What does the American Conservative stand for anymore?

[Patine]

That people on here are incapable of even discussing the issue the OP brings up in favor of castigating all conservatives as market theocrats says everything that can be said about the possibility of "dialogue" with the left.

And, of course, all of your posts always bring up the futility of a meaningful "dialogue" with you and those in your camp of thinking (which I've pointed out to you numerous times on these forums about the flaws and unsustainable attempt at logic or rationality of) who view the socio-political scheme as a simple matter of two, simple, dumbed-down, unified, hive-mind, black-and-white, binary, Neo-Manichaean "left" and "right" blocs, and expecting such terms to be sufficient, and even respectable and intelligent sounding, and expecting response as though you were speaking in an erudite manner that deserved the response above the level of a Grade Six socio-political understanding. Dialogue certainly cannot be made in any productive or meaningful way in these matters with absolutists. This is the real world, not Star Wars or the Lord of the Rings.

 

[Mouthwash]

You don't even know what rape is, it's not just vikings violently carrying screaming women off.

I'm being snarky, but the point still stands. Women who grow up with healthy gender roles (which are hardly what you experienced) benefit from them more than men do.

Tyranny. Every pre-modern society was awful and deserves to be buried in our past.

Not a colonial attitude at all.

What's annoying about MW is that he won't just state the argument plainly because he knows that if he just outright declares that he's for hierarchy

Hierarchy isn't the focus here. Of course I'm for natural hierarchy, e.g. elders, parents and (decentralized) clergy, but your fixation on it as though it were the core of my belief system says more about your worldview than mine.

As the Traitor Fish said, it would be odd if someone were to bring up 'pro-race mixing' unprompted in describing leftism.

and arbitrary traditional authority

Traditional authority is the least arbitrary sort of authority possible.

It is somewhat interesting, because this is a real-time confirmation of what the author of the piece I posted upthread argued. Conservatives must use deception to make reasoned argument not merely difficult but literally unthinkable. They cannot make a reasoned argument for people to submit willingly to these structures, but more importantly the use of reason itself is dangerous because people who can reason and think for themselves might decide they don't like being trapped in those "traditional" structures, and to try to organize new ones that work better.

What exactly am I *not* being 100% explicit about here? There are alternatives to unconstrained free choice under all circumstances other than dictatorial control of everyone's life. Like, free choice most of the time, but a few obligations and norms to follow.

Fascists and totalitarians understand, correctly, that people are not capable of ruling themselves. Their problem is that they think others - such as themselves - can manage their lives more effectively. Tradition (similar to Fukuyama's rule of law) takes power away from both irresponsible people and arbitrary overlords.

Maybe. In the way all things are connected. But the pride parade is also a response and pushback to the active oppression of queer people.

That is not true. Unless you're defining 'oppression' as being treated as socially odd.

The transition to non-oppression will be wobbly.

No one in the mainstream of finance, academia, or culture is being oppressed for their sexual orientation. Not for at least ten years.

Dude, no. That litany of addiction, loneliness, and suicide etc, is most prominent in small town conservative middle America among cis-straight aged white men etc.

That's true, but in America right now there is a complete mismatch between ideals and practice regardless of tribe. I think that says a lot about which direction the causality flows.

And it's not pride or LGBT rights doing that to them.

It's preventing any sort of healing.

But the solution to this is socialism, not arranged marriages or whatever

 

[Lexicus]

Traditional authority is the least arbitrary sort of authority possible.

On the contrary, authority that is not rationally justified (ie, inherited from the past, unquestioned, traditional) is the most arbitrary sort of authority possible.

 

[El_Machinae]

That is not true. Unless you're defining 'oppression' as being treated as socially odd.

It is true. But if you don't think that queer people have been historically oppressed, that might explain some of your comments. But no, the entire history of Pride is a response to oppression of queer people. There will be oscillation into any specific pushback going too far sometimes, that's a given.

Dude, being gay used to be a criminal offence.

