It’s difficult to argue with Williams. But one wonders if we can boil the argument down a bit more. Human interdependence rests in large part upon the adaptation of the institution of property, that is the social recognition of the ability of a person or persons to exclude others from the use of a resource. Property is thus simultaneously prosocial and antisocial. But without it, there could be no trade and without trade there would not be the degree of interdependence that characterizes our species.
thought to be the first town in Europe, illustrates the point. It was inhabitated by only about 350 people who were engaged in using a spring there to produce salt which they then traded for other goods. The site was heavily fortified to exclude others from making use of the resource, requiring, instead, others to trade for the salt.
And thus we find sustainable patters of specialization and trade:
“Specialized salt production was the major economic activity leading to the development of Provadia-Solnitsata as a central place of special socio‑economic significance in the Eastern Balkans. It started as early as the beginning of the Late Neolithic, although only as a household craft practiced within the settlement. At the end of the Late Neolithic, salt evaporation became a specialized production which was moved outside the settlement and most probably was run as a cooperative. During the Middle and Late Chalcolithic it evolved into an industrial-scale production. This would have been impossible without the formation of several specialized groups consisting of separate teams working in a well-coordinated manner. These groups of specialized workers were engaged in the collection and delivery of firewood, manufacturing and supply of pottery vessels as well as in the process of salt production itself. Major technological advances were made in all three of the core production branches, especially in the thermal technologies related to ceramic production and brine evaporation. The emergence of specialized production was an indicator of a second major division of labour, which in turn was a prerequisite for the emergence of towns. In this sense, specialized salt production makes the agglomeration Provadia-Solnitsata a unique phenomenon.”
Along with the wealth that trade allowed the salt producers to accumulate came religion evidenced by altars. And presumably this also embodied adaptive pressures leading to specializations in social hierarchy and the trading of service implicit in those relationships.
Our modern conceptions of liberty and freedom have at least some origin in the recognition of the enhanced wealth producing capacity of such urban arrangements. At least by, if not earlier, the Roman emperor Augustus recognized the reciprocal gains possible by offering greater autonomy to conquered populations in the form of “Ius Italicum” (https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/RE:Ius_Italicum ) . This early strategy of reciprocal gain through the creation of a “charter city” was emulated in the grants of liberties, freedoms, and other autonomies to various commercial centers by feudal rulers (one example of which: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_imperial_city ) One suspects our current conceptions of liberty and freedom owe as much, if not more, to these arrangements that they do to Magna Carta.
The Rousseau – Hobbes dichotomy that Williams seems engage with, thus seems a bit retrograde. In his greatly under-appreciated History of the Revolt of the Netherlands, Friedrich Schiller offers a somewhat different analysis that seems apropropos of our current squalor:
“To combine universal happiness with the highest liberty of the individual is the solve prerogative of infinite intelligence, which diffuses itself omnipresently over all. But what resources has man when placed in the position of omnipotence? Man can only aid his circumscribed powers by classification; like the naturalist, he establishes certain marks and rules by which to facilitate his own feeble survey of the whole, to which all individualities must conform. All this is accomplished for him by religion. She finds hope and fear planted in every human breast ; by making herself mistress of these emotions, and directing their affections to a single object, she virtually transforms millions of independent beings into one uniform abstract. The endless diversity of the human will no longer embarrasses its ruler—now there exists one universal good, one universal evil, which he can bring forward or withdraw at pleasure, ande which works in unison with himself even when absent. Now a boundary is established before which liberty must halt; a venerable, hallowed line, towards which all the various inclinations of the will must finally converge. The common aim of despotism and of priestcraft is uniformity, and uniformity is a necessary expedient of human poverty and imperfection.”
In this light one might tend to see the “friendliness” school as a manifestation of both the religions of wokery and supranational cosmopolitanism newly empowered with AI and LLMs as awful tools in service of a vision of a global coerced conformity.
The Williams essay Arnold discusses is a brilliant analysis and discussion of human nature and the human condition. Everyone should click through and read it. The constrained or tragic vision of life is the beginning of wisdom based on reality; its opposite, the unconstrained or utopian vision has in various manifestations given rise to untold evil.
