I think his usual formulation (and mine) is "there's no individual prior to society".
That's the most accurate framing imho. Trying to reconcile this with my own (and others') experiences as individuals coming to very different conclusions from the modern status-generating milieu. Maybe the former has nothing to say about the latter.
-
-
Within this context, the state can set-up competitions (intentionally or otherwise). Obviously the market is one. But also secularism and liberal pluralism/neutrality set up competitions among non-profit institutions/creeds.
-
Family law, etc, will set up different sorts of competition for mates. State also condemns/condones norms through what it permits in the media.
-
Yeah all of that is clear. My query was more about individuals - we read weird old books and obscure blogs and came to our conclusions. We are clearly not 'normies'. So this ability at least should exist independent of state and societal incentives.
-
Right. But the state has some control over that, not just in terms of being able to censor, but also because none of us would be doing this if the state wasn't incompetent. Our dissatisfaction reflects the state's incompetence.
-
Does that imply, then, that in a competent state there would be little to no deviation like ours? Intriguing hypothesis. I think Moldbug himself posited that his blog couldn't have come about if the cathedral was doing its job.
-
There's different sources of deviation. In a functioning society, anyone could be a source of knowledge (i.e., imagine living on the outskirts of a medieval city and being the first to see and invading army) or could spot an error. A good sovereign would account for that.
-
To the degree that you need something like 'free speech' it's that you can get at knowledge and get errors corrected, although the manner in which it's done is as important (modern journalism isn't the best way to do this).
-
But I don't think you'd have serious ideological deviation like we have in a well-run state. That generally comes from dissatisfaction. It'd be minor stuff that a good government would be want to see: empirical knowledge and error correction.
- 4 more replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.