The Decline Frame
This point is important enough to restate well, as Foseti does:
The crux of [Scott Alexander’s] argument is that, “It is a staple of Reactionary thought that everything is getting gradually worse.” He then goes on to show that not everything is getting worse. […] It is not a staple of reactionary thought that everything is getting worse. To the contrary, I’ve never read that argument from any reactionary anywhere. […] Let’s correct his statement: It is a staple of Reactionary thought that massive improvements in technology have been very effective in masking massive declines in virtually all other aspects of society.
The progressive assumption, which neoreaction contests, is that it is natural and good to spend the advances of civilization on causes unrelated to civilizational advance. A more controversial formulation (supported here) is that the Cathedral spends capitalism on something other than capitalism, and ultimately on the destruction of capitalism. It tolerates a functional economy — to the extent that it does — only on the understanding that it will be used for something else.
Elementary cybernetics predicts that if productivity is recycled into productivity, the outcome is an explosive process of increasing returns. Insofar as history is not manifesting accelerating productivity, therefore, it can be assumed that social circuitry is being fed through non-productive, and anti-productive links. Techno-commercial Modernity is being squandered on (Neo-Puritan) Progressivism. In the West, at least, that is what is getting worse.
Related: Jim duct tapes Mr. Alexander’s argument to a chair and opens a gallon of 89 octane.
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Posted on October 23rd, 2013 at 3:37 pm | QuoteThe argument to Dark Enlightenment from cybernetics is perhaps one most likely to well-received by libertarians. A decade ago, while enamoured of Rothbard’s thought, I had enough imagination to wonder how much benefit from technological advance had been lost in the maze of bureaucratic regulation we live with today. A move from there to a discussion of other kinds of externalities led naturally to less economics-focused questions about the path our society has taken.
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Posted on October 23rd, 2013 at 6:47 pm | QuoteWhy Gradual?
Events towards the Left Singularity are accelerating, both bankruptcy and pushing the envelope farther left faster. Gay marriage was barely a blink, micro-aggressions, open borders…at the same time their grip is slipping.
I wonder if anyone in Washington realized that when they dramatically increased the Prog DC payroll they put a lot of people in the position of scrambling for what is left of the Left…
What? Child Marriage to beasts? A Transgendered Mexican President? Remember Force beyond what is lawful and will be accepted by an armed population and a police and military that don’t like them, not to mention their own pacifists is basically ruled out.
All financed by many billions of magic money per day.
BTW they’re not exactly looking like tech wizards lately…
What’s Gradual?
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Posted on October 24th, 2013 at 1:07 am | QuoteThat way of putting it brings a lot of clarity.
Alexander’s argument is really something like, “My family has never been better off. I got a huge raise at work, plus my house is mostly still livable because the great new insurance I purchased with it covers a lot of the burns from my son’s arson’s attempt, I can afford my daughter’s therapy and encounter groups, and pest control has almost kept in check the consequences of my wife’s recent decision to not do any housekeeping. Plus, its amazing how much alcohol you can hold when you can buy the top-end stuff, it goes down so smooth.”
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admin Reply:
October 24th, 2013 at 1:12 pm
That way of putting it brings even more clarity.
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I think his critique is ultimately a good thing because it will force us all to sharpen our arguments. Intellectual laziness happens when there’s no challenge from the outside. I wish more progressives would lay down serious, well-thought out challenges, even ones like this that are easily rebutted.
Also, this inspires me to finish putting together the academic-style journal. It’s too easy to build a case against neoreaction when cherry-picking from blogposts—we all let our guard down sometime, slip into hyperbole, or say things that we don’t quite mean because we know our readers understand the larger context. A quarterly “best of” journal will filter the wheat from the chafe, providing a best-case defense of neoreactionary ideas.
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Posted on October 24th, 2013 at 1:56 pm | QuoteI think his case against monarchy at least partially succeeds. I hope the monarchists among us start re-considering their position or at least stop treating monarchy like a panacea.
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VXXC Reply:
October 24th, 2013 at 10:50 pm
Monarchy was a response to baronial anarchy in Europe and elsewhere. The Barons were actually of course an improvement to what preceded them..
I don’t think people will enjoy the actual anarchy without the tyranny. Whatever else we have an effective police force, fairly effective borders, an effective military for defending the nation, pretty effective utilities. This is not a defense of the the current state, which is for sale to all plunderers foreign and domestic, it’s own elites being dedicated to the propostion that all about us is evil and must perish from the earth – a perishing they profit from…we are going in all the wrong ways.
However I can make a defense for the resilience of our inheritance and how we are yet organized due to that inheritance.
Our elites hate the people. Anti-Majority government is bad by definition for most.
We should however consider where this King would come from…I mean where he went to school…and so on. He would be the Elites unbound by custom and our still extant liberties.
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Nick B. Steves Reply:
October 25th, 2013 at 3:48 am
I don’t think many of us really hang our hats on monarchy. What we care about is safe, effective, and sane government. That’s all anyone REALLY cares about. People with IQs above 120 might have some valid opinions about how to get that. People with IQs below 100 almost certainly will not. Ergo mass participatory democracy is one of the worst ways you could think up if you want safe, effective, and sane government. This was not the way thought up by America’s founding fathers which amounted to: White, literate, property holding men getting a say within (relatively) strict federalist principles. That sounds positively sane compared to today.
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Solex Reply:
October 25th, 2013 at 8:57 am
Switzerland: high immigration, good education, mass participatory democracy, sane government.
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admin Reply:
October 25th, 2013 at 9:27 am
… occasionally afflicted by raw psychosis,
VXXC Reply:
October 25th, 2013 at 10:42 am
We have Rule of The Smart now.
Which really means the Rule of Scholars. Thomas Edison had all of 3 months of formal education. Among many things he basically invented R&D, which is where many brainacs now receive livelihood from…Ye would have destroyed his mind with pyschotropic drugs in school. If he evaded your snares you’d certainly make sure he had no career. Nor Einstein.
Rule of Scholars is Ruin. Fearing the People the Smart have used their gifts to deceive, their rule is degrading and insane. It is a projection of their guilt and fears, their loathing for their victims they can still see.
No Rulers in History every pumped pornography and drugs at their subjects for instance.
For they know they cannot hold this Wolf by the Throat once the Wolf realizes it’s situation, and their terror of the people’s just retribution over the obscene plunders and experiments of the Smart drives them to ever more delierium.
The Smart cannot rule, and this is ancient.
Moreover our people will no longer be slaves, this is what some and probably enough are saying.
Rifle Trumps Brain.
Won’t play Rock, Paper, Scissors. We have that now too.
[and don’t tell me to get over self, if you’d be a Tyrant]
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Economics = Politics by Money.
Politics in US = War.
Progress = March of Progressives against all who resist their Values.
ObamaCare = The Hammer
America = The Nail.
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But…..
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Posted on October 25th, 2013 at 10:32 am | QuoteAlexander’s strawman of the neoreactionary is revealing. Nobody thinks that EVERYTHING is getting worse, that’s probably just projection on his part, since as a prog he seems to think that everything is getting better. He evidently cannot break out of the frame that a simple narrative explains everything.
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Posted on October 29th, 2013 at 3:56 pm | Quote