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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32786 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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A recent piece by Rod Dreher is the latest example I’ve seen on the Dissident Right of references to “Theater-Kid-run America” and to the dangers of giving power to “Former Theater Kids” and, well, it’s got me feeling called-out in a very uncomfortable way. Certainly this far from the first time I’ve felt conspicuously out-of-place and unwelcome on the Right; my sparring with @HlynkaCG and @FCfromSSC in this space, and with a number of users when I was an active poster in /r/CultureWarRoundup, have reinforced my acute awareness of how my upbringing and personality profile make me somewhat of an uncomfortable fit in the right-wing ecosystem. But the “Theater Kids” discourse hits me particularly hard because it touches on something over which I’ve agonized for a long time.

The question of “why are artistically-inclined people nearly universally left-wing” has occupied my thoughts extensively ever since I began my journey to the Right. As I’ve mentioned here before - probably extremely ill-advisedly, from an OpSec perspective - I have a theatre arts degree and spent over a decade heavily involved in the local theatre scene (both musicals and “straight plays”) in my city. At one point I was incredibly enthusiastic about pursuing a professional career in that field, and made my participation in it a central part of my identity. My political conversion isn’t the only reason I’ve drifted away from theatre (even my use of the British spelling gives me away as a Theater Kid), but it was by far the biggest accelerant of that decision. Another reason, though, is that even aside from their politics, theatre people can be… difficult to be around in certain ways that made me stick out like a sore thumb sometimes even without politics entering the equation.

So, when I see right-wing commentators taking potshots at “Theater Kids”, part of me wants to not only applaud, but to amplify their criticism: “Oh, you don’t even know the half of it!” I’m far more intimately aware of the particular failure modes of artists, because I saw them up-close and personal for a huge part of my life, and can recognize some of those failure modes in myself. Another part of me, though, becomes very defensive and wants to leap to the defense of the creative class; not only because, despite my current politics and estrangement from that scene, I’m still one of those people at heart, but also because I think right-wing people tread on dangerous ground when they too-eagerly dismiss and alienate artistically-/creatively-oriented people.

It is undeniably true that people involved in the arts are overwhelmingly and ostentatiously left-wing. Look at surveys of political orientation among any even remotely creative-adjacent field and you will find support for progressive parties/ideas well above 80-90%. The question of why this is the case is complicated and fascinating. Has it always been that way? It is dangerous to apply modern political categories to pre-modern societies, but if the “theater kid” personality profile existed in ancient/classical societies, would it be possible to say that those types of people would have been more “proto-woke” than the average citizen?

Remember that the great literary classics of Ancient Greece - the Odyssey, the Iliad, the Theogony - were epic poems delivered orally and accompanied by music long before they were written down and codified in literary form. The bards who would have invented, transmitted and augmented these epic poems were real people with real personalities, and I think there’s a significant likelihood that they were not too different from the actors and rockstars of today. Besides implying a degree of narcissism and superciliousness that we associate with artsy people today, does it also suggest that they would have been the “shitlibs” of their day?

There’s an interesting discourse about how the character of Odysseus is a sort of prototype for the theater kid’s idea of a hero - the idealized self-image of an artist imagining how he would be as a hero. Odysseus is a trickster and fabulist; he achieves his heroic deeds largely through craftiness, subterfuge, deception, and pretending to be anybody other than who he actually is. He can conjure whole worlds and identities at a whim through the magic of wordplay and storytelling. He is labile and mercurial, indirect and full of what we might call chutzpah. He prefigures more modern examples of the “trickster/bullshitter with a heart of gold” archetype epitomized by musical theatre characters like Harold Hill in The Music Man, J. Pierrepont Finch in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, and the funhouse-mirror version of P.T. Barnum presented in the movie musical The Greatest Showman. The guys writing these musicals can’t imagine themselves as Herculean heroes of might and action, but they can imagine themselves saving the world by being so good at spinning a compelling story that they make it come true.

