For me, the great social movements that have dominated the headlines and dug the mass graves of the last century and a half -- Communism, the welfare state, environmentalism, identity politics -- amount to a Great Reaction against the most astonishing event in world history, the Double Revolution, that in physics that has given us relativity and quantum mechanics, and in everyday life has given us the market economy.
When the world is suddenly utterly changed it is natural for people to look back to the past. New-age philosopher Ken Wilber describes it as people stepping back to "what worked" when it seems that things are all going to hell around them. So of course, with the unparalleled changes of the last two centuries there are many people that yearn for an older simpler time.
This nostaglia was evoked by Archie Bunker in the title song of All in the Family, "Those Were the Days" of the time when "Girls were girls and men were men." And the whole point of All in the Family was to sneer at the white working class that was all of a sudden finding itself left behind by history. Or at least by the ruling class.
Or, in a less innocent manner, it was natural for the Germans to revert to blood and soil after the disaster of World War I. And that is what Hitler offered them: a pure Aryan race, and a Drang nach Osten for land to the east of Germany. Absolute insanity for the nation that had invented the automobile and the new physics and left behind the old faith of slave-farmer Gerald O'Hara that "land was the only thing that lasts."
Every effort in the Great Reaction is to re-invent some social or religious or economic facet of the good old days, so my way of illustrating this is to "neo" everything about it.
Most obviously, there is the neo-feudalism of the welfare state. In the good old days of feudalism, the peasants were held in thrall, as semi-slaves, to the warrior class. The peasants tilled the fields and grew the food, and surrendered a good part of their labor to their lord in return for his protection against pirates and other lords that might come and relieve the peasants of their food and land. Same thing now: the ruling class makes all kinds of promises to the workers and offers all kinds of benefits, and people feel secure in their work and in their lives. But this is an illusion, a confidence trick. As the feudal peasants found out when the lords threw them over, and as the white working class has found when the ruling class went global about half a century ago.
Then there is the neo-tribalism of identity politics, that unscrupulous politicians and ideologues use to divide modern voters into race and religious and gender tribes. In the modern era we have tried to use the nation state to create a new kind of membership, to get people to feel membership in something bigger than their kindred and their tribe. But the truth is that our natural human instinct is for the clan of about 120 people, and any politician worth his salt knows how to activate those ancient instincts.
How about the neo-piracy or neo-plunder of modern taxation? Back in the old days under slavery the lords would appropriate as much of the slaves' or serfs' production as possible. Then in the 19th century the expropriation of taxation came as low as 10 percent of GDP. Now it is back up to 35-40 percent in the advanced countries. But what is this expropriation but a return to the old days when the way to get rich was to steal resources from the neighboring tribe? We are better than that, because for us wealth comes from the ideas and labor of humans and the knowledge in between their ears.
Then there is the need to propitiate the gods, in neo-sacrifice. In the good old days humans would sacrifice animals -- or even the first-born son as Abraham nearly did with Isaac -- to propitiate the anger of the gods. René Girard proposed the notion of the scapegoat, an individual sacrificed to carry all the blame for social discord, as a way to restore social harmony in a social group divided by conflict. Our modern politicians are masters at this. Recessions and financial crashes are never the result of reckless government policy but always the fault of greedy bankers and speculators. Or The Jews. The disasters of socialist regimes are always due to "saboteurs and wreckers." Also, of course, we have the environmental movement that wants us to "live simply so that others may simply live" which assumes that there is a fixed amount of resources and that my sacrifice is needed to put food in the mouth of somebody else.
Don't forget the rise of neo-guilt. Nietzsche blames Christianity and "the priests" for the widespread incidence of guilt. He represents this as a cunning trick to get us to turn our healthy tribal hate and cruelty back on ourselves. I like to propose a more innocent notion, that turning warrior rage back on ourselves in Original Sin tames us for the market economy in the city where Viking berserkers are really not helpful to a prosperous economy. Back in the day our modern evangelizers were, like Nietzsche, anti-guilt and anti-Christian. But now all the best people are trying to make white people guilty about their "white privilege" and men guilty about their "toxic masculinity." I think we need a new history of guilt so that we can really understand the social origin and significance of guilt.
One of the most obvious manifestations of the Great Reaction is the emergence of the neo-tyranny of totalitarianism. It's remarkable that, despite the universal horror of tyranny, of man's inhumanity to man, we have seen the most tyrannous political regimes in history in living memory: Stalinism, Hitlerism, and Maoism, and various lesser lights. And here in the United States we have the neo-tyranny of the politically correct to stamp out "hate speech" using the power of the state.
Now my judgement is that these neo-isms reflect basic human instincts that cannot really be abolished. The fact is that many people prefer to live in subordination, and thus we will always need institutions in which they can diminish the risks and rewards of life. But I'd say that it is best for such people to go work for a corporation rather than saddle us with the weight of the welfare state. We humans are tribal down to our toes, but we are also smart enough to imagine new, less exclusive, ways of belonging. We humans need ways to resolve conflict, but we can surely find new ways to do that without blood sacrifice and guilt-tripping whole communities.
And surely there is a higher, better way to provide for common needs than by taxing -- that is, taking by force -- from every worker over a third of his wage.
