Back to the land

[Ares Land]

I think it's an interesting discussion but I don't want to derail the US Politics thread any further. So here's a new thread

So maybe avoid the power struggles and just be a landowner and speech-giver, like Cicero. Who, um, was exiled, pardoned for a time, then murdered.

I can't help being a Roman history nerd. Sorry about that!
So to quibble, Cicero wasn't just a landowner and speech-giver. He was consul then provincial governor and a major actor in the late Republic power struggle. He retired from public life (not entirely voluntarily) because he ended up on the losing side (he was an exceptional orator but a bad statesman.)
I don't think you could be part of the elite and stay out of the public struggles; not in the Roman Republic anyway.

On to the more general debate : my view is that we have or had a view of progress (societal and technological) as an unstoppable force; a force that you cannot resist and shouldn't anyway because it ultimately leads to a greater good.

I believe that our view of progress should be nuanced, finer and overall more subtle. Technological progress isn't an unmitigated good and can, in fact, take the wrong path.
To take an example, it used to feel like cars were the better technology, destined to replace bicycles and trains. It turns out bicycles and trains are, in fact, often the better option. (Which doesn't mean we can't have better bicycles and trains, and in fact we do.)

In certain ways the industrial revolution could be a step down. The situation is better now, but it's really not that clear cut that being an 19th century urban factory worker was a step up (I agree that living in the city offered better opportunities, but that's to be balanced with repressive and dangerous working conditions). It also brought, somewhat later on, the not-negligible chance of being mowed down in a World War.

Happily, the starry-eyed view of Progress is no longer current so we can turn a more critical eye of progress (though attitudes towards AI make me reconsider that point of view. It still looks like that when a critical and rational view is faced with The Future, The Future still wins, even when it makes little sense.)

Personally I think this is the biggest emergency we have, because it threatens the ecosphere we depend on. At the same time, it's both solvable, and being worked on. The worst-case scenario, RCP8.5, projecting a 5 °C increase, is now considered impossible. The world is converting to solar and wind power. Even the US, despite Trump's wet dreams about coal power.

To that I would add that climate change isn't the only way we're destroying the ecosphere, either. But I am, like you, really an optimist about that. It's a very difficult fight, but our attitudes have improved and we have a solid awareness of where the issues are (which wasn't the case in, say the 70s, let alone the 50s), understanding the problem being halfway to solving it.

A point I can't stress enough: I don't want to turn back the clock to feudalism. I don't deny any of the various pains of pre-modern life; I also feel we've gained a very precious thing which is a rather precise understanding of the world and also -- and that may be even more important -- a more realistic view of what we don't understand.

With all that in mind, a few things to consider:

• If you fact-check the literal claim that feudal peasants had more free time, well, it's probably wrong. If we take the general spirit of the assertion though... Our idea of success, right now, is working 70+ hours at one of the jobs described by Graeber in Bullshit Jobs, with constant cell phone, Zoom or Slack interruption. To each their own I guess, but that makes me feel being a subsistence farmer isn't so bad. More seriously though, the question is 'is it the best we can offer?'
• 'Feudalism' covers a millenia of very different realities. But in a very general way, feudal lords were, well, lording it over you but they didn't micromanage and had in fact to work within a fairly constrained set of obligations. In other words, the lord could be a bother but not as much as corporate HR. Again, not a defense of feudal lords, but is it the best we can do?
• Kings did feel free to expel or outright massacre religious minorities. Here I don't we've made that much progress. Europe mostly refrains from such things, but just barely. Worldwide though, I can think of several instances of worse massacres than the Wars of Religion.

On to more positive things: what should progress looks like? Maybe it could take surprising forms. So far progress has meant using more energy, but do we need to keep going until we start climbing the Kardashev scale? Maybe the advanced approach is less energy used, more precisely applied. More assumptions should be questioned: cities are great, I entirely agree, but now human habitation is almost all megacities with rural areas basically abandoned - does that make sense? Is it healthy to be increasingly cut off from our natural habitat?

