I recently got back from a trip to Japan. Though the purpose of this trip was primarily familial, I was able to go to Kanazawa (new location for me) and Kyoto (an overdue return trip) for historical reasons.
I made sure to go to as many shrines as possible, as I love Shinto Shrine culture. A non-unversalist and localized way of integrating people’s need of the spiritual and public ceremony with everyday life focused around local legends, lore, and topography.
What follows is an attempt to lazily (i.e. with AI) render Shinto shrines dedicated to North American folk heroes and cryptids, from the Raven of indigenous Pacific Northwest folklore to more modern fare like cryptids. Sadly, I was not able to give the shrines themselves an Americanized look and retain the overall theme. Normally, this is the kind of thing I would draw myself, but its focus on buildings (a weakness of mine) means this is the more efficient method.
Jersey DevilMothmanRavenCoyote
Now for Halloween I just have to figure out what the North American equivalent of the Nuribotoke is.
I was originally going to write this post anyway before all the Gaza Strip stuff happened. I was simply waiting to get back from an international trip before doing so. That a new round of fighting between Israel and Palestine broke at the tail end of my trip only added from my desire to write such a thing. And while I know it would get more attention if I published it externally at some official publication, I feel few would allow me to say what I really want on the subject.
Every tribal war or local territorial dispute now has taken on global dimensions due to media saturation, the universalist claims of the American state, and the existential rhetoric its opponents adopt in response. This leads to a massive distortion in what people regard as self-interest, rejecting rationalist prudence for a crusader mentality of whatever the pet cause of the day is or ones personal/psychological vendettas.
People who live in North America for instance, but have no friends or family in either Israel or Palestine, are deeply invested in a tribal ethnic war that has no bearing on their life. Or, would have no bearing on their life were it not for the risk of outside power escalation. And the primary driver of outside power escalation is of course countries (and their publics) wanting to ‘do something‘. This is why interventionist states and their mouthpieces in the press are so obsessed with human rights narratives. They are always seeking to manufacture consent for the next intervention. It is increasingly obvious that in order to care about peace and stability one must not embrace, but renounce, the human rights focused view of the world.
While I am sure a large amount of the religious fanfiction of some cultures draws them like flies to shit when conflict in the Levant breaks out, this region is hardly alone in attracting this kind of attention. Having a national interest based discussion about Ukraine in North America, for instance, is always buried under layers of posturing bullshit about democracy, clashes of civilizations, and whatnot.
The obsession with tallying ‘War Crimes’ is a big part of this and may be central to this kind of rhetoric. The problem is war crimes trials are always by necessity victors justice, and without trials the concept has no meaning but a kind of whine. Power differentials make the concept situational as we know certain people will be punished and others not. Furthermore, such discussions feed into a false belief that war can be tamed and functions as a kind of courtly jousting match on a predetermined field. But in an era of mass urbanization, high explosives, and existentially justified stakes, this is impossible. Any war is a war on civilians and therefore the point of ‘war crimes’ is moot. To support a military operation is, inevitably, to support war on a society, not just its front line military. Considering the logistical network required for militaries to function this is both logical an inevitable. But it also means that to support a war means, undeniably, support for war on civilians and all that entails. This is why I personally support only a very few military operations even though I am not a pacifist. In my adult life I have only directly supported counter-ISIS and counter-Al Qaeda operations. And yes, this means I was fully supporting the demolition of places like Aleppo and Raqqa. Nor did I have the gall to pretend the policies I was advocating were actually for the good of the people being bombed, because no such policy can be good for everyone. The very existence of foreign policy presupposes the obvious observation that there are multiple groups of people with divergent interests.
The political center and its lapdog journalists, in love with war as they are, are actually made more hawkish by their faith that war is a controllable, even chivalric force of social change. Their maudlin humanism is not a hypocrisy except in rhetoric, it is a natural extension of their world view of treating war as transformational and moral rather than the breakdown of order and the failure of diplomacy. But some, even going back to Sunzi, warned us of the truth from the start: War is always a failure and a dangerous roll of the dice, even when it is necessary. That is why it must be kept to a minimum even though it is always prepared for as inevitable. But when it is embraced, it is only rational to embrace it to the maximum. If you believe a war is necessary, you believe the attempted demolition of another society is necessary. At least have the honesty to admit it. All people have a place where they reach this point. It is dishonest to deny it. And becoming squeamish when your faction does not behave in the way a suburban commentariat wishes just shows your views are superficial at best, calculated for social prestige at worst.
But let us not just pick on the centrists. The past month has shown us the worst spread of leftoid and rightoid thought across the board. Our entire culture is unprepared to seriously engage with nuance and restraint. Earlier, a moronic English language spokesperson for the Ukrainian military threatened U.S. citizens for criticizing involvement in the war. Even a cursory examination of this person’s past reveals a sadly predictable pattern: the lost soul in search of a cause who wanders the world looking for a fight that isn’t theirs. Having finally found one (a war which, since the failure of the first Russian offensives anyway, is basically now one of local territorial control) the foreign volunteers have adopted as a cause above and beyond their empty listless life in an attempt to find meaning they are too weak to make for themselves. A lack of self-cultivation leads to radicalization abroad.
I used to analyze patterns of extremist recruitment for jihadist networks when I worked for the U.S. government. It is interesting how many of the psychological identifiers are in place for western Ukraine volunteers. Downward mobility, an obsession with culture war and global teleology, the desire to erase one’s own personal insignificance by joining an existential cause beyond themselves. When these people come home, mark my words, they will destabilize their home countries. They are the new Freikorps, or Japanese army officers after the Siberian Intervention, or jihadists. Their jihad is Reddit (or Azov) and their connections and sense of entitlement make them a domestic danger. At the very least they should be put under surveillance. And for me, a general opponent of the surveillance state, to say that means I am very serious about the danger these people pose to the rest of us.
The right, if anything, has beclowned itself even more than the left and center. At least Ukraine ties into great power competition and therefore is a national security issue of some kind. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can’t even do that unless you think Saudi Arabia and Iran are global powers…an odd thesis. For years I have been warning the realism and restraint community (who has been rightly happy with more republicans listening to its argument than at any time in generations) that this was a fair-weather situation. I told many people, again and again, that the second something happened to Israel you would see the Bush/Cheney marriage of evangelical end times prophecies and neoconservatism come roaring back to the surface like it had never left. That happened this week. All the Big Tough Guys who pose about being better than the pussy humanists now shriek about seeing the face of war brought to their darling little pet nation, Israel, the nation they have sworn allegiance to above that of their own. This transferred nationalism allowing them to go to places the regular old kind at home is inadequate for. The conservative love of a country which could be considered the biggest ‘welfare queen’ in American history, one that bombed the USS Liberty and constantly schemes to involve Washington in more Middle Eastern quagmires, is a masochistic and yes, quite cucked, affair. Any utility this alliance once had ended with the end of the Cold War, and it now serves only as a burden. Yet these sentimental rightoids cannot stop themselves. Its the Bible Country and its under attack! Tom Clancy would want us to be the heroic protagonists of this new Battle for Civilization! The Left Behind series is now real- get ready to RAPTURE!
