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leviathan-supersystem · 6 years ago

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Okay, been workshopping my script for the video adaptation of the “currents” post with @sapphixxx (thnx bb) and i’m gonna post it here for commentary and critique one last time before i record myself reading it then start editing some clips and stuff for a video, so anyways yeah, hit me with your best critiques, sisters ✨💅

(also i’m thinking i’m going to call the video “social currents” instead of just “currents” because i feel like that gives a better sense of what it’s about. also changed the script to reflect this)

People have proposed various methods for understanding society and how people interact with each other from a scientific standpoint, from dialectical materialism, to memetics, to analysis of incentive structures, even to viewing social groups as a kind of superorganism, with each individual as a body in a cell.

And I thought- what if you were to take those models and jam them together into some kind of big social theory Frankenstein?

We might use the work of B.F. Skinner as a jumping off point- known for his eponymous “Skinner Box,” a simple box that administered rewards or punishment in response to certain actions- pushing a lever, or moving to a particular part of the box. Experimental subjects places in the Skinner Box soon changed their behavior in response to these incentives, generally increasing rewarded behavior and decreasing penalized behavior- even fruit flies, in a simple Skinner Box that heated up when they moved to one side of the box, soon changed their behavior in response to incentives, avoiding that side of the box.

Social interactions can be a bit like a Skinner Box- our actions are either rewarded or penalized by those around us, through everything from subtle expressions of approval or disapproval to more overt forms of reward and penalty, and soon our actions shift in response to this.

How our actions are incentivized or disincentivized depends on the memes the people around us carry- memes not in the lolcat or SpongeBob sense, but in the older sense of the term, an element of a culture or system of behavior passed from one individual to another. How the people around us will respond to our actions is shaped by their moral beliefs, political beliefs, religious beliefs, etc.- these collections of memes, or memeplexes, often contain a list of dos and don’ts, and people around us carrying these memes will incentivize or disincentivize our actions according to these scripts.

Sometimes people create their own value systems, but usually people just pick up the value systems they’re immersed in by their community through osmosis, or join communities because they find their value system appealing- but all value system memeplexes were created by someone at some point, to serve someone’s interest- perhaps the interest of the community as a whole, or perhaps the interests of a specific class or individual.

A group of people sharing a value system act in tandem as a massive incentive system, affecting the behavior of everyone they contact, in ways from subtle to extreme- to graph out what that looks like, let’s draw a rough diagram loosely inspired by a real life example, let’s say the culture war between the right and left surrounding the new age scene in 1970’s San Francisco.

Let’s represent these worldviews- left wing, right wing, and new age- with color dots, and say the blue dots indicate right-wingers, and the pink dots indicate left-wingers, and the orange/yellow ones indicate new-agers.

And then from there, draw arrows to indicate the influence that people have over each other- with the size of the arrow indicating the intensity of that influence, and the color of the arrow representing which value system is guiding how they incentivize or disincentivize behavior- whether they’re following the values of right-wing politics, left-wing politics, or the new-age scene in how they reward or penalize the actions of the actions of those they interact with.

(Looking at this chart, it might seem strange to think that there would be overlap between right-wingers and new-agers, but those familiar with the new age scene in 1970’s San Francisco wouldn’t find that unusual.)

The social incentives which an individual receives- the social reality that they experience- is determined by their relations to the people around them, and consequently the set of social incentives one person receives will be radically different from that of another. Within right-wing social clusters, they would be rewarded for praising then-governor Ronald Reagan, in left-wing social clusters they would be rewarded for opposing the Vietnam war, in new-agey social clusters they would be socially penalized for expressing disbelief in crystal healing, and so on- these rewards likely taking the form of things like praise and increased social clout, and the social penalties likely including being scorned or even shunned.

This is very simplified rendition, of course- a perfectly accurate one would be excessively cluttered- but this works as a lose rendition of how communities interact. People with shared beliefs cluster together, and influence each other and the people they’re socially adjacent to according to those shared values, and in doing so they coalesce into collective incentive systems which shape the behavior of everyone they come into contact with.

The relation between these incentives and behavior is not always straightforward- for example an intended penalty might act as a reward for a person who enjoys negative attention- but behavior is always inevitably affected by and contextualized by these incentives.

From this angle, social groups which coalesce around memplexes appear as almost a kind of collective organism, with each person being a cell in the body of some kind of massive behemoth- the memeplex serving as it’s genetic- or memetic- code, and the incentives serving as it’s nervous system.

Now, a lot of analysis which has used this sort of metaphor has framed it as strictly negative, but I don’t think that’s useful- these sorts of social organisms form any time you have multiple people together who have even vaguely shared beliefs about right and wrong, and I don’t think it’s meaningfully possible or desirable to prevent people from congregating around shared moral beliefs. We’re all cells in the bodies of vast superorganisms, conduits for forces far larger than ourselves, and that’s okay!

Let’s call these collective organisms “social currents,” building off of the sense of the word current meaning “particular ideas, opinions or feelings being present in a group of people.”

But also referencing it’s more common usage as referring to a current of water - something a person can get caught in the flow of. Or an electrical current, coursing through conduits.

Most social phenomenon can be described in these terms- groups of people acting in tandem to incentivize and disincentivize behavior according to a memetic script- from political movements, to religions, to cults, to ethical philosophies, to governments, to corporations and even artistic movements- all of these can essentially be thought of as different varieties of social currents.

And there can also be social currents within social currents- for example all corporations are sub-currents of the super-current of capitalism, which is the prevailing hegemonic economic social current.

The incentives used by social currents include everything from material incentives/money, to expressions of approval or disapproval from peers, to legal punitive measures like imprisonment- even our internal feelings of guilt and pride are ultimately based on the value systems we’ve picked up through social interaction, and thus are just another form of incentive that currents use.

Our choices are so heavily shaped by the incentive structures of the social currents we interact with that insofar as we have any kind of autonomy as individuals, this is expressed more by what social currents we choose to interact with or act as a conduit for than it is by what we choose to do within a given current.

Morality, rather than being some unchanging concrete set of laws encoded into the universe, is a function of this social phenomenon- people generate memetic scripts about which actions to incentivize and which to dis-incentivize, and the effect of this incentive structure will be to varying degrees beneficial, or detrimental, to society- or possibly beneficial to one class at the expense of another. Morality isn’t like the laws of physics as much as it’s like a form of technology, which must always be continually updated and improved to be more beneficial to more people.

We could also roughly sort social currents according to the categories of Economic and Ideological- or in Marxist terms, Base and Superstructure.

These both overlap and have a reciprocal relationship, of course, but there is a definite divide between social currents which incentivize mostly through material economic means, like corporations- let’s call these Economic, or Base Currents- and social currents which incentivize behavior through more subtle ideological and personal means, such as political ideologies and religions- let’s call these Ideological, or Superstructure Currents

Often there will be superstructure currents which emerge out of base currents, or base currents which emerge out of superstructure currents- consider the mission statement of the ethos of a company as a superstructure current emerging out of a base current, or a boycott organized by political group as a base current emerging out of a superstructure current- or for a more complex example, the food program run by the black panthers as a base current emanating from a superstructure current, which, had there been a successful revolution, might have evolved into a more larger and more complex base current- a socialist economy.

While usually social currents operate simply through people following the incentive structure while acting in their own self-interest, once an individual has fully absorbed the value system of a current, they will act according to that value system even beyond the point of self interest- whether this is a good or bad thing depends on the merit of the value system of that social current- on how beneficial it is as a piece of moral social technology.

To give a few examples to illustrate this:

A: Two people in the desert come across water. Instead of splitting it evenly, the stronger of the two- who in this hypothetical happens to lack a sense of guilt or conscience- simply kills the other, and takes all the water for themselves. In the absence of social incentive systems, self-interest plays out in horrific ways.

B: Someone donates money, but the primary reason they did so was because they knew they would receive social approval for doing so, and benefit in the form of social approval outweighed the cost to themselves.

C: Someone knowingly gives their life to save the lives of several other people- perhaps a civilian in a warzone throwing themselves on a grenade. In this case there isn’t even the hypothetical chance that they did it purely for selfish approval-seeking reasons, since the cost was their own life, and whatever social approval they may gain, they will never experience it. This is, nonetheless, still a function of social currents- it’s just that they have internalized the value system to the point where they adhere to it not just as a means to the end of gaining social approval (or avoiding social disapproval and punishment), but as an ends unto itself, and will adhere to it even at extreme personal cost.

D: Some incel creep, stewing in forums which treat Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian as heroes, goes on his own similar spree killing, ending the spree by taking his own life. This person also will never receive any social reward from their cohorts for their actions, due to being dead, but had internalized the value system of the incel ideology to the point where they will act on it even at extreme personal cost.

So you can see that while example C and example D are both acting nominally selflessly, example C is morally commendable, while example D morally repugnant- and while both example A and example B are acting selfishly, and example A is just as repugnant as example D, example B is only somewhat less commendable than example C- point is, acting selflessly does not inherently make you better than someone acting selfishly if the moral framework of the social current you are selflessly adhering to is itself a malignant framework. (And this isn’t a static thing either, since a current that was once benign can become malignant).

So selfishness is, overall, Not Great, but the picture is a little more nuanced than “selfishness=bad, selflessness=good”

In practice, social currents tend to have a certain anatomy- already in this diagram here we can see the different currents portrayed have a clusters within them, as well as a noticeable edge- let’s outline those to bring them into clearer focus.

When the two memeplexes are more compatible, the superorganisms will overlap as they absorb each other, and when they memeplexes are less compatible, they’ll form more distinct boundaries, and attempt to siphon people away from each other, acting more directly in competition. Here we can see both the left-wing current and the right-wing current overlapping with the current of the new-age scene, making it a flashpoint for culture war sparring- this kind of scenario, where one social current will become the arena in which two other currents battle each other, is fairly common, and in fact the culture war between the right and the left within the new age scene in the 70’s is mirrored today by similar culture war skirmishes between the right and left within the Norse neopagan scene.

Social currents have a tendency to try to place parts of the memeplex which are more appealing to outsiders on the external membrane, and to place parts which are more alienating to outsiders near the nuclei- Scientologists don’t tell people about all the Xenu stuff right off the bat, you feel me? This especially applies when attempting to siphon people away from a competing social current.

The Mormons actually have a term to describe this strategy- “Milk Before Meat”- the idea being that you must first expose potential converts to the Spiritual Milk- the more appealing parts of the memeplex- before exposing them to the Spiritual Meat- the more alienating parts of the memeplex.

