“Balance in the universe” concepts (karma, what goes up must come down, what goes around comes around, Golden Rule) are authoritarian high modernism in culture and myth-making.
The universe does have balancey things going on but they aren’t THAT crude. Takes artifice to force it
Conversation
Replying to
These ideas predate modernism so are you saying high modernism embraces them? But authoritarian high modernist states reject many of these cyclic ideas; consider the thousand year Reich, the end of term limits, etc. they sure don’t Golden Rule
1
Replying to
I’m saying they reflect the same psychological tendency. AHM has always existed, long before it acquired a label.
3
1
Replying to
My understanding of high modernism is that it is sited specifically in history, rising in the 1950s. You seem to be saying that AHM tendencies are a consistent part of the postagricultural human psyche: pyramid builders, Chinese dynastys, Roman roads. (Sapiens would agree.)
1
The initially referenced folk homilies and maxims are examples of “common understanding of social life” which predate the era Scott associates with HM. So I’m puzzled by the assertion that these particular principles can be said to serve an “eternal” AHM.
3
I’m not conflating, I’m explicitly and deliberately connecting and positing an underlying human tendency that expresses itself through any kind of agency. I just think it’s a lot more well-defined than you do. It’s a narrow neurotype.
2
Could we call that tendency Utopianism? Does Ehrenfeld’s Arrogance of Humanism add anything to this discussion? Maybe Zen Buddhists would argue that the ability to verbalize _any_ abstract principles to govern human interaction lies at the root of the Fall from Eden.
4
You’re a lawyer right? I think there’s actually an element of a certain kind of legalism to the mentality. Not common law/Austrian but the opposite kind, I don’t know if it has a name. That kind of process mindset is more characteristic than Utopianism in the ends sought (if any)


