From where I type, it's bright obvious the trial run landed swimmingly 👌 Reblogging sure works for evergreen content; keep 'em coming, these darlings from foreign country(*) where they do things differently there 🙂
Glad you liked it! I'll plan on trying to "recycle" some of the evergreen content from the old blog, but plan on interspersing it among new content so I don't get too lazy...
That is, we have a ruling class which is “elite” in that it occupies high positions in our sociopolitical circles and is able to wield power, but that it is NOT “elite” when we consider the intrinsic quality of the individual people involved, who really do not naturally deserve their power and influence.
Before March 2020, I didn't believe this. I thought that the cream naturally rose to the top. But the past three years have taught many of us a lot of things. Some people will always trust authority, but now a huge fraction of the population is permanently scarred. There's some hope for the future.
The poor quality of the elite is irrelevant per se. It is the relativities of ability that are important. An elite of poor intrinsic quality is secure so long as it is superior in capacity to those it rules. This is the rule in Third World societies.
The demoralisation of the masses, the normalisation of dysfunction as a defining feature of key sectors and the dumbing down of education and culture all serve to constrain the formation of capacity amongst the masses. The synergies between these three forces strengthen the regime and enable it to rule securely for now. The Sado-Malthusian regime turns its territories into Cthulhuland: a jurisdiction in which social cohesion is crumbling and anomie and atomisation are the new norm for a significant proportion of the subject population. The condition of the Rust Belt (with the deaths of despair, adverse trends in mortality and morbidity rates and plunging fertility rates) illustrates what Cthulhuland is all about. It brings to mind the immiseration of the town in Steven King's SALEM'S LOT.
The true danger to the elite is external. Competition with rival states puts the US elite under pressure. The quality of the Russian and Chinese elites in terms of selection, formation/education and loyalty/reliability are the key factors.
In the long run the US elite will transform itself. It may well incorporate high IQ migrants with qualifications in STEM in order to manage the technical side of things. Eugenics (suitably camouflaged) will flourish as reproductive technologies enable the elite to breed smarter babies. Over time the elite may become significantly better than the masses.
Even second time through, this a great intro to Ellul and the technical culture. Far too many who comment on our politics today fail to properly understand the true nature of the administrative and managerial state because they fail to grasp the nature of technique as the operating system of our world today.
The founding figures of liberal thought (Bacon, Hobbes and Locke) all integrated their political thinking with their understanding of science. The current operating system is an unacknowledged, often utopian, elaboration of this older strata.
True, but this reliance on the rational, the scientific and technological is itself born out of their desire to leave “superstition” behind create a world that is governed by reason alone. It has always been a utopian, thus ideological in its heart, a desiccated pseudo-religion with the kind of compelling vision powerful enough to compel a society, the belief in Progress.
Agree. The early modern philosophers responsible for the Scientific Revolution fully integrated natural philosophy with revealed religion. Robert Boyle famously believed that the book of Nature complemented the book of God and that the natural philosopher was a kid of priest pursuing a spiritual vocation through inquiry and experimentation. A reconnection with this sort of thinking might well offer a viable alternative to embracing either transhumanism or simply rejecting technology.
🗨 To begin with, one must keep in mind that modern science had its roots in medieval Judeo-Christian religion, with its belief in universal, rational laws given a supreme lawgiver. Without this philosophical background, it is not clear that modern science as we know it would have ever developed in the West. British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, for example, noted that modern science was based on "faith that at the base of things we shall not find mere arbitrary mystery".
But what began within the bosom of Christianity has gone to war with the source which gave it life because it is only by killing the father so to speak (to use Freudian language) that science, technology and the market are able to come fully into their own. The enemy of the secular left is not the secular right, but rather Christianity, and especially its living belief in a supernatural, transcendent reality to which we owe obligation.
This is essentially the point I made in a Substack not too long ago. But the problem is that the limits this would place upon the use and implementation of technology in our lives is at a point which few of us would choose. One of the reasons society threw off the shackles of religious limits on not just technique, but also the market (the two go hand in hand) is that we want the money and power that comes from them. Would society be willing to give up both? Not today.
Yes. Ellul details the process in which the old social, political and religious restraints broke down and gave way to the science, technology and the market, only to seen society become possessed by these same “liberating” forces. One of the core cultural principles of the west has been stretching boundaries, chasing the horizon and living without limits. To say “no” is a profoundly un-western impulse. Enforcing it would, in my mind, signal the end of the west as a cultural forces.
I would disagree with that. We live with the falseness of this claim all around around us. Can an economy really grow without limits forever? Always increasing production and consumption forever? Can we really expect limitless amounts of non-renewable energy (the category “non-renewable” is the tip there)? Isn’t this the fantasy of renewable energy advocates? Energy without limits? Limitless technical and scientific innovation and discovery (it can be documented that real innovation and discovery has been declining since the 40’s)? Are there no limits to sexual and gender freedom? While there is no doubt the West has produced greatness, that greatness is built upon a lie. That lie is Progress. The bill for that great lie is coming due. This is why Tolkien made the argument in the Lord of the Rings against the idea of Progress, making the case that the best we can do (i.e. not a utopia) is a kind of stasis like the Shire.
