How should we understand the current Democratic presidential campaign? The crazy promises ranging from Medicare For All to student debt forgiveness to slave reparations to the Green New Deal? At the current stage it does not seem to be offering strategically pitched items of loot, but something more existential.
I think that the way to understand the Democratic campaign is as a religious festival. As sacrifices to the gods. And as the promise of Paradise. Take the climate change issue. Tucker Carlson:
It comes down to the basic truth, that everyone has a religion, a way of coming to grips with "the meaning of life, the universe, and everything." And everyone has that basic fear, that is so cunningly expressed in the notion of Original Sin, that we humans are basically flawed, that the world as we know it is coming to an end, and that something must be done, something dramatic, to prevent the End of the World.
But most people do not -- why, they cannot -- individually conduct a spiritual quest to determine, for themselves, what life means for themselves. To do that, they would have to read a book. Instead they rely on religious experts -- priests, evangelists, inspirational teachers -- to do the heavy lifting, and plump for one of the prefabricated religious doctrines on offer. I was just reading a Zman take on that; he writes about ageing baby-boom women and their "various self-actualizing fads." Religious cults, by any other name.
I think that we experience this feeling in different ways at the different stages of life. Take the eternal problem of the End of the World. As young'uns we fear that the older generation will wreck the world before we get our chance. Getting older as parents we worry that the world will come to an end before our children establish their place in the world. As we get older still we worry that the world as we have known it will come to an end before our death. Or, as John Derbyshire reports of his working-class mother's thought on her deathbed: "At least I knew England when it was England." At that point, you know your world has ended, but at least you had experienced it in its glory.
Now, our Founding Fathers, like many wise heads of their era, understood that this religious experience of the End of the World exists uneasily with government and politics. That's because their generation experienced as disastrous all the religious wars in Europe of the previous century. They wondered how to relieve the tension between existential religious fears and hopes and the mundane question of who has political power to knock people over the head for breaking the peace.
So they came up with the notion of the Separation of Powers and the Separation of Church and State. To express it in terms that our liberal friends used to to be able to understand, the Founders wanted to make it difficult to "legislate morality."
Of course, in the event, it is impossible to separate law and morality, because morality is implied in every law passed by a legislature or legal decision promulgated by a court of law. But at least the notion of the separation of church and state recognizes that there is a problem, that there are other people out there with a different view of the meaning of life. It expresses the notion that, while the view held by many other people is obviously wrong, still, there is a need for people of different views to get along, if they can.
The trouble is, of course, that there is always a new enthusiastic religious cult coming on the scene with an apocalyptic view of life that knows that, unless we act now, we are all doomed. We know these religious cults by the identities of their enthusiasts: Jacobins, Bolsheviks, Fascists, Nazis, Maoists, Environmentalists, Climate Activists. We wise ones aggregate them under the heading "totalitarian," meaning the recombination of politics and religion into a single millennarian movement.
It's understandable. In my view the notion that the world is not coming to an end, that we should not all act now to prevent the Second Fall, that there are not Evil Forces that need to be smashed is a world view of almost unimaginable nobility and sophistication, completely inaccessible to the average member of the Democratic base that never read a book.
In other words, the idea that life is always in existential tension, that the meaning of life is always going to be uncertain and unresolved, that there is both good and evil in every human heart, that in the end we must just keep on keeping on: this is a world view that few can hope to attain.
And meanwhile there is always another generation grasping impatiently on a new religious cult that promises redemption from the intolerable burden of a Fallen World.
I suspect that the cult of redemption tends usually to be an upper-class thing, a conceit of people that have it made, or almost made.
In the terms of my Three Peoples theory, I would say that the People of the Subordinate Self only get restless when reacting to immediate problems like the loss of a job, or a collapse of the economy. In that situation they strike out like cornered rats. They are not looking for redemption, just the chance to live another day.
The People of the Responsible Self tend to think of setbacks and perils through the lens of personal responsibility and their existing religious beliefs that prompt them to work out what a responsible person should do in the present emergency. Come what may, they are already "saved" or redeemed by their Redeemer. So their response to existential peril is likely to be measured and rational.
It is the People of the Creative Self that are likely to respond to existential crisis with a new religious cult. For them the temptation is always there to use their creative talent to make the world anew. They do this because they are people that imagine they have the power to "make a difference" in the world. You would too if you thought that you had the brains and the truth to set the world to rights.
Obviously, politicians are no fools. Their métier is to know how to push peoples' buttons and turn them into supporters, even true believers. What every Democrat running for president knows is that their base is panting for a leader to lead them out of the Land of Trump, where every firstborn is in danger of -- well, something or other -- into the Promised Land of peace and justice, and on the way to vanquish the monsters of racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia.
See? Nothing has changed. We humans are eternally slaves of the Pharaohs, eternally hoping for the Messiah to save us from the hell of the present. And eternally threatened by evil monsters.
Especially educated members of the Democratic base.
