A common left on the November 2024 open post by John Michael Greer by Renaissance Man (post number 59)
For those who don't know Thomas Sowell "A Conflict of Visions", he says people fall into one of two very broad categories, those who tend to have a constrained view of humanity and those with an unconstrained view. To quote K. Kissin who summarized Sowell, "Those with the unconstrained vision think that humans are malleable and can be perfected. They believe that social ills and evils can be overcome through collective action that encourages humans to behave better. To subscribers of this view, poverty, crime, inequality, and war are not inevitable, rather, they are puzzles that can be solved. We only need to say the right things, enact the right policies, and spend enough money and we will suffer these social ills no more. This worldview is the foundation of the progressive mindset.
By contrast, those who see the world through a constrained vision lens believe that human nature is a universal constant. No manner of social engineering can change the sober reality of human self-interest, or the fact that human empathy and social resources are necessarily limited and scarce. People who see things this way believe that most political and social problems will never be solved, they can only be managed. This approach is the bedrock of the conservative worldview."
Basically, the unconstrained viewpoint has see people as basically good, that cultural differences are superficial, that people change easily if you just present the right argument or show them the right way. Thus borders don't matter, all injustices can be rectified, and everyone can achieve anything they want and the only reason they can't is because of bad people holding them back.
The first point I wanted to make is that for the past 30 years, those with the unconstrained vision have so completely dominated academia, that everyone who graduated with a degree since the 1980s has been exposed to that one single-sided view and one single attitude and one single set of ideas about the world which are held to be unquestionable, and therefore largely unquestioned. That is all of the Clerisy who run government and major corporations, hence many of the policies and attitudes broadly adopted across society (policies which are manifestly failing), and the sneering tone of educated people towards non-educated, who are, to judge from the recent election results, largely of a constrained vision mindset, which is much more common around most of the world.
The second book I referenced is "Lila" by Robert Persig, where it explores, among other things, the idea that culture changes must have time to become solid and tested and modified to meet real needs. Change is inevitable, if for no other reason that physical world circumstances change. A successful culture adapts to change and changes to adapt, but only as needed. If there are too many changes, too fast, they don't take roots and they become fugitive, and any culture that changes too much dissolves. A culture that does not change, that refuses to change becomes brittle and easily broken.
Right now we are in a time when changes are being pushed on us fast and furiously, particularly from the Clerisy who want to achieve perfection now. Anything currently deemed to interfere with the perfection of society must be changed, without any regard for its suitability or whether the new condition is even sane. This has had a huge impact on a great many people who have essentially, thrown up their hands and said, "Fine, I can't keep up. If I'm doomed to forever be a Bad Person because I'm racist, sexist, homophobic... whatever, then if I have to do the time, I might as well do the crime, right?" And thus we see a notable shift into attitudes deemed utterly unacceptable by the Clerisy being adopted wholeheartedly by a huge majority of the populace, if for no other reason than it annoys their soi-disant betters.
And hence the turmoil in the political and social realm: those in the upper classes changing the rules about what is acceptable so frequently no one can keep track, even if those social rules made sense, which most don't, but no one has time to even slow down to check. Those who are not in the upper classes are voting for a collection of agendas from people who range from making sense to spouting utter nonsense, but all of whom are drawn together simply by the common theme that they oppose the Clerisy and their failing policies.
I yearn for politicians who are not on the extremes, who would, in the words of Disraeli, change what needs to change, but only as much as needed. Stability, reliability, rule of law, institutions that are worth respecting.
I very much agree with all the points here, about how a never-ending cascade of changes are thrown onto people, who are then deemed as closed-minded or evil if they do not cheerfully embrace them, and how aspects such as coordination, empathy and acceptance are limited, though perhaps "localized" is a better term.
It's possible to have a great deal of love for those around you, and thinking about love as "limited" is implicitly dragging it down to the realm of quantification, but it is in an important way restricted to a finite number of people, because we can only expand our time and effort in so many ways, and towards so many people or things, which is why I agree with the constrained view presented here.
