About Ideology (Including Yours.) And roots in Romanticism.

First some announcements: 

1. On my other - more formal - blog, I ask "Does government-funded science play a role in stimulating innovation?"  There I refute rising incantations that science, productivity and inventiveness would all do so much better if we revert them all back to the whim of plutocrat lords. (Yeah, that worked great for the 6000 years of stagnant feudalism!) with guest appearances by Ayn Rand, Karl Marx, Adam Smith and... Jonas Salk.

2. Want the perfect gift for that professor or student of Anthropology or Paleontology? 

3. Appearances (see the regularly updated schedule):

        - Nov 7 my new play  - The Escape - will premiere at the Caltech Atheneum.

        - Nov 9 I speak at the Future In Review (FiRe) Conference in Palos Verdes, before flying to Tucson for the Tus-Con sci fi convention.

        - April 8 - two Texas events for the April 8 eclipse - more later

And now... having a little trouble with your clogged dogmas? Let's have a look and see if we can get things flowing again!  I'll start by quoting an exceptionally sapient article.

== Ideology as a refuge from practical problem solving ==

“Because an ideology “looks upon all factuality as fabricated,” it “no longer knows any reliable criterion for distinguishing truth from falsehood.”

— From Arresting Our ‘Flight From Reality by Roger Berkowitz

I recommend you visit this linked essay which continues:

“In 1949, when Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) went to Germany as part of the New York-based Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Commission, she was struck by the way the Germans showed an “at times vicious refusal to face and come to terms with what really happened.” This “escape from reality,” as Arendt named it, meant that the reality of the Holocaust and the death factories was spoken of as a hypothetical. And when the truth of the Holocaust was admitted, it was diminished: “The Germans did only what others are capable of doing.”

“The Germans, at times, simply denied the facts of what had happened. One woman told Arendt that the “Russians had begun the war with an attack on Danzig.” What Arendt encountered was a “kind of gentleman’s agreement by which everyone has a right to his ignorance under the pretext that everyone has a right to his opinion.” The underlying assumption for such a right is the “tacit assumption that opinions really do not matter.” Opinions are just that, mere opinions. And facts, once they are reduced to opinions, also don’t matter. Taken together, this led to a “flight from reality.”

“The focus of Arendt’s lifelong engagement with the human flight from reality was her encounter with ideologies, specifically Nazism and Bolshevism. In The Origins of Totalitarianism and other texts (especially her essay, On the Nature of Totalitarianism), Arendt defines an ideology as a system that seeks to explain “all the mysteries of life and the world” according to one idea.”

…” As ideologies, both Nazism and Bolshevism insist on explaining the events of the world according to theories “without further concurrence with actual experience.” The result, Arendt argues, is that such ideologies bring about an “arrogant emancipation from reality.” …”The modern lie is ideological in that it rejects all contrary evidence and all inconvenient facts. It involves, as Arendt writes, the “mass manipulation of fact and opinion” toward the totalizing end of “rewriting history” and the present to fit one idea.”

*

Do have a look at Roger’s article in Quillette, because the first half is so perfectly on target - diagnosing the same flaw in human nature that I often point-to -- our propensity for self-satisfying delusion, (a flaw that is also a taproot to our greatest gifts, like art and love).  

Ideologies, especially, can be mass delusions that are ecstatically masturbatory, simplifying all of those who disagree into mistakes, to be corrected with erasure.

I concur, while adding that another (or overlapping) common element is romanticism. Nazism, Stalinism, the American Confederacy (in all eight of its manifestations) were all romantic movements. (Mark Twain blamed the Civil War on the novels of Sir Walter Scott!) 

SF is not innocent! We see many common romantic features in the works of Tolkien and George Lucas and George R.R. Martin and Frank Herbert, wherein innately superior beings are portrayed as elegantly admirable (and pretty) while opposing orcs or robots or clone soldiers or masked storm troopers or hovering Harkonnens can be mowed down without qualm, as none of them have faces or mothers. 

(More seductively subtle, the gifted, eloquent and deeply anti-enlightenment O.S. Card relentlessly pushes romantic notions of rule-by-demigod, in place of decadent democracy.)

