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Notes -
On Inferential Distance
There's a pair complaints that get made here on a semi-regular basis to the effect of how "The right" lacks a positive vision/will to power, and more generally the how the whole Left/Right spectrum is incoherent. These complaints are often deployed in tandem with the old Bryan Caplan take about the left is defined by being anti-market and the right is defined by being anti-left. I disagree, and given how I've been accused by multiple users of "torturing the meaning of words" and "doubling down on obvious falsehoods" over the last couple months, and I feel kind of obligated to elaborate.
Entering college life as I did (as Freshman on the GI-Bill Student after 12 years as combat medic), I found it difficult to discount the degree to which certain cultural assumptions dominated the school's culture. I often found myself feeling a bit like Captain Picard in that one TNG Episode where the alien-of-the-week's individual words are readily translatable but their meaning is not. When I first read Yudkowski's post on "expecting short inferential distances" it crystalized something that I had already grasped intuitively but had been struggling to put into words. The concept of "inferential distance" subsequently became something of a bugbear of mine. In 1984 Orwell posits that the key to controlling discourse was to first control the language and I think he was on to something with that. As I've previously observed, for all the talk of theMotte being "right wing" it's userbase is overwhelmingly progressive in background. Being college educated is the default here. Atheism is the default here. A belief in identity politics and Hegelian oppressor/oppressed dynamics is the default here. These assumption (and yes I am calling them assumptions) get baked into the discourse and people who don't already buy into them end up facing an uphill battle if they wish to participate in the discussion. Often times I'll find myself choosing to not bother but I can't help but notice that this amplifies the problem, "evaporative cooling" and all that.
While I recognize that language is more performative than it is prescriptive what I am endeavoring to do here is something like a rectification of names. A lot of what I am about to say is going to be a rehash of things that some of you will have already read before on Lesswrong, SSC, or on theMotte prior our departure from Reddit. But in the interests of engaging with people we disagree with I will attempt to restate my case for the record...
What do I mean when I say "Western Civilization"? I refer to the intellectual tradition that is essentially a marriage of middle eastern mysticism and classical Greek/Roman formalism. This tradition rose to prominance in the first century BC and spread rapidly along the mediterrainian coast ultimately conquering most of Europe and eventually spreading to the new world. One of the core elements that sets this tradition apart from both it's contempraries and predecessors is a belief in "sanctity through service" which in turn translates into requiring a woman's consent for marriage, viewing dogs as high status animals, and regarding slavery with something of a jaundiced eye. There is a debate to be had about to what degree early Christianity created these conditions or was simply a reaction to them but I don't think they matter all that much. It looks to me like a chicken and egg type question as regardless of on which side you fall in the debate the two are inextricably linked. The venn diagram of cultures considered "western" and cultures "heavily influenced by Christainity" (as opposed to other faiths Abrahamic or otherwise) is practically a circle with Jesus himself quoting Homer and Aeschylus in his sermons.
Relatedly, I maintain that the left vs right spectrum are best understood as religious schism within the western enlightment, with the adhearants of Locke and Rousseau on one side and the adhearants of Hobbes on the other. The core points of disagreement being internal vs exterenal loci of control and the "default" state of man. While this model may have fallen out of favor in acedemia over the last few decades I still believe that it holds value in that it "cleaves reality at the joints" by pointing to real differences in how diffrenet classes within the west approach questions of legal authority/legitimacy while still accurately reflecting to the original etymology, IE which side would one be expected to take in the French revolution.
Users here will often argue that the existance (or non-existance) of "an imaginary sky-friend" or individual loci of control are not relevant to whatever issue is being discussed but I disagree. I believe that these base level assumptions end up becoming the core of what positions we hold.
I've caught a lot of flak in this sub for "no true scotsmaning" by equating the alt-right with the woke left but I can't help but notice that they seem to be coming from the same place. That is an underlying assumption on both sides that if only all the existing social barriers/contracts could be knocked down, utopia would be achievable. This is a fundamentally Rousseauean viewpoint where in violence, inequity, and injustice are all products of living in a society. Meanwhile I find myself barrowing pages from Hobbes and Burke, grand ideas are nice and all, but social barriers/contracts are what ensure that the trash gets picked up, and that supermarket shelves get stocked and that I would argue what makes a civilization.
