Bruce Charlton's Notions

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Commenters have recently referred to the ideas of the pseudonymous Mencius Moldbug who blogs at Unqualified Reservations - http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com - and the great man himself once graced this blog with his comments!

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I regard Mencius Moldbug as one the the most important thinkers of our time (OK, there is not much competition - but still...), and I have learned a great deal from him.

He is extremely astute, extremely well-informed (and about relevant matters), honest, shows his working, and (most important) is a truth-seeker.

I think I have read everything on his blog, and have also spent a lot of time thinking about it.

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But (and you were waiting for that 'but', weren't you?) his system is based upon arbitrary axioms and is pragmatic and 'utilitarian' - in the sense that MM argues that his plans for government and society would in practice lead to the greatest happiness and/or the minimum misery for the greatest number of people.

(Or, at least, for the greatest number of people who deserve it, in the sense that those who 'deserve' to have their happiness enhanced and misery diminished are those whose net effect on the gratification of others is positive.)

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MM is perfectly aware and explicit that his axioms are un-founded, and to be judged therefore by their consequences; and he is explicitly utilitarian (with a typical 'liberal' emphasis that the diminution of misery is more important - and more objective - than the optimization of happiness: so that for MM reducing violence and the pain it brings is more important than expanding opportunities for pleasure.)

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But why is happiness good and pain bad? (This being the basis of utilitarian morality)

Of course we feel that way; but (to the secular materialist) these feelings, the specific pairings of stimulus and response, e.g. suffering violence paired with pain, engaging in sex paired with pleasure - are merely contingent facts of natural selection.

And such contingent facts can be, and are, manipulated by training, drugs, surgery and (in future, perhaps) genetic engineering.

Hence, that which previously caused pain can be made a pleasure and that which previously gratified can be made pain.

(Indeed, such inversions of traditional pairings are a major element in political correctness - albeit with inconsistent success, so far.)

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And, anyway, in the Big Picture (as perceived by secular materialism) - what do these momentary phenomena matter? Who (or what) cares about human happiness or suffering? Even a whole human life does not even amount to a micro-spark in eternity.

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In other words, Mencius Moldbug is an advocate of pure nihilism: a total denial of reality (since bottom line 'reality' - i.e. human emotions and what triggers them - is by this analysis wholly reversible, hence wholly relativistic).

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But MM is perfectly well aware of this fact.

And he is not, I am sure, happy with this state of affairs - he is not content to be a nihilist, not content to live in a state of nihilism (however free from pain and misery, however filled with pleasurable distractions).

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Mencius Moldbug is not, therefore, content to leave his ideology, his system, where it happens to be at the moment - but he will continue to seek something better.

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Assuming that Mencius Moldbug does not abandon his search for truth, he will become a Christian. Sooner or later, and possibly at the very last moment, but inevitably so.

He is on the path.

He has, indeed, already crossed the Pascalian+ threshold for salvation: the threshold which lies between being a contented atheist and a seeking atheist.

And therefore, whether he acknowledges it or not, MM is already destined to be saved (assuming, that is, he does not abandon his honest search).

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+Blaise Pascal - Pensees, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18269

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I realise that it was as long ago as June 2007 that I first heard of Mencius Moldbug - now self-unmasked as Curtis Yarvin. As can be seen from the link, I heard of him from being a regular reader of the libertarian economics blog of Arnold Kling - and that in itself shows the scale of change that I have undergone in the past 11 years.

In June 2007 I was myself a libertarian-conservative, an atheist (with post-modern New Age leanings) - and my philosophy of life was a kind of utilitarian hedonism based on an application of natural selection theory to human affairs. In other words I was unusual, extreme, a trouble-maker... but still very much within the socio-political-ideological mainstream.

Like most such people, my main concern was that the others of my ilk were always selling-out: and I mean always! For example, I once spent a morning 'advising' Boris Johnson at the House of Commons - and it became clear that while he expressed all the right ideas, he never actually did any of them. The behaviour of economists, libertarians, democracy advocates and indeed the entire mainstream during and after the 2008 (fake) 'economic crisis' made this baked-in corruption clear and certain.

What I first realised from Mencius M. was that this was in the very nature of the supposed-Right in a democracy - such aspects were constitutive of the very system, and would never change for so long as the system remained - and furthermore the system was very resilient.

While I was reading and commenting on Moldbug's weekly 10,000 word essays, and exchanging e-mails with Curtis Y, I began to become a Christian. Along with MM I began to realise that demotivation was perhaps the deepest problem for those opposed to The Left. The mass of Leftists were also demotivated but this mattered little since their strategy was destructive; and destroying is easy, opportunistic, does not need to be strategic; while a credible Right would need to be strategic, consistent, and disciplined.

In retrospect, I think my conversion to Christianity was tainted by these political insights and attitudes, in the sense that I saw the alternative to as lying between Eastern Islam and Western Christianity; and therefore looked to Christianity to provide Western social cohesion. This, in turn, meant that I was drawn to the Episcopal, catholic Christian churches (and, for similar reasons, Mormonism) - and the first couple of years after I became a Christian (around 2008-9) those were the avenues I tended to explore. Although I was also drawn to Conservative Evangelical churches on the basis that they obviously did an much better job at attracting and motivating young people - which seemed to be essential.

By this time, I had 'parted company' with Moldbug. Although he too was obviously interested in the tough, traditionalist Christian churches (such as the Roman Catholic SSPX, and the Church of England under the Stuart monarchs) - he retained his focus on secular politics-economics - and (incoherently with his other views) began elaborating (to quote TS Eliot) a system so perfect that Men would not need to be good - this error was picked-up and run-with by the Neoreactionary movement. 

I don't know whether Mencius Moldbug's blog was decisive to me - probably not - but it was certainly helpful in actually breaking, permanently, my by-then-brittle faith in libertarian, centre-right economics as the basis for human society.

For which I am grateful.

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I was listening to a speech given in 1968 at Brigham Young University entitled "The Book of Mormon warns America" by Ezra Taft Benson - who was at the time an Apostle of the Mormon church, and later became the President.

http://www.latterdayconservative.com/ezra-taft-benson/the-book-of-mormon-warns-america/

http://speeches.byu.edu/index.php?act=viewitem&id=1619

This was at the height of the explicit culture wars, when the confrontation between the atheist New Left and traditional Christianity was at its most obvious - and before the Left had taken over all the large and powerful institutions.

From a perspective of 2015, this is a very remarkable speech - especially in terms of its tough, uncompromising, style. This was before political correctness made us accustomed the Right only being allowed to use euphemism and indirectness in prestigious public media and in open discourse - we are now easily shocked and scared by the upfront expression of common sense. Leftism was simply, and accurately, called Communism. Socially destructive Leftists were simply called 'traitors'.

(Sophisticated modern people have no concept of loyalty, so 'traitor' is a snigger-word.)

In terms of his analysis of how Leftism operates in America, Benson's analysis is essentially identical with that of the influential blogger Mencius Moldbug - the focus on communists and communist promoters in government agencies, the legal system, academia and the media (i.e. what Moldbug calls 'The Cathedral).

Here is a selection of quotations:

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The Book of Mormon points out how these ancient conspirators were able to fill the judgment seats, usurp power, destroy justice, condemn the righteous, and let the guilty and the wicked go unpunished. Do you see any parallel between this and the present-day decisions of our Supreme Court?

President McKay has stated that the Supreme Court is leading this Christian nation down the road to atheism. I believe the court is also leading us down the road to anarchy and atheistic communism. Here is the net effect of a few of their decisions:

Communists can work in our defense plants... Communists can teach in our schools...Communists can hold offices in labor unions... Communists can run for public offices...Communists can serve in the merchant marines...

The Supreme Court justices would probably have been accused of treason if they had dealt in this manner with the Nazis during World War II. 

