Think Your Way To Safety
Think Your Way To Safety
Vote, if it makes you feel better.
I am a sloppy member of Braver Angels. This is because, while I believe in everything they profess, I don’t have the patience to do anything about it. Those of you who read me probably are familiar with my Abstention Principle which will remain in effect so long as populism rules our domestic affairs. And still I’m probably not going to make a fetish of my principles. I understand something with fresh eyes now that I heard Peter Zeihan say so this morning. Our two party system is a hodgepodge of small coalitions that horsetrade their way to power.
Imagine we have three dozen major identifiable interest groups into which you could sort the American electorate. Too many people think it’s all about guns, or race, or abortion. It’s inclusive all that but way more as well, and these groups go through biorhythms of size, focus and influence. We are a symphony of democracy, not exactly a cacophony but we harmonize in counterpoint.
Every once in a while smart asses in the horn section go off script, but even so, we know what they’re going to play. We have Prokofiev and Williams. Of course we do. This clip reminds me that this was practice, and American democracy is a continuing fallible experiment. It was a bad re-creation of Prokofiev anyway, and Darth Vader’s theme is easy to play. That’s how I see the instruments of democracy, and sometimes we don’t even need a conductor.
Safety In Numbers
There is safety in numbers three ways. The traditional way is just what you’d expect. One is safe in a crowd of one’s own flock. This week at the DNC (not that I can stand to watch) this is surely the dynamic at work.
The second way is what you’d expect an engineer or a science nerd to say. Be data driven. Cite the statistics. Show me the proof of work. I’m certainly in that loose cadre, even though many of us are sadly disappointed by many institutional failures.
The third way is to consider the various voices and instruments in the orchestra of democracy and try to understand what their aims are and how they could be harmonized. Or not. But at least you’ve got their number. Here is the master guideline that nobody has eclipsed since it was published in 2018.
If it helps, I would consider myself a part of 12, 15, 17, 19 and 21. 21 because I like deep Christianity as I explained earlier this year, although I yet to finish my reading in that vector. The Intellectual Dark Web (19) has mutated into HxA, which makes me happy, and because I was invited to speak there this year. That hotshot in the burgundy blazer is Musa al-Garbhi. You can read him here.
In the words of Peter Limberg and Conor Barnes, I have been ‘grey pilled’. That is to say I find very little of compelling interest in the battles of the culture war. Once again, however, I am not making a fetish out of my principled abstention. I’m just rolling with the punches and enjoying a glass of wine at the conference. But I am deeply invested in my ability to think on my feet which involves my being grounded in some serious philosophical [back]grounding and staying current with the state of the memes.
A grey pill, according to Venkatesh, is the process of “relearning the value of questioning and doubt after you’ve been seduced by answers and certainties; it’s leaving comforting ‘secret’ societies for continued intellectual growth.” Grey pills can engender an existential crisis, but at the right dose they can provide a confident unknowing and a sexy uncertainty, what Stephen Fry calls “passionate and positive doubt.” In a world of tyrannical certainty, grey pilling may be an ethical act.
Still, god help me if I lost my day job.
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As I went upstairs to put on my watch, I thought about the fact that I remain fairly close to my white-collar, but Peasant upbringing. I am satisfied that I learned a sufficient number of survival skills to navigate this, the country of my birth. If it weren’t for computers, I’m sure I would have been an electrician. Now that I think about it, I’m rather angry at myself in retrospect for not having looked around for an apprenticeship when I dropped out of USC. Then again, I got a taste of the high life of the Ivy Cabal. After all, I was accepted to Claremont too. I would have made a good Mudder, so I tell myself.
We are locked inside of a crystal puzzle palace, like Bruce Lee on the Island of Han. The only way to survive is to think your way out of it. Use your peasant confidence and make a few genius moves.
