Politics Is The Mind-Killer

  • In the ancestral environment, politics was a matter of life and death
  • Being on the wrong side of a political argument could get you killed
  • Being on the right side of a political argument could let you kill your enemies
  • Politics is an extension of war by other means
    • Arguments are soldiers
    • Once you know which side you’re on, you’re obligated to support all of the arguments of your side, regardless of how weak they are
  • Try to avoid attacking the other side directly with political examples, if you’re interested in finding the truth of the matter

Conflict vs. Mistake

  • Much of the debate in contemporary politics can be explained as a dichotomy between Mistake Theory and Conflict Theory
  • Mistake Theory
    • Treats politics as a form of engineering or medicine
    • State is ill or broken
    • We need to figure the best way to treat the disease or fix the problem
    • Some ideas are effective; other ideas are less effective
    • Debate is essential to finding the right set of fixes
    • Sides are roughly symmetrical - big difference is which side is right
    • Worries about the complicated and paradoxical effects of social engineering
    • Believes problems can be solved through greater intelligence
    • Views passion with suspicion
    • Free speech and open debate are essential to finding truth
    • Content of ideas is more important than their origin
    • Democracy gives too much power to the average person
    • Thinks conflict theorists are making a mistake
  • Conflict Theory
    • Treats politics as war by other means
    • Different blocs are at war with each other to claim limited resources (and deny those resources to others)
    • Debate has, at best, a minor clarifying role - outcomes are decided by power relations
    • Sides are asymmetrical
      • Elites are few in number but have large amounts of individual power
      • People are many, but have relatively little power individually
    • See emphasis on paradoxes as a distraction - people presenting paradoxes are shills for those in power, and distract from the “real problems”
    • Believes that problems can be solved through greater passion and solidarity
    • Views intelligence as suspect - more intelligence = more sophistry
    • Free speech and open debate just allow the other side to come in and spread their ideas
    • The origin of ideas is as important as their content
    • Democracy doesn’t give enough power to the ordinary person - power is too easily coopted by elites
    • Mistake theorists are the enemy - if it weren’t for mistake theorists shilling for the rich and powerful, we’d have social issues solved
  • So now that we have this mistake vs. conflict dichotomy, what do we do with it?
    • Conflict theory is less helpful than mistake theory, but both can be true in places
    • If someone is operating in a conflict theory mode, you can’t use mistake theory arguments to convince them

