Ascending The Tower – Episode XVI, Part 2 – “Useful in the Zombie Apocalypse”

3 Comments

1. 

   Peter A. Taylor August 14, 2016 at 1:00 am

   [Ed. Rescued from spam. Sorry for delay]

   There’s a story about an antebellum Universalist minister, Erasmus Manford, which you might find amusing:

   “In Greentop he met a Black evangelist and they struck up a conversation on salvation. Manford asked him, if he had the power, ‘Would you not save all?’ He replied, of course. Then, by your theology, Manford noted, ‘You’re better than God,’ who won’t.”

   http://www.oocities.org/~cindycasey/rhodauss.htm

   One bone of contention: I liked Moldbug’s “The mystery of pacifism” essay, but I don’t see how it can be reconciled with his use in “The ultracalvinist hypothesis: in perspective” of pacifism as a defining characteristic of progressivism. This “pacifism” is either completely insincere (as he suggests in “mystery”), or the left is thoroughly inconsistent. Calvin, Cromwell, Lincoln, Wilson, both Roosevelts…none of these people were pacifists. This is one of Moldbug’s weak points.

   http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/07/mystery-of-pacifism.html

   1. 

      Nick B. Steves August 15, 2016 at 1:59 pm

      Nice anecdote. It was probably received as a correction back in the day.

      On Pacifism. Well intellectually coherent Progressivism ain’t. Clearly the Puritans were not, themselves, in themselves, pacifist. But congregational churches, by their very nature, allow themselves to be seedbeds for exotic ideas, which given a certain level of socio-economic status as insulation from harsh social and biological realities, may grow up to infect other sects. Shakerism is dead as Jacob Marley, and only it’s styles and memory live on. But what a good memory it is! The pacifism (and the universalism) came from the Quakers. Originally it was quite principled, but grafted on the warlike, City on a Hill (or else we’ll exterminate you) Calvinists, it has strange effects. Consider the woman who tells her son never, never fight back, but who’d be totally gung-ho to send other boys to war to end FGM in Africa. These are impulses, moral poses at best. Not logic.

   2. 

      E Antony Gray August 15, 2016 at 2:41 pm

      Worth pointing out that one of the problems with pacifism *in general* and not specific to Prog’ism is that it tends to have this specific logical contradiction. But maybe calling it a logical contradiction is seeing ‘the logic of morals or ethics’ through the eyes of Kant – as categorical imperatives being the only ‘logical’ morals. (Don’t know if you’re doing this, Peter.)

      Pacifism as an absolute stance is completely impossible. However, I’ve never read that any pacifist was a pacifist in Kant’s sense of ‘doing so as though it were a natural law’. For example, pacifism would be possible as a logical stance if you were in a pacified world, say one already under the full dominion of God (a possibility among many for the World to Come.) In general it seems pacifism falls under three categories:

      1. Pacifism is preferred and moral but war of some sort, though evil, will be necessary to bring all of (whatever) in line to make it possible. The more extreme forms make this ‘war’ merely having war inflicted upon you until the enemy recognizes the *futility of violence.*

      2. Pacifism is for the elect. That is, those who are truly enlightened / destined for salvation / (whatever) should embrace pacifism, which is superior and the only moral way, but may employ the lower moral ‘castes’ to war for them.

      3. I find violence morally repugnant. Thus I won’t have anyone whom I have control over engaging in war, though as the world is a violent place it may still happen.

      In none of these cases is the full situation of the world-at-large really considered vis-a-vis warfare; but all of the positions have some manner of logic to them, though not the logic we expect.

      But do notice that if we set aside egalitarianism as an assumption, and assume, that like pacifism, it’s possible to hold something as an ideal or simply a moral stance (signal) without it needing to be fully realized or even expected to be realized at all any time soon, we note that several logical explanations exist as to how very warlike and sometimes criminal people can coexist and be fostered by pacifists. My general opposition to pacifism and the interpretation of early Christians as being moral pacifists is that in all cases pacifism involves ‘necessary warfare’ which must essentially be tasked out to ‘spiritual/moral inferiors’ either formally or informally. As a Christian, it sets an inequality where there isn’t supposed to be one, e.g. spiritually, even though it is supposedly held by ‘egalitarians’ in the political sense, where I’d oppose it. Pacifism naturally draws a line in the world between the *spiritual* and *peaceful* people and those condemned to fight wars for them, who of course are damned. The only way around this is to accept Whig history, that is, that through this dual mode of war/peace, eventually the ‘peace’ part will increase until there are no warriors required. (It also makes an odd and mostly – feminized – statement about the nature of the world which is necessarily incomplete since it does not encompass an understanding of say, the behavior of creatures below humans. Thus part of the philosophical breach between ‘Christians’ (unitarians) and Darwinian atheist sorts – note that Darwin himself came out of Unitarianism.)

      So I think you can come up with a consistent logic re: pacifism, but it will not be complete. However, do remember that the strength of the progressive system of thought has little to do with its truth, consistency or completeness, but its usefulness as an adaptive fiction. That is, it maintains minimal levels of correlation with reality while being very useful to the powerful. Pacifism makes sense here as an adaptive fiction – what do you tell, if you can get them to believe it, millions of ‘politically emancipated’ people with weapons? Certainly you don’t tell them “violence is the best way to solve a problem.” (That isn’t true of course and is also irresponsible and dangerous) – but why not “violence is futile”? I doubt it is the most effective, but it certainly seems like a useful thing for them to believe.

      It also shouldn’t be surprising that their belief system is rather informal, that is, it could have sincerely held beliefs (and not merely for show, which I think MM is implying by pointing out those four points) which function differently than they say they do. It’s useful to model pacifism as “neglect, followed by draconian violence” – a cycle which fits informality/instability of other views like the postmillenial premillenial belief cycles, Pentecostal cycles of degeneracy and revival, etc.

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