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I'm not sure how else to start this so I'm just going to dive straight in.
A long time bug-bear of mine is something I've come to refer to as the "Leviathan-shaped Hole in the discourse". It's something that has come up multiple times in the last couple weeks and while I've written about it at length back when this community was on reddit and in the comment section of SSC proper back in the day it's been pointed out to me that I haven't really written about it in a while and that I should probably revisit the subject for those who are just joining us. Aknoldewdgment to @Fruck, @hydroacetylene, Et Al.
The short version is that I believe that there are multiple basic human intuitions that are simply missing from the modern secular liberal mindset/worldview.
The long version might require a bit of background to explain.
I get the impression that I'm something of an odd man out here in that I did not go to college after high-shool and in that I never really thought of myself as being particularly intelligent. If anything it was the inverse. I'll be the first to tell you that I am not that fucking bright. I had dreams of being a professional fighter and/or skate-border, but as I moved up the food-chain it became increasinly clear that natural talent was no match for natural talent coupled with the time and money to train full-time. If I were smart I may have figured that out a head of time. In anycase 9/11 Happened and I enlisted. I spent 10 years as a Combat Medic and another 18 months as a feild operative for a Prominant Humanitarian NGO in East Africa before deciding to return to the states and go to college on the GI bill.
As one might imagine, going from being a "Muzunga" in Nairobi to being undergrad at the University of California was a bit of a culture shock. And it is that sense of culture shock that has stuck with me and signifigantly shaped my worldview since. It's one thing to stick out visually, to be visibly older than all the other freshmen, or to be one of half-a-dozen white guys in an otherwise black neighborhood. But it is another to realize that you genuinely walk different, talk different, and think different from your obstensible peers. I was first introduced to rationalism through one of my professors and a fellow-student, and the desire to make sense of whatever the fuck was going on was major part of the initial apeal. I was actually at one of the first SSC reader meet-ups hosted by Cariadoc where I got to meet Scott, and bunch of the other movers and shakers, face to face but as much as I was a fan of the general ideas (systemitized wining Yay!) it was painfully obvious to me that we had fundementally different conceptions of how how the world actually worked. Which in turn brings us to the real topic of this post.
One of the things about having existed in a world outside liberal society is that you cant help but recognize that there is a world outside liberal society. Accordingly it becomes difficult to ignore just how much of liberal society (or what Scott would call "the Universal Culture") is predicated on assumptions that do not necccesarily hold. Yes, If A & B then C, but that's a mightily Laconic "If". This is where the hole comes in. My position is that the secular liberal dominiation of academia has effectively castrated our society's ablility to discuss certain topics in a reasonable manner by baking liberal assumptions about how the world ought to work (rather than how it actually does work) into the vocabulary of the discussion. As such, in order to argue against a liberal in a manner the the liberal will regard as valid one is forced to go through a whole rigirmarole of defining terms that nobody's got time for. Thus the liberal inevitably wins every argument by default. However, winning the argument does not neccesarily equate to being "correct" as one can make a dumb argument for a smart position and vice versa.
The "Leviathan shaped hole" is named for the book Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. I find Hobbes signifigant in that he was one of the first guys in the enlightenment/modern era to approach political science as an actual science with theories that could be either proven or falsfied. However these days he's mostly regarded as a joke, a cartoon characterchure of an absolute authoritarian drawn by people who've never really bothered to read or engage with any of his arguments and I believe that this does our society a disservice. It seems to me that we are at a point where the sort of culture/worldview that produces a guy like Greg Abbott or the median Trump voter is as alien to the typyical liberal as that of an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon and I can't help but expect this to end badly.
Thing is that for all the talk of "fighting the power" one gets the impression that a liberal does not really understand the implications of those words because the've never been in a position to to actually do so. I'm reminded of an argument I got into with another user regarding the killing of Jordan Neely. The Argument has been made that Daniel Penny acted unlawfully by interposing himself between Neely and his intended victim and subsiquently killing Neely. To call Penny a "murderer" and a "vigilante" implies the pressance of a sovriegn authority that penny was obliged to defer to. Hovever if that's the case why did it not act? The simple answer is that it was not pressant and thus the accusations against Penny ring hollow.
One of those fundamental Hobbesian bits of insight that liberals see to lack is the understanding that violent schizophrenics attacking people on the subways is not some aberation, it's the default, and if you aren't going to do anything about it someone else just might.