What I disagree with is the implicit idea that those changes are somehow brought from above, which is to say that academics, writers and politicians willingly embrace certain views, which are then instilled onto regular people.
There is some truth to that, in that thinkers are usually at the forefront of trends in our society, but to me the point to understand is that all social trends are downstream of the direction of the system, which is not made of conscious decisions, but rather are the result of how people pursue their own agenda through technological change, and how the rest of the system has to accomodate this in order to remain efficient and maintain its cohesion through incorporating those new elements.
Let's zoom back because this fundamental principle, the way in which the system is largely autonomous, deserves some justification.
§1. Technological progress happens because companies and various institutions benefit from them. People then adopt those because those are convenient, and these changes trickle into the system as a whole. For instance, no one was explicitly coerced or convinced to live in a world where cars are required to go anywhere, and yet it happened over many decades, because regular people got more and more money to afford a car, which then drove up their demand and required more roads to be built, which then allowed economical activity to be pushed further and further away from the city centre in afford to lessen the price of land, on and on.
Likewise with environmental destruction. It's not like people consciously choose to live a lifestyle reliant on the extraction of fossil fuels, it's more like people choose what's convenient for them, and also because there isn't any real alternative for someone who wants to live a radically simpler life. You might be able to live without electronics and without a car, though this is becoming increasingly more difficult, but your food, clothing, and heating, still come from an industrial world, which ships products across several continents, and all of those processes are reliant on fossil fuels, mining, and the continual destruction of natural ecosystems.
No one chose those things. Those things happen because of the decentralization of responsibility, to the point where no one can really be held responsible for any of the trends in our world, and because people tend to pursue their own interests, their own comfort.
§2. Major changes in one aspect of society necessitate changes in other aspects as well. The invention of the car engine requires vehicles which can handle its power, roads which can accomodate the vehicles, people who can drive a car, laws to make people drive safely and keep them accountable if they don't, industrial processes to make more cars and roads, social activities which are worth travelling far for, and thus using a car, and a general culture which sees cars, and technology, as valuable.
This second principle, the principle of integration of the system, is rather obvious with physical machines, because there are standards that emerge which allow parts to be replaceable, and machines to be compatible with one another, such that for instance you can use pretty much any mouse with any (relatively modern) computer, plug up your machine to a printer, and communicate with totally different computers across the internet.
§3. What might not be so obvious is that human beings also have to become standardized to fit into the system. Our ability to make sense of our own minds and perception is typically rather limited, for the simple reason that becoming less conscious also makes you less able to perceive the losses which result from being less conscious. 1 It's the same thing which happens when you fall asleep, something which you don't notice because you lose the very same ability which could allow you to know that you are awake.
Abstract machines which involve human beings can be called institutions, which are another vital aspect of the system. Just like machines have standardized parts and need to work predictably in order to be efficient and autonomous, so do institutions, except that the standardization of human beings is significantly more painful.
§4. The main institution responsible for standardizing human beings is schooling. I will not refer to it as the "education system", because there is very little, if none at all, education happening in schools. To be educated means to learn about one's environment and oneself, whereas schooling is primarily concerned with making sure that people are dependent on the system to survive, stunt people's initiative, and makes them afraid of authority.
When I say that schooling is "concerned" with those things, I am not saying that teachers are deliberately trying to bully students into submission, though some of the worst ones might. What I am saying is that genuine growth and learning are at best secondary to the dynamic of schooling, which is one where students must shut down their curiosity, aliveness and autonomy in order to remain quiet in classes and do as the teacher tells them to do.
A truly educational world would be one where children could learn directly from their environment, not one where they need a professional who hates their job, and who often dislikes children as well, to do so. 2 Likewise a truly healthy world is not one where everyone has access to the best, most expensive health care, but one where people directly take responsibility for their own health, and have access to a life which allows them to be healthy, such as giving them a lot of time in nature, and giving them the freedom to live the life they want, instead of the constant coercion that we know of, which inevitably has major consequences on your health. 3
§5. The main retort to what I just wrote is that no system could work by giving people this kind of freedom, and indeed, if what you care about is the functioning of the system, you would be correct. The system, by its integrated nature (point 2), has dependencies between its parts. If we allowed children to not attend school if they didn't want to, their time and attention would be swallowed by all the distractions and addictions which come from screens and the internet. This means that a truly educational world would also have to have a sane, supportive culture, rather than the racket which exploits people's attention which is mistakenly called a "culture".