Completing The Countercultures

  • Countercultures of the 1960s-1980s took attention to boundaries as their central theme
    • Monist counterculture - 1960s youth movement - eliminate boundaries and level distinctions
    • Dualist counterculture - religious right - make boundaries absolute
  • Apply this monist vs. dualist conceptual framework to 2 countercultural battlegrounds: gender and national borders
    • Both are about boundaries
    • Both boundaries are nebuolous and patterend
    • Gender was the most important cultural issue in countercultural politics
    • Was was the most important social issue
  • Boundaries are nebulous yet patterned
    • “Nebulosity” is the unstable, uncertain, fluid, complex and ill-defined nature of all meanings
    • These properties are unwelcome because this lack of certainty makes it difficult to build a durable personal identity, social structure or political movement
    • Confused stances are defensive responses to nebulosity
    • Confused stances are attempts to fixate meaning
    • Monism and dualism are different confused stances concering boundaries
      • Monism denies boundaries and distinctions
      • Dualism fixates them as perfectly sharp
    • Boundaries are generally nebulous, but also represent real patterns, so monism and dualism are both wrong
    • Boundaries are also selectively permeable - some things pass through easily whereas others are stopped
    • Monism and dualism deny the inherent complexity of boundaries
    • However both are partially correct
      • Monism recognizes that boundaries are never absolute
      • Dualism recognizes that boundaries are important and should not be wished away
    • Complete stances recognize both nebulosity and pattern
    • The complete stance with regards to boundaries recognizes that boundaries are always nebulous and patterned and thinks about the specifics of boundaries on a case-by-case basis rather than thinking about boundaries in general
    • The fundamental technique for resolving confusion of meaning is to look for unacknowledged nebulosity
      • Notice why nebulosity is unwanted
      • Work out what would be implied if nebulosity were acknowledged as inherent and unavoidable, but not a defect in the fundamental nature of reality
    • Fluid mode extends this method from the individual to the social and cultural level
    • When people are stressed by confusion, they retreat to simple, extreme views that they know are wrong, but which seem defensible in their absolutism
  • Gender
    • Feminist theory during the countercultural era initially focused on workplace equality, but quickly broadened into a general equality movement
    • Denied the existence or legitimacy of any difference between male or female, sometimes to the point of even denying biological differences
    • Symmetrically, dualist theorists insisted that men and women are properly, essentially, immutably and totally different
    • Society must therefore reflect and enforce this boundary between male and female
    • However, gender can’t be wished away, nor is it a hard-and-fast distinction
    • Sexes are different on average, but individuals span the range of variation
    • Some individuals don’t fit neatly into either category
    • No essential characteristic makes something definitely masculine or feminine
    • While most people are comfortable with the differing expectations that society has of men and women, few people are able to conform to these expectations perfectly or consistently
    • Mingled ambiguity and definiteness of gender isn’t a big problem for most people most of the time
    • What is the fluid mode with regards to gender?
      • Gender manifests as a pattern of interaction between specific people in specific situations at specific times
      • Masculinity and femininity are constantly being renegotiated
      • While we’re aware of how our micro-scale behaviors will be interpreted according to macro-scale ideologies we’re not really governed by those macro-scale ideologies
        • Broad ideologies ignore day-to-day realities
        • Are not specific enough to govern individual interactions
    • Gender is patterned, so we can never really be free of it
    • Gender is nebulous, so we can never really totally embody a particular gender
    • Between the two extremes there is room where we can take a playful attitude towards gender
    • Dropping monism and dualism would still leave plenty of room for disagreements, but those disagreements would have to be argued on specific, practical grounds instead of abstract metaphysical ones
    • It’s reasonable to recognize that gender can’t be wished away
    • On the other hand, it’s also reasonable to recognize that there is no single rule that can determine anyone’s gender
    • Someone who passes for a particular sex may as well be considered that sex for most practical purposes
    • It would be helpful if we could restore the public/private distinction that the countercultures destroyed, and then agree that gender is a private matter
  • Sovereignty, borders and war
    • The Westphalian model of a state is the epitome of dualism
      • Holds that there are perfectly defined, permanent borders between states
      • Every square inch of land belongs to one and only one state
      • The government of a state holds sway uniformly within its borders
      • The government of a state has no right to exert any influence beyond its borders
    • This is an unnatural configuration
      • In older eras borders were vague and shifting
      • Sovereign’s rule was absolute in the capital but faded with distance
    • Westphalian model was invented to prevent war
    • However, Westphalian sovereignty laid the foundations for World War 1
    • Monist approach to borders
      • Eliminate national boundaries
      • No countries = no wars
    • However, countries and borders can’t be wished away
    • But borders aren’t hard boundaries either - only North Korea even pretends to maintain complete isolation
    • At the end of the countercultural era, diplomats and international institutions quietly revised the system of international relations to reflect the nebulosity of borders
      • European Union develops as a model for blurred sovereignty, with extant but highly permeable borders
      • World Trade Organization increases both the permeability and selectivity of borders
      • Rwandan and Bosnian genocides changed the minds of many anti-war leftists and established the principle that great powers have both the right and the responsibility to intervene in the internal affairs of sovereign states in order to prevent human rights abuses
      • Failures in the middle-east have convinced many dualists that wars cannot be won with military force alone
    • The only workable questions today concern the specific pragmatics of how borders operate - which people, goods, services, money and armies are allowed to cross borders, and for what reasons?