In your lifetime
- an accusation of being gay could be used to create social permission to physically abuse someone.
- People would engage in defensive social behaviour in order to avoid accusations of being gay.
- gay people couldn't get married
- heck, some people still tell each other that G-d had historically ordered the murder of gay people

 

[Patine]

I'm being snarky, but the point still stands. Women who grow up with healthy gender roles (which are hardly what you experienced) benefit from them more than men do.



Not a colonial attitude at all.



Hierarchy isn't the focus here. Of course I'm for natural hierarchy, e.g. elders, parents and (decentralized) clergy, but your fixation on it as though it were the core of my belief system says more about your worldview than mine.

As the Traitor Fish said, it would be odd if someone were to bring up 'pro-race mixing' unprompted in describing leftism.



Traditional authority is the least arbitrary sort of authority possible.



What exactly am I *not* being 100% explicit about here? There are alternatives to unconstrained free choice under all circumstances other than dictatorial control of everyone's life. Like, free choice most of the time, but a few obligations and norms to follow.

Fascists and totalitarians understand, correctly, that people are not capable of ruling themselves. Their problem is that they think others - such as themselves - can manage their lives more effectively. Tradition (similar to Fukuyama's rule of law) takes power away from both irresponsible people and arbitrary overlords.



That is not true. Unless you're defining 'oppression' as being treated as socially odd.



No one in the mainstream of finance, academia, or culture is being oppressed for their sexual orientation. Not for at least ten years.



That's true, but in America right now there is a complete mismatch between ideals and practice regardless of tribe. I think that says a lot about which direction the causality flows.



It's preventing any sort of healing.

You are a classic textbook case of a cardholding, Kool-Aid drinking, unquestioning supporter of the Revisionist Toxic Nostalgic movement within Socially Conservative circles - the re-envisioning of the past as a much better, more halcyon, more magical, golden age, whitewashing it scrubbing it's (MANY AND MANIFOLD) nasty parts, and giving it a shiny, minty spin, to create an era and time period to "harken back to" and claim emulating and returning to will solve society's problems - but it's an era that never existed, and is HIGHLY impractical to ever exist. This kind of thinking is not typical of certain Social Conservative American groups - the Nazis used the narrative extensively, and so did the Pan-Germans they evolved from, and so did Mussolini's Fascists and the Shenseikai in WW2 Japan, as did Modi in his two election victories, and groups like Jobbik, Golden Dawn, The <Something> Slovak People's Party, the National Front and National Party in Britain, Svoboda in Ukraine, numerous groups in Russia, some of Netanyuahu and Likud's more extreme "natural coalition allies in Israel," and CERTAINLY the "Islamist Extremist" movements. Such stellar company you're in, and with such wonky (and ruinous and destructive) thinking.

 

[MaryKB]

I'm being snarky, but the point still stands. Women who grow up with healthy gender roles (which are hardly what you experienced) benefit from them more than men do.

Absolutely not.

You know nothing about what's in women's best interest or what we want, and your way of thinking is incredibly ignorant and offensive.

 

[Truthy]

On the contrary, authority that is not rationally justified (ie, inherited from the past, unquestioned, traditional) is the most arbitrary sort of authority possible.

I think he thinks rational justifications for things are deceptive and result in stuff that's bad for people. Progressive, liberalism, whatever, are big collections of bad ideas that dominate society through memetics. They're persuasive to lots of people and have the appearance of rationality or freedom-maximization, so they're good at spreading, but they aren't necessarily good for people. I'm connecting this to his views about food and cities. He says we eat lots of junk food because junk food is good at propagating itself because salt, savory flavors, and fat trigger dopamine responses. And this process is analogous to the memetics of progressivism and liberalism: they spread by targeting cognitive tastebuds, even though they're bad for us. He sees old cities as symbolic of tradition: they emerged over long periods of time to suit people's practical and emotional needs and that gradual process of evolution ensured they turned out good. On the other hand, modern cities are thought out and rational and justified. But he thinks they suck and he hates them. I believe his justifications are that slow cultural evolution does a better job of informing how we should live than rationality or memetics. And God fits in here somehow.

