nydwracu niþgrim, nihtbealwa mæst

1. Attempting to put in place a mirror image of the status quo is not meaningful opposition to it. One who would oppose the status quo, and is aware of the dialectic by which this mirroring occurs, must work to move beyond that dialectic. To strike meaningfully at something that is wrong, one must attack the form itself, not merely the manifestation that operates at the time.
2. Meaningful opposition seeks to slow an undesirable pendulum, not merely push it to the other direction; this is the difference between serious theorists and mere advocates for a group, and the two must be kept distinct.
3. That one does not hold power is no reason to operate on a different manifestation of a wrongness used by those who do hold power. Before using a particular manifestation, examine other manifestations of the same form; if some of those are wrong, the form itself merits examination.
4. We will always be wrong, but our foremost goal must be to minimize the degree to which we are wrong; that we cannot be perfect is no excuse not to strive to approach it. In politics, this means that maps are to be judged by their utility at representing the territory: hand-waving, terra incognita, and invocations of deliberate malevolence must be minimized.
5. No political system is entirely complete while the human factor remains unknown; and it may always remain unknown. To forget this is the most dangerous mistake.
6. Every point in both theory and history is part of a line. The question is not where the point lies, but where its vector lies. Rates, not states.
7. One must seek harmony between theory and practice; but, considering the above point, it is not necessarily practice that must change.
8. Morality is an open question, and at its root is the open question of moral judgment. Just as no tree can grow from its absence-of-roots, no moral system can grow from an absence of agents of judgment.
9. No evidently false system can draw adherents. There must be something that rings true to its followers.
10. The goal is not to be a good person; the goal is to be, to as large a degree is possible, a right person. Social goodness changes over time, but, excepting real change in agents, truth does not.
11. One must possess an understanding of the world in order to change it; and that change will follow naturally from the understanding, and be approximately as desirable as that understanding is accurate.

One of my classes this semester claims to be on the topic of “changing the world”: learning the methods of activism and the philosophical backings thereof in order to, as the course description puts it, “inform … decision-making about both ends and means in the struggle to change the world”. However, its actual content is concerned almost exclusively with a small subset of its possible range of topics: the behavior of the government. We are to focus not on our hideously small Overton window, but on SOPA and ACTA, to take one example: the topic of censorship is considered as the topic of state censorship.

This exclusive concern with the ‘public’ sector is a characteristic error of liberal political thought: the only power it recognizes is formal, centralized, and usually governmental. The glaring security hole should be obvious to anyone versed to any substantial degree in leftism or Moldbuggery. As Moldbug said:

A rule that tells us to “keep Mithra out of the schools” is overspecified, unless you think Mithra in specific is the great danger to impressionable young minds. If we keep Mithra out of the schools but we say nothing about Baal, Baal will outcompete Mithra and our children will grow up as Baalist bots.

Moldbug was referring to the separation of church and state—limiting the power of one kind of repeater will, at the very least, not touch the power of other kinds—but this applies equally well to forms of power. What difference is there in practice between thousands of small repeaters situated in a decentralized reinforcement mechanism such that they all send out the same packets and one large, sovereign repeater sending out the exact same packets? The same packets will be sent out either way, but the thousands will go unnoticed, and the one will not.

We can summarize this distinction easily by saying that liberalism, in many forms, is concerned solely with statecraft: the arrangement of the formal sovereign. Statecraft is a subset of politics: the arrangement of society, and the values and determiners of social standing therein. (Adjective forms: registerial, from Esperanto—any possible Latin root is already taken, and Greek would give something beginning with cyber-, which would be far too confusing—and political.)

The values and determiners of social standing thereof… We have already identified statecraft as our Mithra, the focus that brings about the security hole; could this be our Baal?

Well, who canned John Derbyshire? The state?

What was apparently important was not how mild he was but how mild-mannered he could present himself as being; the breach now, in terms of the National Review, may in the end be more one of politesse than politics.

Politesse. Civility, politeness, courtesy. Politesse fired Derbyshire. Values and determiners of social standing, in the ballroom, with a candlestick.

