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Notes -
Some scattered thoughts on personal Agency.
A number of recent comments about consciousness, agency, neurological development, and Trump's first couple weeks in office have gotten me thinking...
When you first bring home a new baby they are functionally just a lump of flesh that converts milk into noise and feces. At some point in the first year they transition from a mostly inert lump to a small animal seemingly intent on ending itself. Like a moth beating itself against a light-bulb you can practically watch the random path Selection algorithm execute in real time. Over time though a transition occurs. Simple insect level algorithms give way to basic instincts (eat, sleep, squirrel!) which are in turn displaced by something else. What exactly that something is hard to characterize, but one day you wake up, look down there is suddenly a tiny person looking back at you. Someone with a personality, opinions, and a complete disregard for neither propriety nor posterity. They just do things.
My point with this tangent is that children (especially small children) are basically just little bundles of human agency. I make this observation to contrast it with a sentiment that I commonly see expressed here. The sentiment that "the voters", "the normies", "the plebs", or whatever you want to call the teaming masses of humanity, are "barely sentient" and "less developed" than those of us that post on theMotte and that "the normie" will inevitably believe/do whatever they are told to by their betters. In short, "the normies" are not agents in their own right. When I see such sentiments expressed, one of my first thoughts is often "this person has clearly never tried to wrangle a 4-year-old"
It seems to me that the minimization (if not outright dismissal) of the role human consciousness and agency plays has become a core belief of our intellectual/managerial class. Most of our existing intellectual and managerial norms seem to be oriented around deflecting and diffusing blame such that no one person ever has to make and, and more importantly own, a decision. It's not the individual who is responsible, it is society, it is the process, it is "structural" issues. The buck is passed from hand, to hand, to hand, until it is worn away to nothing.
Nobody feels responsible for anything and so everything just gets shittier.
I think that much the managerial class' collective freak-out over and antipathy towards Trump, Musk, and "MAGA" movement in general is rooted in the observation that "the normies" have demonstrated that they are not going to just believe/do whatever they are told. That they are agents in their own right.
"You can't just decide to not trust someone because they lied to you in the past, or because they might have an agenda" cries the priestly caste. "The fuck we can't" the normies respond. "Nobody elected Elon Musk" cries the priestly caste, "We elected the guy who said he would hire Musk to take a chainsaw to the federal budget. Also, who elected you?" the normies respond.
I am surprised that other people seem to be surprised by this. As Steven A Smith put it in his interview with Bill Maher, most of the complaints about Trump in the last 2-3 week boil down to "he did what he said he was going to do". That is not much of a criticism if you ask me, if anything it is an endorsement because who the fuck does that these days?
It's worth noting this goes both ways- the chapo trap house listener complaining about landlords and capitalists and the fourchan poster complaining about jews are, perhaps not literally the same person, but they differ mostly in their bogeyman of choice. Neither wants to consider that getting off his ass and doing things will solve his problems, or at least make them manageable.
Watch the twitter DR freak out about the suggestion that managing a panda express is a good job- it appears to be actually true! But exercising agency isn't what they want. They complain about DEI and affirmative action but they don't bother to consider that they can probably get that state flagship spot after two years of community college- the DEI admits will wash out and you can transfer in to take their place. They complain about high housing prices in growing metros, and it's not even that housing prices in growing metros aren't high, it's that these guys don't want to hear 'derelicts are still affordable, you can fix it up as money comes in'(and in the sun belt this is largely true). He complains about modern women but doesn't ask girls out. These people complain jobs are hard to come by because HR filters out candidates but don't want to hear 'call the hiring manager's extension and inquire'.
This stuff is just the inverse of the priestly class.
I dont think that means it "goes both ways" as much as it's just two different people who are both going the same way.
The Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs may each view the other as a bitter rival, but from a 10,000 foot view, both are NFL teams, both are playing in the superbowl, and both have (or had) a star player with the surname Kelce whos mother's name is Donna, so how different can they really be?
I posit that both lavors of freak-out (Chapo and 4chan) come from the same psychological space/impulse, because I think you are correct that, exercising agency is not what they want. Exercising agency is uncomfortable, it means accepting risks, and owning consequences. By the nature of the roles they play, the working caste and the merchant/buisiness caste are both forced to be intimately aware of risk and consequence. The priestly caste on the other hand...
I do not think that what you are describing is "the inverse of the priestly caste" so much as what happens to members (or prospective members) of the priestly caste who "wash-out" or otherwise can't keep up with the pack. At the risk of psychologizing my opponents i think that a lot of the ire directed towards the Elon Musks and Panda Express Managers of the world boils down class resentment. Both the Chapo-listener and the 4channer like to imagine themselves as being in a class above, and so when they see "a normie" or "a pleb" who is manifestly more successful and/or influential than they are, it pisses them off.
I think this aptly explains both "Trump Derangement Syndrome" and the much of the wailing and gnashing of teeth surrounding mis/disinformation. The priestly caste just can't handle the idea that more people are getting thier news from Joe Rogan than they are CNN or the New York Times.
To be clear, 4chan/brocialism was an analogy intended to illustrate a point clearly- I think the DR twitterati are the inverse of what you're calling the priestly class, not terminally online porn addicted NEETs.
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