I think this is it, but I dunno how you separate cultural evolution from memetics and how he can actually think traditional stuff is guaranteed better.

 

[Mouthwash]

It is true. But if you don't think that queer people have been historically oppressed, that might explain some of your comments. But no, the entire history of Pride is a response to oppression of queer people. There will be oscillation into any specific pushback going too far sometimes, that's a given.

Dude, being gay used to be a criminal offence.

In your lifetime
- an accusation of being gay could be used to create social permission to physically abuse someone.
- People would engage in defensive social behaviour in order to avoid accusations of being gay.
- gay people couldn't get married
- heck, some people still tell each other that G-d had historically ordered the murder of gay people

That's all true, but opinions of gay people have seen one of the fastest shifts in human history over the past decade.

I think he thinks rational justifications for things are deceptive and result in stuff that's bad for people. Progressive, liberalism, whatever, are big collections of bad ideas that dominate society through memetics. They're persuasive to lots of people and have the appearance of rationality or freedom-maximization, so they're good at spreading, but they aren't necessarily good for people. I'm connecting this to his views about food and cities. He says we eat lots of junk food because junk food is good at propagating itself because salt, savory flavors, and fat trigger dopamine responses. And this process is analogous to the memetics of progressivism and liberalism: they spread by targeting cognitive tastebuds, even though they're bad for us. He sees old cities as symbolic of tradition: they emerged over long periods of time to suit people's practical and emotional needs and that gradual process of evolution ensured they turned out good. On the other hand, modern cities are thought out and rational and justified. But he thinks they suck and he hates them. I believe his justifications are that slow cultural evolution does a better job of informing how we should live than rationality or memetics. And God fits in here somehow.

Huh, this is surprisingly not a strawman and a fairly accurate summary of my worldview. I think rationality is a poor strategy for a complex environment, and outright maladaptive in the age of mass media.

I think this is it, but I dunno how you separate cultural evolution from memetics

I don't think memetics is a really useful concept, but people had thousands of years to adapt to low-tech civilization. The current pace of technology (as well as the 'creative destruction' of the market) makes any adaptation impossible.

and how he can actually think traditional stuff is guaranteed better.

It isn't guaranteed, but it's a far safer bet than any modern idea.

 

[MaryKB]

Better for straight-white-males perhaps, but without question absolutely worse for everyone else.

 

[Patine]

That's all true, but opinions of gay people have seen one of the fastest shifts in human history over the past decade.



Huh, this is surprisingly not a strawman and a fairly accurate summary of my worldview. I think rationality is a poor strategy for a complex environment, and outright maladaptive in the age of mass media.



I don't think memetics is a really useful concept, but people had thousands of years to adapt to low-tech civilization. The current pace of technology (as well as the 'creative destruction' of the market) makes any adaptation impossible.



It isn't guaranteed, but it's a far safer bet than any modern idea.

I notice @Mouthwash has given no retort to my analysis of his worldview, and all the related worldviews to his. I'm imagining he either has no rational response (but then again, to him, any sort of rationalism is evil and is ruining the world - superstitious, backward, barbaric, unquestioning, Medievalist thinking, which dominated the worst periods of human history, socio-politically, should be brought back instead so we can all reap the rewards of a New Dark Age by his way of thinking), or I would just get insulting to the intelligence drivel, or he would say my point of view is "beneath him to address," which is basically capitulating and admitting defeat while trying to publicly proclaim victory by seeming "elitist."

