Chimpanzees seem to be plagued with the same persistent authoritarian structures. Bonobos, not so much. And we?
I dislike being determinist, but seeing variations on the theme throughout human existence, I am not convinced that we can avoid the ebb and flow of freedom. Your book deals with this in a fashion relating to the creation and distribution of surplus. Maybe this is an opportunity to expand the final chapter? However, I assume the lesson is that we must find ways to resist the siren call of self-important men?
I still remember where I was when I read that Berlin essay (I was 22). It was eye-opening. Understanding the impulse to fascism horrified me and yet made so much sense. Understanding that the drive to rationalism, individualism, and liberty themselves are bound to trigger a counter movement, that too many people (even educated people, in some ways especially intellectuals) are drawn to the romantic, to the Big Man, to being rallied against internal and external 'enemies' and are scared of the openness, humanism, and independent thought that the Enlightenment entails.
It gave me conviction in what to oppose but the impulse shall always be with us.
My suggestion is to add more. Bring it up to date with the post-WWII shift (such as it was) from conservatism to fascism (Burke would be so ashamed). The US alone will probably suffice for this, but of course you could bring in modern European movements too.
The road to serfdom is through the concentration of power in one man. At best we have 5 good Caesars, but we usually get a tyrant in the first round followed by incompetent / insane family members.
The titans of industry and media need to be reminded of how they will fare, based on history. The promise of low taxes and regulation is replaced by bribery, nepotism, and disastrous vanity conflicts. Everyone must serve the tyrant, especially the billionaires, who will become impotent supplicants.
The rule of thumb is eight years of competence followed by however many of bribery, nepotism and the like. You can tell I've been reading Ken Opalo's An Africanist Perspective.
That Berlin essay on Maistre was such a revelation to me! I'd forgotten who wrote it, I wasn't keeping any kind of bibliography in those days, it's not my field, but it was really the primary reading that explained conservatism to me, between Corey Robin and Frank Wilhoit, decades before either.
This is a topic which fifteen years ago I would have considered irrelevant, consigned to the dustheap of history. Sadly, recent history confers renewed relevance. One point which I would make deals with the ease with which individuals accept being slotted into a heirarchy. I note that all of our closest great ape relatives possess dominance heirarchies. This is less damaging to their societies because an individual's position is determined chiefly by their genetic endowment. In human societies, dominant individuals can enhance their offspring's social position through the transmission of material goods. The less fluid nature of human social heirarchies lies at the root of the many social conflicts.
Polanyi: A paraphrase of Johnson (not Borris), A politician is seldom so innocently employed as when promoting inclusive economic growth (assuming his Econ 101 class included Pigou taxation).
Polanyi's faith in unseen forces that can create a fair and efficient Society mirrors the Neoliberal faith in Markets to solve problems economists repeatedly fail to model with precision. Perhaps Angus Deaton's clarion call for economic humility in the March 24 "Rethinking Economics" is the truest answer.
As Gary W notes, our cousins are social, hierarchical animals. Evolution has embedded this way of life in our brains. Reduce/remove our educated thinking with stresses and we quickly revert to that model. As historians say, "civilization is very shallow".
Economists need to get away from the more tractable "Rational Man" assumption and understand that "Emotional Man" is often the more important behavioral factor. Emotional states allow falling back into the comforts of a [stable] hierarchy.
We need to embed the idea of democracy and personal freedom to a deeper level to reduce the trend to revert to our evolutionary type. Make the idea of our civilization a deeper idea, attached to strong emotions. [Maybe not to the extent of "Hate Week for fascists."] Americans are more patriotic than Brits, so I find it hard to understand why Trumpism that is clearly not aligned with the US Constitution and the democratic way of life, is currently ascendant. Has life become so stressfull that a fraction of the population will drop those ideals that seem emotionally embedded from school age, to follow a cult leader?
Two local organic chicken farmers have told me that chickens only peck each other when there is a shortage of protein. Let them roam free, and they'll eat bugs and worms to get the protein they need. You only get a pecking order if shut them up and induce a scarcity of protein.
pecking each other implies no hierarchy, whilst pecking order does. Is there any evidence that birds have a social hierarchy? Birds are not apes, which clealy do have a hierarchy that is well documented, and AFAIK, has no association with nutrition. If it did, then those well fed males at the apex, whether ape or human, might no longer feel the need to express dominance, and accede to a male lower in the hierarchy. That is not the picture we have of human society, where acquisitiveness of resources from food to sex never seems to end without societal restraints.
