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So, there's a recurring criticism I see in many spaces regarding various right-wing projects in building parallel institutions, alternative ideological frames to that of the left, cultural resilience, and so on (ranging from critics of "Benedict Option" strategies, to Neema Parvini when talking about why "American nationalism" does not and cannot exist), which is that the thing in question is "a LARP," or "LARP-y," or something similar. Which is to say that it is "performative," that the actions aren't backed by some sort of deep-down "genuine" belief.
To which I say: so what?
First, whence this idea that the "deep-down" internal mindset of a person is more important than the actions themselves? Do a person's deeds carry so little weight, compared to their mental state when doing them?
But more importantly, isn't this how anyone gets started with something? I mean, a lot of the examples that come to my mind are things that I'm only familiar with second-hand, but I'll try to explain.
I'm old enough that back in the first few grades of elementary school, they made us stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day. I think back on us as first graders, doing that. Were we actually earnestly pledging our undying allegiance to the Republic and its flag? We didn't even understand all the words we were saying. We were just reciting what we were told to recite, the way we were taught to recite it, because we didn't want to get in trouble. It was all fake, all performative, all "a LARP."
Those of you who grew up religious, did you really understand every hymn you sang, every element of each ritual you participated in, from the very first time you did it? Or was there at least some "going through the motions" and mimicking your elders, with true understanding coming later?
In one of the replies to that Twitter post on the "homeschool prom" linked late last thread, someone described school dances as "a LARP" of the actual 'courtship' scene/process. Well, how else do people learn?
One common criticism of Pascal's Wager is that, even if you buy the argument, it only serves to persuade you that you should believe God exists, and there's a clear gap between thinking "I should believe God exists" and thinking "God exists." I mention it, because Pascal himself addressed this point shortly after introducing the Wager. And his answer is LARPing. Once you're convinced you should believe in God, then start acting as if He exists. "LARP" as a person who believes in God. If you do it thoroughly enough for long enough, Pascal argues, you'll start to actually believe it.
I've seen similar arguments in everything from job interview advice to dating advice — picture the person you want to be, and then act as they would, even if it's "all pretend."
It all comes down to the same classic piece of advice: "fake it till you make it." And what is the "fake it" stage, if not "LARP-y"? If not "performative" and, well, fake?
The reason given for this strategy is that it rarely stays fake forever. Maintaining a performative pretense, saying and doing one thing all while constantly going "this is silly, this is stupid, this is fake, this isn't me, I don't believe any of this" in your head is hard (at least for non-sociopaths). It's why governments have made citizens recite propaganda slogans over and over, why they made us say the Pledge of Allegiance over and over — because many times, it doesn't stay fake, doesn't stay merely performative. Again, it's fake it till you make it.
And even if an individual never "makes it," never achieves real belief no matter how long they perfectly maintain "the LARP"? Well, when we're talking about a long-term project involving a significant number of people, you have to consider future generations. Which gets to a concept mentioned here on the Motte before: generational loss of hypocrisy. Even if the first generation never get rid of their inner "this is so fake" thoughts… well, the next generations — whether that's new recruits, or their literal children — can't see those inner thoughts, only the outer "act." The LARP will not be multi-generational. To quote @WhiningCoil again:
So, to sum up, the accusation that a project of this sort is "LARP-y" is kind of irrelevant. Yes, it'll be LARP-y to start with; it kind of has to be. That's how things work. It's a phase — a necessary phase in the process of becoming something more, and if the people involved stay determined enough, and keep it up long enough, that phase will pass, and it will become something more.
Fake it till you make it.
(I'm hoping this isn't too incoherent, and isn't too low effort for a top-level post.)
