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And because our conflicts are structured as Who, Whom class conflicts in which one must overtake the other, these conflicts can only end in the social death of one group. What we need is an American Cymbeline. We need a leader that says “Hey, we demonstrated our power, we proved our point, time to head home.” Rather than continual acceleration towards armageddon, we need the ability to see a point proven, and to respect a point that has been proven, without continuing to push it. But I am as trapped in the matrix as any, I don’t even know what that would look like.
*Giacomo’s character is a fascinating anachronism, he is clearly coded as an Italian in the Renaissance stereotype. Crooked, Machivellian, horny, prone to gambling and to cheating. His subplot revolves around Giacomo’s claims that he is essentially the ultimate PUA, and that AWALT. His debate with Leonatus could probably form a whole CW post in the “la plus ca change” genre, but I’ve written too much as it is.
**This is itself kind of fascinating to me, most accounts at the time seem to say that he was speaking not about the French Revolution, but about the 1968 riots in France which also inspired the Rolling Stones Street Fighting Man. But I like the other way of looking at it better, something can have meaning even if that meaning is a misinterpretation. A sort of very short death of the author.
Only by negation, in that people act like it despite being so far from it. Our total war is less this and more maga racists and woke libs arguing on twitter (or more likely, scrolling other people arguing on twitter) for thirty minutes before driving to work. Where they'll, directly or indirectly, serve desires of consumers of all political stripes, contributing to the general peace and prosperity we all experience. The troubles are still recent, weren't even close to total war, and are a thousand times worse than American internal conflict. A thousand people get fired for saying the wrong thing - it sucks, but it's not a thousand car bombs, it's not half a city being firebombed. Is such a dramatic solution really necessary?
What is an honorable, monarchial victory for one side in modern politics? "The left" wins both on democratic numbers, 'elite' numbers, or raw skill of believers, so ... imposed racial quotas on all jobs? You giving up your political beliefs and accepting Gay Space Communism as your new ruler? The 'purifying nature' of historical war wasn't a new empire conquering your nation and then everyone hugging and making up. Maybe local life would be mostly undisturbed - new elites, occasional conscription of your men to fight more of the empire's wars (not very peaceful). Or maybe you convert to an entirely new religion, with new rituals and social arrangements. The magnanimity of the king is to not continue to kill the conquered, because conquered men are more useful to him than dead men. The king shows his power when claiming new territory so he can use that territory later, not just to 'be powerful' in some abstract sense that's never used. What does the libs 'using you' look like?
Nobody's being exterminated! Neither the trans nor the conservatives. Both are almost entirely "free" to live their lifestyle as they wish. Again, notably contrasting to the strict cultural codes of historical societies ruled by monarchs.
So was the Filioque, so was the long-past successor of Muhammad, and yet millions were killed under "personal leadership" for "national honor" from that. One could make the opposite argument - the diffuse social-media war over a thousand different topics eats up man's instinct for conflict, greasing the wheels of the cooperative global economy, or something. If democracy and mass media gives people a mode of conflict-resolution that isn't war - and the conflicts are, as FHM suggests, meaningless - why isn't democracy better? (this paragraph was exploring an idea, not something I believe is good)
I'm not sure your analogies work.
tangent on literal war, to not seem like a l*ftoid: Actual war finely separates the most capable, complex individuals and structures from the slightly-less-so, and as such is a grand, civilizational elaboration of the evolution that produced every trait we hold dear. But it's not peaceful, and it's not clear modern war, even from a consequentialist HBD darwinist nietzche [...] perspective, is particularly useful for anything.
Interesting points overall. I think there are things we could learn from modern war, though.
In actual war, the combined might of NATO failed to defeat the Taliban, a fairly small group of religious fundamentalists supported by next to nobody! We had all the wealth, firepower, training and logistics. We totally failed to achieve our objectives, whatever they were. We are missing something vital here! There is something the Taliban has and we don't, something that let them win where we lost, despite having every materiel advantage. There's something the British had and lost, when they ruled 1/4 of the world. Could modern Britain even rule 1/2 of Iraq, today? I doubt it - they can barely field 80,000 men in the army!
Maybe it's some combination of heartfelt desire for victory, self-confidence, good leadership and coherent politics.
Even the Soviet puppet government of Afghanistan had more integrity than the clowns we put in charge - it lasted until September 1992, longer than the Soviet Union itself.
I don't think that war merely reveals small details, like whether Lockheed Martin has better engineers than Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group or Sukhoi, whether AirSea battle is better than whatever Beijing is cooking up. It can show if there's a beating heart inside a civilization, or whether there's been a lobotomy.
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Two things.
First I think your analysis conflates disputes that will be resolved by exercises of power (persuasive or coercive) with disputes about who is more powerful. When people argue about misgendering or the use of slurs in certain contexts it's not because of some perceived power differential, it's a genuine dispute over how it's appropriate to use words. When people object to using "Nigger" in even the "mention" sense it is generally because they think it is inappropriate when used that way. Similarly when people defend its use they think it is because using it in the context is appropriate or valuable. This is a dispute that might be settled by exercises of power but the dispute is not centrally about who is more powerful.
Second I think the emergence of a Cymbeline is impossible due to the distributed nature of the groups involved in Culture War disputes. The reason Cymbeline can credibly capitulate Britain to Rome is that the Britons, as his subjects, are obliged to follow his wishes on the matter. There is no similar entity or institution (or set of entities or institutions) in our modern distributed politics.