[zompist]

I think it's an interesting discussion but I don't want to derail the US Politics thread any further. So here's a new thread

So maybe avoid the power struggles and just be a landowner and speech-giver, like Cicero. Who, um, was exiled, pardoned for a time, then murdered.

I can't help being a Roman history nerd. Sorry about that!
So to quibble, Cicero wasn't just a landowner and speech-giver. He was consul then provincial governor and a major actor in the late Republic power struggle. He retired from public life (not entirely voluntarily) because he ended up on the losing side (he was an exceptional orator but a bad statesman.)

I don't think you could be part of the elite and stay out of the public struggles; not in the Roman Republic anyway.

Oh yeah, he was one step below the big boys. And probably stuck his head out more than was good for him.

On to the more general debate : my view is that we have or had a view of progress (societal and technological) as an unstoppable force; a force that you cannot resist and shouldn't anyway because it ultimately leads to a greater good.

I believe that our view of progress should be nuanced, finer and overall more subtle. Technological progress isn't an unmitigated good and can, in fact, take the wrong path.
To take an example, it used to feel like cars were the better technology, destined to replace bicycles and trains. It turns out bicycles and trains are, in fact, often the better option. (Which doesn't mean we can't have better bicycles and trains, and in fact we do.)

I agree. But I'm not sure anyone has been rah-rah about every technology except the editors of Popular Mechanics and Wired. Almost everything has been resisted, or denounced as corrupting, harmful, or useless.

There are instances of turning the clock back-- e.g. we phased out chlorofluorocarbons, we backed away from battlefield nerve gas, we banned DDT and thalidomide and lead paint, we're aware of antibiotic abuse. Maybe a wiser society would figure out a way to test new ideas at scale, enough to see if they work without being so committed that they can't be abandoned.

[*]If you fact-check the literal claim that feudal peasants had more free time, well, it's probably wrong. If we take the general spirit of the assertion though... Our idea of success, right now, is working 70+ hours at one of the jobs described by Graeber in Bullshit Jobs, with constant cell phone, Zoom or Slack interruption. To each their own I guess, but that makes me feel being a subsistence farmer isn't so bad.

I think both workers and the scientific management people agreed, for half a century, that 40 hours a week was the max: people get too tired and careless when overworked. Ironically it's the "better jobs", like programming, that are most affected by overwork.

[*]'Feudalism' covers a millenia of very different realities. But in a very general way, feudal lords were, well, lording it over you but they didn't micromanage and had in fact to work within a fairly constrained set of obligations. In other words, the lord could be a bother but not as much as corporate HR. Again, not a defense of feudal lords, but is it the best we can do?

I think we need a new term for what's starting to come in... nanomanagement? Again, it seems like a huge step back for management: the top thinkers of the 70s, like W. Edwards Deming, advocated worker empowerment, not logging keystrokes and setting up cameras and denying pee breaks.

This, and the overwork, could easily be changed by governments. We're not powerless to stop this stuff.

So far progress has meant using more energy, but do we need to keep going until we start climbing the Kardashev scale? Maybe the advanced approach is less energy used, more precisely applied.

As you probably know, I've addressed this sort of question in my Almea+400 project. I don't think breakneck advancements will keep going for 10,000 years. And people will think hard about the ancestral environment as lifestyles come into view which completely abandon it. Some people will go off and live in space habitats in completely mutated bodies; others will think about how they might go back to hunting/gathering only with, y'know, cell phones and modern medicine.

As I said, people have romanticized the past for as long as they've been aware of having a past. Besides our technology, the biggest change is that people used to expect the world to suck, and saw no way to keep it from sucking except for God to remake the world. I don't think our problems are really worse today*, but the difference is that today we think the world could be different and way better, and we resent it not being so.

* I know the obvious rejoinder is "atom bombs! WWII! Trump!" etc. But if you're dead from an atom bomb, you're just as dead as if a soldier ran you through with a sword. Wars used to be near-constant. And again, I'm reading about the Romans & Byzantines right now, and rulers as stupid and self-destructive as Trump are common as shit. If institutions got borked, or the army lost its competence, or half the empire was lost, some dude did that. It was very rarely something that was really no one's fault. (The closest was the Islamic invasion... but Rome and Persia exhausted themselves by escalating their old feud at just the wrong time.)