I go into all this in Vivid Tomorrows. And while I have earned most of my income by penning tales that have strong romantic elements, I write such passages at night, when the wind rustles tree branches and I feel the thrumming echoes of the caves. But I also say romanticism has no business - after 6000 years of calamities - getting involved in the daytime pursuits of politics, policy, science, justice and negotiation based on pragmatically verifiable facts.

== Hatred of Modernity ==

Alas, the 2nd half of Roger's essay dives into a completely separate Arendt obsession, her dyspeptic growl at modernity and science which I deem easily refuted.  For example, it was not ‘reconciliation’ that defeated Nazis, or Leninist romantics or the many phases of confederatism. 

What's been our great strength? It was a spirit of courage to face that ‘loneliness’ in alliance with different and varied others, whose very differences contribute to a healthy and wholesome tribe/nation/humanity.

We are not all so terrified, all the time, that we must clutch demonizing ideologies. There are other emotions, like fortitude, patience, curiosity and humor. And yes, an appreciation of facts and willingness to change our contingent models of the world (despite Plato’s yammers about the hopelessness of that wondrous pursuit.)

Despite my respect for Hannah Arendt, I feel no compulsion to heed in the slightest either Nietzsche or Hegel, whose incantation spells I particularly detest. Where I disagree foremost is over the outright dismissal of human provability. 

Like Roger Berkowitz, I do not take seriously the pathetic immortality fetishists or those nutters who think they can promote themselves - via miraculous technology - to godhood. But unlike him, I recognize that we stand on the shoulders of generations who struggled to make us better than them…

… and we are better!  Each generation of Americans - for example - has struggled over demands that we expand our horizons of inclusion, beyond the horizons that were new to our parents. And slowly - (far TOO grindingly slowly) - we have done so, each generation. And science, disproving ten thousand pat and comfy folk assumptions, played a major role in that!

Indeed, if we do keep improving, our wiser heirs will almost certainly realize that we've only shown how very much farther there is to go.

== Civilizational Competition? ==

Western nations and allies, e.g. Japan and S Korea ("W+") are actually doing very well, overflowing with creativity, invention, science, productivity and the sort of moral rediscovery that has engendered a very active younger generation, fizzing with criticism and eagerness to save the world... traits that were squelched across those 6000 feudal/futile years. Traits that are utterly repressed in 'civilizational" rivals like China, Russia, radical Islam, etc.

Let's be clear. Only those nations with habits of self-critical error discovery have been at all active at addressing potentially existential problems, like the environment, or justice, or rule of law. It is either W+ habits of error-discovery or extinction. Period. I stand ready to show that in any arena, from debate to wager.

There is one reason for cultural anomie by Western+ citizenries. That cause is the most aggressive propaganda campaign the world has ever seen, cleverly leveraging the reflex toward criticism that's been trained into W+ citizenries, igniting healthy Suspicion of Authority into paranoia toward their own institutions.

In Europe and the U.S. this campaign has been augmented by cynically evil despots herding millions of victims to EU and U.S. borders as refugees, successfully sparking rightward 'populist' political reactions.

There is no 'civilizational' bullshit. One imperative - and just one - unites China, Russia, radical Islam, etc. into common cause. That unifying drive - propelled by male reproductive strategies a billion years old - is to re-establish the feudal pyramids of power that dominated 99% of human societies for 60 centuries or much more.  

Squint and you can see it in all enemies of the W+... justifying pyramids of power. Some base it on religion, or tradition, or romanticism, or 'civilization rivalry.' But that is decoration.

The worldwide oligarchic putsch unites all enemies of the W+ Enlightenment Experiment (W+EE) for one reason: because the W+EE will likely succeed within the next 20 years at inculcating critical habits in ALL world youth! And when that happens, a return to feudal pyramids will be impossible, no matter how much money you have or political foes you defenestrate.  

This may be their last chance. And they are pulling out the stops.

Liberal societies will not co-exist with any of that. As happened to Athens and Florence, liberalism will be crushed, burned, the atoms incinerated and dropped (this time) into the sun... and the experiment will never be allowed, again.

Or else, what will happen is what the cabals fear most. We may decide to save the world and the future despite them. By growing up.

Impeachment is a dream. Get over it and fight effectively.

Before diving in, let me point to where my scratch essay, making six points about the "anonymous hero op-ed write," has been revised and published on MEDIUM, pointing out that even the most fervent Trump supporter must admit one blatant fact, that Trump has been a crappy judge of character... given how many times he howls "betrayed!" (This is the one point you can make to a Mad Uncle and he'll have no response, no fox-ism, nothing.)