And these American Pied Noirs are just waiting to see their Biblical fever dreams reenacted at home as well as abroad. Once again, surveillance is needed. In a rational state without delusions of Imperial Globalism, that’s what we would do. We would treat people more interested in fighting other people’s battles as inherently dangerous and unstable, and merely waiting to bide their time to import those battles back home. The historical record on these type of people is very clear on this point. At the very least their antics should be tracked and publicly documented on public forums.
Conflict zone interest should be categorized on a location-based capacity. The further something is located from you, the less relevant it is. Its ability to impact you only worsens the more things get involved. Anglos are taught from birth to see all struggles as global and good vs evil, but they are inevitably local, contextual, and tribal. They can be everything and existential if you live in or near a place, but are not if further afield. The true danger of globalization is that every struggle can become globalized.
Conflict is both inevitable and eternal. Understanding this, the only rational conclusion is containment, not intervention. Containment is not pacifism and requires both vigilance and force, but it can and will reduce the spread of outbreaks of violence. Those who wish to make local conflicts go global are complicit in making the world a more awful place, be they hawkish politicians or these psychological damaged war tourists. Diplomatic wisdom is being rooted more in place, in a very real physical sense, than being rooted in some Platonic-Manichean realm of battling ideals. It is spatial relationships that should concern the makers of foreign policy, not dreams of world transformation.
‘The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism‘ is the philosopher John Gray’s latest book-length work. As long time readers may be aware, I am a huge fan of his. This was one book I could not wait for the official U.S. release of, and ordered a U.K. copy early so as not to have to wait until November to read it. It helps that it will be used, along with some other of his works, as part of a longer term research project I am just beginning to embark on.
Those who are unfamiliar with much of Gray’s work will find this book bracing, unique, and a welcome antidote to the normal neoliberal consensus/culture war echo chamber of our decaying order where nations pretend to be fighting for the angels of light against the forces of darkness, and mediocre politicians such as Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis square up to have debates over who can be the better Not-President.
Those who are familiar with Gray’s work, however, will find little new here. The Ukraine War has given Gray an extreme fascination with historical writers and thinkers in Russian history, which colors most of the central portion of the book. His (correct) disgust at early Soviet attempts to create ‘a new man’ becomes a tad overdone in his list of aphoristic anecdotes, to the expense of the first and closing sections of the book, which, in my opinion, are superior. If you have read Black Mass, Soul of a Marionette, Two Faces of Liberalism, and The Immortalization Commission, however, you will not find wholly new material here. Only new combinations centered loosely around the framing of Thomas Hobbes.
The overall argument is one I have made before myself, while citing Gray and his prior work no less, Hobbes -along with Spinoza- was the true and original liberal (before it began to mutate into a messianic religion starting with Kant and Rousseau and reaching full apotheosis in the present day neoliberal). His Leviathan, for all its flaws, was a useful and practical attempt to escape the delusions of endless sectarian warfare and the social engineering of Puritans by creating a society that could arbitrate between different groups, allowing diversity to exist below the state while retaining outward facing unity.
As society has changed, however, so too has this Hobbesian state edifice-the Leviathan. I myself have written before about its becoming an out of control beast that is no longer restrained by human-tier comprehension. (Considering Gray has a subsection on Lovecraft in this new book, I cannot help but wonder if he has read this blog). Gray wants to focus on how the Chinese social credit Panopticon and the Russian theocratic-mafia edifice are also now rival leviathans to the neoliberal-woke hybrid in the North Atlantic. Not just to let his readers know that the world is currently multipolar and the liberal internationalist experiment has failed, but also to lament the passing of the old secular Leviathan. A Hobbes brought forward in time might recognize Singapore or some of the Latin American states, but would not recognize these three creatures.
For in place of the old has come the Leviathan taken over by the very forces it was meant to control and dissipate. The Leviathan of the missionaries which seeks total control over the private as well as public sphere. The old and perpetually failed project of directed human betterment to bring about the great teleology which is always claimed to be around the corner, yet never arrives. There is no diversity and keeping the peace, no navigating the necessity of a balance of power, only eternal war of The Elect against all who are not Elect. The very thing the Leviathan was meant to prevent is the thing it is becoming. It is mandatory inclusiveness in sectarian war.
Gray once had a bunch of reactionaries who gravitated to his thought. Such people suddenly stopped writing about him favorably once Seven Types of Atheism was released and it became obvious that his true target in attacking humanist pathos was the religion that inspired it. In New Leviathans he reminds us of why this was with his bracing honesty at the intellectual lineage of the dire process he speaks about:
All four of the defining ideas of liberal thought are continuations of Christian monotheism. The primary of the individual is a secular translation of the belief that each human being is created by the deity, which has an authority over them that transcends worldly power. The egalitarian belief that human beings have the same moral status reproduces the that all human beings are equal in the sight of God. Liberal universalism- the belief that generically human attributes are more important than particular cultural identities- reflects the idea that humankind is created in God’s image. The belief that human institutions are indefinitely improvable replicates the theistic faith that history is a moral narrative of sin followed by redemption. The ancient pre-Christian world accepted that the evils of human life recur in unending cycles. The secular humanist faith in progress is a pseudo-solution to the so-called problem of evil, which arises only with the belief in a benevolent and omnipotent creator-god. […] This Christian message inflamed the millenarian movements of medieval times and the secular revolutionaries of the twentieth century. It underpinned classical liberalism, and inspires hyper-liberals today. In woke movements, victimhood confers moral authority, as it does in Christianity.
This book is a warning. It may not be one needed by those already familiar with Gray, but it is one that more people should heed. Though perhaps I might be more likely to recommend Black Mass or Two Faces of Liberalism above it. Nevertheless, the central thesis holds up. To quote from the conclusion:
The deification of the human animal was alien to Hobbes’ way of thinking as the divination of power. Leviathan was mortal just as every human being was mortal. There is no final deliverance from the state of nature. This is Hobbes’s hidden message, which he never fully accepted himself. If Leviathan is human artifice, politics is a necessary art. The task of the age is not to bind to the new Leviathans, as was attempted in the late liberal era, but to bring them close to what Hobbes believed they could be- a vessel of peaceful coexistence. In recognizing that peace can be achieved in many types of regime, Hobbes was a truer liberal than those that came after him. The belief that a single form of rule is best for everyone is itself a kind of tyranny.
I am on record on this very site as being very opposed to the trend of constantly remaking movies. While there are outliers, usually remakes miss what makes the original timeless and strip all the brains and soul out of a movie in order to make something forgettable and Current Year that will make a few bucks or worse, be an inferior product which then replaces the original in the memory of people too young to have seen the first.
Keep in mind I once broke up with a dude for saying the Dawn of the Dead remake was better than the original.
But something I have come to notice recently is that this dynamic does NOT hold up in games. Game remakes and remasters can be (usually are?) often very good. Sometimes even great.
