Good piece. I would argue that it is impossible for us to know ourselves and that one of the consequences of sin is that man’s ability to deceive himself knows no bounds. Because no man can fully know himself, is always engaged in fictions about himself, that mankind is always hypocritical. An ethical system cannot be built on these realities of a lack of hypocrisy and a lack of self deception as they are realities which cannot be overcome (at lest not without the saving work of Christ, and then our experience of this salvation is, in this life, ever only in part). Real community is built in spite of these deceptions of ourselves and others. It is a spiritual bond which transcends these human frailties and the uncertainties of living in a sinful world.
As for the friend/enemy distinction as found in Schmitt, this is an existential thing based upon a threat to one’s existence. It has nothing to do with truth or falsehood, but rather the question of whether or not the other represents a threat to us or not. It is this threat to our existence that defines us as an in group. This threat always implies war and violence which may or may not be realized. The friend/enemy distinction is built around the question of “would I die to protect this person’s life?” or “would I kill to protect their life?” Those that you would die for and kill for are friends. It is that simple. All other political questions flow from this basic concept of “the political.” The state, a true state, exists to protect the interests of “us” from “them” with violence if necessary. This is why Schmitt argues that the American constitutional system and state is not a true state.
As for grounding the moral, I would argue that the only grounding for wisdom (and by extension truth) is in the direct encounter with God. The question is whether or not we believe that we or another person has met and has a world from God. Or baring a direct word, that they speak as one who is trustworthy. This is the foundation for true authority. Paul in 1 Cor 7:25 says this, which captures it nicely:
“I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy.“
In this regards, Christians have long argued that other faiths which claim words from God or revelations are actually not being spoken to by God but rather by deceiving spirits, demons.
As to your final point, I would say these heuristics are useful for identifying those who are not Christian, and who have not had a direct encounter with God, but by the Lord's mercy are trustworthy. Perhaps you will always trust a direct encounter with God more, but so long as enough trust can be there to share the same tent, then we have enough trust to build a coalition to generate the space we need to survive.
This is why I argue for “small tent” conservatism. The first goal is not to build a coalition. You cannot decide upon allies unless you have an absolutely inviolable core that drives the movement. If you are all things you are nothing. This is why I make the case that the future of the Dissident Right will be Christian, because only in the Christian faith is there the potential to build that tight knit “we” with an inviolable core. All allies who come on board will do so knowing they are in the back seat of a Christian project. The rest will join with the regime, which is, frankly speaking, probably more their home anyways.
At the end of the day, I'm operationalizing morality as a prediction model here. Can you trust someone to advance, or at least not interfere with your pursuit of your own interests, or journey along your spiritual path. These heuristics will be useful in that regard. I'm proposing a core that can put people from different faith backgrounds on equal footing, but the fact that Christians would likely be the largest block of such a coalition means they would have outsized influence. The Bush dynasty destroyed trust in the notion of a nationwide Christian coalition. Perhaps this trust can be rebuilt, but starting with a demand to sit at the head of the table doesn't seem like it will be effective, but that's just speculation on my part.
>"As for the friend/enemy distinction as found in Schmitt, this is an existential thing based upon a threat to one’s existence."
I consider the current regime an existential threat to anyone with typical moral sensibilities. These sensibilities are systematically gamed in a manner that is destroying social trust and will therefore ultimately destroy civilization as we know it. Everyone who plays this game with enthusiasm is an enemy. The act of climbing their perverse hierarchy poses an existential threat, and the primary imperative for anyone without spiritual grounding is climbing this ladder. The main point I was trying to make here is only that classical liberalism and universalism embedded within the foundational ideology of Americanism can only be retained if those who don't hold these values are excluded. That it is permissible and necessary to exclude them by force implies the state has a role here, insofar as it exists. This appears superficially to be a violation of universalism, but we're really only looking to exclude hypocrites, because the entire ideology is self-contradictory if we don't.