That was careless writing on my part. Chickens, once they start pecking each other, quickly form a hierarchy and usually a pretty narrow one. Given the energetics of jockeying for place, nature prefers a form of decentralizing planning in which relationships once established are rarely challenged.
I wonder if the ultimate problem isn't excessive belief in free will. Fascism and Trumpism don't really take society/experience/conditions seriously, do they? Neither do Lenin or even, despite himself, Polanyi. Isn't liberalism's strength its pragmatic insistence that there are lessons to be learned but that they can only come slowly and must be based on actual, hard-won evidence of best practices? Fascists and Trumpists and Communists are voluntarists who use imagined collectivity as a touchstone for atomizing fantasy and flattery. That's very different from taking shared conditions and biological tendencies (and potentials) seriously.
I have little doubt that we all have it in us, marching in processions, and then having a picnic. Then Plato and institutions as hierarchical by merit, a false consciousness that fits like a glove. In a movie, the young George IV and pals going around more than unkempt, with uncut hair disarrayed, and obtrusive postures. Francois Marie Arouet, On doit cultiver son jardin! - Stolen by Thomas Jefferson, humans as masters of their own domains. Why ? Why does everybody with a seat on public transit immerse in their phones? Do they really disdain everybody else, or is it prayer, like a prostration but in the head? People want to be wild and free and play in the band. It's too confusing Brad, we're still debating the Republic and Politics, for me Adam Smith's lecture saying that republics, autocracies, theocracies, democracies, [kleptocracies, and Marx's executive committees] can each succeed the other, Plasticity! Cathedral Towns!
It is good to see Bugs Bunny quoted, even if not cited.
:-)
Chimpanzees seem to be plagued with the same persistent authoritarian structures. Bonobos, not so much. And we?
I dislike being determinist, but seeing variations on the theme throughout human existence, I am not convinced that we can avoid the ebb and flow of freedom. Your book deals with this in a fashion relating to the creation and distribution of surplus. Maybe this is an opportunity to expand the final chapter? However, I assume the lesson is that we must find ways to resist the siren call of self-important men?
Yes. Optimism of the intellect, and even of the will, is hard to hold on to here... Brad
Time for a little Elizabeth Barrett Browning perhaps.
https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/napoleon-iii-italy
And perhaps also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dialogue_in_Hell_Between_Machiavelli_and_Montesquieu
:-)
I still remember where I was when I read that Berlin essay (I was 22). It was eye-opening. Understanding the impulse to fascism horrified me and yet made so much sense. Understanding that the drive to rationalism, individualism, and liberty themselves are bound to trigger a counter movement, that too many people (even educated people, in some ways especially intellectuals) are drawn to the romantic, to the Big Man, to being rallied against internal and external 'enemies' and are scared of the openness, humanism, and independent thought that the Enlightenment entails.
It gave me conviction in what to oppose but the impulse shall always be with us.
My suggestion is to add more. Bring it up to date with the post-WWII shift (such as it was) from conservatism to fascism (Burke would be so ashamed). The US alone will probably suffice for this, but of course you could bring in modern European movements too.
I think that my well be the right thing to do. Brad
Well: Sometime ago you asked subscribers about the topics they would like on Grasping. This one drew an impressive show of Revealed Preference.
The road to serfdom is through the concentration of power in one man. At best we have 5 good Caesars, but we usually get a tyrant in the first round followed by incompetent / insane family members.
The titans of industry and media need to be reminded of how they will fare, based on history. The promise of low taxes and regulation is replaced by bribery, nepotism, and disastrous vanity conflicts. Everyone must serve the tyrant, especially the billionaires, who will become impotent supplicants.
The rule of thumb is eight years of competence followed by however many of bribery, nepotism and the like. You can tell I've been reading Ken Opalo's An Africanist Perspective.
That Berlin essay on Maistre was such a revelation to me! I'd forgotten who wrote it, I wasn't keeping any kind of bibliography in those days, it's not my field, but it was really the primary reading that explained conservatism to me, between Corey Robin and Frank Wilhoit, decades before either.
Yes It is brilliant...
