Bravo! Love this even more than most of your posts.
I do think that it is impossible to fully disenchant the world however. The more that is attempted, the more it runs up against the nature of human beings, which is to seek for spiritual meaning, greater real understanding and God.
Because of this, I believe that the attempt to disenchant the world has no possibility of complete success, and therefore the "total closure or endpoint" can never be reached.
The more the State promises, the less it is believed.
The belief that new technology can be used by the State to obtain absolute control is wide of the mark. In fact technology has undermined the modern State by revealing its lies and lack of competence!
You might argue that AI will be different. I suspect it won't, and the hubris and narrow world view of the technocrats will become even more apparent.
And yet... we now have the knowledge that past theocracies were sometimes unpleasant to live in (if you came to the attention of the priests) and current theocracies are definitely unpleasant to live in (when you know that other ways of living exist). So 're-enchantment' if it means more religious or spiritual sensibilities is a poor place to aim at. The 'New Age' of the hippies was perhaps an attempt to roll back modernity and The Man but didn't and couldn't take hold. The 'Old Age' of some religious societies was limited too when some monks or religious orders could only exist by the charity of the wider population.
We are perhaps caught in the trap identified by Margaret Thatcher - we tend to believe in society as a 'thing', as modernity, but in reality 'society' is just ordinary people trying to live. And as modernity grinds on to a world government and everyone knowing their place the realisation that modernity carries no authority other than people choosing not to challenge it is a very fragile situation and open to disruption.
Thatcher. When anyone quotes her famous passage on "society", with disapproval, all they make clear is that they have not read the full speech, which is spot on - "society" is a nebulous concept; what we CAN affect is family, relatives, neighbours, and where we live. These all being real and not conceptual.
Meanwhile, am I right in thinking that Rousseau suggested that the state (or "general will") will make us free - whether we want to be"free" in those terms or not?
And that takes me to the wonderful lyrics of the Grateful Dead's song, "Liberty" in which their bard, Robert Hunter (a very smart man indeed), noted in the chorus as follows.
I prefer Ayn Rand, who wrote that there was no such thing as society, apart from the people who compose it. I've seen writers write about society as if it exists apart from its components and she must have done too.
Rand wrote that what is called 'society' is just a short way of saying a million, two million or however many million.
If only Godwin had proved as correct about the withering of the State with progress as he was about falling birth-rates.
There's a sense of inevitability in your piece (forgive me if I'm mis-characterising) that I don't share; certainly the left's claims that 19th century reformers laid the foundations of the Welfare State is teleological tosh.
In my view, the psychological effect of 2 World Wars made the appeal of a protective State seemingly irresistible. What a Pandora's Box the inception of the Welfare State has proven to be; culturally, politically and economically!
Thanks, Greg. No doubt the Wars had their impact on all of this. This is a point made explicit by Greenleaf in his old series on collectivism. There is a chart showing how each war caused the state to grow as a proportion of GDP without ever really falling back to pre-war levels.
Just one further observation... Is it really true that premodern government intervened less in people's lives? that there were greater limits on governance? I mean, religion tends to monitor the quotidian pretty effectively, arguably more so that the internet. And wrongthink was handled with murderous rampages.
Have you ever viewed Novecento by Bertolucci? An interesting sociological perspective there because the focus is on what is essentially a feudal community. The Church seems pretty far removed, as does government. So there's something to be said for freedom within the confines of certain regimes.
Hi Greg. Yes. "The Bug in our Thinking and the way to fix it". google me / it. I am embarrassed by self-promotion but struggling to overcome my embarrassment.
if you are in the UK on my own website the word 'hypnosis' in the coupon box will get you a small discount before end oct.
I’m only a third of the way in (I have a number of reads on the go!) but, I have to say, your book is absolutely fascinating and the most unusual I’ve ever read. Very interesting and will definitely put a comment on Amazon when finished.
very interesting (and we read Weber when I was in university). yet where you say the following I find one step too far: "...secular rule definitionally cannot point to God for its justification, and can only thereby point to the world itself..." << indeed, yet combined with a respect for and understanding that there is such a thing as Natural Law. "...and the purported necessity of in some way making it better..." << that's a tough one: 'better' than what? does colonialism, slavery, discrimination, wars fit in this presumed process of 'making things better'? ".... as reasons why government should exist...." << good example of legitimising one's own existence!