Key point: our response to the op-ed "hero" has to be -- "thanks... but look at who appointed you, and try some humility. You are blatantly not qualified to pick and choose which GOP positions to support."

From the somewhat ridiculous to the generally sublime... Rebecca Solnit, one of America’s best journalist-historians, is almost always on-target, offering well-supported news and surprises… even though, in this case, she and I reach different conclusions. She starts by pointing out how the daily storm of Trump tweets deliberately distracts from an avalanche of related depredations that get masked, such as this under-reported gem:

“...the legal counsel at the Department of Transportation, Andrew Kloster, formerly of the Heritage Foundation, tweeting on August 22nd that a Hollywood actress was a succubus melding together satanism and the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah in one loopy tweet, a perfect marriage of antisemitism and misogyny.” 

"Or that “climate change research proposals in the Department of the Interior were being reviewed by a character named Steve Howke, who’s sole qualification (seems to be) being an old high-school football buddy of Secretary Zinke’s from Whitefish, Montana.”

(The day after Ms. Solnit posted that, a policy analyst working for the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security resigned after emails showed that analyst Ian M. Smith had been in regular contact with known white nationalists, including Alt-Right leader Richard Spencer, and Jared Taylor.)

Seriously, dial in to this and other Solniticisms and see someone who “out-rachels” MSNBC’s Maddow. Solnit’s long list of rightwing ethical and criminal atrocities, many of them barely noted by news media, will convince any sane American that we’re in the hands of a mafia. An international organized crime syndicate.

But that’s kinda the point. The blatancy of it all is so thuggish, boorish and ultimately stupid, that I’m reminded of Hannah Arendt’s appraisal of the Nazis’ evil banality. They achieved power through bullying and cheating and complicity by cynical oligarchs, but also because all the smart folks and modern people were complacent. When that complacency wore off, the modern world ponderously gathered itself, converged and smashed the Nazi thuggery to dust.

Ms. Solnit would respond: “Great. Then stop being complacent and smash! Impeach now!” But I disagree, at least in part. Thanks to the Trumpian grotesquery, no modern-thinking American is complacent, anymore. But it’s wrongheaded to demand a spasmodic, Verdun-style frontal assault on Donald Trump, himself. That is mistaking a symptom for the disease – a common error that could cost us dearly, especially if – in lancing an excruciating boil -- we then lapse into relieved celebration, ignoring a far worse cancer below.

Look, it’s plain that Donald Trump represents an existential problem… every action that he takes either serves a cynically rapacious world oligarchy (including gambling tycoons and the Russian Mafia) or else feeds fuel to a dangerous eighth phase of the recurring American CivilWar. Only here’s the deal. Everyone can see this. The members of every fact-using profession… including the intelligence communities, law enforcement and the FBI, civil servants, scientists, and the U.S. military officer corps. Yes, that includes the crewcut men and women who are now – in their millions – condemned by the mad-right as a conspiratorial “deep state.”

They can see it all, and these skilled, decent people are doing what they can. No president in history has ever been so hemmed-in, isolated, cauterized and, indeed, rendered rather powerless.

Oh, Trump’s appointments – especially judicial – will be daunting cancers for decades. (You expect any different from Pence?) His deliberate destruction of every strength that won us the Cold War and gave the world its greatest era of (flawed) peace and progress, should make any patriotic mind shiver… as our ancestors quailed after setbacks like Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Pearl Harbor, Kasserine, Selma, or Kent State. But those ancestors gritted-teeth and bore down for the long haul, knowing there’d be no quick fixes.

As I point out elsewhere, impeachment is not just a long-shot fantasy. Even if successful, it would likely do far more harm than good, putting Two Scoops Trump into a reality show mode that he’d enjoy vastly more than his daily torment in the Oval Office. You don’t think he’d milk that martyrdom, helping turn this phase of civil war red-hot? (Indeed, my biggest dread is that the Putin-Mercer-Adelson-Murdoch oligarchy, tired of the harm he’s doing to their political apparatus, might order a “Howard Beale” hit, igniting the whole nation in flames. God bless the U.S. Secret Service.)

