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SilentCal comments on "NRx" vs. "Prog" Assumptions: Locating the Sources of Disagreement Between Neoreactionaries and Progressives (Part 1) - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (340)
Fascinating project you've taken on!
Let me try to add one, though I'm no expert:
Domination is terrible (prog) vs. domination can be eudaimonic (NR) I often see neoreactionaries contend that dominated members of traditional societies were happy, even those progressives would identify as most oppressed. The argument goes roughly that peasants, slaves, battered wives, and so on who accepted their lot in life would mentally adapt and be able to be perfectly happy. Progressivism/liberalism/the Cthedral has either destroyed our capacity to thrive in these arrangements or caused us to dishonestly claim we would hate them.
The standard modern assumption, on the other hand, is that this kind of domination is a horrible thing to inflict on any human, that peasants, slaves and battered wives suffered immensely, and that it's essential to eradicate even the shade of this kind of treatment.
Note that this particular NRx view comes directly from Aristotle, who wrote in "Politics" that some people are slaves by nature and it's better for them to be ruled.
Interesting dichotomy. Yes, I think you may be on to something here.
One way to test this hypothesis would be to locate a place in the world today, or a place and time in history, where the ideas of the "Cathedral" has not / had not penetrated, and give the "oppressed" a chance to state their true opinions in a way where they know that they don't need to censor themselves in front of the master.
For example, if we went back to 1650 in Virginia (surely before any abolitionist sentiment or Cathedralization of that society's discourse...) and found a secret diary of a slave that said, "Oh lawd, I sho' love slavin' fo' da massah evryday," then that would support the neoreactionary hypothesis. On the other hand, many discoveries of secret slave diaries in that context saying, "Bein' slaves is awful bad" would suggest the opposite.
Although I can't seem to find any citations for this at the moment, I do believe that I have run across at least one such example of a slave praising slavery in my time spent looking at primary sources from American antebellum slavery...but, if I recall, it might have been from a slave writing just after the Civil War, writing about "Dem was da good times befo' da war," and the statement might have been given for ulterior reasons with a mind to who the audience would be (possibly ex-slavemasters whom the ex-slave now served as a sharecropper...I can't remember the context).
To be sure, the vast, vast majority of slave sources that I have read all seem to indicate that slaves hated slavery and tried to escape at any opportunity...but maybe that was just the Cathedral fooling them...
Unfortunately, writing was an elite skill throughout much of history, and the honest opinions of the oppressed were not often recorded....
I believe that Putin currently has something like 85% approval rating in Russia...
Wars will do that. See eineteen eighty four.
Seventh quote here: http://radishmag.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/slavery-reconsidered/
The opinions of ordinary North Koreans might be a good test.
And yet it is the progressives who seem too believe that wireheading, the ultimate trade of freedom for pleasure, is a good thing.
How is wireheading trading freedom away if you are quite sure that it will do exactly what you want, and if you have some "abort button"? That sounds like the ultimate power.
Perhaps we are confusing what something looks like from the outside (it looks like the person is obviously immobilized and helpless) vs. what it feels like on the inside (the person gets exactly what they want).
Note that I would be wary about ever wireheading if there were other humans still around whose actions were not sufficiently predictable or constrained. That is because they could potentially try to mess with me while I am in my wireheaded state. I would only go into the wireheaded state if either I was the only human left and I had perfectly automated everything to take care of me while I was being wireheaded, or if there were other humans, but they were all safely under the control of an AI singleton who would keep them from screwing with me while I was being wireheaded.
(Knowledge of) acceptance isn't much use without (knowledge of) alternatives.
Bingo. We have a winner. Yes, in the absence of any other clues this seems to me to be the way to differentiate between political left and right, although it breaks down in certain atypical cases such as Stalinism on the left and certain highly liberal strands of capitalism advocacy, on the right.
(If this is a necro post, then it's only because yours was a comment worth reviving.)