We should make things as simple as possible, but no simpler, as Albert Einstein didn't quite say. But what about human society? Can this unimaginably complex emergent phenomenon be simplified?
Maybe, maybe not. But we humans do it anyway; it is our way of trying to understand and deal with the world of other people.
The simplest thing is to divide the world into "us" and "them," friends and enemies, and this is what politics does. But if we want to get beyond simple binaries and the war of all against all, or at least the binary of my people against your people, or the Hunger Games binary of Capitol against the Districts, we must make the world a little less simple.
Most students of human society have divided it, like Gaul, into three parts. For George Orwell it was Inner Party, Outer Party, and Proles. For Marx it was Communists, Bourgeoisie, and Proletarians. For Tolkien it was Elves, Hobbits, and Dwarves. For the Vikings it was Earls, Peasants, and Thralls (or slaves). For Curtis Yarvin it is Gentry, Commoners, and Clients.
I have joined this three-layer parade with my reductive Three Peoples theory. I submit it as an honest attempt to simplify human society as much as possible, but no further.
I propose that there are three kinds of people in the world:
People of the Subordinate Self Call them slaves, serfs, workers, clients, marginalized, oppressed: these are people that do not experience "agency." They are go-along-to-get-along people, villagers under the thumb of the big man, the serfs of the feudal lord, the factory workers of the corporate behemoth, the ward heelers of the precinct captain, aspiring rappers dealing drugs for the urban gang. They attach themselves to a powerful patron in return for scraps from the lordly table.
People of the Responsible Self Call them commoners, citizens, middling sorts, "deplorables," these are people that believe they can understand the world according to already established rules and have a responsibility to do something about it. These are people that follow the rules, go to work, and obey the law.
People of the Creative Self These are people that want to live a creative life, maybe as a writer, an artist, a videographer, an activist, a revolutionary. They don't want to follow the rules, they want to discover new rules. They don't want just to go to work, they want to reinvent work. They don't just obey the laws; they want to make new ones.
I got the idea of the Responsible Self from Robert Bellah in his "Evolution of Religion." I got the idea of the Creative Self from Richard Florida in The Rise of the Creative Class.
In medieval times, England's King Alfred divided the world into "those who pray, those who fight, those who work." This is similar to the three French Estates, with the First Estate the clergy, the Second Estate the nobles, and the Third Estate the peasants and burghers. There is, in addition, the three-layer theory of Allyship currently popular among our lefty friends. In this world the evolved and activist Allies are fighting for the Oppressed Peoples against the White Oppressors. It is clearly an update of Marx's three layers of Communists, Bourgeoisie, and Proletarians. But notice that both the Allyship narrative and Marx collapse the three layers into two.Allies and Oppressed Peoples are united as one against the White Oppressors. Communists and Proletarians are united as one against the Bourgeoisie. I maintain that this collapse is reactionary, a step back to the primitive.
But things don't have to be that serious. I have proposed a three layer system of Snobs, Schmucks, and Scum. A less insulting version is to think of society as composed of Somebodies, Anybodies, and Nobodies. You may think of today's America as composed of Anti-Americans, Americans, and Emerging Americans; I couldn't possibly comment.
Let us not insult Richard Wagner by omitting his three-layer theory. He divided the world of The Ring into gods, humans, and Nibelungs.
Of course, the world is much more complicated than a mere three layers. Yet most of the time most people have difficulty imagining anyone different from themselves as anything but an enemy, in a crude "us" and "them" approach to life, religion, and politics. So a Three Peoples theory is one step up from crudity, from the war of "us" against "them." And there is another thing, suggested by Ken Wilber in his analysis of developmental psychology as applied to human consciousness. He proposes that anyone in a particular "level" will regard people in a lower "level" as delta-minus morons, and people in a higher "level" as madmen.
The most obvious use of this Three Layer concept is as a way to understand our modern politics, which always seems to be based upon an over/under coalition between the highest Layer and the lowest Layer against the Middle Layer. In the current Allyship narrative, the Allies of the ruling class fight for the Oppressed Peoples of the lower class against the White Oppressors of the middle class. Or, using Yarvin's three layers, the educated-class Gentry combine with their underclass Clients against the middle-class Commoners.
I have come to believe that the modern over/under politics is a recipe for conflict. The three-layer world of noble, commoner, and serf of the olden time sets up a world of established hierarchy, and hierarchy, according to Jordan B. Peterson and his lobster notion, is Nature's way of reducing violence. Thus it is not surprising that the leftist politics inspired by Marx -- to replace peaceful hierarchy with a fight for equality by collapsing the Three Layers of educated, middling, and underling into an us-against-them binary of allies and oppressed against white oppressors -- is a recipe for killing fields.
The Three Layers notion also allows us to understand the emerging populist nationalisms in the United States and in Europe. The populist movements are all associations of ordinary middle-class people fighting back against the over/under coalition that dominated politics during the last century when the working class had the votes to empower the educated class to use the political system to reward the workers with programs and benefits and reward itself with power, with sinecures, and with pensions. The ordinary middle class is emerging as a political force because it is now the largest sector of society, if it chooses to use its numbers in the political arena.
The populist nationalisms of the present day are thus an inner-outer politics, of "us," the middle class against the enemy, the "them," of uppers and downers. Because "there is no politics without an enemy."
Maybe after it is all over we can return to a peaceful hierarchy, like the lobsters.
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