"Modernity dictates that there is no (explicitly) theological aspect to government - government’s only concern is the world and our relationship to it."
Pinkowski's latest essay at First Things describes the liberal triumphalism after the collapse of communism in 1989, when liberals assured us liberalism had won and we could enjoy "the separation of the public realm from the private sphere by appealing to value neutrality" in our politics forever and ever.
Neutrality.
The story begins long before 1989, but most recently, the transgender agenda rolled out in US public schools and pushed by US embassies abroad is one particularly raw, and insane, manifestation of the actually existing "value neutrality" we are all forced to enjoy. A man is a woman if he says so, and his declaration must be defended by the State. Nobody voted for transgenderism, but it is claimed to be a product of legitimate political maneuvering, finalized with a Supreme Court decision.
I appreciate your analysis of how separation has actually resulted in "the complete unification of the State and the world"; it pairs well with Pinkowski's essay and discussions.
As usual, great stuff here, David. The tale of the happy man from Herodotus is a favourite.
As I read Julius Ruechel's *Plunderers of the Earth,* I find myself concerned with central planning, especially as it pertains to global warming, and misguided global efforts to govern the weather. He points out how previous efforts to control nature have resulted in catastrophe: collapsed ecosystems through Lysenkoism, and the Great Dustbowl--essentially mass starvation. We've got lunatic programs going on now with Bill Gates advocating destruction of old growth forests to bury the carbon, and sun dimming. It's as though every effort is being made to make human systems more fragile. The end of modernity is looking more and more like the legend of Atlantis. So I'm not sure what will be left. My guess is it won't be much: crumbling infrastructure, a return to hunter gathering for a while... No joke.
Have you read 'Hospicing Modernity' by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, David? It might be a bit leftie but the title fits what you are grappling with here. I haven't read it yet but it's on my self, recommended by Dougald Hine. I don't always resonate with Dougald, but I admired his attempt to wrestle with the falling apart of control over his climate narrative world during 2020-2.
David, before reading this piece, I read these (the second a response to the first) articles. They seem to have some overlap with what you are writing about. You may like to read them
Another splendid explanation of the sheer futility of societal existence and its constant negation of the supreme importance of individuality. An individuality which should be predicated upon knowing who and what you are and your inconsequential place in the infinite universe.
It highlights the evolution of societal governance, with its view of the Enlightenment as merely a step in the journey to where we are now.
A journey which has produced the materialistic comfort and convenience resulting from technological advances, but which has merely promoted the view that humanity can and should control the world.
The article has opened my eyes to the superficial effect of the Enlightenment, which has had the effect of prompting the role of governance and, thus, societal control,
In considering the increasing chaos of modern life, I’ve been conscious of the ongoing ‘dumbing down’ of those aspects of the Enlightenment - principally the freedom to question and the increasing persecution of sceptics - as being a possible path back to a more acceptable mode of existence.
However, the article quite rightly alludes to the impossibility of ‘going back’ in time and, thus, that the utterly ludicrous coercing of humanity to accept the eventual principle of ‘world governance’ is just part of humanity’s journey.
Where it will lead is anybody’s guess and, as with the end of the ultimate human journey, we won’t know the answer until we get there!!!
The necessity of retaining the preternatural spirituality of existence is what, hopefully, will enable humanity to survive the lunacy of the attempted installation of a world governance and emerge into the next manifestation of the species.
"This argument is futile because all of the problems which Moynihan identifies (economic stagnation, demographic crisis, a bloated state which gobbles up the productive economy, ever-expanding regulation of society, paternalism, and so on) are in fact themselves consequences of Enlightenment."
On the contrary, they are the consequences of the anti-enlightenment, led by Kant, Hegel and Marx.
"So while people may have an instinct that it would be better it the State did less, and while there may be brief periods where it is made to do very slightly less (as in the UK in the 1980s), because there is no theological or spiritual limitation on the expansion of state authority and the scope of its interests, any objections are always: a) temporary, and b) unprincipled, i.e., having to be made within the framing of modern government and accepting its premises." - the entire concept of theocracy seems to have passed you by, as does Man's faculty of reason.