To understand the difference in these two mediums and the reason games work and films do not when remade is to realize that interactivity in a product greatly increases the amount of moving parts at play. A certain practical winnowing has occurred in the past 20 years that enables endless playtesting to refine what works for an experience and what does not. This is a level of pragmatism and necessity that is irrelevant for film. Film must first and foremost be a visual and auditory feast for the audience and all other concerns are secondary. Personally, I think the medium peaked (for now anyway) in the 70s and 80s when it comes to proportional quality in aesthetic. Most ‘innovation’ since then has become finding new ways to green screen things and find every more bombastic spectacles that compromise the tried and true veracity of practical effects. There are exceptions, of course, but the overall trend still doesn’t look good and hasn’t since the 2000s.
Games on the other hand are always working to improve user interface (or should be), as well as having to upscale for new hardware. This means often times botched yet innovative experiments cannot be fully realized until later. At the same time, the industry has become lucrative, corrupted by investment over vision, and has lost a lot of what once made it great in its era of peak creative experimentation (the 90s- think about where games were at the start vs the end of that decade and compare it to any other). Additionally, neglected games eventually become unplayable due to technological compatibility issues.
And so we have some remakes and remasters that have brought back some great products that might not have even been made in today’s climate, but with quality of life improvements and graphical upgrades that enable new audiences to find them. Most notable of these to me have been the System Shock remake, the Quake II remaster (its a very real possibility that 1997’s Quake II might be my 2023 game of the year), and above all the gold standard for remakes so far, the Resident Evil 2 remake of 2019.
So, indulge me here while I list some games I would love to see remade or remastered with a brief description of why. Just in case any enterprising developers are using their google-fu to figure what old properties might be worth mining again. Not included on this list is Max Payne, which I just learned is in fact going to get remakes.
Afterlife– Few people have heard of or remember this game, but the 1995 heaven and hell building simulator was my first building game and, thematically and aesthetically, still my favorite. The game has a terrible balancing system and broken, if funny, natural disasters. But its peak quality pixel art and funny humor. I would hope a remake would keep the pixel art aspect.
Unreal (the first one)- The Unreal series went hard for multiplayer and left its original debut with only one terrible sequel to mark its passing. But this game is a masterpiece of atmosphere and unbroken first person exploration and combat on an alien world. It came out around the same time as Half Life and honestly I view it as the far superior shooter of that year.
No One Lives Forever 1 and 2- This series, a kind of 60s/James Bond immersive sim parody, was fantastic spy shooting and sneaking. The first one was funnier but the second one really pulled out the stops with workable stealth, great locations, and even a level in a trailer park being sucked into a tornado. The franchise has lingered in legal limbo for years though, preventing further development.
The Thing- 2002’s Thing game tried to capture the paranoia of the movie with an interesting squad based mechanic of shapeshifter infiltration. The tech just wasn’t there at the time though to pull this off properly, but I think it could be done today. Imagine a Thing themed game in Capcoms RE engine and then having to do the blood test on squad members.
Eternal Darkness- The only console only game that tempted me to break my unsullied record as an exclusive member of the PC Gaming Master Race, the idea of historical time hopping survival horror (but with way better controls) deserves a revival.
Battlezone- Not the very original black and white arcade game, but the 90s franchise of sci fi ground control combat/base building strategy game. Taking the Cold War into the solar system for alternate history sci fi was fantastic, and the game was a blast with many unique vehicle designs.
Heavy Gear 1 and 2- Honestly this franchise just needs a proper sequel. But the second game in particular was probably the best executed mecha combat game of all time but is hard to get working on modern systems. I am, to put it mildly, a huge fan.
Though there is a Daggerfall remaster, modernized controls and UI feel would be extremely welcome in my opinion.
People who will read this and know me well will wonder why my favorite game of all time, Alpha Centauri, is not on this list. The first reason for this is that the GOG version works perfectly fine and the game is so good I don’t think it needs anything else even after 24 years. The second reason is that its my plan to have an entire entry at on this site at some point in the future all about just that one game, so hold on.
The job of the trickster is not to passively lament negative trends, but to seek to exploit them for one’s own gain even if they are terrible. This is why historical figures like Nixon could spend decades lamenting the march of communism and then turn around and basically end the ideological-priorities-first phase of the Cold War.
Constructing the Black Longhouse was always meant to be a gradual and long term coming together of trends I have noticed. Many are discontent with the mainstream offerings and noticing an overall intellectual decline in greater civil society. As dark ages descend, the public sphere becomes more unbearable as it is divided between the most complacent status-quo defenders and the most fanatical cultists for their opposition. The two create between them a system of exclusion for all others. In order for one to keep both their curiosity and their sanity, it becomes apparent to stay engaged with like minded individuals and create alternative communities…but communities sufficiently divorced from schizophrenic mediocrity to enable actual inquiry and critical thought to survive long term and prepare for its return.
I don’t want to take attention away from how Neoliberal Boomers are primarily responsible for this mess, and that younger people certainly did not create these conditions, but its becoming increasingly undeniable that the Boomer’s true cultural and ideological successors are now the Zoomers. Their future in power will be just as bad if not worse as what came before. A true dark age really is coming as hypersensitive people with tiny attention spans and held to the lowest possible standards gain power over institutions. The bitter harvest of No Child Left Behind and Common Core are bearing rotting fruit. The cable news couch potato has found a recruitment pool just as deferential to authoritative propaganda as they are. One whose utterly enslavement into the norms of neoliberal bug-people is so complete it is lifelong and totalizing, though superficially covered up with performative radicalism and the postmodern-identity lapel-symbolism of various far right and far left loyalties.
At this point everyone knows the drill. Conflict adverse, intellectually incurious, and passive-aggressive, a generation of weaponized autism stands ready not to rebel against the mistakes of those who came before them, but to become the fundamentalist wing of perpetuating those very mistakes. A ready made snitch brigade obsessed with cultural conformity in the service of Silicon Valleys neofeudal church and social arrangement. The gateway demographic to a future of WALL-E People. Ready and willing to sell out their friends and family for updoots and cultural capital between media binging. A useful cohort for those who seek to keep the present socio-economic system intact is one which claims to challenge it but in fact upholds its structure. The Boomer elite truly has found a cohort they deem worthy to carry on their legacy of endless culture war in service of neoliberal-imperial maintenance. The full spectral dominance of the lumpens. Sounds incredibly bleak, right?
But keep some things in mind here:
Zoomers are the smallest age cohort in modern history.
They will likely be the poorest cohort in modern history, reducing their potential for political influence.
They will inherit/replicate a world where having long-term perspectives and the ability to read a book (especially a nonfiction book) cover to cover will be seen as superpowers.
You can literally communicate in code in public to avoid their snitching by simply writing in cursive or using non-literal metaphor in speech. Finally, a use for cursive!
Once the sheen of the usually not-neutral but claiming to be so Phact Checquers begins to rub off, inevitably people will come to distrust pop-knowledge, hot takes, and other mid-wit sources claiming to be authoritative. The default ‘Google Search to find the truth in 2 seconds’ trend will die because it will deliver less useful or trustworthy answers over time.
The expansion of AI and automation will negatively impact mid-wit commentariat and effectively ‘offshore’ thinking skills for the lumpenproles, but this will further increase the value of what the non-mid-wit observers bring to the table as their competition imposes self-obsolescence. There are things AI cannot do.
