Thedes and phyles

Xenosystems:

Insofar as a thede corresponds to a unit of autonomous, reproducible social organization, it is a far narrower concept than the one Nydwracu outlines. A thede is an ethnicity if it describes a real — rather than merely conventional — unit of human population. This is, of course, to exclude a great variety of identity dimensions, including sex, sexual orientation, age, interests, star signs … as well as some of those Nydwracu mentions (musical subcultures and philosophical schools). Generalization of ‘thedes’ to include all self-conscious human groupings risks diffusion into frivolous subjectivism (and subsequent re-appropriation for alternative purposes).

If the analysis of thedes begins with the recognition that man is a social animal, it is a grave error to immediately expand the scope of the concept to groups such as women, lesbians, dog-lovers, and black metal fans, since none of these correspond to biologically-relevant social groupings. …

Rigorization of thede analysis in the direction of real ethnicities would also require the abandonment of attempts to assimilate classes to thedes, although class identities can mask thedes, and operate as their proxies. Between New England and Appalachia there is a (real) thede difference between ethnic populations, encrusted with supplementary class characteristics. Used strictly in this way, the idea of a thede does theoretical work, and uncovers something. It exposes the subterranean ethnic war disguised by class stratification.

This definition—more accurately, this overloading—of the word ‘thede’, which was originally approximately defined as “a superindividual grouping that its constituent individuals feel affiliation with and … positive estimates of”, operates on a different scale than the original concept intends. Clarity of language demands avoidance of overloading, so an “autonomous, self-reproducing social unit” will be called a phyle. This has precedent, notably in The Diamond Age, which appears to use the word toward a vision similar to Land’s phyletic pan-secessionism: “As a reliable heuristic, only those groupings which are plausible subjects of secessionist autonomization should be considered [phyles].”

Here we see the difference in scale between ‘thede’ and ‘phyle’: ‘phyle’ operates on the political scale of secessionism, whereas ‘thede’ operates on the much smaller, lower-level social scale. Subcultures are not phyles, but they are thedes. (Here it must be said that ‘thede’ may be better defined by example than by stating a concrete dictionary-definition, despite that the former method requires more effort on the part of the reader; it is always difficult to precisely define that which one understands only intuitively. The original definition could be read to imply that all of “sex, sexual orientation, age, interests, star signs”, the examples Land gives of dimensions of identity, are thedes, but they aren’t. Interests and statistically rare sexual orientations are often organizing principles upon which thedes are built, but that’s different.)

The question of scale is most easily seen in the sciences: biology operates on a higher scale than chemistry, classical physics than quantum physics, and so on. Scaling upwards is a process of abstraction: the chemist abstracts upward from elementary particles to atoms and molecules, the biologist from atoms and molecules to organisms and organs, the classical physicist from particles to objects, and so on. Different scales, different levels of abstraction are useful for different questions: it would be pointless for an architect or a car safety tester to think in terms of fermions and bosons, but a quantum physicist must do so.

The idea of the thede was developed within the context of group dynamics: explaining and understanding not secessionist impulses or subterranean ethnic wars, but individuals’ actions in relation to thedes and thedes’ actions in relation to individuals and other thedes. Any political lessons that can be learned from the study of thedes are secondary, though certainly not incidental.

The study of politics often ignores the question of scale: the mainstream political philosopher begins with an account of morality and proceeds to an account of the state without stopping to observe humans. This error cannot be corrected merely by beginning with an account of states; one must know with what and with whom one is dealing. Marxism is not out of the ordinary in its failure to offer an account of nationalism, or of the national terms in which, as Benedict Anderson says, every successful revolution since World War II has defined itself; the liberalism of today relegates nationalism to an aberrant superstition, as is evident in the previously-linked discussion of phyles.

In the not-too-distant future, we’ll see more and more people grouping themselves in phyles. They’ll stop identifying themselves as Americans, or Russians, or Chinese – unless that accident of birth is really important to them.

