The Enlightenment and modernity have, Brink Lindsey argues, led to mass society and mass affluence. But their overrun has also created a world where individuals are buffeted by strange alien and...
Tocqueville? I read Brad's summary of Brink Lindsey as derivative of Burke instead: another Enlightenment thinker obsessed with social glue. But Tocqueville would also do.
I always considered being able to break free from the social glue as one of the great triumphs of the Enlightenment. There are few tyrannies more oppressive than social glue, and the human scale tyrannies of town, clan, caste and family carry into the greater world.
All true. But we can't escape tyranny, and can only choose among them. If you need the money, would you rather suffer from the tyranny of the Vampire Loan Company, or that of your solvent-and-generous-but-subtly-censorious Uncle Fred? Many people in fact have this kind of Hobson's choice, and some would rather deal with the Vampire. Employment is a very gluey relation, but most folk prefer it to independence. Etc.
I'm not a conservative, much less of the Grand Inquisitor variety. But the conservatives have a point. Glue is oppressive, but so is freedom. You can't win; you can't break even; you can't get out of the game.
Sometimes I get the impression that Lindsey's take on the Permanent Problem is that it's about getting out of the game.
The glue versus freedom argument was the crux of Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden. One feminist take is that Eve chose freedom and Adam has been punishing her for it since.
I'm curious what you think! Reading Lindsey's substack I've often felt that his diagnosis was more convincing than his proposed solutions, but I've wanted to give it more thought.
It's probably just a mistaken impression, but I often sense Lindsey flirting with the medievalist critique of modern society. At other times, he seems to be flirting with Stalin's engineering of human souls. Lindsey's heart seems to be in the right place, but then his mysticism with regard to "flourishing" appears. I have no problem with flourishing per se and agree that it is much harder to do so in the US than in most advanced societies for ideological reasons. Still, his vague use of the term is suspect.
Humans have always lived in a web of powerful forces beyond the scope of any individual. If anything the forces our modern society applies are more benign and malleable than those through most of history if only because of Enlightenment thinking and the scientific / engineering revolution in productivity. The machine works as well as it does because of its massive inhuman scale, its weak local governance and its impediments to making a difference.
Now, I'm trying to figure out what the freedom to govern oneself at a human scale means. That's the whole point of the sovereign citizen movement and a host of related maladies, so I imagine it means something else in this context. I have a similar problem with the freedom to connect with others and act to make a difference at a human scale. You can argue about platform bias and institutional corruption, but how is this different from our current situation. There's clearly some mystical element I am missing.
My intellectual plate is over full with all the arguments and counter arguments and I am getting an intellectual upset stomach.
My initial take was the three are just yelling past each other.
Another silly take was that the three are just pissed that the right people are not paying attention to them. They are not getting invited to the right conferences, talk shows, blogs and not having access to the corridors of power.
This paragraph is a description of the arc of my life from poverty to abundance.
"Lindsey’s definition of individual flourishing centers on close relationships (family, friends, community), meaningful projects (work or nonwork efforts that demand skill and conscientiousness), and rich experiences (the cultivated ability to attend to the world’s “miracle of consciousness”). Flourishing societies combine inclusiveness (dense webs of belonging and status for most people) with dynamism (the capacity to explore, experiment, and innovate, and to turn new capabilities into better lives)." Judged by this standard advanced societies fall short.
This last sentence leaves me with an upset intellectual stomach.
Brad, you really cut to the key issues in this discussion that I have been following a bit from afar. Thanks for the clarity in what's really going on in this important conversation.
Brilliant summary, and totally fair. I read Brink's book and thought his analysis was spot on. I am more skeptical about the solution, i.e. capitalism at decentralized human scale, or a web of semi-autarchic communities, or at least the feasibility of getting there -- though I see the logic in why Brink recommends it. I am eager to see your take on the solution Brad.
Perhaps you give the argument too much due notice in its own frame.
"The Enlightenment and modernity have, Brink Lindsey argues, led to mass society and mass affluence. But their overrun has also created a world where individuals are buffeted by strange alien and alienating systems—market, bureaucratic, ideological, algorithmic—that barely register them as people."
Correct my misapprehension, the true cause of mass humanity is the decline in mortality preceding the decline in natality.
Blaming the enlightenment for that change in ratio seems curious to me.
Part of the premise in your Slouching is to note the marvel that we went from sub 1B to 8B+ people.
Assuming an 8-fold increase in global human populations wouldn't cause terrible problems after reading Malthus seems an odd choice.
Michael Strain is a hack. And that is being nice. Health Care is not his field, yet he writes about healthcare. Why not stick to his actual expertise? He misses what is essential to understanding markets for health insurance: A relatively few sick people generate most of the expense. Covering heathy people is not a big challenge. Covering sick people is a huge challenge, and there is a great deal of money to be made by excluding them.