This idea is basically what Ava Duvernay’s recent film Origin is all about — it is an exploration of ‘caste’ in 3 (India, Nazi Germany, USA) societies throughout history but the word ‘caste’ can really be interchanged for ‘ingroup’ and ‘outgroup’. The film is directed by Duvernay but the ideas are Isabel Wilkerson’s (author of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent). Duvernay/Wilkerson explain that ‘castes’ are constructed in society by people with power to preserve their power at the expense of people without it by using various “pillars” of control like violence, laws on reproduction, etc.
Both in Nazi Germany and Jim Crow America, Jews and “Aryan” Germans were not allowed to reproduce, and Blacks and Whites were not allowed to reproduce, respectively. Even though miscegenation laws have since been repealed in both places, it is important to note that the social impacts of such laws do not vanish from the face of the earth as the laws themselves do. Through this ‘pillar’ of caste control and many others, these societies have created artificial classes of people to preserve the power and advantage of those at the top.
That would surprise me. I suspect it was more prejudice and ignorance than the conspiracy you suggest. Two things stand out to me. The Spanish did not behave this way. Maybe the more important one is that these same people at the top [in English colonies] had sex and children with their slaves.
What do you mean the Spanish did not behave this way? The entire mestizo experience is a race-based caste system, just as existed and still exists in the United States today (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mestizo). The Spanish are a terrible counterexample for you to have chosen and honestly only further affirms Wilkerson’s theory. “Prejudice and ignorance” or “racism” are easy scapegoats for broader, more systemic caste-based social stratification that the film actually spends a good amount of time debunking — you should just go watch it, dude.
Sorry I wasn't more more clear. My comment was in no way intended to apply to caste systems. I was only referring to racial segregation in reproduction. In their American colonies, the Spanish not only didn't prevent intermarriage, they encouraged it.
I am too tired to reply to this but just know that I don’t fully agree but I’m glad we can at least establish some semblance of a post-slavery race-based caste system in American history
This does not come up in Duvernay’s film (and I would presume it doesn’t come up in Wilkerson’s writing, either), but I would also argue that the controversial nature of abortion in America today is yet another “pillar” of caste control via reproduction.
If you talk to people about why they are against abortion, that's pretty much never going to be a reason. Maybe you know their "real" reason but I'm going to lean towards skepticism.
I think a lot of pro-natalist thinkers view abortion bans as a way to sustain/strengthen population growth rates of those races/ethnicities currently experiencing low birth rates — obviously many have religious qualms but I think some view bans on abortion as a means to ensure there are enough people of certain races to justify our race-based caste system
That's certainly possible but I doubt by that's what they are thinking. I'm pretty sure most against abortion see it as murder and any other reasons are secondary at best.
Also, it would be a reason that goes against the facts. Whites get abortions at lower rates than blacks and Hispanics.
Just because whites get abortions at rates lower than minorities doesn’t mean some might think banning abortions will still help buoy the population growth rate of white people
“Achieving mutually beneficial cooperation and peace [is] a matter of complex systems of norms, surveillance, incentives, institutions, and balances of power, which either constrain competition or channel it into desirable collective outcomes.”
The stated strategy of radicals is to destroy the complex systems of norms etc., and utopia will spontaneously arise from the rubble. Where and when has such a miracle ever occurred?
At large scales such miracles rarely occur. Probably the American and French Revolutions, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and to varying degrees the independence struggles of former British colonies.
In smaller scales they are more common, and there is also the question of "radical" depending on where you stand. For example, I think the institutions of higher learning are the crown jewels of this country, and to a lesser extent the major institutions of journalism and the various administrative agencies (the Federal Reserve system, the CDC, the FDA, etc.) and there are concerted efforts to tear these down or minimize their importance, rather than work to strengthen and improve them.
What happened after the French Revolution was hardly wonderful. Intra- and international killing on a vast scale. Lots of destruction. The rise and fall of the dictatorship of Emperor Napoleon. Sure, it gave us the metric system ...
I take "spontaneous" to be measured in human history time scales. So 150+ years of absolute monarchy vs 10 months of the so called "reign of terror", and longer if you want to throw in all of Napoleon.
It is going to take me many lifetimes of getting PhDs on this subject to fully argue the point, so I'll just stop with this:
If you put a gun to my head and said choose one of Louis XVI or Robespierre.. I'm team Robespierre (of course I claim all of Voltaire and Rousseau on my side) ;)
I was taking everything from the the Committee of Public Safety (basically a junta with Robespierre as the head) taking power to the downfall of Napoleon, about two decades. A lot longer than ten months. Whatever the time period, it was not "[A]chieving mutually beneficial cooperation and peace". Far from it.
