There are a lot of ways of describing the great debate in the West that has raged, off and on, since the Enlightenment. The most popular way is to frame it as Left-versus-Right, even though the definition of Left and Right has changed significantly over time. Another way is to view it as traditionalists versus progressives. The former resists change while the latter embraces it. Of course, there’s always the appeal to nature, about the natural order of human society, whether we are more like chimps or bonobos.
Another way to think of the great debate in the West, is to think of one side as the horizontal argument and the other as the vertical argument. Those on the Left start with the assumption that the natural state of human society is flat, where human societies are a lattice work of relationships among equals. Those on the Right look at human society as a hierarchy, where important social relations are between those above and below. To both sides of this divide, these arguments are mutually exclusive.
Starting on the Right, the argument against liberalism since the French Revolution has been focused exclusively on social hierarchy. At the bottom are the peasants, who serve a lord, who in turn is a vassal to a greater lord. This relationship continues up to the very top of both the secular order and the religious order. In fact, the secular and religious hierarchy are intertwined, reaching into the heavens. At the top is God, who is not only served by this hierarchical order, but created it and maintains it.
This hierarchical understanding of human society was the default until the Enlightenment, when both the secular and religious conception of human organization was challenged by a new conception of society. This horizontal conception sees all humans as fundamentally equal. They are equal to one another and equal before God. In fact, it is the Christian conception of equality before God that is the root of this view. If all men are created in God’s image, they must be equal before God, and therefore equal to one another.
In practical political terms, democracy is the tangible expression of the horizontal conception of human society. There can be no greater expression of social equality than one man one vote. This is why there is no room for Christianity within a fully democratic society. If God holds dominion over man, it means the inequality of man is the work of God, which contradicts the notion of universal equality. The egalitarian world view has no place for a transcendent God, so God had to be eliminated.
On the other hand, the peak of aristocratic rule was the ultimate expression and the Christian West. From the lowest peasant to the heavens, stretched an unbroken chain of vassal relationships. Every man in the chain answered to someone and everyone answered for someone. The exception were the peasants at the bottom were only responsible to their lord. Equality of any sort is pointless in such an arrangement, as even equals will have unequal duties and obligations.
To this day, both sides argue for their conception of the world to the exclusion of the alternative. In the reaction to the French Revolution, conservative thinkers focused exclusively on the need to for authority that could only come from hierarchy. Ultimately, a belief in God is what gave legitimacy and authority to all secular arrangements, as God was at the top of the nature order. As a result, they could accept no alternative to the old aristocratic order, where a monarch sat atop the social hierarchy.
Similarly, to this day the Left cannot accept that there may be a hierarchical relationship between people within a society. They have taken this to the extreme of denying basic biological differences between people, including differences between the sexes. In the French Revolution, holding up the severed head of the king was the ultimate expression of the equality of man. In this age, forcing boys to take hormones and dress like girls is the ultimate expression of sexual equality. The world is perfectly flat.
Both sides of this great debate are wrong to think each view of human society is exclusive of the other. A more complete view of human society includes both the vertical and the horizontal model. The horizontal is like a spinning disk with a tight core. That core exists around the vertical axis of hierarchy. The vertical axis is held in balance by that core. If the core collapses, the vertical wobbles and collapses. If the vertical becomes unstable, the core becomes unstable and the horizontal flies apart. Society disintegrates.
There are many explanations for why the old hierarchical order collapsed, most spectacularly in the French Revolution. The industrial revolution, changing demographics, increases in population and the rise of a middle-class are good reasons to explain some of what happened in France. The fact is, the vertical, that series of hierarchical relationships became unstable. Once the King was no longer able to pay his bills, fulfill his obligations, the logic of the system started to collapse. Without a king, there can be no hierarchy.
Today, as the West reaches the limits of horizontal organization, not only has the vertical axis of hierarchy been eliminated, the core itself is beginning to pull apart. Lacking the gravitational force of social hierarchy and the rituals and ceremonies to enforce it, the core is drifting away from itself. Instead of centrifugal force pushing dissimilar elements to the fringe, those foreign elements are free to pass through the core, increasing its rate of disintegration. As a result, the system is showing the same instability as 1789.
The question, of course, is whether there is a third conception of human society that will replace the horizontal once it dissipates. The argument from the Right is the collapse of the Progressive moral framework will inevitably lead to a restoration of the old order, where hierarchy defined social relationships. That’s unlikely as the ingredients that gave rise to the old order do not exist in the modern world. Modern western societies lack the human capital to make anything like the aristocratic order work.
There’s also the question of whether the West will exist after the collapse of the Progressive moral order. There is a strong case that the West is getting dumber, which explains the grip of multiculturalism on the ruling class. That decline in IQ is being magnified by the waves of low-IQ populations from over the horizon. We may have reached a tipping point from which there is no turning back. The future of the West may be Neolithic people squatting in the ruins of what used to be Western civilization.