But that is just as stupid as identifying yourself as being black because you happen to have been born with black skin, of thinking of yourself as white because that was an accident of your birth. Racism and nationalism are the hallmarks of an unevolved, or even degraded, person. I have neither time nor patience for either of them.

The problems here go far beyond the scope of mere progressive linguistic tics like “unevolved”, and are really too numerous to list here; the question of “accidents of birth” (which ought to read something more like circumstances of socialization) will be addressed in a later post. The key point here is the denunciation as ‘degraded’ of an organizing principle that the historical record shows holds great power: the underlying account of man transforms itself from an ‘is’ to an ‘ought’ unnoticed, and the problem of the scale of man reveals its unaddressed state.

For another example, consider the aversion to ritual common among the writing class—an error even Mencius Moldbug cannot avoid:

The first thing I remember from my first year in Maryland was something called a “pep rally.” For those of you who did not attend an American public high school, a “pep rally” is basically a straight ripoff of what Albert Speer did at Nuremberg, except that (a) it is indoors, (b) there is not quite as much fire, and (c) there is less saluting, more screaming, and about the same amount of chanting.

Ritual has no further place in Moldbug’s analysis, nor do the impulses, the facts of human nature, that underlie it. Moldbug has been criticized for ignoring those facts and for ignoring that scale; that criticism is admittedly not given in these terms, but the point of the “only a sperg would think anyone would follow a CEO” line should be clear.

There are a few possible reasons for the common avoidance of this scale, most of which do not invoke concepts plundered from the field of abnormal psychology. Perhaps it is cladistic, arising from the Puritan tendency toward spartan and individualistic living; perhaps it comes from the failure of actually-existing institutions to be the sort of things that can provide that which lies on that scale; perhaps that scale is marked as low-class; or perhaps it’s a matter of prestige. Few can productively speculate on the nature of morality or the incentive-structures of a state, but anyone who’s been to high school can observe thede dynamics.

But there’s another possibility. Back to Land:

Ethnicities correspond to real populations, and to cladistic structures. ‘Thedes’ as presently formulated do not. Ironically, this denotational haziness (super-generality) of the thede concept lends itself to usages guided by extremely concrete connotations, with a distinctive Blut und Boden flavor. Usage of the word ‘identity’ (at least, on the right) has exactly the same characteristics.

Between “Blut und Boden” and “what Albert Speer did at Nuremberg”, it’s clear how the study and resulting practice of that scale is marked. It has become the exclusive province of a Right so far outside the Overton window that not even the contrarians can break through the windowsill outside which it lies.

(Where does the Blut und Boden come from anyway? ‘Thede’ is just another word. It existed in Middle English, but it fell out of use for a few centuries. If you go to Reykjavik, you’ll pass some buildings named with very long compounds that contain the word þjóð; that just means ‘national’, as in Thingvellir National Park or National Archives. And what of the Dutch? Has the Anglosphere been conquered by Adolf van Huid?)

But this association is a failure of scale. One may as well speak of “Jewish physics”. The purpose of the concept is not to say anything about morality, the state, or secession, but (as previously mentioned) to clarify the analysis of social interactions—though it may bring about insights that do apply to higher levels. Phyles certainly seem to have thedish and elthedish markers and shibboleths. (Note that Land describes ‘phyle’ as narrower than ‘thede’. Most thedes are not phyles, but are all phyles thedes?)

As for ‘phyle’, some difficulty remains. Where are the lines to be drawn? There are phyles that reproduce themselves completely genetically, like the Yezidis; should similar things that also (or primarily) reproduce themselves memetically be considered phyles? The most extreme example is the Shakers, but groups that abandon biological reproduction altogether cannot be large or persistent enough to pose a serious problem. Some of Scott Alexander’s tribes, especially the Grey one, seem to be powered far more by memetic reproduction than genetic; should the Grey Tribe be considered a phyle?