I wasn't talking about choosing between the Revolution and Louis XVI. The great tragedy of the Revolution is that is was up against a pretty big evil but then it pooped its pants all over Europe.
The American revolutionaries thought they were upholding the norms of "freeborn Englishmen" and a good many Englishmen thought they were as well, making numerous speeches in Parliament to that effect.
Absolutely, it was not a remodeling of society, although quite a revolution in self government. And it was radical (and still is!) to not be a Royalist. Indeed Dr. Johnson and Gibbon among others thought it unwise. And more importantly as Hamilton famously observed, it was a question of "whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force". A radical idea of ever there was one :)
"ChatGPT, write this story up like one of Aesop's Fables."*
"Ok, here is a version of the American Revolution with a moral-of-the-story metaphor in the style of Aesop's Fables:
"A squirrel climbed to the top of a tree's main trunk, but wanted to get even higher. He hopped on the highest limb to 'branch out in a new direction', so to speak, and did indeed rise higher. For a time. But not for long.
"Prideful of his decision and accomplishment, he associated his wonderful view only with the branch, not the trunk below, and forgot that of course the branch owed its very existence and almost all of its altitude to the support provided by that trunk. Also, squirrels have a habit of gnawing at the bark of the nearest tree available to maintain their teeth, but the squirrel saw no danger in doing this, since it had never caused any problems for him before. But he also forgot that he had only ever gnawed on the bark of the thick trunk - which can take the hit - and not on that of a thin branch, which can't.
"The squirrel gnawed as squirrels must and proceeded to saw off the branch he was sitting on. In short order, the once lofty squirrel was laid low.
"Moral: Remember your roots."
*I could have gone meta, "ChatGPT, write me one of those 'ChatGPT, write me ...' memes."
I am more sympathetic to the "spontaneously arise" part, as most societies and systems of norms and behaviors emerge spontaneously and not based on some initial design alone. I.e. products of human action and not human design so much.
On the other hand, the utopia bit is unlikely, as what spontaneously arises need not be great, especially when you have wrecked all the stuff that spontaneously arose before. That and utopias generally fail to make the transition from the dreams of humans to the reality of human interaction.
Yes, something will spontaneously arise from the ashes, but “spontaneous” isn’t synonymous with “instantaneous,” and “something” isn’t synonymous with “utopia.” So, the most likely outcome of the destruction of western civilization is a long dark age followed by a new order that is far inferior to that which was destroyed.
Yea, agreed. I do find that spontaneous order is rather underappreciated in general, however. The irony that most people miss is that imposed rules rarely produced the desired outcomes, and often result in the destruction of the underlying spontaneous order that the imposed rules were meant to improve. Designed social systems tend to break down rather spectacularly.
“Of all the people that I read these days, Williams is the one whose intellectual interests and outlook align most with my own. As a young academic, he is an extreme outlier.” What a great compliment.
Consider the theories of ecology/evolution regarding competition within and between populations. The more similar you are to something, the more of a direct competitor is becomes. Squirrels and birds don't particularly pay each other mind - they are different and non-interacting. It takes a very specific kind of interaction to bridge the gap and establish salience - predator/prey, for example.
So with people; two people who are competing for the same promotion are always most threatening to each other in the workplace. The sway that one patriarch or matriarch holds in a family is the strongest kind of domination - outside of sibling rivalry, and that graduates with age and gender. This adds layers of complexity when 'intersectionality' - a word made dirty by identity politics, but in some senses useful - leads to people playing alternative roles and alternative allegiances, because we each can be an element in various cross-cutting groups, including family, neighborhood, profession, gender,
As soon as I read about the "Market for Rationalizations" by Dan Williams, I've been a fan of his general analysis. Here he takes one of my more influential books, "The Goodness Paradox", and uses it to both support & criticize the book he reviews (& I'm unlikely to read*), "Survival of the Friendliest".
Yes, being friendly, self-domesticating, has been a big part of human evolution, and history. As has both war against out-groups, and intra-group & intra-family violence.
Arnold quotes Williams insight about how elites & rulers support when they: "think it will promote their interests in some way. Although perpetrators in such cases will often DEPICT rivals and enemies as highly threatening, that’s often just propaganda that functions to coordinate group behaviour and justify atrocities."