As I have written before, I am of the mind that the notion of friend is far more important than that of enemy. You must now clearly, without a doubt, who your friends are. This is why the atomizing power of modernity is so, so damaging. For without friends you cannot identify an enemy. There is no political. From the regime’s perspective this is ideal, because as long as you have individuals the question of the political does not arise. Before real political opposition to the regime can occur, there must first be a collective “we.” Without that “we” there is no enemy.
Hence the functional description of we. Those who confer status based on character as opposed to alignment with the regime. I'm trying to clarify that the we is broad and the irredeemable core of the enemy is small. Shifting means away from those that employ delusion and hypocrisy signals defection. It lowers status in their prestige hierarchy and raises it in our own.
I would argue the opposite, that the vast majority of people, many who think themselves as in opposition to the regime, are actually more aligned than they realize (boomer-cons, yea party, libertarians, “the party left me” types, neo-cons...you get the idea). There really isn’t a true conservatism in the US. The “we” is going to be a very small number. But it doesn’t have to be large. 5-10% of the population is all that is necessary.
I see what you mean, but the coalition I'm referencing isn't centered around conservatism, it is centered around populism. The difference in the size of the "we" is just a function of our perspectives. My "we" is a large number because it includes people that don't necessarily reciprocate this sentiment at the moment. The idea is to work together with people who agree that power needs to be distributed, which then ensures that each part of the coalition can find a place to call home within the polity.
You would argue that it is impossible to know ourselves fully and completely, and that living a life completely free of hypocrisy and delusion is impossible, and I would agree, but that has no bearing on the usefulness of the model, nor its compatibility with your own conception of morality. You have discussed previously the value of humility and defined this as understanding yourself as you are. This is a noble goal, even if it can never be realized in full. Avoiding hypocrisy and delusion is much the same, and targeting this puts you on the path. I agree that real community is built in spite of these deceptions of ourselves and others, but in the current age, the status hierarchy the elites have constructed and live atop have coded hypocrisy and delusion as high status, and this has in turn destroyed real community at scale. In order to reverse this trend supplanting this hierarchy is necessary. If you frame any such alternative in strictly Christian terms, a broad enough coalition to resist the corrosive impact of the regime on real community, which they consider a competing institution. The more successful the real community, the more attractive a target it becomes for Sauron. Neoliberal Feudalism's observation that East Palestine was a chemical attack directed at the Amish fits in with this narrative. Do you observe a fellow Christian smoking meth and engaging in homosexual acts while condemning such behavior and think he is not morally distinguishable from a man who is faithful to his wife? Don't mistake these heuristics as ends unto themselves, they are proxies for spiritual alignment the way you've described it yourself. It is spiritual alignment that we are looking to promote and recognize, but what the heck does that mean? If you think through discrete examples of individuals you consider to be spiritually aligned, or living in Christ vs not, I argue these examples can probably be framed in terms of humility/knowing yourself/resisting delusion and consistency with chosen values (hypocrisy).
In this sense, I argue that we are in a position where the idea of a political coalition is the wrong way to think about it. The current system is built by the left for the left. All the players within the system are in some form or another progressive. If you wish to seize the system you will lose as you will become the system. I am of the mind that we must go the other direction, forming closed, or mostly closed societies built around notions of Christian discipleship. In some sense we look to build colonies within the imperium (there is no where else to go). This means that your engagement with the regime, the fight, is to establish space to create a new foundation.
I agree that seizing the system is a no go. As is, it wields too much coercive centralized power. It must be supplanted. If it isn't supplanted, it will come for you. The more successful the colony you build, the more the current system will prioritize its destruction. Such colonies are existential threats to a totalizing system that can't abide intermediating institutions of any kind. By all means, establish your colonies, but to think you can afford to ignore those who seek to destroy you and successfully hide in this current environment seems like it plays into their hands a bit.
As long as managerial thinking remains the operational ideology, the regime will be in place. It is everywhere in everything, the dominant way of thinking in our society. This is the biggest reason for parallel societies, to build something on a different foundation. Managerialism is leftism and leftism is managerialism. This is why Conquest’s Law is operable.
(I'm not sure what I touched, but my comment got launched before I was done editing it, and I don't see where Substack will let me fix it. If they aren't going to let us edit comments after they are posted, then they should at least ask "Are you sure?")