Note the strange liberal speech tic, the assumption that politesse and politics are mutually exclusive. It’s not a political matter, no, not at all; it’s just a matter of “being a good person”, as if such notions are utterly apolitical, outside the realm of dispute, right where liberalism wants them to be.

How, then, can activism, in the registerial sense in which it is taught, change the world? Trying to effect real change through activism is like trying to build a botnet using a hole closed back when OS/2 was the hot new thing, while there are millions of end-users running unpatched Windows installs as root who don’t know any better than to download FunnyCatPic.jpg.exe.

If you’re a fascist, say, no amount of activism will be as effective as getting the student body of Harvard into Von Thronstahl. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference what the government does if the Cathedral priests of the next generation rattle on about ‘honor’ and ‘degeneracy’ the way ours do about ‘justice’ and ‘racism’. (Of course, I’m not a fascist, but there aren’t any bands with my politics. Maybe I’ll start one someday. Bet I’d suck less than Von Thronstahl, or, for that matter, NOFX.) The ‘struggle’ to which my professors refer is far more ideographic than registerial, unless you support the existing ideography.

It’s not entirely ideographic, of course, but this post is long enough already.

It is becoming increasingly clear that, as the Invisible Committee said, we are situated within a collapse; or, in the vocabulary this blog aims to develop, a paradigm shift. However, the notion of a “shift” is somewhat problematic; in the strictest sense, there is no shift, but only the creation, and subsequent filling, of an ideological gap. The consensus ideology breaks down, and, in the (possibly apocryphal) words of Abbie Hoffman, “there seem to be a lot of different realities going around”; an ideology, of course, has both prescriptive and descriptive aspects, with much of the former arising from the latter—policy positions are dictated both by perceived facts and moral axioms (more on this later), and the structure of the reality tunnels used, due to its ability to affect those positions, must be included as part of the ideology.

But this is not all there is to a true paradigm shift. Changes in the descriptive do not necessarily change the prescriptive; if, for example, the liberal and leftist claims about the irrelevance of human nature were thrown out, the claims about the prescriptive value of maximizing freedom could still remain untouched, with only a lowering of the highest amount of freedom perceived possible. A true paradigm shift requires a shift in ideography: without it, collapse will be interpreted through the lens of that ideography. Consider the Ron Paul supporter: what we have now is not good; capitalism is good; therefore what we have now is not capitalism, and capitalism must be implemented.

This is so because ideography is not completely void of denotation. Although there is a wide playing field for the strategic maneuvering of ideographs, that playing field is not infinite; there are situations to which terms almost certainly cannot be applied. Xeer is not communism, and slavery is not freedom. In addition, the playing field is tilted; although it is possible to maneuver certain ideographs into certain places, it is highly counterintuitive, and therefore they are not likely to stick. (This, of course, is the failure of American conservatism.) An ideography, like an ideology, has a direction, and if it points straight to hell, the solution is not to apply it more consistently.

This is all rather confusing, and perhaps should be summarized. The tweet that set me on this path, from @corinthino, may serve that purpose well:

Before the change in thought there must be a change in thought that makes the change in thought possible in the first place.

Before a new paradigm can be adopted, the old one must be discarded; otherwise, the direction remains the same. As I said here: “How can you have a successful revolution when you can’t even break away from the values of the ideology you’re trying to destroy?” The ruling ideology will view its own collapse through itself, and take it as a reason to further its own ends. In order to change directions, then, the driver’s seat must first be emptied.

(Hopefully this makes sense; I’m not too sure of it myself. And whatever you do, don’t take it as truth; it’s just a model, and it may or may not be useful.)

Mangan provides a definition of duocodicalism in action:

those laws which hinder [the globalizing elite] go unenforced, those which serve them are enforced.

Of course, this only applies when the globalizing elite are the ones in charge, as they are in the case of the federal government. One can easily imagine duocodicalism being used to further agendas that would be distinctly distasteful to said elite. Duocodicalism is a tool in the toolbox of the ideologue; like many other tools, it can be used for almost any purpose.

Anarcho-tyranny is the endgame of duocodicalism. Those who support certain tyrants will support the instances of duocodicalism that bring those tyrants closer to power. Duocodicalism can also arise out of honest confusion over the proper role of politics, but that’s another post for another time.

