VI: What is to be Done?
We are at the end of our journey. We have discovered that all our trusted cultural institutions have become utterly corrupt, and that this corruption is at the root of an increasingly severe social crisis.
All the recent polls showing declining faith in "democracy" actually speak to the voters’ inchoate realization that the current regime is not democratic. We live in a neo-feudal society cloaked in the forms of a democracy, in which elite minorities have essentially undermined basic social cohesion, with economic, cultural, and social consequences. The disease began and is most advanced in the United States, but the European Union, across the pond, is rapidly catching up: Unparalleled as a vehicle of state capture by the Nobility and Clergy, the EU “technocratic” bureaucracy has insulated itself from the treacherous masses of the old nation-states, with multiple layers of treaties, judiciaries and organizations. The euro has castrated "peripheral" governments even of their fiscal powers, reducing them essentially to ceremonial bodies (the Greeks don't even bother to vote anymore).
In America the same endgame has been achieved by capture of the state bureaucracy, of the courts, and of the duopolistic parties, now turned into the Party of the Nobility (R) and the Party of the Clergy (D).
But the results across the West are pretty much the same: social decay and impotent peasant rage.
How to restore genuine popular sovereignty is the great issue of our time. Of the two ruling castes, the Clergy is the most vulnerable, and since the ideologies it spreads undermine the social cohesion necessary for the people to fight for a more just economic order, its power must be broken first.
How to go about it? First, expose the enemy for what it is. Right now, a silent majority has been cowed into submission by a band of fanatics representing themselves as a morally superior vanguard. Most people bow not so much out of fear for their livelihood, but because they believe the fanatics’ end to be righteous, making it easier to accept humiliating compromises with one's conscience. This must cease. The Mask of Compassion must be destroyed. We have seen how, after each anti-police campaign, homicides skyrocket. This effect disproportionately hits blacks from poor neighborhoods.
All the recent polls showing declining faith in "democracy" actually speak to the voters’ inchoate realization that the current regime is not democratic. We live in a neo-feudal society cloaked in the forms of a democracy, in which elite minorities have essentially undermined basic social cohesion, with economic, cultural, and social consequences. The disease began and is most advanced in the United States, but the European Union, across the pond, is rapidly catching up: Unparalleled as a vehicle of state capture by the Nobility and Clergy, the EU “technocratic” bureaucracy has insulated itself from the treacherous masses of the old nation-states, with multiple layers of treaties, judiciaries and organizations. The euro has castrated "peripheral" governments even of their fiscal powers, reducing them essentially to ceremonial bodies (the Greeks don't even bother to vote anymore).
In America the same endgame has been achieved by capture of the state bureaucracy, of the courts, and of the duopolistic parties, now turned into the Party of the Nobility (R) and the Party of the Clergy (D).
But the results across the West are pretty much the same: social decay and impotent peasant rage.
How to restore genuine popular sovereignty is the great issue of our time. Of the two ruling castes, the Clergy is the most vulnerable, and since the ideologies it spreads undermine the social cohesion necessary for the people to fight for a more just economic order, its power must be broken first.
How to go about it? First, expose the enemy for what it is. Right now, a silent majority has been cowed into submission by a band of fanatics representing themselves as a morally superior vanguard. Most people bow not so much out of fear for their livelihood, but because they believe the fanatics’ end to be righteous, making it easier to accept humiliating compromises with one's conscience. This must cease. The Mask of Compassion must be destroyed. We have seen how, after each anti-police campaign, homicides skyrocket. This effect disproportionately hits blacks from poor neighborhoods.
All religions demand sacrifices, and the victims of the "social justice" cult are mostly black
Likewise, we have learned how self-styled “social justice” policies have led to the moral and material degradation of black and other minority individuals first and foremost. As decent people instinctively abhor desecration, so the late wave of cultural vandalism will predictably lead to a backlash hurting, again, mostly marginalized individuals. We repeat, once again: This is a feature, not a bug. Pathological doctrines are by the Clergy and for the Clergy. All groups, the whole catalog of intersectionality, feature in them just as means to an end, therefore collateral damage is inevitable.
From the tragic to the trivial: did you know that the main reason nowadays for the under-representation of women in STEM is the (overall unwarranted) allegation of “systemic sexism”? That’s right, the fanatics' cries of pervasive anti-women bias are actively discouraging female students away from science:
From the tragic to the trivial: did you know that the main reason nowadays for the under-representation of women in STEM is the (overall unwarranted) allegation of “systemic sexism”? That’s right, the fanatics' cries of pervasive anti-women bias are actively discouraging female students away from science:
The perception that STEM fields continue to be inhospitable male bastions can become self-reinforcing by discouraging female applicants, thus contributing to continued underrepresentation, which in turn may obscure underlying attitudinal changes.
Likewise, anarchy and fanaticism are actively fomenting an authoritarian reaction, of which Trump is only the tragicomic beginning. It’s alright for the Clergy: they get new bogeys to rally the troops with, and new causes for grants and fundraising--pathological ideas increase their selective fitness in academia as they provoke more backlash in society. But the truth is that doctrines that profit a ruling class at the expense of their subjects are called reactionary, no matter what they claim for themselves (the Nazis claimed to be socialists). So stop running scared and call out the fanatics for what they are: Reactionary fools (at best), not compassionate idealists who occasionally go too far. Spread the word.
