Jonah Goldberg's new book, The Suicide of the West, is out this week, and I haven't ordered my copy. I'm not exactly sure of his argument, but it seems to include at least Deirdre McCloskey's Great Enrichment, because I hear him talking about $3 per day, which is the daily income of Brits, Indians, Chinese, USians in 1800. Jonah calls it the "Miracle" of getting from $3 per day to $100 per day.
From the blurb on Amazon:
The reason, I have come to believe, is that the notion of the material world understood by science and the notion of the rational actor that is understood by post Enlightenment theory misunderstands the nature of man the animal.
Yes, reason and science are the amazing developments that have enabled the "Miracle" but we are still 90 percent the social animals that survive because we live in groups and we conform to the world-view of the group. And we act not on a rational analysis of the situation but from emotion, or "affect."
I have been able to come to a reasonable understanding of all this by reading Jordan B. Peterson's Maps of Meaning. In that book Peterson runs us through myth, religion, alchemy, Jung and Nietzsche to try and make sense of it all.
And the most important thing he says is that we do not go through life as rational actors, deciding every moment what to do based on a scientific analysis of alternatives. Not at all.
What we do is go unthinkingly, unconsciously, from moment to moment in our "known world," which is known to us partly from our own experience and mostly from the socialization we get from the group, through its myths, religion, and its menu of "things we believe." Anyone that disagrees with the norm is typically labeled as a madman, if relatively harmless, or a dangerous heretic, if not relatively harmless. Thus our life in the "known world" is partly just unconscious life on auto, and partly an unconscious subordination to the culture of the group we belong to.
Thus it makes complete sense that lefty mobs combine to anathematize anyone that dares to diverge from the liberal line. That is what humans do. It is the way we preserve our human groups and keep everyone safe in the "known world" and its best practices, and keep klueless klots from bashing into the guardrails and killing themselves. The punishment of dissenters and heretics is how we preserve our group way of life, the way of life that has brought us successfully to the present moment.
But what happens if suddenly our unconscious life lived moment to moment in the "known world" bumps into something unexpected? What happens right away is Fear. Here is what rats do when they encounter something unexpected. They stop, freeze in Fear for a while, and then tentatively start exploring around them, in an attempt to understand what has happened, and how they should adapt to the unexpected, whether it is dangerous or useful or what.
We humans do the same thing. When we come upon something unexpected, we freeze in Fear. Then, after a while, we start to figure out what went wrong, and what to do about it. But this sort of thing happens not just to individuals but to groups as well. The bulk of Peterson's book is about the social process of adapting to the new and unexpected at the group level, the irruption of the "unknown world" into the known world of the group and the way in which the group responds to the chaotic challenge of the unknown.
In Peterson's view, the agent of adaption is the creative, sacrificial, revolutionary hero, the Christ figure, that explores the frightening unknown and proposes, and suffers, for his solution to society's problem. He suffers, of course, because society never wants to change. Even as the world is collapsing in ruins, people still want to go on in the old way, and they still want to punish heretics that propose a new world view.
Now in my view the Axial Age religions -- Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam -- are astonishing ways of adapting the received "way of life" from a small tribal group to a larger agricultural-plus-city group. It proposes the brilliant notion of divine justice to deal with the problem that, in a society larger than the village, we do not know what everyone is doing, and who has done what to whom, and therefore cannot mete out justice to all the malefactors.
In my view the nation state is an astonishing way of replacing the actual tribe of the kindred, people actually related to me by blood, with the totally fake and artificial and much larger tribe of the nation, united by a centrally imposed language and a totally fake and artificial glorious history.
But we are now in a place where the old Axial Age religions are no longer meaningful to educated people in the West. And we are now in a place where the nation state is no longer meaningful to educated people in the West.
In my view the Axial Age religions were responsibility religions, with a God that spelled out a vision of divine justice that people were expected to follow on their own -- with a bit of help from priests and churches and Inquisitions. But our new educated class is in the process of replacing the old responsibility religion with a religion of creativity. In their view what is best in life is to be creative; everything else is deplorable. Nietzsche is the guy that is really starting to face up to this, with his "Beyond Good and Evil" and his "we free spirits." What does a culture of creativity look like? That is what Nietzsche is trying to do.
Very nice: I am all in favor of the culture of creativity. But I doubt if the overwhelming majority of humans are ready for this. So a culture of creativity has to account for the fact that most people are not ready for it.
In my view the nation state is an astonishing human and cultural and political achievement, even though its birth has everywhere been the work of some dominatory and conquering elite. But our educated elite has determined that the nation state is the cause of all wars, and that the nation state must be replaced by supra-national institutions like the EU and the UN. Ordinary people cannot be trusted because they are all proto-fascists, so educated experts must rule. However, the educated elite still needs to use politics in order to gain the support of ordinary people for their elite agenda. In the nation state era they would appeal to the national idea, through notions like "British is best," the "American way of life." The Germans, of course, developed the idea of the national "Volk." But what were the elite to to do if nationalism was a bad word and Volk is nothing more than genocide? Well, what the educated class has done is revive the tribalisms of old. Instead of the nation they are using what we now call "identity politics" to rally people. First it was the identity of class, in the Communist Manifesto. The workers belonged to no nation, but would join in a Communist International across national borders. Then the educated class started to appeal to people on the basis of gender and race within nation states -- all this to achieve equality of gender and race.