Impeachment and removal would rob much of our growing coalition. Many of those crewcut “deep state” public servants would let themselves be soothed into relief and renewed complacency by a crooning President Mike Pence, promising comity and renewed respect for professional castes. This might even please some leftists, who are now equivocal over all the retired officers and short-haired ‘blue dogs’ now crowding into the Democrats’ big tent. 

But screw anyone who favors ideology ahead of victory over confederate treason.

Above all, the boil we see in front of us is blocking something far worse that would replace it. The Trumpian White House leaks like mad, rendering it largely impotent! Only the very deepest mafia stuff goes un-revealed, so far. But a Pence administration would be tightly disciplined, filled with dedicated dominionists who are focused on shared goals, much of it revolving around their firm belief and relish in two sacred tomes: The Fourth Turning, by Strauss & Howe (beloved of Steve Bannon), and the Book of Revelation’s gory, hand-rubbing anticipation of an end to all human endeavor, all freedom and argument and striving, an end to all new children, and an end to the United States of America. And either way, we are so fucked.

I recommend “Mike Pence's plan to outlast Trump.” Seriously. Also the NYT’s Frank Bruni points out that Pence "adds two ingredients that Trump doesn't genuinely possess: the conviction that he's on a mission from God and a determination to mold the entire nation in the shape of his own faith, a regressive, repressive version of Christianity. Trade Trump for Pence and you go from kleptocracy to theocracy." (Not scared by that? Read Robert Heinlein's prophetic novel Revolt in 2100.)

And again, see my reasons why impeachment should be kept in reserve. A last resort, either for emergency or else once the nation reaches a post Civil War consensus.

Looking back to the recommendations of Hannah Arendt, who studied deeply how to oppose Nazi-like mafias and thuggeries, I’d distill this wisdom.

(1) Wake up; this is serious, worth your time, your effort and risk.

(2) Wake others. Form coalitions that welcome refugees from the madness.

(3) Don’t be stupid.

(4) This could be a long haul.

I respect the heck out of Rebecca Solnit and I urge you all to read her, possibly in preference over me!  Still, when we get to specifics, “impeach now” is dumb. It’s impatient. It ignores the coalition-building and grinding envelopment that Churchill and FDR and Marshall used, to achieve victory over monsters.

And it’s a dream.  Wake up.

==  Suspicion toward every elite… except the most dangerous one  ==

The trick of the Scottish-American Enlightenment -- though not the Franco-German wing - was suspicion of all authority, or SoA. It was essential because we are human and whenever any group gets solitary power... even idealistic technocrats like many of the engineers who became managers and then politburo mavens in Beijing... you will fall for every temptation of authoritarian delusion. It's how we're made. Oh, some lords are better than others. But the meaning of the American Revolution was "we should do without lords."

Hence, our SoA propaganda - in every Hollywood film - created a reflex that's kept us free, though we often disagree over which "elite" is striving to seize too much power. 

Leftists assume it's aristocrats and faceless corporations.  Rightists assume it is snooty academics and faceless government bureaucrats. (You see both tyrannical modes portrayed in diverse films.) Libertarians should aim their SoA at both and all directions! But most of them have, alas, been suborned into being tunnel-visioned, rightist tools.

Now, it's perfectly reasonable to sniff suspiciously when any elite says "leave it to us!" And Technocracy - rule by those with smarts and knowledge and credentials - is certainly one hypothetical dictatorship by a snooty elite.  

Except for China though (and Beijing may be exactly that, under a communist/mercantilist veneer), when has technocracy ever been a substantial authoritarian-oppressive mode? There are no plausible scenarios by which it could happen in the West. 

Is it okay to sniff suspiciously at "fact-people?" Sure. As it was okay to sniff at excesses by labor unions. But when unions have been plummeting for forty years, the intensity of screeching against them becomes highly suspicious.  Especially when the billionaires financing this hysteria have been getting more powerful and benefiting outrageously for those same 40 years. 

What kind of Suspicion of Authority instinct is it, that cannot notice: "Hey, I am marching with fervor for the only elite in society whose power, wealth and influence have been skyrocketing to atmospheric levels for decades, and is now approaching levels not seen since 1789 in France."

Face it.  Suspicion of Authority has been healthy for us.  It kept us free. But traitors have discovered how to metastacize it into a cancer that attacks every elite except the very one that took power and crushed hopes in every other human civilization. The same one that cheated, stymied all progress, cheated, murdered, cheated, stole and cheated across 6000 years. The very same one the American Founders rebelled against, who Adam Smith denounced as market destroyers, and who got a million poor southern whites to fight and die for slavery.