In addition, incentive structures are usually more severe, and the rules more strict, the deeper you go- this similarly helps to ease the process by which someone is absorbed into a social current.

In some of those nuclei clusters we can see noticeable power hierarchies, particularly the ones on the top and bottom right, which are clearly centered around specific individuals or groups who the rest of the cluster is subordinate to. To tie this more firmly into the real world, if the pink and blue represent the political left and the right in this model, then the nuclei-like clusters would be both informal and formal groups of political activists, with some of the more formally organized political groups having overt hierarchies and chains of command.

These kinds of power imbalances within a social current have a detrimental effect upon it, resulting in a kind of social decay- to illustrate an example, consider the reverend of a right-wing church gradually making his church more cult-like, consolidating his own power at the expense of his followers.

(Now, a more thorough diagram might show how this church interacts with the larger social current of Christianity, how the different denominations act as distinct yet connected currents, how they’ll act in opposition or in tandem depending on circumstance, and how they overlap with both the right and the left- but it would take years to create a diagram which accurately captured all that.)

A person who already has disproportionate power within the social current, in this case the aforementioned reverend, shifts their value system in their own favor, re-writing the rules to their own benefit- (one popular path for the preacher gone full-blown cult leader is to re-write the rules to allow themselves to take multiple young wives, like David Koresh did)- here I’m representing that shift with the shift from blue to teal-ish in the upper right corner, representing a shift from the background ideology of right-wing christianity to the specific ideology of a tightly controlled reactionary cult- and this has a ripple effect on the cluster surrounding them,

shifting it so that the rest of the people in the current better serves the interests of the leader and his cadre, often at the expense of everyone else within the cluster. The subtle shift from preacher to cult leader, and the attendant shift in the social mores of the church, doesn’t in any way benefit his followers- but given his disproportionate ability to reward or punish his followers, they fall in line out of fear of punishment, adopting the new value system, enforcing it on each other horizontally in addition to the pressure the cult leader is exerting from above.

So while the popular narrative holds that we need hierarchy to maintain social order, in actuality hierarchy is in many ways harmful to social order- the powerful have every motivation to shift the rules in their favor, change the social current’s incentive structures such that it acts to their benefit and exploits the people lower in the hierarchy- not to mention when there is a clear divide between the people who make or enforce social rules, and the people subject to them, the people who make or enforce social rules have little reason to follow them- cops, and Ted Kennedy, can get away with murder.

Of course, a lot of the times the social rules were already in their favor to begin with- hence why they had more influence in the first place.

In either case, whether baked in from the beginning or a function of societal rot as the powerful further entrench their power, the end result of memeplexes being undermined by hierarchy is the same: the prevailing ideas and values are the values of the ruling class, and the interests of the ruling class are disguised as the universal interest of all.

Luckily, hegemonic power attempting to entrench itself isn’t the only way a social current’s value system can shift, and there are other forces which act to counteract the entrenchment of the ruling class- put a pin in that, because we’re going to come back to that in a minute.

There’s also another type of cluster within the social currents in this chart, and that’s clusters of people who have become dissatisfied with the status quo of the social norms of the current they’re within - lets highlight those in grey.

These pockets of dissatisfaction generally emerge in response to legitimate grievances with real problems in the value system of the status quo (though they can also occasionally be founded on illegitimate grievances, like that of a formerly privileged class losing their privilege). Often these problems in the value system are tied into the kind of exploitative hierarchies I mentioned earlier - however, problems can exist within the value system of a social current without them necessarily being to any exploitative classes’ benefit- sometimes the source of the problem is that the rules have been written or re-written to benefit one person or class at the expense of the rest, but occasionally there are problems in the value system of a current which are caused by simple human error, and aren’t to anyone’s benefit.

Lets say that the pocket of dissatisfaction within the left-wing current is people who feel the social norms around sex within the left are dysfunctional, while the pocket of dissatisfaction within the right wing current is people dissatisfied with the excesses of the ascendant evangelical right, perhaps specifically unhappy with the excesses of the preacher turned cult leader they’re socially adjacent to.

On one hand, these pockets of dissatisfaction can act as a point from which a competing social current can attempt to siphon away individuals, in the form of people from the competing current reaching out to the people in the pocket and making the case that they would be happier if they were to leave their current for the competitor- in this example, someone reaching out to people alienated by the church-gone-cult, so that she can make a case to them that the social values within the left prevent this kind of reactionary religious excess- in this framework it can almost be represented as one current extending a pseudopod into the other current to draw in people from it:

This is a relatively simple example- one person reaching out to another- but a current can generate extremely complex social mechanisms to draw people from other currents into itself. For example consider a group like redneck revolt, which reaches out to people in right-wing leaning rural areas and recruits them into the left, or conversely, for another example from same 1970′s time frame as our diagram, the Jesus movement, a right-wing movement which recruited hippies into reactionary evangelical Christianity. Unlike a redneck revolt, which is pretty overt in what it’s goals are, the Jesus movement was more deceptive, framing itself as a left-leaning progressive brand of Christianity when in actuality it’s most prominent figures were staunchly reactionary- just look at the Jesus movement associated cult the Children of God, which marketed itself to hippies and presented itself as progressive to outsiders, while it’s leader was preaching racist, homophobic, and antisemitic screeds to the people living on the cult commune.

An especially deceptive version of the previously mentioned milk before meat strategy comes into play here, in this case being used as a strategy to siphon people away from the left while concealing that intention, presenting a progressive face to suck in hippies and then indoctrinating them with far-right ideology once they’ve been ensnared. So while the strategy of one social current extending a pseudopod into another to siphon away members may be pretty universal, it can either be done in ways which are more honest about the intentions, like Redneck Revolt, or it can be more underhanded and dishonest like the Jesus movement was, and relying on more overtly deceptive versions of the Milk Before Meat tactic- though almost all social currents use mild Milk Before Meat tactics when drawing people in by at least somewhat downplaying aspects of the memeplex more alienating to outsiders at first.

Of course, Milk Before Meat tactics can sometimes fail- sometimes the more alienating parts of a memeplex end up alienating people, in spite of attempts made to mitigate this- whether this results in those people simply returning to the current they were being absorbed from, or forming a new pocket of dissatisfaction, depends on the scenario, specifically on the degree to which they had transferred from one current to another.

While these pockets of dissatisfaction can act as a weakness for another current to leech off of, they can also act to generate a corrective force, as people in these pockets who have been harmed by the existing social norms within that current create an updated version of that value system, or an entirely new value system, in response to their material needs- so for example, this pocket of dissatisfaction in the diagram represents women who had been harmed by the dysfunctional social mores around sex in the 60’s and 70′s radical scene- this spurred them to create ideological concepts based off of critiques of the “free love” norms of the 60’s radical scene, ideological concept which would later be described as “sex-negative feminism.”

In this diagram this is represented by the grey pocket of dissatisfaction becoming a new internal social current, which acts in opposition to the current surrounding it on the point of contradiction- here the red current within the pink current represents sex negative feminism within the larger context of the “free love” ideology which prevailed in much of the left.

This internal current spreads within the social current surrounding it, absorbing people who resonate with their critiques of the social status quo, eventually dispersing and incorporating itself into the larger surrounding current.

In the classic dialectical materialist model, the first current is the thesis, then the new current growing out of the pocket of dissatisfaction is the antithesis, they synthesize into a new social status quo, which inevitably will have it’s own pockets of dissatisfaction, and the process repeats.

For example, as portrayed in this diagram, the problems inherent in the 1970’s radical scene’s social norms around sex was the flashpoint for the development of feminist critiques of sex and porn, then the flaws inherent within the sex negative framework, such as it’s sometimes excessively puritanical values and it’s ugly transphobia, spurred sex positive feminist critiques, then the flaws within the sex positive framework spurred a new wave of sex critical feminism, and so forth, this back-and forth dialectic working to shape the social norms around sex within social spaces on the left.

Now, I’m sure some would argue that in the back and forth between sex negativity and sex positivity, one of the two was reactionary, and emerged to retain the privilege of an oppressive class and undo progress. However I disagree, I think both sex positivity and sex negativity- and the back and forth dialectic between them- played a progressive role in improving the social norms around sex within the left.

The pattern of “people disenfranchised by the current value system create a new value system, which spurs action which shifts social norms to better accommodate peoples needs” is visible everywhere- revolutionary action by the oppressed against the status quo is not only a force in driving social and moral advancement- it’s the primary force, the grinding dialectical engine at the heart of history and morality.

We can see this pattern playing out especially clearly in the field of LGBT rights, where homophobic and transphobic laws and social mores- which are a harmful incentive system which unnecessarily punishes benign behavior- spurred the emergence of the lgbt rights movement, as the people harmed by homophobic and transphobic social mores and laws to joined together in radical action to change them.

Or for an example on a larger scale, consider the way feudalism was supplanted by liberalism and capitalism, particularly around such flashpoints as the French revolution- so we can see that this dialectical pattern can take different forms, and while sex critical feminism and sex positive feminism both acted internally within the left, the contradiction which spurred the decline of feudalism was more severe, with the liberal enlightenment social current more fully separating itself from the feudal social current before overtaking it.

(Similarly, at this point it’s necessary for capitalism to be supplanted by an entirely new economic current- the contradictions at play here are too severe to be resolved through a more subtle internal dialectical process.)

As noted earlier, the ruling class losing it’s power and privilege due to social progress creates it’s own pocket of dissatisfaction. This can generate a harmful reactionary social current, which aims to undo that progress- and this certainly applies to the decline of monarchy and feudalism.

Reactionary currents caused by an oppressive class losing their power can have a significant memetic ripple effect, outlasting the actual people who lost their power- and the reactionary current which emanated from the aristocracy and monarchy losing their power after feudalism declined continues to this day. The central narrative of monarchist reactionaries in the wake of the decline of feudalism (this will sound familiar) was that progressivism and democracy were bad, and that Jewish people, freemasons, and the Illuminati were behind them (especially in relation to the French revolution)- as you’ve probably already noted, this narrative which continues to play a central role in reactionary movements to this day, from fascism to neoreaction- though some original flavor moldbuggian neoreactionaries attempted to swap out the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theorism for a sinister Calvinist conspiracy.