Rephrasing, Dem elites 'will often depict Trump as highly threatening, but it's only lies & propaganda to coordinate Dem behavior and justify illegal spying, illegal censorship of the truth, and killing an unarmed election fraud protester while calling the protest an insurrection'. I haven't seen Williams take on any of these three huge lies/ misinformation, but each helped Reps do worse, lose. In 2018 it was after illegal spying by Obama & Russian Hoax & 2 year Mueller coverup of illegal FBI/CIA spying & persecution of Trump supporters. Then it was govt-Big Tech censorship of the Biden laptop (which FBI had & knew was Biden's since 2019) which helped Biden win/ steal 2020. Which combined with other elections and a big, Trump supported "Stop the Steal" J6 protest against election fraud. This protest was falsely called an insurrection, like the Civil War, despite no arms on any protesters in the Capitol Building. Then 2 years of Dem J6 "insurrection" investigation w/o finding out: a) how many govt agents were there (& actions); b) who did pipe-bombs; c) who set up the gallows (at 6:30am, with video) & c2) why the Capitol Police didn't take the illegal gallows down. The insurrection smear, along with the again very relevant abortion issue, led to Dems winning the Senate barely, and Reps barely winning the House. Misinformation has been helping Dems every election since it became a Current Thing.
Many of the post-January Williams' posts have been about misinformation, and how overblown the hysteria about misinformation is -- since talk of misinformation basically became huge with the 2016 votes for Brexit and Donald Trump. But since the Democrats won in 2018, 2020, and half-won in 2022, Williams concludes misinformation isn't such a problem. For those who believe Dem lies, still, misinfo isn't a problem -- and Williams avoids antagonizing that market by pointing out the lies which had effects, since that audience, and maybe Williams, likes the effect.
As Williams says: "In fact, people are instinctive press secretaries. We frame our traits and behaviours in the most socially attractive light we can get away with - which often means depicting ourselves as highly prosocial, friendly, and altruistic - and then Sincerely Believe Our Propaganda." Williams believes his own propaganda (as I believe mine). For the Trump hating market, Williams provides mild rationalizations.
As a truth supporter, it seems all the general claims of Williams seem true, tho he selectively leaves out those most elites won't like.
His view seems entirely consistent with the Rob Henderson Luxury Beliefs, and provides support for them from a "this is how young elite wanabees could have such beliefs".
(*Another very similar book is "Humankind", and somewhat similar is "Sapiens")
You quoted a line from Wiliams that bothered me (perhaps unnecessarily),
"…much anthropological research suggests a common pattern in many small-scale societies involving coalitions of high-status men, who generate extremely oppressive rules and rituals, which they use to coerce others (e.g., women, children, and lower-status men) within their communities."
One of the things I liked about Joyce Benenson's Warriors and Worriers is that she doesn't let women off the hook. Men, she says, are overtly competitive, obviously trying to do well for themselves, to get what advantages they can. Women are just as competitive, but largely hiding it under "agreeableness", seeming like a "nice person". If Williams means, like so much feminism and feminism-adjacent these days, that all bad things start with men, and women, being powerless, then have to adjust, I think he's wrong. If he means that's one strategy among many of getting advantage, I have no problem.
I agree with the Constrained Vision, but I think that in terms of "what people think" we more often see conflicts when none or less is possible. There are an enormous range of win-win arrangements of societies that we fail to take advantage of because we think of things as zero sum, immigration and climate change being the primary US examples.
"Win-Win" is the lie people tell to drown out the real harms caused by claiming their proposals produce benefits that are either illusory or nobody wants.
Ultimately, a person or caste's lot in life depends on how he or they regard life's many obstacles. The person who starts with the attitude that his struggles are his enemies' fault will waste his efforts on rent-seeking and be an economic failure. The one who starts with the world as it is and builds himself up from there, like Kipling's Sons of Martha, will succeed. This is the way nature rewards good character, and it's anti-civilization to have government try to change those outcomes.
It’s difficult to argue with Williams. But one wonders if we can boil the argument down a bit more. Human interdependence rests in large part upon the adaptation of the institution of property, that is the social recognition of the ability of a person or persons to exclude others from the use of a resource. Property is thus simultaneously prosocial and antisocial. But without it, there could be no trade and without trade there would not be the degree of interdependence that characterizes our species.
