> Well, nobody wanted to publish that one, and a friend in the industry convinced me that going the self-publish route was actually a bad signal if I wanted to write popular books in the future.
Why does he care so much about popularity and institutional gratification and approval? What happened to make him so buck broken? I'm just incredulous.
He got started with GMU money when they needed a young disposable intellectual who could say risqué things on Twitter during the woke era that they couldn't say without getting cancelled. It's been astroturf from the very beginning.
>which is evidently what Jack Vien calls personalism
Since youve recommended him as a translator before, the title here uses the wrong from of the article (and misses the umlaut, but that might be convenience rather than ignorance).
>We can denote by words like ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ those social forms that spring up everywhere from quite rudimentary roots (which is not to say that they are always invariably the same forms), as opposed to those that are heavily dependent on the machinery of modern civilization.
Low confidence thought: I agree with the way youre using "natural", but I dont think thats the explanation. Chinese imperial bureaucracy has a lot of machinery, but it seems pretty natural for them. And insisting on the machinery of *modern* civilisation is, I think, the same circularity that Hanania is doing. What I think is happening is that humans can create unnatural states, but for one to exist on a large scale you have to try - and the combination of sufficient understanding of human nature and setting oneself against it has only happened this once.
>In light of this, we might expect stronger commitment to left-wing causes among mediocrities than elites within the clerisy.
This certainly seems true of wokeness, and very likely of practical committment to activism as well, but I think in terms of beliefs the top clerisy is more liberal than the mediocrites. Ideological consistency in general requires intelligence, and a predominantely liberal group becoming more consistent is becoming more liberal. I think this outweighs any decrease in liberal sentiment-affiliation that might be there.
1. Jack Vien's translation of Haller's Restoration of Political Science is based on the French version of that work (which is apparently the more extensive one); as far as I know he has no claim to knowledge of German.
2. I'll give some more thought to the distinction of natural/organic vs. unnatural/mechanical, because as you say, these concepts can be as slippery as Hanania's 'elites'. And certainly true that other civilizations have had sophisticated states and technology, though nothing as advanced as our own, which allows for a lot more revolutionary meddling. Perhaps the decisive factor is power centralization (I've long thought that 'Bioleninism' represents a society-wide variant of stereotypical tyrant's court politics, such as emperors using eunuchs for loyalty etc.)
3. I suspect you are right about the liberal (as opposed to woke) sympathies of elites, which is why I don't much credit midwit theory, but we need to understand how far this relates to their vulnerable position against the MHC mob and need for ideological acceptability. An online space where they could explore certain ideas on the quiet, without being yelled at and accused of things by populists, could succeed in changing some of their views (and in isolated cases already has, despite the limitations of the present-day dissident scene).
"This brings us to the role of liberal and leftist ideology. It should go without saying that these are ideologies of modern Western states, particular to our own time and place, and that there is no universal reason why a scholarly elite should be anti-conservative, liberal, democratist, etc. (any more than that it should be Catholic, Vedic, or Confucian)."
Some time ago a smarter man than me tried to create a universal definition for leftism, rather than one primarily describing politics in post renaissance Europe. He said that leftism was the broad trend for belief systems and the clerisy to enforce them to double down on their own principles over time. Just as European (post)Christian leftism becomes more leftist, a Muslim clerisy could (and scholars of the Abbasid caliphate say, did) become more Muslim, and Confucian mandarins, more Confucian. No matter the belief system in place, the repeated creeping towards extreme enforcement of the base principles will inevitably tangle and clash with what is actually needed for human flourishing on the ground, and lead to decline.
Yes, we can identify some universal traits and perennial tendencies of clerical castes, and ever-increasing dogmatism might be one of them. Question is whether that is the same thing as leftism, or (more likely in my view) something that overlaps with it, and how to draw the Venn diagram in the latter case.
I don't think I've read that theory, so a link or book title would be much appreciated.
One shouldn't take that gruesome oik Hanania seriously. His sugar-daddy has dreadful taste.
The true intellectual and cultural elites are shut out completely from prestigious institutions, institutions which once derived their prestige from true elites, but which now merely issue fiat status with open hostility toward actual merit. Now one can spot poseurs simply by their not being shut out by their fellow-poseurs.
> Well, nobody wanted to publish that one, and a friend in the industry convinced me that going the self-publish route was actually a bad signal if I wanted to write popular books in the future.
Why does he care so much about popularity and institutional gratification and approval? What happened to make him so buck broken? I'm just incredulous.