I think this is very related to an observation that has been pointed out for some time now: In most modern places, especially cities, the liberal or even progressive worldview is nowadays the de-facto conservative option in the intuitive sense of the word. What would you call the worldview of your own parents, of the entrenched powers, of the commonly accepted older moral guardians? The default opinion of the church lady archetype around me (to some lesser degree even where I grew up, and certainly where I live now) is some mix of environmentalism (which in itself is intrinsically conservative to some degree) and anti-fascism that many of them have by now been holding since the 70s or so. "Too far left" is to them equivalent to "too pious"; Maybe foolish or impractical, but never really bad or evil. Even if they may technically be part of a religion, they clearly hold their leftie creds in higher regard, often explicitly assuring everyone that no, they actually don't care about the teaching of their actual official religion in particular, they are more on the generally spiritual side and just wanted to be active in some religion in some form. Hell, the literal evangelische Kirchentage (church days organized by mainline protestants) have some great workshops (translated, obviously): "Queer animals on the ark", "brave and strong. Empowerment for BiPoC-kids" or "name blessing for trans*, inter or non-binary people".
This necessarily means that any rival ideology claiming to be conservative is actually at best regressive or at worst wholly unrelated to conservatism, since the de-facto conservatives hate being called conservative. In that sense, the LARP-criticism is correct, since one of the selling points of conservatism is the proof-by-demonstration intrinsic to the ideology that has been dominant for the last decades or longer. It's obviously a general problem also often observed on the left on different topics, but right-wing projects like to have it both ways: On one hand, they recognize they're the rebels organizing a new system, and on the other, they want to leech off the prestige of some old conservative tradition that they were never part of, insufficiently understand, imperfectly copy and which thus may or may not actually work the way it used to. People notice that.
I don't completely disagree with you, however. In my view, most of these right-wing projects need to be more honest they are not really conservative anymore, and lean more into the rebel frame. Nevertheless, as you point out, to some degree unapologetic LARPing is always part of how you create a new system. But it also includes more flexibility and adaption based on what works and what doesn't than many of them want to really practice. Creating something new is hard work.
To elaborate on this point: The accusation of LARPing is most pertinent when it's "LARPing as trad", which is a sort of performative contradiction. The original sense of "tradition" (from Latin traditio) is "that which has been handed down", and not (as in colloquial usage) "the way things were at some point in the past" - but this equivocation is significant. The value of tradition qua tradition is in the Lindy effect, but if that's what you care about, a "tradition" that must be "RETVRNed" to is really no tradition at all, but a LARP. If the tradition (as in, the organic chain of transmission) was broken, such that you have to learn about it from old books rather than from your elders, then in fact it did not stand the test of time, and so it can't claim the Lindy effect to its credit.
My parents, and their parents, were part of a church. I was raised in this church. I decided in my twenties to leave this church despite my parents and siblings all remaining in it, and in my thirties I decided to, as you have it, RETVRN. Was the tradition broken, given that I left?
If I had stayed away, but instead my children decided to RETVRN, would the tradition be broken?
If there's a community of a hundred people forming a church, and 80% leave the church and 20% stay, and then we fastforward, say, three generations, would descendants of the 80% joining the church be LARPing? Would converts with no connection to the church at all be LARPing?
In short, can you join or adopt a tradition in any meaningful sense? If not, where do traditions even come from in the first place?
Traditions start as innovations, then become traditions.
The problem here is the claim that one is not innovating when one RETVRNS.
One is not innovating when one adopts another's innovation either, though.
It's a distinction of Sense versus Reference. The California hippie who travels the world in search of spiritual wisdom and winds up adopting (say) Tibetan Buddhism is not doing the same thing as the Tibetan layman who practices Buddhism because that's just what their people do.
Which is all well and good, since Buddhism has a core that is (purportedly) true regardless of how one arrives at it. But the irony of "trad-LARPing" comes in when the ideology has no substance or justification other than its supposed traditional status, i.e. tradition-qua-tradition, something of the form: "This society has lost its way because there are too many individualists, people who think they know better than they did in the good old days. Therefore it falls to me, the lone heroic seeker, to forsake mainstream society and devote my life to poring through the ancient tomes (the more ancient the better) in search of the one true ideology." This is the same mindset as that of the wandering hippie, a mindset which (I claim) is more persistent and fundamental to one's character than any particular ideology which one may adopt.
I think this is uncharitable. I you look at the examples of tradlarping today, you see people who are specifically unsatisfied with some aspects of modernity (such as the destruction of marriage) and are trying to bring it back by manifesting living in a 50s magazine ad for vaccum cleaners.
It's cargo culting a lot more than it is blindly worshiping the dead.
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