How does one explain the court’s attitude towards the communist conspiracy which is a much greater threat than the Nazis ever were?...

I have not even covered the areas of how the court is hamstringing the police, destroying property rights, encouraging civil disobedience, undermining state sovereignty, and so forth.

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We have mentioned briefly the help which the communists have received from our Supreme Court. Suffice it to say that they have penetrated every major segment of our society... the news media, the schools, the churches, the unions, etc. 

But their greatest desire and most successful drive has come from their effective penetration of government.

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We extend the advantage of diplomatic recognition to their puppets when they come to power. We send them billions in foreign aid. We’ve trained their pilots. We ship them wheat. Through cultural and other exchanges, their spies come to America. We supply them know-how. We extend them credit. We buy their goods. Their propaganda goes through our mails at our expense. We’ve helped them in their conquests through secret agreements.

Our government does all it can to keep the anti-communists from coming to power in any country. 

And once we’ve helped the communists to take over a nation such as China and Cuba, we do all in our power to keep the anti-communists from freeing their land. We even negotiate with these butchers and sign treaties with these criminals who have no respect for treaties. 

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The vast majority of American citizens and federal employees are loyal to our Republic. But there are a few traitors whose numbers are growing and who are in key positions to influence and help shape government policy.

In fact it is becoming increasingly apparent that appointment to high government office today is not hampered by one’s past affiliations with communist fronts or one’s ability to follow the communist line. You don’t need to look further than the President’s Cabinet and recent appointments to the Supreme Court to find ample evidence of this fact... 

Parrot the communist line and you can expect to be glamorized by the liberal news media and pushed to the front. But take a strong anti­communist position and you can expect to be passed over, smeared, and silenced. And this has happened and is happening to too many great and distinguished Americans to be accidental.

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The communists could not do this all by themselves. They knew that communism would also have to be built by non-communist hands. And so, as in the past, they use, to suit their purpose, the misguided idealist, the political opportunists, the dupes and fellow travelers, and the ignorant and apathetic Americans...

He knows that some of his greatest successes have come with programs which have been sold to the American public as ways to fight the communists but which in reality had the net effect of promoting communism.

This has been true of our foreign aid program. Designed, supposedly, to help nations, its overall effect has been to keep socialist governments in business, enhance the communists, discourage free enterprise and demoralize the anti-communists.

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And so on...I quote above Benson's own words, but even harder things are said in citing approvingly quotations from others.

What do I infer from this? That what would have been, and would still be, depicted by The Cathedral as hysterical paranoia about 'Reds under the Bed'; was not just accurate, but an underestimate of the reality and trends.

That the stakes were clear by 1968, and the broad outlines of what has come to pass in the political system were clearly apparent - since Benson gives every appearance of speaking from a generally-understood perspective.

In particular, there was clarity that communism/ Leftism/ The Cathedral was absolutely hostile to Christianity - which was why Benson was giving this speech - and a recognition that the rise of communism causes the decline of Christianity.

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(In this respect Benson gets it right where Moldbug gets it wrong - communism was and is anti-Christian and atheist in nature, and it does not make analytic sense to regard it as a Christian heresy. To point at the post-communist corrupted pseudo-Christian churches and accuse them of causing Leftism is an example of victim-blaming. The Leftism of most modern church leaders is more akin to Stockholm Syndrome, the pitiful parrotings of the chronically abused, than it is to the masterminds of Leftist strategy.)

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What was not apparent in 1968 was the extent to which communism/ Leftism would achieve its goals primarily by the sexual revolution - by 'rights talk' applied to anyone who advocated sexual practices out-with faithful marriage.

The potential for the initially merely-libidinous sexual revolution to be deployed politically, to add-to the 'civil rights' based race alliance by pandering to women, the sexually promiscuous, those with psychopathologies and so on - This process was insidious, cumulative and surprising in its scope, effectiveness and destructiveness of tradition, Christianity and pretty much everything that was good about The West.

But in terms of where communism/Leftism was located in the USA, and how it operated; the politically-mainstream Benson was using the same analytic frame as was rediscovered forty years later by Mencius Moldbug - the main difference being that Moldbug was coming from an atheist Leftist then Libertarian background, while Benson was speaking from a rooted Christian perspective.

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...is clear from his first and foundational (and, I believe, unrepented?) statement of 2007:

The basic idea of formalism is just that the main problem in human affairs is violence. The goal is to design a way for humans to interact, on a planet of remarkably limited size, without violence...

The key is to look at this not as a moral problem, but as an engineering problem. Any solution that solves the problem is acceptable. Any solution that does not solve the problem is not acceptable.

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.uk/2007/04/formalist-manifesto-originally-posted.html 

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At that time MM was available for e-mail discussions, and - as I recall, I've lost the e-mails - I took him to task over this; as being a project which was obviously Leftist in aim, but having different methods: in other words; the same end, but different means. 

But if I didn't say so then (when I was a libertarian secular pro-democracy kind of person) I certainly would do so now: This is a Leftist project!

However, I now recognize that all secular projects are Leftist, inevitably, since they are merely species of utilitarianism - different variants on how to enhance the pleasure of various people or groups, or diminish their suffering (e.g. by eliminating violence).

In other words, these are hedonic projects in which the pleasure-pain axis is the bottom line - indeed, how could they be anything else? since religion is ruled out as the goal of socio-political organization. 

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If it wasn't obvious then, it is obvious now - since Moldbug's concepts and terminology have become a typical Leftist talking shop (about of the kind familiar to those such as myself who steeped themselves in the world of quasi-Marxist small magazines of the 1970s to 90s) - I mean animated conversations about precise definitions, tactics, and purity. 

The underlying idea is that if the ideological structure can be got right, then reality will crystallize around it in the desired form. 

These conversations are interminable since the basic underlying ideas are incoherent except at an extreme level of abstraction - but they are not without effect; as the phenomenon of Political Correctness shows. 

Those obscure and obsessive Marxist nutters wrangling about the 'isms' in the small magazines of the 1970s to 90s are now the intellectual lunatics in charge of that asylum which is 21st century public discourse. 

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So I would not characterize the Moldbug acolytes as nonentities who are wasting their time on trivialities - it is perfectly possible that these ideas could catch on and spread, and that some of these advocates could become successful and influential. 

I merely want to make the point that this is Leftist would-be careerism, in one of its purest and most characteristic guises.

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I mention this because MM himself, and some of his followers, seem to suppose that they are engaged in a reactionary project - or even that they are aiming at restoring some previous historical phase of human political organization.

But all previous phases of human political organization were religious - and Moldbug's ideas are not preceded by a religious Great Awakening, and so amount to wanting past social organization but minus its single most importantly motivating and cohering factor.

Pick and mix politics of preference - wanting what you want and not what you don't: and convincing yourself you can have it. 

Which is, if I may say so, a typical Leftist trick!
 
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There is an alternative morality - or anti-morality - that I have come across; and which seems to reflect a genuine modern alternative to the traditional morality of good and evil; this is the idea of a Balance of Things.

The idea is that there is no good and evil - or rather than good is one-sided, and in order for society and a person to be in a proper state, there needs to be a mixture of what-used-to-be called-good with what-used-to-be-called-evil. Both sides (good and evil - light & dark) need to be represented.

I think the idea may have come from Nietzsche, and it was prominent in Jung's ideas about the  light and shadow aspects of a person, the crown of his tree needing support from the roots; the need to know your 'shadow'. acknowledge it, give it its due...

The notion is that personal development, integration or growth, may entail doing things that are 'traditionally' discouraged or forbidden - in the name of Balance.

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But the most influential version of this is that there ought to be a balance - both in society and in persons - between order and disorder; between Law and Chaos.