Nothing says Elite Human Capital like constant status anxiety.
He got started with GMU money when they needed a young disposable intellectual who could say risqué things on Twitter during the woke era that they couldn't say without getting cancelled. It's been astroturf from the very beginning.
What is GMU money?
George mason university
George Mason University, the home of Tyler Cowen, Robert Hanson and that kid Decker. Dunno if the OP claims of funding are true though.
give second part
Got some (re)reading to do for it first; it'll be more in-depth than this one.
>which is evidently what Jack Vien calls personalism
Since youve recommended him as a translator before, the title here uses the wrong from of the article (and misses the umlaut, but that might be convenience rather than ignorance).
>We can denote by words like ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ those social forms that spring up everywhere from quite rudimentary roots (which is not to say that they are always invariably the same forms), as opposed to those that are heavily dependent on the machinery of modern civilization.
Low confidence thought: I agree with the way youre using "natural", but I dont think thats the explanation. Chinese imperial bureaucracy has a lot of machinery, but it seems pretty natural for them. And insisting on the machinery of *modern* civilisation is, I think, the same circularity that Hanania is doing. What I think is happening is that humans can create unnatural states, but for one to exist on a large scale you have to try - and the combination of sufficient understanding of human nature and setting oneself against it has only happened this once.
>In light of this, we might expect stronger commitment to left-wing causes among mediocrities than elites within the clerisy.
This certainly seems true of wokeness, and very likely of practical committment to activism as well, but I think in terms of beliefs the top clerisy is more liberal than the mediocrites. Ideological consistency in general requires intelligence, and a predominantely liberal group becoming more consistent is becoming more liberal. I think this outweighs any decrease in liberal sentiment-affiliation that might be there.
1. Jack Vien's translation of Haller's Restoration of Political Science is based on the French version of that work (which is apparently the more extensive one); as far as I know he has no claim to knowledge of German.
2. I'll give some more thought to the distinction of natural/organic vs. unnatural/mechanical, because as you say, these concepts can be as slippery as Hanania's 'elites'. And certainly true that other civilizations have had sophisticated states and technology, though nothing as advanced as our own, which allows for a lot more revolutionary meddling. Perhaps the decisive factor is power centralization (I've long thought that 'Bioleninism' represents a society-wide variant of stereotypical tyrant's court politics, such as emperors using eunuchs for loyalty etc.)
3. I suspect you are right about the liberal (as opposed to woke) sympathies of elites, which is why I don't much credit midwit theory, but we need to understand how far this relates to their vulnerable position against the MHC mob and need for ideological acceptability. An online space where they could explore certain ideas on the quiet, without being yelled at and accused of things by populists, could succeed in changing some of their views (and in isolated cases already has, despite the limitations of the present-day dissident scene).
i notice it is often translators who have the very best political commentary, maybe i will have to add enthusiasts of old poetry to this as well
Which others (translator-commentators) would you recommend?
Chad Crowley is very good
"This brings us to the role of liberal and leftist ideology. It should go without saying that these are ideologies of modern Western states, particular to our own time and place, and that there is no universal reason why a scholarly elite should be anti-conservative, liberal, democratist, etc. (any more than that it should be Catholic, Vedic, or Confucian)."
Some time ago a smarter man than me tried to create a universal definition for leftism, rather than one primarily describing politics in post renaissance Europe. He said that leftism was the broad trend for belief systems and the clerisy to enforce them to double down on their own principles over time. Just as European (post)Christian leftism becomes more leftist, a Muslim clerisy could (and scholars of the Abbasid caliphate say, did) become more Muslim, and Confucian mandarins, more Confucian. No matter the belief system in place, the repeated creeping towards extreme enforcement of the base principles will inevitably tangle and clash with what is actually needed for human flourishing on the ground, and lead to decline.
Yes, we can identify some universal traits and perennial tendencies of clerical castes, and ever-increasing dogmatism might be one of them. Question is whether that is the same thing as leftism, or (more likely in my view) something that overlaps with it, and how to draw the Venn diagram in the latter case.
I don't think I've read that theory, so a link or book title would be much appreciated.
It's in this blog: https://inelegantviceroy.stechlinsee.ch/
Cheers, will take a look.
One shouldn't take that gruesome oik Hanania seriously. His sugar-daddy has dreadful taste.
The true intellectual and cultural elites are shut out completely from prestigious institutions, institutions which once derived their prestige from true elites, but which now merely issue fiat status with open hostility toward actual merit. Now one can spot poseurs simply by their not being shut out by their fellow-poseurs.