Links to Consider
Simon Cooke on the legible society; Glenn Reynolds on political lawfare; Jonathan Haidt on academia; Haidt and Lukianoff on identity politics
Zamyatin paints the perfectly legible society where the system has all the information it needs to serve its purposes and, in doing so, to sustain the ciphers that were once people. Zamyatin offers some hope of rejecting the state but then dashes it by having the main character telling us that the state will continue because it is founded on reason. And “reason should win”.
Zamyatin was a Russian novelist. But people do not submit to the soft totalitarianism of the legible society because of reason. They are motivated by a combination of convenience and fear.
Being legible is, for most of us, a convenience. That information held by utilities companies, insurers, banks, health service providers and, of course, the government enables the smooth use of technology to meet our needs, often at lower cost and more quickly than in the pre-digital world.
Say the various Democratic flacks, special prosecutors, and state attorneys general somehow manage to eliminate Trump. What happens?
Half the country – maybe more – will conclude that the whole system is rigged, that the establishment doesn’t follow the rules, and that it will gang up on anyone it sees is a threat. They will conclude, in short, that the government, and indeed the entire system, is illegitimate.
And they will be right. And the politicians of even a generation ago recognized that as enormously dangerous.
…looking at who’s on top today, and what they seem to want, makes me sad.
It is like watching a train wreck.
Speaking of train wrecks, Jonathan Haidt writes,
The good news is that the academy’s free fall is now over. American higher ed hit rock bottom on December 5, 2023 in that Congressional hearing room. Anyone who wants universities to bounce back and regain the trust of the American people must understand this new morality and ensure that it never holds sway on campus again.
He seems to be saying that the powers that be in academia now understand what went wrong and will proceed to fix it. I find this remarkably optimistic. As I see it, the extreme version of the oppressor-oppressed narrative is a fashionable belief, not easily fought with logic.
Haidt reposts a chapter from his book with Greg Lukianoff.
What happens when you train students to see others—and themselves—as members of distinct groups defined by race, gender, and other socially significant factors, and you tell them that those groups are eternally engaged in a zero-sum conflict over status and resources?
Cynically, I would say that you are giving the consumers what they want. Suppose a student is having difficulty earning good grades. Instead of telling him, “We have standards, and you might not be living up to them,” you tell him, “If you are not succeeding here as much as you would like, blame the oppressors.”
When the value of merit comes up against the value of justice, justice wins. It is much more fashionable.
Substacks referenced above:
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Has Harvard hit rock bottom? I say they’re still at the Precontemplation step.
1. Precontemplation - No buy-in that a problem exists.
2. Contemplation - Acknowledge the problem, but ambivalent about change.
3. Preparation - Small steps toward change
4. Action - Committed to new incentives.
I meant to write a comment in the previous post about what the Jews in the U.S. should be doing. What they should be doing is arming themselves heavily and organizing a plan for self-defense.