If there is to be a next chapter to the story of European people, it will require a conception of society that acknowledges the hierarchical relationships that are natural to man, but also the interlocking horizontal loyalties and commitments that allows for a strong cultural core. That means transcending the crude materialism that sprang from the Enlightenment, but also acknowledging the limits of authority. That probably means a clear eyed understanding of the nature of man and his biological origins as a species.
Serious question here. Help me understand this, or did I just miss something obvious.
Zman has talked how social hierarchy is important to us on the Right side of the great divide (“Those on the Right look at human society as a hierarchy, where important social relations are between those above and below.”), and this is reinforced by others’ writings, e.g., Jonathan Haidt. And yet, it is largely folks on our side of the great divide who rail the most about elites. This strikes me as somewhat inconsistent – we stress the importance of hierarchy, yet we hold those at the top of the hierarchy in contempt. Is it simply an issue that we have the “wrong” elites? Yet, it seems that in contemporary western civilization, regardless of country, to be “elite” means to share a globalist, pro-population replacement immigration, identity politics outlook.
We value actual, meaningful, and natural hierarchy. When some people have the means and pushiness to claim mantles of authority for themselves and settle into positions of judgement over others, of course we complain. That’s a fake hierarchy, an unnatural system that leads to resentment and rebellion.
Back to the “the rich are smarter” argument. Individualists do not believe in that type of broad generalization; they see innumerable hierarchies of intelligence, emotional quotient, ambition, what you’re willing to work for, and what you’re born with, to name a few. In too many words and a round-about way, what I’m saying is cons/trads have respect for earned hierarchy (Mark Steyn writes great books, and I don’t) and and contempt for the other kind– Don Lemon as opinion leader. Right.
We respect earned placement in life, according to morals, standards, goodness and Godliness. But when o-bama and michelle types are pushed to the top and Brian Stelter critiques media, while George Soros tries to buy his Open Society, yes, that causes our complaint. We have no problem with elites or authorities who genuinely belong there.
“but also acknowledging the limits of authority“
It’s not left, right, up, down or sideways. It’s an argument between recognizing the limits of authority vs. believing that authority fundamentally has no limits.
Explains pretty much every argument in American politics today.
Great post on my favorite Z theme: the intersection between human biology and human culture.
the word zman is strugging to find to combine horizontal and vertical is volk. The west has no current conception of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volk
The west has no current conception of it.
You are aware that Volk is a German word, ja?
Oh, I think we’re all familiar with
“Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer,”
I think one can argue that war itself, including neolithic tribal warfare, is not just a competition for scarce resources, but a biological cleansing mechanism. Clearly the IQ of your average infantry soldier would be far less than the son of a banker who is able to avoid the draft. “The rich are different” as F. Scott Fitzgerald once said. They’re smarter. They understand complex things, including human nature itself, and the ability to see war for what it is and either 1) avoid it, 2) profit from it, and ideally, both. I think one can say that the precursor to the CIA, the OSS, was a warehouse to hide rich kids from the front lines in WW2, especially after the experiences of WW1, where the rich were just as brainwashed into putting their kids on the front lines as the poor.
It’s uncomfortable to say that the guy who stormed the beaches of Normandy was stupid, or the guy who died in the Mekong Delta was stupid. But I sure as hell wouldn’t have died for FDR or LBJ, or clown GWB in Iraq. Many of those men never were able to reproduce. Their lines ended with them. We’re definitely overdue for WW3. No one should ever die for clown politicians. The stupid always do.
Up through WWI, the officer corp died at a higher rate than did the infantry. I don’t know the stats for WWII, but a sense of duty still carried the day within all male classes.
A false aristocracy, especially a market oriented one, will rarely and probably never display nobility of any form.
A sense of duty to serve was a dominant feature in true aristocracies: first in war first in faith. They died at a higher rate because they understood it was their job to lead their men out of the trenches. They did this knowing they’d be the least likely to make it back.
In a civilization worth defending, the nobility of doing one’s duty, even knowingly charging into one’s own death, was expected.
My father stormed the beaches at Normandy. He wasn’t stupid, he was brave. He didn’t do it because of politicians. And he reproduced. Lots of other men did the same.
In the Great War, aka “The War to End All Wars (hows that going for ya?) 25% of the 1918 Oxford University class died,
That was the death of the West’s civilization.
We’re now finally reaching the part where too many parts have fallen off the zombie to continue.
Awfully broad generalization. Prob a lot of minimalists who value time more than money would win if we were to battle over IQ scores.
Feels more like a merry-go-round where we’re all sitting on leering transsexual centaurs and it never stops accelerating.
‘…a clear eyed understanding of the nature of man and his biological origins as a species”. And on that note, I give you Rammstein. – “Deutschland, mein Herz in Flammen.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeQM1c-XCDc
Thanks for posting! Had no idea Rammstein is back. Fantastic. Could you please elaborate a little more on the meaning of the song? (How you personally understand it)
Vielen Dank!
Basically it means Germany’s history so bad, we can’t be proud of our country or to be German.
Unfortunately this sort of thinking, especially dwelling on the politics and policies of the 1940’s, is not helpful. This mentality ignores the positive things Germany has contributed to the world in the fields of science, music and literature.