This is a topic which fifteen years ago I would have considered irrelevant, consigned to the dustheap of history. Sadly, recent history confers renewed relevance. One point which I would make deals with the ease with which individuals accept being slotted into a heirarchy. I note that all of our closest great ape relatives possess dominance heirarchies. This is less damaging to their societies because an individual's position is determined chiefly by their genetic endowment. In human societies, dominant individuals can enhance their offspring's social position through the transmission of material goods. The less fluid nature of human social heirarchies lies at the root of the many social conflicts.
Polanyi: A paraphrase of Johnson (not Borris), A politician is seldom so innocently employed as when promoting inclusive economic growth (assuming his Econ 101 class included Pigou taxation).
Polanyi's faith in unseen forces that can create a fair and efficient Society mirrors the Neoliberal faith in Markets to solve problems economists repeatedly fail to model with precision. Perhaps Angus Deaton's clarion call for economic humility in the March 24 "Rethinking Economics" is the truest answer.
Correction: "[that governments can use] markets [and Pigou taxation/subsidies] to solve problems."
As Gary W notes, our cousins are social, hierarchical animals. Evolution has embedded this way of life in our brains. Reduce/remove our educated thinking with stresses and we quickly revert to that model. As historians say, "civilization is very shallow".
Economists need to get away from the more tractable "Rational Man" assumption and understand that "Emotional Man" is often the more important behavioral factor. Emotional states allow falling back into the comforts of a [stable] hierarchy.
We need to embed the idea of democracy and personal freedom to a deeper level to reduce the trend to revert to our evolutionary type. Make the idea of our civilization a deeper idea, attached to strong emotions. [Maybe not to the extent of "Hate Week for fascists."] Americans are more patriotic than Brits, so I find it hard to understand why Trumpism that is clearly not aligned with the US Constitution and the democratic way of life, is currently ascendant. Has life become so stressfull that a fraction of the population will drop those ideals that seem emotionally embedded from school age, to follow a cult leader?
Two local organic chicken farmers have told me that chickens only peck each other when there is a shortage of protein. Let them roam free, and they'll eat bugs and worms to get the protein they need. You only get a pecking order if shut them up and induce a scarcity of protein.
pecking each other implies no hierarchy, whilst pecking order does. Is there any evidence that birds have a social hierarchy? Birds are not apes, which clealy do have a hierarchy that is well documented, and AFAIK, has no association with nutrition. If it did, then those well fed males at the apex, whether ape or human, might no longer feel the need to express dominance, and accede to a male lower in the hierarchy. That is not the picture we have of human society, where acquisitiveness of resources from food to sex never seems to end without societal restraints.
That was careless writing on my part. Chickens, once they start pecking each other, quickly form a hierarchy and usually a pretty narrow one. Given the energetics of jockeying for place, nature prefers a form of decentralizing planning in which relationships once established are rarely challenged.
"That peroration may have satisfied Polanyi, but I have no idea what it means." - Magnificent.
I wonder if the ultimate problem isn't excessive belief in free will. Fascism and Trumpism don't really take society/experience/conditions seriously, do they? Neither do Lenin or even, despite himself, Polanyi. Isn't liberalism's strength its pragmatic insistence that there are lessons to be learned but that they can only come slowly and must be based on actual, hard-won evidence of best practices? Fascists and Trumpists and Communists are voluntarists who use imagined collectivity as a touchstone for atomizing fantasy and flattery. That's very different from taking shared conditions and biological tendencies (and potentials) seriously.
I have little doubt that we all have it in us, marching in processions, and then having a picnic. Then Plato and institutions as hierarchical by merit, a false consciousness that fits like a glove. In a movie, the young George IV and pals going around more than unkempt, with uncut hair disarrayed, and obtrusive postures. Francois Marie Arouet, On doit cultiver son jardin! - Stolen by Thomas Jefferson, humans as masters of their own domains. Why ? Why does everybody with a seat on public transit immerse in their phones? Do they really disdain everybody else, or is it prayer, like a prostration but in the head? People want to be wild and free and play in the band. It's too confusing Brad, we're still debating the Republic and Politics, for me Adam Smith's lecture saying that republics, autocracies, theocracies, democracies, [kleptocracies, and Marx's executive committees] can each succeed the other, Plasticity! Cathedral Towns!
Smells like Teenage Leviathan