The Illuminati was a small short-lived enlightenment-era discussion group, but then some deranged pro-monarchist priest named Augustin Barruel accuses them of having caused the French revolution, and from there the telephone game of the memetic ripple effect exaggerated the Illuminati into the ultimate shadowy boogeyman in the reactionary narrative. More than anything else, the fact that the whole right-wing conspiracy theory about the Illuminati is directly traceable back to the reactionary response to the French revolution shows just how severe the memetic ripple from that reactionary social current was, and how firmly caught up in it’s wake a lot of modern reactionaries are. Both fascism and neoreaction can be understood as essentially mutations and cross-pollinations of the reactionary current that emerged in response to the French revolution.

However, while reactionary currents can undo progress, nonetheless the general overall trend of history is toward improvement- the long moral arc of the universe bending toward justice.

Now, if power imbalances are harmful, and if these sorts of dialectical processes correct power imbalances through social upheaval, the question must be asked- why do power imbalances exist in the first place?

To answer this question with a question- how do you create an incentive system without that incentive system creating a power imbalance between those it rewards and those it punishes?

It’s a difficult question, with no easy answer!

Of course, this may drive many to deem social currents and incentive structures inherently evil- “We must cast off all binds that might shape our behavior, destroy all the authoritarian social mores, reject all coercive social systems, and embrace individualism fully!” they might say “’The People’ is dead! Good-day, Self!” They might also tell you you’re “spooked” and tell you to read Stirner.

Here’s the thing though- as noted earlier, any time you have people in a group where some of them have shared beliefs about which actions are good or bad, these kind of social incentive systems are going to emerge- you could try to prevent people from doing anything which might in some way incentivize or dis-incentivize the actions of others- but how would you convince people not to reward or penalize the behavior of others, without in some way rewarding or penalizing their behavior yourself in order to convince them?

And more importantly, would we really be better off if there were no social incentive systems or consequences for action? Would we really be better off if, for example, abusers, faced no repercussions? And recall here that we’re talking not only about formal legal penalties but also decentralized social penalties like “people not liking you”- which, mind you, can be a pretty powerful social tool for shaping behavior.

So as you can see, there isn’t an “out” here, and the dream of a world without incentive structures is in actuality neither possible nor desirable. The goal shouldn’t be to abolish all social incentive structures, but rather to correct what is broken, to replace flawed incentive structures with better ones, and to improve upon the social technology of morality.

So, what is the takeaway from all of this?

Especially, what is the takeaway from all this when it comes to the question of how to make and keep a revolution?

Anarchist approaches to revolutionary theory generally hold that a revolutionary movement must reject all forms of hierarchy and authority to create a genuinely revolutionary movement.

Marxist approaches on the other hand, as per Engels in On Authority, take a view that hierarchy and authority are not strictly negative, and it’s the class character they serve which is the important thing.

What we can see from the framework I’ve laid out here is that the truth lies essentially somewhere in the middle- namely, that anarchists are correct that hierarchy is inherently corruptive, and should be avoided or it will undermine a revolutionary movement from within. However they are incorrect in the individualistic social-libertarian approach which they generally tie in with their rejection of hierarchy- Engels may have been wrong on hierarchy, but he was correct on the reality that a sense of discipline, unity, and order is necessary in a revolutionary movement if it is to maintain itself long enough to supplant the hegemonic order, let alone sustain itself afterward.

The revolutionary social current we create must be more functional, and more beneficial to human well-being if we are to successfully supplant the prevailing hegemonic current.

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currents420420 · 6 years ago

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And I thought- what if you were to take those models and jam them together into some kind of big social theory Frankenstein?

We might use the work of B.F. Skinner as a jumping off point- known for his eponymous “Skinner Box,” a simple box that administered rewards or punishment in response to certain actions- pushing a lever, or moving to a particular part of the box. Organisms inevitably shifted their behavior in response to these incentives- even fruit flies, in a simple Skinner Box that heated up when they moved to one side of the box, soon changed their behavior, avoiding that side of the box.

How our actions are incentivized or disincentivized depends on the memes the people around us carry- memes not in the lolcat or SpongeBob sense, but in the older sense of the term, an element of a culture or system of behavior passed from one individual to another. How the people around us will respond to our actions is shaped by the moral beliefs, political beliefs, religious beliefs, etc. of people around us- these collections of memes, or memeplexes, often contain a list of dos and don’ts, and people carrying these memes will incentivize or disincentivize our actions according to these scripts.

Sometimes people create their own value systems, but usually people just pick up the value systems they’re immersed in by their community through osmosis, or join communities because they find their value system appealing- but all value system memeplexes were created by someone at some point, to serve someone’s material interest- perhaps the interest of the community as a whole, or perhaps the interests of a specific group or individual.

A group of people sharing a value system act in tandem as a massive incentive system, affecting the behavior of everyone they contact- to understand what that looks like, let’s draw a rough diagram loosely inspired by a real life example, let’s say the culture war between the right and left surrounding the new age scene in 1970’s San Francisco.

Let’s represent these with color dots, and say the blue dots are right-wingers and the pink dots are left-wingers, and the orange/yellow ones new-agers.

And then from there, lets draw arrows to indicate the influence that people have over each other- with the size of the arrow indicating the degree of influence one person has on the other, with the color of the arrow representing which value system is guiding how they incentivize or disincentivize behavior- whether they’re following the values of right-wing politics, left-wing politics, or the new-age scene in how they reward or penalize the actions of the actions of that person. (It might seem strange to think that there would be overlap between right-wingers and new-agers, but those familiar with the new age scene in 1970’s San Francisco wouldn’t be surprised.) The social incentives which an individual receives, and the social reality that they experience, is determined by their relations to the people around them, consequently the set of social incentives one person receives will be radically different from that of another. Within right-wing social clusters, they would be rewarded for praising then-governor Ronald Reagan, in left-wing social clusters they would be rewarded for opposing the Vietnam war, in new-agey social clusters they would be socially penalized for expressing disbelief in crystal healing, and so on.

This is very simplified rendition, of course- a perfectly accurate one would be excessively cluttered- but this works as a lose rendition of how communities interact. People with shared beliefs cluster together, and influence each other, and the people they’re socially adjacent to, according to those shared values.

From this angle, social groups which coalesce around memplexes like this appear as almost a kind of collective organism, with each person being a cell in the body of some kind of massive behemoth- the memeplex serving as it’s genetic- or memetic- code, and the incentives serving as it’s nervous system.

Now, a lot of analysis which has used this sort of metaphor has framed it as strictly negative, but I don’t think that’s useful- these sorts of social organisms form any time you have multiple people together who have even vaguely shared beliefs about right and wrong, and I don’t think it’s meaningfully possible or desirable to prevent people from congregating around shared moral beliefs. We’re all cells in the bodies of vast superorganisms, we’re all conduits for forces far larger than ourselves, and that’s okay!

For lack of a better term, lets call these collective organisms “currents,” building off of the sense of the term meaning “particular ideas, opinions or feelings being present in a group of people.”

But also referencing it’s more common usage as referring to a current of water - something a person can get caught in the flow of. Or an electrical current, coursing through conduits.

Most social phenomenon can be described in these terms- groups of people acting in tandem to incentivize and disincentivize behavior according to a memetic script- from political movements, to religions, to cults, to ethical philosophies, to governments, even to corporations and artistic movements- all of these can essentially be thought of as different varieties of currents.

And there can also be currents within currents- for example all corporations are sub-currents of the super-current of capitalism, which is the prevailing hegemonic economic current.

The incentives used by currents include everything from material incentives/money, to expressions of approval or disapproval from peers, to legal punitive measures like imprisonment- even our internal feelings of guilt and pride are ultimately based on the value systems we’ve picked up through social interaction, and thus are just another form of incentive that currents use.

Morality, rather than being some unchanging concrete law encoded into the universe, is a function of this social phenomenon- people generate memetic scripts about which actions to incentivize and which to dis-incentivize, and the effect of this incentive structure will be to varying degrees beneficial, or detrimental, or beneficial to one group at the expense of another. Morality isn’t like the laws of physics as much as it’s like a form of technology, which must always be continually updated and improved to be more beneficial to more people.

We could also roughly sort currents according to the categories of Economic and Ideological- or in Marxist terms, Base and Superstructure.

These both overlap and have a reciprocal relationship, of course, but there is a definite divide between currents which incentivize mostly through material economic means, like corporations- let’s call these Base currents- and currents which incentivize behavior through more subtle ideological and social means, such as political ideologies and religions- let’s call these Superstructure Currents

Often there will be superstructure currents which emerge out of base currents, or base currents which emerge out of superstructure currents- consider the mission statement of the ethos of a company as a superstructure current emerging out of a base current, or a boycott organized by political group as a base current emerging out of a superstructure current- or the food program run by the black panthers, a base current emerging from a superstructure current which could have, had there been a successful revolution, evolved into a more larger and more complex base current- a socialist economy.

Our choices are so heavily shaped by the incentive structures of the social currents we interact with that insofar as we have any kind of autonomy as individuals, this is expressed more by what currents we choose to interact with or act as a conduit for than it is by what we choose to do within a given current.

While usually currents operate simply through people following the incentive structure while acting in their own self-interest, once an individual has fully absorbed the value system of a current, they will act according to that value system even beyond the point of self interest- whether this is a good or bad thing depends on the merit of the value system of that current- on how beneficial it is as a piece of moral social technology.

To give a few examples to illustrate this:

A: Two people in the desert come across water. Instead of splitting it evenly, the stronger of the two- who happens to lack a sense of guilt and conscience- simply kills the other, and takes all the water for themselves. In the absence of external incentive systems created by society, or internal incentives like guilt, self-interest plays out in horrific ways.

C: Someone knowingly gives their life to save the lives of several other people. In this case there isn’t even the hypothetical chance that they did it purely for selfish approval-seeking reasons, since the cost was their own life, and whatever social approval they may gain, they will never experience it. This is, nonetheless, still a function of currents- it’s just that they have internalized the value system to the point where they adhere to it not just as a means to the end of gaining social approval (or avoiding social disapproval and punishment), but as an ends unto itself, and will adhere to it even at extreme personal cost.

So you can see that while example C and example D are both acting selflessly, example C is morally commendable, while example D morally repugnant- and while both example A and example B are acting selfishly, and example A is just as repugnant as example D, example B is only somewhat less commendable than example C- point is, acting selflessly does not inherently make you better than someone acting selfishly if the moral framework of the current you are selflessly adhering to is itself a malignant framework. (And this isn’t a static thing either, since a current that was once benign can become malignant).