All of these trends argue towards a re-emergence of a new cultural aristocracy. Not (I hope) in the economic sense- in fact, the new economic aristocracy will almost certainly be part of this monolithic and trend chasing morass worth opposing. But rather a new intellectual aristocracy will arise made up of the minority of people still capable of critical thought. These people will not be popular or well-liked. In fact, they will be treated with great suspicion by the masses. But they will be necessary. And it is better to be needed than to be liked. This new aristocracy will even include (and perhaps even be dominated by) Zoomers, for none will be more motivated to go underground than those most awash in a groupthink they know to be false and futureless.
The opportunities to lurk in the shadows and emerge as advisors, leaders, and oppositional taste makers, to say nothing of the overtly creative pursuits, are enormous. Think of how Triple-A gaming has produced ever more terrible products and higher and higher costs while the indie scene has exploded into affordable quality by word-of-mouth. Think of how the old neoconservative establishment loses popularity and public cache constantly even as its power remains -for now- intact.
This unfolding era of brainrot can in fact be survived and even turned into an opportunity so long as the opposition is willing to take to the shadows and play the long game. Slowly, surely, with some behind the scenes coordination, oppositional ideas can be inserted back into the conversation as the Silicon Douche neofeudalism inevitably begins to collapse on itself due to its unsustainability and inability to see its own problems. While never lucrative, those who bothered to stay apart and aloof will end up wielding disproportionate influence over society if they only hold out long enough. Orders this stupid simply cannot last without either changing or falling.
The question remains, however, how long will that time take to arrive? Since this may not even occur in any of our lifetimes, we had best get to community building. Stay local and under the radar whenever possible.
In the meantime, the kidult minions of the Silicon Reich will be scouring the world for challenges to their complacency (and the interests of their older, richer masters). There are still shadows to hide in online, but not on public-facing social media. That is terrain that must be de facto ceded to the enemy. Anonymous forums and email lists are a better way to find contacts now. Perhaps more importantly, in a world where the former counter-cultural nature of the internet has become the monoculture, it becomes imperative to turn the real life offline into the new place of the counterculture. In cities this is easy, with word-of-mouth events not posted online. Outside of cities this is more difficult.
In a world where few read books, publishing them becomes a new way of communication. Information peasants are rarely even aware of books, especially nonfiction ones. And thus even online will likely not even know or care about those discussing them even publicly. This also serves as a screen to keep out those unwilling to do reading from diluting the Shadow Aristocracy.
These are just hypotheses. Practically speaking, things will work out their own way. But I have no doubt the increasing stupification of society will only lead to the demise of this current phase. I just don’t know the timing.
In the meantime, hold strong and build those connections. You are going to need them.
One of the most precious local resources you can have is a used bookstore. Especially one with a focus on things usually not held at other similar establishments. Even in the age of widespread Kindle access (which as a person who frequently relocates and likes to travel light is usually a good thing), e-books tend to come to people either by algorithmic recommendation or from specific search. But sometimes, what you need to complete the collection is something you don’t even know exists. Or that is too obscure to be well known enough to get an electronic adaptation.
So was it with me this month. I knew I had to write something on the utility and necessity of divergent governance, world views, and culture complexes. Specifically because there seems to be a kind of partial resurgence of Fukuyama-Friedmanism among a surly establishment. But I held off due to lacking a specific frame of reference worth writing about. And then there was the missing link right on the shelf in front of me in the used book store. A book I had never even heard of previously; Maruyama Masao’s ‘Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan.’
The uniqueness in shaking up a complacent world plagued by used bookstores overlaps with the themes of appreciating the uniqueness of divergent societies. It is interesting to think how the big panic among bibliophiles in the 90s and 00s was how giant bookstore chains were going to eat up all independent booksellers. There was even a terrible romantic comedy about it. But now we see that smaller bookshops are doing comparatively well to these former behemoths, specifically because of their uniqueness, while the neoliberal edifice of the giant chain is the one which struggles to survive in the internet age.
Ask any farmer, herder, or long term trend examiner if they think monoculture is a good idea and they will tell you it is not. The Irish Potato Famine, the Dust Bowl, the modern day Khat farming in certain parts of the world, and many more examples show this to be the most dangerous thing humanity can do on the macro-scale. The same principle applies to politics and economics, albeit in a less immediately quantifiable way. Too much of one thing, no matter how apparently successful it may appear to be, invites disaster the second this singular thing goes wrong. The degree of interconnected commerce the world was under at the turn of this century was viewed by most in the developed world as a good thing, but the worldwide collapse caused by the failure of the American housing bubble caused the Great Recession of 2008 and a series of violent economic disruptions we are still living under today. Present conditions of social homogenization in the internet era are similar in that an apparent triumph by present teleologists is not but hubris before an inevitable collapse. Those prepared to diverge and capable of learning from different examples will weather the storm better than those who simply follow trends. Not because they simply adopt a contrarian world view (reflexive contrarianism is simply a values inverted take on still being enslaved to present trends, after all), but because they show that alternatives are not just possible, but necessary. Such examples do not exist to be copied, since they are context dependent, but because they can be proportionally learned from in a way that cultivates critical thought and distance from mandatory trend chasing. This is why diversity, which, sorry DEI HR people, includes ideological diversity, is a critical value for the flourishing of the human experience. And it is especially critical for the scholar of the humanities-itself a discipline subjected to a forced conversion of sorts in the last decade.
The Tokougawa Shogunate was in many ways a conscious effort to diverge from what seemed like omnipresent trends then affecting Japan. Coming to power after generations of constant regional warfare, it was a thoroughly feudal but also self-consciously centralizing force of stability. The ruling elites had spent a thousand years being Sino-Weebs and nursing an inferiority complex towards China and blindly copying its philosophical and political debates. Meanwhile, in the south, enormous amounts of people under the influence of Portuguese and Spanish missionaries were converting to Christianity, a religion of mandatory monoculture with an expressly ‘globalist’ intent to culturally assimilate the planet into a teleological quest of seeing the human experience of a universal battle of good versus evil.
‘Greetinth Heathan. We hath come from Cathhtillia to sthpread the wordzth of Haythooth.’
Japan had always been a place of syncretic tolerance when it came to religion. Buddhism and Confucianism could exist in syncretism or modus vivendi with local Shintoism and so they could be tolerated. Christianity could not play well with others, and thus it was not tolerated. It was, in fact, thoroughly exterminated. A decision which might have saved Japan politically and certainly saved it culturally. A side effect of this was the closing of the country to all but regulated amounts of Chinese, Korean, and Dutch commerce.
The conventional narrative at this point is that the Tokugawa Shogunate sat in a state of pure stagnation for over 250 years. Peaceful, yes, but undynamic. This is not true. Or, more accurately, it was not true until the last half century of its existence. For while there were many onerous, unnecessary, and even farcical rules of the closed country such as related to travel and adoption of technology, overall this was a remarkably successful and dynamic government. Edo went from a tiny fishing village to one of the largest (and one of the cleanest, somehow) cities in the world. Peace became the norm for centuries. The population exploded initially and the government responded by instituting the first country-wide forest preservation program in history. The creative world took off, especially in arts like wood block printing. The country would eventually fall behind, as all orders do under the entropy of time, but not after a massive and impressive recovery from what came before.
