Darwin on the biology of morals and the evolved form of human, tribal social cooperation and altruism:
Peter Richerson, PhD ecology, UC Davis, quotes Darwin (as an example of group selection hypothesis and the neurobiology of sympathy in "primeval times"):
"It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over other men of the same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes, and this would be natural selection (178-179)."
---end excerpt---
In other words, "individualism" is contrary to human nature, especially as a stable base for civilization.
Every "individualistic" capitalist is part of a vast network of human relations.
Sociopathic, narcissistic and nihilistic-postmodern personalities show up on both the "left" and "right", but in different ways.
Thank you. I agree, though I think we must find a balance between individuality and its creative self-expression, and the collective life, and certainly, that balance is no longer there. Are you familiar with the work on Sorokin on Creative Altruism, in which he investigated how traditional civilizations created and trained people for selflessness ?
To clear out some underbrush, the human species evolved to be socially cooperative and altruistic within kinship groups (relatively small gene pools, see Dunbar's number). Agentic values, "individual achievement", when taken to extremes are probably not healthy (see Habermas' theory of communicative action), just as conformist "communion" values aren't healthy (example: mythic, medieval religion).
The whole point of "integral" (Aurobindo, Gebser, Wilber, etc.) and related theories is to regain balance.
A peculiar fact is that most of the deeply pathological tendencies on the "left" tend to be recycled ILLIBERAL (Romanticist, anti-rational) arguments from the Ancien Regime, the Alter and Crown system's objections to the Reformation and Enlightenment.
That seems weird to most people that have not considered that the intellectual and artistic classes that have been the historical vanguard for the left ALWAYS DESPISED the middle classes (early modern urban commoners and their expanding production and trade system) as some kind of impure, semi-literate version of medieval, earthy, but spiritually pure, illiterate peasants.
In that sense, socialism was originally "conservative" in its opposition to the threat posed by the expanding middle classes to the old intellectual and artistic traditions (refinements, snobbery, arrogance are ads common on the "left" as they were originally to ecclesiastic elites and the nobility).
The "woke" "left" is well documented as becoming dangerously totalitarian and anti-democratic in its fusion to the corporate-state,* under postmodern conditions, suburban consumerism, techno-economic disruption, the disintegration of the modern nation state, the disintegration of high-social-trust, the disintegration of the hierarchies of curated expertise that modern societies rely on to function, etc.
Other than small fringe movements, most of the conventional "left" has been absorbed into the system of "structural inequality and the politics of power". HIJACKED (as Orwell predicted).
Herbert Marcuse explicitly wrote about how to merge the "left" with the corporate-state, under conditions of a cultural revolution (identity politics), to destroy classical liberalism and "capitalism". Marcuse famously and openly called for totalitarianism in that Neo-Marxist project. Revolutionaries that come to power are far more likely to abuse power for totalitarian purposes, which is clearly the case with the "woke" left (which is hegemonic as aligned with global corporations, especially digital capitalism).
Social scientist Joel Kotkin even refers to the "woke" "left" (professional-managerial classes) as the New Clerisy, indicating their role in turning the "left" into a faux religion, or cult, supported by global elites and digital capitalism (neoliberal, billionaire oligarchs and plutocrats).
Where ever "woke" is seen, it is a shadow of the corporate-state's abuses of power, destruction of free speech, corporate neoliberalism, etc.
Again, "woke" HIJACKED the conventional left's class struggle narrative in the wake of most of the working classes' rejection of violent, Marxist class revolution and has gained enough power to get entrenched as a hegemonic force that is regressive.