So, what does this imply about the self-image of artists, and what can it teach us about the likely consequences of giving the reins of power (cultural, political, or otherwise) to people who come from this milieu and/or have this personality type? Many on the Right - I’m thinking especially of the blogger The Z-Man - have noted that modern American politics are dominated by a sort of Carny (meaning a carnival performer or huckster) type of personality. There’s a persuasive case to be made that democracy inherently rewards and gives power to that exact type of person. I think we can see all around us many of the failure modes of trusting these people with the governance of our country and the production of our cultural narratives. They are fundamentally unserious people, addicted to attention and applause, attracted to head-in-the-clouds utopian nonsense because they never fully grew out of a sort of perpetual narcissistic adolescence, convinced that the key to solving hard problems is just telling a really good lie and crafting a feel-good narrative so aesthetically-pleasing that it can’t help but manifest into reality. This is a spot-on description of the personalities of many of the theatre people I know, and I wouldn’t trust them to organize a bake sale, let alone run a country.

And yet. By telegraphing its open hostility to artists and creatives - by throwing up a big sign that says, “people with liberal arts degrees, go away!” - I believe that the Right severely cripples itself. Firstly, on a practical level, it deprives the Right of its ability to mobilize individuals who can craft aesthetically-compelling narratives that will inspire and convert normal people. Right now, the only interesting art that most people in first-world countries will ever be exposed to is made by leftists. We can talk about the reasons for this; certainly some of them are structural, and are downstream of the fact that Hollywood and creative industries more generally are dominated by powerful leftists who limit the ability of right-wing content creators to access the kind of resources and backing required to produce and distribute media. But even when right-wingers get a chance to make art, it… generally doesn’t measure up.

Why is that? Is part of the reason why right-wingers (myself included) are so interested in pre-modern art is that they can keep Retvrning to it and are relieved of the burden of having to create something new? Why is it that the only people who go to classical music concerts and operas are PMC shitlibs? If the Right achieves its glorious counter-revolution, will the end product look like the town from Footloose? Distrustful of art and self-expression for fear that it breeds degeneracy? Forever fighting a battle to suppress artsy types who will corrupt the youth and bring the poison of leftism back from the dead? Should creative types who are otherwise on board with the Rightist project be concerned that we are helping to build a future that will have no place for us?

Maybe the fact that I’m asking these questions is proof that Red Tribers are right to be suspicious of people like me. If a conservative and traditional life is ideal for the vast majority of people, who cares what a tiny minority of whiny self-obsessed “artists” want? Aren’t people like me the reason we got to this point in the first place? It’s a tough subject for me to think about. To what extent can I whole-heartedly commit to a political project that will marginalize the people most similar to myself, in order to secure the greater good for the great mass of other people on earth? Am I just overthinking this entirely and letting a flippant shitposty meme trigger me into neurotic despair?

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Oh, you are dead-on about Trump, and I pegged him from the second he came down that elevator as a toxic grifter to be avoided at all costs. I do think that for all the ways I’m an odd fit for the Right, the fact that at no point was I ever a run-of-the-mill normie conservative gives me a bit of insight into some of the failure modes to which the Red Tribe is vulnerable, and I knew that Trump would be able to expertly exploit those vulnerabilities while actually doing close to nothing to help the people who voted for him. He is the ur-fabulist, someone so labile and bereft of sincerity that he will say and believe literally anything he thinks he needs to in order to secure adulation and power.

The PMC libs are the inheritors of the elite culture which they claim so conspicuously to hate, and the only conservatives left are the proles. If there is hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, is there any taste of tradition left. Proles and animals are free.

I mean, what’s the point of all of it if the proles rise up and overthrow their overlords, only to institute a society where the height of artistic culture is Pawn Stars and a NASCAR race? If the destruction of the PMC means the destruction of what’s left of our high culture, I’ve got to say that siding with the elites starts to look like a more attractive prospect. Say whatever you will about the PMC and their schizophrenic relationship to traditional high culture, but like I said, when I go to a classical concert or a ballet or an opera, it’s very obvious who is keeping these traditions alive, and it sure as hell isn’t Trump voters.

when I go to a classical concert or a ballet or an opera, it’s very obvious who is keeping these traditions alive, and it sure as hell isn’t Trump voters

I'm not as convinced- their version of theater is wildly popular. They don't outright call it that (partially for reactionary reasons), but the term "kayfabe" comes from the way its performers act.

Yes, it's a bit more formulaic since it has to fit within its primary conceit of a sports match, but I really don't see much difference between Shakespeare and WWE- it's just that we consider one high art and the other something else, probably because Shakespeare was 400 years ago and nobody fully understands its memes any more.

Seconding @Hoffmeister25.

