Lorenzo, this latest post is an unexpected treat. You have taken the many threads you’ve been pulling on for years - fertility collapse, institutional rot, elite status games, the realignment of Western politics - and woven them into one clear picture. Instead of another standalone diagnosis you bring together Piketty on the Brahmin Left versus the Merchant Right, Goodhart on Anywheres versus Somewheres, al-Gharbi and Turchin on elite over-production and moralized status competition, Henderson on luxury beliefs, Miniter on the unaccountable classes, and Davies on the current political realignment, and you show how they actually fit together. The result is a coherent view of a civilization whose technology has outrun its evolutionary adaptations, whose institutions are increasingly run by people insulated from consequences, and whose conventional parties no longer speak for the rooted majorities they once claimed to represent. The essay therefore works both as a useful map of the present and as a reminder of why your longer body of writing is worth going back to: you ground it in evolutionary, biological and historical realities. The authors you listed, even though their descriptions are insightful and varied, and they all have explanations based on their specific way of looking at the world, it feels to me they are dealing with abstract humans, as they mostly miss the root of explanatory power - the evolutionary process that brought us here and made us who we are as humans, in our best and our DSA worst.
I think it’s pretty clear from history that if the Anywhere class doesn’t offer some concessions to the populist movement some sort of violent unrest is locked in. They have taken on the form of the medieval Catholic Church (which funnily enough seems to happen in the institutions of all historically Protestant countries) and the Reformation is bubbling away, probably to an explosive point.
Look at it as Reformation Part II. Luther proposed a new God over the old Church. The woke propose a new god over the old one, called EQUALITY. But as in all previous cases it is not necessary to actually LIVE one´s faith, just declare it.
I guess this makes the internet and social media the new Gutenberg Press.
The needs are eternal—ritual, group bonding, redemption and atonement, millenarian fantasies, scapegoating etc—but the new technology seems to create a brand-new market (or even brand-new ecosystem) for these needs to be reinvigorated, reimagined and then to create the symbiotic relationship between the needy proles and the new class of opportunists, moral/spiritual entrepreneurs and self-proclaimed messiahs, who arise to conquer this new world.
Our Social Justice moment is a sort of post-God mashup of Calvinism and Marxism, with all the same intense destructive energy of past religious uprisings, based on a fundamentalist form of egalitarianism that can never be achieved, thus never doubted or abandoned.
And, like you said, admission is free as long as you promise to post the right hashtags or wear one of the revolutionary bangles (BLM sticker and/or keffiyeh). Who could pass up this deal? Moral superiority plus meaning and purpose for almost nothing!
Yes any historian worth their salt can see the obvious parallels. But even more so, America itself seems to frame everything via the 17th century wars of religion, probably because most of its founding stock were from that time. It’s Roundheads and Cavaliers on repeat.
Sometimes we even experience a Prohibition as in America during the 1920's, only to completely forget all about it after it´s all over. Just like covid!
Mate, you are a fucking Katana, slicing though layers of bullshit to reveal the truth. Or perhaps a Claymore or broadsword would be a better choice of blade?
I admire your fearlessness in speaking the often unpalatable truth.
Anyway, thanks for that, as always. I regard you as one of the great public intellectuals of our time. If/when you come to Canberra, which is my AO, I would be very pleased to shake your hand, buy you a beer, offer you a bed etc.
From the chart on math, science and reading scores, it appears that the only people dumber than the Palestinians are the people immigrating there. Makes sense.
Great essay. I have always felt the PMC class need the problems to continue to exist. The first order of any organisation is its own survival which creates a conflict of interest. You capture this conundrum very well.
The feminisation of institutions with a philosophical change of direction plays a larger part in the equation IMHO - weakened accountability, equity outcomes, consensus enforcement through speech codes etc. I would appreciate your thoughts.
1) "How anti-racism can increase racism" - no kidding: when racists on behalf of some group attack another group in an "anti-racist" way, what do you expect? And was that not the progressive flaming-out of it that started during the Obama presidency? For the reason that we had just elected a black president - for two terms - so how do you get the progressive vote from now complacent blacks and various minorities if you don't reawaken a fear of non-existent racism?
2) "The Declining IQ of University Students" - the average IQ of US undergraduates dropped from around 120 in 1940 to about 102 now. Additionally, in 1940 only 5% of adults in the United States held a college degree, and 42.8% of Americans ages 25-39 had a bachelor's degree or higher in 2024. Meaning almost half of the graduates are now below IQ 100, and instead of ~5% of the population back then, the number of college graduates is closing in on half the population. With correlated future job achievements on jobs they are not capable of performing (or earning "unemployable degrees" for which they are not capable or interested to pay the loans back - so give us socialism and loan forgiveness). While receiving all the indoctrination. What a way to overproduce an entitled, scornful retard elite? Also, based on the trend, it well may be that in 1900 the college graduate IQ level may have been even higher.