There is no justification, in reason, for the Omnipotent State, it can only be justified and has only ever been justified by appeals to faith and the rejection of reason.
The Omnipotent State requires both faith and altruism, the complete rejection of the enlightenment.
Oh, and the entire response to Covid, apart from in Sweden, was mediaevalist, the result of the anti-enlightenment.
Your entire article talks about nothing in particular, it doesn't define its terms, it uses words as if they mean everything and nothing simultaneously and is a humungous package-deal that groups exact opposites together, as if they are the same thing.
"And this has meant that, particularly since the Enlightenment, the political project of modernity has become the achieving of ‘progress’, meaning improvements in the material and moral conditions of mankind - making the world, literally, better." - progressivism is very old politics, very old epistemology and ethics presented as new.
Leaving aside whether I'm talking about 'nothing in particular', your first sentence is completely wrong, but in an important way. The response to Covid was not 'medieval' - it was exactly the opposite. It imagined that the aim of government was to cheat death. No medieval person could possibly have conceived of the state - or death - in that way, because they understood the soul, rather than the flesh, as the most important element of the human person. This in a nutshell is entirely what was meant in the article.
Bravo! Love this even more than most of your posts.
I do think that it is impossible to fully disenchant the world however. The more that is attempted, the more it runs up against the nature of human beings, which is to seek for spiritual meaning, greater real understanding and God.
Because of this, I believe that the attempt to disenchant the world has no possibility of complete success, and therefore the "total closure or endpoint" can never be reached.
The more the State promises, the less it is believed.
The belief that new technology can be used by the State to obtain absolute control is wide of the mark. In fact technology has undermined the modern State by revealing its lies and lack of competence!
You might argue that AI will be different. I suspect it won't, and the hubris and narrow world view of the technocrats will become even more apparent.
God must be laughing as he watches us!
Yes, I basically agree. Thanks, Adam.
And yet... we now have the knowledge that past theocracies were sometimes unpleasant to live in (if you came to the attention of the priests) and current theocracies are definitely unpleasant to live in (when you know that other ways of living exist). So 're-enchantment' if it means more religious or spiritual sensibilities is a poor place to aim at. The 'New Age' of the hippies was perhaps an attempt to roll back modernity and The Man but didn't and couldn't take hold. The 'Old Age' of some religious societies was limited too when some monks or religious orders could only exist by the charity of the wider population.
We are perhaps caught in the trap identified by Margaret Thatcher - we tend to believe in society as a 'thing', as modernity, but in reality 'society' is just ordinary people trying to live. And as modernity grinds on to a world government and everyone knowing their place the realisation that modernity carries no authority other than people choosing not to challenge it is a very fragile situation and open to disruption.
Thatcher. When anyone quotes her famous passage on "society", with disapproval, all they make clear is that they have not read the full speech, which is spot on - "society" is a nebulous concept; what we CAN affect is family, relatives, neighbours, and where we live. These all being real and not conceptual.
Meanwhile, am I right in thinking that Rousseau suggested that the state (or "general will") will make us free - whether we want to be"free" in those terms or not?
And that takes me to the wonderful lyrics of the Grateful Dead's song, "Liberty" in which their bard, Robert Hunter (a very smart man indeed), noted in the chorus as follows.
Ooo Freedom
Ooo Liberty
O... Leave me alone
To find my own way home
To find my own way home
I'm gonna find my own way home
I prefer Ayn Rand, who wrote that there was no such thing as society, apart from the people who compose it. I've seen writers write about society as if it exists apart from its components and she must have done too.
Rand wrote that what is called 'society' is just a short way of saying a million, two million or however many million.
Yes - coming from very different angles of course, one a politician the other an author/philosopher.
Not at all, they were coming from the same angle, essentially, though Rand was more articulate.
It's a poor place to aim at materially but perhaps not spiritually. We don't know. That's the point I wanted to make. It depends on one's framing.
If only Margaret Thatcher had been able to see herself as just an ordinary person trying to live...
Very interesting piece David.