Anyway, people are how they are, any changeability is already in the programming, so "sit back and relax, because" as Saint Bill (Hicks) used to say "it's JUST A RIDE". (Of course, enough people are wired to NOT "sit back and relax" thus we get "interesting plot devices".)
there are 3 dots in the bottom left corner of each comment, if you click on the 3 dots corresponding to your comment you can click to edit or delete. I see your other comment so I'll respond here... the way that I frame your position, because it is more or less the same as my position, at least in terms of bounded rationality, is that you don't have control over who you are. That said, who you are absolutely has control over what you think, feel, and do. If there's no 3rd person omniscient free will only makes sense as a concept in a subjective context. I say we have free will because we are able to make decisions according to our conscience. That we don't control who we are would only infringe upon free will if a 3rd party with its own conscience instead had control. If its just natural cause and effect then qualitative teleological perspectives can't find purchase as natural cause and effect doesn't have a perspective.
Everyone, at every moment, chooses to make "what seems to them" the best possible choice of the options available, based on "what they have been given to work with" and NO ONE HAS ANY CHOICE IN WHAT THEY HAVE BEEN GIVEN TO WORK WITH. Thus, "free will" is an illusion.
G_d (as some folks prefer) is not merely "affectionate benevolence"; he/she/it/they is/ the "author of the Universe", and, as such, is also the author of every unspeakable "evil" one might think of (including hypocrisy and Apparently, what are "evils" from our point of view are (to the authare_r) necessary plot devices in the "story of the Universe".
My thoughts about leaders who pushed the vax mirror Brad Miller to some extent. The reason why can be described in terms of these heuristics. Delusion and hypocrisy was the proximate cause IMHO. In a way, I'm trying to provide a way of evaluating who will support pointless forever wars, useless medical interventions, and divisive social ideology (DEI) with discrete evaluation of observable behavior.
>> If we’re confident that we’re aligned with truth and reality, it doesn’t matter that
>>human cognition isn’t necessarily oriented to see reality as it is, we can adjust messaging
>>to leverage psychological disposition without resorting to underhanded means.
Occasionally entertaining the small-scale pursuit (e.g. limited to my own life) of "reality-hacking" in a variety of ways, I find that statement to be intriguing - and something I'd love to hear you expound upon - both at the micro and macro levels.
The most straightforward example I can give is consideration of biases. Knowledge of biases can be used for nefarious or noble purposes. Typically, understanding a bias allows us to improve our reasoning. This is most applicable at the micro-level. If I know about confirmation bias, I might place extra scrutiny on data that supports a position I already hold. At the macro level/for propaganda purposes there are a lot of things we can glean from social psychology that we can use without compromising ourselves. Take for instance the power of descriptive norms. If there is something we want people to do then it is probably OK to highlight that a lot of people are doing that thing, but only if a lot of people ARE actually doing that thing. Another interesting point I was just reminded of by Rob Henderson's latest is that the peripheral method of persuasion is less stable/better suited for manipulation. A key means by which we activate the peripheral route is emphasize how someone is or isn't an expert before hearing their argument. If we want our side to win, we want people to take the central route more often and spread the idea that you are undermining your own ability to centrally process ideas if you allow yourself to know whether or not someone is an expert before considering their argument. This also provides clues that whenever someone really dramatically does the opposite (e.g. mainstream media) whether intentional or not, they are directing you towards a mode of persuasion that conditions you to be manipulated.
Good piece. I would argue that it is impossible for us to know ourselves and that one of the consequences of sin is that man’s ability to deceive himself knows no bounds. Because no man can fully know himself, is always engaged in fictions about himself, that mankind is always hypocritical. An ethical system cannot be built on these realities of a lack of hypocrisy and a lack of self deception as they are realities which cannot be overcome (at lest not without the saving work of Christ, and then our experience of this salvation is, in this life, ever only in part). Real community is built in spite of these deceptions of ourselves and others. It is a spiritual bond which transcends these human frailties and the uncertainties of living in a sinful world.