So, is Fox saying we should apply fierce, hate-drenched SoA toward all other 'elites' - science, teaching, journalism, civil servants, every fact using profession... including now the "deep state" FBI and officer corps... all elites except one? The only one that is actually, actually rising to obligate and near total power? 

What a coincidence! Those other 'elites' are the only forces in society who could possibly stymie that total coup, and they just happen - all of them -- to be eeeeevil!  All of the folks who know stuff, in their diverse tens of millions, yes, all of them.

Welcome to the essence of the confederacy, folks. Plantation lords and the populist-numbskulls who march and die to protect the lords' privileges. It is the same, recurring national fever, our perennial curse. And we must gird ourselves to do as we've done before. 

Stop it. Politically. With malice toward none. With charity for all and binding the national wounds. Knowing that if the sickness wins this round, that is not how we'll be treated.

Flawed models of society... (Some kinda work). And why our worst foe is certainty.

I plan to be more general and deal with bigger-broader issues this time since, well, we have to pause now and then. Take a breath, saying (about today's political ructions) "this, too, shall pass."

Still, before diving into "social and political "charts" and the theory of totalitarianism, I will throw out there two vital and timely news items. First...

You must read the text of Sen. Jeff Flake’s speech, declaring that he can no longer stand by, while American discourse, politics, and even civil peace are wrecked by “reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have been elected to serve."

Another excerpt: “Leadership lives by the American creed, “E pluribus unum.” From many one. American leadership looks to the world and just as Lincoln did, sees the family of man. Humanity is not a zero sum game. When we have been at our most prosperous, we have been at our most principled, and when we do well, the rest of the world does well.”

The Arizona Republican does a humble mea culpa about having been too quiet in the era that led up to Donald Trump, and he implicitly calls Trump a devastating symptom of a deeper sickness in his own party. 

So, then… might this lead to what the Republic desperately needs? A critical mass of grownups who will disown the whole Murdoch-owned maelstrom of lies and cheaters, coalescing instead to form a Party of Sane American Conservatives, or PASAC? Elsewhere I show that this sort of thing sis happen in the past. See "The Miracle of 1947."

Alas, we have been waiting for such a gathering of sane conservatives for at least a decade. If it were going to happen, would they not have saved us from the nation-rape of the recent Tax Bill?

See Also: Why Military Chiefs Are Condemning White Supremacy.  

Seriously, the GOP political caste is cowardly. But if I am wrong about the Officer Corps, then we are well and simply screwed. 

If I am right, then we have powerful allies who want the American Republic and the Great Enlightenment Experiment to succeed. And they are caught in a terrible, terrible bind. God bless em.

Do your part. See how to take advantage of the revulsion-momentum and help reduce the Hannity-Fox ad revenue.

== “Charting” politics? ==

I have long inveighed against the absurdly lobotomizing so-called “left-right political axis,” which crams all issues together along a scale that no one can even properly define.  Others have agreed that one-dimensional politics is unworthy of a sapient people. My recently departed colleague, Jerry Pournelle, was among those who have tried to offer an improved landscape.

One problem with most such models – like the "Nolan Chart" often handed out at Libertarian gatherings – is that the two axes all too often overlap, meaning that there will be a tendency for persons traveling along one coordinate to automatically travel along the other. In other words, using the terminology of science, the variables are neither independent nor orthogonal. Also, many of these mental calisthenics have been created with a specific political message in mind. In other words, they suffer from tendentiousness, a gross logical sin that occurs when the arguer claims to be seeking a neutral process, but is driven all along to reach a foregone conclusion.

Their very purpose is not illuminating but polemical, to lure others who are viewing the chart to drift toward the corner that the chart-makers want you to go. Or - in Jerry's case - to a definition of "moderate centrist" that happened to be his view on everything. Jerry's 2-D chart is better than the tendentious "Nolan Chart," though alas, it is still non-orthogonal and "rationality" is a judgment call. e.g. I deem Randians to be spectacularly irrational. 

My own 2D (and 3D!) charts use measurable metrics that are truly orthogonal and the resulting landscape is not tendentious... not designed to lead you to my favored direction.They also happen to eviscerate the standard assumptions that you are used to. So be prepared to re-evaluate!

