House of Eratosthenes

A political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change…the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change.

Liberalism:

A theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard.

A political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties…a philosophy that considers government as a crucial instrument for amelioration of social inequities.

These don’t work, especially when one seeks to understand the current political situation in the United States, led as it is by a “conservative” who seeks to change things, and is resisted by “liberals” who want to keep things the way they are. These liberals do not believe in the self-regulating market, as America’s First Holy Emperor made all too clear.

My definitions are imbued with the unique desirable advantage of actually working, even across across time:

What exactly does conservatism seek to conserve? Civilization, the blessings that come from having it, and the definitions that make civilization possible. From what does liberalism seek to liberate us? Those things — starting with the definitions.

Civilization, the dictionary tells us, is:

A relatively high level of cultural and technological development…the culture characteristic of a particular time or place…refinement of thought, manners, or taste…a situation of urban comfort.

I take issue with these as well. Not because I disagree with what they say, but because they’re weak definitions. They depend on themselves.

Civilization is the banishment of something else; it is an absence of something. That something is brutality.

Savage cruelty, inhuman behavior, insensibility to pity or shame.

Brutality is when we act like animals, civilization is when we act like something better. Brutality is when, I am bigger and stronger than you and you have something I want, it’s mine already. You just don’t know it yet. When I want it I’ll take it. Civilization is a bulwark, of some kind, against that. Civilization has laws, usually criminal and civil. It has hierarchies of authority. It provides for redress of grievances.

I wasn’t there, but civilization must have started with motherhood. That’s because it must have started with someone who was weak, and yet valued by someone who was strong; this must be how physical strength, as the coin of the realm, was displaced by something else — the only way it could happen. The brute is at the top of the local hierarchy of brutes, the strongest one who can take all that he pleases. But the brute has a mother. If he wants to go and do his brutalizing, he has to leave the cave and roam around, and cannot be there all the time. And so there must have been pacts made: You leave mine alone, and I’ll leave yours alone.

Civilization depends on definitions of things. For a definition to work, it must a) impose an objectively-evaluated reproducible result upon complex situations that arise from everyday life, and b) not depend on itself. Reviewing human history, even casually, it is easy to see civilization is not the default state. The human race has managed to erect various civilizations, and after a time these crumble into nothing and become archeological relics. So it takes something to get a civilization going, and once it’s started you can’t just walk away and expect it to keep on truckin’.

Anything that is not the default state, that involves other people and may or may not work — to get it working and keep it working, you have to have three things. You must have these definitions, along with the willingness to make and abide by the definitions once they’re made; you have to have the resources, including time, work and the willingness to do the work; and you have to have the vision.

A thought, concept, or object formed by the imagination.

Many people can participate in a common effort, each contributing their visions, if they agree on a common set of values.

Something intrinsically valuable or desirable: …sought material values instead of human values.

Once you form a vision, you can make a plan. The plan requires the vision; you have to incorporate a workable understanding of what it is you’re trying to do.

A method for achieving an end…a detailed formulation of a program of action.

If the plan involves some threshold of complexity, it can be broken down into objectives.

Something toward which effort is directed…an aim, goal, or end of action.

Plans and objectives may require strategies.

The art of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward a goal.

And of course strategies rely on tactics.

A device for accomplishing an end.

Values → Vision → Plan → Objective → Strategy → Tactics.

We argue among ourselves about politics, because we have disagreements about one of those six. The six are in sequence. Disagreements about strategy and tactics are easy to resolve. Disagreements about values and vision are much harder to resolve.

All of these depend on defining things. An organizational hierarchy can work as an effective substitute against definitions of things, with someone at the very pinnacle laboring under, or enjoying, the final word on how to resolve whatever pressing questions arise. But these civilizations are not stable and they don’t last. One may protest that ancient civilizations, such as the Egyptians, persevered exactly this way and for thousands of years. But it only appears that way to the very casual reader. Such “civilizations” were broken up into dynasties, with schisms, internecine squabbles and other conflicts. We tend to think of these as enduring civilizations because new factions were too respectful, or perhaps too lazy, to knock down the monuments and other artifacts of the previous ones. But in the meantime, they obliterated some of the definitions made or observed by those previous ones.

It is fashionable, in this day and age, to observe that conservatives and liberals are all trying to achieve the things outlined above. It isn’t so. “Liberals,” as we use that word today, are definitions-averse. Definitions get in the way of their fun, so they oppose the creation of new definitions where they’re needed, and in fact are in favor of obliterating the definitions we have already. They seek to “liberate” us from the definitions that make civilization work. They want their pyramid-shaped power structure. Each liberal fancies himself either as the despot at the pinnacle of the power-pyramid, or sharing a kinship with that despot.

The old saying is that a conservative is a liberal who got mugged. That’s close to the truth, which is: A conservative is a liberal who was on the wrong side of bureaucratic power, on the wrong side of capriciously made “final” decisions. And the liberal may think himself a conservative who was on the wrong side of law, and/or police brutality. Even in cases where that’s true, the eradication of civilization, in whole or in part, is an overly heavy-handed solution to the problem. It appeals only to those who “think” with their emotions, and are definitions-averse.

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Memo For File CCXWednesday, September 26th, 2018

Memo For File CCX
Wednesday, September 26th, 2018