 

[El_Machinae]

One advantage of using tradition is that we can know that tradition evolved out of the net set of social experiments that went on previously. So, in other words, it works in the way it works. It often doesn't have underlying Theory, because the rationalizations are dressed up in different ways. But if you don't have a knowledge base to determine what's the best way to go about things, then Tradition at least gives you a set of predictions to work with. Doing things that work merely because they work isn't the worst thinking. But it's important to not put it on a pedestal. It's the net result of people's best efforts, but there's no reason to assume that historical people had Insight that we don't

 

[Lexicus]

He sees old cities as symbolic of tradition: they emerged over long periods of time to suit people's practical and emotional needs and that gradual process of evolution ensured they turned out good. On the other hand, modern cities are thought out and rational and justified. But he thinks they suck and he hates them.

But this is just incoherent. For cities to have emerged over long periods of time to suit people's practical and emotional needs would have required rational analysis of what the needs are and how to fulfill them.

I think rationality is a poor strategy for a complex environment, and outright maladaptive in the age of mass media.

What does this even mean? Again, what is your substitute for rationality? "Tradition" is no such substitute; "tradition" and "rationality" are not the same kind of thing, not fulfilling the same kind of functions. What you really mean when you say that "tradition" works better than rationality is that unthinking submission to whatever traditions you happen to be born into works better than rationally evaluating society to try to make it better.

The reason you can't say that outright is because it's patently insane and somewhere deep down you know it.

Better for straight-white-males perhaps, but without question absolutely worse for everyone else.

This is so interesting! Usually in these kinds of arguments it's the conservatives claiming the mantle of rationality which has led some 'progressives' to decry rationality as something primarily benefiting straight white men. I've never seen the reverse argued.

One advantage of using tradition is that we can know that tradition evolved out of the net set of social experiments that went on previously. So, in other words, it works in the way it works. It often doesn't have underlying Theory, because the rationalizations are dressed up in different ways. But if you don't have a knowledge base to determine what's the best way to go about things, then Tradition at least gives you a set of predictions to work with. Doing things that work merely because they work isn't the worst thinking. But it's important to not put it on a pedestal. It's the net result of people's best efforts, but there's no reason to assume that historical people had Insight that we don't

Again, this makes no sense. Remember, "tradition" here is being posited as a superior alternative to rationality. That means that "tradition" has to exclude the concept of 'experiments' entirely, because 'experimenting' requires a rational analysis of process and results.

 

[Patine]

I think he thinks rational justifications for things are deceptive and result in stuff that's bad for people. Progressive, liberalism, whatever, are big collections of bad ideas that dominate society through memetics. They're persuasive to lots of people and have the appearance of rationality or freedom-maximization, so they're good at spreading, but they aren't necessarily good for people.

Modern Social Conservative viewpoints, especially in the Revisionist Toxic Nostalgic that predominates them nowadays, also are at least as bad in this phenomenon. Of course, any new ideas or improvements will automatically get stuck in the "crab trap" of having a pre-set socio-political stance (of which ALL have failed horribly - let's call a spade a spade) label being attached to them, often arbitrarily, and sabotaging them from the get-go. We're really screwed up here, and NO ONE has the "magic plan" or big idea that will solve everything if we all just get behind it.

One advantage of using tradition is that we can know that tradition evolved out of the net set of social experiments that went on previously. So, in other words, it works in the way it works. It often doesn't have underlying Theory, because the rationalizations are dressed up in different ways. But if you don't have a knowledge base to determine what's the best way to go about things, then Tradition at least gives you a set of predictions to work with. Doing things that work merely because they work isn't the worst thinking. But it's important to not put it on a pedestal. It's the net result of people's best efforts, but there's no reason to assume that historical people had Insight that we don't

However, times and circumstances change, and what's good for one time period is monstrous and ruinous for another. That is the Achilles Heel of Social Conservativism and Traditionalism, is their naïve and thoughtless viewpoint of the supposed timelessness and infallibility of their points of view, and desire to shove it where it won't work, no much how damage that does.

 

[El_Machinae]

I'm not saying it's perfect I'm just pointing out where it has some utility. You can posit that it is the sum of what has worked. If you want to fiddle with it, you just need a good knowledge base to Base new predictions on

 

[El_Machinae]

That's all true, but opinions of gay people have seen one of the fastest shifts in human history over the past decade.

