The Jocks and the Nerds, allied against the Theater-kids.
"Warriors" and "Merchants" need to ally against the "Priests" - that would be the read from the perspective of Gaetano Mosca to our current situation.
It seems to me there are two options:
1. Counter-elite merchant (nerd) class is able to take over, with the aid of Warriors (jocks).
2. Caesar figure (from a Warrior or Peasant class) takes over with the aid of Merchants.
I'm inclined to think the Nerds have a better chance if they stop playing with their fish ponds (as Cicero says). The Jocks are just too far away from the levers of power to understand how the system works or how to manage the other classes - not that Jocks haven't been able throughout history - it just so happens that in our current situation, a big number of them would need to be trained to do that - while the Nerds (merchants) learn the ropes by succeeding at being nerds (e.g. tech, finance).
The problem is there isn't a compelling political formula, yet.
Maybe it can be Bitcoin-centric or AI centric. But the most compelling one might be Space Exploration - as it aligns both Nerds and Jocks.
Getting a new political formula might be tricky, as we either need to re-invigorate the current one (post WW2 order, ruled by instituuuuuuutions, globalist human-rights corporate skatocracy) or get one that replaces the old - either from the outside or breaks it from within.
There's a problem of coordinating the Jocks and Nerds together, specially in a scenario where the Nerds are running the show and the Jocks don't want to shove them into a locker.
Have you ever seen a Rugby player get a long with a kid from Chess Club? it's complicated to arrange. But maybe if they had enough of the people running the YearBook Club and the student newspaper... something can be done about it.
I think the first step is to make the nerds and jocks realize that there are no teachers. That no one is running the show.
These are just some thoughts.
"Warriors" and "Merc (hidden)
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I like Mosca. I think he's useful.
I find the mapping to Jocks, Nerds, and Theater-Kids to be ambiguous and confusing. Those are high school types. When I try to figure out exactly who they represent in the spheres that matter (e.g., in NYC finance, San Francisco tech, DC politics, etc.) it gets very muddy. Because Jocks, Nerds, and Theater-Kids aren't the actual thing. Why not drop the cute metaphors and analyze our situation in terms of the actual players?
I like Mosca. I thin (hidden)
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>>2286I agree with
>>2287 that jocks and nerds and so on are confusing terms in the context of modern politics. First of all they may not even be real, but rather hallucinations of the particular high school sexual frustrations of the kind of people who become hollywood writers. The whole idea is to cast themselves who would normally be considered weak, weird, and uncharismatic, as being somehow superior (in intelligence in particular) to the socially and sexually dominant anlgo saxon “chad”. The reality of course is that chad is just as smart or smarter, but is not socially constrained to a performative identity of book smarts.
Second of all, to the extent the nerds are relevant they are not merchants, but engineers. Its actually chad who is more likely to be a successful financier, and the real type mythologized as the stereotypical hollywood nerd isnt even likely to be a successful engineer. A politics of the engineer should be developed, but it should be on its own terms. Im a big fan of the work of mr Scientism, drawing on veblen, who really laid the groundwork for such a politics.
I agree with >>2287 (hidden)
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The terminology of political formulae should aim firstly to clarify rather than confuse, and secondly to provide an accurate map of the terrain. Not trying to be too negative about this post, but when I read this I feel doubtful as to whether it's a good way of thinking about things.
Along these lines, I'd evaluate "Priests v. Warriors & Merchants" as an OK formula for describing the state of play. I don't know if "warriors" and "merchants" are useful concepts for describing the growing opposition to the regime, but "priesthood" (and relatedly, Yarvin's "Cathedral") are rock-solid terms for illuminating the actual role and function of the academia-media-NGO complex. Scott Alexander's "Red Tribe, Blue Tribe, Grey Tribe" is old but good, easily comprehended by normies, and perfectly anodyne.
On the other hand, we probably shouldn't use these American high school stereotypes as anything other than shitposting Twitter insults.
>>2292Agreed. Nerd is not an anticoncept the emergence of the nerd as a personality type is worth talking about - but not in this context, and they certainly shouldn't be understood as merchants.
The terminology of p (hidden)
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I know what a "nerd" refers to. I was friends with a bunch of them when I was a kid. It wasn't filled with resentment like the Hollywood portrayals, we liked the normies and the normies liked us, but everyone could tell who was who.
I know what a "jock" refers to. As others have said it's a fictional concept rather than a real one. I've watched those movies, so I know what we're talking about here.
I have no idea what a "theater kid" refers to. I've seen shitposters throwing the term around but I just have no concept to attach to it, real or fictional. Is there some archetype I've somehow totally missed? Is it another attempt to fill the void left by the delegitimization of the word "faggot"? What's going on here?
I know what a "nerd" (hidden)
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>>2296Theatre kids are very real. If you'd met one you'd know, I think. There's a kind of overexagerated pixar mannerism that comes from some combination of theatre over-training for expressive stage presence, watching too much western animation and tumblr, and the usual geek pathology of tribal identity-formation through collective self-caricature. The social problem with them is that they are very aggressive in infantilizing themselves and everyone around them. Put one of them in charge of an institution and suddenly it becomes kindergarten. Somehow because they are trained to be loud, energetic, earnest, and hyper-progressive, they do actually end up in charge of things a lot. There's something ominous about them being the sort of final form of homo bureaucratus; they are very at home under the authority of "teacher" and learn to work such systems well to attack and humiliate all other modes of being. Is this the last man? Check out some cringe compilation videos for examples. These people being simultaneously powerful and representative of the total destruction of the dignity of european man means they get a lot of hate.
I remember going to a national park and the ranger started treating everyone like a kindergarten class, and talking and making faces like she was a pixar character. It was very offensive, but the Amerigroids stuck listening to her (it was a cave with no easy escape) didn't seem to mind. I couldn't help but lose respect for everyone involved, myself included. I was musing to myself about theatre kid occupied government when she announced openly that of course she was in fact a theatre kid.
I don't know if that helps, but count it as a blessing if you've never had to interact with this type.
Theatre kids are ver (hidden)
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Theater kids = NYT, WaPo, CNN, Human rights orgs, NGOs, UN, HR department, Hollywood
Nerds = techbros, STEM academia, Wallstreet, pharma
Jocks = military, police, NFL, UFC
Theater kids = NYT, (hidden)
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>>2308OK, so that clarifies what you were thinking.
I still don't think it clarifies much to group the relevant actors into those three broad categories. Why not just apply Mosca's analysis directly?
OK, so that clarifie (hidden)
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