I really don't see much difference between Shakespeare and WWE- it's just that we consider one high art and the other something else

What this reminds me of, perhaps because of recent exposure to the china-racial-enemy thread, is reading this old Amren article:

In this context, I recall some remarkable discoveries by the late American linguist, William Stewart, who spent many years in Senegal studying local languages. Whereas Western cultures internalize norms—“Don’t do that!” for a child, eventually becomes “I mustn’t do that” for an adult—African cultures do not. They rely entirely on external controls on behavior from tribal elders and other sources of authority. When Africans were detribalized, these external constraints disappeared, and since there never were internal constraints, the results were crime, drugs, promiscuity, etc. Where there have been other forms of control—as in white-ruled South Africa, colonial Africa, or the segregated American South—this behavior was kept within tolerable limits. But when even these controls disappear there is often unbridled violence.

Surprising confirmation of Stewart’s ideas can be found in the May/June 2006 issue of the Boston Review, a typically liberal publication. In “Do the Right Thing: Cognitive Science’s Search for a Common Morality,” Rebecca Saxe distinguishes between “conventional” and “moral” rules. Conventional rules are supported by authorities but can be changed; moral rules, on the other hand, are not based on conventional authority and are not subject to change. “Even three-year-old children … distinguish between moral and conventional transgressions,” she writes. The only exception, according to James Blair of the National Institutes of Health, are psychopaths, who exhibit “persistent aggressive behavior.” For them, all rules are based only on external authority, in whose absence “anything is permissible.” The conclusion drawn from this is that “healthy individuals in all cultures respect the distinction between conventional … and moral [rules].”

However, in the same article, another anthropologist argues that “the special status of moral rules cannot be part of human nature, but is … just … an artifact of Western values.” Anita Jacobson-Widding, writing of her experiences among the Manyika of Zimbabwe, says:

“I tried to find a word that would correspond to the English concept of ‘morality.’ I explained what I meant by asking my informants to describe the norms for good behavior toward other people. The answer was unanimous. The word for this was tsika. But when I asked my bilingual informants to translate tsika into English, they said that it was ‘good manners’ …”

She concluded that because good manners are clearly conventional rather than moral rules, the Manyika simply did not have a concept of morality. But how would one explain this absence? Miss Jacobson-Widding’s explanation is the typical nonsense that could come only from a so-called intellectual: “the concept of morality does not exist.” The far more likely explanation is that the concept of morality, while otherwise universal, is enfeebled in cultures that have a deficiency in abstract thinking.

As always, one man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens. Art exists, and WWE ain't it. Commonality of many building blocks is of no relevance. People can be more or less equipped to notice the totality of intellectual effort and purpose directing it which separates art and pure entertainment.

No doubt WWE could be used to stage actual high art, but its incentives lead to the opposite.

“Even three-year-old children … distinguish between moral and conventional transgressions,” she writes. The only exception, according to James Blair of the National Institutes of Health, are psychopaths, who exhibit “persistent aggressive behavior.” For them, all rules are based only on external authority, in whose absence “anything is permissible.”

Aristotle disagreed in that, according to Laetrus, he thought that most people don't act according to some internal sense of right and wrong, but according to what won't get them into trouble:

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

In his view, most people are what Mr. Blair calls "psychopaths".

This is indeed not so clear-cut. Plato also argued that there does not exist a man so virtuous as to abstain from crime that cannot de discovered, in a passage that I believe has inspired Tolkien (Wiki notes the parallel but says there's no proof of borrowing):

The best is to do injustice without paying the penalty; the worst is to suffer it without being able to take revenge. Justice is in the middle between these two extremes. People love it, not because it is a good thing, but because they are too weak to do injustice with impunity. Someone who has the power to do it, however—someone who is a real man—would not make an agreement with anyone, neither to do injustice nor to suffer it. For him, that would be insanity. That is the nature of justice, according to the argument, Socrates, and those are its natural origins.

We can see most clearly that those who practice it do so unwillingly, because they lack the power to do injustice, if we imagine the following thought-experiment. Suppose we grant to the just and the unjust person the freedom to do whatever they like. We can then follow both of them and see where their appetites would lead. And we will catch the just person red- handed, traveling the same road as the unjust one. The reason for this is the desire to do better than others. This is what every natural being naturally pursues as good. But by law and force, it is made to deviate from this path and honor equality.