From where I type, it's bright obvious the trial run landed swimmingly 👌 Reblogging sure works for evergreen content; keep 'em coming, these darlings from foreign country(*) where they do things differently there 🙂
--
(*) aka BC ie Before Covid
Glad you liked it! I'll plan on trying to "recycle" some of the evergreen content from the old blog, but plan on interspersing it among new content so I don't get too lazy...
That is, we have a ruling class which is “elite” in that it occupies high positions in our sociopolitical circles and is able to wield power, but that it is NOT “elite” when we consider the intrinsic quality of the individual people involved, who really do not naturally deserve their power and influence.
Before March 2020, I didn't believe this. I thought that the cream naturally rose to the top. But the past three years have taught many of us a lot of things. Some people will always trust authority, but now a huge fraction of the population is permanently scarred. There's some hope for the future.
The poor quality of the elite is irrelevant per se. It is the relativities of ability that are important. An elite of poor intrinsic quality is secure so long as it is superior in capacity to those it rules. This is the rule in Third World societies.
The demoralisation of the masses, the normalisation of dysfunction as a defining feature of key sectors and the dumbing down of education and culture all serve to constrain the formation of capacity amongst the masses. The synergies between these three forces strengthen the regime and enable it to rule securely for now. The Sado-Malthusian regime turns its territories into Cthulhuland: a jurisdiction in which social cohesion is crumbling and anomie and atomisation are the new norm for a significant proportion of the subject population. The condition of the Rust Belt (with the deaths of despair, adverse trends in mortality and morbidity rates and plunging fertility rates) illustrates what Cthulhuland is all about. It brings to mind the immiseration of the town in Steven King's SALEM'S LOT.
The true danger to the elite is external. Competition with rival states puts the US elite under pressure. The quality of the Russian and Chinese elites in terms of selection, formation/education and loyalty/reliability are the key factors.
In the long run the US elite will transform itself. It may well incorporate high IQ migrants with qualifications in STEM in order to manage the technical side of things. Eugenics (suitably camouflaged) will flourish as reproductive technologies enable the elite to breed smarter babies. Over time the elite may become significantly better than the masses.
Even second time through, this a great intro to Ellul and the technical culture. Far too many who comment on our politics today fail to properly understand the true nature of the administrative and managerial state because they fail to grasp the nature of technique as the operating system of our world today.
The founding figures of liberal thought (Bacon, Hobbes and Locke) all integrated their political thinking with their understanding of science. The current operating system is an unacknowledged, often utopian, elaboration of this older strata.
True, but this reliance on the rational, the scientific and technological is itself born out of their desire to leave “superstition” behind create a world that is governed by reason alone. It has always been a utopian, thus ideological in its heart, a desiccated pseudo-religion with the kind of compelling vision powerful enough to compel a society, the belief in Progress.
Agree. The early modern philosophers responsible for the Scientific Revolution fully integrated natural philosophy with revealed religion. Robert Boyle famously believed that the book of Nature complemented the book of God and that the natural philosopher was a kid of priest pursuing a spiritual vocation through inquiry and experimentation. A reconnection with this sort of thinking might well offer a viable alternative to embracing either transhumanism or simply rejecting technology.
🗨 To begin with, one must keep in mind that modern science had its roots in medieval Judeo-Christian religion, with its belief in universal, rational laws given a supreme lawgiver. Without this philosophical background, it is not clear that modern science as we know it would have ever developed in the West. British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, for example, noted that modern science was based on "faith that at the base of things we shall not find mere arbitrary mystery".
sciencemeetsreligion.org/blog/2022/11/have-science-and-religion-always-been-at-war/
But what began within the bosom of Christianity has gone to war with the source which gave it life because it is only by killing the father so to speak (to use Freudian language) that science, technology and the market are able to come fully into their own. The enemy of the secular left is not the secular right, but rather Christianity, and especially its living belief in a supernatural, transcendent reality to which we owe obligation.
This is essentially the point I made in a Substack not too long ago. But the problem is that the limits this would place upon the use and implementation of technology in our lives is at a point which few of us would choose. One of the reasons society threw off the shackles of religious limits on not just technique, but also the market (the two go hand in hand) is that we want the money and power that comes from them. Would society be willing to give up both? Not today.
Yes. Ellul details the process in which the old social, political and religious restraints broke down and gave way to the science, technology and the market, only to seen society become possessed by these same “liberating” forces. One of the core cultural principles of the west has been stretching boundaries, chasing the horizon and living without limits. To say “no” is a profoundly un-western impulse. Enforcing it would, in my mind, signal the end of the west as a cultural forces.
I would disagree with that. We live with the falseness of this claim all around around us. Can an economy really grow without limits forever? Always increasing production and consumption forever? Can we really expect limitless amounts of non-renewable energy (the category “non-renewable” is the tip there)? Isn’t this the fantasy of renewable energy advocates? Energy without limits? Limitless technical and scientific innovation and discovery (it can be documented that real innovation and discovery has been declining since the 40’s)? Are there no limits to sexual and gender freedom? While there is no doubt the West has produced greatness, that greatness is built upon a lie. That lie is Progress. The bill for that great lie is coming due. This is why Tolkien made the argument in the Lord of the Rings against the idea of Progress, making the case that the best we can do (i.e. not a utopia) is a kind of stasis like the Shire.
Thorough explication of Ellul's technique and its implications by an author too humble to link to 😇 --> apokekrummenain.substack.com/p/technique-propaganda-and-the-left
You are too kind. Thanks for the link.