If we care about conscious qualities, such as genuine learning, curiosity, freedom, beauty, courage and love, then the entire system would have to change, not just a few isolated parts, because each part of the system is dependent on other parts. This is why nothing meaningfully changes, unless we are talking about more, more and more. Technological and social progress happen because they are the only direction which make sense to a machine-world. More beautiful or free, or simply different, doesn't make sense to machine-logic, only more efficient and more quantity.
§6. Social changes, whether political or economical, are driven by the trends highlighted above, and tend to justify technological progress as good. But those pro-system ideas and beliefs which circulate are really a surface layer for trends which are far deeper and more powerful, and which no one could meaningfully change, let alone stop.
The reason why for instance feminism has taken over is, in an important way because of ideas and media which have been circulating and which spread the cluster of ideas surrounding feminism, but much deeper than that is the fact that the total erasure of fundamental differences between men and women is central to the functioning of the system. Excluding women from the workforce and from working within the institutions of the system is not beneficial to it, which is why feminism had to arise at some point, in order to drive more and more people into the workplace, so that the system could grow even more, and be more and more integrated.
The general dynamic is as such: 1) there is some sort of pressure, or discontent, which arises from living in the system. And 2) because people are utterly reliant on the system to live, their efforts to make things change naturally end up going in some direction which is favorable to the system. With feminism, what happens is that a combination of various factors, such as a) women being more and more alienated from a sense of community, due to the erosion of neighborhoods since people work further and further from where they live, b) those same women using their free time to write and talk with one another about their situation c) the inevitable backlash produced by violent and domineering men, d) teachers being predominantly women e) the ideal of equality arising from the Enlightenment and f) the basic reality that women were utterly dependent on their husband to provide for themselves, and had less rights than them, all contributed to the tension felt in women's lives, rightfully so, and which fed into the rise of feminism.
However, because feminism is ultimately a movement which depends on the system to uphold itself, since feminists aren't particularly keen on going Kaczynski-mode and live more promitive lives off of rabit hunting and foraging, it was inevitable that their increased "freedom" would end co-opted into corporate careers, or working within institutions of the system.
This two-fold dynamic of building tension and relieving it all within system-friendly boundaries is inevitable because people will never destroy the very system on which their survival hinges. It's all good to be radical as long as it helps your career, but as soon as the latter is threatened, you know for sure that the barking dog will eat from the hand that feeds it.
§7. To be against the trends of the system would cast you out, not just in terms of the ideas you believe in, but also in terms of how you live. The reason why academics tend to embrace and spread ideas which favor the technological system is because if they didn't, they wouldn't have got to their position in the first place. Only someone who is comfortable within institutions, where direct experience and consciousness are secondary and beliefs and conformity are primary, and who doesn't have any fundamental problem with the system can rise to a position of power in an institution. They might talk about isolated issues, but they will never, ever talk about the system because it gives them their cushy job.
They might then say that they always held this or that idea before they could build a career out of it, but it doesn't change the fact that it is precisely because their idea is fundamentally accepting of the system, and reassuring to the ego which builds it, that they could have had any success whatsoever. The reason why a techno-friendly, middle-class version of Buddhism, the religion of Techno-dharma, is becoming more widespread is because the ego loves the reassurance of following methods and soothing its anxiety, and because none of it whatsoever is threatening to the system.
To come back to the initial point, what the comment says towards the end is that it would be better if our changes were more gradual rather than thrown all at once and forced into our lives. But what this commenter doesn't realize is that it couldn't be otherwise. The system is not driven by conscious people making deliberate choices and spreading what they believe in.
Fundamentally, the unconstrained view emerges from the fact that boundaries get in the way of technological progress. If people only wanted to interact with their own narrow culture, or their own village, then there would be no such thing as a multinational company, or a large institution, which are both necessary for the system to maintain and expand itself, since it requires massive operations in order to operate complex machinery, both the physical and the human kinds.