If only Godwin had proved as correct about the withering of the State with progress as he was about falling birth-rates.
There's a sense of inevitability in your piece (forgive me if I'm mis-characterising) that I don't share; certainly the left's claims that 19th century reformers laid the foundations of the Welfare State is teleological tosh.
In my view, the psychological effect of 2 World Wars made the appeal of a protective State seemingly irresistible. What a Pandora's Box the inception of the Welfare State has proven to be; culturally, politically and economically!
Thanks, Greg. No doubt the Wars had their impact on all of this. This is a point made explicit by Greenleaf in his old series on collectivism. There is a chart showing how each war caused the state to grow as a proportion of GDP without ever really falling back to pre-war levels.
Just one further observation... Is it really true that premodern government intervened less in people's lives? that there were greater limits on governance? I mean, religion tends to monitor the quotidian pretty effectively, arguably more so that the internet. And wrongthink was handled with murderous rampages.
It intervened less but the church undoubtedly intervened more. Medievals were not free in any meaningful sense.
Have you ever viewed Novecento by Bertolucci? An interesting sociological perspective there because the focus is on what is essentially a feudal community. The Church seems pretty far removed, as does government. So there's something to be said for freedom within the confines of certain regimes.
yes indeed. I don't know if you've read my book (yet) but the core insight is the mechanism which both launched and limited the Enlightenment ...
Which book please Hugh? "The bug in our thinking?"
Hi Greg. Yes. "The Bug in our Thinking and the way to fix it". google me / it. I am embarrassed by self-promotion but struggling to overcome my embarrassment.
if you are in the UK on my own website the word 'hypnosis' in the coupon box will get you a small discount before end oct.
Just downloaded it on Kindle Unlimited (being a cheapskate) but thank you.
... just remembered - please do post a review on amazon when you have finished!
Hey no worries! It is on multiple platforms because I would like people to read /hear it. I don't expect to make money. I hope you enjoy it.
I’m only a third of the way in (I have a number of reads on the go!) but, I have to say, your book is absolutely fascinating and the most unusual I’ve ever read. Very interesting and will definitely put a comment on Amazon when finished.
Thank you. I am very glad that you are appreciating it. And, like all authors, very grateful for feedback.
very interesting (and we read Weber when I was in university). yet where you say the following I find one step too far: "...secular rule definitionally cannot point to God for its justification, and can only thereby point to the world itself..." << indeed, yet combined with a respect for and understanding that there is such a thing as Natural Law. "...and the purported necessity of in some way making it better..." << that's a tough one: 'better' than what? does colonialism, slavery, discrimination, wars fit in this presumed process of 'making things better'? ".... as reasons why government should exist...." << good example of legitimising one's own existence!
"Modernity dictates that there is no (explicitly) theological aspect to government - government’s only concern is the world and our relationship to it."
Pinkowski's latest essay at First Things describes the liberal triumphalism after the collapse of communism in 1989, when liberals assured us liberalism had won and we could enjoy "the separation of the public realm from the private sphere by appealing to value neutrality" in our politics forever and ever.
Neutrality.
The story begins long before 1989, but most recently, the transgender agenda rolled out in US public schools and pushed by US embassies abroad is one particularly raw, and insane, manifestation of the actually existing "value neutrality" we are all forced to enjoy. A man is a woman if he says so, and his declaration must be defended by the State. Nobody voted for transgenderism, but it is claimed to be a product of legitimate political maneuvering, finalized with a Supreme Court decision.
I appreciate your analysis of how separation has actually resulted in "the complete unification of the State and the world"; it pairs well with Pinkowski's essay and discussions.
Thanks very much - I'll have read.
As usual, great stuff here, David. The tale of the happy man from Herodotus is a favourite.
As I read Julius Ruechel's *Plunderers of the Earth,* I find myself concerned with central planning, especially as it pertains to global warming, and misguided global efforts to govern the weather. He points out how previous efforts to control nature have resulted in catastrophe: collapsed ecosystems through Lysenkoism, and the Great Dustbowl--essentially mass starvation. We've got lunatic programs going on now with Bill Gates advocating destruction of old growth forests to bury the carbon, and sun dimming. It's as though every effort is being made to make human systems more fragile. The end of modernity is looking more and more like the legend of Atlantis. So I'm not sure what will be left. My guess is it won't be much: crumbling infrastructure, a return to hunter gathering for a while... No joke.