This has become a staple of much modern 'alternative' literature and narrative - I first came across it explicitly in Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius Quartet (published from the nineteen sixties counter culture) and related books - which have a pervasive anti-moral-morality in which nothing is forbidden and anything may be good or necessary, according the the contextual need for 'balance'.

However, although The Balance is supposed to be the goal, in practice chaos is the most positively regarded - presumably because the baseline is seen as the crushing tyranny of Law (The Establishment, The Bourgeoisie).

The same basic idea seems to have received much wider circulation and approval from the Dungeons and Dragons alignments Lawful versus Chaotic , with the implication that a balance of the two is necessary in the desirable society - and again there is a pervasive preference for chaos.

The idea here is that a good character can be either chaotic or lawful (or neutral); and so can an evil character. As such this does not challenge the polarity of good and evil, but in practice the effect has been to popularize the 'chaotic' character whose behaviour, and morality, is unpredictable, may be selfish and short-termist, is unpredictable, unfaithful and random - yet who may nonethless be 'good' in the sense of morally-approved.

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The matter of balance was memorably, albeit indirectly, dissected by Mencius Moldbug (the old pseudonym of Curtis Yarvin) when he concluded that there was in reality no such thing as 'chaotic good', and that this idea was subversive of good - especially subversive of the possibility of a good society.

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/what-if-theres-no-such-thing-as-chaotic.html

But Moldbug was writing from a secular perspective, and the Law and Order versus Chaos polarity comes from a necessarily secular perspective - in particular it comes from the perspective which sees Law as merely man-made, expedient at best, and often arbitrary and corrupt.

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To break Law when Law is considered to be an arbitrary (and to some degree corrupt) system of man-made rules; and to behave in a chaotic fashion can be seen as a necessity - and indeed a matter of freedom.

Even sheer destruction is justifiable, when that which is destroyed has no intrinsic validity, but is just one among many possible and 'equally valid' alternatives.

From such a perspective; Law and order are stasis, and intrinsically totalitarian; The Balance requires destruction in order to achieve dynamism, energy, and to create hope. 'Evil' is a necessary part of 'good'.

At root it is a matter of psychology - Law and Order are seen as merely Weber's Iron Cage of bureaucracy, The System, The Establishment -- rule by the rich and powerful and successfully selfish - in such a context, random acts of defiance, rebellion, destruction - even sheer selfishness, sexuality and greed - become 'desirable'; especially from non-establishment people.

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It is as if since there is no intrinsically-good Lawful-order, but only exploitation of one set of humans by another; then 'at least' the 'balance' of perpetual disorder (chaos) gives as many people as possible a chance to take a turn at being the exploiters.

And, this is 'at least' more interesting that a static society of docile rule-followers trudging through futile and meaningless observances that merely serve to justify the status quo.

When order is man-made and for men's purposes, it cannot be more than merely expedient.

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As I say, these inferences come from a secular perspective; a world where God is dead, and where psychological satisfactions are the bottom line.

Mencius Moldbug's argument for the superiority of Law over Chaos is utilitarian; that Law is to be preferred over Chaos because a Lawful society allows more people to have more pleasure and to suffer less - especially the latter: Law minimizes human suffering - that is Moldbug's primary argument and assertion.

This perspective has become the basis of the Neo-reactionary movement - the assertion that Order is necessary and Law is good - and the focus is on developing a system which maximizes Law and Order; with society regarded as a problem of engineering (esp. computer engineering), and the task being to engineer an optimal system; (to reiterate) 'optimal' being defined in terms primarily of minimizing human suffering, then secondarily of enabling human fulfillment.

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What this or any other secular perspective does not tell us is why the suffering of 'other people', most of whom we do not know or know only via the mass media, ought-to concern us.

(And if it does concern us, why it is not easier to treat that concern rather than treating its cause. So if I am feeling bad because of other people's suffering, maybe I ought to be more selfish and could train myself to be so; or maybe I could take a tranquillizer - then I will no longer feel concerned about other people. Problem solved!)

When social law and order are seen as merely expedients, means to an end, for producing states of mind; why should anybody care about the well-being of 'society' - which is long term, remote and may never happen - when it conflicts with our own happiness (or pleasure, or avoidance of some degree of suffering) immediately and in the short term.

Indeed, it seems to be impossible to operationalize utilitarianism in any objectively valid - or even merely publicly agreed - way, because there is insufficient consensus about measuring and summating the degree of suffering or happiness of other people.

In practice, the ruling elite merely make assertions concerning whose suffering is to be regarded as the most significant and severe; and whose suffering is to be disregarded, minimized or mocked.

These assertions are then coercively-imposed on the population - enforced by laws (such as hate crime legislation), regulations and rules (such as those about equality and diversity), backed by propaganda from the mass media and officialdom.

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There is, of course, no secular reason why anybody should care about anything other than their own current state of mind. Life necessarily becomes expediency.

At bottom, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky were correct when they simply observed that in modernity God is Dead, and without God Anything is Permitted. The thesis can be elaborated to any degree desired, but that is the plain fact of the matter.

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So the Law versus Chaos distinction should be seen as a false antithesis deriving from secularism. Properly, Law is a means, not an end - and when Law is treated as an end it leads to the demand for Chaos - and the false ethic of goodness as a matter of Balance between Law and Chaos.

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Clearly, although Chaos would indeed be evil from a religious perspective, Law would only be good if it was consistent with God's Law. For a Christian, Law and Order that operates (on average, net) to subvert, destroy or invert Christianity - is evil Law and Order. It would be crazy for Christians to support a system of anti-Christian laws merely because they are Laws!

For a Christian, a well-ordered and obedient society which adhered to evil laws would itself be evil. Not wholly evil, of course, because order is a good - but Law is only a partial good, not good-in-itself; but such a society would be mainly evil; and if its Laws were mostly aimed at destruction of good (i.e. destruction of truth/ promotion of untruth; destruction of beauty/ promotion of ugliness; destruction of virtue/ promotion of sin) - then the society would be systematically evil.

This is already, and increasingly, the case.

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In sum, religion trumps law; and if this is properly understood, it is not a matter of preference, but a matter of logic.  Law without a basis in religion, Man's Law that is not God's Law, Law as an end-in-iteself is merely arbitrary and expedient - and not necessarily nor always preferable to more-chaos.

(More chaos may lead to a better situation when Law is evil.)

When secular Law becomes oppressive, or itself destructive by subversion and inversion (i.e. the current situation), and a human mind feels crushed and demotivated, then there is compelling reason from the secular perspective not to want 'a bit of chaos', to 'liven things up' and 'give other people - especially, ahem, 'myself ' (i.e. the subjective individual) - a chance'

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In sum, the whole Law/ Order versus Chaos/ Revolution analysis is flawed, because secular - and because secular, purposeless. Secularism offers no basis for Law concerning which state of affairs is preferable, or what a desirable 'balance' might be, except for assertions concerning optimal psychological states; and in practice these will be enforced top-down elite preferences concerning the significance of these imputed states of mind, and decisions on whose (supposed) states of mind are primary and whose may be ignored.

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I had a (Mencius) Moldbug moment today when reading a sample of the screeds of fawning admiration expressed in obituaries to the recently dead historian Eric Hobsbawm.

If you want to see what the ruling intellectual elite really think, then you should look at some of this stuff, and survey the list of honours and establishment accolades to this chap.

The lack of any concept of evil in a post-Christian society has seldom been so obviously on display.

EH was the epitome of an evil intellectual: evil in motivation and in influence, and on an epic scale - yet of course the mass media stopped everything to heap his bier with praise.

All this is a no brainer - but it is worth seeing how advanced and effective has become the secular Leftist technique of 'framing'; such that truly massive accomplishments of evil are re-packaged and re-presented as saint-like virtue.

Black is white, up is down, 2 + 2 = 5...