This brings me to the book I just finished, ‘Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan.’ The above was something I already was quite familiar with, being a lifelong student of East Asian history. What I did *not* know, however, was the specific intellectual currents of high Tokugawa thought. And Maruyama’s book (first written in the 50s and reissued and updated in the 70s) filled this void. And within the story of this period of philosophy are many useful ideas for those concerned with resistance to monoculture and who value practical steps for how to develop alternatives.
At first, the Shogunate decided to get into Confucianism hard. Neo-Confucianism, specifically. This was because it filled a very specific niche in converting the potentially dangerous samurai class into good administrators and bureaucrats. This process was so successful that it was basically completed in less than two generations. Once that was the case, many intellectuals began to realize that Confucianism may not in fact be an ideal synthesis for the Japanese context. Neo-Confucianism, the then dominant strain, in particular was extremely moralistic and idealistic, demanding a kind of cultural uniformity from ruling to ruled based out of the Song Dynasty priorities it has first arisen from. Specifically the thought of Chu Hsi, who was a kind of Song Aaron Sorkin who held out that public policy would follow naturally from personal example and the ruling class’ commitment to principle above all else. A walk-and-talk of style with no substance but that of being desirable to emulate. Yamaga Soko, writing in the latter 17th Century, was himself a Confucian but found this Song world view alien and idealistic. He noted that the Song had preached these principles as they were humiliated by the Khitan and Jurchen and then wiped out by the Mongols in turn, so what actual use had this world view served? Song history was not more glorious than other Chinese Dynasties and its failure to secure its own stability made its moralistic traditions seem like compensatory coping. Surely, Japan needed something more grounded and less idealistic. Confucianism, according to Yamaga Soko, had to be recaptured from these Song revisionists and adjusted to be practical.
This began a growing rebellion against moral-idealism more generally and with greater degrees. Ogyu Sorai, also a Confucian, would end up unintentionally laying the groundwork for a full blown intellectual anti-Confucian reaction with his critique of being wedded to Chinese examples and practices when the reality that the Shogunate governed Japan, which had a different historical experience, beckoned. The core of this problem, according to him, was the commitment to universal principles that Neo-Confucianism espoused:
“All things in Heaven and Earth derive their forms from yin and yang and the five elements. They all originate from one and the same source. But once they have been transformed into Heaven and Earth and a myriad of things, they cannot be discussed in terms of principle alone. It is a great mistake to teach that human nature and Heaven are the same as principle.”
Sorai’s main focus was that history debunked rigid moralism. The more one looked at home and abroad, the more complex the story became, and thus the less relevant seeing the world through a single ideological prism became. Now that Japan had some stability and distance from the conflicts of the past (and raging abroad) it could reflect more on its own place, which was distinct but not exceptional. In another quote which sounds all too real today he says:
“The fact that even many men of good character become bad after the pursuit of learning is entirely due to the harmful effects of Chu Hsi rationalism. According to the Tung-chien kang-mu, there has never been a satisfactory person, past or present. Anyone who views the people of today with this kind of attitude becomes naturally becomes a man of bad character…Those who subscribe to the Sung scholars’ version of Confucianism insist on making a rigid distinction between right and wrong, good and evil. They like to have every aspect of all things thoroughly clarified, and in the end they become very proud and lose their tempers very easily.”
This was coupled with an awareness that not everything is interconnected. Creative pursuits need not reflect governing ideals or vice versa. The multiplicity of living was to be found in the division of human output into different fields, rather than trying to force them all together.
Coming later came thinkers like Motoori Norinaga, the real hero of this story, so far as I am concerned. For him, Sorai had not gone far enough. Human nature was part of the rest of nature, and thus beyond such quaint concepts of good and evil- as was the world itself. Confucianism had blinded people from simply adapting to their circumstances without a need for elaborate justifications. So too had Japan erred in trying to become Chinese when it was not part of China. It was the historical evolution of society that mattered in how it should behave, not some abstract non-historical ideal. The Shogunate, according to Motoori, was a highly successful government because it had allowed Japan to become something other than a Chinese pick-me or a Spanish colony despite being initially outclassed by both. Devoid of the imperial ambitions that would afflict later Japanese history, he spoke of a uniqueness without resorting to that other kind of moralism, chauvinism. Neither was he a nostalgic, despite his scorn for both Confucianism and Buddhism, stating:
“When I propound The Way I do not advise the people of today to behave like the ancients, unlike the Confucians and Buddhists. Any attempt to compel people to practice the ancient way of the gods in opposition to existing circumstances is contrary to the behavior of the gods. It is an attempt to outdo the gods.”
Within this thought, and that of its successors, came a litany of scholars who had unknowingly prepared the way for the dissolution of the very feudal order they were supposedly defending, with a general questioning even of the class system being teased just in time for the sudden crash into modernity that Japan would experience in the latter 19th Century.
Masao Maruyama’s book, needless to say, was a great find. And it cannot be ignored that the only reason I found this useful book on societal divergence and bucking moralistic trends in another time and place was because of a used bookstore that itself stood against the tide of monoculture in my own society.
To wish for a universal order in economics is to wish for monopoly. In politics it is to wish for monoculture. When monoculture fails it can drag everyone else down with it, so alternatives need to exist, even if only on the outskirts. Motoori Norinaga advocated for obeying the laws but understanding that the laws were temporary and people must always keep an open mind to governance. This becomes impossible if everyone, everywhere, is governed the same way. The more different people are, the easier it is to learn from them. When ensconced inside one moralist order, be it that of the Sorkinite libs, neoreactionaries, or the Neo-Confucian fanboys of Chu Hsi, we must treasure the opportunity to learn from divergence, both failures and successes, whenever possible. It is not thinking through received wisdom with no counter-examples that serves as our antibodies from the failures of the monoculture.
This is also why the ‘Tokugawa Option’ is superior to Rod Dreher’s ‘Benedict Option’ and other related examples of North American paleocon thought. They wish to wed their attempt at an alterative to the very first ideal of universalized moralism: Abrahamic monotheism. Missionary monotheism is the ultimate monoculture after all. It knows no limit on souls to harvest or geography to conquer. World views that seek to squash context and distinction for mass moralism behind a universal purpose are contrary to the necessity of upholding intellectual diversity. To opt out from the relentless groupthink cannot be done with a world view that sees all of Earth as its rightful dominion and sanctimony as its unifying principle. Neoliberalism, and especially its current evangelical incarnation of woke-progressivism, is nothing if not the direct intellectual descendant of Christianity. But the Benedict Option people are correct that alternative communities (plural, I would add) are needed. But to live in a modus vivendi with each other they must take divergence as the norm rather than unity. Communities that reject atomized liberal individualism can and should exist, but only as situational groups in time and space. This requires the rejection of universal moralism and the acceptance of a polydirectional world view. In theological terms the word is polytheism.