As happens even more thoroughly, if you dare to try on the socratic probings of my Questionnaire on Ideology, which speaks to none of today's hot-button issues. None at all. Still, you'll go huh!

== Stuck in a rut ==

Let me illustrate the stupidity of our current “spectrum” simply: Many of our supposed "left-right" rigor mortises collapse if you ask the right questions. e.g. Competition is clearly a mighty generative force and "right" people claim they are defending it from being stifled by lefty meddlings.  

But Adam Smith, Hayek and common sense show that competition is best when regulated to maximize the number of confident, skilled and ready participants!  Well, nothing ever expanded that pool of competitors more than liberal interventions in mass health, education, infrastructure and rights.

And keeping things flat-fair. After 6000 years, we know that brief eras of open-fair competition are always ruined by oligarchic cheaters. Regulations (e.g. anti-trust) that keep competitive markets flat-open-competitive are not "stifling."  They ensure a fair game, as do regulations and referees in sports.

For these two reasons, it is insane to call liberals "leftists" who want socialism, just because they want some socialist interventions that increase the number of skilled participants and regulations to keep competition fair.  In fact it is the exact opposite!  Liberals are the only friends that a fair and open market system have! If he were alive today, Adam Smith would be a Democrat. And the folks at Evonomics show this by citing Smith more than anybody. 

In contrast, most "libertarians" today seldom mention or have read Smith, and the C-Word... "competition" ... is never mentioned at all, amid the idolatry of unlimited aristocratic property.

Those five paragraphs, alone, show how insane "left-right" is, since it does not even mean what it claims to mean in the narrow realm of market economics! Not while the "right" is the chief force destroying flat-fair competition today.

== A flawed but improvable system ==

Lawrence Lessig is at it again.  Last year he tried to get on the Democratic Presidential debates — not aiming to win nomination, but to elevate the conversation, trying to discuss corruption and the poisonous effects of Big Money in politics. Among the many huge mistakes made by Democrats was squelching such participation in the first few debates. They missed an opportunity to draw in viewers and make themselves decisively the party of thoughtfulness, by bringing in diverse voices, at least for a while.

(I was so disappointed Jerry Brown didn’t run… not to win office, but to bring his stunning mind onto that stage and shattering all the standard models.)

Regarding Lessig’s anti-corruption campaign - let’s be clear: Republican Congresses are not only the laziest in the history of the Republic - holding the fewest hearings, votes or days in session and passing almost no bills, including none of their proclaimed priorities… but they are also the most corrupt, spending nearly all of their time doing “fund-raisers.” 

Democrats do some of that, too! But much less and (crucially) most of them would vote for Lessig’s reforms.

Now, while continuing his efforts on campaign funding. Larry is pushing another endeavor, filing a lawsuit against a major distortion of our political process, the “Winner Takes All” apportionment of electors in 48 states, in presidential elections.

The Electoral College itself is in the Constitution. But “Winner Takes All” is not! It is a corruption instituted by party hacks - like gerrymandering - to cheat American voters.

I know Lawrence Lessig has seen my essay on this matter, first circulated in the last century and posted on my site in 2008.  

To be clear, this is no panacea. Ending “Winner Takes All” will generally ensure that the Electoral College is apportioned closer to the popular vote… but there is an inherent advantage to the GOP in the plethora of low population red states, each of which has two senators and hence two bonus electors. (We need two Dakotas? Seriously? Read up on how that came about.)

Still, fairness will improve some if we do this simple reform. And candidates will pay attention to more than just a few swing states. So I urge your support.  Here’s the fundraiser for Larry’s effort. Do sign up! Though also circulate my 2008 link, since… well… fair is fair.

== Monstrous Certainty ==

Let me finish with a riff on the nature and roots of despotism.

One of the more important unsung corners of our renaissance is the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, where director Roger Berkowitz runs the “Amor Mundi” (love of the world) Newsletter, offering many off-angle modern insights.  Here he discusses the way that many on the far-left have chosen to veer their passionate interest away from traditional topics like class warfare and economics, over to critiquing the way the masses have been hypnotized into false cultural beliefs.  