I often think of liberalism as a bell jar: since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is essentially no competing world view that people in the west are exposed to. Everyone they meet are some kind of liberal. Liberals call each other "liberals" as an insult. The "communists" are really liberals, the "alt-right" are really liberals, when you scratch beneath whatever surface label they've applied to themselves all you find is a liberal. On the one hand this is a reflection of the blinding success of liberalism but also has resulted in a significant weakening of liberalism as an effective mode of governance.
To treat liberalism as an inevitable endpoint, or a universal truth, or some manifestation of the underlying laws of the universe; it undermines what made liberalism triumphant and successful.
The connections of liberalism and communism is a more real phenomenon than the altright being liberal. Although it is true that some dissident rightists are in part of a certain kind of liberal.
But of a different type than modern liberalism which is part of the new left and has stronger cultural marxist dna.
here is a thoughtful discussion about liberalism that raises the issue of how it relates to communism.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=j2AFw6EW1bw
In regards to the success of liberalism it does have to do with a heavy dose of authoritarianism, and dogmatic adherence.
And authoritarianism for progressivism of what is the current trend. Just as USSR was considered the dictatorship of progressivism, modern liberal democracy fits within that paradigm increasingly but of what is the current version of progressivism.
People like Fukuyama have been defending all sorts of authoritarian moves. Modern liberal tribe is not the tribe of Greenwald.
To the extend that liberalism is about neutrality of institutions, a free marketplace of ideas, respect of rule of law, equal and consistent application of rule of law or even liberal nationalism and national self determination, or respecting freedom of assocation/speech in the fundamental degree, seeing oppositional politics where the right wing opposition is allowed to exist, all that has been eroded.
To the extend that it is about opposing corruption and capture of power by ethnic lobbies, or big weapon manufacturers (some of the biggest donors of thinktanks), or intelligence agencies, or neocon families as permanent bureocrat aristocracy, again we see a failure.
To the extend it is about disempowring warmongers whose actions are against international law, again we see that modern liberals as a tribe are failing.
Of course the reality is that from the very existence of the French revolution there have always been a significant element of extremism. And the problem of the dominant ideology of a society leading to fundamentalist extremism and theocratic totalitarian society is also at play, and involves more than just liberalism.
My conclusion is the ideological fanaticism for progress and liberalism leads to an ideology that is destructive and even erodes some of the possible virtues associated with liberalism. But this association like any religion that promises utopia and associates itself with goodness is something that true believers promote. But the whole concept is motte and bailey at its substance, for part of the success have been discrimination against non liberals, and also associating with liberalism the warmongering imperialists, the racist supremacist ethnic lobbies, the authoritarian Saul Alinsky fans (such as Hilary Clinton), or those who collaborate with people like Bill Ayers.
The mixture of some restrained liberalism with conservatism and nationalism works better but has failed to gatekeep and stop the more far left faction.
While liberalism as an ideology is flawed but some part of it in combination of non liberal tradition, can create something that works better in combination than any other element in isolation, the tribe of liberals is different. They fit within what I criticize more so than ever before. While in the past in addition to more new left types, some people who called themselves liberal, might have fitted more in line with a more moderate syncretic tradition, this is hardly the case with today mainstream liberalism. Ironically, the marginalization of liberal tribe in favor of those of a more syncretic tradition would also lead to a society that does succeed more (but never absolutely as they are utopian and flawed) in some of the promises of liberalism I mentioned that modern liberalism completely fails at.
But this was also the case historically. The counter revolutionaries promoted better functioning and freer societies than the radicals of French revolution. East European countries that blacklisted communists and had an ideology that combined conservative, traditional, liberal elements worked better than the current cultural marxist new left paradigm or the communist one.
While there is some value to aspects of liberalism and the correct response to throw the dirty bathwater without the baby, the ideology of what happens as liberalism purity spirals and is called liberalism still or "liberal democracy" or "peoples democracy" deserves no preservation but to be thrown to the dustbin. While many of the people who became aligned with modern liberalism due to the reasons I mentioned in the first part of the post will join the new reigning ideology if the new left/cultural marxist/modern liberalism starts losing influence. Even with all the institutional capture there is still sizable backlash, precisely because it doesn't work well. Where people of the tradition I favor, appoint likeminded people in positions of power this works to promote an ideology more in line with that. For example Orban and Hungary. The issue now is that the new left/modern liberal types are acting more aggressively worldwide and have captured significant power in the USA.