David Ronfeldt's TIMN model (which has an entry on the P2P web site) attempts to describe why social and political pathologies keep mutating and reappearing historically, surviving constant disruption, cultural evolution and social change:
re: David Ronfeldt's TIMN model of social change
disruption -> disintegration -> regression to ideological tribalism -> reintegration at a higher, more complex level (social form)
... At first, when a new form arises, it has subversive effects on the old order, before it has additive effects that lead to a new order. Bad actors may prove initially more adept than good actors at using a new form — e.g., ancient warlords, medieval pirates and smugglers, and today’s information-age terrorists being examples that correspond to the +I, +M, and +N transitions, respectively. As each form takes hold, energizing a distinct set of values and norms for actors operating in that form, it generates a new realm of activity — for example, the state, the market. As a new realm gains legitimacy and expands the space it occupies within a social system, it puts new limits on the scope of existing realms. At the same time, through feedback and other interactions, the rise of a new form/realm also modifies the nature of the existing ones.
... Paul Gottfried, who is very familiar with academia in Europe, argues that even there this ["woke"] stuff is to a large degree an American export. His thesis is that the relocation of the Frankfurt School to the USA during the Hitler era had the effect of fusing "cultural Marxism" with the American public administration state and the wider progressive paradigm, which was rooted in turn in the New England WASP culture and its derivatives, and this stuff was then re-exported back to Europe following WW2, when those countries essentially became American protectorates. I would add that the Frankfurt School were collaborators with American intelligence during WW2, and helped created the foundation for the faux left controlled opposition created by the CIA in the 1950s under the guise of the Congress on Cultural Freedom.
Sociologist Troy (Keith) Preston explains how the "left" was hijacked:
Rothbard suggested that fascism was a hybrid of socialism and conservatism, or the idea of reestablishing a traditional conservative stratified social order but with a socialist component that was largely about overcoming what the fascists considered to be the culturally unaesthetic aspects of capitalism (e.g crass commercial culture, tacky department stores, and billboards) and political rule by the merchant class, and I suspect this is a good analysis of fascism as well.
But the thing about social evolution is that social evolution is resilient and undergoes perpetual shape-shifting. The classical bourgeois capitalism of Marx's era eventually gave way to managerial capitalism during the period when mass society was continuing to grow and technological expansion was taking place in ways that transcended ideological differences or different forms of government or specific forms of political economy.
All systems in the 20th century, whether formally capitalist, socialist, or fascist had to adapt to those changes. now managerial capitalism is being fused with digital capitalism and the tech-oligarchs are becoming the new aristocracy and the managerial class is becoming the new clergy. So systems like the US/European corporate welfare states, Eastern socialism, or the fascist model adopted by the Central European countries and some "NICs" (newly industrializing countries) were all reflections of these wider historical trends during their own time and had to adjust to these.
So glad to see you get this out. Your story is so compelling Michel and really creates a powerful narrative of standing for your principles in spite of what was happening with coming up against the mutation of the left in later postmodernity. Looking forward to reading more.
This is easily the longest Substack post I have ever read, and the first post I have read from this Substack. I will check some other posts here, but I feel like I've jumped in the deep end when I should have waded in from the shallows. Perhaps I've been conditioned to expect shorter, more easily digested pieces. But that's my limitation, not a problem with what you've written. There's nothing about the blogging format that should require us to present material in small, unconnected bits and avoid more involved texts.
I've come across your work before, when I was researching online communities, so I expect that there is much here worth reading. I'd like to follow up on your writing about knowledge acquisition, self-knowledge and awareness, and the four quadrants you touched on. But it’s what you have to say about identity politics and the fracturing of the left that I find immediately useful.
In New Zealand (where I’ve lived for 30 years), we have our particular racial and gender divides, but class divisions dominate lived experience (despite New Zealanders considering this country much more egalitarian than the England the initial settlers came from).
Our last general election (Oct. 2023) resulted in the most libertarian, neoconservative, right-wing government since the 1990s. There has been much discussion among New Zealanders on the left here on Substack and elsewhere about what to do. There are so many ways in which we are a divided as a society that developing a strategy to respond to the shock and awe of the first 100 days of the current administration is not an easy task. Addressing common projects around shared values, as you discuss, is in itself an organising strategy and, perhaps, a good way to start. But I better stop here before I break any unstated but understood guidelines about the appropriate length of a comment. Thank you for all the work this post represents. I’ will read more of what you’ve published here.