This idea that we should remain mired in guilt from our past is exactly what most of the West is teaching it’s children today, especially now in the US with it’s anti-white mentality..
Meanwhile in China, where Mao obliterated millions of his own people, they now have the strongest economy in the world. If China teaches us anything, it’s to get over your past, be proud of your country and move forward.
What they do in Heathrow is they throw into the giant mall without telling you your gate until an hour before boarding. Since you have no idea where to wait, you mill around the mall.
Germany’s history is fine. If only young Germans (the puppies in the video?) knew the history.
(Myself leaning in the direction of Ir—-, Zü—-)
If nothing else, screaming Deutschland, Deutschland should wake up a few.
Maybe I am giving Rammstein too much credit. (I always do)
When I first heard the Mein Teil song, my first interpretation was, that it is anti-war, anti-army recruitment:
“Suche gut gebauten Achtzehn bis Dreißigjährigen zum Schlachten, Der Metzgermeister.”
Well, was I ever surprised. Huh. On the other hand…
Are you familiar with the french comedian Dieudonné?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjJlscUbsE4
We shall overcome.
The Left has spun itself around so far on so many issues, I like to call them Feudalists. Their “green’ policies are a return to subsistence peasant farming. Their positions on speech, conduct, weapons, etc. would effectively make us normals into feudal serfs. Travel, luxury, and entertainment – that’s for them, not us.
I suppose the first generation of aristocracy would be selected for their woke virtues. After that, I can’t see much difference.
Can we put quotes around “woke”? All part of the declining IQ and culture and it’s sad indeed when we take our cues from them instead of the reverse. Taking our cultural cues from the other used to mean ragtime. Now it means mangling language and therefore, thought.
The IQ issue is disturbing. Let’s assume that white IQ has fallen to 98. In the not distant future, the country will be around 50% white (98 IQ), 25% Hispanic (90), 15% Black (85), 5% Asian (100) and 5% other (let’s say 95). That would give the country a 94 IQ, compared to ~100 in 1965.
That’s the difference between Norway and Armenia. But it’s worse than that because Armenia is an ethnically and religiously cohesive country. The lights may not always come on, but the people are family so to speak.
Supposedly, Brazil has a national IQ of 87, so perhaps we won’t be North Brazil, at least not that quickly. But I still think that the country is heading to some Brazil-like situation as opposed to South Africa simply because no race will have the numbers to impose themselves on others. (Well, whites could if we had the balls, but we don’t.)
Pockets of the 1st world in parts of the cities and various areas around the country, surrounded by 2nd and 3rd world neighborhoods and areas. Crime, gangs, kidnappings will be an issue, but the wealthy will have very good private security to protect their areas. The small middle class will be the most vulnerable, living next door to the abyss.
But even that is a best case (or, really, a temporary) scenario if we don’t stop immigration from Africa. If the country’s black population increases to 25% or more, there’s simply no way it can function without a dictatorship. There’s a reason the South had Jim Crow and didn’t allow blacks to vote. It was the only way to hold civilization together.
That’s why I sometimes wonder if Europe is in more danger than the United States. Yeah, our demographics are worse by far, but Europe seems hellbent on bringing civilization destroyers. It’s one thing for your country to be 25% Hispanic; it’s quite another to be 25% Muslim or African or both.
We’re on the cusp of serious changes. Whites in Western Europe and the United States have inflicted a lot of damage on themselves over the past 50 years, but this first wave of invaders hasn’t been enough to push us to edge of major disruptions. Sure, there’s more crime, terrorism, welfare, generally crappiness, but you can still recognize our societies. We still have elections. People still work in the cities. It’s not as smooth or safe as it once was, but it still functions, more or less.
Another 50 years of immigration, especially if it’s from Africa and the Middle East, will fundamentally destroy our societies. They won’t be recognizable. France in 50 years – if they continue to allow even relatively light immigration – will not bare any resemblance to France from 50 years ago. It will not be a functioning democracy. It will not have the rule of law. It will not be colorblind. The same is true of the United States if we allow in African immigration.
Whites in the West will either stop immigration from Africa and the Middle East or be wiped out. We don’t have the luxury that whites in 1965 had.
Citizen, I believe you are basically correct, but I’m not sure your explanation on where we are headed can be adequately stated without further acknowledgement of the concept of the “smart fraction” and how it interacts with your observation of declining IQ. That and AI in highly technical fields might very well be mitigating factors in buying us enough time to find a socially acceptable way to halt IQ decline.
A halt to third world low IQ immigration is a no brained however.
It’s one thing for your country to be 25% Hispanic; it’s quite another to be 25% Muslim or African or both.
The Moslems are an asset, an accelerant for nationalist sentiments. Their revolting attitudes and behaviours ensure that even mainstream lefties want them gone. If a European politician wanted to burn his career to ashes, all he’d have to do would be to promise more immigration – legal or otherwise – like Trump recently did.
Hispanics are relatively inoffensive, so even on the American right, you have people being fine with Hispanic immigration, as long as it’s legal.
It’s the difference between cystic and metastasized cancer: the former can be cut out.