Say what you will about scarcity, but it did crystallize your choices of with whom to associate, in whose welfare you are mutually invested. It's also a double-edged sword, a good-to-bad scale from family - community - tribe - racism - fascism. In Kurt Vonnegut's 1976 novel "Slapstick", Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain institutes vast extended families. Everybody with the same middle name is a cousin, and those with the same number (1-20) are siblings. Presuming a national entity exists, perhaps a tax system that rewards, say, the Uranium-12's (versus the Oyster-6's) superior contribution to the overall state's capacity to feed, fuel, heal, and shelter its citizens would be a workable plan.
I see. What about inverting the presentation, and always start simply by saying: we need BOTH market and non-market organization, working side by side.
"Non-market organization" being composed of a large number and variety of separate, purposeful centers (i.e. social groups and institutions), each targeted narrowly upon a non-market good or service. "Non-market goods and services" being items which expressly do not have market supply and demand characteristics. The value comes in reduction of transaction or transformation costs (after Douglass North), or some analogue thereof, which may increase various kinds of growth. Even though that may be difficult to value numerically if it is non-monetizable to begin with.
The new approach being to list explicitly the items (e.g. as part of a political platform) that MUST be funded, instead of arguing over taxes first and letting legislators deciding what to fund with the taxes later.
Along with a huge push to simplify rules and regulations. In the case of environmental protection, this means making prohibitions more absolute against destroying wildlife ecosystems, instead of having so many caveats and exceptions.
In other words, instead of saying, you can't spend wealth on these things over here in this pile, and we're going to increase taxes to take care of those things -- explicitly LIST and budget the things that the market cannot buy, and we're going to take that much in taxes, and you can go hog-wild with the rest of your money on being creative and consuming?
"That is almost exactly wrong." Indeed. The conundrum of power haunts all the earnest blueprints of the New Jerusalem I've ever paid serious attention to, up to and including LIndsey's. I doubt we'll ever see eros credibly overcome thanatos in our approaches to turning thoughts into facts, not, at least, unless and until we purge the last of our African Plains Ape atavisms, and become something like a new species. African Plains Angels, d'you think? A consummation devoutly to be wished, surely. Biological evolution is propbably too slow, though, and with Nazis like Bannon presently hogging all the microphones, even our most earnest and well-founded attempts to finally come to turns with our dilemma tend to sound like whining.
Tocqueville? I read Brad's summary of Brink Lindsey as derivative of Burke instead: another Enlightenment thinker obsessed with social glue. But Tocqueville would also do.
I always considered being able to break free from the social glue as one of the great triumphs of the Enlightenment. There are few tyrannies more oppressive than social glue, and the human scale tyrannies of town, clan, caste and family carry into the greater world.
All true. But we can't escape tyranny, and can only choose among them. If you need the money, would you rather suffer from the tyranny of the Vampire Loan Company, or that of your solvent-and-generous-but-subtly-censorious Uncle Fred? Many people in fact have this kind of Hobson's choice, and some would rather deal with the Vampire. Employment is a very gluey relation, but most folk prefer it to independence. Etc.
I'm not a conservative, much less of the Grand Inquisitor variety. But the conservatives have a point. Glue is oppressive, but so is freedom. You can't win; you can't break even; you can't get out of the game.
Exactly right.
Sometimes I get the impression that Lindsey's take on the Permanent Problem is that it's about getting out of the game.
The glue versus freedom argument was the crux of Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden. One feminist take is that Eve chose freedom and Adam has been punishing her for it since.
I gather that Pluribus is also a lot about the glue versus freedom conflict.
I'm curious what you think! Reading Lindsey's substack I've often felt that his diagnosis was more convincing than his proposed solutions, but I've wanted to give it more thought.
It's probably just a mistaken impression, but I often sense Lindsey flirting with the medievalist critique of modern society. At other times, he seems to be flirting with Stalin's engineering of human souls. Lindsey's heart seems to be in the right place, but then his mysticism with regard to "flourishing" appears. I have no problem with flourishing per se and agree that it is much harder to do so in the US than in most advanced societies for ideological reasons. Still, his vague use of the term is suspect.
Humans have always lived in a web of powerful forces beyond the scope of any individual. If anything the forces our modern society applies are more benign and malleable than those through most of history if only because of Enlightenment thinking and the scientific / engineering revolution in productivity. The machine works as well as it does because of its massive inhuman scale, its weak local governance and its impediments to making a difference.
Now, I'm trying to figure out what the freedom to govern oneself at a human scale means. That's the whole point of the sovereign citizen movement and a host of related maladies, so I imagine it means something else in this context. I have a similar problem with the freedom to connect with others and act to make a difference at a human scale. You can argue about platform bias and institutional corruption, but how is this different from our current situation. There's clearly some mystical element I am missing.
My intellectual plate is over full with all the arguments and counter arguments and I am getting an intellectual upset stomach.