They would especially have the freedom I am talking about if they had the power that the ancestor of Gyges of Lydia is said to have possessed. The story goes that he was a shepherd in the service of the ruler of Lydia. [...] There were windowlike openings in it and, peeping in, he saw a corpse, which seemed to be of more than human size, wearing nothing but a gold ring on its finger. He took off the ring and came out of the chasm. He wore the ring at the usual monthly meeting of shepherds that reported to the king on the state of the flocks.And as he was sitting among the others, he happened to turn the setting of the ring toward himself, toward the inside of his hand. When he did this, he became invisible to those sitting near him, and they went on talking as if he had gone. [...] As soon as he realized this, he arranged to become one of the messengers sent to report to the king. On arriving there, he seduced the king’s wife, attacked the king with her help, killed him, and in this way took over the kingdom.

Let’s suppose, then, that there were two such rings, one worn by the just person, the other by the unjust. Now no one, it seems, would be so incorruptible that he would stay on the path of justice, or bring himself to keep away from other people’s possessions and not touch them, when he could take whatever he wanted from the marketplace with impunity, go into people’s houses and have sex with anyone he wished, kill or release from prison anyone he wished, and do all the other things that would make him like a god among humans. And in so behaving, he would do no differently than the unjust person, but both would pursue the same course.

I actually agree both with Greeks and with woke anthropologists that morality does not exist and does not differ from conventional etiquette in some substantial objective sense. The belief that it does is obviously downstream from tenets of (Christian) religion, which insists on there being some supernatural authority that informs one's conscience in a way that's qualitatively superior to mere interiorization of customs. Olympians weren't moral role models or authorities. Even Yahweh isn't much of one, even his old prophets weren't. Crucially, Christianity doesn't give much of a shit for the material world that is a disposable platform for testing the character of an immortal soul, so it can get away with abnormally severe deontology, the good of the entire polity being not worth the abuse of a single child. (it's worth noting that Dost's argument in Karamazovs about «tear of a child» is often misconstued as expressing this sentiment, but it was just the old problem of evil in a world created by a good God). This was important for creating a WEIRD psychotype.

But also, clearly racists-objectivists have a point.

To be more specific, we can say that in this framework «morality» is distinct from etiquette in that it is a) premised on instinctive empathy for your fellow being with moral patienthood (this is admittedly somewhat circular), b) practically consists of general game-theoretical heuristics that are intended to maximize long-term happiness/suffering ratio for the group and its members, and c) affects emotions and behavior even in the absence of external reward.

This still allows for diversity of moral systems. When the racist author says that Kenyans wouldn't have freed Dreyfus because they fail at counterfactual reasoning, he misses this.

Whenever I taught ethics I used the example of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French Army who was convicted of treason in 1894 even though the authorities knew he was innocent. Admitting their mistake, it was said, would have a disastrous effect on military morale and would cause great social unrest. I would in turn argue that certain things are intrinsically wrong and not just because of their consequences. Even if the results of freeing Dreyfus would be much worse than keeping him in prison, he must be freed, because it is unjust to keep an innocent man in prison. To my amazement, an entire class in Kenya said without hesitation that he should not be freed.

The Chinese, or even Japanese, are obviously capable of thinking about complex counterfactuals, but it may be that they too wouldn't have been persuaded by the deontological reasoning here: «social harmony» is for them a moral heuristic that can very well compete with «justice», and is valued for the same object-level reasons the instinct is derived from. Insults to harmony are received with indignation and outrage of the same nature as acts of abuse directed at individuals in the West. Indeed I think that a typical East Asian would appeal to a deeper counterfactual, that of the plausible uncertainty of Dreyfus' innocence, to justify the court doubling down: unrest in the name of redressing a *merely highly likely injustice is not worth it. And heuristics of Kenyans may be not too different, only baked into common metis and inaccessible to abstract reflection. In fact we could say that empathetic morality is more logically primitive than ethics of conventional behavior, because conventions can account for second-order effects which still resolve to moral benefit.

I do not always believe that what I quote or refer to is better than my own thoughts on the matter – those are just neat illustrations for the topic at hand.

I think morality does exist, and as far as I know I don’t derive it from christianity. Imagine everyone has a ring of gyges. To avoid getting stolen from and killed, we refrain from such things even in the absence of retribution. The analogy holds because people really do occasionally have the opportunity to do evil unseen. Magical, acausal thinking perhaps, but I truly believe that if I act that way, they will too. Well, some of them. But it requires them to understand the defect-defect equilibrium we are heading to without such magical thinking, and trust in an unenforceable contract. I’m sorry to say that for me the moral value of a person has an intelligence component, though obviously intelligence is no guarantee.

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