But it isn't a done deal and there is nothing inevitable or unique here that is different to any historical examples people who are loyal to X or Y ideology/religious sect being possible for them to either capture power, or fail to do so, based on the circumstances. It does seem that messianic thinking helps movements to capture power. Specifically the part that is about the movement bringing the world at the stage of utopian end of history and bringing forth the messianic age where people are saved. Although liberalism seems to have multiple figures and the ideology in general as the messiah, and also larger groups as the bringer of salvation, rather than one central figure. With the liberals themselves and various intersectional groups as the Messiahs and redeemers.
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What does this mean?
Essentially what it says on the tin.
They take the current power and prosperity of liberal societies such as the US and EU for granted. Treating it as though it were somehow inevitable, rather than something that has to be actively cultivated and maintained.
Gotcha - on first reading, I misinterpreted it as
which triggered my confusion. Based on what you said, the intention is more along the lines of
I would also agree with the first version. Lockean/Millian liberalism is a meta-ideology built to maintain a balance between order and chaos, the left and the right, the conservative and the progressive. In doing so it ensures that the conservative doesn't make society stagnate and the progressive doesn't push so far ahead people can't keep up. It is not meant to be the dominant ideology, and as we have seen it has been coopted as a result of its rise to prominence.
This is projecting back onto Locke and Mill something very much more modern. Neither would recognize this description.
I used Lockean/Millian liberalism to keep it separate from liberal as progressive and Liberal as conservative, not to suggest Locke or Mill considered it a meta-ideology. As far as I'm aware that's all me baby. But I do believe they'd both be on board with it once I explained it to them, I arrived at it after reading On Liberty and the Letters of Toleration back to back.
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I imagine there were more than a few Germans who were born and remembered life under monarchy in the German Empire. Then they witnessed the fall of the monarchy and transformation to a Republic after the abdication in 1918. They lived in the Weimar Republic and witnessed the fall of the Republic to a fascist government under Hitler. Then the fall of National Socialism to a Communist government. And then the fall of Communism to a liberal Democracy. You have to wonder the cynicism that ideological thrashing would build into a person, and the gullibility of the people who truly believe "finally, we have reached the Truthful Solution."
Liberalism is only successful because its adherents truly believe in it and cannot imagine anything else. The second it's regarded as anything other than an inevitable endpoint, or universal truth, is when it is going to fail.
I think you underestimate the strength of liberalism. In the darkest days of 1940-41 when it was Britain alone against Germany, many were happy to write it off as an annoyingly obstinate but ultimately dead ideology. Yet the liberal democracies ended up thrashing the autocracies; not only crushing them under the weight of the combined outputs of the arsenals of democracy but ultimately converting them as well.
Perhaps liberalism will wither and decay. Perhaps some other, superior, more evolutionarily fit ideology will take its place. But I'm not betting against it just yet.
Liberalism made an alliance with Communism to make that happen. Something which both liberals and communists like to gloss over.
Remind me, Who were the Nazis allied with when they invaded Poland again?
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The communists needed the liberals much more than the other way around. If the western allies had refused to help the Soviets at all and the Germans beat them, Berlin and Hamburg and Frankfurt are still piles of radioactive ash come September 1945.
If the Western Allies had refused to ally with the Soviet Union, there would have been no war between Germany and Western Europe. Instead, Europe was destroyed and Great Britain lost its empire. Liberalism's greatest victory entailed the destruction of Europe, the collapse of the British Empire, and the Communist conquest of half of Europe. All to "save Poland" by the way.
You are aware that war broke out between Britain and Germany before the USSR’s formal alliance with Germany was broken?
"War broke out", you mean Great Britain declared war on Germany right?
The second in command of Germany, Rudolf Hess, actually boarded a plane, flew to Great Britain, strapped on a parachute for the first time in his life and bailed out of the plane to try to go around Churchill and make contact with Britain's peace factions:
So how does war between Britain and Germany "break out" if Britain and France don't declare war on Germany, or if they make peace with Germany and remain neutral during the Soviet war?
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I get that this is difficult for you as a Liberal who has named himself after the SS to comprehend but history says otherwise
I'm really curious as to how you think this happens. All evidence points to the fact that Hitler regarded the Anglos as natural racial allies. There were no plans at all for war against Western Europe. Hitler was genuinely surprised that Great Britain and France declared war over Poland.