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I noticed from the Stats that yesterday this blog broke half a million page views. It is running at somewhat more than 1000 page views per day - which is about double what it was when I began daily blogging.

Probably lame. But then of course I deliberately don't do the things that might increase usage - blogroll, linking, be topical etc. I hope (inter alia) to make this blog a bit of a haven from topicality and commercialism.

(These things seem to work, because whenever I break the rules and write a topical blog with links to high usage sites, I do get a lot more page views recorded. E.g. the recent posting on the death of Eric Hobsbawm, which also mentioned Mencius Moldbug and attracted his fan base.) 

But I can't really decide whether 500K PVs is something to be pleased about, or just rather sad - considering the blog has been going on a daily basis for more than a couple of years.

But my impression is that page views bear only a very indirect relation to the health of a blog. I have had unprecedented numbers of views over the past days - but people were merely looking at

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/this-is-your-brain-this-is-your-brain.html

...which seems to have been linked from somewhere. Yet on these same high viewing days I have had very few/zero comments.

And even the number of comments seems a poor guide to measuring the kind of impact I hope for. I had a email from a reader who said that a zero commented blog post had been one of the crucial factors in him becoming a Christian. What more could one ask?  An infinitely valuable outcome.

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I think it was perhaps Mencius Moldbug who originated the stupid idea - which I have seen repeated in hundreds of different versions - that the current, mainstream, politically correct Left are puritans.

Of course there is a grain of truth, else the idea would have gone nowhere. The grain is that New Left is a descendant of the New England Puritans who emigrated from (mostly) East Anglia, became the Boston Brahmins, founded Harvard etc.

And this class, via various mutations including the Transcendentalists and their circle of radicals Unitarians, abolitionists, feminists etc) evolved into the post Civil War US ruling class; who were the fount of post-middle-1960s New Leftism.


OK. But to call the New Left puritans is something only a non-Christian could do, for at least two very obvious reasons.

1. A puritan is very religiously Christian, and believes that this should permeate every aspect of social and personal life.

2. A puritan advocates that sex be confined to (a single, permanent) marriage. In other words, a puritan rejects the entirety of the post-sixties sexual revolution.

Since Leftists are not Christian, and since they are (in theory and in practice) sexual revolutionaries; the idea that Leftists are puritans is wrong. 


The fact that so many supposedly 'Right wing' anti-political correctness commenters accuse Leftists of being puritans, simply shows that those who make the accusation are themselves not Christian and are pro-sexual revolution. In other words, to accuse Leftists of puritanism is itself evidence of Leftism! 

Such an accusation could only come from someone who does not take real religion seriously, and who regards sex and sexuality as trivial. 

In other words, the accusation that Leftists are puritans could only come from a Leftist. 


A Leftist can concisely be defined as anyone who is not primarily religious, as a principle of social organisation Or, a Leftist is anyone who puts forward any this-worldly principle (happiness, equality, justice, freedom, prosperity, minimisation of suffering, law and order, science...) as the primary goal of social organisation.

And the easiest sign of a Leftist is: someone who is in-favour-of the sexual revolution. 


Note: At least in the USA; the use of 'puritan' as a term of insult seems to have been popularised among the intellectual elite from the socialist, pro-communist left of the early 20th century; such as Van Wyck Brooks's influential 'Wine of the Puritans' of 1908. 

The internet, like the mass media generally, is highly dominated by the USA; and most of the comment and analysis comes from the US. 

But - since 2020, when all the world was in policy-lockstep for the first time in human history - it should be obvious that we live in a global totalitarian system.

Yet too many US commenters, perhaps especially on the non-religious 'Right'; still assume that the USA is the root and origin of global power. 

The work of Mencius Moldbug/ Curtis Yarvin can be taken as an example: in which he puts 'the Cathedral' - the 'Ivy League' intelligentsia and affiliates, with HQ Harvard University - as the controlling ideological centre. 

Another common idea is that the US Supreme Court has been the most important factor in influencing long-term socio-political trends - and that is where the centre of power lies. 

Others imagine that the birdemic was a US-initiated and -sustained phenomenon*. 

But the present situation, in which (apparently) the US Supreme Court Judges are under siege; threatened by totalitarian-leftist violence egged on by the mass media; and leading US politicians and security agencies will neither acknowledge the fact, protect them, nor do anything substantive to discourage the situation... shows me that the USA is now a controlled nation - the US elites are middle managers for executives whose loyalties lies elsewhere. 

The US 'cathedral' is run in the interests of the globalists, whose affiliations are demonic and to do with the strategy of soul damnation. 

The premier institutions of the USA - whether President, Houses, Supreme Court, or Harvard - are all grist to the globalists mill; and will be destroyed as and when expedient for the globalists agenda. 

US national institutions are now - one and all - followers, not leaders. 

*Of the five current global Litmus Test issues (the four of 2020, plus the 2022 Fire Nation war) the US originated both the sexual revolution and antiracism; but that was in the middle 1960s. Control of these  agendas has since been lost to global institutions; such that the USA cannot now roll-back or step-away from them, even when they desire to - any more than other nations are allowed the choice to opt-out from The Plan. Or, at least, the solution lies at a far deeper and more spiritual level than that of politics, media, corporations and institutions. 

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From 2010, on the Medical Hypotheses blog - for those who missed it... I regard this as probably one of my most important 'scholarly' articles. The post is about 2,500 words - so is better copied, pasted and printed-out before reading (assuming the 400 word summary seems sufficiently alluring)

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The cancer of bureaucracy: how it will destroy science, medicine, education; and eventually everything else

Bruce G Charlton. Medical Hypotheses - 2010; 74: 961-5


Everyone living in modernizing ‘Western’ societies will have noticed the long-term, progressive growth and spread of bureaucracy infiltrating all forms of social organization: nobody loves it, many loathe it, yet it keeps expanding.

Such unrelenting growth implies that bureaucracy is parasitic and its growth uncontrollable – in other words it is a cancer that eludes the host immune system.

Old-fashioned functional, ‘rational’ bureaucracy that incorporated individual decision-making is now all-but extinct, rendered obsolete by computerization. But modern bureaucracy evolved from it, the key ‘parasitic’ mutation being the introduction of committees for major decision-making or decision-ratification.

Committees are a fundamentally irrational, incoherent, unpredictable decision-making procedure; which has the twin advantages that it cannot be formalized and replaced by computerization, and that it generates random variation or ‘noise’ which provides the basis for natural selection processes.

Modern bureaucracies have simultaneously grown and spread in a positive-feedback cycle; such that interlinking bureaucracies now constitute the major environmental feature of human society which affects organizational survival and reproduction. Individual bureaucracies must become useless parasites which ignore the ‘real world’ in order to adapt to rapidly-changing ‘bureaucratic reality’.

Within science, the major manifestation of bureaucracy is peer review, which – cancer-like – has expanded to obliterate individual authority and autonomy. There has been local elaboration of peer review and metastatic spread of peer review to include all major functions such as admissions, appointments, promotions, grant review, project management, research evaluation, journal and book refereeing and the award of prizes.

Peer review eludes the immune system of science since it has now been accepted by other bureaucracies as intrinsically valid, such that any residual individual decision-making (no matter how effective in real-world terms) is regarded as intrinsically unreliable (self-interested and corrupt). Thus the endemic failures of peer review merely trigger demands for ever-more elaborate and widespread peer review.

Just as peer review is killing science with its inefficiency and ineffectiveness, so parasitic bureaucracy is an un-containable phenomenon; dangerous to the extent that it cannot be allowed to exist unmolested, but must be utterly extirpated. Or else modernizing societies will themselves be destroyed by sclerosis, resource misallocation, incorrigibly-wrong decisions and the distortions of ‘bureaucratic reality’.

However, unfortunately, social collapse is the more probable outcome, since parasites can evolve more rapidly than host immune systems.

