The great weakness of all reactionary ideologies is that there are more admissible solutions to the (often accurate) abstract societal models they induce from history and want to admit. So they are forced to arbitrarily limit the solutions to those already traced by history.
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This is like discovering Euclidean geometry, formalizing it axiomatically, discovering that you can't actually undermine non-parallel-line geometries, and then legislating that only the Euclidean parallel line postulate is legal.
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It doesn't work. The degeneracy (in a mathematical sense) of history as a solution to a system of psychohistorical equations, once recognized, inevitably evolves past the degeneracy to realize a fuller set of solutions.
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I've often wondered why my writing seems to appeal to a subset of reactionary types even though I'm openly anti-reactionary. I think it's because I share a bunch of analytical lenses with both left and right reactionaries, but then go on gleefully to alt-parallel-postulates
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Reactionary is a word that I havent really understood except that it means something derogatory. What does it *really* mean?
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Me too. You are presumably reacting to something. What are you reacting to? Is my response to this tweet reactionary behavior? The opposite could be "actionary" where you just take actions that are not in response to anything.
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Is it reactionary if one acts to put out an act of arson?
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Semantic first principles are less useful here than conventional usage. In the US certain people self-identify as reactionaries. My usage is based on their self-declared positions.
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In that case: reactionary = opposing political or social progress or reform. Is that the same as conservative?
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Not quite. In the US at least they are distinct. Reactionaries often argue for things like monarchism and how slavery was actually good. Conservatives tend to simply want to moderate and govern the pace of change rather than reverse it.
It's not that benign, it's usually used as an epithet for conservatives.