(Note: Finals season has begun, so this will probably be my last post for a while. I might be posting some of my final papers here once my grades are in, since they may turn out to be of interest to at least the alt-right crowd. We’ll see.)

I’ve referenced the concept of ideography before, but I haven’t given it a proper treatment yet. In short, an ideography in the political sense is a set of ideographs: terms assigned a particular emotional load by an ideology for use in its rhetoric.

The use of ideographs will often seem absurd to readers outside the ideology to which they belong. An average American going through Nazi political material would almost certainly find the references to Volksgemeinschaft, das Führerprinzip, and Jewry to be, at the very least, disorienting, similar to the feeling one gets when traveling to a foreign country and finding that the toilets have foot pedals instead of flush handles. But then, so would the average Nazi upon hearing the constant references of Western political material to the somewhat isomorphic concepts of liberty, democracy, and fascism. For an example closer to home, consider the reaction of the average American ‘liberal’ (I’ll dispense with my usual scare quotes from here on out; just keep in mind that, contrary to my usual practice, all terms are to be taken in their usual American senses) to Newt Gingrich’s “secular socialism” routine.

Can an isomorphic example, of a conservative reaction to a sound bite applying the liberal ideography, be constructed? It is possible to come close, with, for example, the constant charges of racism leveled at just about every conservative figure and movement, but there is one crucial difference: liberals don’t respond emotionally to “secular socialism”, but conservatives most definitely do to “racism”. In fact, as the conservative line on affirmative action demonstrates, “racism” is just as much a part of the conservative ideography as the liberal one. And, for that matter, the white supremacist one: David Duke uses it.

Pretty pervasive ideograph we have here, if a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan uses it to deliver the exact same emotional load as Tim Wise. They both agree that racism is a Bad Thing; the only difference is in the definition. Duke wants to apply it to Wise, and vice versa. Any debate between the two (ignoring that, in reality, at least one of the two would have to be carted off by security five seconds in) would almost certainly consist mostly of redefinitions of the term, and other ideographs common to the American political arena. These semantic games are common: witness the attempt of Roger Scruton, one of the few conservatives with two brain cells to rub together, to split the positions he disagrees with that can be supported by the positive ideograph “liberty” into a new, negative ideograph, “license”, instead of rejecting the ideograph altogether.

It is clear, then, that in addition to the conservative ideography, there exists an ideography shared by just about the entire American political arena, which I will call the American ideography. Its contents include, on the positive side, liberty, equality, freedom, democracy, progress, fairness, and justice, and on the negative side, racism, fascism, and anything related to Hitler.

The astute reader will, by now, have picked up on an omission: nowhere have I mentioned liberal ideography. There is a reason for this omission: there may be a few minor differences, but at least on the major points, the liberal ideography is the American ideography. Most ideographs used by liberals are also used by conservatives, and with the same intended effect. (This is less so on the alt-right; one of the many instances of convergent evolution between Mencius Moldbug and the European New Right is their explicit refudiation of that ideography.)

Now consider the history of the American ideography. Its terms’ associations have changed consistently, and in a consistent direction: leftward. Equality under the law became equality of opportunity, and is now becoming equality of outcome. Freedom from the tyranny of a single, unelected, overactive monarch became freedom from fear and want, and is now becoming freedom from any sort of moral judgment of all but the most repulsive forms of libertinism. And so on. Considering the structure and history of this ideography, and its identification with ‘Americanism’, there can be no American Right. The American ideography does not hold promise for conservatives, and yet they do not challenge it; in fact, they do the opposite, and in doing so, sign their own death sentence.

That is the failure of conservatism.

(Update: If you don’t care about Moldbug’s caste system but still want an analysis of juggalos, you’ll probably want to go here.)

I suppose it was inevitable that the alt-right blogosphere would discover juggalos eventually. Unfortunately, they come no closer to a proper analysis than anyone else.