As for the friend/enemy distinction as found in Schmitt, this is an existential thing based upon a threat to one’s existence. It has nothing to do with truth or falsehood, but rather the question of whether or not the other represents a threat to us or not. It is this threat to our existence that defines us as an in group. This threat always implies war and violence which may or may not be realized. The friend/enemy distinction is built around the question of “would I die to protect this person’s life?” or “would I kill to protect their life?” Those that you would die for and kill for are friends. It is that simple. All other political questions flow from this basic concept of “the political.” The state, a true state, exists to protect the interests of “us” from “them” with violence if necessary. This is why Schmitt argues that the American constitutional system and state is not a true state.
As for grounding the moral, I would argue that the only grounding for wisdom (and by extension truth) is in the direct encounter with God. The question is whether or not we believe that we or another person has met and has a world from God. Or baring a direct word, that they speak as one who is trustworthy. This is the foundation for true authority. Paul in 1 Cor 7:25 says this, which captures it nicely:
“I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy.“
In this regards, Christians have long argued that other faiths which claim words from God or revelations are actually not being spoken to by God but rather by deceiving spirits, demons.
As to your final point, I would say these heuristics are useful for identifying those who are not Christian, and who have not had a direct encounter with God, but by the Lord's mercy are trustworthy. Perhaps you will always trust a direct encounter with God more, but so long as enough trust can be there to share the same tent, then we have enough trust to build a coalition to generate the space we need to survive.
This is why I argue for “small tent” conservatism. The first goal is not to build a coalition. You cannot decide upon allies unless you have an absolutely inviolable core that drives the movement. If you are all things you are nothing. This is why I make the case that the future of the Dissident Right will be Christian, because only in the Christian faith is there the potential to build that tight knit “we” with an inviolable core. All allies who come on board will do so knowing they are in the back seat of a Christian project. The rest will join with the regime, which is, frankly speaking, probably more their home anyways.
At the end of the day, I'm operationalizing morality as a prediction model here. Can you trust someone to advance, or at least not interfere with your pursuit of your own interests, or journey along your spiritual path. These heuristics will be useful in that regard. I'm proposing a core that can put people from different faith backgrounds on equal footing, but the fact that Christians would likely be the largest block of such a coalition means they would have outsized influence. The Bush dynasty destroyed trust in the notion of a nationwide Christian coalition. Perhaps this trust can be rebuilt, but starting with a demand to sit at the head of the table doesn't seem like it will be effective, but that's just speculation on my part.
>"As for the friend/enemy distinction as found in Schmitt, this is an existential thing based upon a threat to one’s existence."
I consider the current regime an existential threat to anyone with typical moral sensibilities. These sensibilities are systematically gamed in a manner that is destroying social trust and will therefore ultimately destroy civilization as we know it. Everyone who plays this game with enthusiasm is an enemy. The act of climbing their perverse hierarchy poses an existential threat, and the primary imperative for anyone without spiritual grounding is climbing this ladder. The main point I was trying to make here is only that classical liberalism and universalism embedded within the foundational ideology of Americanism can only be retained if those who don't hold these values are excluded. That it is permissible and necessary to exclude them by force implies the state has a role here, insofar as it exists. This appears superficially to be a violation of universalism, but we're really only looking to exclude hypocrites, because the entire ideology is self-contradictory if we don't.
As I have written before, I am of the mind that the notion of friend is far more important than that of enemy. You must now clearly, without a doubt, who your friends are. This is why the atomizing power of modernity is so, so damaging. For without friends you cannot identify an enemy. There is no political. From the regime’s perspective this is ideal, because as long as you have individuals the question of the political does not arise. Before real political opposition to the regime can occur, there must first be a collective “we.” Without that “we” there is no enemy.
Hence the functional description of we. Those who confer status based on character as opposed to alignment with the regime. I'm trying to clarify that the we is broad and the irredeemable core of the enemy is small. Shifting means away from those that employ delusion and hypocrisy signals defection. It lowers status in their prestige hierarchy and raises it in our own.