Likewise, a trend such as mass migration, whether legal or not, happens because it is very good for the system to have access to cheap labor. Even if people didn't migrate in Western countries, the fact would remain that companies, being profit-driven first of all, would keep exporting most of their labor to third world countries, in order to stay competitive with one another, and increase their profits. People do not want to leave their home country, leaving behind their family and stability, and many of the people in the receiving countries might not want those migrants either, yet it still happens because this is the direction of the system.
Furthermore, even if it is true that there are people who hold far more power in how our world is shaped than others, the fact remains that those people only got to a position of power because they fit within our system. They might not be the most system-friendly people in the world, for instance president Trump is a bit of a loose cannon and tends to put his own interests over the interests of the system, but he's still fundamentally someone who fits inside our world.
Egoic people such as Trump, and system-friendly people of various kinds, whether from the left or the right, might appear wildly different on the surface, but they both unite with one another whenever there is a complete outsider. Someone who for instance rejects work not out of laziness, but because they want meaningful, participatory work which affords them freedom and access to their production, as opposed to the current left and right wings which both see work as part of a broader system which puts production above any human quality, which is why even Marxists fundamentally support the factory, the roads, the power plants and the institutions of our world, even if they want to change them and manage them differently.
All of this is to say that the system can be altered in some ways, which can meaningful to argue and fight over, but fundamentally it has only one direction, which is more and more technology, at a pace which is not set by conscious individuals, but rather the emerging trends of the market and how its effects spread in our world. These drastics changes in technology must then be accompanied by changes in how people live and think, which is what ultimately leads to the social changes decried by the original comment, but the debates and arguments which we see are merely the surface layer of a deeper process, of which no one is in control of.
We are like the passengers of a train where no one is in charge, but which always keeps going in the same direction. The fact that people take sides in the left and right-wing dispute is in fact perfect for the system, for it allows it to keep doing its job. The right-wing is now gaining more and more momentum, which gives them the illusion that the world will be shaped by their ideas and principles, but this is a naive fantasy. Most of them want to live in a world grounded to cultural roots, which would allow some sense of stability on which our lives could be built, which is a good intention, but what they don't realize is that this is utterly incompatible with the technological progress demanded by our system, as Kaczynski acutely observed.
One of the biggest mistake when it comes to evaluating the system is to think that it has rulers, or some kind of intentionality that drives its direction. This isn't the case, we live in a headless world. What dictates the direction of the system is its own tautological demands for efficiency and integration.
This is analogous to how the alienated ego only has one purpose which makes sense to it: maintaining itself. Because it isn't in touch with anything other than its own likes and dislikes, ideas and goals, it doesn't make any sense to surrender to something greater than itself, because it sees that as meaningless sacrifice, which is why the alienated ego can only pursue its own pleasure, comfort, satisfaction, power, status, but never live for any conscious quality such as love, freedom, peace, beauty or belonging.
Addictions are easy to ridicule from the outside, but from the inside an addiction is always rationalized, always sensible, simply because there is nothing else in the addict's life that could inform a different set of choices, a qualitatively different life. This is what we are experiencing collectively, the addiction to technological progress, except that there is no single 'I' that could talk responsibility for all of this.
On the other hand, an individual can change their own life, because they have access to a conscious 'I', a united sense of "me" who is in touch with the rest of Reality, and from which I experience everything meaningful in my life. Instead of wallowing in despair over the inevitable fate of headless collectives, the sovereign individual identifies what he can take responsibility for, takes action, murders the usurping king, and allows the prince to be in charge. 4
1 This phenomenon is what gives us the Dunning Kruger effect. Poor discernment is unable to see its own limitations, because the small size of its own world is just as small as its ability to grasp what is possible.
2 To read more about this, see for instance The Myth of Education by Darren Allen.
3 Addictions, overeating, terrible sleep, eating disorders, and much more, are heavily compounded by people forced into living a life which is not true to them.
4 A quote from a note by Darren Allen.
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Politics System Narrativewarfare
2025-11-10