No, I mean both “Christian” and “progressive” in a fairly conventional sense. It’s just that while I’m aghast at MM’s policy suggestions, I love his analysis of social history, at least the parts of it based on his idiosyncratic outside view.
He has a very poor understanding—indeed, a denial—of the emotional factor in society and the internal workings of ideology/religion, he’s very US-centric and really ignorant of more collectivist societies (e.g. Russia or Japan—he has never once written a single illuminating sentence about them), he rarely admits that his enemies can be simultaneously honest and intelligent.
However, many of his key points—the identification of truly history-making social forces (“the Clergy” et al.), Pronomianism vs Antinomianism, Leftism as a fundamentally Neoplatonic/Christian current, etc—that’s where he makes more sense than most other writers on the topic(s). Well, some very modern leftists, like Zizek, do approach such analysis at times—but with insufficient clarity, I’d say.
So, I endorse his broad sociological description (with caveats), but I’m in complete and utter normative disagreement with him on nearly every issue. E.g. I believe that “Antinomianism” is indeed morally superior to “Pronomianism”, because living through a system of artificial bindings—local, unequal, justification-free bindings—is in my opinion an affront to humanity’s better side, and that outweighs the material benefits of “law and order”. I think that certain states of being and feelings—especially social ones—are a more worthwhile thing for humanity to pursue than hedonism or QALYs. And many other such things, which IMO leave me in fundamental ethical opposition to him and his allies.
P.S. Please note that my caveats about his description of reality are major ones, and even the post on Pronomianism vs. Antinomianism, which is one of his high points, contains many absurd statements and general misinterpretation of human behavior. Yet it is intellectually stimulating to an extraordinary degree, unlike saner writings. And that’s the entire point to me.
P.P.S. I have just reread that post myself, and noticed with great amusement that M.M., like me, also examines Zizek’s view of social ethics—then he pronounces Zizek an incarnation of evil and the Devil’s emissary on Earth. It is refreshing to see my morals opposed with such mirror clarity. Here’s what he quotes from Zizek:
The Benjaminian “divine violence” should be thus conceived as divine in the precise sense of the old Latin motto vox populi, vox dei: NOT in the perverse sense of “we are doing it as mere instruments of the People’s Will,” but as the heroic assumption of the solitude of sovereign decision. It is a decision (to kill, to risk or lose one’s own life) made in the absolute solitude, with no cover in the big Other. If it is extra-moral, it is not “immoral,” it does not give the agent the license to just kill with some kind of angelic innocence. The motto of divine violence is fiat iustitia, pereat mundus: it is JUSTICE, the point of non-distinction between justice and vengeance, in which “people” (the anonymous part of no-part) imposes its terror and makes other parts pay the price—the Judgment Day for the long history of oppression, exploitation, suffering...
I find this… a little scary, yeah—certainly not to be immanentized rashly—but beautiful and inspiring, sublime. We are at war, then.
As a seperate point, I think it should be on the nation (or clade or patchwork city) to provide food, medicine, etc. to its people, which is a progressive idea. Sort of like Moldbug’s idea of a nation wanting to have good customer service, but moreso.
Good customer service from government is such a strong concept. Yes, it would be nice if the teller at the DMV was nicer, but the underlying problem is that government’s role in society is to provide things that don’t have a willing seller (quasi-universal free education for children) or don’t have a willing buyer (prisons, driver’s licenses).
I’m not sure that competition for citizens is likely to improve the quality of either of those services. The issue is obvious for coercive government acts, but moral hazard issues would be a serious drain on social services if free migration worked the way Moldbug suggests—I suspect that is one reason why Moldbug explicitly expects some patches to have much lower social services than provided by current governments in the West.
You don’t need to go around looking for flaws in Patchwork. It’s Moldbug’s one big utopian crackpot moment. IMO there’s literally hundreds of reasons (chief among them being how easily humans can be misled by “free-market” manipulation) why most patches would devolve into really ugly, totalizing and rather stable corporate slavery (think singing the Wal-Mart anthem every morning and needing amphetamines just to get ahead), gradually resort to mind control technology, or just stay poor despite the law of comparative advantage because they started out as a collection of outcasts.
OR, in the extremely unlikely event that it all went fine and humanely, it could create so much wealth and peace that the elites would be drawn to Universalism simply as an attractive value/goal system (shaped like the forager mind, not like a ruthlessly efficient machine), and dismantle the borders and such. Or something else. It is really so poorly thought out that it’s not worth criticizing, except as mediocre science fiction.