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Everyone in modernizing ‘Western’ societies (roughly the USA, UK, Western and Central Europe) will, no doubt, have noticed that there has been a long-term, progressive growth and spread of bureaucracy. Except during major war; this has not been a matter of pendulum swings, with sometimes less and sometimes more bureaucracy, but instead of relentless overall expansion – albeit sometimes faster and at other times slower.

The bureaucratic takeover applies to science, medicine, education, law, police, the media – indeed to almost all social functions. Such unrelenting growth implies either that 1. Bureaucracy is vital to societal functioning and the more bureaucracy we have the better for us; or that 2. Bureaucracy is parasitic and its growth is uncontrollable. Since the first alternative has become obviously absurd, I am assuming the second alternative is correct: that bureaucracy is like a cancer of modernizing societies – i.e. its expansion is malignant and its effect is first parasitic, then eventually fatal.

While it is generally recognized that modern societies are being bled-dry by the expense, delays, demoralization and reality-blindness imposed by multiple expanding and interacting bureaucracies, it is not properly recognized that bureaucratic decision-making is not merely flawed by its expense and sluggishness but also by its tendency to generate wrong answers. Modern bureaucracy, indeed, leads to irrational and unpredictable decisions; to indefensible decisions which are barely comprehensible, and cannot be justified, even by the people directly involved in them.

In what follows, I will make a distinction between, on the one hand, Weberian, functional, ‘rational’ bureaucracy which (in its ideal type, as derived from the work of Max Weber; 1864-1920) incorporated individual decision-making and was evaluated externally in terms of results and efficiency; and, on the other hand, modern ‘parasitic’ bureaucracy which (in its ideal type) deploys majority-vote committees for its major decision-making, is orientated purely towards its own growth, and which by means of its capacity to frame ‘reality’ - has become self-validating.

I will argue that parasitic bureaucracy evolved from rational bureaucracy in response to the rapidly changeable selection pressures imposed by modern society, especially the selection pressure from other bureaucracies having constructed a encompassing, virtual but dominant system of ‘bureaucratic reality’; and that the system of rational bureaucracy is by now all-but extinct – having been rendered obsolete by computerization.


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The problem of parasitic bureaucracy

It is a striking feature of modern bureaucracy that nobody loves it, many loathe it (even, or especially, the bureaucrats themselves), yet it keeps growing and spreading. One reason is that bureaucracy is able to frame reality, such that the more that bureaucracy dominates society, the more bureaucracy seems to be needed; hence the response to any bureaucracy-generated problem is always to make more and bigger bureaucracies. It is this positive feedback system which is so overwhelming. Mere human willpower is now clearly inadequate to combat bureaucratic expansionism. Bureaucracy has become like The Borg on Star Trek: the next generation: it feeds-upon and assimilates opposition.

Bureaucracies are indeed no longer separable but form a linked web; such that to cut one bureaucracy seems always to imply another, and larger, bureaucracy to do the cutting. When the dust has settled, it is invariably found that the total sum and scope of societal bureaucratic activity has increased. And it is well recognized that modern bureaucracies tend to discourse-about, but never to eradicate, problems – it is as-if the abstract bureaucratic system somehow knew that its survival depended upon continually working-on, but never actually solving problems... Indeed, ‘problems’ seldom even get called problems nowadays, since problems imply the need and expectation for solutions; instead problems get called ‘issues’, a term which implies merely the need to ‘work-on’ them indefinitely. To talk in terms of solving problems is actually regarded as naïve and ‘simplistic’; even when, as a matter of empirical observation, these exact same problems were easily solved in the past, as a matter of record.

Over much of the world, public life is now mostly a matter of ‘bureaucracy speaking unto bureaucracy’. Observations and opinions from individual humans simply don’t register – unless, of course, individual communications happen to provide inputs which bureaucracies can use to create more regulations, more oversight, hence create more work for themselves. So individual complaints which can be used to trigger bureaucratic activity may be noted and acted-upon, or personal calls for more bureaucratic oversight may be amplified, elaborated and implemented. But anything which threatens the growth and spread of bureaucracy (i.e. anything simple that is also worryingly swift, efficient or effective) is ignored; or in extremis attacked with lethal intent.

The main self-defence of modern bureaucracy, however, is to frame reality. Since bureaucracies now dominate society, that which bureaucracies recognize and act-upon is ‘reality’; while that which bureaucracies do not recognize does not, for practical purposes, exist. Bureaucracy-as-a-system, therefore constructs a 'reality' which is conducive to the thriving of bureaucracy-as-a-system.

When a powerful bureaucracy does not recognize a communication as an input, then that communication is rendered anecdotal and irrelevant. Information which the bureaucracy rejects takes-on an unreal, subjective quality. Even if everybody, qua individual, knows that some thing is real and true – it becomes possible for modern bureaucracy implicitly to deny that thing's existence simply by disregarding it as an input, and instead responding to different inputs that are more conducive to expansion, and these are then rendered more significant and 'realer' than actual reality.

For many people, the key defining feature of a bureaucracy (as described by Weber) is that ideally it is an information-processing organization that has established objective procedures which it implements impartially. It is these quasi-mechanical procedures which are supposed to link aims to outcomes; and to ensure that, given appropriate inputs a bureaucracy almost-automatically generate predictable and specific outputs and outcomes.

However modern bureaucracies do not work like that. Indeed, such has been the breakdown in relationship between input and output that modern bureaucracies devote immense resources to change pure-and-simple; for example continually changing the recognition of input measures (i.e. continually redefining 'reality') and re-defining an organization’s mission and aims (i.e. rendering the nature of the organization different-from and incommensurable-with the past organization) and repeatedly altering the organizational outcomes regarded as relevant (re-defining making any decline in the efficiency of the organization formally un-measurable).

Such change may be externally- or internally-triggered: either triggered by the external demands of other bureaucracies which constitute the organizational environment, or triggered by the innate noise-generating tendencies of committees.

With endlessly-altering inputs, processes and outputs, bureaucratically-dominated organizations are impossible to critique in terms of functionality: their effectiveness is impossible to measure, and if or when they may be counter-productive (in terms of their original real world purpose) this will also be unknowable. Individual functional organizations disappear and all bureaucracies blend into a Borg-like web of interdependent growth.


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The nature of bureaucracy: rational versus parasitic

What is bureaucracy? The traditional definition emphasises that bureaucracy entails a rational human organization which is characterized by hierarchy and specialization of function, and that the organization deploys explicit procedures or regulations that are impartially administered by the personnel. A rational ‘Weberian’ bureaucracy was probably, on the whole, performing a useful function reasonably efficiently – in other words its effectiveness was perceived in terms of externally-pre-decided criteria, and its growth and spread were circumscribed.
In medical terms, Weberian bureaucracy was therefore – at worst - a benign tumour; potentially able to overgrow locally and exert pressure on its surroundings; but still under control from, and held in check by, the larger host organism of society.

But, just as cancers usually evolve from benign precursors, so it was that modern parasitic and useless bureaucracies evolved from the rational and functional bureaucracies of an earlier era. Probably the key trigger factor in accelerating the rate of this evolution has been the development of computers, which have the potential to do – almost instantly, and at near zero cost – exactly the kind of rational information processing which in the past could only be done (much more slowly, expensively, and erratically) by Weberian bureaucracy. My contention is that large scale rational, functional bureaucracies are now all-but extinct, destroyed by computerization.

I assume that, when rational bureaucracy was facing extinction from computerization, there was a powerful selection pressure for the evolution of new forms of irrational bureaucracy – since rational procedures could be converted into algorithms, formalized and done mechanically; while irrational procedures were immune from this competition.