Solnitsata, an archaelogical site in Bulgaria, (https://journals.openedition.org/mediterranee/8246 )
thought to be the first town in Europe, illustrates the point. It was inhabitated by only about 350 people who were engaged in using a spring there to produce salt which they then traded for other goods. The site was heavily fortified to exclude others from making use of the resource, requiring, instead, others to trade for the salt.
And thus we find sustainable patters of specialization and trade:
“Specialized salt production was the major economic activity leading to the development of Provadia-Solnitsata as a central place of special socio‑economic significance in the Eastern Balkans. It started as early as the beginning of the Late Neolithic, although only as a household craft practiced within the settlement. At the end of the Late Neolithic, salt evaporation became a specialized production which was moved outside the settlement and most probably was run as a cooperative. During the Middle and Late Chalcolithic it evolved into an industrial-scale production. This would have been impossible without the formation of several specialized groups consisting of separate teams working in a well-coordinated manner. These groups of specialized workers were engaged in the collection and delivery of firewood, manufacturing and supply of pottery vessels as well as in the process of salt production itself. Major technological advances were made in all three of the core production branches, especially in the thermal technologies related to ceramic production and brine evaporation. The emergence of specialized production was an indicator of a second major division of labour, which in turn was a prerequisite for the emergence of towns. In this sense, specialized salt production makes the agglomeration Provadia-Solnitsata a unique phenomenon.”
Along with the wealth that trade allowed the salt producers to accumulate came religion evidenced by altars. And presumably this also embodied adaptive pressures leading to specializations in social hierarchy and the trading of service implicit in those relationships.
Our modern conceptions of liberty and freedom have at least some origin in the recognition of the enhanced wealth producing capacity of such urban arrangements. At least by, if not earlier, the Roman emperor Augustus recognized the reciprocal gains possible by offering greater autonomy to conquered populations in the form of “Ius Italicum” (https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/RE:Ius_Italicum ) . This early strategy of reciprocal gain through the creation of a “charter city” was emulated in the grants of liberties, freedoms, and other autonomies to various commercial centers by feudal rulers (one example of which: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_imperial_city ) One suspects our current conceptions of liberty and freedom owe as much, if not more, to these arrangements that they do to Magna Carta.
The Rousseau – Hobbes dichotomy that Williams seems engage with, thus seems a bit retrograde. In his greatly under-appreciated History of the Revolt of the Netherlands, Friedrich Schiller offers a somewhat different analysis that seems apropropos of our current squalor:
“To combine universal happiness with the highest liberty of the individual is the solve prerogative of infinite intelligence, which diffuses itself omnipresently over all. But what resources has man when placed in the position of omnipotence? Man can only aid his circumscribed powers by classification; like the naturalist, he establishes certain marks and rules by which to facilitate his own feeble survey of the whole, to which all individualities must conform. All this is accomplished for him by religion. She finds hope and fear planted in every human breast ; by making herself mistress of these emotions, and directing their affections to a single object, she virtually transforms millions of independent beings into one uniform abstract. The endless diversity of the human will no longer embarrasses its ruler—now there exists one universal good, one universal evil, which he can bring forward or withdraw at pleasure, ande which works in unison with himself even when absent. Now a boundary is established before which liberty must halt; a venerable, hallowed line, towards which all the various inclinations of the will must finally converge. The common aim of despotism and of priestcraft is uniformity, and uniformity is a necessary expedient of human poverty and imperfection.”
In this light one might tend to see the “friendliness” school as a manifestation of both the religions of wokery and supranational cosmopolitanism newly empowered with AI and LLMs as awful tools in service of a vision of a global coerced conformity.
Gee, I can't think why that book is under-appreciated ;-).
I enjoyed the salt story though.
The Williams essay Arnold discusses is a brilliant analysis and discussion of human nature and the human condition. Everyone should click through and read it. The constrained or tragic vision of life is the beginning of wisdom based on reality; its opposite, the unconstrained or utopian vision has in various manifestations given rise to untold evil.
This idea is basically what Ava Duvernay’s recent film Origin is all about — it is an exploration of ‘caste’ in 3 (India, Nazi Germany, USA) societies throughout history but the word ‘caste’ can really be interchanged for ‘ingroup’ and ‘outgroup’. The film is directed by Duvernay but the ideas are Isabel Wilkerson’s (author of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent). Duvernay/Wilkerson explain that ‘castes’ are constructed in society by people with power to preserve their power at the expense of people without it by using various “pillars” of control like violence, laws on reproduction, etc.
What are some laws on reproduction?