[Ares Land]

I agree. But I'm not sure anyone has been rah-rah about every technology except the editors of Popular Mechanics and Wired. Almost everything has been resisted, or denounced as corrupting, harmful, or useless.

There are instances of turning the clock back-- e.g. we phased out chlorofluorocarbons, we backed away from battlefield nerve gas, we banned DDT and thalidomide and lead paint, we're aware of antibiotic abuse. Maybe a wiser society would figure out a way to test new ideas at scale, enough to see if they work without being so committed that they can't be abandoned.

I agree on both counts, there's always been opposition and we're steadily getting better at phasing out harmful technology.
A side effect of that, though, is that yes the left, and especially the environemental left often comes across as conservative or even anti-science. That's a misconception I'm trying to clear up

As an example (a highly loaded one I'm afraid) it's not anti-science to oppose nuclear reactors. You can understand how a nuclear power plant work and feel that they're an unnecessary risk.

I think both workers and the scientific management people agreed, for half a century, that 40 hours a week was the max: people get too tired and careless when overworked. Ironically it's the "better jobs", like programming, that are most affected by overwork.
(...)
I think we need a new term for what's starting to come in... nanomanagement? Again, it seems like a huge step back for management: the top thinkers of the 70s, like W. Edwards Deming, advocated worker empowerment, not logging keystrokes and setting up cameras and denying pee breaks.

This, and the overwork, could easily be changed by governments. We're not powerless to stop this stuff.

Yes, absolutely, that could be changed. Though it'd take a huge cultural change too; apparently working insane hours is something to brag about.

As you probably know, I've addressed this sort of question in my Almea+400 project. I don't think breakneck advancements will keep going for 10,000 years. And people will think hard about the ancestral environment as lifestyles come into view which completely abandon it. Some people will go off and live in space habitats in completely mutated bodies; others will think about how they might go back to hunting/gathering only with, y'know, cell phones and modern medicine.

Yes, I feel we rouhgly think along the same lines anyway.

[Raphael]

Re: the overal "Back to the Land"-point, I'm reminded of an extremely ugly jingoistic quote ascribed to some anti-French British person (but I'm repeating myself): "France would be a great country if it wouldn't be populated by French people."

I'm bringing this up in this context because a person who doesn't like cultural or religious conservatism with its small-mindedness and petty hatreds and bigotries might argue that the countryside would be a great place to live if there wouldn't be so many people who are a lot into hating people who have done nothing wrong for no good reason living there.

But since this is, at least to some extent, about sights and sounds and look and feel and sheer physical beauty - well, personal note, I know that I'm clearly biased in this regard, but I still think that few things in the world look as great as the Northern German countryside on a warm and sunny day. Of course, the problem is that since we're talking about Northern Germany here, there aren't all that many warm and sunny days.

As for "progress", no I don't think that it's something that "naturally" happens on its own, is unstoppable, and always makes things better. But I do think that under post-early-modern conditions, it usually happens, if people put in the effort, and it often changes things for the better, again, if people put in the effort. I do very much think that the world is better now than it was 300 years ago, and that this matters, because we're up against a powerful global political movement that is trying to turn things back to where they were 300 years ago, or where they think they were 300 years ago, except when it comes to technology, and they may well succeed. See my comments in the comments section of this blog post by Nathan Goldwag: https://nathangoldwag.wordpress.com/202 ... s-anymore/

I know the obvious rejoinder is "atom bombs! WWII! Trump!" etc. But if you're dead from an atom bomb, you're just as dead as if a soldier ran you through with a sword. Wars used to be near-constant.

So much this.

And again, I'm reading about the Romans & Byzantines right now, and rulers as stupid and self-destructive as Trump are common as shit. If institutions got borked, or the army lost its competence, or half the empire was lost, some dude did that. It was very rarely something that was really no one's fault.