Whites in the West will either stop immigration from Africa and the Middle East or be wiped out.
Just so. And whites are not going to be wiped out.
I agree about Hispanics being almost too easy to forget about, unlike Muslims. That said, births in France are ~20% Muslim and probably between 5% and 10% black. In a generation, the under-40 population of France will be 25% Muslim and 5-10% non-Muslim black due to differing birth rates. And that’s without immigration!
Bless your country of Denmark. But other parts of Europe will be dealing with substantial Muslim populations in 25 years. (Muslims are 10% of births in England, probably close to that if not more in Germany, God only knows in Belgium. Add in some immigration and we’re looking at 15-20% of the under-40 population in a generation or so.)
That said, you’re correct, and I was wrong to say white could be wiped out. Dramatically reduced, possibly, probably likely. Wiped out. No. We all need to remember that Europeans are by far the most talented people on the planet. That’s not homer hyperbole; that’s a fact. Some portion of whites will pull it together, and when they do, it’s over. No other group can stop them.
The only questions are home many whites will wake up and when.
In a generation, the under-40 population of France will be 25% Muslim and 5-10% non-Muslim black due to differing birth rates.
That still leaves 65% French, and they’re rioting already.
Yes, Europe will not be the same: In a generation, Europe will be vaccinated against CultMarx for the next 300 years and have a zero tolerance policy of Islam, and we will not rest until the traitors that enabled the destruction of our culture are brought to justice.
We all need to remember that Europeans are by far the most talented people on the planet.
Exactly. If there were 10% Europeans against 90% Arabs and blacks, I’d still put my money on whitey. We wiped out a hundred million people in the last century alone, and those people were our fellow Europeans.
The last time Western troops went up against Mohammadans in a real war, was in Desert Storm, in 1990. The most powerful military machine in the Moslem world never saw what hit them, we killed them at a rate of a hundred to one – on their own turf! – the panicked survivors desperately trying to surrender to any white man they saw.
The Moslems are poking a sleeping dragon. They say they love death more than we love life. I say we can find a way to accommodate both cravings.
The Europeans and their diaspora that come out the other side of this trial by fire are going to be pretty bad ass. Smart, tribal and gladly willing to kill. They will be a Wagnerian nightmare. Bikers with brains.
They’ll be worse than the Vikings. The Vikings sought adventure, money and new lands. These guys will seek retribution.
Yeah the masturbation machines, Bear/Eagle pits, and roller coasters of death will be real this time
Wolf Pits are the best.
I have a fantasy about my people boiling out of the hills of Appalachia. My beloved hill tribes. Please excuse me I just read that some nig bought Dollywood. I’m labile emotionally.
Rome began to collapse in the 3rd Century. The Altantic civilization of Europe began to establish itself with the defeat of the Muslims and the reign of Charlemagne. This didn’t stabilize until around the the 11th/12th Centuries. Close to 1000 years of collapse and disorganization which made us vulnerable to outsiders.
The Nordics and Germanic peoples were arguably, though less organized than the Latins, as intelligent if not in some ways more so.
We are being replaced by primitives, neolithic (if barely even that), and outsiders. One incapable of rising above the primitive the other already has a functioning civilizational model that will outlast ours.
We still at least numerically rule the roost. We can still pack a punch that will send all others packing. Will we throw it? Fight among ourselves? Consume ourselves into oblivion?
Almost every war our ancestors fought had a fraction of the justification we now have.
The next election, regardless of the outcome, is probably our last opportunity to set down strong organization roots in opposition to clown world and our decay.
Our brethren across the pond seem to have crossed this threshold. Will we? As a product of the enlightenment, are we even able to do so?
We may be equal before God, but I’m not God. Therein lies the rub. The calling themselves kings, queens, and goddesses is not just some silly meme they post on their social media, it’s a fucking mental illness. Apotheosis
Yeah I don’t get the problem under discussion. Yes we are all equal in the eyes of God, dung beetles rolling up little balls of s*** compared to his mugificence. But but if my ass is in a sling and I have a federal prosecutor breathing down my neck… I want the meanest most jewey lawyer with a chip on his shoulder against the feds I can possibly find. The problem we have is there’s just not that many ditches that we need dug. The solution seems Easy and humane to me, put the excess on the dole. Make the checks contingent upon them coming in every 7 months for injectable birth control. I would estimate that 50 % of white prog house holds have resorted to implanting their wild teenage daughters with a slow-release birth control. No Stigma attached to it. Allow PP to administer the implants and give them a cut of the money. This would bring the progs on board. Of course all this would have to be balanced with a counter program that encourages motherhood and attentive child rearing whithin the desirable demographics.
Haven’t given it enough thought to have an opinion on the idea of democracy undermining Christianity, but I will say this: so much of the left’s perverted worldview can be traced back to the French Revolution. Bitter upper middle class intellectuals want to demolish the current order because they think they are smarter and more deserving of rewards than the aristocracy. An insatiable thirst for unearned rewards.