The Tokugawa Shogunate died when it became too old and obsolete. All things do. Furthermore, one should never seek to copy the past. But when it comes to thinking, in a future oriented way, of alternatives, divergent examples are more useful. The Shogunate is just one of these case studies. I have endeavored to mention others before on here and will continue to do so. But for now the most realistic way to get to the end goal of The Black Longhouse is by contemplating The Tokugawa Option and other such self-conscious societal outliers. We look at those who intentionally turned away from massive pressure to take another’s path in order gird ourselves for potential futures. How can we emulate their successes and avoid their failures to outlast the monocultural fads that seek to brainwash us into acquiescence?
The yokai and goblins parade through the night, terrifying but fascinating to look upon. Without them the night streets would be devoid not only of character but of originality. They remind us that there is more than the rote mundanities of the town in daytime.
I recently gave this exact lecture at a conference in Buenos Aires organized by Nueva Sociedad, the Fredrich Ebert Foundation, and Torqada Di Telli University. I am going to leave the text here.
The Ukraine War dominates the field of international relations and conflict analysis like no event since perhaps the fall of the Soviet Union. Its effects are truly global despite being extremely limited in the geographic scope of its combat. A combination of NATO’s relentless expansion ever eastward and Russian chauvinism towards its former satellite states and near abroad have plunged the world into once again worrying if a crisis in eastern Europe will drag powers from across the world into an ever spiraling situation outside of anyone’s control.
Here is where I diverge with the many analysts who comment on the danger of geographically fractured geopolitics. This present struggle is, and should remain, a European War as much as possible. Particularly now that it has devolved into a territorial dispute more than its likely original objectives- which was a full scale regime change operation planned in Moscow to be carried out in Kyiv. The worst case scenario feared at the outbreak has subsided, and now the worst case scenario has become further international escalation. Increased regionalization is in fact a good thing, as it presents an ability to keep conflicts local and compartmentalized rather than have them immediately reach the status of global crisis.
I would contend that this war has harmed Russia far more than it will ever help it, even if Russia emerges from the maelstrom with actual territorial gains. Its plans to dominate the European energy market are wounded, its military is shown to be badly in need of major logistical and tactical level performance reform, and many countries known for close relations with Moscow are more suspicious than ever before. Especially Kazakhstan, whose growing oil wealth contrasts with the sword of damocles that hangs over its decision making by a bellicose Moscow and a Russian-majority population in its northern territories. Meanwhile, countries like Turkey and China are making the most of the situation to act as interlocutors between disputing powers. This reflects the increased competitiveness of strategically located middle powers, of which the Eurasian landmass has many. This factor is as important as the rise of China, considering how Japan, Indonesia, India, Iran, Turkey, Germany, and France all exist in a shatterbelt of regional power projection.
But Russia’s blunder has not just adversely affected its own position in a multipolar world. It has also exposed the fragility of an increasingly elderly Postwar Order. Cold comfort on a grinding attritional battlefield perhaps, but a very real faultline between the United States and its European allies on one side and much of the rest of the world on the other has been clearly exposed. Much of this divide stems from an over-reliance on sanctions by Washington, ironically undermining the very global trade the United States claims to be vital in upholding. Despite alienating many potential partners in the Global South, the amount of U.S.-led sanctions imposed on trade in the world consistently doubles with every new Presidential Administration, despite the provable fact that sanctions have a higher failure rate than they do successes. Concerns from abroad at this destabilizing behavior go largely unheard in the halls of DC. This is largely due to the immense imperial hubris of the U.S. and the ideological indoctrination of many of its junior allies who have come to believe such self-comforting ideas as “the end of history” and an eternal march of linear progress towards market economics, democratic norms, and other culturally specific and historically contingent elements falsely marketed as universal to the human experience. Such a world view makes every international crisis a global battle of ideas and thus existential. But to most of the world, the only thing existential about various faraway wars are the damage it does to international stability, and the dangers of being strong-armed into various great power alliance networks.
Allow me to bring these themes to a more local context as befits our present location. I will start with a literary reference.
In Gene Wolfe’s quintet of novellas known as The Book of the New Sun, the majority of the events of the story take place in a far future state known as the Commonwealth. This declining South American-based adoptive monarchy was once a vast interstellar empire, but now is a besieged continent-sized political entity centered around a massive capital city known as Nessus…which is strongly implied to be the future Buenos Aires. This state has its own massive internal problems but generally seems less odious than the sea monsters that lurk in the ocean or the massive northern power known as Ascia, which is invading it.
A fascinating thing about the Ascians is how they speak a language no one can understand. This is because it is entirely based on political slogans and analogies related to their ideological worldview. For example, if you wanted to begin a story with the phrase “Once upon a time,” in Ascian, you would say “In times past, loyalty to the cause of the populace was to be found everywhere. The will of the Group of 17 was the will of everyone.” Being so committed to a utopian vision of how the world works, the Ascians can no longer communicate with anyone outside of their ideological bubble. Warfare seems to be the only form of international relations left to them.
This is what ‘The North Atlantic world’ (as well as some elements of Eurasianist Russia) seem to be increasingly becoming. Obsessed with false analogies over ‘Appeasement’ and ‘The New Cold War’, they have lost all contact with the local, regional, and national interests that still constitute survival for the countries of the Global South. But much like the Commonwealth in Book of the New Sun represents the potential for an alternative divergent from its ideologically maximalist neighbors, so too do parts of the Global South show us a way to handle faraway crises and keep them local.
The Non-Aligned League in the Cold War is an interesting example of trying to opt out of superpower-rivalry dominated politics, but it lacked any kind of geographic continuity and was really more of a statement of intent than something viable. But the future of the southern hemisphere in general looks better for such experiments in stability and peacebuilding than any other region, particularly South America.
While South America is in the Western Hemisphere and thus will always need to factor in (ideally positive) relations with the behemoth known as the United States, it also exists at a safe distance from most of the world’s conflict theaters, and has a unique history of comparative geopolitical stability when it comes to peer-to-peer diplomacy. Sure, events such as the War of the Triple Alliance, The War of the Pacific, and the Chaco War have all occurred here, but compared to any other significant landmass with multiple nations sharing borders, this is positively pacifistic. Considering that the general trend of the future seems to be towards a re-regionalization, and most of the revisionist powers are in Eurasia, this trend of relative international stability in South America is likely to continue in the near future. And perhaps even come into greater self-direction as the U.S. directs more and more of its efforts towards East Asia and Europe. Most competition, struggle, and therefore military effort in the world will be in Eurasia, giving places further out a time to breath and find their own way forward.
Personally, as a citizen of the United States, I look forward to more Western Hemisphere cooperation, which builds off of a mutual desire to keep the stability of the region and prevent outside powers from dividing it. North and South America, taken together, represent an immense supercontinent which is eminently defensible by sea, and which contains three major global chokepoints on maritime activity, the high Arctic, the Tierra del Fuego, and the Panama Canal. It cannot be bypassed, something that cannot even be said for Eurasia. I believe there is a more realistic possibility for mutual security and prosperity here than there ever could be in either Eurasia or Africa. Indeed, this overlooking of the immense geopolitical potential of the Western Hemisphere is a subject I would like to research to a much deeper level in the future. (Anyone also interested in this, please feel free to contact me directly).