Thank you so much for this very cogent reply and your concern about change strategies and I am happy you appreciate it despite its indeed special length. I don't intend to do this every week or every other week, but it felt warranted in this case. Politics is extremely difficult in this age of polarization and tribalization, and with reversal in the class basis of the political movements, complicating everything for genuine emancipatory movements. My hunch is that we now have to start with self-organized and transformative productive projects, and then seek allies within and without the political and economic structures, much as the labor movement did in the 19th century.
I’ll look to see what you’ve written about identity politics. Younger people might be forgiven for thinking that the purpose of politics is to have the freedom to discover, live and express one’s personal identity. It’s a goal that has moved to the front of the march and is a rallying cry for many. It makes it more difficult to challenge individualism, a central tenant of neoliberal, libertarian, and capitalist projects, if we accept the idea that each of us, separate from other individuals but grouped by our shared sense of difference, is the centre and focus. If we see the world through the lens of personal, individual difference, our mission statement is unlikely to address structural inequality and the politics of power.
Dear Mark, thanks for your perspective. It all depends what me mean by identity politics. I certainly can live with the kind of identity politics that led to the idea of a Rainbow Coalition which included women and workers in a grand alliance for me equal rights and solidarity in society. But I do not agree with the current 'suprematist' forms, which aim to erase biological difference, and the rights of women and gays, and is often driven by a virulent social racism (contempt for workers), and pressure to limit freedom of speech and political pluralism. HEre are some quotes (23) with various forms of 'progressive' critique: https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Identity_Politics
Darwin on the biology of morals and the evolved form of human, tribal social cooperation and altruism:
Peter Richerson, PhD ecology, UC Davis, quotes Darwin (as an example of group selection hypothesis and the neurobiology of sympathy in "primeval times"):
"It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over other men of the same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes, and this would be natural selection (178-179)."
---end excerpt---
In other words, "individualism" is contrary to human nature, especially as a stable base for civilization.
Every "individualistic" capitalist is part of a vast network of human relations.
Sociopathic, narcissistic and nihilistic-postmodern personalities show up on both the "left" and "right", but in different ways.
Thank you. I agree, though I think we must find a balance between individuality and its creative self-expression, and the collective life, and certainly, that balance is no longer there. Are you familiar with the work on Sorokin on Creative Altruism, in which he investigated how traditional civilizations created and trained people for selflessness ?
To clear out some underbrush, the human species evolved to be socially cooperative and altruistic within kinship groups (relatively small gene pools, see Dunbar's number). Agentic values, "individual achievement", when taken to extremes are probably not healthy (see Habermas' theory of communicative action), just as conformist "communion" values aren't healthy (example: mythic, medieval religion).
The whole point of "integral" (Aurobindo, Gebser, Wilber, etc.) and related theories is to regain balance.
A peculiar fact is that most of the deeply pathological tendencies on the "left" tend to be recycled ILLIBERAL (Romanticist, anti-rational) arguments from the Ancien Regime, the Alter and Crown system's objections to the Reformation and Enlightenment.
That seems weird to most people that have not considered that the intellectual and artistic classes that have been the historical vanguard for the left ALWAYS DESPISED the middle classes (early modern urban commoners and their expanding production and trade system) as some kind of impure, semi-literate version of medieval, earthy, but spiritually pure, illiterate peasants.
In that sense, socialism was originally "conservative" in its opposition to the threat posed by the expanding middle classes to the old intellectual and artistic traditions (refinements, snobbery, arrogance are ads common on the "left" as they were originally to ecclesiastic elites and the nobility).