The outcome is that, despite retaining a vast structure of procedure and regulation, and the organizational principles of hierarchy and specialization, those powerful modern bureaucracies that survived the challenge of computerization and are still alive and growing nowadays are non-rational in their core attributes. Irrationality is indeed an essential aspect of a modern bureaucracy’s ability to survive and thrive. Those bureaucracies which remain and are expanding in this post-computerization era are neither rational nor functional.

This evolution towards pure parasitism – with no performance of a substantive real-world function - is only possible because, for any specific bureaucracy, its relevant environment now substantially consists of other bureaucracies. It is 'other bureaucracies' that are the main selection pressure: other bureaucracies pose the main threat to survival and reproduction. A modern bureaucracy therefore must respond primarily to ‘bureaucratic reality’ – and any engagement with ‘real life’ (e.g. life as it is perceived by alert and informed individual human beings) simply stands in the way of this primary survival task.

So, the best adapted modern bureaucracies are those which most efficiently play the game of satisfying the constantly-and rapidly-changing requirements of other major bureaucracies. Success brings expansion by local growth and metastatic spread. But, in contrast, satisfying the stable requirements of ‘real life’ and human nature, by contrast, brings a bureaucracy little or no rewards, and a greater possibility of extinction from the actions of other bureaucracies.


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The role of committees in the evolution of bureaucracy

I will argue that the major mechanism by which irrationality has been introduced into bureaucracies is the committee which makes decisions by majority voting.

Committees now dominate almost all the major decision-making in modernizing societies – whether in the mass committee of eligible voters in elections, or such smaller committees as exist in corporations, government or in the US Supreme Court: it seems that modern societies always deploy a majority vote to decide or ratify all questions of importance. Indeed, it is all-but-inconceivable that any important decision be made by an individual person – it seems both natural and inevitable that such judgments be made by group vote.

Yet although nearly universal among Western ruling elites, this fetishizing of committees is a truly bizarre attitude; since there is essentially zero evidence that group voting leads to good, or even adequate, decisions – and much evidence that group voting leads to unpredictable, irrational and bad decisions.

The nonsense of majority voting was formally described by Nobel economics laureate Kenneth Arrow (1921-) in the 1960s, but it is surely obvious to anyone who has had dealings with committees and maintains independent judgement. It can be demonstrated using simple mathematical formulations that a majority vote may lead to unstable cycles of decisions, or a decision which not one single member of the committee would regard as optimal. For example, in a job appointments panel, it sometimes happens that there are two strong candidates who split the panel, so the winner is a third choice candidate whom no panel member would regard as the best candidate. In other words any individual panel member would make a better choice than derives from majority voting.

Furthermore, because of this type of phenomenon, and the way that majority decisions do not necessarily reflect any individual's opinion, committee decisions carry no responsibility. After all, how could anyone be held responsible for outcomes which nobody intended and to which nobody agrees? So that committees exert de facto power without responsibility. Indeed most modern committees are typically composed of a variable selection from a number of eligible personnel, so that it is possible that the same committee may never contain the same personnel twice. The charade is kept going by the necessary but meaningless fiction of ‘committee responsibility’, maintained by the enforcement of a weird rule that committee members must undertake, in advance of decisions, to abide by whatever outcome (however irrational, unpredictable, unjustified and indefensible) the actual contingent committee deliberations happen to lead-to. This near-universal rule and practice simply takes ‘irresponsibility’ and re-names it ‘responsibility’…

Given that committee decisions are neither rational nor coherent, and are therefore radically unpredictable, what is their effect? In a nutshell the short answer is that committees – overall and in the long term – generate random ‘noise’. Committees almost certainly increase the chances that a decision is wrong – but overall they probably do not have lead to any specifically biased direction of wrongness. While some committees using some procedures are biased in one direction, others are biased in other directions, and in the end I think the only thing that we can be sure about is that committees widen the range of unpredictability of decisions.

Now, if we ask what is the role of randomness in complex systems? - the answer is that random noise provides the variations which are the subject of selection processes. For example, in biology the random errors of genetic replication provide genetic variation which affects traits that are then subjected to natural selection. So, it seems reasonable to infer that committees generate random changes that generate variations in organizational characteristics which are then acted-upon by selection mechanisms. Some organizational variations are amplified and thrive, while other variations are suppressed and dwindle. Overall, this enables bureaucracies rapidly to evolve – to survive, to grow and to spread.

How much random noise is needed in a bureaucracy (or any evolving system)? The short answer is that the stronger is the selection pressure, the greater is the necessity for rapid evolution, then the more noise is needed; bearing in mind the trade-off by which an increased error rate in reproduction also reduces the ability of an evolving system accurately to reproduce itself. A system under strong selection pressure (e.g. a bureaucracy in a rapidly-changing modernizing society) tends to allow or generate more noise to create a wider range of variation for selection to act upon and thereby enable faster evolution – at the expense of less exact replication. By contrast, a system under weaker selection pressure (such as the Weberian bureaucracies of the early 20th century – for instance the British Civil Service) have greater fidelity of replication (less noise), but at the expense of a reduced ability to change rapidly in response to changing selection pressures.

I am saying here that committees using majority voting are responsible for the evolution of malignant bureaucratic growth in modern bureaucracies, and that this is why majority-vote decision-making permeates modern societies from the top to the bottom.

Although almost all major decision-making in the ‘Western’ world is now by majority voting there may be two significant exceptions: firstly military decision-making in time of war; secondly the personal authority of the Pope in the Roman Catholic Church. In both these types of organization there seems to be a greater emphasis on individual decision-making than on committee voting. Military command structures and the Roman Catholic hierarchy are therefore probably both closer to the ideal type of a Weberian rational bureaucracy than to the ideal type of a modern parasitic bureaucracy.

If so, the only major exceptions to majority rule decision-making at a world level, and probably not by coincidence, are the oldest and longest-enduring bureaucratic structures: that is, organizations which have retained functionality and have not themselves been destroyed by bureaucratic cancer.


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Why are there committees at all?

Although they may nowadays be almost wholly damaging, committees cannot in their origins have been entirely useless or harmful; or else the form would never have survived its first appearance. If we acknowledge that individuals have the potential for better (i.e. more rational and coherent) decision-making than committees, then the decline of individual decision-making must not be due to the lack of advantages so much as the perceived problems of individual decision-making.

The problems of individual decision-making are the same as the problems of individual power: in essence these problems are self-interest (i.e. the observation that power will be deployed differentially to benefit the power-holder) and corruption (i.e. the observation that over time power will corrupt, making the individual progressively a worse-and-worse decision-maker until he us note merely self-interested but progressively driven mad: power mad).

Since humans are self-centred beings living in an imperfect world, all individuals tend to be both self-interested and corruptible (albeit to widely-varying degrees!). Of course, self-interest and corruptibility applies equally to people 'serving' on committees - each of whom is wielding lesser but anonymous and irresponsible power. Nonetheless, it seems to me that committees are mostly favoured because they are seen as a solution to these intrinsic problems of individual power. The implicit assumption is that when a committee is run by majority voting then individual self-interests will cancel-out. Furthermore, that since power is spread-around more people on a committee, then the inevitably corrupting effect of power will be similarly diluted.

In reality, committees mostly solve the problems of power to the extent that they reduce the effective deployment of power. So that, if committees are indeed less self-interested and less prone to corruption than individuals, this is achieved mainly because the committee structure and procedures make decision-making so unpredictable and incoherent that committees are rendered ineffective: ineffective to such an extent that committees cannot even manage consistently to be self-interested or corrupt! Therefore, the problems of power are ‘solved’, not by reducing the biases or corruptions of power, but simply by reducing the effectiveness of power; by introducing inefficiencies and obscuring the clarity of self-interest with the labile confusions of group dynamics. Power is not controlled but destroyed…

Therefore, if committees were introduced to reduce the abuse of power, then instead of achieving this, their actual outcome is that committees reduce power itself, and society is made docile when confronted by significant problems which could be solved, but are not. And surely this is precisely what we observe in the West, on an hourly basis?

