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advancedatheist comments on Why is Mencius Moldbug so popular on Less Wrong? [Answer: He's not.] - Less Wrong
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The main insight I got from Moldbug is not exactly one that he set out to convey. Moldbug is an outright opponent of democracy. What I learned is just that undemocratic political systems can make sense, that you can have a political philosophy other than democracy. So the main thing I took away is an increased political cosmopolitanism.
Some years earlier, it was comparably educational to read (on American right-wing sites) the idea that the fundamental political ideal of the United States is that it is a constitutional republic - that the rule of law and the protection of individual freedom, not democracy, are its fundamental values. However, this seems to be a minority understanding today, even within America itself.
Many science fiction writers have postulated the return of feudal social structures, noble houses, monarchies and such in "the future." The democratic era we live in and take for granted could very well have resulted from a drunkard's walk away from long-term social norms., and if we could survive cryotransport, we might find ourselves in nondemocratic, hierarchical societies in Future World.
BTW, I've noticed from watching The Walking Dead series that feminism, progressivism and democracy have to fall by the wayside when our kind of civilization collapses and the strong males have to take charge to keep the surviving hunter-gatherer bands in business. Why couldn't this also happen in a society which manages to maintain high living standards and technological progress?
Offhand, I can't think of any sf which has explained why a return of a feudal system is plausible. Instead, the story just starts out with a feudal system in place. I believe this is because feudal systems[1] are familiar and lead to interesting stories.
[1] Having been exposed to a little bit of actual history, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if the feudal societies in fiction are gross oversimplifications of real world feudalism.
There is a sizable minority of academic historians that deny there ever was such a thing as real world feudalism (as it is popularly conceived of). See for example, the work of historian Elizabeth A. R. Brown.
Can you give a quick summary of what they mean by this? This sounds very interesting.
In the Vorkosigan series, the main events surround a planet with a feudal system. This is explained because the planet lost contact with the larger galactic civilization and regressed in tech level massively. Meanwhile certain powerful bandits and raiders became strong enough in the chaos and passed down their roles on to their children. Then when they ended up being reconnected with the advanced technology societies they became very quickly a feudal culture with advanced technology. One major aspects of the stories is how this is an inherently unstable situation. (I have to wonder if this is in deliberate contrast to something like Dune where society stagnates in a feudal system with advanced tech for hundreds of years.)
Wil McCarthy's Queendom of Sol novels, as I recall, provide some backstory for the feudal government in a very advanced civilization with a lot of transhuman tech. The upper class in this society even went out of its way to find the remaining plausible pretenders to royal status, so it made an heir of Tonga's royal family as the queen, and married her to the survivor of some obscure noble family in Catalonia. McCarthy argues that this arrangement would provide stability and reduce the waste of resources on politics because the queen and her consort, like everyone else, would live for really long times and exploit the human tendency to form dominance hierarchies.
How resistant are these generalizations from fictional evidence?
The Men in the show are more physically and emotionally capable of the hand to hand violence needed to combat the zombies. Though Andrea is becoming a very good shot. Looks like she will be replacing Shane as the leader of the Ruthless Party.
As for democracy in The Walking Dead, before Rick decided to announce himself group dictator in the last show, I think he had democratic support, if not a formal election result. The deliberations over whether to off that captured fellow seemed fairly democratic as well - though not so much for the captured fellow.
But in an advanced technological society, women are equally capable of engaging in most but not all useful labor, and relegating them back to sitting at home polishing the silver is a waste of half your human capital. To that extent, rolling back feminism is a non starter for high living standards.
what? no. maybe only strong "compassionate"/"nurturing" females can keep groups of hundreds together without fragmentation.