The "woke" "left" is well documented as becoming dangerously totalitarian and anti-democratic in its fusion to the corporate-state,* under postmodern conditions, suburban consumerism, techno-economic disruption, the disintegration of the modern nation state, the disintegration of high-social-trust, the disintegration of the hierarchies of curated expertise that modern societies rely on to function, etc.
Other than small fringe movements, most of the conventional "left" has been absorbed into the system of "structural inequality and the politics of power". HIJACKED (as Orwell predicted).
Herbert Marcuse explicitly wrote about how to merge the "left" with the corporate-state, under conditions of a cultural revolution (identity politics), to destroy classical liberalism and "capitalism". Marcuse famously and openly called for totalitarianism in that Neo-Marxist project. Revolutionaries that come to power are far more likely to abuse power for totalitarian purposes, which is clearly the case with the "woke" left (which is hegemonic as aligned with global corporations, especially digital capitalism).
Social scientist Joel Kotkin even refers to the "woke" "left" (professional-managerial classes) as the New Clerisy, indicating their role in turning the "left" into a faux religion, or cult, supported by global elites and digital capitalism (neoliberal, billionaire oligarchs and plutocrats).
Where ever "woke" is seen, it is a shadow of the corporate-state's abuses of power, destruction of free speech, corporate neoliberalism, etc.
Again, "woke" HIJACKED the conventional left's class struggle narrative in the wake of most of the working classes' rejection of violent, Marxist class revolution and has gained enough power to get entrenched as a hegemonic force that is regressive.
David Ronfeldt's TIMN model (which has an entry on the P2P web site) attempts to describe why social and political pathologies keep mutating and reappearing historically, surviving constant disruption, cultural evolution and social change:
re: David Ronfeldt's TIMN model of social change
disruption -> disintegration -> regression to ideological tribalism -> reintegration at a higher, more complex level (social form)
https://twotheories.blogspot.com/2009/02/overview-of-social-evolution-past.html
---excerpts---
... At first, when a new form arises, it has subversive effects on the old order, before it has additive effects that lead to a new order. Bad actors may prove initially more adept than good actors at using a new form — e.g., ancient warlords, medieval pirates and smugglers, and today’s information-age terrorists being examples that correspond to the +I, +M, and +N transitions, respectively. As each form takes hold, energizing a distinct set of values and norms for actors operating in that form, it generates a new realm of activity — for example, the state, the market. As a new realm gains legitimacy and expands the space it occupies within a social system, it puts new limits on the scope of existing realms. At the same time, through feedback and other interactions, the rise of a new form/realm also modifies the nature of the existing ones.
...
Troy [Keith] Preston [said]
... Paul Gottfried, who is very familiar with academia in Europe, argues that even there this ["woke"] stuff is to a large degree an American export. His thesis is that the relocation of the Frankfurt School to the USA during the Hitler era had the effect of fusing "cultural Marxism" with the American public administration state and the wider progressive paradigm, which was rooted in turn in the New England WASP culture and its derivatives, and this stuff was then re-exported back to Europe following WW2, when those countries essentially became American protectorates. I would add that the Frankfurt School were collaborators with American intelligence during WW2, and helped created the foundation for the faux left controlled opposition created by the CIA in the 1950s under the guise of the Congress on Cultural Freedom.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/01/black-lives-matter-finances.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sociologist Troy (Keith) Preston explains how the "left" was hijacked:
Rothbard suggested that fascism was a hybrid of socialism and conservatism, or the idea of reestablishing a traditional conservative stratified social order but with a socialist component that was largely about overcoming what the fascists considered to be the culturally unaesthetic aspects of capitalism (e.g crass commercial culture, tacky department stores, and billboards) and political rule by the merchant class, and I suspect this is a good analysis of fascism as well.
But the thing about social evolution is that social evolution is resilient and undergoes perpetual shape-shifting. The classical bourgeois capitalism of Marx's era eventually gave way to managerial capitalism during the period when mass society was continuing to grow and technological expansion was taking place in ways that transcended ideological differences or different forms of government or specific forms of political economy.
