Self-deception and social corrosion

History as warning, analogy and caricature.

Will Francis, Unsplash

The latest essay in the Worshipping the Future series is up on Helen Dale’s Substack. It examines, using the evolutionary lens, our capacity as self-deceptive, rationalising moralisers. How, given so much of our cognition is not conscious, we can game ourselves in order to game others.

The essay has sparked some particularly insightful or otherwise useful comments. What follows is based on my replies to comments on the essay.

Myth versus history

A useful discussion of why meritocratic cultures generate historiographical cultures and hierarchical ones generate mythic cultures is Donald E. Brown, Hierarchy, History & Human Nature: the Social Origins of Historical Consciousness. That the politics of the transformational future theologises history, based on identity hierarchies, is why it is so prone to producing cartoon or caricature (i.e. mythic) history.

This turn to mythic history as a result of creating identity hierarchies has become a pervasive problem in an academy increasingly dominated by the politics of the transformational future. In forthcoming essays, I will explore the foundational lie of feminism (that the liberation of women required a special ideology) and its implications.

Hyper-norms

In the latest essay, I introduce the notion of hyper-norms. Norms that trump all other considerations, even practicality or the basic structure of things.

For instance, making it a matter of moral urgency that folk born biologically male be declared to be women. Even if that means a double rapist gets sent to a women’s prison.

Similarly, that disastrous crime and homelessness policies are adopted in “progressive” cities.

There is a danger that the concept of hyper-norms could be used in a special pleading way. The point has to remain focused on moralising that rejects fundamental structures of reality, not simply how things happen to be in a particular society.

The concept of hyper-norms very much came out of my reading of scholarship on the nature of norms and rules. I read H L A Hart’s ‘The Concept of Law’ many years ago, so have not been citing it because I would need to re-read it to be confident in any such citation.

The work which really enabled me to get a useful grasp on norms is Cristina Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms (2006) and her Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure and Change Social Norms (2017). She develops her analysis rigorously, based in part on behavioural lab work.

I was struck by how “free floating” moral norms seem to be in her analysis. Which I now see as a strength rather than a weakness. For instance, Westerners tend to be more moral in behavioural labs than in real life; foragers less moral in such labs than in real life. The latter live far more in a world of connections, the former behave differently when on display.

The use of moral claims to dismiss concerns about structure is a pattern that, once you are alerted to it, keeps popping up. So I am confident the notion of hyper-norms is onto something, but agree one has to be careful in the use of it.

Inward or outward

I have recently become somewhat enamoured of C-dramas, as they can be both great stories and be very intelligently done. (I only bother with those which are non-historical or set before 1800, to avoid the propagandising.)

The difference between the karmic cultures of Asia and the one-life cultures of the Middle East and its religious colonies (which includes the entire West) becomes very clear in their respective fantasy tales. I particularly recommend Love Between Fairy and Devil, available on Netflix, to see this.

The difference very much shows up in their philosophies. Even though China is a profoundly meritocratic, and so historical, culture, while India is a profoundly hierarchical, so mythic, culture the difference between them as karmic cultures compared to Middle Eastern monotheism and “one shot” European/Mediterranean paganism is quite clear.

Two books which explore these differences are Thomas McEvilly’s magnum opus, The Shape of Ancient Thought which, while showing that Greek and Indian philosophy were both far more similar, and far more mutually influenced, than is usually acknowledged, also shows their very different trajectories.

It is more typical for the philosophy of the karmic cultures to head inwards into consciousness. Conversely, it is more typical of Greek-derivative philosophies to evolve into a more outward-from-consciousness direction. A pattern exemplified by Descartes’s cogito ergo sum.

A good introduction to the difference is Amaury de Riencourt, The Eye Of Śiva: Eastern Mysticism and Science.

Intimations of murder and mimesis

In the essay, I write of:

Homo sapiens: the ape that murdered its way into niceness. The human condition in a nutshell.