I would argue the opposite, that the vast majority of people, many who think themselves as in opposition to the regime, are actually more aligned than they realize (boomer-cons, yea party, libertarians, “the party left me” types, neo-cons...you get the idea). There really isn’t a true conservatism in the US. The “we” is going to be a very small number. But it doesn’t have to be large. 5-10% of the population is all that is necessary.
I see what you mean, but the coalition I'm referencing isn't centered around conservatism, it is centered around populism. The difference in the size of the "we" is just a function of our perspectives. My "we" is a large number because it includes people that don't necessarily reciprocate this sentiment at the moment. The idea is to work together with people who agree that power needs to be distributed, which then ensures that each part of the coalition can find a place to call home within the polity.
You would argue that it is impossible to know ourselves fully and completely, and that living a life completely free of hypocrisy and delusion is impossible, and I would agree, but that has no bearing on the usefulness of the model, nor its compatibility with your own conception of morality. You have discussed previously the value of humility and defined this as understanding yourself as you are. This is a noble goal, even if it can never be realized in full. Avoiding hypocrisy and delusion is much the same, and targeting this puts you on the path. I agree that real community is built in spite of these deceptions of ourselves and others, but in the current age, the status hierarchy the elites have constructed and live atop have coded hypocrisy and delusion as high status, and this has in turn destroyed real community at scale. In order to reverse this trend supplanting this hierarchy is necessary. If you frame any such alternative in strictly Christian terms, a broad enough coalition to resist the corrosive impact of the regime on real community, which they consider a competing institution. The more successful the real community, the more attractive a target it becomes for Sauron. Neoliberal Feudalism's observation that East Palestine was a chemical attack directed at the Amish fits in with this narrative. Do you observe a fellow Christian smoking meth and engaging in homosexual acts while condemning such behavior and think he is not morally distinguishable from a man who is faithful to his wife? Don't mistake these heuristics as ends unto themselves, they are proxies for spiritual alignment the way you've described it yourself. It is spiritual alignment that we are looking to promote and recognize, but what the heck does that mean? If you think through discrete examples of individuals you consider to be spiritually aligned, or living in Christ vs not, I argue these examples can probably be framed in terms of humility/knowing yourself/resisting delusion and consistency with chosen values (hypocrisy).
In this sense, I argue that we are in a position where the idea of a political coalition is the wrong way to think about it. The current system is built by the left for the left. All the players within the system are in some form or another progressive. If you wish to seize the system you will lose as you will become the system. I am of the mind that we must go the other direction, forming closed, or mostly closed societies built around notions of Christian discipleship. In some sense we look to build colonies within the imperium (there is no where else to go). This means that your engagement with the regime, the fight, is to establish space to create a new foundation.
I agree that seizing the system is a no go. As is, it wields too much coercive centralized power. It must be supplanted. If it isn't supplanted, it will come for you. The more successful the colony you build, the more the current system will prioritize its destruction. Such colonies are existential threats to a totalizing system that can't abide intermediating institutions of any kind. By all means, establish your colonies, but to think you can afford to ignore those who seek to destroy you and successfully hide in this current environment seems like it plays into their hands a bit.
Unfortunately the regime can’t be brought down without bringing down the whole west with it.
You're absolutely certain of this? I'm not sure we can predict such a thing with any degree of certainty.
As long as managerial thinking remains the operational ideology, the regime will be in place. It is everywhere in everything, the dominant way of thinking in our society. This is the biggest reason for parallel societies, to build something on a different foundation. Managerialism is leftism and leftism is managerialism. This is why Conquest’s Law is operable.
My code of morality is pretty simple.
1) I will defend free speech.
2) I will not censor free speech
3) I will defend those who can not defend themselves.
4) I will not kill (unless in self defense,) I will not steal, I will not rape, I will not resort to name calling.
5) I will stand up for the law and defend my community.
6) I will listen to all sides of a problem before making my decisions.
7) I will live in reality.
(I'm not sure what I touched, but my comment got launched before I was done editing it, and I don't see where Substack will let me fix it. If they aren't going to let us edit comments after they are posted, then they should at least ask "Are you sure?")
