[part 2]
Hoffer’s hostile attitude toward what he called intellectuals is complicated, even contradictory. On the one hand, he admired well-educated, articulate people, corresponded with them, and wrote down hundreds of quotations from their books. On the other, he despised those he identified as “men of words” and expressed contempt for them and their followers
In the usual sense of the word, Hoffer himself was an intellectual. He read books and wrote them. But he had no desire to teach others, he said, and this made him “a non-intellectual”. For the intellectual is someone who “considers it his God-given right to tell others what to do.”
What the intellectual craves in his innermost being is to turn the whole globe into a classroom and the world’s population into a class of docile pupils hanging onto the words of the chosen teacher.
“Even in a union meeting of more or less unlearned longshoremen, I never have the feeling that I know best, that I could tell them what to do”, Hoffer pleaded. He had faith in the competence of ordinary Americans to solve their own problems. …
One target was Herbert Marcuse, a Marxist political theorist who taught at Brandeis University. America suffered from “repressive tolerance”, Marcuse believed, and many leftist radicals of the day (such as Abbie Hoffman and Angela Davis) admired him. Hoffer called Marcuse “a shabby would-be aristocrat”. …
Hoffer at one point defined an intellectual “as one who saw himself as born to teach, lead and command”; later as “a literate person who feels himself a member of … an intellectual elite.” He began to develop these ideas even as he was writing The True Believer. Mass movements are generated by non-creative men of words, he believed. …
He viewed them as a dangerous species. They scorn profit and worship power; they aim to make history, not money. Their abiding dissatisfaction is with “things as they are”. They want to rule by coercion and yet retain our admiration. They see in the common criminal “a fellow militant in the effort to destroy the existing system”. Societies where the common people are relatively prosperous displease them because intellectuals know that their leadership will be rejected in the absence of a widespread grievance. The cockiness and independence of common folk offend their aristocratic outlook. The free-market system renders their leadership superfluous. Their quest for influence and status is always uppermost.
A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual’s sense of worth as an automated economy is a threat to the worker’s sense of worth. Any social order, however just and noble, which can function well with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.
…
All intellectuals are homesick for the Middle Ages, Hoffer wrote. It was “the El Dorado of the clerks”—a time when “the masses knew their place and did not trespass from their low estate”. Intellectuals enjoyed their first taste of blood when they started the French Revolution. Writers and revolutionaries had a new sense of their power. “They knew that the world was vulnerable to the potency of thought and that they were the new makers of history.”
But the nineteenth century had been a big disappointment. The workers had shown unwelcome signs of wanting to join rather than rebel against the bourgeoisie. The members of the intelligentsia, pushing too openly for revolution, had overplayed their hand and were discredited in the failed European revolutions of 1848. They didn’t return to the stage of history until the Russian Revolution.
Unless they are consulted and flattered, Hoffer argued, intellectuals constitute a destabilizing force in society. When a prevailing order is discredited or overthrown, it is often “the deliberate work of men of words with a grievance”. Even a vigorous and meritorious regime is likely to be swept away if it fails to win the allegiance of the articulate minority. When we hear of widespread disaffection within the society it is really the intellectuals who are disaffected. On the other hand, where that minority lacks a grievance, the prevailing order—however incompetent or corrupt—is likely to remain in power.
The modern faith in education as the solution to society’s ills had only made matters worse. Shortly before The True Believer was published, Hoffer noted that if it is true that “…the most rabid fanatic comes from among the non-creative men of words, then it is obvious that a spread of education and a reverence for creativeness is likely to multiply the number of those thwarted in their attempts to create.”
Possibly, then, “the diffusion of literacy in the Western world … has created a reservoir of fanatics of the most virulent kind.”
Educational efforts in Asia had kindled more resentments and grievances than solutions, he thought. “Many of the revolutionary leaders in India, China and Indonesia received their training in conservative Western institutions.”
— Thomas Bethell, Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher
Although the strictly Orthodox sector is growing rapidly, it is still too small by itself to account for the large size of Israeli Jewish families. There is also evidence that fertility rates correlate not just with religious intensity but also with nationalism. Right-wing Israeli women, even secular ones, have large families.
For the most part, such transactions do not actually happen at all. This is in a sense the “missing trade” in the world. It is most visible at the level of countries. As Pankaj Ghemawat shows in World 3.0, the cultural distance between countries is a very strong predictor of bilateral trade levels, and the strength of border restrictions between two countries can be measured in terms of missing trade: the trade that would exist if the border didn’t exist. If I recall correctly, Ghemawat estimates that the missing trade across the US-Canada border (the strongest economic bilateral relationship in the world, grounded in very deep cultural affinity) is missing several trillion dollars.
When they do happen, there is usually a trader-mediated market in the middle, one of whose primary functions is to create a certain amount of anonymity, by obscuring the origins and destinations of goods and services in order to preserve the fictions on either side.
This allows, for instance, ideological foes to trade things like agricultural produce, oil and minerals.
It is no accident that things traded via intermediary trader markets are typically commodities. It is much easier to obscure the origin and destination of things like oil than things like movies. To the extent that a product or service is not a commodity, it carries with it the values of the producer culture.
I’m not convinced that the US/Canada cultural affinity is that deep. The two seem pretty different; and after the revolution, when the monarchists were chased out of the States, most of them went to Canada.
Also, is the operative thing here really cultural distance in general, or is it cultural distance between elites? The latter is more relevant in things like war: consider that Washington entered America into two wars for the purpose of siding with Britain to crush Germany. (The main reason the Anglosphere didn’t knock Germany back to the Stone Age after WW2 was that USG worried that, if they did that, it would go Communist.) The elites were Anglophiles, but many of the common people were Germans.
T: “We’ll make more money if we throw out the king. But how do we sell it? We must argue for the freedom of the people to choose their own government.”
T+175: “Government is inefficient, wasteful, and easily co-opted by our enemies. It’s obvious. But how do we sell it? We all believe that people have the freedom to choose their own government; let’s say that people should also have freedom from government.”
T+240: “No one should ever disapprove of my life choices. But how do I sell it? We all believe that people have freedom from government; let’s say that people should also have freedom from being shamed. (As long as they like my life choices; if they don’t, they’re shaming and infringing my freedom.)”
Everything in this country that is pro-German is Anti-American. Everything that is pro-German must go. The German press. The teaching of German in the elementary schools, at least. German Alliances and the whole German propaganda must be abolished. A great American patriotism is essential to national existence. Any alliance that weakens it, is an enemy and should be treated as such. The brewers and allied liquor trades that back such an alliance should suffer the same penalty.
If Prohibition is so obnoxious to this class of Germans as statements indicate, they will either be compelled to change their habits and adjust themselves to the new environment, or else find some beer-soaked, Bacchus-dominated spot in the fatherland and go there. Americans are too patriotic to harbor an enemy of the public good within her borders, when by prohibiting it they can better carry out the purpose of government and promote the general welfare.
No patriot can defend the brewers and allied trades in this unpatriotic act. How can any loyal citizen, be he wet or dry, help or vote for a trade that is aiding a pro-German alliance? The time is here for a division between unquestioned and undiluted American patriots, and slackers and enemy sympathizers. A German Alliance that carries on a propaganda for Germany or a brewers’ association that backs it, has no claim on a patriot. The challenge to every 100 per cent American is to strike the hyphen from the German-American Alliance and make it an American alliance or destroy it. That task cannot be completed as long as its partners in disloyalty, the pro-German brewers and their allies, are allowed to gather money from the people to betray the government. The most patriotic act that the Congress or any Legislature or the people can do … is to abolish the un-American, pro-German, crime-producing, food-wasting, youth-corrupting, home-wrecking, treasonable liquor traffic.
When the white people who make up your ethno-nationalism have spent the past 60 plus years voting in progressively more anti-racist bullshit, have elected a black man because he is black, and spend their time persecuting each other for anti-racism – exactly how are you going to get them to act in their own ethnic self interests?
They are acting in their own perceived self-interest; it’s just that ‘white’ isn’t the relevant category.
Among Brahmins, ethnic self-interest remains in the background: it would be possible to construct a fairly accurate explanation for their politics that doesn’t invoke it. (Rational irrationality, status hierarchies, unknown unknowns, etc.) But that doesn’t mean they have no thedishness amongst themselves. Brahmin attitudes toward Vaisyas range from mocking contempt to genocidal hatred: Brahmindom is monoatheistic, and Vaisyas are clearly on the outside of that, are clearly elthedish to Brahmins. It follows from this that they can’t be considered to be in the same group, insofar as groups are relevant.
One potential solution is to cultivate a new Brahmindom from the Vaisyas, one that’s aware of the proper duties of their caste. The role of Brahmindom is to produce the art, the poetry, etc. for the culture. (Brahmins don’t listen to folk music; they listen to ‘folk punk’. This is a symptom of the underlying disorder.)
Total collaboration of the castes is as unlikely as total collaboration of the classes, but it does not follow from this that the current Streicherism is inevitable.
In America, ‘priesthood’ would be more accurate than ‘Brahmindom’, and ‘missionary caste’ would be more accurate still.
Chesterton’s fence does not necessarily mean that a social norm implies a process of deliberate engineering toward that norm in order to solve or prevent a specific problem — though sometimes it may, as with the Catholic Church’s engineering of norms against close cousin marriage.
Notes toward similar concepts to Chesterton’s fence — perhaps drawing on some level from Steve Sailer’s ideas about the British, emergence, and evolution (and golf):
1) Civilizations are rare. Why? If civilizations arise wherever the resources exist — but can this explain civilizational cycles within the same area? If civilizations arise wherever there is a great leader to unify the people and found an empire — but why did some empires collapse shortly after their founding? Korea demonstrates the importance of social technology in civilizational maintenance/flourishing; certain other areas may also, like southern Italy, but then there’s IQ as a confounding factor. (But how do those areas compare to others of similar IQs?) hbdchick makes a good case that a certain type of social norm (marriage patterns) has far-reaching effects; if there’s one, there’s likely to be others. This field isn’t well-understood at all, but its importance should be obvious, since the collapse of empires is well-attested in the historical record. And if norms play a significant role in the maintenance of civilizations, isn’t the existence of a norm in a successful civilization evidence (weak but existent) that the norm is important? (That’s a question — I don’t know, but it seems like it. There are probably statistical methods for dealing with this sort of thing, but I don’t know them.)
