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I am a hlynkian right-wing progressive, and I don't recognize any of you as such.
Politically, my preferred outcome would be to exalt White bisexual antitheistic males above all others and make this identity the pass to being treated as aristocracy. I don't want meritocracy, equality of opportunity, judging the content of someone's character. I certainly don't want any retvrn. All I want is progressive stack with me at the top, laughing as I kick those below.
Aesthetically, I subscribe to everything my enemies love. Promiscuous girls with tattoos and one side of their head shaved make me go crazy. Some of my favorite sci-fi series are Ninefox Gambit and Gideon the Ninth (the same number in the title is not a coincidence, because nothing is ever a coincidence — the author of that reference is hardly a tradcath himself). I adore skyscrapers and strive to spend as little time in nature as humanly possible.
Does this describe anybody else here? And if it doesn't, you are not progressives with a palette swap, as alleged. And does this describe anyone anywhere at all?
Hlynka’s framework doesn’t really mean anything, it’s nonsensical, internally contradictory and deliberately designed primarily to include literally all his political enemies.
The core grain of truth is captured much more effectively by Scott’s own ‘blue tribe’ designation, which includes for example neoreactionaries, much of the dissident right and many urbane conservatives of the more centrist persuasion.
On the dissident right, “racist libs” is a longstanding accusation toward eg. racists who supposedly aren’t sufficiently hostile towards feminism or gay rights. But there too it’s largely a form of in-group policing, much like SecureSignals’ exhortation that any reactionary who isn’t sufficiently hostile to Jews isn’t actually a “dissident rightist”.
Because aristocracy is a hereditary status, I don’t think it’s possible to have one without women. And - at least depending on the test you propose to verify bisexuality (top or bottom?) - there are probably far too many eligible men to qualify.
I don’t think your ideology is wholly unusual. A milder version (sci-fi techno-futurist social liberalist anti-democracy) has its supporters in Silicon Valley. I suppose Peter Thiel is gay rather than bi, but he comes close.
All I want to do is to live in a civilized and functioning society. I have nothing against nativist sentiment (except in as much as it affects me) but do not demand that this place be peopled primarily by my co-ethnics (drawn broadly or narrowly), however I want it to be a safe, peaceful, well-managed place. Somewhere the weak are cared for but the strong are celebrated. Somewhere where the best have (many) more children than the worst. Somewhere people marry young and happily, and stay married. Somewhere where the streets are always clean, where the people are fit and healthy, where the buildings are beautiful, where crafts are celebrated. A beautiful society, full of beautiful people, who live well, who drink but not to excess, who spend lively evenings singing on the piazza, who prioritize friends and family above work, but who work hard. Who live in cities that are neither full of ugly glass towers or sprawling McMansion suburbs, but instead draw from Haussmann’s Paris and Regency stucco London; cities of boulevards and parks and six-story buildings built in traditional styles, symmetrical, with high ceilings and large windows. I abhor the mob above all else; among all modernity’s ugliness democracy is perhaps the most grating institution.
I have few views about other tribes, sexualities or identities except in so much as they may or may not make such a vision more difficult to achieve. I happily work and am friends with people of many identities from around the world.
Does this make me a conservative?
Yes it does! Specifically, the vision you describe appears to be one of boring stagnation and endless, cozy mediocrity (it's also so stereotypically European). I would much prefer the world to be like the SF Bay Area that despite (there are enough arguments that this is actually "because of") its many flaws, produces amazing things like Google, Nvidia, SpaceX, OpenAI, and the general research output of Stanford and UC Berkeley. The average person would definitely be much worse off, but the greatness it produces would be worth it, both for making the future nicer and for making society feel like it has an actual soul.
This part in particular:
would grind technological and scientific progress to a halt since it dramatically underestimates how much hard work and obsession is needed to make breakthroughs. The architectural preferences also suggest an aversion to experimentation which, while it can produce a lot of short term ugliness, is necessary in the long run to avoid boring homogeneity and settling for not-so-great local optima.
I don't know how properly to argue that my preference is better than yours---your vision is extremely cozy and comfortable. I would start with a worry that your world would collapse through not being able to progress enough to keep up with population growth, resource depletion, or unexpected disasters. You're settling for the good that we have right now instead of taking the risks necessary to either improve it or protect it in the future.
I realize that a lot of this is down to personal views on what constitutes short-term and local optima, but I don't buy that there is significant experimentation or perceivable progress going on. AFAICT, humanity has been stuck in glass, steel and concrete + mildly-to-weirdly-deformed geometric shape architecture for prestige buildings since roundabout the end of WWII. How many more of these are needed before we can move on? For more practical housing we went from stuff like this to this in the suburbs or from this to this in the urban core.
Here in Berlin, old buildings command significant rent premiums and the districts which feature coherent blocks of old architecture untouched by the bombs or post-war city planners are by far the most popular. I realize it would be bad and boring if we tiled the universe with brownstones or Parisian boulevards, but it doesn't seem to me like modernity has really been much more dynamic and creatively vibrant than the past in terms of architecture, instead we just have a different kind of monotony, albeit one that many people, me included, perceive as aesthetically inferior.
That Antwerp Port House looks like it wants to be a spaceship or something. I think the Japanese are onto something with all their fictional city-ships (e.g. Macross, Xylem), and that this is a sign of how weird modern architecture can be redeemed.
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Porque no los dos? It seems like most of the pre-war innovators lived in a world closer to the Family Values and Functional Civilization world than the San Francisco Bay world, sometimes in their own libertine bubbles, sometimes in structures within the more conservative ambience.
It'd be great if we could have both of these things, with the ability for them to coexist without one trying to punish the other for their different values.
Nevertheless, I wonder if, even granting the world where Familyland and Siliconland weren't at each other's throats, I'd have to wonder if braindrain wouldn't lead to the same imbalance we see today. Species can niche partition, but can civilization?
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