Isegoria

As this dystopian election campaign unfolds, Andrew Sullivan revisits Plato’s Republic:

It has unsettled — even surprised — me from the moment I first read it in graduate school. The passage is from the part of the dialogue where Socrates and his friends are talking about the nature of different political systems, how they change over time, and how one can slowly evolve into another. And Socrates seemed pretty clear on one sobering point: that “tyranny is probably established out of no other regime than democracy.” What did Plato mean by that? Democracy, for him, I discovered, was a political system of maximal freedom and equality, where every lifestyle is allowed and public offices are filled by a lottery. And the longer a democracy lasted, Plato argued, the more democratic it would become. Its freedoms would multiply; its equality spread. Deference to any sort of authority would wither; tolerance of any kind of inequality would come under intense threat; and multiculturalism and sexual freedom would create a city or a country like “a many-colored cloak decorated in all hues.”

This rainbow-flag polity, Plato argues, is, for many people, the fairest of regimes. The freedom in that democracy has to be experienced to be believed — with shame and privilege in particular emerging over time as anathema. But it is inherently unstable. As the authority of elites fades, as Establishment values cede to popular ones, views and identities can become so magnificently diverse as to be mutually uncomprehending. And when all the barriers to equality, formal and informal, have been removed; when everyone is equal; when elites are despised and full license is established to do “whatever one wants,” you arrive at what might be called late-stage democracy. There is no kowtowing to authority here, let alone to political experience or expertise.

The very rich come under attack, as inequality becomes increasingly intolerable. Patriarchy is also dismantled: “We almost forgot to mention the extent of the law of equality and of freedom in the relations of women with men and men with women.” Family hierarchies are inverted: “A father habituates himself to be like his child and fear his sons, and a son habituates himself to be like his father and to have no shame before or fear of his parents.” In classrooms, “as the teacher … is frightened of the pupils and fawns on them, so the students make light of their teachers.” Animals are regarded as equal to humans; the rich mingle freely with the poor in the streets and try to blend in. The foreigner is equal to the citizen.

And it is when a democracy has ripened as fully as this, Plato argues, that a would-be tyrant will often seize his moment.

He is usually of the elite but has a nature in tune with the time — given over to random pleasures and whims, feasting on plenty of food and sex, and reveling in the nonjudgment that is democracy’s civil religion. He makes his move by “taking over a particularly obedient mob” and attacking his wealthy peers as corrupt. If not stopped quickly, his appetite for attacking the rich on behalf of the people swells further. He is a traitor to his class — and soon, his elite enemies, shorn of popular legitimacy, find a way to appease him or are forced to flee. Eventually, he stands alone, promising to cut through the paralysis of democratic incoherence. It’s as if he were offering the addled, distracted, and self-indulgent citizens a kind of relief from democracy’s endless choices and insecurities. He rides a backlash to excess—“too much freedom seems to change into nothing but too much slavery” — and offers himself as the personified answer to the internal conflicts of the democratic mess. He pledges, above all, to take on the increasingly despised elites. And as the people thrill to him as a kind of solution, a democracy willingly, even impetuously, repeals itself.

Z Man describes the monasteries of America:

Storing up knowledge in books at a monastery is fine, but passing them around so others can learn and expand upon what’s in those books is how civilization flourishes. Those monks copying old texts were increasing the mass of human understanding. Copying Aristotle meant that the copy could be sent to another monastery to be read and copied again. It also meant more men exposed to Aristotle, and not just in the monasteries. The nobility were able to build libraries too.

The thing about the medieval system was that it was tightly bound by Catholicism on one end and the state on the other. Intellectual life had to appeal to the king and the Church. In this regard, the Church served another key role. They vetted and filtered the books that were produced, thus they controlled the knowledge of the society. The crown may have had a monopoly of force, but the Church gave it legitimacy and an intellectual structure through which to rule.

We like to think that the modern age is a time when information flows freely around society, unencumbered by the state or powerful interests. Colleges and universities are endlessly going on about having free speech and open debate. Journalists insist their job is to speak truth to power, which means saying things that are outside the approved list of truths. Even so-called conservatives bang on about the glories of free and open dialogue, usually while they denounce Donald Trump.

The truth is, the monastery system is still with us. Instead of the crown financing the learning centers, it is billionaires, corporations, non-governmental organizations and international bodies. Instead of monasteries, we have think tanks, research centers and foundations. All of which are “not for profit” which means contributions are tax deductible. The rich pay themselves for supporting the organizations that exist to promote the interests of the rich and powerful.