The Great Reaction is a challenge to us all to imagine something for this age, after the Double Revolution of modern physics and the modern economy, something higher and better than a cowardly return to Old Ways of olden times.
When the world is suddenly utterly changed it is natural for people to look back to the past. New-age philosopher Ken Wilber describes it as people stepping back to "what worked" when it seems that things are all going to hell around them. So of course, with the unparalleled changes of the last two centuries there are many people that yearn for an older simpler time.
This nostaglia was evoked by Archie Bunker in the title song of All in the Family, "Those Were the Days" of the time when "Girls were girls and men were men." And the whole point of All in the Family was to sneer at the white working class that was all of a sudden finding itself left behind by history. Or at least by the ruling class.
Or, in a less innocent manner, it was natural for the Germans to revert to blood and soil after the disaster of World War I. And that is what Hitler offered them: a pure Aryan race, and a Drang nach Osten for land to the east of Germany. Absolute insanity for the nation that had invented the automobile and the new physics and left behind the old faith of slave-farmer Gerald O'Hara that "land was the only thing that lasts."
Every effort in the Great Reaction is to re-invent some social or religious or economic facet of the good old days, so my way of illustrating this is to "neo" everything about it.
Most obviously, there is the neo-feudalism of the welfare state. In the good old days of feudalism, the peasants were held in thrall, as semi-slaves, to the warrior class. The peasants tilled the fields and grew the food, and surrendered a good part of their labor to their lord in return for his protection against pirates and other lords that might come and relieve the peasants of their food and land. Same thing now: the ruling class makes all kinds of promises to the workers and offers all kinds of benefits, and people feel secure in their work and in their lives. But this is an illusion, a confidence trick. As the feudal peasants found out when the lords threw them over, and as the white working class has found when the ruling class went global about half a century ago.
Then there is the neo-tribalism of identity politics, that unscrupulous politicians and ideologues use to divide modern voters into race and religious and gender tribes. In the modern era we have tried to use the nation state to create a new kind of membership, to get people to feel membership in something bigger than their kindred and their tribe. But the truth is that our natural human instinct is for the clan of about 120 people, and any politician worth his salt knows how to activate those ancient instincts.
How about the neo-piracy or neo-plunder of modern taxation? Back in the old days under slavery the lords would appropriate as much of the slaves' or serfs' production as possible. Then in the 19th century the expropriation of taxation came as low as 10 percent of GDP. Now it is back up to 35-40 percent in the advanced countries. But what is this expropriation but a return to the old days when the way to get rich was to steal resources from the neighboring tribe? We are better than that, because for us wealth comes from the ideas and labor of humans and the knowledge in between their ears.
Then there is the need to propitiate the gods, in neo-sacrifice. In the good old days humans would sacrifice animals -- or even the first-born son as Abraham nearly did with Isaac -- to propitiate the anger of the gods. René Girard proposed the notion of the scapegoat, an individual sacrificed to carry all the blame for social discord, as a way to restore social harmony in a social group divided by conflict. Our modern politicians are masters at this. Recessions and financial crashes are never the result of reckless government policy but always the fault of greedy bankers and speculators. Or The Jews. The disasters of socialist regimes are always due to "saboteurs and wreckers." Also, of course, we have the environmental movement that wants us to "live simply so that others may simply live" which assumes that there is a fixed amount of resources and that my sacrifice is needed to put food in the mouth of somebody else.
Don't forget the rise of neo-guilt. Nietzsche blames Christianity and "the priests" for the widespread incidence of guilt. He represents this as a cunning trick to get us to turn our healthy tribal hate and cruelty back on ourselves. I like to propose a more innocent notion, that turning warrior rage back on ourselves in Original Sin tames us for the market economy in the city where Viking berserkers are really not helpful to a prosperous economy. Back in the day our modern evangelizers were, like Nietzsche, anti-guilt and anti-Christian. But now all the best people are trying to make white people guilty about their "white privilege" and men guilty about their "toxic masculinity." I think we need a new history of guilt so that we can really understand the social origin and significance of guilt.
One of the most obvious manifestations of the Great Reaction is the emergence of the neo-tyranny of totalitarianism. It's remarkable that, despite the universal horror of tyranny, of man's inhumanity to man, we have seen the most tyrannous political regimes in history in living memory: Stalinism, Hitlerism, and Maoism, and various lesser lights. And here in the United States we have the neo-tyranny of the politically correct to stamp out "hate speech" using the power of the state.
Now my judgement is that these neo-isms reflect basic human instincts that cannot really be abolished. The fact is that many people prefer to live in subordination, and thus we will always need institutions in which they can diminish the risks and rewards of life. But I'd say that it is best for such people to go work for a corporation rather than saddle us with the weight of the welfare state. We humans are tribal down to our toes, but we are also smart enough to imagine new, less exclusive, ways of belonging. We humans need ways to resolve conflict, but we can surely find new ways to do that without blood sacrifice and guilt-tripping whole communities.
And surely there is a higher, better way to provide for common needs than by taxing -- that is, taking by force -- from every worker over a third of his wage.
The Great Reaction is a challenge to us all to imagine something for this age, after the Double Revolution of modern physics and the modern economy, something higher and better than a cowardly return to Old Ways of olden times.
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