Amerika

Among human groups, a tendency arises to use the power of the group to suppress disturbing ideas. The origin of this arises in the fear of the individual of not being included, and so the group criminalizes exclusion. This creates a society of tolerance, acceptance, low standards and entropy, because by not rising to a standard above themselves, the group declines to a mediocre standard.

Think of every coddled and protected entity you can: this is what group tendencies do. Dodo Birds lose the ability to fly or flee; the children of rich celebrities become entirely inert; people in government bureaucracies where they are shielded from the consequences of their actions lose all sense of being efficacious or efficient. This is entropy.

In every age, there are those who stand against the group and point to the duality of reality and principle — the former what arbitrates results, the latter how we know what to aspire to — as what should replace the group. We recognize that human social groups converge on what is convenient, not what is real, and as a result are as toxic and poisonous as an epidemic.

These individuals against the herd tend to find themselves branded heretics, pariahs and evil, hateful people. Of course, we must note that to evil, good is evil, and therefore that much as to the insane the sane are insane, the herd will oppose any healthy ideas.

This means that a celebration of honest heresy is in order. Let us list a few, for your enjoyment and contemplation, that turn reality against the herd:

• What is popular, is wrong. Most people pursue what is popular as a means of choosing an option which is “safe,” meaning that it works for others and is safe from social criticism or censure. They are motivated more by fear of doing wrong in a social context than desire to do right in terms of end results in reality. In addition, they choose what is simplified and convenient for them to do. This is why short-term solutions and easy answers win out, even with an intelligent group. The “committee mentality” prevails wherever people are trying to get along with each other because interpersonal politics become more important to individuals than finding a solid and clear answer.
• People are self-deluding. Humans like to think of themselves as good people who exist in a state of equilibrium. Instead, the mind rapidly flits between ideas, desperately trying to hold on to a sense of order, and so most decisions are made from the perspective of doing what makes the individual feel most stable. For this reason, individuals tend to reject difficult and complex problems and replace them with simple emotional reactions. This in turn makes them hostile to clear solutions and explanations.
• Evil is real. Looking at existence from the prospect of its continuity and improvement, we might view “good” as that which is connected to the whole and responsive to it, thus interacting with it and improving it qualitatively. Evil, on the other hand, would be that which withdraws from the whole and focuses on a subset of the whole in order to increase its own power. Where good encourages reflection, or meditation on our own acts and their consequences as well as potential actions and goals, evil short-circuits this process and disconnects from the wider world in order to be more focused on the individual and what it can possess or control. Whether or not there is a Satan lurking below us in a demonic underworld — although we are thankful for this notion, as it brought us some of the best Slayer lyrics — something like “evil” exists around us and within us, and is a temptation of every second of every day and in every action that we take or fail to take.
• Our goal is organization. Most efforts fail because they are disorganized, which means that parts are not assembled in a pattern that enables them to interact to produce the end goal. Our enemy is disorganization, which is the process by which chaotic individuals create disorder among the parts, sabotaging the end goal in order to engage in some self-interest of their own. Even thoughts need to be organized. Where disorder persists, dysfunction becomes the accepted norm and thus people act toward further dysfunction, much as we see in the modern fallen West.
• Morality is size-independent. A society has a moral standard like surface tension of a body of water: once pierced, chaos results. Any immoral acts work toward piercing this moral standard, and all moral acts strengthen it. In this view, whether one steals a billion dollars or a candy bar, the result is the same. People become accustomed to immorality, then become corrupt, and by accepting this as the norm, destroy anything good and replace it with a corrupt alternative. This is how values are inverted.
• The only solution is quality people. Rules do not ensure good outcomes, only that the interpretation of the rules will be changed. Market forces and political censure can be dodged. Bureaucrats and police cannot restrain an unruly populace. The only solution is to have good people, both in competence and moral character, in power in all places where decisions are required. The farm with a good owner prospers; the farm with a bad owner, or no owner, does not.
• Elitism is compassion. When we establish hierarchy by elevating the best and demoting the worst, we create a more competent and functional structure. This in turn leads to better results and all benefit from these, even if they were demoted from higher degrees of wealth, power and status.
• Rationalization destroys purpose. Most people, when a sub-optimal outcome is achieved, do not agitate to press toward a better outcome. Instead, they accept the mediocre and rationalize or justify it as being what they wanted all along. For this reason, asking a group of people if they are “happy” is a pointless endeavor; they do not know, and will make themselves happy with even bad results.

These heresies are taboo because they invert the usual human way of thinking, which is that if we find a way to unite the group and get everyone or most everyone to agree on something, we have achieved a good result. This is normally described as peace, happiness, love, equality, oneness, tolerance or any of the other brain-negating concepts used by those who prefer short-term absence of conflict — driven by their individual fear — to finding a working answer. People would rather patch a leaky boat than rebuild it, even if it still leaks.

Currently, we are in the midst of a change of orders. The old order was created over the past thousand years as power was divided from a central hierarchy into increasing degrees of mob rule. It found its ultimate expression in liberal democracy as a global order, and since that entity reached power, the failure of that approach has become clear. Now the old order fades away, and we look toward something new, which introduces fear and trembling among the herd.

As part of this transition, it is imperative that we remove social pretense and other illusions so that we can see the actual task before us. What was heresy under the old order will be common sense under the new, and while this provokes fear among much of the popular, it is important to remember that they fear risk out of concern for their personal self-interest, and any ideologies or protestations they offer are merely camouflage for that fear.

Our new path as a species, as nations and as individuals lies in defeating fear. We must face the truth, no matter how cold and sharp it seems, in order to achieve greatness again. Only through this can we escape the falling order of the old and learn the wisdom of embracing the new.

Tags: committee mentality, elitism, heresies, organization, popularity, rationalization, self-interest

Forging A Perfect Conservatism | Outliers (#49)