Not all decay comes from the lower class; some comes from the middle, but due to the nature of the decay they bring about, they are never portrayed as such. It should go without saying that there is no cohesive society in much of America, but a patch to that bug has been found: to fill that alienating void, subcultures (more properly, sub-societies, although that is unfortunately not the established term) have been formed, which offer at least some of the benefits—institutions, shared culture, sense of identity, self-esteem—of a proper society. Mangan comes close to admitting this point:

One of the most repellant aspects of the Juggalos is the way they have themselves convinced that they comprise some sort of brotherhood, that they receive a form of acceptance from each other that “normal” society has somehow denied them

However, this is not a proper solution, for two reasons: that it increases cultural diversity, and that it is not available to everyone. Every ingroup is an outgroup to everyone else, and outgroups are commonly demonized on any available pretense. Subculture membership carries a significant social stigma, which rules it out to all but those who have nothing to lose and those who have no worries about losing anything; for everyone else, joining a subculture would be simply trading one form of alienation for another form whose consequences are, if not worse, at least far more visible. To put this problem in terms of Mencius Moldbug’s caste analysis, subcultures are a viable option to Dalits and some Brahmins, but not to Vaisyas or Optimates. (Helots, of course, have no need for a subculture.)

But, you ask, why “any available pretense”? Surely there must be a clear reason to demonize the juggalos? As Mangan says:

The video on the Juggalos shows us a motley, highly unappealing collection of the most idiotic, most pierced morons that one could imagine. None of them seem to be able to use any other adjective but f**kin’ or m*****f**kin’, nor to say anything that makes much sense. All of them appear to be on massive quantities of drugs and/or alcohol.

I will not dispute those points, but can someone point me to any negative aspect of the juggalo subculture that does not appear to a far greater degree in Brahmin subcultures? (And no, the fact that juggalos are encouraged to be alpha and Brahmins are encouraged to be beta does not count.) Brahmins are notorious for such behavior, and yet they hardly ever draw criticism for it, even in blatantly Vaisya circles. (Also, those traits, in and of themselves, are not negative; it is only when they are taken to extremes that they become negative. But an inability to grasp the concept of moderation is pervasive in America, so that does not complicate the analysis.)

In fact, these traits appear across the caste system, but some groups draw more criticism than others. Examination of those patterns of criticism reveal some interesting patterns: it is well-known that BDH institutions criticize negative traits of OV groups and vice versa, but BDH institutions also frequently criticize some Dalits; specifically, the white ones, commonly known as ‘rednecks’.

Mencius Moldbug’s caste system cannot explain this without an addition: the Antyaja caste, covered by Jim Goad in his Redneck Manifesto. Their exclusion from the original model is understandable, since, whether due to their status as a monkey wrench into prevailing Brahmin theology or out of honest ignorance, Brahmins almost never acknowledge their existence, and commonly confuse them with Vaisyas. (I have experienced this firsthand; my mother is a Brahmin from a vaguely Optimate background, but the rest of my family and many of my friends are Vaisyas, so I was raised somewhat between castes. I made the mistake of believing I was a Brahmin, going to a very strongly Brahmin college, and maintaining some Vaisya ideals, so I was treated as an Antyaja, by which I mean I was accused of being a member of the KKK, told that America and the world would be better off without people like me, and forced out after one semester.)

Another possible reason for their exclusion is that they severely complicate the model. They cannot be said to be allied with either side of the BDH-OV conflict; although they clearly fall on the OV side, OV have about as negative an opinion of them as they do of BDH. In addition, they pattern with BDH on some issues: they tend to be Democrats despite their generally Republican political views, and they, unlike Optimates and Vaisyas, can form subcultures, as exemplified by the thoroughly Antyaja phenomenon of juggalos.

Which brings us back to the original point. Although subculture formation results in higher cultural diversity and therefore higher levels of alienation, lack of effective subculture formation usually means even higher levels of alienation; the underclass (Dalits, Helots, and Antjayas) are better off in this regard than many Brahmins and even Vaisyas, as Van Jones pointed out, although those without a solution to the problem are far harder to criticize, due to their lack of identification with any specific group. But the worst possible scenario, I think, is ineffective subculture formation, which provides none of the benefits of subculture formation but all of the drawbacks. In other words, hipsters.

And as for the charge that Insane Clown Posse “sounds no different than the usual black rap”… well, I’d like to see Soulja Boy do this. Or even this.