Another data point, post French Revolution. The early-mid 19th century French aristocrats led the way in wholesale spying on anyone and everyone of any social or political position, and widely employed honey traps for their political enemies. Nothing is new under the Sun.
Z Man;
Exceptional Framing. But I’d propose a twist. Both ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ have hierarchies in observable fact. Left = Hidden Hierarchy. Right = Open Hierarchy.
Cuba, Venezuela, the USSR, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and other Socialist Paradises most definitely *have* hierarchies. But the rulers of each deliberately make it hard for outsiders to comprehend the structure.* Why_?
Aside from those rulers’ pecuniary advantages due to outsiders having to pay off more grifters due to lack of certainty about who’s really in charge, I’d say it is due to their man-centered religion of ‘equality’.
You have said yourself that Progressivism is a religion, and it is hard to disagree. Once one has seen that particular frame, it cannot be unseen. Progs’ demands that people bend the knee to observably stupid and destructive tenants of equivalence (e.g. women are as strong as men) is all the evidence you need of its religious nature. Further, how else to account for Progs’ visceral hostility to Christianity_? Hate and fear of a religious competitor, I’d say.**
The necessity for open hierarchy is probably why any military tends towards ‘The Right’.
___________________________
*The ChiComs are an interesting possible exception, but I don’t know enough to say for sure.
** Not sure why they don’t feel the same about Islam, aside from stupidity, that is.
I think that future historians will note that the tipping point occurred some time during the past generation or so (perhaps in the 90s). The root cause has been systemic and relates to a broad and slow deterioration of the species by virtue of the affluence-driven extinction of natural hardship and the concomitant demise of fitness selection. Dead-weight has become a parasitic cancer.
This will continue until our species experiences something equivalent to colony collapse. It will be messy, but generally the strongest and smartest among us will emerge on the other side.
humans can only really “connect” to about 100 – 125 other persons — and that includes family and friends. that is as big as the horizontal can scale up. connecting these pods together is where you get vertical scaling.
i suspect the real issue in modern society is that everyone knows what the people above them have and how their lives are better. have to isolate the layers of society culturally.
but at the end of the day, everyone with an IQ less than 90 is surplus to requirements. remove these 7+ billion people and all the problems of modernity go away.
Karl;
Interesting observation. Thru-out history, about 100 men is the standard smallest-sized military unit building block: A century in the Roman Army, a company in Western Armies. From there on up it’s aggregations of same under a hierarchal command structure.
I’m pretty sure it’s no coincidence.
It’s a hard wired limit. There is even an official name and theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
3M Corp. limits business and production unit sizes to 140 personnel for very good reasons, relationships in groups of 140 or less are direct, no middle man, everyone knows who is directly responsible for every step in the process .
Dunbar thought the number to be 150. Others have suggested different numbers, but at max it’s a few hundred people. When we are thinking about how society should be organized after the current lunacy has run its course, I think this observation that there is a certain limit above which humans cannot maintain stable social relationships could offer a useful starting point.
The level of social organization where everyone knows each other is the level at which democratic decision making can probably actually work. So maybe groups of this size (100–200 people) should form the basis of the political system of a society. Let’s call this the “tribal” level of the political system. At this level everybody, both men and women, would have an equal say on how the “tribe’s” day to day business is run.
Above this ”tribal” level decision making would get increasingly ”aristocratic” in nature, but the choice of who gets the chance to rise to the ”aristocracy” should be made at the ”tribal” level. So the men of each “tribe” would elect a few of them to represent the tribe at the next level of the political system, representatives from several “tribes” would form a political body that would elect few of its members to represent the said body at a next level of political system, and so on and so on.
Gradually the democratic nature of the system would get more and more ”homeopathic”, but that also happens in our current ”democratic” system, so who cares. At least in this kind of ”tribal/aristocratic” system the hierarchy would be completely transparent. This kind of system would also probably quite effectively cull sociopathic con men from the pool of potential political leaders and restrict the influence of greedy plutocrats and lying media whores to the political decision making process.
Another good analogy. You have civilization spinning around a center with centrifugal forces acting on both vertical and horizontal axes like a top that is not solid, but made up of parts held in relation to each other by societal and economic relationships rather than covalent, magnetic, or charged bonding. Closest thing I can come up with is “atomic spinning top” theory.
Yes. The French Revolution started all the left-right business, but it wasn’t at all theoretical in its origins. It actually began during the Estates general, after the National Assembly had been formed and the king had ordered the first two orders to sit with the third estate. At that point, almost everyone in the assembly was a constitutional monarchist. Democracy wasn’t even a twinkle in anyone’s eye. However, the people with more radical tendencies tended to sit with each other on the left, and those more inclined to want something closer to absolute monarchy on the right, but even a majority of these could be said to favor some form of representative government along with a monarch. Later on, almost no one remained on the right who was an absolute monarchist. The funny thing is, the majority, even on the left, decided in the constitution of 1791 to limit the franchise according to how much taxes people were able to pay, leaving the concept of hierarchy intact, in a theoretical way. The subsequent constitution of 1793 opened the franchise to all adult males, but this was never enacted due to the formation of the revolutionary government of the Terror, run chiefly by the committees, until Thermidor.