So selfishness is, overall, Not Great, but the picture is a little more nuanced than “selfishness=bad, selflessness=good”

In practice, currents tend to have a certain anatomy- already in this image here we can see the different currents portrayed have a clusters within them, as well as a noticeable edge- let’s outline those to bring them into clearer focus.

When we do this, we can see an amoeba-like shape taking form- inner nuclei, and an outer membrane. Similar to how genetic code instructs cells on how to organize into an organism, this is how memetic codes instruct individuals on how to organize into collective superorganisms. And when the two memeplexes are more compatible, the superorganisms will overlap as they absorb each other, and when they memeplexes are less compatible, they’ll form more distinct boundaries, and attempt to siphon people away from each other, acting more directly in competition. Here we can see both the left-wing current and the right-wing current overlapping with the current of the new-age scene, making it a flashpoint for culture war sparring- this kind of scenario, where one current will become the arena in which two other currents battle each other, is far from uncommon. For example the culture war between the left and the right within the new age scene in the 70’s is mirrored today by culture war skirmishes between the left and the right within the Norse neopagan scene.

Currents have a tendency to try to place parts of the memeplex which are more appealing to outsiders on the outside membrane, and to place parts which are more alienating to outsiders near the nuclei- Scientologists don’t tell people about all the Xenu stuff right off the bat, you feel me? This especially applies when attempting to siphon people away from a competing current.

In addition, incentive structures are usually more severe, and the rules more strict, the deeper you go- this similarly helps to ease the process by which someone is absorbed into a current.

In some of those nuclei clusters we can see noticeable power hierarchies, particularly the ones on the top and bottom right, which are clearly centered around specific individuals or groups who the rest of the cluster is subordinate to. To tie this more firmly into the real world, if the pink and blue represent the political left and the right in this model, then the nuclei-like clusters would be both informal and formal groups of political activists or discussion groups, with some of the more formally organized political groups having overt hierarchies and chains of command.

These kinds of power imbalances within a current can have a detrimental effect upon it, resulting in a kind of social decay.

To give an example, consider the reverend of a right-wing church gradually making his church more cult-like, consolidating his own power at the expense of his followers.

(A more thorough diagram might show how this church interacts with the larger current of Christianity, how the different denominations act as distinct yet connected currents, how they’ll act in opposition or in tandem depending on circumstance, and how they overlap with both the right and the left- but it would take years to create a diagram which accurately captured that, and even then it would be so complex as to be almost unreadable.)

A person who already has disproportionate power within the current- in this case the aforementioned reverend- shifts their value system in their own favor, re-writing the rules to their own benefit- (one popular path for the preacher gone full-blown cult leader is to re-write the rules to allow themselves to take multiple young wives, like David Koresh did)- here I’m representing that shift with the shift from blue to teal-ish in the upper right corner, representing a shift from the background - and this has a ripple effect on the cluster surrounding them,

shifting it so that the rest better serves the interests of themselves, or other people within the inner circle of leadership, often at the expense of everyone else within the cluster. The subtle shift from preacher to cult leader, and the attendant shift in the social mores of the church, doesn’t in any way benefit his followers, only himself. But given his disproportionate ability to reward or punish his followers, they fall in line out of fear of punishment, adopting the new value system, enforcing it on each other horizontally in addition to the pressure the cult leader is exerting from above, increasing the leaders power even further.

So while the popular narrative holds that we need hierarchy to maintain social harmony, in actuality hierarchy is in many ways harmful to social harmony- the powerful have every motivation to shift the rules in their favor, change the incentive structure of the current such that it acts to their benefit and exploits the people lower in the hierarchy, not to mention when there is a clear divide between the people who make or enforce social rules, and everyone else, the people who make or enforce social rules have little reason to follow them- cops, and Ted Kennedy, can get away with murder.

Of course, a lot of the times the social rules were already in their favor to begin with- hence why they had more influence in the first place. In either case, whether built into it from the beginning, or caused by societal rot as the powerful entrench their power, the end result is the same: the prevailing ideas and values are the ideas and values of the ruling class, and the interests of the ruling class disguised as the universal interest of everyone.

Luckily, hegemonic power attempting to entrench itself isn’t the only way a currents value system can shift, and there are other forces which act to counteract the entrenchment of the ruling class- put a pin in that, because we’re going to come back to that in a minute.

There’s also another kind of cluster within the currents in this chart, and that’s clusters of people who have become dissatisfied with the status quo of the social norms of the current they’re within - lets highlight those in grey.

These pockets of dissatisfaction generally emerge in response to legitimate grievances with real problems in the value system of the status quo (though they can also occasionally be founded on illegitimate grievances, like a formerly privileged class losing their privilege). Often these problems in the value system are tied into the kind of exploitative hierarchies I mentioned earlier - however, problems can exist within the value system of a current without them necessarily being to any exploitative classes benefit. But while often the source of the problem is that the rules have been written (or re-written) to benefit one group at the expense of the rest, occasionally there are problems in the value system of a current which are caused by simple human error, and aren’t to anyone’s benefit.

Lets say that the pocket of dissatisfaction within the left-wing current is people who feel the social norms around sex within the left are dysfunctional, while the pocket of dissatisfaction within the right wing current is people dissatisfied with the excesses of the ascendant evangelical right, perhaps specifically unhappy with the excesses of that preacher turned cult leader i mentioned earlier, who they’re socially adjacent to.

On one hand, these pockets of dissatisfaction can act as a point from which a competing current can attempt to siphon away individuals, in the form of people from the competing current reaching out to the people in the pocket and making the case that they would be happier if they were to leave their current for the competitor, in this case reaching out to people alienated by the church-gone-cult, and making a case to them that the social values within the left prevent this kind of reactionary religious excess- in this framework it can almost be represented as one current extending a pseudopod into the other current to draw in people:

This is a relatively simple example- one person reaching out to another- but a current can generate more complex social mechanisms to draw people from other currents into itself. For example consider a group like Redneck Revolt, which reaches out to people in right-wing leaning rural areas and recruits them into the left, or conversely, for an example from time frame of our diagram, the 70’s, the Jesus movement, a right-wing movement which recruited hippies into reactionary evangelical Christianity- unlike Redneck Revolt, which is pretty overt in what it’s goals are, the Jesus Movement was more deceptive, framing itself as a left-leaning progressive brand of Christianity when in actuality it’s most prominent figures were staunchly reactionary- just look at the Jesus Movement associated cult the Children of God, which marketed itself to hippies and presented itself as progressive to outsiders, when secretly it’s was preaching racist, homophobic, and antisemitic screeds to the people living on the cult commune.

An especially deceptive version of the milk before meat strategy comes into play here, in this case being used as a strategy to siphon people away from the left while concealing that intention, presenting a progressive face to suck in hippies and then indoctrinating them with far-right ideology once they’ve been ensnared. So while the strategy of one current extending a pseudopod into another to siphon away members may be pretty universal, it can either be done in ways which are more honest about the intentions, like Redneck Revolt, or it can be more underhanded and dishonest like the Jesus Movement was.

While these pockets of dissatisfaction can act as a weakness for another current to leech off of, they can also act to generate a corrective force, as people who have been harmed by the existing social norms within that current create an updated version of that value system, or an entirely new value system, in response to their material needs- so for example, this pocket in the diagram on the left represents women who had been harmed by the dysfunctional social mores around sex in the 60’s radical scene. This motivates them to create critiques of the “free love” norms of the 60’s radical scene, these critiques eventually developing into the ideological concepts which would later be described as “sex-negative feminism.”

In this diagram this is represented by the grey pocket of dissatisfaction becoming a new internal current, which acts in opposition to the current surrounding it on the point of contradiction- the red current within the pink current representing sex negative feminism within the larger context of the “free love” ideology which prevailed in much of the left.

This internal current spreads within the current, absorbing people who resonate with their critiques of the social status quo, eventually dispersing and incorporating itself into the larger surrounding current.

In the classic dialectical materialist model, the first current is the thesis, then the new current growing out of the pocket of dissatisfaction is the antithesis, then they synthesize into a new social status quo, which inevitably will have it’s own pockets of dissatisfaction, and the process repeats.

For example, as portrayed in this diagram, the problems inherent in the 1960’s radical scene’s social norms around sex was the flashpoint for the development of feminist critiques of sex and porn, then the flaws inherent within the sex negative framework, such as it’s sometimes excessively puritanical values and it’s ugly transphobia, spurred sex positive feminist critiques, then the flaws within the sex positive framework spurred a new wave of sex critical feminism, and so forth, this back-and forth dialectic working to shape the social norms around sex within social spaces on the left.

The pattern of “people disenfranchised by the current value system create a new value system, and this theory spurs praxis which shifts social norms to better accommodate peoples needs” is visible everywhere- revolutionary action by the oppressed against the status quo is not only a force in driving social and moral advancement- it’s the primary force, the grinding dialectical engine at the heart of history and morality.

We can see this pattern playing out in the history of LGBT rights, where homophobic and transphobic laws and social mores- which are a harmful incentive system which unnecessarily punishes benign behavior- spurred the emergence of the lgbt rights movement, as the people harmed by homophobic and transphobic social mores and laws to joined together in radical action to change them.

Or for an example on a larger scale, consider the way feudalism was supplanted by liberalism and capitalism, particularly around such flashpoints as the French revolution- so we can see that this dialectical pattern can take different forms, and while sex critical feminism and sex positive feminism both acted internally within the left, the contradiction which spurred the decline of feudalism was more severe, with the liberal enlightenment current more fully separating itself from the feudal current before overtaking it.

Similarly, at this point it’s necessary for capitalism to be supplanted by an entirely new economic current- the contradictions at play here are too severe to be resolved through a more subtle internal dialectical process.

As noted earlier, the ruling class losing it’s power and privilege due to social progress creates it’s own pocket of dissatisfaction, which creates a harmful reactionary current.

Reactionary currents caused by an oppressive class losing their power can have a significant memetic ripple effect, outlasting the actual people who lost their power- consider the reactionary current which emanated from the aristocracy and monarchy losing their power after feudalism declined, which carried as it’s central narrative the notion that progressivism and democracy were bad, and that Jewish people, freemasons, and the Illuminati were behind them (especially in relation to the French revolution)- this narrative which continues to play a central role in reactionary movements to this day, from fascism to neoreaction- though some original flavor moldbuggian neoreactionaries attempted to swap out the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theorism for a sinister Calvinist conspiracy.