However, for obvious historical reasons, countries south of the United States cannot exactly trust its good graces. For now, no matter what future the hemisphere as a whole holds, South America must plan for itself. And the dangers of the present global moment of multipolarity offers opportunities to those far from the core regions of global rivalry, so long as the continent continues the trends begun in the 1990s by pursuing constructive mutual relations with each other. In fact, these should be deepened precisely because remaining reliant on faraway imports, globe-spanning supply chain networks, and the like risks turning a position of distance into one of isolation. But, building upon a legacy of self reliance, I believe that South America, collectively, can continue serving as an example of what geopolitical maturity and regional stability looks like.
The long term prospects I feel bullish about are that South America has many countries with clearly defined maritime interests and large port facilities, enabling participation in what has been a centuries long turn towards oceanic commerce being the most efficient form of economic activity across the globe. This is coupled with productive yet sometimes remote interiors. Most of the problems faced by South America have to do with these often coastal-facing countries having ill-defined borders in geographically challenging frontiers and seeking to manage demarcation of resources and land with neighbors. But with much of the population far from these potential clashing points, there exists less fuel to treat disputes as existential or ideological in nature. This has enabled a level of sober statecraft in diplomacy to take root that has prevented a major war from breaking out here for a much longer time here than happens elsewhere. Should South American governments continue the trend of pursuing regional cooperation outside of alien and globally-maximizing alliances, it is they, and not the ‘North Atlantic,’ Beijing, or Moscow that will serve as the most instructive example of responsible statecraft for smaller powers in the near future.
In his book ‘Imagined Communities’, Benedict Anderson postulates that despite most historians ignoring the trend, it was the wars of liberation in the Americas, and in particular in South America, that really invented the modern concept of a nation-state as we know it today. Not founded so much on unified ideology or romantic ethno-centrism as the common Eurocentric narrative goes, this first modern nationalism was a result of newspaper print runs and collective arrangements being limited by often forbidding geography, and people realizing that their experiences had diverged from that of the sprawling empires that they were birthed from and their inevitable global wars.
As the various revisionist regional powers gear up for a new round of competition, and the previously hegemonic United States struggles to adapt to multipolarity, it is precisely this confluence of localism and stable regionalism that will come to delineate the more successful regions from the ones consumed by struggle. As too much dependence on the far abroad is replaced by more regional and secure connections less likely to be disrupted by a cascade of distant wars, other parts of the world might take note in turn, reducing the ability for regional wars to go global and enabling more nations to choose their battles judiciously, away from the requests to partake in economic or even military crusades far away from their interests.
If I may end with a quote from Argentina’s most famous founding father, Jose de San Martin, ‘You will be what you must be, or else will be nothing.’
‘If the ideology of democratism continues to replace the older understanding of democracy as rule by the people, then we can expect the concentration of greater and greater power in the ruling classes. That may include elected or unelected political officials or more nebulous but arguably more powerful interests, such as those who control our media and forms of communication- the so called tech giants and corporate media. The proclaimed need for these bodies to have greater control, including over ideas, will invariably be couched in the language of protecting democracy.’ ~Emily Finley, ‘The Ideology of Democratism’
I once had a fun drunken conversation with some friends. What is the worst profession for every generational cohort? In which life direction does the lowest form of scum from a particular age group drip and congeal in the largest proportional numbers? It was surprisingly easy to answer this question. Boomer: Small business owner. Gen X: Silicon Valley. Zoomer: Streamer. And of course, most relevant for this post, Millennial: Journalist.
Culturally speaking, there is little to say that differs from what I once said all the way back in 2015. These types fly between Eurozone and North American mega-cities interacting with the same people from the same class and professional backgrounds endlessly and, no matter all of their accrued flight miles, never learn a damn thing about the beautiful cultural and ideological diversity of planet Earth. They are mostly mediocre English literature majors whose experience of difficulty and challenge comes from ‘needing mental health breaks’ when someone makes fun of them. They value access to prestige over even their own salaries and especially the truth of the ‘scoop’ they pursue, selling their services to trends in pursuit of an ultimately empty and vacuous currency which is paid through social media clout and ‘influence.’
It wasn’t always like this. Social media has compromised this profession. And it is a necessary profession. Back in the 90s, jokes about lawyers being the scum of the Earth were common, but few doubted they had a utility in the functioning of society. Likewise, in present day discourse those of us in the U.S. who have had any experience with the police here know how awful they can be, but most of us do not doubt the necessity of law enforcement to exist. The debate is merely how it conducts itself towards the public. So too is this the case with the journalist. Or journoid. Perhaps journoscum? We need them. But for them to function we need them to have certain attributes. Much as a sense of civic responsibility makes the lawyer and police officer more bearable, so too might a sense of intellectual curiosity salvage the journoid and return them to their pre-millennial roots as challenging asshole muckrakers.
Something happened around 2010. A certain coffee house loving, smooth jazz listening, insufferable twat had to grow up and did so by proportionally infiltrating one particular profession. Think the hipster is dead? No. The hipster is still alive…and dominates the mainstream media in English speaking countries. This song was memetic in 2010. You might think it dates poorly given its age, but give it another listen. You know who this is about, and where those people are today professionally. You know they will still chase clout until they die of old age, buried in a tomb covered in corporate Memphis bas-reliefs, even though chasing clout is normally just a thing for people under 25 and Hollywood types.
If I was willing to put in the effort, I would do a full study on how this profession became so proportionally obsequious and pathetic. I am not willing to put in that effort right now because I have more interesting things to deal with. The reality is undeniable though and I can give a quick theory: Social media. That thing so many journoids believe to be the end all and be all of influence, impact, and substance. It is none of those things. Additionally, sources now look at an entirety of output rather than a personal relationship. There has been an elite overproduction in the humanities so any unpopular opinion can be punished with termination. So desperate over-educated mid-wits clamber over each other, devouring the corpses of their kind in order to make it to that point they all crave: The Garden Party.
The Garden Party, perhaps hosted by The Guardian, perhaps by The New Yorker, is the Bohemian Grove of the journoid. Unable or unwilling to do proper reporting on anything larger than the local level (lest they be fired for rocking the boat) the average journoid’s only recourse is to rub elbows with the very people they should be viewing critically. This would be understandable, were it not for the fact that if anyone else does this for any reason it is inherently ‘problematic’ in the declarations of that own class’ mores. Especially since the Millennial Journoid’s mission in life is to stalk random non-powerful people and try to get them fired for minor transgressions against Current Year, but never to do this to CEOs or politicians. The journoid will judge you for making the necessary compromises to achieve results, but cannot be judged for doing the same in turn. Possibly because they almost never actually achieve the results they are supposedly seeking. Partly also because they will be the first to deny they are seeking results aside from objectivity. A claim that has been turned into farce long before the particular crop of professional activists.