All around Washington DC, there are organizations, like American Enterprise Institute, that are financed by rich people to pump out papers, books, commentary and experts to populate TV and radio. If you look at their 990 filing, you see that the guy in charge made $700K in compensation. Board members made six figures, with most in the mid-200’s. Charles Murray made $270K just from this one job. His books, speaking fees and so forth probably double that number. Being a “thinker” pays well.

AEI is a big foot operation, but there many smaller ones too. The Fund for American Studies funds journalists and reporters with grants. The list of programs on their 990 is mostly benign stuff that sounds nice. Then you see the long list of trustees. The one name that jumps out is Fred Barnes who took $25K for his troubles. One of the benefits of being a journalist, who plays ball, is you get to sit on boards at these non-profits. Some pay more than others, but it is easy to see how it can add up.

Then there is the magazine rackets. National Review has a thing called the National Review Institute. Notice how they always call their people “fellow” to give it that academic feel. Their 990 is not very interesting, but NRI is mostly a clearing house. The director makes $200K a year, in case you’re curious. That’s small potatoes compared to John Podhoretz, who takes over $400K in salary from Commentary Magazine, another non-profit operation.

Of course, it’s not just indigenous billionaires paying these people to promote them in the press. Foreign governments get in on the act too. The government of Malaysia famously bought favorable coverage from conservative media a few years ago. You may recognize the name Ben Domenech from that article. He writes for the Federalist and was in on the anti-Trump crusade. He also got jammed up in a plagiarism scandal, yet he somehow remains in good standing with conservative media.

My favorite, I think, is Brent Bozell, who Mike Cernovich has been going after on Twitter. Bozell runs a racket called the Media research Center. It’s supposed to police the media for bias. Brent makes $400K for his trouble, that’s when he is not penning anti-Trump pieces for Breitbart. No one should begrudge Bozell his money, but when the media watchdog is paid by the same people funding the media, it’s hard to take him seriously.

The reality is our opinion makers are all kept men. They are the monks and clergy of our age, shaping intellectual life and setting the limits of what is and what is not permitted in the public sphere. This is done mostly to promote their own position, but financed by the donor class, on whose behalf the monks and priests of the commentariat work. When you are living the 1% lifestyle, you’re not about to rock the boat by speaking truth to power.

The reason they are fainting over Trump and the rise of the Alt-Right is the same reason the Church panicked over Martin Luther. The difference is Jan Hus is an army of bloggers and writers on-line using the megaphones of social media.

The Song Dynasty (960-1279) was the most wealthy and successful of all Chinese dynasties:

Not to date; the best dynasty, period. Better than anything than came later. Richer, more urbanized, and arguably with better technology. The Song Dynasty had machinery that the Qing Dynasty didn’t have in the 19th century. The Song economy had huge foreign trade links, and the Song government in 1000 again had higher revenues than the Chinese government in 1900.

Some argue that that was the result of better governance. As seen in the previous post, the Song had solved an eternal problem of Chinese governance: how to deal with the military and the aristocracy. The solution they took was to screw them both, and put the government completely in hands of the bureaucracy. They set up their model civil examination system, reduced the number of eunuchs to a minimum, took care the armies in the provinces didn’t get too big, kept most of the imperial family in the capital so they didn’t develop territorial power. I wonder if urban life was also meant to keep them busy having fun while depressing their fertility. Not a bad research idea.

[...]

The Song was by far the smallest and weakest of all Chinese dynasties.

They didn’t care though: they were swimming in money. Losing access to the Silk Road forced them to trade by sea: and surprise, maritime trade is much more profitable! The Song Dynasty had higher revenues in 1000 than the Qing dynasty had in 1900. Their technology boomed: by some accounts the Song had better machinery than the Qing 800 years later. Urbanization rates were also the highest China ever saw until the 20th century.

The Song were weak, but they were rich: they decided it was cheaper to pay off the barbarians than to keep an army to fight them. And it was true. What were the barbarians going to do with all that silver anyway? They naturally spent it in buying stuff from China. So the silver went away as tribute, and came back as trade. Better than to keep an army of uppity generals and risk that they stage a rebellion or blackmail the court every now and then. While a section of the bureaucracy was against such a dishonorable treaty, the smartest Mandarins knew that in order to keep running the government they’d better pay off the barbarians and keep the military from having any influence at court.