Second, if you feel the lure of identity politics: wake up. Being an individual in a free society is hard. It brings isolation and anxiety. But those peddling doctrines to relieve you of the burden of individuality are not your friends. The relief they offer is illusory, like a kindly doctor looking after a Munchausen patient. Societies are imperfect, they have high class hysteresis, and this can and should change. However an individual’s determination and hard efforts can conquer all. There is no all-encompassing race- or gender- based “system” explaining away all of life’s difficulties. The Clergy blandishing you to acquire a victim mentality, to seek redress in identity politics, to see the world as the battle of angels and demons, are the same people who will charge you $2500 to come to dinner to tell you how sinful and/or victimized you are. When given half the chance, they have harmed vulnerable people more than any knuckle-dragging Republican ever could. It is a nasty con: By the Clergy and for the Clergy. Prove, by not falling for it, that you are not the fragile one.
Second, if you feel the lure of identity politics: wake up. Being an individual in a free society is hard. It brings isolation and anxiety. But those peddling doctrines to relieve you of the burden of individuality are not your friends. The relief they offer is illusory, like a kindly doctor looking after a Munchausen patient. Societies are imperfect, they have high class hysteresis, and this can and should change. However an individual’s determination and hard efforts can conquer all. There is no all-encompassing race- or gender- based “system” explaining away all of life’s difficulties. The Clergy blandishing you to acquire a victim mentality, to seek redress in identity politics, to see the world as the battle of angels and demons, are the same people who will charge you $2500 to come to dinner to tell you how sinful and/or victimized you are. When given half the chance, they have harmed vulnerable people more than any knuckle-dragging Republican ever could. It is a nasty con: By the Clergy and for the Clergy. Prove, by not falling for it, that you are not the fragile one.
"Modern man, freed from the bonds of pre-individualistic society, which simultaneously gave him security and limited him, has not gained freedom in the positive sense of the realization of his individual self; that is, the expression of his intellectual, emotional, and sensuous potentialities. Freedom, though it has brought him independence and rationality, has made him isolated and, thereby anxious and powerless.
This isolation is unbearable and the alternatives he is confronted with are either to escape from the burden of his freedom into new dependencies and submission, or to advance to the full realization of positive freedom which is based upon the uniqueness and individuality of man."
-Erich Fromm
Third, a longer-run strategy must aim to curb university enrollment. The vast majority of college students learn absolutely nothing of value to their future jobs. A degree is used purely as a signaling device to employers. Start a campaign to ban — legally, at the federal level — hiring discrimination on the basis of educational degree (excepting MDs, JDs and a few other technical fields such as engineering). If employers want to assess the intelligence and conscientiousness of job candidates, they can give them personality and skills tests, followed by apprenticeships. This type of screening would be more efficient (and more egalitarian) than relying on the imperfect proxy of a college degree. Legislation to this effect would shift the focus of employers on actual skills, and this could be boosted by establishing a network of high-quality public-funded trade schools. (Imagine if that option had been provided to Rosa Lee&family, along with some basic ethical teaching, instead of leaving them to rot on welfare, drugs and crime). The labor market would benefit, and university enrollment would collapse. No more student debt crisis! No more talent wasted and perverted by the sickening pall of conformity in universities! Academia would be restored finally to what it is meant to be: The training grounds for the select few driven by love of learning to devote their lives to the pursuit of knowledge.
Finally, the Clergy itself must be dismantled. Its corruption is spreading through society like a cancer. Centralized funding mechanisms should be scrapped, and likewise the administration, the departmental structure, the peer-review system, and the pyramidal model of research groups. The aim is to break the self-organizing behavior that leads to ideological uniformity. Great care should be devoted to shielding the individual from peer pressure. Purges for thoughtcrimes à la James Watson should become structurally (or systemically) impossible. In fact, thoughtcrime of all sorts should be deliberately encouraged, the more offensive the better. That is the proper function of academia, and how it used to be.
Can we succeed? We can and should try. But the truth is that civilizations have an allotted lifespan. They bloom at the edge of chaos, and then they proceed to destroy themselves. The Western world today speaks for itself: by the evidence of its decay it announces its dissolution.
Finally, the Clergy itself must be dismantled. Its corruption is spreading through society like a cancer. Centralized funding mechanisms should be scrapped, and likewise the administration, the departmental structure, the peer-review system, and the pyramidal model of research groups. The aim is to break the self-organizing behavior that leads to ideological uniformity. Great care should be devoted to shielding the individual from peer pressure. Purges for thoughtcrimes à la James Watson should become structurally (or systemically) impossible. In fact, thoughtcrime of all sorts should be deliberately encouraged, the more offensive the better. That is the proper function of academia, and how it used to be.
Can we succeed? We can and should try. But the truth is that civilizations have an allotted lifespan. They bloom at the edge of chaos, and then they proceed to destroy themselves. The Western world today speaks for itself: by the evidence of its decay it announces its dissolution.