Overly attached to their image in the public eye, the journoid often finds that they have no inner self whatsoever. No anchor but a desperate seeking of fame. No direction but that of being recognized. These are people who, in my experience, cite twitter threads as if they are equivalent to peer reviewed articles or books. Because it is ‘The Discourse’ that matters to them, not actionable policy goals or outcomes. And especially not the truth. God forbid, the truth is dangerous to this new type that rules the profession, as any concept of factual truth would call into question their failure to critically interrogate the Iraq, Libya, Syria wars before it was too late-to say nothing of the financial system that makes even their lives precarious. You see a current version of this playing out about the reticence to even have the temerity to ask questions about all the various suspicious narratives coming out around the Nord Stream pipeline bombing. If you want a totemic image to crystalize this in the mind, just picture Chuck Todd’s face looking smug and baffled at hearing anything that would never be said out loud at The Garden Party, on loop, across every media platform, forever. Needless to say, this is not the behavior of intellectuals. Yet they insist on being treated as such. Let us consult the words of Machiavelli for a riposte:
‘There are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless.’
And if this critique is put to them, I can tell you from experience how they would respond. ‘Its still better than in a country with a state run press.’ In terms of the practice of the profession, this is usually true. But in terms of the character of the people in that profession, it is actually worse. I know an RT journalist is a propogandist. And I suspect they know it too. The Anglo-Journoid, however, is deeply convinced that believing in a state sanctioned narrative voluntarily and perpetuating falsehoods as a matter of ‘defending democracy’ or some such nonsense is superior to having one mandated to them. I disagree. Self delusion is in fact more damnable in a person to me than mercenary work ever could be. The mercenary knows they want money and gets it. They might have to lie to others but not to themselves. The true believer, however, is a cultist used as tissue paper to wipe the ass of the cult leader, all while believing it is the right thing to do and castigating you for not doing the same. This is far worse. The dignity of the mercenary is heroic compared to the cowardly clergy of stenographers that presently dominate the journalistic profession. And no amount of maudlin refugee memoirs and Kite Runner tier cultural commentary is going to close that gap.
As a member of the realism and restraint community, I have long held that before being able to badger politicians to do what we want, we first must break through the consensus building of a professional class based around narrative shaping. My radical position, which is not yet remotely popular but is getting increasingly acknowledged privately, is that we must also wage a public struggle against much of the press. Not because they are the press, but because we deserve a better press. There are individuals who represent the craft of journalism well even today (some are even Millennials, believe it or not) but individuals matter little without coordination and communities. When non-mid-wit journalists are found, they should be supported. When those willing to question monolithic narratives arise, give them credit. Because, as I said before, we need this profession in society. But what we don’t need is people who believe they are critical thinking and investigatory when they are in fact a preaching priesthood interested only in imparting their (subjective) values onto morally neutral information, and even hiding other information that contradicts a teleological narrative uncritically inherited by the sheer osmosis of being an Anglo.
To come so directly against this in my profession is uncommon, but the sentiment behind this is not. Those who desire personal ambition and prestigious appointments simply cannot state how they really feel. And since I want more restrainers in power, I can’t fault them here. But for me, personally its the art of strategy I’m interested in. My personal professional outcome is a far lesser investment to me than being good at seeing the bigger patterns. If it becomes more expedient to switch paths once again I am more than happy to do so.
No matter the issue or professional field, if you are of a similar disposition you might enjoy this sentiment. Its the only thing we have in an era where social media clout takes over and consumes so many professions. Lets just hope this trend need not advance much further into even more careers.
Sean Fleming has a fascinating book titled Leviathan on a Leash about how to conceptualize state responsibility by updating Hobbes’ versatile theory of state representation and collective responsibility for the modern era. He (like John Gray in Two Faces of Liberalism) correctly sees that Hobbes-for all the reasonable disagreements one can have with his thought- especially in regard to absolute loyalty to authority- offers a superior framework for the multi-faceted society than the more popular Kantian interpretations so common today.
The most important aspect of this is that while the state has many attributes of personhood, it lacks independent agency. Like a mentally disabled person or child, it cannot represent itself and must require a parent, legal guardian, or lawyer to represent them. This guardian is then invested with full powers to act as the dynamic force on behalf of its charges. Understanding this allows us to tackle questions of state responsibility for debt, war, and other policies.
There was one issue I diverged from the author on worth mentioning. Though it does not assist his case to do so, Fleming makes a point of writing at no small length on how this Hobbesian contract between people and state is invalidated by a society where the majority of people are too indoctrinated/lack access to alternative sources of information to make informed decisions. Since the Hobbesian bargain is always on some level security and stability in exchange for loyalty, I fail to see why this distinction should be made. Brainwashed people can and do authorize representatives and are just as capable of collective loyalty. All successful societies also engage in some level of indoctrination (if anything the illusion of choice given by US and UK news media is every bit as affective as state monopolized news in forcing public consensus on key issues), meaning that by introducing this point Fleming does not help his overall argument and opens up the question of where exactly the line is between fully, partially, and not at all indoctrinated really is.
Towards the end of the book, Fleming talks about how the concept of representatives of state-and the distinction between personhood and tool-use are going to become increasingly blurred as artificial intelligence becomes a larger part of statecraft. Given that these homunculi will be programed by humans and thus inevitably inherit some of their pathos, we might have to seriously consider questions of state responsibility when the actions, most likely unintentional, of some kind of store brand Skynet open up a whole new can of worms between nations. We cannot simply assume we will get the more trustworthy(?) AIs of Deus Ex, after all. This is a serious problem geostrategists should be preparing to grapple with.
But whether or not we see increasingly automated states, a less real but more symbolically apt comparison of the Leviathan of modern statehood came to me: that of the Lovecraftian Eldritch Abomination. Since about the time of the subterfuge and nuclear deterrence of the Cold War, large and successful states have reached a complexity which is often quite literally unfathomable. Multiple sometimes separate and sometimes overlapping intelligence agencies conduct business that is often even unknown to the sovereign representatives of the people. The phrase ‘Deep State’, so castigated by the bien pensant media because a few low-information voters use it, is a real phenomenon and has been academically studied for generations at this point. Bizarrely, these types of organizations are assumed by right-thinking western technocrats to only exist in different countries, but not in countries like the United States with far greater amounts of technological prowess and funding. You are either in the cult or you are not. What is going on deep within the bowels is still obscured regardless of proximity.
Within the confines of this beast the social contract itself seems to be with something beyond comprehension. The beast’s thoughts are so removed from personhood that you are really only dealing with an approximate representative via the person or persons who hold the most power. Like cultists of Yog Sothoth, not even they can truly fathom what it is they are representing. They only know that they bask in the immensity of its presence. Its weighty psychic gravity is unpredictable and implacable, its power over mere humans incalculable. But lest this seem all-terrifying, there is another aspect of this which perhaps reflects the philosophical materialism of both Hobbes and Lovecraft: this god-like being (or series of beings under conditions of multipolarity) can do something more traditional gods cannot- prove its own existence. And-potentially-die as well.
The question still remains, however: Will its unfathomable web of idiosyncratic goals be capable of aligning with its own subjects needs? Or, like a proper eldritch abomination, will it see us simply as toys for amusement or even irrelevant insects? If this is what happens, the Hobbesian contract is gone as security of subject is no longer taken into consideration. But perhaps even weirder would be what if this monstrosity *does* uphold the bargain? And if so for how long? We might be even less prepared to deal with the ramifications of that.
The Trickster's Guide to Geopolitics 