Good essay DLA. You have a knack for tying together the loose threads of history into an insightful narrative. In each human capital cycle, a simple truth is reformulated in a rigorous way that gives it political efficacy (with timing also being important). The implementation of this simple truth then removes inefficiencies, leading to a virtuous cycle of capital improvement. Removing barriers to land ownership, literacy, and political participation all improved economic efficiency by creating a more meritocratic environment in the short term. In the long term this led to eugenic changes in the population. Human capital was improved through education as well as selection pressure.
Wokeness/DEI/race communism is sort of a self-aware attempt to harness this energy, but it falls short because its basic hypothesis is incorrect. DEI posits that there is a lot of elite human capital that is being unfairly held back due to various -isms, and that forcing elite institutions to take these people in will correct this. Unfortunately that theory does not appear to be working, and in fact it is reducing efficiency by excluding and demoralizing competent workers from “privileged” backgrounds.
I agree that genetic engineering is likely the next frontier. 200 IQ test tube baby Übermenschen with LLM personal assistants will usher in the next virtuous cycle. Hopefully this can happen without another Black Death, though some kind of population collapse is bound to happen given declining birth rates.
Privileged people aren't being excluded; they are being ideologically tested for cooperation and openness. I highly recommend you read Werner Zagrebbi on this:
Interesting read. Like with every Gray Mirror essay I read, I now have some further reading to do. Btw is Zagrebbi a real person or is this another Yarvin pseudonym?
After reading it I still agree with my initial position. Zagrebbi seems to be saying that wokeness is popular because it signals high status and pro-sociality, and he explicitly compares it with Abrahamic religion in that regard. I don’t disagree with that, nor do I disagree that right wing/HBD/race realist types are more likely to be disagreeable and uncooperative. But just because woke thought helps members of a globalized elite get along professionally, doesn’t mean it won’t be harmful for the general economy. At the end of the day, if academic standards are being relaxed in order to force more black doctors through medical school, the quality of medical care is sure to decrease. And just like with Abrahamic religion, wokeness has benefits for social cohesion, but it comes at the cost of stifling scientific debate.
Wow this is a very dense article, I will need to re-read it but I am curious. What is your writing process like, I really like it because you have a very high ideas/word density but still I am able to follow it and there is a common thread for the ideas, it is not hectic
I am guessing you read Richard Hanania? I think he coined the term "Dale Gribble voter."
Anyhow, I agree with you that the first wave of "industrialization" actually preceeded colonialism (I've read a lot of Medieval history and it really is true that by c. 1450 Europeans had way more personal freedom and tech than most other cultures, and that those things had a positive feedback loop).
I'm skeptical that Marxism ever did much to industrialized the countries that fell to it. It's true that, for instance, China industrialized under the CCP, but all the non-comminist countries in that part of the world industrialized faster.
I also don't think it's fair the characterize Freemasons as deists who admired paganism and rediscovered science, art, and architecture during the Renaissance. Science and architecture were both progressing all through the high and late middle ages, and while some Masons are deists, most of us have always been Protestants with ordinary religious views for our time/place (including a negative view of pre-Christian paganism.) Nor did Masonry, which didn't really become a "speculative" fraternal order until the 17th century in England and Scotland, have anything to do with the Italian Renaissance. (Our rituals existed in an early form during the times of Petrarch and Leonardo, but the people performing them were devout Catholics hard at work building Gothic cathedrals in England, northern France, and the Low Countries, not philosophers or artists in Italy.)
Can you give me an example of a country that industrialized as quickly as the Soviets or Chinese during the same time period, of a similar size and scale? It's an impossible question to answer, because there are no other countries of a similar size and scale.
You don't have to be a communist to agree with the statement that "enslaving people increases economic development in the short term."
I don't think you understand the history of Proto-Freemasonry. Read Machiavelli. I can't take any Freemason after 1965 seriously -- totally dead and hollowed out institution.
I don't see why it follows that a country being large requires it to be communist to industrialized quickly. In 1945, South Korea amd Taiwan were agrarian backwaters just like mainland China, and on a per capita basis they industrialized much more quickly and with fewer needless political killings.
You can of course assume that different rules apply for big countries like Russia and China, but then your theory has a small-sample-size problem, since the only other country of that size (the United States) had already industrialized more gradually during the 19th century. (And FWIW I consider Britain and America's gradual industrialization to be a bigger accomplishment, since those countries were actually inventing the new technologies the made the industrial revolution possible, not just copying them.)
And Freemasonry before 1965 wasn't dominated by Deists either. Sure there were some, simply because Masons are big on religious tolerance (though Deism as a major current in Masonry was mostly an 18th century thing), but Masonry itself had nothing to do with the Italian Renaissance or the philosophies of Michiacelli and Montaigne, and if you think otherwise it's probably because you've borrowed a lot of ideas from Catholic conspiracy theorists who label everything they don't like as "Masonry" or "Proto-Masonry."
And if you're going to talk about something that changed radically in the year 1965 and became a "totally dead and hollowed out institution," maybe you should look closer to home? Masons don't have a centralized authority that's powerful enough to bury most of our rituals in one fell swoop, but someone else does....
South Korea and Taiwan were allied with the United States, which injected money into them. Not communism, but a form of international welfarism.
In the 1500s, Proto-Masonry is the name I give to the organized Deistic movement. Rudolf II, for example, was a proto-Mason, who didn't believe in any of the various sects. These people were often Platonists, sometimes called Hermeticists.
The Catholics are right in this instance, and your defensiveness doesn't excuse bad history. I have no clue what you're implying when you say I should look closer to home -- that I'm a communist?
Good essay DLA. You have a knack for tying together the loose threads of history into an insightful narrative. In each human capital cycle, a simple truth is reformulated in a rigorous way that gives it political efficacy (with timing also being important). The implementation of this simple truth then removes inefficiencies, leading to a virtuous cycle of capital improvement. Removing barriers to land ownership, literacy, and political participation all improved economic efficiency by creating a more meritocratic environment in the short term. In the long term this led to eugenic changes in the population. Human capital was improved through education as well as selection pressure.
Wokeness/DEI/race communism is sort of a self-aware attempt to harness this energy, but it falls short because its basic hypothesis is incorrect. DEI posits that there is a lot of elite human capital that is being unfairly held back due to various -isms, and that forcing elite institutions to take these people in will correct this. Unfortunately that theory does not appear to be working, and in fact it is reducing efficiency by excluding and demoralizing competent workers from “privileged” backgrounds.
I agree that genetic engineering is likely the next frontier. 200 IQ test tube baby Übermenschen with LLM personal assistants will usher in the next virtuous cycle. Hopefully this can happen without another Black Death, though some kind of population collapse is bound to happen given declining birth rates.
Privileged people aren't being excluded; they are being ideologically tested for cooperation and openness. I highly recommend you read Werner Zagrebbi on this:
https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-origin-of-woke-a-george-mason
Interesting read. Like with every Gray Mirror essay I read, I now have some further reading to do. Btw is Zagrebbi a real person or is this another Yarvin pseudonym?
After reading it I still agree with my initial position. Zagrebbi seems to be saying that wokeness is popular because it signals high status and pro-sociality, and he explicitly compares it with Abrahamic religion in that regard. I don’t disagree with that, nor do I disagree that right wing/HBD/race realist types are more likely to be disagreeable and uncooperative. But just because woke thought helps members of a globalized elite get along professionally, doesn’t mean it won’t be harmful for the general economy. At the end of the day, if academic standards are being relaxed in order to force more black doctors through medical school, the quality of medical care is sure to decrease. And just like with Abrahamic religion, wokeness has benefits for social cohesion, but it comes at the cost of stifling scientific debate.
Completely agree with everything you have said here.
Wow this is a very dense article, I will need to re-read it but I am curious. What is your writing process like, I really like it because you have a very high ideas/word density but still I am able to follow it and there is a common thread for the ideas, it is not hectic
I hope we’re able to genetically modify adults, if 200 IQ Aryan youth steal my job and gf I’m ending it.
I am guessing you read Richard Hanania? I think he coined the term "Dale Gribble voter."
Anyhow, I agree with you that the first wave of "industrialization" actually preceeded colonialism (I've read a lot of Medieval history and it really is true that by c. 1450 Europeans had way more personal freedom and tech than most other cultures, and that those things had a positive feedback loop).
I'm skeptical that Marxism ever did much to industrialized the countries that fell to it. It's true that, for instance, China industrialized under the CCP, but all the non-comminist countries in that part of the world industrialized faster.
I also don't think it's fair the characterize Freemasons as deists who admired paganism and rediscovered science, art, and architecture during the Renaissance. Science and architecture were both progressing all through the high and late middle ages, and while some Masons are deists, most of us have always been Protestants with ordinary religious views for our time/place (including a negative view of pre-Christian paganism.) Nor did Masonry, which didn't really become a "speculative" fraternal order until the 17th century in England and Scotland, have anything to do with the Italian Renaissance. (Our rituals existed in an early form during the times of Petrarch and Leonardo, but the people performing them were devout Catholics hard at work building Gothic cathedrals in England, northern France, and the Low Countries, not philosophers or artists in Italy.)
Yeah, here's my previous article: https://deepleft.substack.com/p/cultural-marxism-on-the-right
Can you give me an example of a country that industrialized as quickly as the Soviets or Chinese during the same time period, of a similar size and scale? It's an impossible question to answer, because there are no other countries of a similar size and scale.
You don't have to be a communist to agree with the statement that "enslaving people increases economic development in the short term."
I don't think you understand the history of Proto-Freemasonry. Read Machiavelli. I can't take any Freemason after 1965 seriously -- totally dead and hollowed out institution.
I don't see why it follows that a country being large requires it to be communist to industrialized quickly. In 1945, South Korea amd Taiwan were agrarian backwaters just like mainland China, and on a per capita basis they industrialized much more quickly and with fewer needless political killings.
You can of course assume that different rules apply for big countries like Russia and China, but then your theory has a small-sample-size problem, since the only other country of that size (the United States) had already industrialized more gradually during the 19th century. (And FWIW I consider Britain and America's gradual industrialization to be a bigger accomplishment, since those countries were actually inventing the new technologies the made the industrial revolution possible, not just copying them.)
And Freemasonry before 1965 wasn't dominated by Deists either. Sure there were some, simply because Masons are big on religious tolerance (though Deism as a major current in Masonry was mostly an 18th century thing), but Masonry itself had nothing to do with the Italian Renaissance or the philosophies of Michiacelli and Montaigne, and if you think otherwise it's probably because you've borrowed a lot of ideas from Catholic conspiracy theorists who label everything they don't like as "Masonry" or "Proto-Masonry."
And if you're going to talk about something that changed radically in the year 1965 and became a "totally dead and hollowed out institution," maybe you should look closer to home? Masons don't have a centralized authority that's powerful enough to bury most of our rituals in one fell swoop, but someone else does....
South Korea and Taiwan were allied with the United States, which injected money into them. Not communism, but a form of international welfarism.
In the 1500s, Proto-Masonry is the name I give to the organized Deistic movement. Rudolf II, for example, was a proto-Mason, who didn't believe in any of the various sects. These people were often Platonists, sometimes called Hermeticists.
The Catholics are right in this instance, and your defensiveness doesn't excuse bad history. I have no clue what you're implying when you say I should look closer to home -- that I'm a communist?
Violence isn't rising in the developed world. You're reading memes, not data.
Your talking points are hot air. Violent crime is down.