Both in Nazi Germany and Jim Crow America, Jews and “Aryan” Germans were not allowed to reproduce, and Blacks and Whites were not allowed to reproduce, respectively. Even though miscegenation laws have since been repealed in both places, it is important to note that the social impacts of such laws do not vanish from the face of the earth as the laws themselves do. Through this ‘pillar’ of caste control and many others, these societies have created artificial classes of people to preserve the power and advantage of those at the top.
That would surprise me. I suspect it was more prejudice and ignorance than the conspiracy you suggest. Two things stand out to me. The Spanish did not behave this way. Maybe the more important one is that these same people at the top [in English colonies] had sex and children with their slaves.
What do you mean the Spanish did not behave this way? The entire mestizo experience is a race-based caste system, just as existed and still exists in the United States today (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mestizo). The Spanish are a terrible counterexample for you to have chosen and honestly only further affirms Wilkerson’s theory. “Prejudice and ignorance” or “racism” are easy scapegoats for broader, more systemic caste-based social stratification that the film actually spends a good amount of time debunking — you should just go watch it, dude.
Dude,
Sorry I wasn't more more clear. My comment was in no way intended to apply to caste systems. I was only referring to racial segregation in reproduction. In their American colonies, the Spanish not only didn't prevent intermarriage, they encouraged it.
Yes but I’m saying intermarriage while still implementing a system of race based stratification is still affirmation of race based caste
But the reality is people did reproduce - black and white - and the result was just another rung in the social order in many cases.
Thus affirming America’s race-based caste system (if you are referring to America)
Well, unlike India it seems like it was mutable and of comparably short duration.
I am too tired to reply to this but just know that I don’t fully agree but I’m glad we can at least establish some semblance of a post-slavery race-based caste system in American history
This does not come up in Duvernay’s film (and I would presume it doesn’t come up in Wilkerson’s writing, either), but I would also argue that the controversial nature of abortion in America today is yet another “pillar” of caste control via reproduction.
If you talk to people about why they are against abortion, that's pretty much never going to be a reason. Maybe you know their "real" reason but I'm going to lean towards skepticism.
I think a lot of pro-natalist thinkers view abortion bans as a way to sustain/strengthen population growth rates of those races/ethnicities currently experiencing low birth rates — obviously many have religious qualms but I think some view bans on abortion as a means to ensure there are enough people of certain races to justify our race-based caste system
That's certainly possible but I doubt by that's what they are thinking. I'm pretty sure most against abortion see it as murder and any other reasons are secondary at best.
Also, it would be a reason that goes against the facts. Whites get abortions at lower rates than blacks and Hispanics.
Just because whites get abortions at rates lower than minorities doesn’t mean some might think banning abortions will still help buoy the population growth rate of white people
“Achieving mutually beneficial cooperation and peace [is] a matter of complex systems of norms, surveillance, incentives, institutions, and balances of power, which either constrain competition or channel it into desirable collective outcomes.”
The stated strategy of radicals is to destroy the complex systems of norms etc., and utopia will spontaneously arise from the rubble. Where and when has such a miracle ever occurred?
At large scales such miracles rarely occur. Probably the American and French Revolutions, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and to varying degrees the independence struggles of former British colonies.
In smaller scales they are more common, and there is also the question of "radical" depending on where you stand. For example, I think the institutions of higher learning are the crown jewels of this country, and to a lesser extent the major institutions of journalism and the various administrative agencies (the Federal Reserve system, the CDC, the FDA, etc.) and there are concerted efforts to tear these down or minimize their importance, rather than work to strengthen and improve them.
What happened after the French Revolution was hardly wonderful. Intra- and international killing on a vast scale. Lots of destruction. The rise and fall of the dictatorship of Emperor Napoleon. Sure, it gave us the metric system ...
I take "spontaneous" to be measured in human history time scales. So 150+ years of absolute monarchy vs 10 months of the so called "reign of terror", and longer if you want to throw in all of Napoleon.
It is going to take me many lifetimes of getting PhDs on this subject to fully argue the point, so I'll just stop with this:
If you put a gun to my head and said choose one of Louis XVI or Robespierre.. I'm team Robespierre (of course I claim all of Voltaire and Rousseau on my side) ;)
I was taking everything from the the Committee of Public Safety (basically a junta with Robespierre as the head) taking power to the downfall of Napoleon, about two decades. A lot longer than ten months. Whatever the time period, it was not "[A]chieving mutually beneficial cooperation and peace". Far from it.