The Illuminati was a small short-lived enlightenment-era discussion group, but then some deranged pro-monarchist priest named Augustin Barruel accuses them of having caused the French revolution, and from there the telephone game effect exaggerated the Illuminati into the ultimate shadowy boogeyman in the reactionary narrative. More than anything else, the fact that the whole right-wing conspiracy theory about the Illuminati is directly traceable back to the reactionary response to the French revolution shows just how severe the memetic ripple from that reactionary current was, and how firmly caught up in it’s wake a lot of modern reactionaries are. Both fascism and neoreaction can be understood as essentially mutations of the reactionary current that emerged in response to the French revolution.

However, while reactionary currents can undo progress, nonetheless the general overall trend of history is toward improvement- the long moral arc of the universe bending toward justice.

To answer this question with a question- how do you create an incentive system without that incentive system creating a power imbalance between those it rewards and those it punishes?

It’s a difficult question, with no easy answer!

Of course, this may drive many to deem currents and incentive structures inherently evil- “We must cast off all binds that might shape our behavior, destroy all the authoritarian social mores, reject all coercive social systems, and embrace individualism fully!” they might say. They might also tell you you’re “spooked” and tell you to read Stirner.

But the thing is, any time you have people in a group where some of them have shared beliefs about which actions are good or bad, these kind of social incentive systems are going to emerge- you could try to prevent people from doing anything which might in some way incentivize or dis-incentivize the actions of others, but how would you do this without in some way rewarding or penalizing their behavior yourself?

And more importantly, would we really be better off if there were no social incentive systems or consequences for action? Would we really be better off if abusers faced no social repercussions? And recall here that we’re talking not only about formal legal penalties but also decentralized social penalties like “people not liking you”- which, mind you, can be a pretty powerful social tool for shaping behavior!

So as you can see, there isn’t any way to escape this here, and the dream of a world without incentive structures is in actuality neither desirable nor possible. The goal shouldn’t be to abolish all social incentive structures, but rather to correct what is broken, to replace flawed incentive structures with better ones, and to improve upon the social technology of morality.

So, what is the takeaway from all of this?

Essentially, that both Anarchists and Marxist-Leninists are right in some ways, and the way forward is to synthesize the two modes of thought- to merge the concepts of horizontal non-hierarchical social organization from Anarchists, with a sense of duty, unity, and discipline more akin to the ideas floated by Marxists in Engel’s On Authority, or Mao’s Combat Liberalism. Through a more complete understanding of currents and how they function, we can more effectively create a revolutionary current which can supplant the hegemonic capitalist current, driving the great dialectical engine of history and morality forward toward greater human flourishing and prosperity.

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bolandoando · 4 years ago

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woke up from an intense dream, idk if it was aliens or just a landslide but i was in san francisco and ppl were running to get to safety and i had my nephew w me but he was like 2yrs old again and we stopped at this restaurant to wait in line for food but had to leave cuz thats ridiculous the place was packed and the line was too long and then my nephew was walter jr from breaking bad and we got out of there and then me and a group ran to an apt building and holed up there bc we were being chased by some ppl w bayonets and we had cameras all over the house so we cud see em come in and we locked ourselves in a bedroom and i held the door closed and i cud see them behind the slats of the door (?) not a v safe door and then one intruder guy was like here shoot me and i had to aim a space agey gun at him but he kept ducking and dodging and im like cmon man and it only delivered a shock and he was alive but a little toaster and fried and rambling about thanks and he chased me around the bed and i had to stamp on him w a paddle. that was a little scary. weird dream

#i remember running on a road and stopping to look at this lake or something #it was bottlenecking out to the ocean but the water was coming into it as opposed to out to the ocean #and i cud see the currents

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hviral · 5 years ago

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Marianne Williamson and Silicon Valley are the dead ends of the Hippie Era

There are no hippies on Haight Street anymore. Along the eponymous road in the storied San Francisco neighborhood, arguable birthplace of the counterculture movement, tourist shops hawk tie-dye memorabilia to commemorate hippie culture, music and style. Yet aside from physical tchotchkes, the spirit of the 1960s no longer permeates the Haight: gone are the grinning, barefoot peaceniks, as are the free clinic and the Diggers. In their place? Aggrieved, techie millionaire property-owners whose primary spiritual tenets are not free love but property values.

Though the modern Haight resident may seem at odds with the busking, guitar-strumming hippie of yore, the two have far more in common than they might seem. The counterculture ideology of the 1960s was absorbed into Silicon Valley: many of the hippie era believed earnestly that technology, in particular computers, had the potential to revolutionize the world. Author John Markoff, who chronicled the history of the early computer industry in Silicon Valley, writes that the inventors of the PC clustered around Stanford were “deeply influenced by the 1960’s counterculture and by the anti-war movement.” “The computer technologies that we take for granted today owe their shape” to the hippies, he writes, noting that hippies were politically “split between modern-day Luddites and technophiles [w]ho believed better tools could lead to social progress.”

Though it sounds quaint now, many of those who fell into the latter category, including the acid-downing Steve Jobs, thought that networked computers would usher in a populist, user-led revolution where, as digital beings freed from government’s oppressive shackles, we would overcome the The Man.

That, clearly, did not happen; computers, and particularly networked computers — meaning, the modern Internet — have oppressed us in new ways unforeseen by our utopian hippie forebears. Indeed, Silicon Valley’s internet giants now profit primarily from surveillance, selling targeted ads based on observed knowledge of their users. Yet despite a compelling lack of evidence for its efficacy, this techno-utopian mindset reigns supreme in Silicon Valley, so much so that the scions of Silicon Valley often genuinely believe they’re doing good when they are really engaged in so much surveillance or exploitation.

How could a movement defined by free love and civil liberties be digested into the tech industry’s cynical maw? The answer is actually quite simple: the vast majority of hippies, in the United States at least, lacked a coherent class-based analysis undergirding their politics. They did not understand, ideologically, the ways in which the rich oppress poor; that meant that a businessman who did not behave like one — who perhaps exploited his workers but wore tie-dye and read Baba Ram Dass — might be seen as a fellow traveler in hippiedom, whereas a poor working-class worker who detested the hippie aesthetic might be seen as an incorrigible enemy, a foot-soldier of “The Man.”

This lack of a coherent class-based analysis doomed the American hippies’ politics, and their vague and ideologically flexible ideals could be easily folded into something as sinister as Apple, the epitome of wasteful planned obsolescence and conspicuous consumption. Partly this was due to the class upbringing of many hippies: most emerged from the middle-class, and were generally white. Thus, their politics were encapsulated by their petit-bourgeois upbringings; indeed, it takes a certain degree of material comfort to be able to drop out and live on a commune for a few years. While there were pseudo- or fully-Marxist political groups ancillary to the hippie movement — in particular the Black Panthers, Students for a Democratic Society, American Indian Movement and the Young Lords — these groups were the exception to a largely formless mass movement whose primary politics were social libertarianism and anti-war sentiment.

But to return to Silicon Valley: there is even a term for the school of thought that defines this synthesis of counterculture libertinism and techno-utopianism: it is called the California Ideology. Jason Rhode, writing in Salon, called it the “belief system of the ruling techie class.” “T]ech culture is right-wing economics covered over with a layer of hippie rhetoric,” Rhode writes; the doctrine’s “central tenet” is that “machines [will] fix everything,” he continues.

What Silicon Valley’s techno-utopianism consistently misunderstands is that technology does not exist in a vacuum; technology is politics. Pieces of technology are borne of political decisions and have political origins; most are designed to maximize profit for the creator. This is a political function of the highest order, and explains why technology never solves social problems, as it literally can’t; only politics can

Few of the techies who have absorbed these hippie ideals would identify with their indirect origins in hippiedom. Yet on the other side of the see-saw, there are today still some New Agey neo-hippies, direct ideological descendants of the 1960s — people who perhaps have lost the aesthetic, but still believe in counterculture tenets, and have some vague understanding of “love” as the universal answer to all our problems, political and otherwise. Many of those who count themselves among this New Age fork of hippiedom are readily identifiable celebrities: Deepak Chopra, Masaru Emoto, and of course, Marianne Williamson, spiritualist, author, and Democratic contender for President. Williamson is particularly adept at articulating her vague and inconsistent worldview in quick soundbites, as she did towards the end of the second round of Democratic debates:

I want a politics that goes much deeper. I want a politics that speaks to the heart, because the only way to fight — you keep talking about how we’re going to fight Donald Trump. You can’t fight dog whistles. You have to override them.

And the only way you can override them is with new voices, voices of energy that only come from the fact that America has been willing to live up to our own mistakes, atone for our mistakes, make amends for our own mistakes, love each other, love our democracy, love future generations, something emotional and psychological that will not [be] emerging from anything on this stage. It will emerge from something I’m the one who’s qualified [sic] to bring forth.

This reads like an ahistorical spin on a Marxist class analysis. In Williamson’s worldview, oppressors like Trump will not cease oppressing because their subjects rise up — but rather when said oppressors’ voices are “overridden” with an emergent love.

Historically, this doesn’t tend to work. You can’t appeal to some imagined conscience of those who exploit you. In general, those who are engaged in oppression or exploitation — especially when it has a material basis in which it enriches the oppressor — have shaped their entire belief system around their perception. Or, in Upton Sinclair’s words: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

There was never a war that was won because of appealing to the power of love, and there was never a strike that was won by appealing to the power of love. Mass movements are borne of people, action, and protest. The rich won’t change their minds and empty their wallets because you ask them to feel more love — and anyway, even if a few of them did, that wouldn’t undo the structural underpinnings of the system that enables their ilk to exploit. The “power of love” schtick can be part of this type of protest, but it cannot be the only thing — because a lack of love is not what drives exploitation. A want of power and money is.

The point of all this is, much of American liberalism is trapped politically between two false gods: the utopian technologists of Silicon Valley and the “power of love” crowd exemplified by Williamson. Both are unworkable paths to social change.

The post Marianne Williamson and Silicon Valley are the dead ends of the Hippie Era appeared first on HviRAL.

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randomvarious · 6 years ago

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Spookie Tooth - “There Are No Right Angles Found in Nature” The Event Horizon ‘psi’ 1995 Downtempo / Trip Hop

Spookie Tooth (not to be confused with the British 60s and 70s rock band, Spooky Tooth) is a barely-known alias of the San Francisco trip hop and downtempo duo Eighty Mile Beach. The multi-talented Beth Custer and Christian Jones began this project in 1995, but they didn’t reach a level of prominence until they signed to San Francisco label Om Records in 1997 as Eighty Mile Beach. Under this name, they released their most famous song in 1998, which I’m posting today, but I feel like all 90s trip hop and downtempo heads would be surprised to find out that this song was originally released on a compilation three years prior, under a completely different name.

San Francisco’s Beth Custer, who plays clarinet, sings, composes, teaches, and owns a record label, began her musical career in the 90s, playing in an avant garde jazz band called Club Foot Orchestra and a tribal, new agey band called Trance Mission. Christian Jones, a DJ, engineer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, programmer, and composer was an engineer on Trance Mission’s self-titled debut album in 1992, released on City of Tribes Records. Three years later, Custer and Jones, performing under the name Spookie Tooth, contributed “There Are No Right Angles Found in Nature” to City of Tribes’ Event Horizon ‘psi’ compilation. In 1998, after signing to Om as Eighty Mile Beach, they released the song as a single with a notable remix by now-legendary downtempo producers and DJs, Thievery Corporation. The song also appeared on Eighty Mile Beach’s lone album. But its first appearance, unbeknownst to many, was in 1995.

Custer and Jones combine their talents to generate this super chill mid-90s track. Custer sings softly, and provides the bass and organ keyboards while Jones programs the dubby and sluggish tribal drums as well as playing the bass and turntables. Custer’s soothing vocals drift in and out, as she and Jones switch back and forth between vocals and heady instrumentals, in which the drums become heavier and Custer plays deep clarinet rhythms. At the end, the intensity rises just a tad as Custer sings in a somewhat more stunted and ad-libbed fashion over the now-heftier beat.

Very chill tribal downtempo track that everyone thought came out in 1998 but actually came out in 1995.

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papermoth-bird-blog · 6 years ago

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California Coast: Santa Cruz to San Francisco.

On our way down to Santa Cruz, we tried to take our time once again. That being said, we did take many of the look off’’s on the previous days’ trip. And, I will admit, there was growing antsiness in my inner world. I was about ready to be by myself again, and yet, I was still so far from that being logistically possible.

We drove through Big Sur again towards Monterey, stopping to look at cows and flowers and water bodies. Gopala insisted he wanted to try to pet a cow- despite my “I don’t think they’d like that much”. As we rounded each bend, I imagined all the people who had ridden along these same roads. Kerouac, without a doubt, but so many more writers and artists & muses themselves. Not to mention all the people that had travelled this coastal highway that I’d never even heard of, and maybe wouldn’t ever. Each scattering their own thoughts into the wind as they passed along this road. Each of these people forming new parts of themselves here too. It did feel like a gateway of some sort to me. An unseen passageway- one that wasn’t so tangible, or perhaps concretely emotional, but one that I am strangely sure was there.

The car climbed off the coast & towards the inland road. We came across a farm stand- one that had some of the best produce prices I’ve ever see- 3 avocados for a dollar! 7 kiwis for a dollar! I got myself a big bag of banana chips & a bunch of fresh stuff (including mangoes, blood oranges, avocados) all under 6 dollars. Gonna say that might be the bargain of the whole trip. I ate avocados & orange in the car as we eventually rolled into Santa Cruz. The thing about getting up at 5 is that your day complete already as you are still sitting in early afternoon. We waited for the Library to open so we could charge our devices. Gopala also wanted to print more photos of Gurus and Gods for his car. Once my phone was charged enough, I took the opportunity to taste independence again, if not for a short amount of time. I told Gopala I was going for a walk & vaguely waved that I’d be back in a bit.

‘A bit’ turned out the be a couple hours later. Even that didn’t really feel like enough time alone. I knew what I really need, what I really wanted, was to be really truly alone & in control of my being- my schedule, my routine, my diet. Gopala had a bad tendency to judge absolutely everything I do. Only to follow up with some Vendatic reasoning if I showed any kind of indifference to the stuff he was telling me. What irritates me most about men, is that they seem to think “quiet & polite” means “weak & a push-over”, That alone really bubbles-up my inner demon. More then that though, I felt like my schedule wasn’t in my control either, I kept saying “I think I just need to get to San Fran and regroup”, but we found lots of reasons to delay.

Santa Cruz.

For what it’s worth, Santa Cruz is a really beautiful place and definitely has a really cool vibe about it. There were the most skaters I’ve ever seen in one area-- with the potential exception of Venice Beach. Driving down the streets you saw cool old cars with surf boards sticking out the windows or strapped onto the rook- waiting for the slightest bit of warmer weather. The beach was pretty nice, with a pier & bars like most Californian City Beaches. In addition to that, though, there is also a full blown carnival set up down there. Colourful rides & the like. Out of all the carnivals I’ve ever been to, this one genuinely had one of the best vibes about it- but maybe that’s because I walked through it alone (or rather on the phone with Kluane) due to it being the off season. The town is also filled with a lot of new-agey shops that smell like incense- although a little more gentrified than other places I’ve been. Overall Santa Cruz felt a little dream & half asleep. It’s a college town (a similar size to Kingston ON), that you can tell gets packed in summer with people seaking that iconic “California” experience.

Like much of the coast, there are a lot of people in Santa Cruz living out of their vans, not by force, but by choice. At the library, we pulled up next to this guy with a long grey beard & dreads tucking into his trucker hat. The van had all kinds of sticker stuck to the sides- bands, places & funny sayings- but mostly bands. Later in the day, we struck up a conversation with him, when he heard us listening to Jerry Garcia as Gopala redecorated the inside of his mobile shrine. He passed us a flyer & invited us to a few shows for the following week. Gopala seemed interested, but The shows started at 9, which was definitely later than we were staying up at that point. Plus he might have seen the pleading “please let’s just leave” face I had on. The guy went on to talk about conspiracy theories of the California fires & about surfing & about the “hundred year bloom” that was about to happen in Death Valley. On another trip- perhaps with my sisters- I could really settle into the vibe & would have loved to stay and make friends like this, but this time, I knew, was not the time.

Along with the distinctly laid back vibe, there is a really strong & healthy rebel vibe. We happened upon Subrosa (which, when I walked by before, drew me in too for whatever reason...maybe someone told me about & I forgot). Anyways, they were having a “Free Fair”, meaning everything there was Free- Nice clothing, massages, books, trinkets, homemade food, electronics & instruments. I myself, collected a t-shirt from an artist I think lives in New Orleans (because I recognize their work) & a couple ‘zines from their library which was about herbalism & making tincture. I kinda took a deep breath, because these people reminded me of my community back home. I overheard conversations like “oh, I’m teaching for two weeks at witch camp” & “yeah I was gathering a lot of pursulane recently”. I smiled to myself as the young girl whispered to her mom “look mom! There’s our farmer!” There was a guy also dressed up like a full blown pirate- like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean. I walked around the patio- looking a the lace & silk scarves hanging from the trees- talking myself down, because I knew I had absolutely no more room in my pack.

Gopala ended up getting into a Vendantic argument with that very same farmer not five minutes later. I snapped to attention- but there was nothing I could really do. The guy was pointing out that the bindi Gopala was wearing might be considered cultural appropriation, and Gopala went immediately into a schpeal about “well that only makes sense if you think you are the body”. To which the guy said “huh?” “you aren’t the body, you aren’t the mind, you are god”. You could tell the guy did not want to engage in that way and he about said as much, adding “I actually like being in my body & connecting to it” to which Gopala said something like “Well you are living in full ignorance then”. I wanted to scream out of embarrassment, but also on behalf of my allyship with this man. As we got into the car, I tried to explain to Gopala that he shouldn’t engage with people like that & why it might be inappropriate & how he is speaking from an opinion of the Truth, but that other people connect to Truth in a different way. He wasn’t interested in hearing me though, and pretty much accused me too of being “asleep”, to which he told me I’d feel better if I did some breathing excersizes. Instead I repacked my bag & held my breath (literally) for fear that if I let any of my breath out it would come tumbling out with curse words and further angry grumbles. He was reminding me more and more of a definite mixture of two of my least favourite ex-boyfriends and I was getting a huge urge to straight up run away. I was determined to get to San Fran, though and it was only an hour & a half away at that point.

We paused again near the seashore- because Gopala suggested doing meditation at the beach- I think he was trying to do it for me partitally, but we couldn’t find cheap parking anywhere. Instead we found a lot further up & I hoped out the car & called a friend. And cried a little out of frustration. And then I cried a little more about Ellie- and what a hard ass she had been. And that she was the type of person to say exactly what she meant & what she wanted & stuck to her guns like no one else. If I learned anything from her, it was that. I felt better after that cry. I knew that I had all that in me too. And I was fully resolved to use those skills, I didn’t care about being sweet and fully polite at that point.

San Francisco.

We got back in the car & finally drove onto the highway towards San Francisco. All the way, I was messaging friends who might have friends or contacts in San Fran- so I could ground with a friendly face of some sort. My friend Asa (who I stayed with in NOLA) used to live in Oakland (the city just across the bridge from san fran). He found a friend that I could stay with, which felt like a huge relief. She was out until late evening tho, so I decided to get a hostel for the night. I got Gopala to drop me off at the HI city centre & did my best not to full run out of the car. I didn’t think to look back though.

The Hostel is huge- obviously an old hotel of apartment building or something. It’s old, but has all the charms that come along with creaky buildings- including an old-fashioned elevator & distinct architecture features. The walls are covered in Art that depicts witches & little gothic characters. The front desk people looked normal enough- except one girl who was a full blown goth, complete with pleather jacket with fur trim, shaved hair style & the most dramatic eyebrows I’ve seen in a long while. Gothy-girl band music played over the common areas. I felt immediately at home/calm.

I went up to my room & decided the best thing I could do for myself was to re:group in simple ways- shower, meditate, read, check in with a few friends & write. I met my dorm mates- two girls from Germany on a road trip through the western part of America. We chatted for a while about travel & the Grand Canyon & the Coast of California. They leave today for the rest of their. I have to check out at 11 from the hostel & make my way to oakland with my big pack. Gopala already messaged me about coming to a Sivananda Vedanta thing, but I’m just gonna leave that message hanging a bit. I’ll have to get back to him eventually because I owe him gas money. For the mean time, I’m gonna take a breather & experience the city by myself.

So far, it feels a lot like New York- tall buildings everywhere- the “never sleep” vibe. I’m in a district called the Tenderloin, near chinatown. There are lots of homeless people around, so I went low pressure about the walking-around-at-night-by-myself. I did do some research about things to do around here. I heard tell that the Mission district is home to the best Burritos in the country- which I read on trip advisor first. But as soon as I went back into the lobby, a few people came in talking loudly about them too. So you know I’m going to have to do that. Apparently the city is fairly walkable. The German girls told me three days would be plenty to feel like I’ve “seen San Francisco”. I’m looking forward to it, but already planning my trip back to LA so that I have some wiggle room for my trip to Mexico. I’m really looking forward to that & hoping to save as much money as I can here (ha! the most expensive city in the sates) so that I have more money to do exciting things with my friends in Tulum. Trying my best to be present though, with all that being said. I have a good feeling about today, and that’s all I really need.

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yahoo-roto-arcade-blog · 6 years ago

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Closing Time: Kelvin Herrera traded out of fantasy value

Kelvin Herrera was traded Monday, but no umpires changed teams (AP)

Not every baseball trade turns into a zero-sum game for our purposes. The Nationals and Royals made a swap Monday and all it offered fantasy owners was a headache. No winners here.

Kelvin Herrera moves from Kansas City to Washington (the Royals scored three prospects), and with that his fantasy value takes a seismic hit. Herrera has been a terrific closer for the Royals this year (2.05 ERA, 0.82 WHIP, 14 saves), but he’s not going to be the chairman in DC. The Nats already made it clear — Sean Doolittle (himself having a knockout year) is the closer, with Herrera the next guy in line. Fantasy owners might hold Herrera for the ratios anyway, but you’re going to lose the handshakes, unless Doolittle hits a major slump or gets hurt.

[Yahoo Fantasy Football leagues are open: Sign up now for free]

The Royals are one of baseball’s worst teams, at 22-50, but if they can find a dedicated closer, he would hold some value for us. Unfortunately, there isn’t an obvious candidate. Those in deep leagues went scavenger hunting Monday, but there isn’t much to find in this bullpen.

Kevin McCarthy was probably the best guess in a weak lot, since he’s been the main set-up guy. A 1.12 WHIP is good, a 3.86 ERA not so good. He’s only struck out 19 men in 30.1 innings. He might be able to pitch to contact and get away with it. His best skill is his heavy ground-ball tilt.

Brandon Maurer was a mediocre closer in San Diego for a few years, carrying a career ERA over five. He’s been terrible in 5.1 innings this year (10 H, 8 R, 4 HR, 3 BB, 5 K). I’m not tossing a coin into that fountain.

Tim Hill at least strikes people out. The 28-year-old rookie has 23 whiffs over 21.2 innings, though he’s also walked eight men. His ERA is just under five, his WHIP a bloated 1.38. He’s also left-handed, which sometimes keeps a pitcher away from a dedicated ninth-inning job.

If you need to gamble on the few saves the Royals might produce, McCarthy is my guess. But I don’t blame anyone who prefers to avoid this situation completely.

• The only surprising thing about Brandon Nimmo is that we have to keep discussing him as a fantasy-add topic. He’s been such a terrific player for the Mets, he should have cruised well past the 50-percent threshold a while ago. Alas, he sat around 50 percent on the eve of the four-game Colorado series, and it took a monster game Monday (four hits, two homers — one a standing-up, inside-the-park special), to push a few people to the transaction they should have made weeks ago.

Over-the-fence home runs are becoming a little too easy and conventional for Brandon Nimmo. pic.twitter.com/52B07uHPWa

— New York Mets (@Mets) June 19, 2018

Nimmo has always been a pedigree player. He was the 13th overall pick in the 2011 draft, and he showed up on all three scouting clipboards before the 2015 season. The Mets didn’t see him as a primary outfielder when the season started, but he’s forced his way into 60 games, with dynamite results: .287/.401/.603, 12 homers, seven steals. He’s scored 35 runs. Over the last month, he’s hit .299, clocked 10 homers, stolen five bases, scored 20 runs. Only Mike Trout and Andrew Benintendi have more outfield fantasy value over that period.

Some will worry about gridlock later in the season, if and when the Mets get everyone healthy. But Nimmo has probably played too well to lose his spot in line. He also needs to show better results against lefties, not than an .801 OPS is reason for shame. He’s a monster against the righties (.309/.433/.667), and it’s a right-handed world.

If I were entering a redraft, I’d look at Nimmo around the fourth round. And I’m not sure that would be enough to get him. The Mets haven’t had many bright spots other than Jacob deGrom this year, but Nimmo’s been the star of the offense. I expect this to be a full-season story.

Not all fantasy sources are eager to buy into Nimmo. I’ve seen him ranked below Denard Span and Dexter Fowler on a few pages (offer Fowler for Nimmo and see how the other guy responds; better yet, just drop Fowler, please). Steamer says he’ll slash .237/.336/.394 the rest of the way. It’s important to realize some sources are going to be slow to buy a breakout. Wait for proof was the way everyone played fantasy baseball in the dark ages, but it’s not how you win a competitive mixed league today. Be better than that. I know most of you are, already.

• Are we back in on Pablo Sandoval? Can we at least have the conversation? Panda has a .271/.340/.457 slash, with an OPS+ of 118 and a wRC+ of 120. Both of those stats set 100 for league average; it’s just a new-agey way to say Sandoval has been, for his 144 at-bats, about 20 percent better than a league-average player.

Sandoval is ostensibly the current starter at third base, with Evan Longoria (busted hand) on the shelf. Panda has a .286/.364/.571 slash in June, with four homers in 49 at-bats. He’s striking out a quarter of the time, but his walk rate is almost to 10 percent. He’s eligible at both corner spots. I’m interested again. The Panda is owned in just three percent of Yahoo leagues.

• It’s been a dreadful year for fantasy catchers, especially if your league requires two starters. John Hicks was the lead to Dalton Del Don’s most recent pickups column, for good reason. Most fantasy owners will feel the backstop pinch, sooner or later.

With that established, we need to have a Tom Murphy chat.

Murphy is getting a chance to take the Colorado gig and run with it. He’s started six of the last seven games. Not a lot has come from it (6-for-23, two doubles), but any Coors Field regular is worth a kick of the tires. Murphy had a .289/.359/.642 slash at Triple-A, with 16 homers in 49 games.

The ownership tag is just five percent, so there’s time to get in. Chris Iannetta (.233, five homers) wasn’t doing much for the Rockies. Perhaps Murphy is ready to blossom at age 27.

Follow the Yahoo fantasy baseball crew on Twitter: Andy Behrens, Dalton Del Don, and Scott Pianowski

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currents420420 · 6 years ago

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And I thought- what if you were to take those models and jam them together into some kind of big social theory frankenstien?

We might use the work of B.F. Skinner as a jumping off point- known for his eponymous “Skinner Box,” a simple box which administered rewards or punishment in response to certain actions- pushing a lever, or moving to a particular part of the box. Even fruit flies, in a simple Skinner Box which heated up when they moved to one side of the box, soon changed their behavior in response to incentives, avoiding that side of the box.

How our actions are incentivized or disincentivized depends on the memes the people around us carry- memes not in the lolcat or spongebob sense, but in the older sense of the term, an element of a culture or system of behavior passed from one individual to another. How the people around us will respond to our actions is shaped by the moral beliefs, political beliefs, religious beliefs, etc. of people around us- these collections of memes, or memeplexes, often contain a list of dos and don’ts, and people carrying these memes will incentivize or disincentivize our actions according to these scripts.

A group of people sharing a value system act in tandem as a massive incentive system, affecting the behavior of everyone they contact, in ways from subtle to overt- to graph out what that looks like, let’s draw a rough diagram loosely inspired by a real life example, let’s say the culture war between the right and left surrounding the new age scene in 1970’s San Franscisco.

Let’s represent these with color dots, and say the blue dots are right-wingers and the pink dots are left-wingers, and the orange/yellow ones new-agers.

And then from there, draw arrows to indicate the influence that people have over each other- with the size of the arrow indicating the degree of influence one person has on the other, with the color of the arrow representing which value system is guiding how they incentivize or disincentivize behavior- in this case, whether they’re following the values of right-wing politics, left-wing politics, or the new-age scene in how they reward or penalize the actions of the actions of that person. (It might seem strange to think that there would be overlap between right-wingers and new-agers, but those familiar with the new age scene in 1970’s San Fransisco wouldn’t be surprised.) The social incentives which an individual receives, the social reality that they experience, is determined my their relations to the people around them, and the set of social incentives one person receives will be radically different from that of another. Within right-wing social clusters, they would be rewarded for praising then-governor Ronald Reagan, in left-wing social clusters they would be rewarded for opposing the Vietnam war, in new-agey social clusters they would be socially penalized for expressing disbelief in crystal healing, and so on.

This is very simplified rendition, of course- a perfectly accurate one would be excessively cluttered- but this works as a lose rendition of how communities interact. People with shared beliefs cluster together, and influence each other, and the people they’re socially adjacent to, according to those shared values.

Now, a lot of analysis which has used this sort of metaphor has framed it as strictly negative, but I don’t think that’s useful- these sorts of social organisms form any time you have multiple people together who have even vaguely shared beliefs about right and wrong, and I don’t think it’s meaningfully possible or desirable to prevent people from congregating around shared moral beliefs. We’re all cells in the bodies of vast superorganisms, we’re all conduits for forces far larger than ourselves, and that’s okay!

For lack of a better term, lets call these collective organism “currents,” building off of the sense of the term meaning “particular ideas, opinions or feelings being present in a group of people.”

But also referencing it’s more common usage as referring to a current of water - something a person can get caught in the flow of. Or an electrical current, coursing through anything which can become a conduit for it.

Most social phenomenon can be described in these terms- groups of people acting in tandem to incentivize and disincentivize behavior according to a memetic script- from political movements, to religions, to cults, to ethical philosophies, to governments, even to corporations and artistic movements- all of these can essentially be thought of as different varieties of currents.

And there can also be currents within currents- for example all corporations are sub-currents of the super-current of capitalism, which is the prevailing hegemonic economic current.

We could also roughly sort currents according to the categories of Economic and Ideological- or in Marxist terms, Base and Superstructure.

Often there will be superstructure currents which emerge out of base currents, or base currents which emerge out of superstructure currents- consider the mission statement of the ethos of a company as a superstructure current emerging out of a base current, or a boycott organized by political group as a base current emerging out of a superstructure current- or the food program run by the black panthers as a base current emanating from a superstructure current, which could have, had there been a successful revolution, evolved into a more larger and more complex base current- a socialist economy.

Our choices are so heavily shaped by the incentive structures of the social currents we interact with that insofar as we have any kind of autonomy as individuals, this is expressed more by what currents we choose to interact with or act as a conduit for than it is by what we choose to do within a given current.

To give a few examples to illustrate this:

A: Two people in the desert come across water. Instead of splitting it evenly, the stronger of the two simply kills the other, and takes all the water for themselves. (Also in this hypothetical they feel no guilt and won’t ever be intervened on by society, which is a bit of a stretch, sure, but I need an example to illustrate how selfishness plays out in the absence of any kind of incentive system.)

So selfishness is, overall, Not Great, but the picture is a little more nuanced than “selfishness=bad, selflessness=good”

When we do this, we can see an amoeba-like shape taking form- inner nuclei, and an outer membrane. Similar to how genetic code instructs cells on how to organize into an organism, this is how memetic codes instruct individuals on how to organize into collective superorganisms. And when the two memeplexes are more compatible, the superorganisms will overlap as they absorb each other, and when they memeplexes are less compatible, they’ll form more distinct boundaries, and attempt to siphon people away from each other, acting more directly in competition. Here we can see both the left-wing current and the right-wing current overlapping with the current of the new-age scene, making it a flashpoint for culture war sparring- this kind of scenario, where one current will become the arena in which two other currents battle each other, is far from uncommon. For example the culture war between the right and the left within the new age scene is mirrored today by culture war skirmishes between the right and left within the norse neopagan scene.

In addition, incentive structures are usually more severe, and the rules more strict, the deeper you go- this similarly helps to ease the process by which someone is absorbed into a current.

In some of those nuclei clusters we can see noticeable power hierarchies, particularly the ones on the top and bottom right, which are clearly centered around specific individuals or groups who the rest of the cluster is subordinate to. To tie this more firmly into the real world, if the pink and blue represent the political left and the right in this model, then the nuclei-like clusters would be both informal and formal groups of political activists or discussion groups, with some of the more formally organized political groups having overt hierarchies and chains of command.

These kinds of power imbalances within a current can have a detrimental effect upon it, resulting in a kind of social decay.

To give an example, consider the example reverend of a right-wing church gradually making his church more cult-like, consolidating his own power at the expense of his followers.

(A more thorough diagram might show how this church interacts with the larger current of Christianity, how the different denoninations act as distinct yet connected currents, how they’ll act in opposition or in tandem depending on circumstance, and how they overlap with both the right and the left- but it would take years to create a diagram which accurately captured that, and even then it would be so complex as to be almost unreadable.)

A person who already has disproportionate power within the current- in this case the aforementioned reverend- shifts their value system in their own favor, re-writing the rules to their own benefit- (one popular path for the preacher gone full-blown cult leader is to re-write the rules to allow themselves to take multiple young wives, like David Koresh did)- here I’m representing that shift in value-system with the shift from blue to teal-ish in the upper right corner- and this has a ripple effect on the cluster surrounding them,

But given his disproportionate ability to reward or punish his followers, they fall in line, adopting the new value system, enforcing it on each other horizonally in addition to the pressure the cult leader is exerting from above.

So while the popular narrative holds that we need hierarchy to maintain social harmony, in actuality hierarchy is in many ways harmful to social harmony- the powerful have every motivation to shift the rules in their favor, change the currents incentive structures such that it acts to their benefit and exploits the people lower in the hierarchy, not to mention when there is a clear divide between the people who make or enforce social rules, and everyone else, the people who make or enforce social rules have little reason to follow them- cops, and Ted Kennedy, can get away with murder.

Of course, a lot of the times the social rules were already in their favor to begin with- hence why they had more influence in the first place. In either case, whether baked in from the beginning or a function of societal rot as the powerful entrench their power, the end result is the same: the prevailing ideas and values are the values of the ruling class, and the interests of the ruling class disguised as the universal interest of all.

These pockets of dissatisfaction generally emerge in response to legitimate grievances with real problems in the value system of the status quo (though they can also occasionally be founded on illegitimate grievances, like a formerly privileged class losing their privilege). Often these problems in the value system are tied into the kind of exploitative hierarchies I mentioned earlier - however, problems can exist within the value system of a current without them necessarily being to any exploitative classes benefit- sometimes the source of the problem is that the rules have been written- or re-written- to benefit one group at the expense of the rest, but occasionally there are problems in the value system of a current which are caused by simple human error, and aren’t to anyone’s benefit.

For a modern example consider a group like redneck revolt, which reaches out to people in right-wing leaning rural areas and recruits them into the left, or conversely, for another example from time frame of our diagram, the 70’s, the Jesus movement, a right-wing movement which recruited hippies into reactionary evangelical Christianity- unlike a redneck revolt, which is pretty overt in what it’s goals are, the jesus movement was more deceptive, framing itself as a left-leaning progressive brand of Christianity when in actuality it’s most prominent figures were staunchly reactionary- just look at the Jesus movement associated cult the Children of God, which marketed itself to hippies and presented itself as progressive to outsiders, when secretly it’s was preaching racist, homophobic, and antiemetic screeds to the people living on the cult commune. An especially deceptive version of the milk before meat strategy comes into play here, in this case being used as a strategy to siphon people away from the left while concealing that intention, presenting a progressive face to suck in hippies and then indoctrinating them with far-right ideology once they’ve been ensnared. So while the strategy of one current extending a pseudopod into another to siphon away members may be pretty universal, it can either be done in ways which are more honest about the intentions, like Redneck Revolt, or it can be more underhanded and dishonest like the Jesus movement was.

But on the other hand, these pockets of dissatisfaction act as a corrective force, as people who have been harmed by the existing social norms within that current create an updated version of that value system, or an entirely new value system, in response to their material needs- so for example, the pocket in the diagram represents women who had been harmed by the dysfunctional social mores around sex in the 60’s radical scene, which spurred them to create ideological concepts based off of critiques of the “free love” norms of the 60’s radical scene, ideological concepts which would later be described as “sex-negative feminism”

In the classic dialectical materialist model, the first current is the thesis, then the new current growing out of the pocket of dissatisfaction is the antithesis, they synthesize into a new status quo, which inevitably will have it’s own pockets of dissatisfaction, and the process repeats.

For example, as portrayed in this diagram, the problems inherent in the 1960’s radical scene’s social norms around sex (which was one of the points of weakness the Jesus movement exploited) was the flashpoint for the development of feminist critiques of sex and porn, then the flaws inherent within the sex negative framework spurred sex positive feminist critiques, then the flaws within the sex positive framework spurred a new wave of sex critical feminism, and so forth, this back-and forth dialectic working to shape the social norms around sex within social spaces on the left.

Now, I’m sure some would argue that in the back and forth between sex negativity and sex positivity, one of the two was reactionary, and emerged to retain the privilege of an oppressive class and undo progress. However I disagree- I think both sex positivity and sex negativity- and the back and forth dialectic between them- played a progressive role in improving the social norms around sex within the left.

The pattern of “people disenfranchised by the current value system create new value system, which spurs praxis which shifts social norms to better accommodate peoples needs” is visible everywhere- revolutionary action by the oppressed against the status quo is not only a force in driving social and moral advancement- it’s the primary force, the grinding dialectical engine at the heart of history and morality.

We can see this pattern playing out in the field of LGBT rights, where homophobic and transphobic laws and social mores- which are a harmful incentive system which unnecessarily punishes benign behavior- spurred the emergence of the lgbt rights movement, as the people harmed by homophobic and transphobic social mores and laws to joined together in radical action to change them.

Or for an example on a larger scale, consider the way feudalism was supplanted by liberalism and capitalism, particularly around such flashpoints as the French revolution- so we can see that this dialectical pattern can take different forms, and while sex critical feminism and sex positive feminism both acted internally within the left, the contradiction which spurred the decline of feudalism was more severe, with the liberal enlightenment current more fully separating itself from the feudal current before overtaking it.

As noted earlier, the ruling class losing it’s power and privilege due to social progress creates it’s own pocket of dissatisfaction, which creates a harmful reactionary current.

The Illuminati was a small short-lived enlightenment-era discussion group, but then some deranged pro-monarchist priest named Augustin Barruel accuses them of having caused the French revolution, and from there the telephone game of the memetic ripple effect exaggerated the Illuminati into the ultimate shadowy boogeyman in the reactionary narrative. More than anything else, the fact that the whole right-wing conspiracy theory about the Illuminati is directly traceable back to the reactionary response to the French revolution shows just how severe the memetic ripple from that reactionary current was, and how firmly caught up in it’s wake a lot of modern reactionaries are. Both fascism and neoreaction can be understood as essentially mutations of the reactionary current which emerged in response to the French revolution.

However, while reactionary currents can undo progress, nonetheless the general overall trend of history is toward improvement- the long moral arc of the universe bending toward justice.

To answer this question with a question- how do you create an incentive system without that incentive system creating a power imbalance between those it rewards and those it punishes?

It’s a difficult question, with no easy answer!

Any time you have people in a group where some of them have shared beliefs about which actions are good or bad, these kind of social incentive systems are going to emerge- you could try to prevent people from doing anything which might in some way incentivize or dis-incentivize the actions of others, but how would you convince people not to reward or penalize the behavior of others, without in some way rewarding or penalizing their behavior yourself?

So as you can see, there isn’t an “out” here, and the dream of a world without incentive structures is in actuality neither desirable nor possible. The goal shouldn’t be to abolish all social incentive structures, but rather to correct what is broken, to replace flawed incentive structures with better ones, and to improve upon the social technology of morality.

So, what is the takeaway from all of this? Essentially that both Anarchists and Marxist-Leninists are right in some ways, and the way forward is to synthesize the two modes of thought- to merge the concepts of horizontal non-hierarchical social organization from Anarchists, with a sense of duty, unity, and discipline more akin to the ideas floated by Marxists in On Authority or Combat Liberalism. Through a more complete understanding of currents and how they function, we can more effectively create a revolutionary current which can supplant the hegemonic capitalist current, driving the great dialectical engine of history and morality forward toward greater human flourishing and prosperity.

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