Because committee-based bureaucracy is predicated on an ethic of power as evil: it functions as a sort of unilateral disarmament that would be immediately obvious as self-defeating or maladaptive unless arising in a context of already-existing domination. And a system of committee-based bureaucracy can only survive for as long as it its opponents can be rendered even-weaker by even-more virulent affliction with the same disease: which perhaps explains the extra-ordinarily venomous and dishonest pseudo-moralizing aggression which committee bureaucracy adopts towards other simpler, more-efficient or more-effective organizational systems that still use individual decision-making.

If we assume that committees were indeed introduced as a purported solution to (real or imagined, actual or potential) abuses of individual power; then committees will therefore usually achieve this goal. So long as the quality of decision-making is ignored, then the committees seem to be successful. Committees can therefore be seen as a typical product of one-sided and unbalanced moralism that has discarded the Aristotelian maxim of moderation in all things. Bureaucracy adopts instead unilateral moralism which aims at the complete avoidance of one kind of sin, even at the cost of falling into another contrasting kind of sin (so pride is avoided by encouraging submission, and aggression is avoided by imposing sloth).

However the subject matter of ‘trade-offs’ is avoided; and the inevitable self-created problems of single issue moral action are instead fed-upon by bureaucracy, leading (of course!) to further expansion.

Hence, modern decision-making means that societal capability has declined in many areas. It has become at best slow and expensive, and at worst impossible, to achieve things which were done quickly, efficiently and effectively under systems based on individual decision-making. To avoid the corruption of individual authority, society has been rendered helpless in the face of threats which could have been combated.


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Bureaucracy in science – the cancer of peer review

This situation can readily be seen in science. Although modern science is massively distorted and infiltrated by the action of external bureaucracies in politics, public administration, law, business and the media (for example), the major manifestation of bureaucracy actually within science is of course peer review.

Over the last half-century or so, the growth and metastatic spread of peer review as a method of decision-making in science has been truly amazing. Individual decision-making has been all-but obliterated at every level and for almost every task. The elaborateness of peer review has increased (e.g. the number of referees, the number of personnel on evaluating panels, the amount of information input demanded by these groups). And peer review or other types of committee are now used for admissions, appointments, promotions, grant review, project management, research evaluation, journal and book refereeing, the award of prizes… the list just goes on and on. Clearly, peer review fits the pattern of malignant expansion of bureaucracy that is seen in the rest of modern society.

And, as with the rest of society, the cancer of bureaucratic peer review eludes the immune system of science. It has now been widely accepted, by the other bureaucracies of modern society in particular, that peer review is intrinsically valid; and that any other form of decision-making is intrinsically corrupt or unreliable. This belief is not merely implicit, but frequently explicit: with ignorant and nonsensical statements about the vital and defining role of peer review in science being the norm in mainstream communication.

The irresistible rise of peer review can be seen most starkly in that any deficiencies in peer review triggers demands (especially from other bureaucracies) for more elaborate and widespread peer review. So that the endemic failure of increased journal peer review to maintain quality, or to eliminate what it is purported to detect; such as deliberate fraud, or multiple publication, or serious error - leads inevitably leads to plans for further increases in peer review. So there is peer review of greater elaborateness, with further steps added to the process, and extra layers of monitoring by new types of larger committees. The ultimate validity of peer review is simply an assumption; and no amount of contrary evidence of its stultifying inefficiency, its harmful biases, and distorting exclusions can ever prove anything except the need for more of the same.

Yet the role of peer review in the progress of science remains, as it always has been, conjectural and unverified. The processes of gathering and collating peer opinion as a method of decision-making are neither rational nor transparent – and indeed (as argued above) this irrationality and unpredictability is in fact a necessary factor in the ability of committee systems such as peer review to expand without limit.

In the past; the ultimate, bottom-line, within-science validation of science came not from the committee opinions of peer reviewers but from the emergent phenomenon of peer usage – which refers to the actual deployment of previous science (theories, facts, techniques) in the ongoing work of later scientists. This was an implicit, aggregate but not quantified outcome of a multitude of individual-decisions among peers (co-workers in the same domain) about what aspects of previous science they would use in their own research: each user of earlier work was betting their time, effort and reputation on the validity of the previous research which they chose to use. When their work bore fruit, this a validation of previous research (in the sense that having survived this attempt at refutation the old science now commanded greater confidence); but when previous research was faulty it 'sabotaged' any later research building upon it in terms of correctly predicting or effectively-intervening-in the natural world. Beyond this lies the commonsensical evaluation of science in terms of ‘what works’ – especially what works outside of science, by people such as engineers and doctors whose job is to apply science in the natural world.

But now that committee-based peer review has been explicitly accepted as the ‘gold standard’ of scientific validity, we see the bizarre situation that actual scientific usage and even what works is regarded as less important than the ‘bureaucratic reality’ of peer review evaluations. Mere opinions trump observations of objective reality. Since ‘bureaucratic reality’ is merely a construct of interacting bureaucracies, this carries the implication that scientific reality is now, to an ever-increasing extent, simply just another aspect of, and seamlessly-continuous-with, mainstream 'bureaucratic reality'. Science is merely a subdivision of that same bureaucratic reality seen in politics, public administration, law, the media and business. The whole thing is just one gigantic virtual world. It seems probable that much of peer reviewed ‘science’ nowadays therefore carries no implications of being useful in understanding, predicting or intervening-on the natural world.

In other words, when science operates on the basis of peer review and committee decision, it is not really science at all. The cancer of bureaucracy has killed real science wherever it dominates. Much of mainstream science is now ‘Zombie Science’: that is, something which superficially looks-like science, but which is actually dead inside, and kept-moving only by continuous infusion of research funds. So far as bureaucratic reality is concerned, i.e. the reality as acknowledged among the major bureaucracies; real science likely now exists at an unofficial, unacknowledged level, below the radar; only among that minority of scholars and researchers who still deploy the original scientific evaluation mechanisms such as individual judgement, peer usage and real-world effectiveness.

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What will happen?

The above analysis suggests that parasitic bureaucracy is so dangerous in the context of a modernizing society that it cannot be allowed to exist; it simply must be destroyed in its entirety or else any residuum will re-grow, metastasize and colonize society all over again. The implication is that a future society which intends to survive in the long-term would need to be one that prevents parasitic bureaucracy from even getting a toe-hold.

The power of parasitic bureaucracy to expand and to trigger further parasitic bureaucracies is now rendered de facto un-stoppable by the power of interacting bureaucracies to frame and construct perceived reality in bureaucratic terms. Since bureaucratic failure is eliminated by continual re-definition of success, and the since any threats of to bureaucratic expansion are eliminated by exclusion or lethal attack; the scope of bureaucratic takeover from now can be limited only by collapse of the social system as a whole.

So, if the above analysis is correct, there can be only two outcomes. Either that the cancer of modern bureaucracy will be extirpated: destroyed utterly. In other words, the host immune system will evolve the ability to destroy the parasite. Maybe, all majority voting committees will coercively be replaced by individuals who have the authority to make decisions and responsibility for those decisions.
Or that the cancer of bureaucracy will kill the host. In other words, the parasite will continue to elude the immune system. Modernizing societies will sooner-or-later be destroyed by a combination of resource starvation plus accumulative damage from delayed and wrong decisions based on the exclusions and distortions of ‘bureaucratic reality’.

Then the most complex rapidly-growing modernizing Western societies will be replaced by, or will regress into, zero-growth societies with a lower level of complexity - probably about the level of the agrarian societies of the European or Asian Middle Ages.

