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Notes -
On the culture war and the dark arts of communication
How does the average person come to believe certain messages communicated to them about the culture war? The easiest answer is that this process happens sub or semi-consciously. As Moldbug's Cathedral points out, raising an individual from cradle to majority (or beyond) within a certain world view will, intentionally or unintentionally, impart that world view upon him to a greater or lesser degree. But I am interested in more specific and more practical answers.
We all spend a great deal of time and effort writing and arguing about the culture war but it seems obvious to me that most of the effort remains within a small community and its not in a form suitable for general consumption. But how can it be made suitable?
For example, given adult literacy (see here for examples of the levels) and IQ, what types, lengths, and complexities of messages is a person able to understand? And which of those messages become adopted as personal beliefs?
Take Moldbug or Marx. Clearly, the writings of either author are beyond the reach of the average person. What rules would guide the translation of these works into a form consumable by the average person? How many pieces would their works have to be broken up into? How many ideas could be contained in each piece? How many interactions with a given idea are necessary for a person to understand or agree with it? What grade-level should the text be written in? What tone or voice should be used? What changes are more effective for different segments of the population, men, women, rural, urban, etc.?
Surely there are people skilled in the dark arts of communication, advertising, and psychology which know how to translate* the sorts of things we discuss into a form consumable by the average person. Given that these disciplines are not new, surely there is a handbook of basic principles for crafting such messages? Do we have any practitioners of the dark arts that can provide such resources?
*I looked for an AI that can translate a given text into a text of substantially similar meaning but at a specified (lower) grade level. I have not found any such tool.
Since you mention Marx, Kapital was serialized in French worker's newspapers in the 1870s. Marx included this letter as a foreword, and a forewarning, which is often included in translated form with English editions today:
Dear Citizen,
I applaud your idea of publishing the translation of “Das Kapital” as a serial. In this form the book will be more accessible to the working class, a consideration which to me outweighs everything else.
That is the good side of your suggestion, but here is the reverse of the medal: the method of analysis which I have employed, and which had not previously been applied to economic subjects, makes the reading of the first chapters rather arduous, and it is to be feared that the French public, always impatient to come to a conclusion, eager to know the connexion between general principles and the immediate questions that have aroused their passions, may be disheartened because they will be unable to move on at once.
That is a disadvantage I am powerless to overcome, unless it be by forewarning and forearming those readers who zealously seek the truth. There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.
Believe me,
dear citizen,
Your devoted,
I'm not confident in any sources on its impact in serialized form, but at least two people (Marx and Lachatre) had confidence that there existed in the French working class enough autodidacts to make it worth publishing.
The Bible might be another great, and difficult, text comparable, and intensive bible study is something pretty frequently undertaken by ordinary men. I've been using one of these plans for the KJV. I've also, separately, been attending bible study weekly. The bible study uses a newer translation, which I dislike, but I go anyway because three of my lifelong best friends go to it, and I want to see them and hang out. And that's the sauce.
Those frenchmen weren't reading Kapital in their bedrooms in secret, chainsmoking Gauloises by lamplight. They were reading it as part of socialist parties, and unions, and workingmen's benevolent clubs; chainsmoking Gauloises together. Ordinary men don't read the bible quietly to themselves, they read it as part of a bible study group from their local church. They are not trying to interpret difficult passages by themselves, they are interpreting them together, one and another working through it, finding different meanings and understandings and examples.
So you want the dark secret of the temple of communication? Communication ---> Commun ---> Community. Break it down into digestible chunks (YouVersion gives me three-four bitesize daily chunks of bible, such that I'd read the whole thing in 365 days); then bring people together in a group to read it and interpret it and learn it. Some will read it just to go to the group! You want people to read Moldbug? Bring people together to read it as a club, a group. Drink, smoke, laugh, hang out, learn. F3 groups are a great concept, once again internet RadTrads are reinventing the religious wheel. Take advantage of a shortcut that capitalist modernity is increasingly cutting itself off from, human contact. You think that some asshole twitter consensus or some MSM anchorman with a serious camera gaze are going to mean shit compared to actual friends working through the material together?
As an aside, I'm adding as a second comment to keep the flow of the first comment, you have to have reasonable expectations of what people are going to pull out of a big text. I've taken a lot of classes over the years, and in one pass through a big work like that on my own or in a college format, I might pull out two or three big things I actually remember for the rest of my life. A second pass might produce more. Truly great texts, stuff like Homer, Joyce, Augustine, Dante, Tolstoy; every time I read it I pull something new from it.
So you're probably not going to produce a bunch of guys who quote Moldbug chapter and verse after one go. It will take years, and many tries, but every time a little bit will stick. That's the essence of memetics, right? Some stuff hangs on, like a filter feeding whale.
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