As far as the Enlightenment and its effect on the Revolution, I would say that it helped prepare people’s minds for progress in general, but it had no particular program of government in mind. In fact, I would say that if you read the actual Encyclopedia, there is very little talk about government, but a lot about the nuts and bolts of how things work. Prejudices of individuals do come through, even in the Encyclopedia, but most of these were expressed separately, in polemical works of fiction, written to be sold for profit. “The last king strangled with the entrails of the last priest” is attributed to Diderot, and he was an irreverent man, but read his quotes here,https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Denis_Diderot, and most of them have a rather conservative nature. Voltaire struggled to find a priest who who give him last rites at death, and wanted a Christian burial. Montesquieu wanted aristocratic government.
At the time of the Revolution only one encyclopedist remained alive, the Abbe Raynal, who had been in exile for writings that ridiculed absolute monarchy, who returned during the Revolution. He sent a letter to be read the the Constituent Assembly that denounced the Jacobins and encouraged a constitutional monarchy with more power vested in the king than anyone in the Assembly wanted. His letter was hooted so much it was a struggle to read all of it.
The real influence driving the French to fanatical democratic ideas was Rousseau. Norman Hampson does a good job of proving this Prelude to terror : the Constituent Assembly and the failure of consensus, 1789-1791. One can call Rousseau an enlightenment thinker of a sort, but he was not at all systematic. He rarely defined things in practical ways, and most of his works were novels or confessions. His sympathies set the tone, however.
Madame de Stael makes the point in her memoirs that the natural course of events and the majority of the French would have led to a constitutional monarchy, but that the democratical elements in the government had to institute a dictatorship (suspending constitutional government and instituting the Terror)in order to have the social justice that they thought society was deserving of. (She doesn’t use those exact words, I’m just bringing them up to date). This is basically what we have seen done over and over again in the last hundred years, with leftists reproducing the conditions of Robespierrist government to see if they can make a utopia jump out of the cauldron.
The spinning top described by Zman, like any workable form of government requires a certain balance. Solonic Statesmanship is discovering where the balance lies.
Doc;
I’m definitely stealing “…expecting utopia to jump out of the cauldron [of enforced equality]”. What inevitably jumps out is terror + a new hierarchy. The latter was likely the point all along.
Teapartydoc, wow, you really know your history. Good on you for that, and for your thoughtful analysis.
Stop fanning his balls. It only encourages him. All this egg head shit is borderline gay. Which reminds me I’m reading James Lafonds book cracker boy and it is really blowing my hair back.
Well if no one else is gonna say it, I will:
So you are arguing that in addition to the x and y axis of human inter-relationships…. that there is also a ‘z’ component?
Seems a little self serving to me…. 😉
Well, I tried to be subtle about it, but if you insist…
Yes, there is a Z component. And it is in another dimension, i.e., not readily apparent to us 3 dimensional folk—but the mathematical (read socialogical) models work when it is included in application. 😉
The West is a result of Rome and Athens as transmitted through white people. The Catholic Church inherited the Roman Empire that adopted Greek mythology and philosophy. Paganism could not give to people what Christianity could, but Christianity did not have the same intellectual strength as Greek philosophers. It was the monestaries and universities of the Catholic Church that absorbed the ancient Greek worldview into Christianity and that took centuries of our greatest thinkers (St. Augustus and Thomas Aquinas to name just two) working from fragmented texts.
Whatever comes next for European peoples must incorporate Christianity as Christianity did Greek Philosophy. So far poetry has failed as has self-help pop-psychology, but this is why I can’t hate Jordan Peterson as much as I’d like to. His attempt to blend Jung with Christianity is another attempt in a process that dates back to at least when Nietzsche diagnosed the problem with “God is dead.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXYuqrO8LLo
Paganism in ancient Greece was too much wrapped up in questionable magic such as oracles and rituals. In Rome, the approved religions were allied to the state and encouraged by the ruling classes as social glue. Both had some virtues, but in the end, didn’t satisfy the human need for transcendence and a life after death to look forward to.
No wonder that as early as the first century B.C., cults with a tinge of mysticism such as that of Isis and Cybele began to make headway, and Christianity — with its combination of love of fellow man and other-worldliness — quickly grew in influence from the second century A.D. on as the wheels began to come off the Empire.
The first few generations of Christians look, from this distance, quite appealing. For the first time altars were used, not to sacrifice living animals (or people), but to celebrate communion.
Alas, human nature being what it is, that couldn’t last; within a few decades, the Christians were arguing and in some cases fighting among themselves over issues like the Arian heresy. There is a sort of spiritual Gresham’s Law — bad religious practice drives out good. As in everything else, the good does not maintain itself. It must be endlessly renewed.
Last sentence …. YES!!!
Men generally seek hierarchy in their formal relationships and women generally seek to eliminate hierarchy. Yet men often are very egalitarian in their informal social relationships, while women are extremely hierarchical when it comes to the informal social world. Humans are interesting creatures.