My prediction is that outcome two – societal collapse - is at present the more probable, on the basis that parasites can evolve more rapidly than host immune systems. Although as individuals we can observe the reality of approaching disaster, to modern parasitic bureaucracies the relevant data is either trivial or simply invisible.

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Further reading:

Although I do not mention it specifically above, the stimulus to writing this essay came from Mark A Notturno’s Science and the open society: the future of Karl Popper’s philosophy (Central European University Press: Budapest, 2000) – in particular the account of Popper’s views on induction. It struck me that committee decision-making by majority vote is a form of inductive reasoning, hence non-valid; and that inductive reasoning is in practice no more than a form of ‘authoritarianism’ (as Notturno terms it). In the event, I decided to exclude this line of argument from the essay because I found it too hard to make the point interesting and accessible. Nonetheless, I am very grateful to have had it explained to me.

I should also mention that various analyses of the pseudonymous blogger Mencius Moldbug, who writes at Unqualified Reservations, likely had a significant role in developing the above ideas.

This argument builds upon several previous pieces of mine including: Conflicts of interest in medical science: peer usage, peer review and ‘CoI consultancy' (Medical Hypotheses 2004; 63: 181-186); Charlton BG, Andras P. What is management and what do managers do? A systems theory account. (Philosophy of Management. 2004; 3: 3-15); Peer usage versus peer review (BMJ 2007; 335: 451); Charlton BG, Andras P. Medical research funding may have over-expanded and be due for collapse (QJM 2005; 98: 53–55); Figureheads, ghost-writers and pseudonymous quant bloggers: the recent evolution of authorship in science publishing (Medical Hypotheses. 2008; 71: 475–480); Zombie science’ (Medical Hypotheses 2008; 71:327–329); The vital role of transcendental truth in science’ (Medical Hypotheses. 2009; 72: 373–376); Are you an honest scientist? Truthfulness in science should be an iron law, not a vague aspiration (Medical Hypotheses. 2009; Volume 73: 633-635); and, After science: has the tradition been broken? Medical Hypotheses, in the press.

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As I will be embarking on the attempt to pull-together my thoughts on political correctness, I will be confronted by the necessity to frame the argument.

Do I use statistics? Do I provide heavy referencing for my statements?

'No' and 'no' is going to be the answer.

Instead I will try to present a rational argument. 

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I have just bee reading Mencius Moldbug's comments on a thread at Mangan's - http://mangans.blogspot.com/2010/12/ron-unz-apologist-for-mexican-invasion.html - and MM is very insightful on this, from a historian's perspective. I reached similar conclusions from the angle of medical science.

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The way that large scale data sets and statistics are actually used is to control the discourse, maintain uncertainty, to exclude refutation.

A single data set that (no matter how wrong) appears to support PC is spread across the media of the world in a few hours; but no amount of data in refutation of PC is ever enough: and what there is is subject to hyper-critical and incompetent dissection.

The Bell Curve 'controversy' is a clear example of this phenomenon.  The data were as straightforward and clear as any such data realistically ever can be, and yet...

And big data collection is very expensive, so that it is always under primary control of big social systems (and reanalysis of the data, while possible, never compensates for the lack of primary control - fresh data is always spun to favour PC).

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The main role of 'statistics' is merely to summarize unwieldy amounts of data. The prime statistic is the average.

Before proceeding further the first step is to decide whether averaging makes any sense - in medicine usually it does not - averaging merely creates artifacts of the 'an average of apples and oranges' variety.

What is the 'average' effect of a drug that leaves 3 people dead, 10 people unaffected and 7 people cured? Answer: there isn't an average effect : the minimum valuable statistical summary is 3, 10, 7.

Any attempt to condense the data further than this is an error. Yet this error is mainstream, standard in reporting of clinical trials.

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The same kind of error is going on all the time in social statistics.

But the use of social statistics for propaganda is now much simpler and more obvious than this.

The UK was the best documented country in the world - with reliable statistics going back many hundreds of years: back to the Domesday Book of 1086.

Not any more. In the first place the national statistics are dishonest, in the second place they are incompetent (schoolboy errors abound), and in the third place they are grossly incomplete.

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If the UK government really wants to take a problem off the map, they simply do not collect statistics on it, then attack any critics on the basis that their evidence is anecdotal.

One example I exposed was related to the 'quality' of university teaching, as supposedly-measured by the QAA (quality assurance agency) for higher education:

http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/journalism/lecturesizes.html

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2008/05/class-sizes-in-uk-universities.html


Yep the QAA did not collect data on university class sizes: still don't.

It could be done in a day, at the cost of the salary of about 250 man hours for a junior administrator.

But they don't do it.

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Also they do not collect data on teaching contact hours.

The only available data (not from the government) suggest that in the UK teaching contact hours are the lowest in the civilized world

http://www.hepi.ac.uk/466-1275/The-Academic-Experience-of-Students-in-English-Universities-%282006-report%29.html

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So if the government does not want something discussed, they simply don't collect data on it.

And if there is no data, the bureaucracy have created a 'climate' in which it would be 'scientifically' irresponsible to discuss matters.

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Immigration is probably the biggest matter. Sustained, mass immigration at an unprecedented level is a very obvious feature in the UK, much of it 'illegal' or due to people claiming 'asylum' from poorer and more violent societies, or just people arriving undocumented and unable to speak and staying anyway... 

How much?

Who knows? Nobody knows.

Data are not being collected.

Hence there is zero discussion in the 'responsible' media.

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Evidence?

What people experience in their lives.

But this is just anecdote.

And to raise an anecdote is personal, it means taking personal responsibility for evidence. It means being exposed to personal criticism for one's reported anecdotal experience.

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But then governments use anecdote.

They use single instances to support argument - as when Gordon Brown used a failed Oxford applicant called Laura Spence to argue that the UK university system was biased against working class people, or state schools, or northerners, or something...:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Spence_Affair

This anecdote was false, mistaken, bizarrely ill informed, an incompetent mess - but it didn't make any difference.

The government got their way - university admissions was brought under state control, and now a PC system of allocating UK places according to social class quotas is in place. (It doesn't work - but it is in place).

So anecdote is forbidden: except when it supports PC projects.

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In sum, the modern use of data is anti-truthful, the intellectual elite have proven themselves to be utterly corrupt.

Don't look for intellectual consistency here: there is none. 

The PC elite are indifferent to honesty and promote lies (see above), indifferent to beauty - indeed promote ugliness (see modern art and architecture), indifferent to virtue - indeed promote the opposite of what used to be regarded as virtue (see the rest of this blog).

This is done by mass consensus among the intellectual elite.

And they do not respond rationally to critique - not at all - but moralistically.

moral: that is the root of their concern.

Not virtue, morality.

And that morality is political correctness.

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The refusal to collect statistics on universities and immigration/ asylum seekers is because these are PC/ multicultural/ inclusive projects - and data might get in the way of the goals. Therefore: no data.

The modern elite will sacrifice anything to political correctness - even the education and prosperity of their own children.

This political correctness is serious stuff!

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NOTE:

If data could defeat political correctness, then PC would already have been defeated by Charles Murray - by himself and unaided. Or by Thomas Sowell. Or Steve Sailer.

That, on the contrary, PC has grown and thriven and spread and tightened its vice-like grip should be sufficient evidence that PC is not threatened by data: PC has data under control.

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PC will not be defeated by rational debate: no it won't.  Nor by evidence.

PC will be defeated by itself, of course, if it lasts long enough; or else it will be defeated before this by the strongest/ most determined/ most relentless remaining group that is not PC.

Political correctness will not, will never, be converted by reason and evidence. In all probability PC personnel will be replaced, not converted.

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For PC (as for most humans) morality trumps any amount of reason and evidence.

PC could only be converted by a higher morality i.e. a religion, which seems, at the moment, in the West... very unlikely.

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