My initial take was the three are just yelling past each other.
Another silly take was that the three are just pissed that the right people are not paying attention to them. They are not getting invited to the right conferences, talk shows, blogs and not having access to the corridors of power.
This paragraph is a description of the arc of my life from poverty to abundance.
"Lindsey’s definition of individual flourishing centers on close relationships (family, friends, community), meaningful projects (work or nonwork efforts that demand skill and conscientiousness), and rich experiences (the cultivated ability to attend to the world’s “miracle of consciousness”). Flourishing societies combine inclusiveness (dense webs of belonging and status for most people) with dynamism (the capacity to explore, experiment, and innovate, and to turn new capabilities into better lives)." Judged by this standard advanced societies fall short.
This last sentence leaves me with an upset intellectual stomach.
Brad, you really cut to the key issues in this discussion that I have been following a bit from afar. Thanks for the clarity in what's really going on in this important conversation.
Brilliant summary, and totally fair. I read Brink's book and thought his analysis was spot on. I am more skeptical about the solution, i.e. capitalism at decentralized human scale, or a web of semi-autarchic communities, or at least the feasibility of getting there -- though I see the logic in why Brink recommends it. I am eager to see your take on the solution Brad.
Perhaps you give the argument too much due notice in its own frame.
"The Enlightenment and modernity have, Brink Lindsey argues, led to mass society and mass affluence. But their overrun has also created a world where individuals are buffeted by strange alien and alienating systems—market, bureaucratic, ideological, algorithmic—that barely register them as people."
Correct my misapprehension, the true cause of mass humanity is the decline in mortality preceding the decline in natality.
Blaming the enlightenment for that change in ratio seems curious to me.
Part of the premise in your Slouching is to note the marvel that we went from sub 1B to 8B+ people.
Assuming an 8-fold increase in global human populations wouldn't cause terrible problems after reading Malthus seems an odd choice.
Michael Strain is a hack. And that is being nice. Health Care is not his field, yet he writes about healthcare. Why not stick to his actual expertise? He misses what is essential to understanding markets for health insurance: A relatively few sick people generate most of the expense. Covering heathy people is not a big challenge. Covering sick people is a huge challenge, and there is a great deal of money to be made by excluding them.
Say what you will about scarcity, but it did crystallize your choices of with whom to associate, in whose welfare you are mutually invested. It's also a double-edged sword, a good-to-bad scale from family - community - tribe - racism - fascism. In Kurt Vonnegut's 1976 novel "Slapstick", Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain institutes vast extended families. Everybody with the same middle name is a cousin, and those with the same number (1-20) are siblings. Presuming a national entity exists, perhaps a tax system that rewards, say, the Uranium-12's (versus the Oyster-6's) superior contribution to the overall state's capacity to feed, fuel, heal, and shelter its citizens would be a workable plan.
Brad, what do you mean by the phrase, "equalizing societal power in the form of wealth"?
at the very least tight constraints on what wealth can be spent on, and from there heavy progressive consumption taxes, plus predistribution policies.
I see. What about inverting the presentation, and always start simply by saying: we need BOTH market and non-market organization, working side by side.
"Non-market organization" being composed of a large number and variety of separate, purposeful centers (i.e. social groups and institutions), each targeted narrowly upon a non-market good or service. "Non-market goods and services" being items which expressly do not have market supply and demand characteristics. The value comes in reduction of transaction or transformation costs (after Douglass North), or some analogue thereof, which may increase various kinds of growth. Even though that may be difficult to value numerically if it is non-monetizable to begin with.
The new approach being to list explicitly the items (e.g. as part of a political platform) that MUST be funded, instead of arguing over taxes first and letting legislators deciding what to fund with the taxes later.
Along with a huge push to simplify rules and regulations. In the case of environmental protection, this means making prohibitions more absolute against destroying wildlife ecosystems, instead of having so many caveats and exceptions.
In other words, instead of saying, you can't spend wealth on these things over here in this pile, and we're going to increase taxes to take care of those things -- explicitly LIST and budget the things that the market cannot buy, and we're going to take that much in taxes, and you can go hog-wild with the rest of your money on being creative and consuming?
Freedom of Religion? Is that not simply an example of Freedom of Speech? Why should the two be distinguished?
"That is almost exactly wrong." Indeed. The conundrum of power haunts all the earnest blueprints of the New Jerusalem I've ever paid serious attention to, up to and including LIndsey's. I doubt we'll ever see eros credibly overcome thanatos in our approaches to turning thoughts into facts, not, at least, unless and until we purge the last of our African Plains Ape atavisms, and become something like a new species. African Plains Angels, d'you think? A consummation devoutly to be wished, surely. Biological evolution is propbably too slow, though, and with Nazis like Bannon presently hogging all the microphones, even our most earnest and well-founded attempts to finally come to turns with our dilemma tend to sound like whining.