Interesting take. A bit counterintuitive by today's standards, but, now that I think about it, probably true. Curious to hear more of your thoughts on that!

[Raphael]

we backed away from battlefield nerve gas,

I assume you've read Bret Devereaux on that? https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collectio ... s-anymore/

[Ares Land]

Re: the overal "Back to the Land"-point, I'm reminded of an extremely ugly jingoistic quote ascribed to some anti-French British person (but I'm repeating myself): "France would be a great country if it wouldn't be populated by French people."

That is, in fact, often quoted in France.

I'm bringing this up in this context because a person who doesn't like cultural or religious conservatism with its small-mindedness and petty hatreds and bigotries might argue that the countryside would be a great place to live if there wouldn't be so many people who are a lot into hating people who have done nothing wrong for no good reason living there.

It's currently true but not inevitable.
I don't know how rural Germany is. Rural America is world-famous for this but I have no idea what it's really like outside pop culture stereotype.
It is true of rural France (though there used to be plenty of rural départements with left-wing majorities.) But I don't think it's an inevitable fact of life. You can find very progressive rural areas, and very far-right cities.

I do very much think that the world is better now than it was 300 years ago, and that this matters, because we're up against a powerful global political movement that is trying to turn things back to where they were 300 years ago, or where they think they were 300 years ago, except when it comes to technology, and they may well succeed. See my comments in the comments section of this blog post by Nathan Goldwag:

Well, one day the far right is talking about reinstating the divine right of kings, the next day it's all about Mars bases and AI.

[Raphael]

Well, one day the far right is talking about reinstating the divine right of kings, the next day it's all about Mars bases and AI.

Less contradictory if you assume that they get their politics from various works of classic space opera.

[WeepingElf]

I don't know how rural Germany is.

Conservative. I grew up on a farm in Germany, and while my father is not particularly conservative, most of his colleagues are.

[malloc]

Less contradictory if you assume that they get their politics from various works of classic space opera.

Somehow Palpatine has returned...

I don't know how rural Germany is.

Conservative. I grew up on a farm in Germany, and while my father is not particularly conservative, most of his colleagues are.

My impression has always been that rural areas in general skew to the right of urban areas in their respective country, particularly on social issues.

[Raphael]

My impression has always been that rural areas in general skew to the right of urban areas in their respective country, particularly on social issues.

Often true, but then again, a while ago, rotting bones claimed that in Bangladesh, there are rural people who hate the universities as supposed centers of religious fundamentalism.

[Richard W]

Often true, but then again, a while ago, rotting bones claimed that in Bangladesh, there are rural people who hate the universities as supposed centers of religious fundamentalism.

Maybe it comes from the sentiment, "They're a queer lot in the city".

[zompist]

we backed away from battlefield nerve gas,

I assume you've read Bret Devereaux on that? https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collectio ... s-anymore/

I hadn't seen that, so thanks. Devereaux is always good reading!

[zompist]

And again, I'm reading about the Romans & Byzantines right now, and rulers as stupid and self-destructive as Trump are common as shit. If institutions got borked, or the army lost its competence, or half the empire was lost, some dude did that. It was very rarely something that was really no one's fault.

Interesting take. A bit counterintuitive by today's standards, but, now that I think about it, probably true. Curious to hear more of your thoughts on that!

The book is Edward J. Watts' The Romans, BTW. I'll probably review it when I finish.

Modern historiography prefers grand, underlying tendencies, and there are certainly areas where that approach pays off. E.g. the seesaw of nomadic vs Chinese power in East Asia; or the basic facts of which countries can or cannot support a large army; or the revolution in society caused by printing. The Great Man type of history is out of favor, though this is in part because we're far more interested in the people milling in the background, which a focus on the Great Man obscures.