I wasn't talking about choosing between the Revolution and Louis XVI. The great tragedy of the Revolution is that is was up against a pretty big evil but then it pooped its pants all over Europe.
I'm not sure I'm seeing the spontaneous miracle in South Africa. Perhaps it is slow rolling.
The American revolutionaries thought they were upholding the norms of "freeborn Englishmen" and a good many Englishmen thought they were as well, making numerous speeches in Parliament to that effect.
Absolutely, it was not a remodeling of society, although quite a revolution in self government. And it was radical (and still is!) to not be a Royalist. Indeed Dr. Johnson and Gibbon among others thought it unwise. And more importantly as Hamilton famously observed, it was a question of "whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force". A radical idea of ever there was one :)
"ChatGPT, write this story up like one of Aesop's Fables."*
"Ok, here is a version of the American Revolution with a moral-of-the-story metaphor in the style of Aesop's Fables:
"A squirrel climbed to the top of a tree's main trunk, but wanted to get even higher. He hopped on the highest limb to 'branch out in a new direction', so to speak, and did indeed rise higher. For a time. But not for long.
"Prideful of his decision and accomplishment, he associated his wonderful view only with the branch, not the trunk below, and forgot that of course the branch owed its very existence and almost all of its altitude to the support provided by that trunk. Also, squirrels have a habit of gnawing at the bark of the nearest tree available to maintain their teeth, but the squirrel saw no danger in doing this, since it had never caused any problems for him before. But he also forgot that he had only ever gnawed on the bark of the thick trunk - which can take the hit - and not on that of a thin branch, which can't.
"The squirrel gnawed as squirrels must and proceeded to saw off the branch he was sitting on. In short order, the once lofty squirrel was laid low.
"Moral: Remember your roots."
*I could have gone meta, "ChatGPT, write me one of those 'ChatGPT, write me ...' memes."
I am more sympathetic to the "spontaneously arise" part, as most societies and systems of norms and behaviors emerge spontaneously and not based on some initial design alone. I.e. products of human action and not human design so much.
On the other hand, the utopia bit is unlikely, as what spontaneously arises need not be great, especially when you have wrecked all the stuff that spontaneously arose before. That and utopias generally fail to make the transition from the dreams of humans to the reality of human interaction.
Yes, something will spontaneously arise from the ashes, but “spontaneous” isn’t synonymous with “instantaneous,” and “something” isn’t synonymous with “utopia.” So, the most likely outcome of the destruction of western civilization is a long dark age followed by a new order that is far inferior to that which was destroyed.
Yea, agreed. I do find that spontaneous order is rather underappreciated in general, however. The irony that most people miss is that imposed rules rarely produced the desired outcomes, and often result in the destruction of the underlying spontaneous order that the imposed rules were meant to improve. Designed social systems tend to break down rather spectacularly.
Dan Williams is great. Thanks for recommending his Substack.
“Of all the people that I read these days, Williams is the one whose intellectual interests and outlook align most with my own. As a young academic, he is an extreme outlier.” What a great compliment.
Consider the theories of ecology/evolution regarding competition within and between populations. The more similar you are to something, the more of a direct competitor is becomes. Squirrels and birds don't particularly pay each other mind - they are different and non-interacting. It takes a very specific kind of interaction to bridge the gap and establish salience - predator/prey, for example.
So with people; two people who are competing for the same promotion are always most threatening to each other in the workplace. The sway that one patriarch or matriarch holds in a family is the strongest kind of domination - outside of sibling rivalry, and that graduates with age and gender. This adds layers of complexity when 'intersectionality' - a word made dirty by identity politics, but in some senses useful - leads to people playing alternative roles and alternative allegiances, because we each can be an element in various cross-cutting groups, including family, neighborhood, profession, gender,
generation, and so on.
Thanks for this, Arnold - and I'm honoured by what you say at the end. Best, Dan.
As soon as I read about the "Market for Rationalizations" by Dan Williams, I've been a fan of his general analysis. Here he takes one of my more influential books, "The Goodness Paradox", and uses it to both support & criticize the book he reviews (& I'm unlikely to read*), "Survival of the Friendliest".
Yes, being friendly, self-domesticating, has been a big part of human evolution, and history. As has both war against out-groups, and intra-group & intra-family violence.
