race Wokesim.  The meta-narrative is always more accurate than the facts.  

That's why hate hoaxes and more true than actual hate crimes. They reflect the deeper reality of the "real" levels of trauma.  Only the super-marginalized need to personify their trauma in order for it to even be heard.  It is a Kafka trap. The only way to truly signify marginalization starts to become to hyper-sensationalize it so even the most minor problems are personified as huge.  New religions and religions undergoing normal inquisitional cycles do this too. Soon it's not just sexual misconduct that's a sin, it is the mere thought of it that is. It's not alcohol that is a sin, the use of grapes themselves becomes a sin.

This is a classic purge dynamic. Costly commitment displays and faith tests are an adaptive way to clean house and install a new, purified, ruling class and norm enforcement protocols.  That's also why there is so much push back to this stuff, and why the only adaptive solution to counter this push back is to form resistance to it as a Kafka trap.

Critical Race Theory has done this beautifully.  US wokeism is a disease akin to Nazism, 1900's marxism. But it's also just as much a disease as 4th century Christianity, Christ era Christianity, or any  axial age religion.  Trying to judge things on an objective - factual basis misses the point.