It was a massive diplomatic coup. It worked brilliantly. The Khitan were actually fairly civilized people. They were literate in Chinese, developed their own script based on it, run a fairly sophisticated state apparatus. The problem between nomadic herders and settled farmers is that nomadic life is hard. It’s hard to live off animal products only. Nomads also want grain, cloth, paper, tea, you know, nice stuff. The only way of getting it is to trade or to take it by force. But the Khitan managed to invade a small bunch of Chinese land. It was enough for them; they got their small territory of Chinese land, full of Chinese farmers to make grain for them, Chinese scribes to run their government for them. The Khitan kept their capital north of the mountains, enjoyed their hunting and herding, and as long as the Song kept sending silver and silk, they respected a peace that lasted a 100 years.

The weakness of the Song solved the Mongol problem, allegedly for the price of the tax income of a single province. The army didn’t like it, but the army could go to hell. At the Song it was the mandarins who run things. And they were doing a mighty fine job. The population doubled to more than 100 million people. Printing was invented and developed into a national industry, as well as gunpowder. Art and literature also developed beyond anything previous. It was a Golden Age. Some people say the Song were on the breach of undergoing a capitalist revolution.

Chinese history is great, Spandrell says:

It’s long, it’s well documented, and it’s documented in explicitly moralistic terms. Chinese thought has been always focused in how to achieve good governance, and histories are written as to contain parables of what good government is, and what bad government leads to. [...] Good government leads to nice things. Bad government leads to death and misery. That’s all Chinese intellectuals have ever cared about. I think it’s a good priority to have.

All states have a state religion:

If your state religion is controlled by a hostile state, you are toast. That is spiritual insecurity. The official state religion of most states is progressivism, and their progressivism is controlled by the NGOs, which are controlled by the US State Department, which is controlled by Harvard in pretty much the same way the US supreme court is controlled by Harvard. (Sometimes the president makes minor, and usually ineffectual and unsuccessful, efforts to influence the US State Department. If he gets too stubborn about it, the media demonize him.)

Back in the 1400 and 1500s the Pope was in the pocket of the Holy Roman Emperor and/or the King of Spain, and a lot of states were at war or near war or cold war with the Holy Roman Emperor and/or the King of Spain. These states found that the Pope was getting up their noses. They found Martin Luther handy to protect themselves from papism, which eventually led to the bloody holy wars of the Protestant Reformation west of the Hajnal line. Being Roman Catholic was spiritual insecurity – you were apt wind up incorporated in the almost universal empire of the triple crown.

More recently Jomo Kenyatta complained during the twentieth century: “When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.” That is spiritual insecurity.

China has a big problem with progressivism and assorted Christian sects, many of which smell suspiciously like the State Department, discovering in the New Testament that gay sex is sacred, and husbands should obey their wives. The obvious solution is state sponsored Confucianism Manchesterized, or state sponsored Manchesterism Confucianized, but they are hesitant and confused. What exactly is their state religion? Supposedly it is Maoism, but Maoism is just not that credible these days, and they don’t particularly wish it was credible. They are half decided to go with Confucianism, but what sort of Confucianism? They are not sure. In the recent confrontation in Hong Kong, the police backed the protestors against the government, siding with the US state department against Peking. Such is the power of faith. Hong Kong suffers severely from spiritual insecurity. The authorities in Peking need to decide on something that is credible, persuasive, and sane, and go with that, for right now China is spiritually insecure. The state department plots a “democratic” takeover of China. If what happened in Hong Kong had happened in Peking, China would be ruled by the State Department and looted by Wall Street the way Russia was after the fall of communism.

[...]

There are no large scale hierarchical organized Christian religions in the west that seriously dissent from the State Department line that all religions, rightly understood, are the same religion, and that religion is progressivism.

In order to be an effective persuader, Scott Adams suggests, you must embrace the idea that common sense is an illusion:

And you must understand that humans rarely (if ever) do anything because of logic and reason. The part of us we consider rational is in reality a rationalizer. Your mind is creating little movies in which you are the star.

In a Hoffman type of reality, where we all experience our own version of the truth, you can see how affirmations might be less about magical thinking and more like a mental tool to edit the movie you are experiencing as your life. When you focus on the future you want, the result is self-persuasion, and perhaps that is enough in a Hoffman universe to write the upcoming scenes in your movie.

That is essentially how I experience my reality. I focus on whatever I want, and I imagine it as vividly as I can, as often as I can, and for some reason it happens. If you know anything about my history, you know it is filled with unlikely events that somehow conspired to get me everything I want. My experience violates everything that humans typically assume about reality. And that’s just the stuff you know about. Trust me when I say my daily experience is so far above normal that I literally can’t tell you about it without being labelled insane.