(of course, given any kind of singularity it’s all rather irrelevant)
I strongly disagree with this. Also I had to check out what a Bircher is:
The John Birch Society is an American political advocacy group that supports anti-communism, limited government, a constitutional republic[1][2] and personal freedom.[3] It has been described as radical right-wing.
That’s ridiculous.
Moldbug doesn’t approve of constitutional republics! ;)
I’m genuinely curious about the positions of an anti-royalist Moldbuggian. Or do you mean something different by “progressive”?
No, I mean both “Christian” and “progressive” in a fairly conventional sense. It’s just that while I’m aghast at MM’s policy suggestions, I love his analysis of social history, at least the parts of it based on his idiosyncratic outside view.
He has a very poor understanding—indeed, a denial—of the emotional factor in society and the internal workings of ideology/religion, he’s very US-centric and really ignorant of more collectivist societies (e.g. Russia or Japan—he has never once written a single illuminating sentence about them), he rarely admits that his enemies can be simultaneously honest and intelligent.
However, many of his key points—the identification of truly history-making social forces (“the Clergy” et al.), Pronomianism vs Antinomianism, Leftism as a fundamentally Neoplatonic/Christian current, etc—that’s where he makes more sense than most other writers on the topic(s). Well, some very modern leftists, like Zizek, do approach such analysis at times—but with insufficient clarity, I’d say.
So, I endorse his broad sociological description (with caveats), but I’m in complete and utter normative disagreement with him on nearly every issue. E.g. I believe that “Antinomianism” is indeed morally superior to “Pronomianism”, because living through a system of artificial bindings—local, unequal, justification-free bindings—is in my opinion an affront to humanity’s better side, and that outweighs the material benefits of “law and order”. I think that certain states of being and feelings—especially social ones—are a more worthwhile thing for humanity to pursue than hedonism or QALYs. And many other such things, which IMO leave me in fundamental ethical opposition to him and his allies.
P.S. Please note that my caveats about his description of reality are major ones, and even the post on Pronomianism vs. Antinomianism, which is one of his high points, contains many absurd statements and general misinterpretation of human behavior. Yet it is intellectually stimulating to an extraordinary degree, unlike saner writings. And that’s the entire point to me.
P.P.S. I have just reread that post myself, and noticed with great amusement that M.M., like me, also examines Zizek’s view of social ethics—then he pronounces Zizek an incarnation of evil and the Devil’s emissary on Earth. It is refreshing to see my morals opposed with such mirror clarity. Here’s what he quotes from Zizek:
I find this… a little scary, yeah—certainly not to be immanentized rashly—but beautiful and inspiring, sublime. We are at war, then.
Hi, I don’t think Russia is culturally a collectivist society. However, I could have a biased view. Do you have any evidence for this claim?
As a seperate point, I think it should be on the nation (or clade or patchwork city) to provide food, medicine, etc. to its people, which is a progressive idea. Sort of like Moldbug’s idea of a nation wanting to have good customer service, but moreso.
Good customer service from government is such a strong concept. Yes, it would be nice if the teller at the DMV was nicer, but the underlying problem is that government’s role in society is to provide things that don’t have a willing seller (quasi-universal free education for children) or don’t have a willing buyer (prisons, driver’s licenses).
I’m not sure that competition for citizens is likely to improve the quality of either of those services. The issue is obvious for coercive government acts, but moral hazard issues would be a serious drain on social services if free migration worked the way Moldbug suggests—I suspect that is one reason why Moldbug explicitly expects some patches to have much lower social services than provided by current governments in the West.
You don’t need to go around looking for flaws in Patchwork. It’s Moldbug’s one big utopian crackpot moment. IMO there’s literally hundreds of reasons (chief among them being how easily humans can be misled by “free-market” manipulation) why most patches would devolve into really ugly, totalizing and rather stable corporate slavery (think singing the Wal-Mart anthem every morning and needing amphetamines just to get ahead), gradually resort to mind control technology, or just stay poor despite the law of comparative advantage because they started out as a collection of outcasts.
OR, in the extremely unlikely event that it all went fine and humanely, it could create so much wealth and peace that the elites would be drawn to Universalism simply as an attractive value/goal system (shaped like the forager mind, not like a ruthlessly efficient machine), and dismantle the borders and such. Or something else. It is really so poorly thought out that it’s not worth criticizing, except as mediocre science fiction.
(of course, given any kind of singularity it’s all rather irrelevant)
“Crackpot moment”? Moldbug might have lucid moments, but Bircher crackpottery is the mainstream of his political writings.
I strongly disagree with this. Also I had to check out what a Bircher is:
That’s ridiculous.
Moldbug doesn’t approve of constitutional republics! ;)
From my point of view, I think royalty is too much of a single failure point, and would approve of a small council being rulers instead.