But that leaves its opposite, which we might call the Great Failure history. I'd have to re-read the book to give specific examples, but every other emperor is one. Start with the fact that the Roman empire, though it lasted for 1500 years, never had a good succession mechanism. So outside a couple of favored centuries, it was Game of Thrones all the time. Everyone who got to be emperor via civil war basically chose a path of violence, weakening of the rule of law, and the corruption of the army. They or their descendants paid for it by losing huge swaths of territory. Not a few chose stupid advisors, or waged wars they promptly lost, or needlessly antagonized the landowning class or parts of the church. All this despite arguably having the best models for a state in the ancient world (i.e. a republic without excessive concentrations of power, and with the ability to judiciously expand the notion of citizenship).

(That sounds like I'm romanticizing the Republic, and I certainly don't mean that. Its last two centuries are a demonstration of its weaknesses, and it only looks better before that before we don't have the detailed sources. But in many ways it did function better than the Greek states.)

I think the Great Man approach came naturally at a time when, frankly, no one expected kings to behave any better. You might as well admire the canniest thugs, if thugs were all that you were going to get. With modern eyes, it's hard to read a history of any empire and think that the men at the top were Great at all. They were often in fact a lot like Trump: brutal in nature, just as greedy, and choosing their advisors just as badly.

[Raphael]

But that leaves its opposite, which we might call the Great Failure history.

There's Kiran Pfitzner's "Mediocre Man Theory of History", though he's only posted about that on a website hosted by Substack, so people who don't want to give Substack traffic wouldn't want to read it: https://www.deadcarl.com/p/the-kaiser-a ... man-theory

[Raphael]

Since we were talking - well, I was talking - about Bret Devereaux, there's an extremely creepy and, as a matter of course, fairly offensive and generally yucky fascist meme making the rounds now, and Devereaux has taken it apart a bit in a brief Bluesky thread. Content warning: extreme creepiness, offensiveness, and general yuckiness. https://bsky.app/profile/bretdevereaux. ... vayc5krc2q

[Ares Land]

Since we were talking - well, I was talking - about Bret Devereaux, there's an extremely creepy and, as a matter of course, fairly offensive and generally yucky fascist meme making the rounds now, and Devereaux has taken it apart a bit in a brief Bluesky thread. Content warning: extreme creepiness, offensiveness, and general yuckiness. https://bsky.app/profile/bretdevereaux. ... vayc5krc2q

Oddly relevant to the discussion but, yes, yuck!
(It goes without saying that the meme is entirely delusional and/or propaganda for... um. what exactly? Internet fascists are so far out I don't understand a single thing they're saying.)

[Raphael]

Oddly relevant to the discussion but, yes, yuck!
(It goes without saying that the meme is entirely delusional and/or propaganda for... um. what exactly? Internet fascists are so far out I don't understand a single thing they're saying.)

Oh, I think it's pretty clear - it's saying that things were better before the Industrial Revolution, at least for the people who fascists think are the only people who matter. And that we should go back.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know a place where the original meme is posted that neither requires a Bluesky login to see the meme nor involves visiting the places of people who agree with it?

[Raphael]

Out of curiosity, does anyone know a place where the original meme is posted that neither requires a Bluesky login to see the meme nor involves visiting the places of people who agree with it?

OK, I'll see if I can put it behind a cut here.

More: show

yuk-yuk-yuk-i-absolutely-dont-agree-with-this-meme.jpg (151.93 KiB) Viewed 10210 times

[Ares Land]

Oh, I think it's pretty clear - it's saying that things were better before the Industrial Revolution, at least for the people who fascists think are the only people who matter. And that we should go back.

Not quite the Industrial Revolution, but rather the French Revolution I guess? i.e. technology but with the divine right of the CEO-kings (a la Mencius Moldbug)

I think your idea of space opera was right, and I guess they see themselves as Duke Leto Atreides. (Baron Harkonnen would be more apt, but only a select few will make it. It's techno-serfdom for everyone else.)

[Raphael]

Not quite the Industrial Revolution, but rather the French Revolution I guess? i.e. technology but with the divine right of the CEO-kings (a la Mencius Moldbug)

That's the general fascist position, but I guess the maker of this particular meme might want to go farther than that. See the point about the evils of mass-produced products, for instance.