Counterculture War

  • Both sides in the counterculture war think they’re losing
  • They’re both correct - countercultures lost decades ago, and we’re living in the wreckage of their struggle
  • Modern American politics is descended from the monist and dualist countercultures of the 1960s-1980s
  • We’re doing politics wrong
    • Politics is supposed to be how we deal with vast problems and impending catastrophes
    • Instead, now politics is causing those problems, rather than solving them
    • Media coverage of politics is deliberately making everything worse
    • This is not just true of the US, but of the rest of the world as well - extremist parties are gaining ground across a wide range of countries
    • Much of global macroeconomic policy has been run for the benefit of the financial industry at the cost of everyone else - macroeconomics isn’t about “values”, therefore it’s “not political”
  • Baby Boomer bafflement
    • The culture war persists because Baby Boomers do not understand why their countercultures failed
    • Many participants have a wistful certainty that the (counter)culture of their youth will rise up and replace the current mainstream
    • Both sides resent the other as the apparent explanation for their counterculture’s failure
    • One of the reasons the culture war has heated up over the past few years is because Baby Boomers are realizing that this is their last chance to influence the cultural consensus
    • Maybe understanding that opposition from the other tribe was not the reason for countercultural failure can help overcome polarization
      • Realize that the majority rejected countercultures because they were plainly wrong about many things
      • It would help to understand how younger generations relate to meaningness - many of the most contentious issues between the countercultures are complete nonissues for millenials
  • Let go of the sacred myths of your tribe
    • Both countercultures were claims about the ultimate truth of everything that explains all meanings
    • Both countercultures were attempts to rescue eternalism from the threat of nihilism
    • Counterculture eternalisms function much like religion, even when they’re non-theistic
    • Some of the hardest fought battles aren’t even about values so much as symbolic representations of values
      • Flag burning
      • Harambe
    • Any issue that gets turned into a tribal/political shibboleth is invariably distorted by its role as such
      • Abortion
      • Gun control
      • Keystone XL
    • Both sides know that the other side’s eternalism is wrong
    • Secretly, they know that their own eternalism is wrong too
    • The way to let go of these ideologies is to learn meaningness
    • People stuck in the countercultural mode of understanding don’t even comprehend the problems that later generations face
  • Why are THOSE PEOPLE so awful?
    • During the countercultural era, politics was mostly about substantial social issues and genuine differences in values
    • Now the culture war is mostly about identity and status
    • Most politics today is ritual posturing and intra-tribal communications, rather than genuine attempts to win over members of the other tribe
    • The question is, “Who will win,” rather than, “How can we change society for the better?”
    • The moralization of politics has been a disaster
      • Can’t compromise with evil
      • Even if you do strike a compromise, how do you know the other side will hold up their end of the bargain?
    • The sense of doom among both tribes is correct, but not because the other tribe is about to win
    • Both tribes are doomed because future generations largely don’t care about their conflicts
  • Disentangling the culture war
    • Both sides recognize that the culture war is harmful and should stop
    • On the other hand, the culture war feels like it’s about sacred values, and therefore not amenable to compromise
    • Progress has to come from a better understanding of what both sides actually care about
    • Disentangle morality from politics
    • Differences in values are much smaller than what most people think
    • Arnold Kling - three languages of politics
      • Progressives - oppression vs. liberation
      • Conservatives - barbarism vs. civilization
      • Libertarians - coercion vs. freedom
    • Each of the above three axes is somewhat orthogonal to the others - can maximize values of all groups without necessarily conflicting
    • Empirical studies show that opposing political groups can come to understand each other if they learn to talk in terms of the other side’s preferred fundamental values
    • Moreover they can change minds by using that language
    • Few today are willing or able to switch moral languages
    • More people passing the ideological Turing test would go a long way towards enabling more compromise

Are Your Enemies Innately Evil?

  • Most people don’t see themselves as evil
  • The enemy’s story, seen from the enemy’s point of view isn’t going to make the enemy look bad
  • However, because politics is the mind-killer, it’s difficult to construe the enemy’s true motivations without appearing to defend the enemy
  • If seeing the world from the other side makes you feel sad, rather than righteous, you may be seeing the world as it truly is
  • This doesn’t mean your enemies’ beliefs are true or right
  • It just means that they’re doing the best for what they believe, just as you are doing the best for what you believe
  • There is no rule that says that there has to be an option that isn’t tragic in some way