Imagine I'm a trans person and I want to negotiate a Truce With The Transphobes. Two questions arise. First, who am I? What entity or institution can credibly claim to speak on behalf of trans people everywhere? Second, who am I negotiating with? What entity or institution can speak for all the anti-trans groups and organizations out there? International relations are a bad model for intra-national group relations because in international relations there are generally well defined entities that can credibly make commitments on behalf of their nation. Not so with Culture War groups! We often talk about groups as if they were agents, with wants and desires and engaging in actions, but it is important to remember this is an abstraction, a convenience, not reality.
As an aside I think this second thing is a powerful contributor to the degradation of political discussion. It leads us to unclear thinking or, at least, substantial inferential distance with the people we are conceiving of this way.
I want to make clear that I'm not sure I have a solution, I'm as trapped in the matrix as everyone else. I'm not sure I can imagine anything that looks like a realistic solution, at best we're all in the gutter but some of us are looking up at the stars.
I broadly agree with your second point. The lack of organized groups, with leaders to whom loyalty is owed and goals that are to be met and not exceeded, has been a significant contribution to the CW spiral. BLM isn't a group with demands, it is a gag reflex that engages whenever a Black person is harmed under sufficiently dire (apparent, reported) circumstances. One can't negotiate with it.
And the way that you, as an individual Trans person, would work toward negotiating a truce in whatever small way, isn't by actually negotiating. It is by engaging in loyalty and working on building groups within your own community that are well run and loyal, encouraging your compatriots to show loyalty and deference. It is only once groups exist that command loyalty that negotiation is possible.
I can't find the quote, but I remember a bon mot about, I want to say Syria on gaining independence?, that went something like "Today, 50% of the population thinks they are merely major religious or political leaders, 40% think they are great writers, 5% think they are Prophets, and the last 5% think they are God." I'm probably butchering it from a history book I read a long time ago. But one of the things I do think Moldbug gets right is that what is missing isn't leadership, it is obedience. We can't all be leaders, we can't all think of ourselves as leaders, or nothing will ever get done. I guess we can take it back another three hundred years and say that we're still living through the consequences of the Protestant Reformation?
As to the first point: I disagree. The increasingly confusing restrictions on the use of the word Nigger, or the application of pronouns, or which sports teams people practice with, are all exercises of raw social power. Performed by their advocates for the purpose of demonstrating power, resented by their targets because they are exercises of power. I'd compare the use of speech codes by analogy to this kind of exchange:
Imagine you've just gone through a bad breakup. You're a little sick of everyone talking about it, asking you how you're doing, asking you what happened, you just want to move on and talk about something else for a bit. You go over to your brother's house to watch the game, you say "Hey, listen, I don't want to talk about the breakup, I'm tired of talking about it, let's just watch the game." He proceeds to ask you about it, over and over, even though you remind him that you don't want to talk about it.
Most people in that scenario, even if they weren't that upset about talking about the breakup to begin with, will become furiously angry at being forced to talk about it. Talking about the breakup was merely embarrassing or unpleasant, but being told that you aren't allowed to say you don't want to talk about something is saying that you have no power to determine that. The other party, your brother, will in turn become angry that he "isn't allowed to ask questions." Because that is limiting his power.
The goal of symbolic actions, like banning words, is to exercise power. Power that cannot be exercised arbitrarily does not exist. Make it clear to your enemies that you can do symbolic, or absurd, things, and it will be clear that you could do dangerous things too.
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Thanks for writing this up. I wish I could comment on the play itself but unfortunately I haven't read it.
Ok, but... which side is he saying this to? Would you accept a rightist Cymbeline who told you "ok, you proved your point, but now it's time to let MTFs in women's sports and institute permanent DEI quotas and all the rest of it", just imagine him asking for total capitulation on whatever CW issue is nearest and dearest to your heart. Would you be ok with that?
If not, then why would you expect leftists to accept a leftist Cymbeline?
Conflicts always happen for a reason. It's not like people are stupid and they're just failing to realize that they could, like, not fight each other or something. Most CW issues aren't very amenable to compromise either - there's no physical piece of territory that you can split up 50/50. You either accept MTFs as women or you don't, you either pay reparations or you don't, etc. That's part of what makes the conflicts so interminable.
I am neither an orthodox leftist nor an orthodox rightist, so I don't want to pretend I can speak for anyone. But I think the obvious flaw in your theory is that avoiding total capitulation through partial accommodation is sort of the whole point. In an existential struggle, we can be certain that one side will cease to exist. I would have liked to see Leftists respond to the 2016 Trump victory in a way that didn't lead me to link that one Brecht poem constantly. And I would like to see Republicans respond to the 2020 Trump loss by coming to terms with the facts, rather than denying them.
And to be frank, I disagree with the idea that...
For the most part, we had compromises on most of these positions that were broadly perceived as "good enough" in the Washington Consensus period of 1992-2008. People who want to transition are allowed to, with their own funds, and will be accepted or rejected on an ad hoc social basis. Most high concept and many lowbrow sit coms had a [now considered insensitive] very special episode on the topic. Affirmative Action is accepted in a limited way, but not at a scale that would present significant problems to advancement for talented white people.
One could say those weren't stable equilibria, that it was a slippery slope to a decision one way or the other. I'm not sure I agree, but I'm not sure by what mechanism to disagree.
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