This is all very well, but I doubt if turning the clock back to the smaller identities of class and race and gender is really a better fake tribalism than the fake tribe of the nation.
So here we are in a chaos of warring cultures and tribalisms. What is the solution?
The solution is marked out in Jordan B. Peterson's Maps of Meaning. We need a new sacrifical creative hero to lead us to a Promised Land with a new understanding of the confusing world situation that will, in time, harden into a new religious and group orthodoxy. And this new orthodoxy will convert the rational ideas of modern science and the economic "Miracle" into a new system of religious and cultural "affect" that ordinary people will pick up with the air they breathe.
In my view the new religion must combine several features that serve the "Miracle" and are notably absent from the thinking of the global educated elite.
Our problem, the problem of the non-left, is that we profess the futile notion that we are rational whereas the left is all about feelings. Sorry chum, but the meaning of life, the universe, and everything is all about feelings. The trick is to use feelings in the service of rationally acquired knowledge, to realize that religion is upstream of culture is upstream from politics, but that behind the scenes is knowledge and reason.
It is my belief that the whole arc of the left, from Marx to Marcuse to McKinnon, is a religion upstream from culture upstream from politics that is a Great Reaction against the findings of modern knowledge and reason. I mean, what idiots would set themselves against the ideas that have released billions of humans from hunger and bondage?
Really, this is not that hard!
From the blurb on Amazon:
As Americans we are doubly blessed that those radical ideas were written into the Constitution, laying the groundwork for our uniquely prosperous society:Time was, I would have agreed completely with Jonah. But now I don't. That's because, since July 2016 with the accession of Trump to head the Republican Party, I have had to face the fact that the capitalist/libertarian world view that I held is not good enough.
In the last few decades, these political virtues have been turned into vices. As we are increasingly taught to view our traditions as a system of oppression, exploitation and “white privilege,” the principles of liberty and the rule of law are under attack from left and right.
- Our rights come from God not from the government.
- The government belongs to us; we do not belong to the government.
- The individual is sovereign. We are all captains of our own souls.
- The fruits of our labors belong to us.
The reason, I have come to believe, is that the notion of the material world understood by science and the notion of the rational actor that is understood by post Enlightenment theory misunderstands the nature of man the animal.
Yes, reason and science are the amazing developments that have enabled the "Miracle" but we are still 90 percent the social animals that survive because we live in groups and we conform to the world-view of the group. And we act not on a rational analysis of the situation but from emotion, or "affect."
I have been able to come to a reasonable understanding of all this by reading Jordan B. Peterson's Maps of Meaning. In that book Peterson runs us through myth, religion, alchemy, Jung and Nietzsche to try and make sense of it all.
And the most important thing he says is that we do not go through life as rational actors, deciding every moment what to do based on a scientific analysis of alternatives. Not at all.
What we do is go unthinkingly, unconsciously, from moment to moment in our "known world," which is known to us partly from our own experience and mostly from the socialization we get from the group, through its myths, religion, and its menu of "things we believe." Anyone that disagrees with the norm is typically labeled as a madman, if relatively harmless, or a dangerous heretic, if not relatively harmless. Thus our life in the "known world" is partly just unconscious life on auto, and partly an unconscious subordination to the culture of the group we belong to.
Thus it makes complete sense that lefty mobs combine to anathematize anyone that dares to diverge from the liberal line. That is what humans do. It is the way we preserve our human groups and keep everyone safe in the "known world" and its best practices, and keep klueless klots from bashing into the guardrails and killing themselves. The punishment of dissenters and heretics is how we preserve our group way of life, the way of life that has brought us successfully to the present moment.
But what happens if suddenly our unconscious life lived moment to moment in the "known world" bumps into something unexpected? What happens right away is Fear. Here is what rats do when they encounter something unexpected. They stop, freeze in Fear for a while, and then tentatively start exploring around them, in an attempt to understand what has happened, and how they should adapt to the unexpected, whether it is dangerous or useful or what.
We humans do the same thing. When we come upon something unexpected, we freeze in Fear. Then, after a while, we start to figure out what went wrong, and what to do about it. But this sort of thing happens not just to individuals but to groups as well. The bulk of Peterson's book is about the social process of adapting to the new and unexpected at the group level, the irruption of the "unknown world" into the known world of the group and the way in which the group responds to the chaotic challenge of the unknown.