Love this talk of hierarchy, physics, and now men vs women. We could add the animal kingdom as well. Specifically dogs and pack behavior. I’d note that violence, up to killing, occurs when the pack order is in dispute. Even strange dogs meeting for the first time figure this out quickly—or else. But once determine, life goes on pretty well.
Assuming no outside interference, that is. I suspect the Collapse of the West will have lots of help from the East. And I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords. Seriously. If I’m going to be ruled by darker-skinned foreigners, I’d rather they be from a high culture that goes back thousands of years, not a culture whose highest achievement is putting a bone through their nose. The Han, at least, grasp things like “writing” and “indoor plumbing.”
We’re already under foreign occupation, at least under the Chinese we’d be second-class citizens, not 5th or 6th class like we are now.
The Chinese are a practical and realistic people. If they rule, they will recognize your usefulness in the hierarchy. At present, this seems absent in our diverse culture.
Work with a couple that have kids coming up to college age. Both born on mainland and naturalized to US. Zero tolerance towards “intersectionality” and affirmative action crap. One came here as a 16 year old, had to teach himself English by watching TV, ended up with an MBA and CFA by 26. In his world we’d be rendering these useless parasites into bio diesel. Yeah, the Chinese are practical.
I think new alliances are forming that are being ignored (of course) by the pozzed Western media. China and Russia together have more than enough money, resources, and firepower (nukes included) to hold the entire rotting West including Murrica at bay both militarily and every other way. Both are authoritarian cultures with no tolerance for post-modern intersectional nonsense. That doesn’t mean life under Sino-Russian domination will be “free” in the sense Westerners are used to but if the West is determined to turn itself into some bizarre hybrid of the gayest parts of San Francisco and the worst parts of Latin American and Africa, the Sino-Russians might end up as the only ones who still have electricity and clean water and some idea of modern science. Alternatively, some sort of spectacular Chinese/Russian achievement like being the first on Mars or back on the Moon might spur the West to back off on poz and go back to some kind of Cold War footing where pragmatism and strength were more important than the rights of trannies. I doubt it though.
Older brother married to native Chinese woman for 30 years, one of first in to US following their ability to come over for school. Landowners before Mao; father Chinese Army; class enemies in cultural revolution. Younger brother manufactures instruments in China that can’t be made in US due to labor costs and environmental restrictions. Considerable insight into China, Chinese character and culture. That said, you can’t seriously be suggesting that servitude to an alien prople and culture is a preferable endstate — either China, or one of our 3rd world competitors? What about just fighting it out here, taking the place back, and re-setting America as originally intended / envisioned by the founders, even it it’s for a somewhat reduced populace?
I don’t think you guys quite get it. China is fundamentally incompatible with what we are and what you would seek.
Brother says: “China is a culture of concensus; nothing happens unless everyone agrees; the concept of individual liberty is non-existent, in fact, it’s even more, it’s viewed as an extreme negative.”
This from a guy with many decades direct experience with things Chinese since Americans started traveling there. His perspective is echoed by his wife who states she came here from China to get away from communism, and now is shocked Americans are becoming socialist.
NOTE: of course, we’d have to incorporate some additional constitutional protections once we succeeded — if we succeeded — based on lessons learned. Surely, some enough of us are made of stern enough stuff.
Great feedback about the Han; I’m looking forward to the day when I pay them a small tax and then get on with my life.
Our current overlords seek our immediate destruction- almost as if they project their made-up stories onto us! Come quickly, Chan-Ho.
Yes, they do. No disagreement. I do know they hate us, believe us only worthy of extermination, want us replaced now, and are doing it. And that’s just our lily white betters. I believe we can stop them — that we have the means, materiel and manpower — but I’m just not sure we will: critical leadership shortage. The thought of becoming a vassal people is just too repellant to me.
The ruling caste of society is right wing by this description, and yet they are the most left liberal in practice. How to reckon with oligarchs using leftist memes to crush their bougousie competitors into submission is an open question, but it defies this reading of left and right
Economic inequality has skyrocketed since the 1970s. We can generally credit this to globalization/deindustrialization, mass immigration, feminism and possibly a general decline in IQ. A major boom in debt, personal and public, was the result.
All of this will generate some rage, but where is it being directed? If you are Simple Jack Dorsey, you definitely don’t want your techbros unionizing because of the horrible work/life balance. So you bring in people used to oriental despotism, and over-promote gays and women. The question is whether they can still control this radicalized workforce. Nationalization is the solution.
Nationalization? Do you mean government ownership and/or control? If this is some kind of irony on your part, it’s not clear.
When it comes to nationalization, we’ve been there, done that. Leaving aside extreme cases like the Soviet Union and its satellite countries, we have an example closer to home: Britain in the 1970s, when major industries like coal and steel, and services such as railroads, were run by the state. The result was extreme inefficiency and politicization of economic resources.
As you imply, corporate capitalism has become corrupt and oppressive as well. It urgently needs to be reformed by stronger regulation (problematic, but better than government management), revival of labor unions (with suitable limitations on behalf of the public interest), and organized citizens pushing back.