Edit: Fixed link, spelling
The SS was highly college educated, particularly in the officer corps (especially prior to 1939 when they started watering down entrance requirements). 30% were university graduates, compared to 2.5% of the general population of Germany in 1962. Half of those present at the Wannsee conference had doctorates. Likewise with Einsatzgruppen and Kommandos, a majority were headed by officers from an intellectual background. 18/23 defendants at the Einstazgruppen trial in Nurnberg were university graduates.
There are long and complex debates over to the religiosity of the SS and it's uncertain. A fair few of the more notorious officers claimed that killing thousands of Jews did not sin against the Commandment of Love, that they were raised as Christians. Others seem to be agnostic or atheistic, or 'spiritual but not religious' in a volkisch sense. There are a fair few Christians and non-materialists here + the whole simulation crowd. I recall reading someone talking about tithing.
I think it goes without saying that the SS had a strong and pervasive belief in identity politics and oppression/oppressed dynamics.
So was the SS a progressive organization? In a certain sense of the word yes. They had their own definition of progress. But that definition does not really match our definition of progressive, given that both would consider themselves totally and irredeemably opposed to eachother. And both are pretty different from motte users!
I don't think you can carve a neat dividing line through Western civilization and say 'all people who want radical, fundamental change are on the same side'. There's a lot of internal variance here!
Take Rousseau. There's the conventional progressive position that society causes all these problems of violence and inequality so we need to change or abolish elements of society. Or the SS-progressive position, where we need to change society so we're better at inflicting violence and inequality on others, honing our society to the peak of its competitiveness with eugenics and discipline.
"Identity politics" and "hegelian oppressor/oppressed dynamics" seem to fit the nazis quite perfectly as well.
Stalin and Trotsky (and Zinoviev, and Bukkarin, and many more) were all totally and irredeemably opposed to each other, eventually. Being willing to fight to the death is evidence of conflict, but there are many forms of ideological conflict, and many forms of non-ideological conflict as well.
Eventually is doing a lot of work here! Those guys were all in the same party together for a long time. The Nazis kicked out Strasser, who was very socialist. But he was also very nationalist and anti-semitic. Rohm might've been gay buy he was also a keen nationalist, militarist and anti-semite. Both men participated in the 1923 putsch too, they had a necessary disdain for democratic norms. But at no point would the Nazis have let in anyone like a modern progressive. Go directly to Dachau, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
Modern progressivism: gay rights, trans rights, privileges/equality for non-whites, anti-authoritarianism, anti-militarism, anti-anti-semitism... you can see the SS officer clenching his pistol
At no point would the Soviets invite Ayn Rand into the Communist Party, at no point would Ronald Reagan join up with Pol Pot. Just because people got purged for power or other reasons, it doesn't mean that they're totally and irredeemably opposed.
I don't think it takes away from your overall point, but Reagan actually very much did support PolPot for many years. That was a real thing that happened.
Damn, that does rather undermine my argument. I suppose there's a distinction between using someone weaker than you as a disposable tool and a genuine alliance. I originally thought of contrasting Reagan vs the Chinese Communist Party but considered that they were working together throughout the 1980s against the Soviets. Obviously the plan was to turn China later on, along with Cambodia for that matter. On a strategic level, strange bedfellows... things are somewhat purer on an ideological/political level.
I don't think it does undermine your point, just a funny coincidence. There's a world where Che and Castro are fighting alongside Kennedy against the great Brazilian fascist menace, or something like that. Things like that are contingent, I think your larger point stands; though it should be noted the ideologies are themselves contingent. Ho Chi Minh was a communist because he needed the help. There's no reason gay rights and anti capitalism are considered allied; they're natural enemies.
How so?
Gay Rights only co-occurs with Advanced Capitalism. There are no traditional feudal countries with gay rights, there are no communist countries with gay rights, not now, not historically. The closest you get is specialized roles for catamites in certain traditional Asian, Muslim, and Greco-Roman societies. The litany of Marx is always relevant here:
Capitalism is the universal solvent, and one of the things it has most thoroughly dissolved are the religious, cultural, and moral strictures on human sexuality.
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