Arnold quotes Williams insight about how elites & rulers support when they: "think it will promote their interests in some way. Although perpetrators in such cases will often DEPICT rivals and enemies as highly threatening, that’s often just propaganda that functions to coordinate group behaviour and justify atrocities."
Rephrasing, Dem elites 'will often depict Trump as highly threatening, but it's only lies & propaganda to coordinate Dem behavior and justify illegal spying, illegal censorship of the truth, and killing an unarmed election fraud protester while calling the protest an insurrection'. I haven't seen Williams take on any of these three huge lies/ misinformation, but each helped Reps do worse, lose. In 2018 it was after illegal spying by Obama & Russian Hoax & 2 year Mueller coverup of illegal FBI/CIA spying & persecution of Trump supporters. Then it was govt-Big Tech censorship of the Biden laptop (which FBI had & knew was Biden's since 2019) which helped Biden win/ steal 2020. Which combined with other elections and a big, Trump supported "Stop the Steal" J6 protest against election fraud. This protest was falsely called an insurrection, like the Civil War, despite no arms on any protesters in the Capitol Building. Then 2 years of Dem J6 "insurrection" investigation w/o finding out: a) how many govt agents were there (& actions); b) who did pipe-bombs; c) who set up the gallows (at 6:30am, with video) & c2) why the Capitol Police didn't take the illegal gallows down. The insurrection smear, along with the again very relevant abortion issue, led to Dems winning the Senate barely, and Reps barely winning the House. Misinformation has been helping Dems every election since it became a Current Thing.
Many of the post-January Williams' posts have been about misinformation, and how overblown the hysteria about misinformation is -- since talk of misinformation basically became huge with the 2016 votes for Brexit and Donald Trump. But since the Democrats won in 2018, 2020, and half-won in 2022, Williams concludes misinformation isn't such a problem. For those who believe Dem lies, still, misinfo isn't a problem -- and Williams avoids antagonizing that market by pointing out the lies which had effects, since that audience, and maybe Williams, likes the effect.
As Williams says: "In fact, people are instinctive press secretaries. We frame our traits and behaviours in the most socially attractive light we can get away with - which often means depicting ourselves as highly prosocial, friendly, and altruistic - and then Sincerely Believe Our Propaganda." Williams believes his own propaganda (as I believe mine). For the Trump hating market, Williams provides mild rationalizations.
As a truth supporter, it seems all the general claims of Williams seem true, tho he selectively leaves out those most elites won't like.
His view seems entirely consistent with the Rob Henderson Luxury Beliefs, and provides support for them from a "this is how young elite wanabees could have such beliefs".
(*Another very similar book is "Humankind", and somewhat similar is "Sapiens")
You quoted a line from Wiliams that bothered me (perhaps unnecessarily),
"…much anthropological research suggests a common pattern in many small-scale societies involving coalitions of high-status men, who generate extremely oppressive rules and rituals, which they use to coerce others (e.g., women, children, and lower-status men) within their communities."
One of the things I liked about Joyce Benenson's Warriors and Worriers is that she doesn't let women off the hook. Men, she says, are overtly competitive, obviously trying to do well for themselves, to get what advantages they can. Women are just as competitive, but largely hiding it under "agreeableness", seeming like a "nice person". If Williams means, like so much feminism and feminism-adjacent these days, that all bad things start with men, and women, being powerless, then have to adjust, I think he's wrong. If he means that's one strategy among many of getting advantage, I have no problem.
I agree with the Constrained Vision, but I think that in terms of "what people think" we more often see conflicts when none or less is possible. There are an enormous range of win-win arrangements of societies that we fail to take advantage of because we think of things as zero sum, immigration and climate change being the primary US examples.
"There are no solutions, only trade-offs"
"Win-Win" is the lie people tell to drown out the real harms caused by claiming their proposals produce benefits that are either illusory or nobody wants.
_I_ do not mean by "win-win" that there are no tradeoffs, only that there are better trade offs.
Ultimately, a person or caste's lot in life depends on how he or they regard life's many obstacles. The person who starts with the attitude that his struggles are his enemies' fault will waste his efforts on rent-seeking and be an economic failure. The one who starts with the world as it is and builds himself up from there, like Kipling's Sons of Martha, will succeed. This is the way nature rewards good character, and it's anti-civilization to have government try to change those outcomes.
I could cash that out into some pretty sensible policies or not. :)
I think this is generally true, yes.