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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.
These two writers are not comparable at all.
Marx is well within reach of average person (at least in the 19th century was) and was widely read by common workers.
(19th century workers knew who were Metternich and Guizot just like modern workers heard about Merkel and Macron)
Basic principles of Marxism - historical materialism, class struggle as engine of history, labor theory of value - are easy to explain.
Moldbug is not meant for average person, it is meant for educated elites - "open minded progressives" - and it says: time to "formalize" power, time to dispose of the charade of "freedom" and "democracy", time to rule the plebs directly with iron fist. Wouldn't it be better to govern as dukes and princes by divine right instead to have to pretend you "serve the people"?
When workers read Marx, they knew what to do - do not trust the bosses and the politicians, organize with their fellow workers and fight for their rights.
Imagine "ordinary people" today reading Moldbug - what exactly should they do when they finish?
I’ve read Moldbug repeatedly, and I don’t see it as a call to action in any traditional sense. It’s a social and political theory that purports to explain the way society actually works as separated from the propaganda that society tells itself about how decisions are made. In that sense he’s closer to something like Plato’s Republic or Moore’s Utopia in which he’s describing a proposed society as a sort of thought experiment as to how a society ought to be run. He’s not saying “overthrow the government,” he’s saying our current system is more broken than the society of the Middle Ages, so much so that running society in the way that the average medieval fiefdom was run would work better for us than liberal democracy.
He calls for an action, but not one of ordinary peon. He calls Nancy Pelosi to stop pretending she is "servant of the people", crown herself as Queen of California, put her hobnailed boots on and clean her kingdom of all trash.
Nope. His proposed solutions - whether high tech crypto cyber corporate utopia of young Moldbug or monarchist primitivist Polpotist utopia of old Moldbug - are something that never existed in history, actual medieval society has nothing in common with these fevered dreams.
I think his main criticism of modern liberal democratic systems is exactly that no one actually has skin in the game. His suggestion that Pelosi or anyone else put on workboots to clean up their district is pointing out that in modern liberal democracy, the entire system is geared specifically to prevent the buck from ever stopping and as a side effect to promote short term thinking.
Monarchy did manage to avoid these problems as if you destroyed your fief there’s nothing of value to pass on to your child. No prince would be happy to find that they were inheriting a fief with its own map of human feces. In fact this alone would probably make the king fix those problems long before they ever got that bad because he doesn’t want his son to rule over garbage dumps and hobo camps. Monarchy has other problems— it lacks the ability to effectively gage public sentiment. But on the whole, the skin in the game generally prevents problems from getting too bad because the ruler’s fate is tied directly to the fate of his state.
This fact alone makes me a bit more sympathetic to monarchy or monarchy with a parliamentary system. Having a personal stake in the outcome is critical to good decisions.
I too know NRX theory. Actually existing hereditary monarchs, unfortunately, never heard about it and had no interest in "investment" and "development" in modern sense, least of all in investment in sanitation (the technology was well known since Roman times).
Louis XIV, if he wished, could rebuild Paris into miracle of the world, city of paved roads, sewers, fresh water supply and plentiful baths.
He had other priorities.
It had to wait for another monarch, self made one.
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