Twitter doesn’t make a profit without data harvesting. As an ad-platform it is consistently underwhelming. Given that a microblog platform is vital to public discourse, nationalizing the company is good public policy, and puts its CIA/NSA links under more scrutiny.
Currently we have the problem of hostile neoliberal oligarchs, and hostile DSA-leaning workforces. Nationalization is the only mechanism, other than everyone right-wing migrating to Gab, where conservatives get a seat at the table.
I don’t think we should nationalize Google or Amazon, but regulation of the search function should be carried out by the FCC. I do think we should force the founding oligarchs to sell their stock to the government in return for exile, the alternative being prison.
When it comes to Facebook, the company clearly must be removed from operational control by Zuck and Sandberg. His controlling share should pass to the government in return for the same exile/prison deal. Other shareholders would not be affected, but the government gets a seat at the table.
LOL.
Twitter is vital to public discourse?
Hahahahahahahaha.
Dude – seriously.
Freedom of speech doesn’t mean I have to allow you to stand on MY front lawn and berate me with a bullhorn all night long.
And Twitter is in the end – a private enterprise. If they are refusing people a platform to say shit they don’t agree with – well then go create your own company and say whatever you want to say (Gab , cough Gab)
If Twitter is being supported by government in ANY way shape or form – then THAT needs to have a hard stop put on it. You also in the end have the ability to completely put a stop to Twitter’s censorship by just refusing to use the platform and saying your words and voicing your opinion somewhere else.
When I hear somebody scream ” Twitter is a public utility!!” the first thing that comes to my mind is “leftie infiltrator”.
The ONLY way you get Twitter to stop doing what they’re doing – outside of stop using the goddamn platform – is government interference.
You really think that’s going to turn out well?
again……. LOL.
When it comes to nationalization writ large, I don’t favor it unless the company is a monopoly with national security implications. I think unions in the private sector are a necessary evil, but in the public sector they jeopardize the principle of representative government, and should not be allowed.
There is one exception here: vice. We made a major error in not requiring alcohol, tobacco and gambling to be nationalized as they are in Scandinavia/Japan. Addictive products should be ideally marketed by inefficient bureaucracies.
Since Alcoholism is far higher in Scandinavia than the rest of the West, I assume that is your goal.
How about the vice people have in wanting to tell other people how to live their lives? Let’s get rid of that vice first.
Personal opinion is it ends up getting away from them. Too many historical examples going back to the Greeks and Romans of “oh we’ll just co-opt these people to our control” and instead got themselves fragged. Was listening to Tim Pool describe his cage match with Jack Dorsey and his legal bodyguard. His read of Dorsey’s body language and reactions was that Jack hasn’t completely figured out his Borg has gone rogue on him.
Comment unrelated?
Mr DeBeers.
I do like well done satire, please play again soon.
Income inequality is directly proportional to the degree to which the government monkeys with the economy. The biggest beneficiaries are those who first get the newly-printed money.
Hierarchy is just one type of “bondage” while Liberalism (the Enlightenment) has had as its goal freeing the “individual” from ALL obligations which he has not freely contracted. Family, community, Church, tribe, nation, etc. all come with entailed obligations, demand loyalties which limit the choices of the “individual”, and consequently they have become targets for liberalism. They need to be repudiated for the “individual” to be “really” free.
Ovidiu, the only category you listed which isn’t voluntary and therefore the resultant obligations are voluntary too is Family. All the others are optional for each person. They do all come with with entailed obligations , demand loyalties and limit ones choices but none are mandatory or unalterable.
Jordan Peterson talks about Tribalism v The Sovereign Individual in his talk to the Oxford Union here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZMIbo_DxJk&t=17s
I burned it to a cd and listen in the car
JP is very smart for a cucky Civ Nat. Pitch that CD into the nearest dumpster, BJ.
The horizontal and the vertical are expressed in the Ten Commandments where the first Commandments describe your relationship with God and the last Commandments describe your relationship with your fellow man which in turn describes the cross. It’s not a coincidence that the entire West is in free-fall it’s and there’s only one thing left to hold onto. There’s only one thing that’s going to save you. Though I suppose some of you were still holding onto guns also.
A gun might not save society, but it might keep you alive just long enough to get someplace where society might survive a little longer.
You are kind of missing the point of guns.
The “guns are for self defense” mindset is laudable in 85% White America with low immigration
Right now the guns are so you and your allies can kill or remove the people who are destroying your society not to facilitate yet another flight
Whites sooner than later will have to embraced that mindset, fight as a group or die.
Til then though, we stay in stage one, vote and hope/work/pray to avoid stage two, kill fucking everybody
Whitney, wrt your comment on keeping your guns. The old saw is appropriate here—“God helps those who help themselves”!
Or from an old sermon. “…to allow one’s life to be taken by someone with no Authority…is to commit the sin of ‘self murder…’”, i.e., suicide.
Nothing in the above implies a disbelief in God or Divine Provinance. I’ll keep my guns and pray to God for His guidance on their use when His time comes—and if he sends me atheistic fellow travelers as tools of His will, I will accept them and use them accordingly.
Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition!