Sofie Channel

Sofie Channel

Anonymous 0xe8
said (11mo ago #1058 ✔️ ✔️ 95% ✖️ ✖️✨ ):

Book Club: Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy.

Dr Alamariu dropped his groundbreaking dissertation last year and by now you have all had a chance to read it. Let's read it again and discuss. This book really hits hard doing two related things that I think are of supreme importance:

First, it re-contextualizes philosophy as the ideological and ultimately political program of the radicalized aristocratic spirit. It gives philosophy a definite end which is the creation of an ideal regime of breeding and training embodied in a state; the preservation and enhancement, at the biological level, of a sovereign community of god-like men of action informed by and carrying out the eternal cosmic order of nature.

This is not just giving content to philosophy, but giving the proper name to this radical Tradition as we have received it. Where many think of or would like to portray this program as a fringe if not outright criminal enterprise of a few malcontents or defeated regimes, Alamariu channeling Nietzsche confronts us with the fact that it is actually the foundation of our whole intellectual canon or even our whole civilization. He thereby elevates the dignity of this program to the highest level, or perhaps restores it to its proper but forgotten dignity. This is not something that can simply be forgotten or moved beyond.

Second, having done so, he challenges philosophy, the real philosophy, in the 21st century with the failure of Platonic philosophy to retain its radical esoteric core. Instead it has lost all its teeth and been taken over by flabby professors in tweed blazers. They try, as Plato did, to portray philosophy as a sort of limp-wristed "defense" of public virtue and normal respectable order. But where Plato did this as a political measure to protect the esoteric core of true philosophy, the modern pseudo-philosophers have simply forgotten it. The thing they now defend is the same stifling nomos of wretchedness that true philosophy was founded against. In turn, they have nothing but hysterical moralistic condemnation for the real thing and for the real will of their patron gods.

This happened because when you try to hide the real story out of cowardice, it is instead simply forgotten. This is why Athena, the patron goddess of philosophy, is also the patron goddess of heroes and of acts of great courage. True philosophy isn't something you might get tenure for, but something you might get executed for. Maybe philosophy can only be done by men of heroic and even tyrannical spirit. The platonic-straussian esotericism doesn't actually work and didn't work to preserve the possibility of true philosophy. In Alamariu's reading, it was Nietzsche's historical role to revive the real thing.

My take, inspired by a dream vision of this, is that Nietzsche's controversial disciples now speak with the voices of gods when they ask us, the aspiring students of true philosophy, the crucial question:

"Why are you hiding in there with the respectable professors when you should be out here in courage and glory with us?"

Dr. Alamariu's academic thesis can't quite ask or answer the question directly, but it seems to haunt the whole work, and his subsequent career is one definite answer to it. It's not the only possible answer. There are very good reasons for why Plato answered it in the way he did. The book adds a great deal of useful context around what that answer was and why, as well. It is worth reading just for that. But I think this is the question.

So it's in this spirit I want to re-read this book: to understand philosophy as an ends-bearing political tradition of supreme importance to our culture, and to explore the crucial question: should philosophy continue to hide its power level?

The schedule is as follows:

* Monday March 04: Intro and Chapter 1.

* Monday March 11: Chapter 2 and 3.

* Monday March 18: Chapter 4 and overall.

Let's use this thread to post any thoughts or notes on the book or the issues raised by it.

Dr Alamariu dropped (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 95% ✖️ ✖️✨

Anonymous 0xed
said (11mo ago #1080 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1082:

On page 65, Alamariu quotes Strauss's "Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy" as follows:

>Over and against the ruinous permissiveness of anarchism, Nietzsche asserts that precisely long lasting obedience to unnatural and unreasonable nomoi is the 'moral imperative of nature.' Physis calls for nomoi while preserving the distinction, nay, opposition of physis and nomos.

This strikes me as important. It's something I've been dwelling on for a while and may be part of the answer to OP's question. Nature, itself only concerned with strength, survival, and supremacy seems to demand that those who contend for its favor take a leap of faith on some system of commitments that is decidedly not that. Simple idealization of the will of nature or nature's god is too corrosive to the kind of order that could actually fulfill it. It's worth meditating on why this is the case.

Any form of life, to the extent that it is unified in a single organism, is making big plans and bets with its entire existence. In the northern hemisphere it is now spring and the trees are investing their sap, itself stored last summer and fall on the bet that summer would end but come again, in new growth that is still too early to pay for itself. By the time a mere incentive-follower would put out leaves, it would be too late and the leap-of-faith organisms would have the head start. And of course the greedy hill-climbing tree wouldn't survive even the mild coastal winters. Every niche and every organism is like this; it exists as an organism and not just a mass of unorganized lower life precisely because and to the extent that organized investment beats hill climbing.

But investment requires internal discipline. Resources have to be allocated away from their immediate holders to be stored or deployed in some way that is not obvious at the time. Sub-organisms are required to subordinate or even sacrifice themselves for the collective success. Locally rational incentive following will produce none of this. Worse, the overall logic by which the whole thing works may not be known to the system or any of its parts, but only to god. Thus the leap of faith taken on the investment in a particular pattern of life is necessarily irrational, based only on some shared faith in a nomos that came from god-knows-where. What is the source of this knowledge? (note it is actually real knowledge, just not subjectively justifiable.)

In life, this comes from the nature of the organism itself, that is, from the blood. The genetic material faithfully encodes knowledge of an advantageous nomos for the organism to constitute itself on. How this "revelation of the blood" comes to us and comes to be mostly correct was of course elucidated by Darwin. Organisms take their leaps of faith on different patterns of life, and the nature or nature's god selects them for further breeding.

In the social organization of man, this is no less true. Human communities are superorganisms that operate as a collective leap of faith on some supra-rational nomos that guides their shared investment into a way of life they themselves don't understand the consequences of. How do they know they're doing the right thing? They can't. They can only have faith in the nomos as given to them by the gods, and hope they aren't a failed experiment. In the long run, those nomoi which tend to be compatible with higher and stronger life will be selected by the gods for further meta-breeding, but they won't necessarily be *about* that.

The crisis that philosophy represents is that in some cases the revealed nomos itself contains the seeds of a corrosive condition that digs under its own faith (ie philosophy). But is philosophy a new type of cancer that just needs to be exterminated, a new type of nomos that can actually create social stability in its open and unapologetic form, or a sort of esotericism that needs to support an exoteric story that isn't quite the full picture? As faithful students of philosophy, the first possibility is not our concern, but we do have to distinguish the latter two.

On page 65, Alamariu (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xef
said (11mo ago #1082 ✔️ ✔️ 81% ✖️ ✖️ ):

>>1080
> Simple idealization of the will of nature or nature's god is too corrosive to the kind of order that could actually fulfill it. It's worth meditating on why this is the case.

As the quote from Strauss (referencing Nietzsche) indicates, man's nature, unlike that of chimpanzee, extends beyond itself to nomos. There is no option to live without nomos. One can only work for a good one, one that harmonizes with and fulfills rather than contravenes phusis.

Costin recognizes this at several points, noting that the Indo-European Steppe pastoralists had their own nomos. But the point doesn't sit well with him, and he often identifies nomos with the bad (gyno-gerontocratic) nomos, then writes as if man could disregard nomos altogether. Which kind of obscures the hard problem of regime.

The other thing that man's phusis extend beyond itself to is techne. Costin doesn't treat technology at all, but it's very much bound up with nomos.

As the quote from St (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 81% ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xf0
said (11mo ago #1083 ✔️ ✔️ 88% ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1090:

I feel that the contents of the sections Admin has laid out are so vast that we are going to need a new way to organize all our thoughts on Costin's work. One thread is probably going to make this way too disorganized.

Honestly, if something like a macro-thread could be created on sofiechan, that might be very useful here. A macro-thread could encompass a sub-thread on each of the chapters of Costin's book, and individual threads could be made about ideas within each of those sub-threads for their corresponding chapter.

I feel that the cont (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 88% ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xf0
said (11mo ago #1084 ✔️ ✔️ 89% ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1086 >>1087:

>Costin recognizes this at several points, noting that the Indo-European Steppe pastoralists had their own nomos. But the point doesn't sit well with him, and he often identifies nomos with the bad (gyno-gerontocratic) nomos, then writes as if man could disregard nomos altogether. Which kind of obscures the hard problem of regime.

I completely agree with this point.
I had not read this book before and I have to admit that I am pretty surprised by the general message. His take on the "altright" seems to indicate that he identifies himself as a kind of child rebelling against the system more than anything else (Either he doesn't understand the full reasons for the RW populist backlash in the West or he is hiding his power for strategic reasons). Reading further, it becomes clear that he views the gerontocracy as being the Great Satan of our time and that his proposed solution is, I guess, tyranny of the philosopher (himself)? Also, is Costin defending Critias? If so then he really is just seeking retribution against the current system without thinking further. He needs to flesh out a more concrete response to governance that is more than just the revolution/White Terror.

Interested to read more and there are a lot of great bits but I am somewhat skeptical of his claims so far (Although I do agree that the gerontocracy must be liquidated). His take on Plato in general also feels too much like committing the same error that liberals do when reading the classics: selective reading to maximize the relatability of the unique circumstances of the ancient world to fit our current circumstances and challenges.

I am also pretty curious as to what he means when he suggests that Plato was using a kind of proto-Straussian secret art of writing in order to conceal his eugenic power levels, when, for what I can tell Plato discusses eugenics explicitly and extensively in the Republic.

I completely agree w (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 89% ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xf0
said (11mo ago #1085 ✔️ ✔️ 89% ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1086 >>1088:

Costin's work also got me to thinking quite a lot about human genetics. What exactly is meant by "good" when it comes to eugenics? I don't think I have ever read concretely what Plato thinks are actually good qualities in humans, I have only ever read him speak in abstracts.

Who should actually be bred?

I don't really believe that physical attraction alone is the best way to select a mate, even though that is probably what many would say. If you breed a bunch of hot bimbos together for 10,000 years that is not going to give you anything beyond an phenotypically pleasing retard.

Costin mentions:
"modern universal ethics or morality, are latecomers and piggyback on the
fundamental and centuries-long work done by the manorial system and
Christianity in reshaping and perhaps rebreeding European man—for there
is strong evidence that many of the behaviors described, such as altruism
toward strangers, are by now hereditary in certain populations."

Is being altruistic toward strangers even a good trait? I guess Costin is critical of Christianity and might address such weaknesses later in the book.

When it comes to things like AI, obviously the whole point of focus is intelligence. If we are to make that our same focus in humans... well maybe the European man is not the ideal specimen.

I would be very interested to read any theories about selective breeding in East Asia, although I believe that Costin is fairly hostile to the Chinese...

Costin's work also g (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ 89% ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xf1
said (11mo ago #1086 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1089:

>>1084
>>1085
Yes in his wilder moments he defends Critias. His positive politics is that the world needs more unapologetic glory-seeking and regimes trying to actually be sovereign and escape the depressing cage of global gerontocracy and global favela-maximizing, up to and including "annihilate everything that exists". He sees youthful energy and much of wild nature as being vastly more valuable than the current beige default of endless boomer gerontocracy squeezing the blood out of the young to pay for their endlessly proliferating wretched clients.

>he suggests that Plato was using a kind of proto-Straussian secret art of writing in order to conceal his eugenic power levels

I think it's more specifically the tyrannical power level. "justice is the will of the stronger" etc. Plato played up the descriptive theory of justice maybe to avoid the awkwardness around whose imperatives. Then it took until Nietzsche to really re-discover the perspectival worldview that Plato may have had underneath.

>What exactly is meant by "good" when it comes to eugenics?

Alamariu and Nietzsche emphasize that this is a question for the founder of a people. It's a value judgement and a bet on what God will appreciate. There is no such thing as "the" good, only different forms of striving for life. Anyways all the authors involved in this work including plato except maybe Strauss are aligned on valuing basically the amoral heroic aryan aristocrat as the most noble type of man. Associated personalities like BAP are quite clear about this in the handsome thursday posts.

>If you breed a bunch of hot bimbos together for 10,000 years that is not going to give you anything beyond an phenotypically pleasing retard.

The most attractive people in the world are far from being retarded. While theoretically you might be able to breed beautiful retards, what we have in fact are beautiful geniuses and nobles. Dolph Lundgren (a handsome thursday favorite) supposedly has a very high IQ.

>Is being altruistic toward strangers even a good trait?

It is according to christians. But no, that's not what Alamariu thinks. He just notes it as an example of people being bred to an ideal.

>the whole point of focus is intelligence. If we are to make that our same focus in humans... well maybe the European man is not the ideal specimen.

Alamariu doesn't care about intelligence at all, and thinks the right spirit is much more important. He's quite harsh on the IQ fetishists. In any case the most noble specimens of european man are also many of the historical geniuses so the trade-off is again less real than the resentful nerds in hollywood would want you to believe.

Yes in his wilder mo (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xef
said (11mo ago #1087 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ):

>>1084
> Also, is Costin defending Critias?

He often refers to Critias, sometimes coyly, comparing him to the Austrian corporal. Is this defense?

Philosophers sometimes troll. Socrates does so often enough, as when he suggests that Callicles is talking like a butt boy. Nietzsche does so on almost every page. I take Costin to be trolling more than making a proposal.

> He needs to flesh out a more concrete response to governance ...

I believe he would say that the time for new governance has not come. The healthy forces in society are much too weak. The soil has not yet been prepared. The task of our day is fertilizing the soil, not yet planting seed.

> ... that is more than just the revolution/White Terror.

Franco, a most even-tempered Christian, had to kill many tens of thousands of Spanish leftists to obtain social peace in Spain for a few decades. One sometimes doesn't have a choice about these things if you actually want to prevail.

> I am also pretty curious as to what he means when he suggests that Plato was using a kind of proto-Straussian secret art of writing in order to conceal his eugenic power levels, when, for what I can tell Plato discusses eugenics explicitly and extensively in the Republic.

I am quite sure that Plato writes esoterically. There is abundant evidence of this unrelated to Costin's book. What his esoteric teachings were is far more contentious.

The eugenics in the Republic is in reference to the Kallipolis, a "city in speech" that Socrates disavows as possible (or even perhaps desirable) to implement. So that eugenics program is, in the text, not ostensibly an actual "policy proposal." Costin is saying: but maybe it was.

He often refers to C (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xef
said (11mo ago #1088 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ):

>>1085
> I don't think I have ever read concretely what Plato thinks are actually good qualities in humans, I have only ever read him speak in abstracts.

I think Plato's view of the good qualities to be sought can be readily inferred from his prescriptions for education, which focus on:

* Gymnastics
* Military Training
* Music and Arts
* Mathematics

All of these are preparatory for philosophy. For Plato, if you're good at these things, you're good.

I think Plato's view (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xef
said (11mo ago #1089 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1091:

>>1086
> It's a value judgement and a bet on what God will appreciate.

Unlike Nietzsche, I'd say that one's bet on what God will appreciate can turn out to be right or wrong. So there is a right and wrong in the betting.

> There is no such thing as "the" good, only different forms of striving for life.

God isn't just appreciating or not at random. Reality is that which selects, and reality has stable structures. So there is such a thing as "the" good; you just have to describe it at a sufficiently high meta-level, not at a conventional object-level.

This is where I differ from Nietzsche. I think Nietzsche is correct locally, but something more like Teilhard de Chardin's view is correct globally.

Unlike Nietzsche, I' (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xf2
said (11mo ago #1090 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ):

>>1083
>if something like a macro-thread could be created on sofiechan, that might be very useful here

I think tags will be how we do macro-threads, and various kinds of horizontal and vertical linking between top-level threads. Good point on the use case. But that's all later. Developmental resources currently amount to one (1) mid-witted retired philosopher-engineer who's never written serious software. Hey at least I'm mostly full time.

Until then, how about we do separate threads for chapter two and chapter three and see how that plays. Consider this the thread for chapter 1.

--admin

I think tags will be (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xf3
said (11mo ago #1091 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ):

>>1089
I agree that both Nietzsche and Teilhard are correct in their domains. What I mean by there being no "the" good is that there is no singular subjective nomos that is the true or correct one. Yes of course Gnon as the selector is quite regular and even quite transparent about what He wants, but it's not always obvious what's going to work, nor how to get there from here. Also, there are many different niches which inherently are occupied by different kinds of beings. That's where the leap of faith and particularity comes from.

I agree that both Ni (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xf5
said (11mo ago #1096 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ):

> I would be very interested to read any theories about selective breeding in East Asia, although I believe that Costin is fairly hostile to the Chinese...

Well, the word "Chinese" is somewhat foreign to pre-modern civilizations that arose in China (geographical region). Nietzsche complains about the "English view" (of Hume). I'll try to disambiguate the word as far as possible so that it has a more concrete reference.

With regard to selective breeding in East Asia, like any pre-modern civilization I think most states were organized by class more than anything. Polygyny was common so the more successful a man was, the more concubines he could take and consequently the more children he can have. The expansion of the bureaucracy in East Asia in the last millennium, most dramatically in China but also somewhat in Korea and Japan, probably has given rise to some genetic consequences, but it would be difficult to find research about this. I would guess that verbal intelligence would have been selected for as a result, to the detriment of certain other traits. "European man" as a category strikes me as roughly as well defined as "East Asian man" at this point. There are different phenotypes and statistical averages to be sure but at this point it's not clear what exactly we should be breeding for. At any rate a well-functioning society requires a
few different kinds of skillful individuals and their ability to work together cohesively is as important as absolute ability metrics. This forum seems to be able to test both these aspects though.

The double meaning of the Greek word nomos as both law and melody is interesting, there is a similar conflation of the two concepts when Confucius discusses the rectification of names:

> When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties (禮 - li (leiX)) and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded.

What I think this really points to is a certain association between the esoteric and exoteric through the arts, that philosophy in itself, requires these additional aspects to create social stability.

The Meiji Restoration has come up in a few discussions before. With regard to East Asia, the modernization of Japan required a large number of Western concepts to be translated as Wasei-kango (和製漢語 - Japanese-made Chinese words, where the characters for Japan and China are more neutral and don't have the same kind of nation-state baggage). Among the words that now needed equivalents were: philosophy, culture, revolution, law (in the modern legal sense), democracy, republic, etc. The study of the Spring and Autumn Annals in East Asia, probably bears some analogy to the study of Ancient Greek history in the West. The Annals and their associated commentaries were just considered an important book for a long time, simultaneously history, philosophy, culture, etc. That said there is a character for "scholar", and a particularly jarring insult for a "rotten scholar" - i.e. someone who only knows how to read books and not actually working for the health of the social order, now exemplified by certain flabby professors in our decadent times.

Well, the word "Chin (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xef
said (11mo ago #1099 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ):

>>1098
> In the sofiechan context this leads to possibly two metrics of interest - coordination among the aristocracy, and the relative strength of aristocracy compared with the monarch.

In the context of Alamariu, we'd also want a metric of quality of the aristocracy, where "quality" is something like "propensity for productive action." Coordination might be an outcome of quality, but the quality itself is arguably more fundamental and relates to practices around marriage, child rearing, and tutoring.

In the context of Al (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xf5
said (11mo ago #1100 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1102:

> In the context of Alamariu, we'd also want a metric of quality of the aristocracy, where "quality" is something like "propensity for productive action."

Agreed, my initial thought with regard to measuring coordination on the channel was some measure of agreement on the quality of posts. If the aristocracy can agree on that ideally other productive actions should follow.

Agreed, my initial t (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xe8
said (11mo ago #1101 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1110 >>1111:

This week we're on Pindar and Callicles.

The whole Pindar section was quite inspiring as far as laying out a worldview that takes inborn excellence seriously. Scientifically speaking, that this must be the way we should see things is less and less controvertible: seemingly over 50% of almost any trait is genetically heritable (as measured by twin studies), and almost nothing is robustly attributable to education. Education and training has an effect, but it always seems to be one of either retarding or developing inborn excellence from or to its genetic limit, not shaping fundamental character. Furthermore we find with Darwin that this blood heritability is fundamental to the nature and formation of life itself. But the obvious consequences of these scientific truths is a worldview vastly different from our modern nonsense.

Pindar and Costin's implication that proper education is re-barbarization under the tutelage of Charon the beast-man in the woods is very interesting. As someone with kids, I took note. I don't know what this looks like though.

The Callicles section is really the meat of this whole book in my reading. That's where Costin is re-grounding philosophy as being actually calliclean under the surface, and giving the calliclean project (tyranny in service of selective breeding) the full dignity of Platonic philosophy. However, Plato's (esoteric) response to Callicles (that he needs to chill out and hide his power level, that philosophy needs to be the champion of public virtue while secretly maintaining its edge) is also convincing. I think we'll have to do a re-reading of both Republic and Gorgias through this lens to see what we really think Plato was getting at, and what we can learn.

Next week we're discussing the Nietzsche part, which is where Costin really engages with the retrospective on whether Plato or Callicles was right in this dispute. I take it from his remarks and subsequent career that Costin thinks that right now at least, Callicles is right, because we need to remember the real thing and not bury it under mountains of careful words. I think that's true to an extent, but IMO ultimately Plato is right that philosophy does have to maintain the esoteric/exoteric double consciousness where the philosopher disregards and rises above nomos while being its champion. We can discuss conclusions next week.

I previously thought we should maybe spin out separate thread for each chapter, but I decided to keep discussion in this thread to avoid an annoying proliferation of selective breeding threads.

This week we're on P (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xf7
said (11mo ago #1102 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ):

>>1100
agreement on quality of posts will be seen in the confidence interval as a high number for up and a low number for down, with little left over. Vigorous disagreement is visible as a firmly mixed reception (about equal up and down with little in the middle). This system may not be optimal and how we interpret signals and represent the distribution will probably be changed at some point, though I have no concrete plans to do anything but what we have. --admin

agreement on quality (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xef
said (11mo ago #1110 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1113:

>>1101
> seemingly over 50% of almost any trait is genetically heritable (as measured by twin studies), and almost nothing is robustly attributable to education. Education and training has an effect, but it always seems to be one of either retarding or developing inborn excellence from or to its genetic limit, not shaping fundamental character.

I'm a hereditarian and have only contempt for blank-slate nonsense. Most of the important traits seems to have a heritability of around 0.6, maybe 0.7.

On the other hand, I dislike the way implications are often drawn for education by hereditarians. It's one thing to beat down bad public policies based on blank-slate assumptions. It's quite another to be indifferent for our own kids. (I'm *not* saying OP makes this mistake. He just provided the impetus for me to draw out the point.)

First off, even a heritability of 0.7 still leaves 0.3 for the environment, and that's much more than I would want to leave to chance for my kid.

But the point is actually much stronger than that. There's an obvious sense in which education really does matter.

Question: In 1600, what percentage of the very most intelligent Europeans learned calculus?
Answer: Zero percent, because calculus wasn't invented until the late 1600's.

There are traditions of knowledge, sometimes critical for a given stage of civilization, that can only be acquired through explicit learning, and which rarely take place apart from explicit education of some form.

All the studies touted by my fellow hereditarians purporting to show that education doesn't matter for life outcomes are bogus because they are unwittingly holding educational institutions constant. In twin studies, the twins may be raised by different families, but they are usually still in the same country, and always in the same time period, which means that the educational practices to which they are exposed are, statistically, the same.

But what would happen if educational institutions at large (in a given country) just uniformly stopped teaching, say, calculus? Would high IQ kids magically learn it anyway, as if calculus were in the genes? Obviously not. Even high IQ kids only learn calculus by being taught it. (A tiny percentage might teach themselves –– irrelevant to my point.)

Education does actually matter strongly, but in a fine-grained way that statistical studies cannot pick up.

I'm a hereditarian a (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xef
said (11mo ago #1111 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ):

>>1101
> I think we'll have to do a re-reading of both Republic and Gorgias through this lens to see what we really think Plato was getting at, and what we can learn.

The two most important works of Plato for getting at his political philosophy in its esoteric/exoteric dimensions are Republic and Laws. (People overlook Laws, but it contains more directly about this than even Republic.)

Callicles in the Gorgias is great for teeing up the issue, but I don't think the rest of the Gorgias has much more on this particular point.

The two most importa (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xf8
said (11mo ago #1112 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ):

> But what would happen if educational institutions at large (in a given country) just uniformly stopped teaching, say, calculus? Would high IQ kids magically learn it anyway, as if calculus were in the genes? Obviously not. Even high IQ kids only learn calculus by being taught it. (A tiny percentage might teach themselves –– irrelevant to my point.)

I think this is where it cuts to a more epistemic debate on education.
Calculus is a good point of discussion because it is typically where youth today are first introduced to proof-based mathematics and see how mathematics is actually done as opposed to applied. If you are teaching calculus, is your focus on how to differentiate and integrate, performing symbolic manipulation as necessary, or on the reading and formulating of proofs and arguments about the abstractions that are being introduced? Symbolic manipulation by computers is now very good, but the ability to really read mathematical texts will probably stay relevant for a long time.

In the 1600s Euclid's Elements was the standard way to learn mathematics, not just to apply a bunch of formulae but to actually work towards mathematical maturity. The desire to read mathematical arguments is rare but even a child with possibly less innate mathematical ability would benefit from such an approach that focuses on the method of argument - they would probably have a better appreciation for mathematics, be better able to apply it in their lives in the future, etc. Not everyone is going to have or need superb knife technique, but it is important for just about any able-bodied person to learn the right way to hold a knife and why it is the right way, even if only so that they don't chop their fingers off.

I think this is wher (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xe8
said (11mo ago #1113 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ):

>>1110
Yes this is crucial. Getting training in traditions of skill is immensely important. In a way it's another kind of inheritance. Do you get the memes that work along with the genes? Good point that heritability studies hold constant the information environment that we are commonly raised in. If we vary the environment of available memetic traditions, maybe we can gain quite a lot.
This is something we should dream of and develop visions for. Imagine education taken to the limit of effectiveness in exposing students to the most important traditions of skill. One who came out of such a program could be expected to be way beyond the average on dimensions that matter.
The other thing worth noting is that heritability studies often focus on things which are not easily gameable ie things which are not matters of simple skill. Of course IQ and even income largely don't follow education; they can't be taught.

Yes this is crucial. (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xf9
said (11mo ago #1114 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1122:

Finishing the reading on Callicles and beginning the reading on Nietzsche, I'm struck that this problem of the esoteric/exoteric structure of the narrative of philosophy is crucial. It deserves much more thought. In particular, what in our own time is the proper exoteric story of philosophy, and what is the way we should understand the esoteric? Of course we can't yet discuss the full esoteric story even here, but broadly I think Nietzsche and Alamariu and others are capturing it with this intense emphasis on breeding, phusis, nature, and the philosopher-ubermensch as a wild man outside conventional morality. Has anyone studied the parallels between the Nietzschean ubermensch and the idealized philosopher? I would guess not because so few seem to have understood this angle, but it seems like something that should be done.

The exoteric today in my view needs to take the form of a rebooted political philosophy that is informed deeply by the esoteric criminal wisdom, but reforms it and applies it responsibly to the problem of public governance and institutions. It must be impeccably legitimate, not in the sense that it kowtows to existing convention, but in that it establishes a convention that could possibly work, which shows itself to be willing to collaborate with the actually existing regime potentialities, while creating a new a bold animating mythos for society. How else are we to reach the future? This is my understanding of "Governance Futurism" etc being the exoteric frame of our set.

But it's this constraint of needing to establish an exoteric frame that could possibly work that Nietzsche seems to have so far failed. He does not provide a vision of society and proper structures and relations therin, but only this resurfaced philosophical will-to-power. There is a reason his thought has not taken off as a legitimating principle outside of fringe groups, and why most people calling themselves Nietzschean seem some kind of incontinent. His thought is very powerful, but somehow unfinished. We should finish it.

Finishing the readin (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xef
said (11mo ago #1122 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1123:

>>1114

Really good observations overall.

> what in our own time is the proper exoteric story of philosophy, and what is the way we should understand the esoteric?

Alamariu interprets Nietzsche as abandoning Plato's use of esotericism as no longer fitting the modern situation. Nietzsche is willing to state what he takes to be the truths of human nature openly, even if it takes a century of more for them to be culturally received. If Nietzsche has an esotericism of his own, it's more a matter of writing with a particular future readership in mind, rather than of outright hiding things.

Of course, none of that means that we, over a century later, cannot reassess the matter.

> The exoteric today in my view needs to take the form of a rebooted political philosophy that is informed deeply by the esoteric criminal wisdom, but reforms it and applies it responsibly ...

That sounds right. One aspect to reflect on is the need to address distinct audiences in distinct registers. Political philosophy can only meaningfully be addressed to elites, but in a nation of 340 million people, there are still great differences between addressing a few thousand individuals, the top 1%, and the top 10%.

> this constraint of needing to establish an exoteric frame that could possibly work that Nietzsche seems to have so far failed.

I think that's right. Part of this is internal to the content of his thought. I've been rereading his work, and it's striking the extent to which he naively accepts a crude 19th-century materialism and positivism. I'm not saying that's the whole of his thought, but it's in the background, and sometimes he'll say things that have a "Believe the Science" ring that I'm sure sounded way better in 1880. This limits his ability to build up a vision of a telos, and telos is fundamental.

The other problem is his readers. Once an author becomes popular, many will read him who are not among those who can benefit. Nietzsche requires a great deal of thinking beyond the page, and most are not capable of that.

Some of his best readers were among the so-called German "conservative revolutionaries" of the 1920's, such as Spengler and Jünger, but that movement got quashed by National Socialism and World War II. I think the best of those writers are worth revisiting.

Really good observat (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xfa
said (11mo ago #1123 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ):

>>1122
>German "conservative revolutionaries" of the 1920's, such as Spengler and Jünger
Yes. Alamariu has an interesting footnote right towards the end of this book where he disavows NS as an expression of the Nietzschean tradition, and cites these guys as the real thing. Now of course he had to say that in 2015 America, but it doesn't have that feeling of reluctant moralistic boilerplate, and he has repeated this assertion in his subsequent much more freely spoken work that he is not actually a Nazi. Of course it's all the same from the perspective of modern America; anything too german, confident, strong, and eugenic might as well be the unique gospel of Hitler himself.

But this fact, that there was a significant cultural movement (lebensreform, germanic hellenism, conservative revolution, etc) in Germany and elsewhere in these interesting directions that was not just Nazism, is very important for those of us looking for the lost wisdom to reform our own civilization. They were doing just that, they were at the height of western cultural, philosophical, and scientific prowess, and their work is now totally neglected under the shadow of Hitler, the bulk of it being untranslated or even lost. Talk about an underrated probable goldmine.

I'm learning to read german precisely for this reason, and I think I'll be following up this reading with some of the obvious ones (spengler, junger). Another author who apparently bears a piece of this is Goethe.

>Political philosophy can only meaningfully be addressed to elites, but in a nation of 340 million people, there are still great differences between addressing a few thousand individuals, the top 1%, and the top 10%.

Yes. My reading on this is that if we get the elite-level legitimacy right, we can do a hell of a lot, and if it's actually solving the problems, the common man will come along as well. The trouble will be overcoming the class hatred. Right now anything the elites are doing is reflexively hated my the populists, and anything that would be good for the common man and society is taboo among the elites. It will be a hell of a fight politically, but I think the intellectual difficulty is concentrated in getting the exoteric elite official political philosophy right. What comes after "progressive equal opportunity capitalist liberal democracy" as the legitimacy-bearing ideology? How much is it an ideological problem and how much is it a problem of actually organizing the new coalitions?

Yes. Alamariu has an (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xfb
said (11mo ago #1124 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1125:

This section on Nietzsche on Aristocracy and it's decline as a prerequisite for high culture is stirring my theory muscles. I've been thinking recently on what it is that really distinguishes the psychopolitical castes in society, and I've come back around as always to my favorite idealized three-caste model of social order:

The productive caste is most people who produce, accumulate, and invest wealth. I deliberately roll the capitalists and workers together in this one because I'm not so interested in their interactions as much as the psychological limitations of the capitalist mind itself. The purpose of this caste in social order is to produce taxable surplus. They are held in place by both force and a psychological domination whereby it is not even thinkable to them to act politically. It feels reckless and criminal to allocate their resources to anything other than consumption and investment. The possiblity doesn't register as psychologically "real". It's this psychological and ideological frame of reference where you are an individually rational self-interested worker-investor-consumer that defines the bounds of their activity. This frame of reference is psychologically plausible enough (I just need to produce/get more and then I'll be happy and fulfilled), but it is also enforced by punishment for deviation. This is Plato's craftsmen&merchants.

The political caste are the ones who actually enforce and defend the social order, taxing the productives and directing their resources to defence, power production, status quo maintenence, and various transcendent legitimate uses of surplus. This is your Washington swamp, activists, and philanthropists (much rotten relative to the ideal). The key problem raised in this chapter is how they have to both produce a psychological type capable of great political force, and also keep such types constrained within the existing regime of legitimate modes of action that the system knows how to coordinate. This means observing many taboos and strictures, epistemic compromises and so on that make it possible to coordinate. They are held from becoming tyrants by these strictures. When they decay, you get tyrants and philosophers. In our own time, we have much and very severe decay of the political regime, though pessimistically maybe not in the way that produces high culture. Our system maybe failed by continually degrading the level of force it's personnel could muster, rather than by losing the ability to contain them. But back to theory, a problem with this is that the political caste themselves are not so capable of reflective repair of the political strictures themselves. The system wouldn't be stable enough if they were. As such, they basically consider the revisionist task to be criminal and foolish similar to how the productives view the political as criminal and foolish. That task falls to the next caste. I think these political types are Plato's auxiliaries, though they may also have some guardian nature.

The philosopher/tyrant caste may or may not be able to exist in any kind of permanent capacity, but they are the ones who have the perspective and extra-conventional power outside the political strictures of the day to define and change what is legitimate and therefore how the political caste coordinates and enforces. Their job is to reflect on the whole system and be beasts relative to its laws, but also to be gods who are the paragons and champions of whatever kind of virtue the society needs. Note in my model we have given these types a much more prosocial telos than in Costin's reading, where they seem to be just criminals who exist for their own lust for truth and glory. This purpose-giving and legitimacy-defining role is sorely needed right now to fix up our society, but note that this need is not any need that can be conventionally understood by society. That would be circular. It's more like a "request for philosopher-tyrants" issued by God, that some of us seem to be able to hear.

I seem to be out of space.

This section on Niet (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xfc
said (11mo ago #1125 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1130:

>>1124
Continuing, my big question in reading this book is still how we are to construct a legitimate role, and more fundamentally a viable strategy, for "political philosophy" as defined here. Nietzsche doesn't, Alamariu doesn't, and Plato's answer is 2500 years out of date. My attempt to define a sort of narrative structure of how philosophers (actually existing philosophy which I will just hubristically assert is represented by us and our friends) fit into society and how the other classes relate to them (us) is maybe my attempt to re-run what Plato did but for us and our times. What's the appropriate answer now? How are we to proceed with our program of reform? What I have sketched above wouldn't work yet because it's not concrete and "compiled" for the target classes yet, but I'm trying to get closer.

Continuing, my big q (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xfe
said (11mo ago #1131 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1132:

Strauss is frustrating because he seems to delight in not saying what he means. Reading "persecution and the art of writing" it's obvious he's some manner of reactionary elitist but he doesn't seem to want to come out and endorse any actual worldview that we could work with. Maybe it's because he was a little too close to and alienated by the second coming of Critias there in Germany. He claims his secret writing scheme will somehow keep alive his tradition among the intelligent few, but how's that working out for him?

In this book, the kojeve Strauss debate is cool but almost entirely because of kojeve's honesty, or at least Alamariu's paraphrase (I haven't read either side of the debate). Page 281 is the heart of it where kojeve is paraphrased as saying that the philosopher has to become a tyrant to test his ideas historically. Without implementation, ideas are in danger of becoming a meaningless babble. It is the historical playing out of an idea that is it's only claim on truth.

I guess kojeve is being critical with his very cogent articulation of how the idea of human nature and philosophy leads directly to mass training and eugenics. Glorious. But of course Strauss refuses to even acknowledge this and therefore adds nothing, leaving it up to his enemies to define the philosophical program.

Strauss is frustrati (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xef
said (11mo ago #1132 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ):

>>1131
> Strauss is frustrating because he seems to delight in not saying what he means. ... it's obvious he's some manner of reactionary elitist but he doesn't seem to want to come out and endorse any actual worldview ...

That's right. He practices esoteric writing even more than Plato, arguably to the point of futility.

> Maybe it's because he was a little too close to and alienated by the second coming of Critias there in Germany.

That's definitely a factor. For eight years after he earned his doctorate, until 1930, he was devoted student of Nietzsche, close to German "conservative revolutionary" thought. As late as 1933, he expressed sympathy for "fascist, authoritarian and imperial principles" in a letter to Karl Löwith. But he was also a Jew and knew he had to get out of Germany, and the only place to go was the West, which was about to go to war with Germany. I think that his writing in America is very much conditioned by that situation and its aftermath.

That's right. He pra (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xff
said (11mo ago #1133 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1134 >>1135:

> Continuing, my big question in reading this book is still how we are to construct a legitimate role, and more fundamentally a viable strategy, for "political philosophy" as defined here. Nietzsche doesn't, Alamariu doesn't, and Plato's answer is 2500 years out of date.

> As the quote from Strauss (referencing Nietzsche) indicates, man's nature, unlike that of chimpanzee, extends beyond itself to nomos. There is no option to live without nomos. One can only work for a good one, one that harmonizes with and fulfills rather than contravenes phusis.

Perhaps the most critical aspect of a reinterpretation in our time is how to re-interpret phusis. Since the decline of the Greek aristocracy would have directly affected the ability of the Greek polis to defend itself, that gives a very direct impetus to efforts to redirect the polis towards the creation of military genius, which Costin describes as "aristocratic phusis "radicalized" and unbound". Considering the polis as a superorganism, this is clearly in the interest of the organisms that comprise it, including the helots. But the atomization of society makes it difficult to model any group in human society as a coherent superorganism anymore, except on the absolute fringes of modernity such as uncontacted tribes. We could consider the Davos attendees, numbering in the thousands, as such a elite group of the current world "civilization", but they do not appear to be a well-coordinated group and at any rate their way of life appears to be unable to perpetuate itself. A successful aristocracy would be able to spread its memes and its genes over space and time.

> But it's this constraint of needing to establish an exoteric frame that could possibly work that Nietzsche seems to have so far failed. He does not provide a vision of society and proper structures and relations therein, but only this resurfaced philosophical will-to-power.

I like the ideas of the Lebensreform movement. They are very compelling with regard to an approach to surviving the environment of societal collapse. But the difficulty in our times for philosophers courting tyrants is that even the most interesting of them, e.g. Bukele, have difficulty making a case for the expansion of a way of life, which would be seen in birth rates. I agree with the other anon that the tension between techne and phusis needs to be addressed, with regard to techne that limits phusis, and that which liberates phusis.

Perhaps the most cri (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xef
said (11mo ago #1134 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1135:

>>1133
> ... the atomization of society makes it difficult to model any group in human society as a coherent superorganism anymore ...

This point is key. For both Plato and Aristotle, a polis needed to be small. In the Laws, Plato puts the ideal number of citizens at 5040. There are good reasons relating to coordination for favoring the small (think of Elon firing 80% of Twitter employees).

It's useless to think of modern nation-state, much less a very large one of 340 million, as anything like a polis. (But you conceivably could have a Society operating within a political party as one.)

> I like the ideas of the Lebensreform movement.

Also, see the earlier Turner (gymnastic) movement in Germany prior to 1848 and in the U.S. afterwards.

> ... the tension between techne and phusis needs to be addressed, with regard to techne that limits phusis, and that which liberates phusis.

Yes. One way I think of this is to apply a deliberate, selective process like that of the Amish, only with an aim of supporting phusis rather than mere conservatism.

This point is key. F (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0x100
said (11mo ago #1135 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1150 >>1471:

>>1133
you are right to tie phusis back to an aestheticization of the virtues necessary for the power and survival of a human community (in the ancient greek case, military virtue and therefore athleticism, bravery, and intelligence. In our case ???). You are also absolutely correct to point out that there are few identifiable human communities ("superorganisms") achieving power and survival right now. Maybe the Chinese will do alright? The Davos elite are high status, but getting wrecked on "abrahamic" terms (ie no kids). The anglo fizzled out almost a hundred years ago. The germans and japanese got wrecked in the war. The thing/people that won the war is this corrosive financial post-modernity that subverts and destroys all distinction and aristocratic potentiality. And even they aren't obviously winning. It really feels like a worldwide outbreak of anti-social fungal infection. I can only keep coming back to the imagery of the kali yuga and the need for a firm break into a new golden age. The greeks came out of the bronze age collapse after all.

So I think our own study of "nature" has a very different question to also deal with. Not just how to retain the political conditions for the cultivation of the erromenesteroi, but what kind of political life is even viable in the current technological and historical condition. In our time especially we have the questions pertaining to technology, industry, globalization, computerization and what that all means for us uplifted apes as the apex platform for higher life. Will AI make human community obsolete? Will industrial society destroy the biological and human conditions of its own existence? Will a small crew of globalist oligarchs reduce the rest of the world to reddit-tier normie slaves? I don't know.

This is why I want to re-read Xenosystems and Teilhard. Land is *the* philosopher of potentially post-human "nature" and may be able to offer some insight. We may have to just accelerate and leap-of-faith through this profound uncertainty, and accelerationist philosophy at least deals with that condition.

Actually Plato and co faced a similar problem. They were all dreaming of the perfect polis, but by the time they had those conversations they were already through the Peloponnesian war, and the polis as a political unit was dead. It was Alexander, the civilization-empire, and Rome that rapidly became the new political unit, until Rome faced a situation like ours in which life simply ceased to go on and it slowly rotted down by exotic cults and barbarian interlopers. What's that saying? The owl of minerva flies only at dusk. By the time you can understand something rationally, it's already obsolete. True history happens on the still-irrational and unknown frontier, where the gods can speak.

>>1134 is right that the nation-state is dead as a polis or anything like it. That doesn't stop 20th century philosophers from dreaming of the ideal state, but they have the same problem: the state as political unit is an obsolete form. The new form has not yet shown itself because we have not yet hit the extreme competitive austerity that will burn away everything that isn't working. We can only guess at it, listen to the gods, and make our leaps of faith.

The bet I am inclined to make is that a general purpose internet forum can be at the foundation of a new kind of abstract polis, hybridizing a living community of several thousand of the best humans and their followers with carefully designed computerization of the social and political processes. The core issue as I see it is to design technical countermeasures by which a small crew of motivated philosophers can defend a larger community against the psyops which have destroyed most of society. This feels like the kind of thing that could be wily enough to survive and self-improve through the end of the kali-yuga.

you are right to tie (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0x105
said (10mo ago #1147 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1163:

> selective breeding in East Asia

> Maybe the Chinese will do alright?

The PRC would need to go beyond Oriental despotism, but they are limited by their internal contradictions. Costin's disdain for Oriental despotism may offer some guidance with regard to bureaucracies.

Ming China was rich, but very effectively squandered its chance at true greatness. To be fair, after taking the throne, Emperor Yungle did send the Ming treasure voyages to bring more states into the Ming sphere of influence, but his paranoia after usurping the throne led to a shift in power from scholar-bureaucrats towards eunuchs.

Costin describes defining features of eunuchs as follows:

> Eunuchs, devoid of an identity and posterity of their own, were seen as the perfect loyal functionaries to carry out the will of a centralized bureaucratic tyranny. This is the distillation of "meritocracy," and the modern total State apparently has plenty of virtual eunuchs to fill out the function in our time — and seems eager to promote many more.

https://medium.com/@CostinAlamariu/rule-of-the-global-eunuch-88ef02a3e64c

The eunuchs were soon accorded a spy agency of their own, the Eastern Depot, with some (Wei Chung-hsien) reaching legendary levels of corruption. Simultaneously, imperial examinations for the civil service became increasingly banal. What had been an exercise in composing verse in Tang China became the eight-legged essay - the equivalent of the five-paragraph essay. Outside the Great Wall, Dorgon and his Manchu army were presented with an opening by the Ming general Wu San-kuei. 120,000 Manchus became the 1 percent in the new dynasty with their superior organization on horseback, but the Eight Banner Army quickly added the more sedentary and demilitarized residents within the Wall to its ranks.

The Manchus inherited the bureaucracy and grew decadent with time. When George Macartney presented muskets (https://journals.openedition.org/extremeorient/2457) to Emperor Ch'ien-lung, the emperor wrote to King George III that "I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country's manufactures." (http://academics.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/China/208/READINGS/qianlong.html). The request to acquire Chusan (and utilize its harbor near modern day Shanghai) was rebuffed and Macartney left empty handed. Muskets would prove effective in opening up the Shanghai British Concession, which would merge with the American one to form the International Concession. Omnia juncta in uno.

The port grew rapidly, quickly accounting for almost half of China's trade. Tastes and influences were shaped by the international arrivals as much as the influx of the gentry from the Yangtze River Delta fleeing the chaos of the Taiping Rebellion.
(https://www.mcgill.ca/mchg/student/lilong/chapter1)

The way I see it, re-barbarization, to the extent that it could establish a new order, supplanting what has gone stagnant, has to originate from a novel method of organization that is able to provide - in our case perhaps more spiritually than materially. It has to be barbaric in its existence, unleashing aristocratic potentiality, while claiming liberalism as its banner.

The PRC would need t (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xef
said (10mo ago #1150 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ):

>>1135
> Maybe the Chinese will do alright?

A key fact about the current CCP is just how deeply Westernized it is. They are attempting to manage China's ascent. They may simply manage its decline. But one thing is certain: they sure are managing (in Burnham's sense). The one thing I don't see from them is any new source of ideas or energy.

A key fact about the (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xe8
said (10mo ago #1163 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1174:

>>1147
>It has to be barbaric in its existence, unleashing aristocratic potentiality, while claiming liberalism as its banner.
Why do we have to claim liberalism as our banner?

Why do we have to cl (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xef
said (10mo ago #1174 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1178:

>>1163
> Why do we have to claim liberalism as our banner?

It wasn't my statement, but I assume the thought is that it's like Augustus claiming to "restore the Republic" lest he be accused of becoming a monarch, or Lincoln claiming to serve the Declaration of Independence, lest he be accused of traducing the Constitution regarding the Southern states.

In other words, it is sometimes prudent to claim the cover of past legitimating ideologies even as one constructs a new ideology of one's own.

Personally, I think it's a tricky question as to when this is actually necessary or helpful.

It wasn't my stateme (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0x114
said (10mo ago #1178 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ), referenced by >>1179:

>>1174
The problem at the heart of all this is the problem of the irrationality of ideology. Of course you have to have some exoteric mythos of what you're doing that comes with a lot of legitimacy. But of course since you're doing something new, what you're actually doing is this other thing that people necessarily(?) don't notice, or choose not to notice. Ideology, to work, has to somehow be non-explicit, because it is the pre-rational foundation. I am really bothered by this because I like understanding my own perspective and i like philosophy. I have to believe that ideology can come to some kind of reflective equilibrium.

But yeah sure maybe we're doing the real democracy (monarchy) and the real liberalism (the rights of gentlemen) and the real anti-racism (hereditary meritocracy). Maybe we're not that cynical. Maybe this is maturity for the philosopher, to stop caring about the labels and really be substance-first.

The problem at the h (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xef
said (10mo ago #1179 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ):

>>1178
> > But yeah sure maybe we're doing the real democracy (monarchy) and the real liberalism (the rights of gentlemen) and the real anti-racism (hereditary meritocracy).

It's tricky because esotericism suffers from the problem of the noble lie: that your successors may "lose the joke."

But it sometimes seems necessary. For example, BAP has recently been arguing against public hereditarianism a la Aporia (https://www.aporiamagazine.com/) not because it isn't true, but because it's hopeless as politics. Some of this is a matter of choosing communication channels.

It's tricky because (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

Anonymous 0xf5
said (10mo ago #1180 ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️ ):

> In other words, it is sometimes prudent to claim the cover of past legitimating ideologies even as one constructs a new ideology of one's own.

Agreed, the cover is what provides security, and provides a barrier to external threats (impeccability). For an internet community, especially considering possible threat models, this sort of barrier is far stronger than material security, say, in the form of cybersecurity. In my experience, liberalism exoterically retains the governing legitimacy. In the US, a "liberal" will often claim that the problems lie not with liberalism, but with capitalism. A "conservative" will often claim that the problems lie with "Big Government".

If we exoterically claim to be defending liberalism, then we could can also exoterically agree with critiques such as capitalism or Big Government or some other bogeymen being the problem. This would also prevent problems from the censors, whose attempts at censure would then threaten their own legitimacy. This could be a framework for how the different layers within the online community work. Esoterically, the governing ideology is then something different, such as "God commands us to colonize the universe". I'm not sure how to specifically layer everything in between, and it may take some experimentation nevertheless.

As an aside, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms endured in East Asia partly because one of its themes is governance legitimacy. Is the warlord who has put the emperor in a golden cage properly revering the emperor? Or is the warlord who can claim some distant patrilineal descent from the dynastic house properly revering the emperor? Throughout the (historically-inspired) stories, one cannot raise armies without having a coherent narrative of why one is exoterically respecting the mandate. To paraphrase one of the ministers, there are three ideological paths forward. Option one is to support liberalism, option two is to replace liberalism, option three is to support liberalism in name, in order to replace liberalism in reality.

Agreed, the cover is (hidden) ✔️ ✔️ --- ✖️ ✖️

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