All systems in the 20th century, whether formally capitalist, socialist, or fascist had to adapt to those changes. now managerial capitalism is being fused with digital capitalism and the tech-oligarchs are becoming the new aristocracy and the managerial class is becoming the new clergy. So systems like the US/European corporate welfare states, Eastern socialism, or the fascist model adopted by the Central European countries and some "NICs" (newly industrializing countries) were all reflections of these wider historical trends during their own time and had to adjust to these.
thanks for this!
So glad to see you get this out. Your story is so compelling Michel and really creates a powerful narrative of standing for your principles in spite of what was happening with coming up against the mutation of the left in later postmodernity. Looking forward to reading more.
appreciate the appreciation!!
This is easily the longest Substack post I have ever read, and the first post I have read from this Substack. I will check some other posts here, but I feel like I've jumped in the deep end when I should have waded in from the shallows. Perhaps I've been conditioned to expect shorter, more easily digested pieces. But that's my limitation, not a problem with what you've written. There's nothing about the blogging format that should require us to present material in small, unconnected bits and avoid more involved texts.
I've come across your work before, when I was researching online communities, so I expect that there is much here worth reading. I'd like to follow up on your writing about knowledge acquisition, self-knowledge and awareness, and the four quadrants you touched on. But it’s what you have to say about identity politics and the fracturing of the left that I find immediately useful.
In New Zealand (where I’ve lived for 30 years), we have our particular racial and gender divides, but class divisions dominate lived experience (despite New Zealanders considering this country much more egalitarian than the England the initial settlers came from).
Our last general election (Oct. 2023) resulted in the most libertarian, neoconservative, right-wing government since the 1990s. There has been much discussion among New Zealanders on the left here on Substack and elsewhere about what to do. There are so many ways in which we are a divided as a society that developing a strategy to respond to the shock and awe of the first 100 days of the current administration is not an easy task. Addressing common projects around shared values, as you discuss, is in itself an organising strategy and, perhaps, a good way to start. But I better stop here before I break any unstated but understood guidelines about the appropriate length of a comment. Thank you for all the work this post represents. I’ will read more of what you’ve published here.
Thank you so much for this very cogent reply and your concern about change strategies and I am happy you appreciate it despite its indeed special length. I don't intend to do this every week or every other week, but it felt warranted in this case. Politics is extremely difficult in this age of polarization and tribalization, and with reversal in the class basis of the political movements, complicating everything for genuine emancipatory movements. My hunch is that we now have to start with self-organized and transformative productive projects, and then seek allies within and without the political and economic structures, much as the labor movement did in the 19th century.
I’ll look to see what you’ve written about identity politics. Younger people might be forgiven for thinking that the purpose of politics is to have the freedom to discover, live and express one’s personal identity. It’s a goal that has moved to the front of the march and is a rallying cry for many. It makes it more difficult to challenge individualism, a central tenant of neoliberal, libertarian, and capitalist projects, if we accept the idea that each of us, separate from other individuals but grouped by our shared sense of difference, is the centre and focus. If we see the world through the lens of personal, individual difference, our mission statement is unlikely to address structural inequality and the politics of power.
Dear Mark, thanks for your perspective. It all depends what me mean by identity politics. I certainly can live with the kind of identity politics that led to the idea of a Rainbow Coalition which included women and workers in a grand alliance for me equal rights and solidarity in society. But I do not agree with the current 'suprematist' forms, which aim to erase biological difference, and the rights of women and gays, and is often driven by a virulent social racism (contempt for workers), and pressure to limit freedom of speech and political pluralism. HEre are some quotes (23) with various forms of 'progressive' critique: https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Identity_Politics
Many thanks.
The P2P website has lots of summaries.
This has a good guide to personal transformation to a post-woke, anti-fragile “integral” culture:
metarationality.com
Indeed a great site.