'This “cultural left” has specialized in “what they call the ‘politics of difference’ or ‘of identity’ or ‘of recognition.’ This cultural Left thinks more about stigma than about money, more about deep and hidden psychosexual motivations than about shallow and evident greed.” Losing interest in labor unions and laborers, the “academic, cultural Left” this wing argues that “the system, and not just the laws, must be changed.” And by “system” they mean the programming that combines racism and classism with the memic repression cult called science.'

Here’s a link to Roger’s excellent and informative missive. And before I continue, let me make clear that this critique is qualitative.  In any quantitative sense, this wing of “leftism” is minuscule, compared to the mad cults that infest and have hijacked America’s currently jabbering-loony right.   Shills like Sean Hannity point at far-lefty shriekers and claim “See? All liberals are like that!” Um, not. In fact, we are able to critique our own fanatics. You confederates cannot. 

Alas, the decline in discourse in American life is, I believe, rooted in something biochemical. The bilious rage of extreme partisans - of all stripes - has a component that's entirely orthogonal to the actual merits or faults of the cause, itself.  That driver is the addictive high of self-righteous indignation.

I've been writing and speaking about this for a long time... once even at the National Institutes for Drugs and Addiction. Barbara Oakley included my piece in her terrific tome PATHOLOGICAL ALTRUISM.

The word "addiction" should be expanded to include so many of the fine and good things that we do, that are reinforced by chemical feedback loops in the brain -- e.g. love of music, or skill, or our kids.  Sanctimony is a mental state that - like many religious experiences - can tap into these reinforcement systems, triggering release of endorphins and dopamine and getting the user to repeatedly return for another hit, another high.

One understands why indignation can do this. Across our evolution, there have been a myriad times when some added force-of-will made the difference between success and failure. Even life or death. Moreover, there are many things - like injustice - that are worthy of volcanic ire! In no way am I implying that liberal activists should back off from their causes.

Still, we have all seen how the passionate can take over advocacy groups and causes. And then there comes a race-to-the-top in competitions to show who is most passionate -- comparison contests that leave many movements under command of the angriest, the most-intense, those least likely to accept partial allies, those least able to negotiate half-step-forward, pragmatic compromises.

== Certainty is the core enemy of our renaissance ==

Of course this flame is stoked by many Hollywood-modern memes, like the relentless lesson of Suspicion of Authority (SoA) that's preached in every film and in so many songs. So many of the passionate proclaim (in effect) "I invented indignation at injustice and suspicion of authority!"  

No, in fact you suckled these lessons from the very society that you've been trained to despise.

Where this relates to the Berkowitz missive is the fact that polemical passions are endangered, whenever they focus on realms that might be amenable to factual analysis, wherein even being right is likely to lead to some tepid, 90% validation, calling for at-least a little compromise and pragmatic negotiation. This quandary means the farthest left can no longer focus on economics or matters of law or governance -- these call for focus on hard and gritty reality, wherein the detested pragmatists can trot out their hated and feared weapon of oppression -- facts.

The postmodernists' war against fact-users - especially science - is thus rooted in exactly the same elements of human nature as the War on Facts waged by the Mad Right. And while of course these two polemical wings are very different -- blatantly the entire U.S. right is far larger and more dangerous for now -- it is not untoward for reasonable people to bear in mind that there are more dimensions here, than just the hoary-lobotomizing "left-right axis."

It was not any calmly-parsed argument of Marxism that made Lenin and Stalin willing mass murderers. It was the thing that Jacob Bronowski denounced in the very last episode of his fantastically wonderful "The Ascent of Man."

Monstrously passionate certainty.

If you binge on anything this year.... binge on that show, which set the template for COSMOS and so many others. 

(And compensate for the 1970s less-PC language; it's worth it.)


== And finally, here is my incantation ==

Try repeating it, aloud.

I am a member of a civilization

It’s good that we have a rambunctious society, filled with opinionated individualists. Serenity is nice, but serenity alone never brought progress. Hermits don’t solve problems. The adversarial process helps us to improve as individuals and as a culture. 

Criticism is the only known antidote to error — 
Elites shunned it and spread ruin across history. We do each other a favor (though not always appreciated) by helping find each others’ mistakes.

And yet — we’d all be happier, better off and more resilient if each of us were to now and then say:

“I am a member of a civilization.” (IAAMOAC)

Step back from anger. Study how awful our ancestors had it, yet they struggled to get you here. Repay them by appreciating the civilization you inherited.