In Peterson's view, the agent of adaption is the creative, sacrificial, revolutionary hero, the Christ figure, that explores the frightening unknown and proposes, and suffers, for his solution to society's problem. He suffers, of course, because society never wants to change. Even as the world is collapsing in ruins, people still want to go on in the old way, and they still want to punish heretics that propose a new world view.
Now in my view the Axial Age religions -- Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam -- are astonishing ways of adapting the received "way of life" from a small tribal group to a larger agricultural-plus-city group. It proposes the brilliant notion of divine justice to deal with the problem that, in a society larger than the village, we do not know what everyone is doing, and who has done what to whom, and therefore cannot mete out justice to all the malefactors.
In my view the nation state is an astonishing way of replacing the actual tribe of the kindred, people actually related to me by blood, with the totally fake and artificial and much larger tribe of the nation, united by a centrally imposed language and a totally fake and artificial glorious history.
But we are now in a place where the old Axial Age religions are no longer meaningful to educated people in the West. And we are now in a place where the nation state is no longer meaningful to educated people in the West.
In my view the Axial Age religions were responsibility religions, with a God that spelled out a vision of divine justice that people were expected to follow on their own -- with a bit of help from priests and churches and Inquisitions. But our new educated class is in the process of replacing the old responsibility religion with a religion of creativity. In their view what is best in life is to be creative; everything else is deplorable. Nietzsche is the guy that is really starting to face up to this, with his "Beyond Good and Evil" and his "we free spirits." What does a culture of creativity look like? That is what Nietzsche is trying to do.
Very nice: I am all in favor of the culture of creativity. But I doubt if the overwhelming majority of humans are ready for this. So a culture of creativity has to account for the fact that most people are not ready for it.
In my view the nation state is an astonishing human and cultural and political achievement, even though its birth has everywhere been the work of some dominatory and conquering elite. But our educated elite has determined that the nation state is the cause of all wars, and that the nation state must be replaced by supra-national institutions like the EU and the UN. Ordinary people cannot be trusted because they are all proto-fascists, so educated experts must rule. However, the educated elite still needs to use politics in order to gain the support of ordinary people for their elite agenda. In the nation state era they would appeal to the national idea, through notions like "British is best," the "American way of life." The Germans, of course, developed the idea of the national "Volk." But what were the elite to to do if nationalism was a bad word and Volk is nothing more than genocide? Well, what the educated class has done is revive the tribalisms of old. Instead of the nation they are using what we now call "identity politics" to rally people. First it was the identity of class, in the Communist Manifesto. The workers belonged to no nation, but would join in a Communist International across national borders. Then the educated class started to appeal to people on the basis of gender and race within nation states -- all this to achieve equality of gender and race.
This is all very well, but I doubt if turning the clock back to the smaller identities of class and race and gender is really a better fake tribalism than the fake tribe of the nation.
So here we are in a chaos of warring cultures and tribalisms. What is the solution?
The solution is marked out in Jordan B. Peterson's Maps of Meaning. We need a new sacrifical creative hero to lead us to a Promised Land with a new understanding of the confusing world situation that will, in time, harden into a new religious and group orthodoxy. And this new orthodoxy will convert the rational ideas of modern science and the economic "Miracle" into a new system of religious and cultural "affect" that ordinary people will pick up with the air they breathe.
In my view the new religion must combine several features that serve the "Miracle" and are notably absent from the thinking of the global educated elite.
- First, we must all serve the market as we once served our feudal lords. This is a very difficult concept for most people to accept, and a lot needs to be done to assist people when the market leaves them by the side of the road. We need to make a cult out of serving the market, and make it ordinary and natural for people to pick themselves up and find a new way to serve when their old job no longer serves. Right now we have a chaos between "free trade" and "jobs for life" and everyone feels betrayed.
- Second, we must revive the nation state or some other artificial tribal notion which almost all people can support. Now the point of a tribe is protection from the neighboring tribe, because the land the tribe occupies is its source of food, and must be defended if the tribe is to continue. This old point has lost its salience because food can be bought and transported from anywhere to anywhere in the world. So the nation state is no longer in the business of protecting the food supply. And yet humans still need protection and the group is what provides protection. So the nation state must provide protection. But from what? Obviously, the terrors of the market, not to mention robbers and mass murderers, and natural disasters. But here is the thing. We should not protect people from the market with gigantic entitlement programs that completely insulate them from the world. Government is here to protect us from existential perils, not to hide us away from day-to-day annoyances.
Our problem, the problem of the non-left, is that we profess the futile notion that we are rational whereas the left is all about feelings. Sorry chum, but the meaning of life, the universe, and everything is all about feelings. The trick is to use feelings in the service of rationally acquired knowledge, to realize that religion is upstream of culture is upstream from politics, but that behind the scenes is knowledge and reason.
It is my belief that the whole arc of the left, from Marx to Marcuse to McKinnon, is a religion upstream from culture upstream from politics that is a Great Reaction against the findings of modern knowledge and reason. I mean, what idiots would set themselves against the ideas that have released billions of humans from hunger and bondage?
Really, this is not that hard!
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