Better get practicing survival skills!
Nailed it again, David! From where I'm standing, anyway.
Have you read 'Hospicing Modernity' by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, David? It might be a bit leftie but the title fits what you are grappling with here. I haven't read it yet but it's on my self, recommended by Dougald Hine. I don't always resonate with Dougald, but I admired his attempt to wrestle with the falling apart of control over his climate narrative world during 2020-2.
I haven't - thanks for the recommendation!
David, before reading this piece, I read these (the second a response to the first) articles. They seem to have some overlap with what you are writing about. You may like to read them
1. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/11/actually-existing-postliberalism
2. https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-post-cold-war-apotheosis-of-liberal
Another splendid explanation of the sheer futility of societal existence and its constant negation of the supreme importance of individuality. An individuality which should be predicated upon knowing who and what you are and your inconsequential place in the infinite universe.
It highlights the evolution of societal governance, with its view of the Enlightenment as merely a step in the journey to where we are now.
A journey which has produced the materialistic comfort and convenience resulting from technological advances, but which has merely promoted the view that humanity can and should control the world.
The article has opened my eyes to the superficial effect of the Enlightenment, which has had the effect of prompting the role of governance and, thus, societal control,
In considering the increasing chaos of modern life, I’ve been conscious of the ongoing ‘dumbing down’ of those aspects of the Enlightenment - principally the freedom to question and the increasing persecution of sceptics - as being a possible path back to a more acceptable mode of existence.
However, the article quite rightly alludes to the impossibility of ‘going back’ in time and, thus, that the utterly ludicrous coercing of humanity to accept the eventual principle of ‘world governance’ is just part of humanity’s journey.
Where it will lead is anybody’s guess and, as with the end of the ultimate human journey, we won’t know the answer until we get there!!!
The necessity of retaining the preternatural spirituality of existence is what, hopefully, will enable humanity to survive the lunacy of the attempted installation of a world governance and emerge into the next manifestation of the species.
"This argument is futile because all of the problems which Moynihan identifies (economic stagnation, demographic crisis, a bloated state which gobbles up the productive economy, ever-expanding regulation of society, paternalism, and so on) are in fact themselves consequences of Enlightenment."
On the contrary, they are the consequences of the anti-enlightenment, led by Kant, Hegel and Marx.
"So while people may have an instinct that it would be better it the State did less, and while there may be brief periods where it is made to do very slightly less (as in the UK in the 1980s), because there is no theological or spiritual limitation on the expansion of state authority and the scope of its interests, any objections are always: a) temporary, and b) unprincipled, i.e., having to be made within the framing of modern government and accepting its premises." - the entire concept of theocracy seems to have passed you by, as does Man's faculty of reason.
There is no justification, in reason, for the Omnipotent State, it can only be justified and has only ever been justified by appeals to faith and the rejection of reason.
The Omnipotent State requires both faith and altruism, the complete rejection of the enlightenment.
Oh, and the entire response to Covid, apart from in Sweden, was mediaevalist, the result of the anti-enlightenment.
Your entire article talks about nothing in particular, it doesn't define its terms, it uses words as if they mean everything and nothing simultaneously and is a humungous package-deal that groups exact opposites together, as if they are the same thing.
"And this has meant that, particularly since the Enlightenment, the political project of modernity has become the achieving of ‘progress’, meaning improvements in the material and moral conditions of mankind - making the world, literally, better." - progressivism is very old politics, very old epistemology and ethics presented as new.
Leaving aside whether I'm talking about 'nothing in particular', your first sentence is completely wrong, but in an important way. The response to Covid was not 'medieval' - it was exactly the opposite. It imagined that the aim of government was to cheat death. No medieval person could possibly have conceived of the state - or death - in that way, because they understood the soul, rather than the flesh, as the most important element of the human person. This in a nutshell is entirely what was meant in the article.
On the contrary, lockdown is part of green ideology and, as such, mediaevalist in nature.