So please explain to me why history suggests a war between Germany and Western Europe if Western Europe had remained neutral in the Polish and Soviet war (or joined the Soviet war on the German side as Hitler had hoped)?
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I cannot fathom what you mean by this. Like I cannot tell if you are being deliberately dishonest or if you have a perplexing, gigantic gap of knowledge. Who was the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact signed by? Who made a deal split Poland, and all Eastern Europe? Who was allied right up until the point tanks began crossing the border on June 22 1941? Because it sure as shit wasn't the western allies and the Soviets.
Hitler genuinely lobbied for the Western Allies to join him in his war against the Soviet Union, or at least to remain neutral. If they had remained neutral then Germany would not have gone to war against Western Europe.
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Well said, and agreed.
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Edit: Meant this as a direct reply to @HlynkaCG.
I think the bit you are missing is that the liberal western order is itself a solution to the Hobbes position. Rather than an authoritarian regime, it turns out, if you convince everyone that everyone else is actually a good person, and create a whole strata of social pressures and reinforcements, if you create that illusion so convincing so that you treat people that way...then you can have a bunch of red in tooth and claw apes crammed into close proximity...and almost all of them end up not trying to murder each other.
Far from looking at the weakness of the liberal order, consider its triumph. There is a reason people want to move to the liberal world, because the illusion actually creates a better place.
If you think that Hobbes was right about fundamental human nature then the liberal world order is an astonishing accomplishment. It has successfully pushed the violent to the fringes. Millions upon millions of animals are packed like sardines into tiny metal boxes every day and DO NOT kill each other!
Now yes, it does then struggle to deal with those fringes, because the whole illusion hinges on people essentially believing everyone is decent. But that is a much smaller problem than much less successful places. I've been to Nairobi and Pakistan and China and the liberal order is significantly better.
You're focussing on the Leviathan shaped hole, without noticing how tiny it is compared to what Hobbes would predict. Significantly more freedom than the authoritarian feudal sovereigns he envisaged would be needed to control humanities base impulses.A place where most people act as if a sovereign has presence even when it doesn't. Where large numbers of them obey traffic lights even when no-one else is around! Human nature tamed by human socialization.
The Liberal civilizational illusion is a triumph of order over chaos. An order created primarily by social behaviors and a great lie. A lie that becomes truth when we believe it to be true. An emergent system that has outcompeted every rival. Communism? Wrecked. Feudalism? Imploded. Libertarianism? Can't even get a foothold.
And you are quibbling over how it has not been 100% successful in controlling human nature? Thats like complaining your football team won 42-7, because they let a single touchdown in. Sure its not perfect, but it is very close!
To restate in your example, the whole reason you can have hundreds of people in tight proximity in a tiny metal tube and that only a random schizophrenic causes trouble is because of how utterly brilliant the liberal order is. You don't notice all the things it prevents, because they didn't happen in the first place.
Correct me at will, but it doesn't look to me like liberalism outcompeted other forms of social organization because of its ability to discourage violence. Would write more but phoneposting.
Its ability to encourage cooperative behaviors and discourage violence, without the near omnipresent sovereign authoritarian presence Hobbes thought would be necessary. As per OP's point the sovereign did not act to stop the schizophrenic because they had no presence on the train.
But if Hobbes is correct the real miracle then is that trains are not full of mayhem every day.
Liberalism can harness that power with less crushing oversight and state violence. Which empowers its nations to excel.
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If we're talking about the classical constitutional order, this is arguably the case. But I also think this something modern liberals have lost sight of. Much like the Mechanicum in 40k they're pushing buttons and pulling levers without really understanding the principles of the system they are trying to manipulate and messing with critical components without recognizing the implications/danger.
"That you don't notice all the things it prevents, because they didn't happen in the first place." is the blindspot.
As I've argued down thread, they take our current peace and prosperity for granted, and are thus unable to imagine see how their choices might lead to negative outcomes. That the typical liberal can look around himself and not see any violent schizophrenics causing trouble, is what allows them to delude themselves into believing that "Defund the Police" is a rational policy rather than societal suicide.
I think my point is those blindspots are necessary to the illusion. If you notice it, the illusion is broken for all of it.
The whole point is things are only better when they don't know the truth.
Taking peace and prosperity for granted is what allows the peace and prosperity.
Its not a bug in other words, its a fundamental feature. And it still gives better results than the converse.
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