Why bad guys always go first
As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog crazy has an advantage as a power culture
The membership test for your power culture is just throwing out anything improbable, like Covid isn’t a virus, and then seeing who backs you up and who doesn’t.
Is there a similarly straight forward way to organize people who desire to be rational into a power culture?
First let’s put out a basic definition of rational as the willingness to be convinced by a logical argument regardless of circumstances. Which is a high bar in that one:
- Must understand logic
- Be open to logic even if a particular argument is against one’s interests
- Not use power to shut down opposing views
The problem is that, unlike crazy, there is no single statement a person can make to prove rational. Even if someone makes an entire video about the virtues of rationality it might turn out his rationality is tainted with self interest.
So it’s not very easy for rational people to recognize each other — much less team up to accomplish things. Assuming there are any rational humans, one might really have to research a person to see if they are in the club or not.
According to Hugo Mercier, co-author of “The Enigma of Reason,”
Obviously rationality has to be defined according to how well you accomplish some goals. You can’t be rational in a vacuum, it doesn’t mean anything. The problem is there’s so much flexibility in defining what you want.
But this strong form of rationality is unnecessary for a power culture. One need not be crazy to join the power culture of crazy — it might be the completely self serving decision of a very sane person.
For instance, altruism, particularly altruism that undermines one’s social power or standing, is a potential membership test. Again this is tricky though as loss of social power or standing might be more than compensated by membership in a rational power culture.
Tithing has a long history as a membership test in religious power cultures. However tithing to any one organization runs the risk of a short lived Cult of Reason. Where the money goes might be less important than it’s loss occurring while one is still alive.
However wealth inequality reduces the effectiveness of membership tests based on giving money or time. Some people have so much of both that giving away 10% of their money or time is much easier than it is for others.
Nor has “how well you accomplish some goals” historically worked well for forming rational power culture. Traditionally education level or performance on an academic test was the membership test and these have become more about empty virtue signalling than rational thinking.
So greed, arrogance and rejection of logical thought have a natural political organizing advantage over more reasonable characteristics. They can instantly identify others like them and form strong power cultures.
Rational power culture then ends up forming mostly in opposition to plans put in motion long ago by some culture of crazy. For instance if you are William Loyd Garrison trying to free the slaves you can be part of an abolitionist movement. But mention women’s rights and:
In 1840, Garrison’s promotion of woman’s rights within the anti-slavery movement was one of the issues that caused some abolitionists, including New York brothers Arthur Tappan and Lewis Tappan, to leave the AAS and form the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which did not admit women.
This is why “both sides” explanations of culture wars are ridiculous on their face:
I believe this is because the dominant right-wing narrative at present is that of populism — an inherently collectivist stance that valorises nationalism, social conservatism, common sense and white or national identity politics, in opposition to a perceived liberal elite that betrays the common people. Meanwhile, the dominant left-wing narrative is that of Critical Social Justice — an inherently collectivist stance that focuses intensely on oppression, marginalisation, discourses and identity politics in opposition to perceived dominant groups in society, who are understood to perpetuate oppression to protect their own privilege.
The suppression of anyone but white men from holding positions of power in the United States isn’t some bogey man invention of an imagined left-wing. There is no left-wing. There is a right-wing that organized itself around greed, arrogance and rejection of logical thought in order to plot and accomplish this statistically verifiable suppression.
Eventually this suppressed group attracted a power culture, that like the abolitionists, organized around ending the suppression. That power culture is no more a “left-wing” than the abolitionists were — they can only act in opposition. If, like in the French Revolution, they actually succeed in taking full control, they would immediately disintegrate along with their organizing litmus test.
Standing up against crazy and for collective responsibility is inherent in the mathematics of reproduction in a difficult world and was recognized by Darwin as well:
In 1871, Darwin argued that group selection occurs when the benefits of cooperation or altruism between subpopulations are greater than the individual benefits of egotism within a subpopulation.
The trick is that those “benefits of cooperation” may not kick in until you are in the middle of WWII, a climate disaster or a death star approaching your planet. The forces of rationality have an enormous disadvantage when it comes to proactive mitigation.
Conversely once a crisis reaches a sufficient level there is a “5 seconds to midnight” effect that allows humans to organize in ways that were previously impossible. Poison gas and nuclear weapons are removed from active use. Slavery is banned in a country half dominated by slavers. Smoking is moved outdoors and prevented from advertising.
Rational power cultures, once formed, have extraordinary powers. There is a reasonable fear that these powers can be abused — like prohibition. However the vast majority of the push back comes from crazy power cultures that want to stay crazy.