Rene Girard famously argued that human society was based on a foundational murder. It turns out, our emergence as a species, as Homo sapiens, was likely based on generation after generation of murders.

On this hypothesis, we are the most gracile species in the genus Homo because we had less need of facial robustness to ward off blows. Instead, there was more selection for emotionally expressive faces to intensify cooperation. Less reactive aggression, and more effective proactive aggression, meant that we are the only species of Homo left standing.

Girard also argued for the importance of mimetic desire. It also turns out that we are the most imitative primate, engaging in much more complete imitation of our conspecifics than chimpanzees do. This aids both learning and cooperation, but can obviously have runaway effects. Especially in circumstances of high levels of efficient self-deception and/or poor levels of consequences feedback. Such as social media generates.

Historical analogies

I am always somewhat wary of applying historical analogies too closely.

For instance, CCP China strikes me as being more Second Reich in its international dynamics than Third Reich. Yes, it is institutionally more similar to the Third Reich (but all Marxist polities are, though the use of markets and commerce by the CCP intensifies the similarity).

Yet, when one looks at the international politics, the Second Reich analogy seems stronger. First, because any military confrontation is likely to be navally centred. Second, because the CCP wants Power dominance rather than territorial expansion. Third, the foreign policy adventurism is driven more by concerns for regime stability than explicit territorial objectives.

As for Roman analogies, the comparison really is with the Christianisation of the Empire over the C4th and C5th, where the analogy is very strong, rather than the decline of the Western Empire, where the analogy is much weaker.

The West still has a serious operational advantage over potential military opponents. So we are well before the Battle of Adrianople (378) demonstrated that Rome had lost its operational advantage. (A fatal flaw, as was demonstrated across the ensuring 10 decades, since Roman soldiers were much more expensive to put into the field than their Germanic opponents.)

I am also very wary of invoking any analogies with either Fascism or National Socialism with any part of Post-Enlightenment Progressivism (“wokery”), even though, in so many way, the “Post-Enlightenment” is the Counter-Enlightenment 2.0.

Including analogies between “woke” capital, and either Fascism or National Socialism. A crucial difference is the lack of the fetishising of the military (including as a model of political action) in “wokery”, that is such a distinctive manifestation of fascism in all its forms.

That “woke” capital is a form of oligarchy seeking normative dominance is clearly true. Thus, Martin Gurri is enlightening on how the online mobs of identitarian cancel culture are a useful mechanism for elite dominance.

Elite racialisation is always a divide, favour-and-dominate strategy, and that particularly applies to “woke” racialisation.

Expanding the level of efficient (i.e. beneficial for the individual) self-deception within social milieus, especially elite social milieus, is not good for the long-term prospects for any society or civilisation.

Examining patterns of social corrosion, potentially leading to various levels and forms of social collapse, is one of my concerns in writing the essays. Hence the latest essay examining how powerful (and potentially destructive) a force self-deception is.

References

Cristina Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms, Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Cristina Bicchieri, Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure and Change Social Norms, Oxford University Press, 2017.

Donald E. Brown, Hierarchy, History & Human Nature: the Social Origins of Historical Consciousness, University of Arizona Press, 1988.

David Cayley (ed.), The Ideas of Rene Girard: An Anthropology of Violence and Religion, 2019.

Jean Ensminger and Joseph Henrich (eds.), Experimenting with Social Norms: Fairness and Punishment in Cross-Cultural Perspective, Russell Sage Foundation, 2014.

H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law, Oxford University Press, 1961.

Thomas McEvilley, The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies, Allworth Press, 2002.

Amaury de Riencourt, The Eye Of Śiva: Eastern Mysticism and Science, Honeyglen Publishing, 1980.

Michael Tomasello, ‘The ultra-social animal,’ European Journal of Social Psychology, 2014, 44, 187–194.

Richard W. Wrangham, ‘Two types of aggression in human evolution,’ PNAS, January 9, 2018, Vol.115, No.2, 245–253.