2) Norms can emerge organically through mass responses to obvious conditions, without deliberate engineering of the sort likely to leave easily-noticed written records.
3) Human universals or near-universals: what is the reason for their existence? There are imaginable ways of organizing society that aren’t seen in the world; is this due to pure historical chance, or? Since they exist, it’s probably a bad idea to devote resources to them without at least trying to figure out why the fence is there.
By hermetically sealing off the household from the broader community, whom they treat with indiscriminate suspicion, helicopter parents corrode the bonds that hold together social-cultural groups larger than the nuclear family. As public gathering places are abandoned and guest/host interactions at the household level become rare, the sense of group membership becomes more cerebral, and hence more wispy and uncertain — reduced to knowledge that we hold the same beliefs and follow the same practices as… well, y’know, the other people like us out there somewhere. Practices as simple as seeing the local mall all decorated for Christmastime, and hosting the neighborhood trick-or-treaters on Halloween, made our membership feel more corporeal and face-to-face — and therefore more real, and more reassuring.
The National Statuary Hall Collection:
The National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol is composed of statues donated by individual states to honor persons notable in their history. Originally set up in the old Hall of the House of Representatives, renamed National Statuary Hall, the expanding collection has since been spread throughout the Capitol.
About two thirds of them are politicians. There is one artist, and only a handful of writers.
There is also a king.
During The Sims’s protracted development, the team had debated whether to permit same-sex relationships in the game. If this digital petri dish was to accurately model all aspects of human life, from work to play and love, it was natural that it would facilitate gay relationships. But there was also fear about how such a feature might adversely affect the game. “No other game had facilitated same-sex relationships before—at least, to this extent—and some people figured that maybe we weren’t the ideal ones to be first, as this was a game that E.A. really didn’t want to begin with,” Barret told me. “It felt to me like a fear thing.” After going back and forth for several months, the team finally decided to leave same-sex relationships out of the game code.
When Barrett joined the company, in October, 1998, he was unaware of the decision. A fortnight into his new job, he found himself with nothing to do when his supervisor, the game’s lead programmer, Jamie Doornbos, took a short vacation. Jim Mackraz, Barrett’s boss, needed a task to occupy his new employee, and he handed Barrett a document that outlined how social interactions in the game would work; the underlying rules for the game’s A.I. that would dictate how the characters would dynamically interact with one another. “He didn’t think I could handle it with Jamie off on vacation, but he figured that at least I’d be out of his hair,” Barrett told me. “Neither he nor I realized that he’d given me an old design document to work from.”
That design document predated the decision to exclude gay relationships in the game. Its pages described a web of social interactions, in which every kind of romantic relationship was permitted. That week, Barrett confounded the expectations of his disbelieving boss. He successfully wrote the basic code for social interactions, including same-sex relationships. “In hindsight, I probably should have questioned the design,” Barrett, who is gay, said. “But the design felt right, so I just implemented it. Later, Will Wright stopped by my desk,” Barrett said. “He told me that liked the social interactions, and that he was glad to see that same-sex support was back in the game.” Nobody on the team questioned Barrett’s work. “They just pretty much ignored it,” he said. “After a while, everyone was just used to the design being there. It was widely expected that E.A. would just kill it, anyway.”
In early 1999, before E.A. had a chance to kill the design, Barrett was asked to create a demo of the game to be shown at E3. The demo would consist of three scenes from the game. These were to be so-called on-rails scenes—not a true, live simulation but one that was preplanned, and which would shake out the same way each time it was played, in order to show the game in its best light. One of the scenes was a wedding between two Sims characters. “I had run out of time before E3, and there were so many Sims attending the wedding that I didn’t have time to put them all on rails,” Barrett said.
On the first day of the show, the game’s producers, Kana Ryan and Chris Trottier, watched in disbelief as two of the female Sims attending the virtual wedding leaned in and began to passionately kiss. They had, during the live simulation, fallen in love. Moreover, they had chosen this moment to express their affection, in front of a live audience of assorted press. Following the kiss, talk of The Sims dominated E3. “You might say that they stole the show,” Barrett said. “I guess straight guys that make sports games loved the idea of controlling two lesbians.”
After The Sims’s successful E3 showing, the game’s future seemed secure. …
The ostensibly controversial design was, to a certain extent, protected by greater concerns about the project. “E.A. was more worried that The Sims would flop and hurt the SimCity franchise,” said Barrett. “It was also a different time; people weren’t so violently for or against same-sex relationships. They didn’t go out of the way to find it and react to it. The right-wing press didn’t have the platform they have today to scream. There was no Twitter, no Facebook, no blogs. I kinda hoped people would come at night with pitchforks and torches. But it never happened.”
The controversy came this year, when Nintendo released, in the West, its Sims-esque video game Tomodachi Life, a game in which same-sex relationships are forbidden.
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