Anyway, people are how they are, any changeability is already in the programming, so "sit back and relax, because" as Saint Bill (Hicks) used to say "it's JUST A RIDE". (Of course, enough people are wired to NOT "sit back and relax" thus we get "interesting plot devices".)
there are 3 dots in the bottom left corner of each comment, if you click on the 3 dots corresponding to your comment you can click to edit or delete. I see your other comment so I'll respond here... the way that I frame your position, because it is more or less the same as my position, at least in terms of bounded rationality, is that you don't have control over who you are. That said, who you are absolutely has control over what you think, feel, and do. If there's no 3rd person omniscient free will only makes sense as a concept in a subjective context. I say we have free will because we are able to make decisions according to our conscience. That we don't control who we are would only infringe upon free will if a 3rd party with its own conscience instead had control. If its just natural cause and effect then qualitative teleological perspectives can't find purchase as natural cause and effect doesn't have a perspective.
Everyone, at every moment, chooses to make "what seems to them" the best possible choice of the options available, based on "what they have been given to work with" and NO ONE HAS ANY CHOICE IN WHAT THEY HAVE BEEN GIVEN TO WORK WITH. Thus, "free will" is an illusion.
G_d (as some folks prefer) is not merely "affectionate benevolence"; he/she/it/they is/ the "author of the Universe", and, as such, is also the author of every unspeakable "evil" one might think of (including hypocrisy and Apparently, what are "evils" from our point of view are (to the authare_r) necessary plot devices in the "story of the Universe".
TikTok Jesus says;
Sell your copy of Atlas Shrugged and buy a sword.
TikTok Mohammed says- By the Sword ye shall have status, ask HAMAS.
TikTok Tao says; Quit talking and get to work.
TikTok Bin Laden says; notice I’m getting a fresh new fan club?
Ask yourself why - it’s not antisemitism.
TikTok Buddha says; quit the navel gazing and get with the program...
TikTok Iron Mike says; It’s 11Busy time, get busy...
Amen, as it’s Sunday.
How about instead Universal Shamelessness?
Observe; Army wants unvaccinated it kicked out back...
this could be the biggest tent ever.
https://www.igor-chudov.com/p/the-army-is-begging-unvaccinated
My thoughts about leaders who pushed the vax mirror Brad Miller to some extent. The reason why can be described in terms of these heuristics. Delusion and hypocrisy was the proximate cause IMHO. In a way, I'm trying to provide a way of evaluating who will support pointless forever wars, useless medical interventions, and divisive social ideology (DEI) with discrete evaluation of observable behavior.
>> If we’re confident that we’re aligned with truth and reality, it doesn’t matter that
>>human cognition isn’t necessarily oriented to see reality as it is, we can adjust messaging
>>to leverage psychological disposition without resorting to underhanded means.
Occasionally entertaining the small-scale pursuit (e.g. limited to my own life) of "reality-hacking" in a variety of ways, I find that statement to be intriguing - and something I'd love to hear you expound upon - both at the micro and macro levels.
The most straightforward example I can give is consideration of biases. Knowledge of biases can be used for nefarious or noble purposes. Typically, understanding a bias allows us to improve our reasoning. This is most applicable at the micro-level. If I know about confirmation bias, I might place extra scrutiny on data that supports a position I already hold. At the macro level/for propaganda purposes there are a lot of things we can glean from social psychology that we can use without compromising ourselves. Take for instance the power of descriptive norms. If there is something we want people to do then it is probably OK to highlight that a lot of people are doing that thing, but only if a lot of people ARE actually doing that thing. Another interesting point I was just reminded of by Rob Henderson's latest is that the peripheral method of persuasion is less stable/better suited for manipulation. A key means by which we activate the peripheral route is emphasize how someone is or isn't an expert before hearing their argument. If we want our side to win, we want people to take the central route more often and spread the idea that you are undermining your own ability to centrally process ideas if you allow yourself to know whether or not someone is an expert before considering their argument. This also provides clues that whenever someone really dramatically does the opposite (e.g. mainstream media) whether intentional or not, they are directing you towards a mode of persuasion that conditions you to be manipulated.
Thanks for that, I appreciate your response.