Sure. But that doesn't negate the fact that Pride was an essential step in eliminating oppression.

The idea that God commanded the murder of gay people has been around for a lot longer than the idea that he didn't

 

[MaryKB]

Worked for doing what exactly?

Consolidating power for wealthy white men? Yes, totally.
Uplifting everyone in society? Absolutely not.

 

[Lexicus]

I'm not saying it's perfect I'm just pointing out where it has some utility. You can posit that it is the sum of what has worked. If you want to fiddle with it, you just need a good knowledge base to Base new predictions on

I'm not even saying you're wrong, I'm saying that within the bounds of a tradition-rationality binary where the two are mutually exclusive, the concept of "what works" doesn't even make sense as applied to tradition. In the absence of rationality there is no way to know what "works" short of the "destruction filter" where some practice works so badly that it cannot reproduce itself and so must die after at most one generation.

 

[El_Machinae]

Well, surviving until the present era. I'm not saying that the past was a Utopia, merely that it was a system that was capable of surviving until the current system comes to place.

People are understandably interested in changing the previous power structures, because the previous power structures are not ideal. But, you cannot forget natural selection. Previous experiments have been tried, and they failed. If they hadn't, they would have survived. The mistake the conservatives make is thinking that any experimentation is going to create worse outcomes.

 

[El_Machinae]

I'm not even saying you're wrong, I'm saying that within the bounds of a tradition-rationality binary where the two are mutually exclusive, the concept of "what works" doesn't even make sense as applied to tradition. In the absence of rationality there is no way to know what "works" short of the "destruction filter" where some practice works so badly that it cannot reproduce itself and so must die after at most one generation.

Making new decisions based on rationality is the only way forward. But it requires a certain hubris, because it requires assuming that you know enough to fiddle without making things worse. Being conservative around such a mindset is not so much hubris as being resigned to the fact that you don't know enough to make changes. But tradition creates the Baseline. And it's the Baseline of the sum of the successes. The mistake some rationalists make is thinking that the conservative rationalizations are true or accurate. They're not, they are post hoc after the fact thinking. But still, you know there is always a fundamental reason why a social institution survived successfully to where it is, even if you don't agree with the underlined story as to why

 

[Traitorfish]

Sure, all this is true, but the mere existence of more than two genders is kinda fatal to the theory that all of human history was characterized by 1950s-US-style gender roles until the postmodern neomarxists ruined everything with Obergefell v Hodges.

But not in a way which problematises gender norms as such, which is how it is very often deployed by Western progressives.

The first one for sure, but the second will likely prove necessary to maintain it. The third option would do much more harm than good.

Do you think that the third is more or less likely than the first, given the electoral concerns of American conservatism?

The national regeneration isn't about violence. The fact is that any restoration will need some degree of deterrence, because the entire nation is going to get whipped into a frenzy when liberals sense their position is in actual danger.

So the enemy, these "liberals", represent a hysterical and malevolent force that can only put down through the use of force, but that force itself contains no spiritual or symbolic quality, represents a purely pragmatic measure. You must appreciate, given the historical relationship of right-wing nationalism to violence, why this should ring hollow?

Making new decisions based on rationality is the only way forward. But it requires a certain hubris, because it requires assuming that you know enough to fiddle without making things worse. Being conservative around such a mindset is not so much hubris as being resigned to the fact that you don't know enough to make changes. But tradition creates the Baseline. And it's the Baseline of the sum of the successes. The mistake some rationalists make is thinking that the conservative rationalizations are true or accurate. They're not, they are post hoc after the fact thinking. But still, you know there is always a fundamental reason why a social institution survived successfully to where it is, even if you don't agree with the underlined story as to why

I would tend to question, though, how far someone asserting that they are doing things as they have always been done can be taken of proof that this is really so. Traditions are mutable; they wouldn't survive if they weren't. What is called "tradition" is as often as much a way of making change legible, or simply palatable, as it is a way of resisting change.