I think that the way to understand the Democratic campaign is as a religious festival. As sacrifices to the gods. And as the promise of Paradise. Take the climate change issue. Tucker Carlson:
Do you really think Nancy Pelosi believes climate change is an existential crisis? Of course, she doesn't think that. Plus, she flies private. Obama can say whatever he wants about carbon emissions. He can shake his chin and be concerned, but when you're spending 15 million of your own dollars on a beachfront estate on Martha's Vineyard, you're not too worried about the oceans rising. But the Democratic base doesn't get the joke. Democratic primary voters believe the talking points.That's the point. Belief. "Democratic primary voters believe the talking points." Yes, actually believe the blandishments of politicians and the passionate declarations of activists. But why?
It comes down to the basic truth, that everyone has a religion, a way of coming to grips with "the meaning of life, the universe, and everything." And everyone has that basic fear, that is so cunningly expressed in the notion of Original Sin, that we humans are basically flawed, that the world as we know it is coming to an end, and that something must be done, something dramatic, to prevent the End of the World.
But most people do not -- why, they cannot -- individually conduct a spiritual quest to determine, for themselves, what life means for themselves. To do that, they would have to read a book. Instead they rely on religious experts -- priests, evangelists, inspirational teachers -- to do the heavy lifting, and plump for one of the prefabricated religious doctrines on offer. I was just reading a Zman take on that; he writes about ageing baby-boom women and their "various self-actualizing fads." Religious cults, by any other name.
I think that we experience this feeling in different ways at the different stages of life. Take the eternal problem of the End of the World. As young'uns we fear that the older generation will wreck the world before we get our chance. Getting older as parents we worry that the world will come to an end before our children establish their place in the world. As we get older still we worry that the world as we have known it will come to an end before our death. Or, as John Derbyshire reports of his working-class mother's thought on her deathbed: "At least I knew England when it was England." At that point, you know your world has ended, but at least you had experienced it in its glory.
Now, our Founding Fathers, like many wise heads of their era, understood that this religious experience of the End of the World exists uneasily with government and politics. That's because their generation experienced as disastrous all the religious wars in Europe of the previous century. They wondered how to relieve the tension between existential religious fears and hopes and the mundane question of who has political power to knock people over the head for breaking the peace.
So they came up with the notion of the Separation of Powers and the Separation of Church and State. To express it in terms that our liberal friends used to to be able to understand, the Founders wanted to make it difficult to "legislate morality."
Of course, in the event, it is impossible to separate law and morality, because morality is implied in every law passed by a legislature or legal decision promulgated by a court of law. But at least the notion of the separation of church and state recognizes that there is a problem, that there are other people out there with a different view of the meaning of life. It expresses the notion that, while the view held by many other people is obviously wrong, still, there is a need for people of different views to get along, if they can.
The trouble is, of course, that there is always a new enthusiastic religious cult coming on the scene with an apocalyptic view of life that knows that, unless we act now, we are all doomed. We know these religious cults by the identities of their enthusiasts: Jacobins, Bolsheviks, Fascists, Nazis, Maoists, Environmentalists, Climate Activists. We wise ones aggregate them under the heading "totalitarian," meaning the recombination of politics and religion into a single millennarian movement.
It's understandable. In my view the notion that the world is not coming to an end, that we should not all act now to prevent the Second Fall, that there are not Evil Forces that need to be smashed is a world view of almost unimaginable nobility and sophistication, completely inaccessible to the average member of the Democratic base that never read a book.
In other words, the idea that life is always in existential tension, that the meaning of life is always going to be uncertain and unresolved, that there is both good and evil in every human heart, that in the end we must just keep on keeping on: this is a world view that few can hope to attain.
And meanwhile there is always another generation grasping impatiently on a new religious cult that promises redemption from the intolerable burden of a Fallen World.
I suspect that the cult of redemption tends usually to be an upper-class thing, a conceit of people that have it made, or almost made.
In the terms of my Three Peoples theory, I would say that the People of the Subordinate Self only get restless when reacting to immediate problems like the loss of a job, or a collapse of the economy. In that situation they strike out like cornered rats. They are not looking for redemption, just the chance to live another day.
The People of the Responsible Self tend to think of setbacks and perils through the lens of personal responsibility and their existing religious beliefs that prompt them to work out what a responsible person should do in the present emergency. Come what may, they are already "saved" or redeemed by their Redeemer. So their response to existential peril is likely to be measured and rational.
It is the People of the Creative Self that are likely to respond to existential crisis with a new religious cult. For them the temptation is always there to use their creative talent to make the world anew. They do this because they are people that imagine they have the power to "make a difference" in the world. You would too if you thought that you had the brains and the truth to set the world to rights.
Obviously, politicians are no fools. Their métier is to know how to push peoples' buttons and turn them into supporters, even true believers. What every Democrat running for president knows is that their base is panting for a leader to lead them out of the Land of Trump, where every firstborn is in danger of -- well, something or other -- into the Promised Land of peace and justice, and on the way to vanquish the monsters of racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia.
See? Nothing has changed. We humans are eternally slaves of the Pharaohs, eternally hoping for the Messiah to save us from the hell of the present. And eternally threatened by evil monsters.
Especially educated members of the Democratic base.
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