From other sources:
1) From X, "In 2022, Nature Human Behavior published an even more atrocious editorial in which they essentially asserted that they would censor articles that came to the wrong conclusions about sex and race differences." https://x.com/EPoe187/status/2095530576501440979?s=20 . So much for the data Cremieux uses to support his opinions on sex differences - the IQ equalitarian ones.
Does not this imply a fundamental difference in cognition between men and females of the species, and as a corollary that the elements of IQ tests, what is omitted, and the balancing of verbal and non-verbal elements (only by a few points)? No one disputes the "fatter tails" (of the Gaussian distribution) though. Because, it is implausible it is all just "the feelings" that differ.
Here is another one - PISA tests are scored on 15 year old - meaning girls are pretty much matured, and boys need another couple of years on average to get there. So, with all the praise of girls outperforming boys in school - on aggregate, even on average boys significantly outperform girls on math and science. And don't give me "they are just not interested, but if they were, they would be better than boys": https://x.com/marcportermagee/status/2097291533762301994 Because, if they were uninterested for the last 100K years, that what adaptation and selection works on - being better at something, which does not apply if a sex does not do something at all and is not interested in doing. Also, argument that they were just historically excluded from pursuits that engage cognitive adaptations that when sciences arrived were applicable leads to the same genetic adaptation result.
- and - Rob Henderson "by four years of age, girls tend to think that boys are academically inferior to them...teachers often see their female students as academically superior...they see things this way even when aptitude tests show the opposite pattern for their classes."- https://x.com/robkhenderson/status/2097526137836429649?s=20
So, it started with amazement not unlike watching a dancing bear: "The marvel is not that the bear dances well, but that the bear dances at all" and ending up believing that bears are dancing better than the ballroom dancing competitors. Or, in other words, it started with belief that if we keep repeating the "girl power" it will become reality; instead the belief itself detached from reality became the truth "good people" believe in. One of dozens of such beliefs in the woke religion catechism.
When things get tough for Somewheres, there’s a tendency towards hostility to those perceived to be “not on our side”. Populous immigrant groups are often observably different in race & culture. They also act as a proxy for frustration with the Elites who feel distant & untouchable.
And the very fact that you're talking about "somewheres", the implicit understanding being that it doesn't matter where they are from as long as it's somewhere, should be a signal that the you've already concede the point to the anywheres.
I am not sure that Charlie Kirk and Anne Widdecombe would agree with you. Most people continue to live pretty normal lives: but that is true across much of history. Until, of course, it’s not.
Yes, but isn´t the motivation behind these crimes always the big screen of life, where the feeling of being left out becomes simply unbearable? Doesn't really need to be a screen; could be raging headlines on cheap newsprint. It all depends on the technology of identity making, as would say "Hair" Professor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1wHOhJpyic
I enjoyed the analysis, but you gloss over the biggest issue for national populists: what the electorate wants is impossible. It's basically a rejection of trade-offs: no immigration, reduced global trade, subsidies and tariffs to protect local industries so we can have the manufacturing job, stable or reduced taxation for the "middle class", no data centers, but still solid economic growth that can pay for en expanded safety net. All of this with soaring government debt and anemic growth everywhere except for the US. But I guess trade-offs are just a lie invented by technocrats and "experts"
Australia experienced quite a long period where the politics of trade-offs were managed well.
A lot of the problem is elite refusal to acknowledge trade-offs. For instance, that there are any costs to immigration. Or that having both Net Zero AND mass immigration is obviously incoherent.
With Covid we experienced an utter failure of technocratic “management”.
Elite institutions have pissed their credibility away by engaging in various forms of performative moral absolutism, at times just outright lying (see the Fauci diaries), or abusive refusal to consider that there are other concerns that have to be considered. The increasing resort to censorship (I am sorry “worrying about misinformation”) is having the effect that censorship normally has—increasing distrust and alienation, while breathing life into conspiracy theories.
Know nothing about Australia but I have voted in the United States off and on through my adult life, and I have never seen an election between candidates who represented in their speech or written views or party platforms or voting records, one or the other side of these things you call trade-offs.
We’ve literally never been asked.
If they ever decided to ask, they would make sure they had stocked the electorate just so.
I defy you to find any common ideological thread among Piketty, Goodhart, al-Gharbi, Henderson, Turchin, Miniter and Davies. The social dynamics explain a great deal about who has what ideology, both because of which ideologies resonate and who gets selected into various roles.
Lorenzo, this latest post is an unexpected treat. You have taken the many threads you’ve been pulling on for years - fertility collapse, institutional rot, elite status games, the realignment of Western politics - and woven them into one clear picture. Instead of another standalone diagnosis you bring together Piketty on the Brahmin Left versus the Merchant Right, Goodhart on Anywheres versus Somewheres, al-Gharbi and Turchin on elite over-production and moralized status competition, Henderson on luxury beliefs, Miniter on the unaccountable classes, and Davies on the current political realignment, and you show how they actually fit together. The result is a coherent view of a civilization whose technology has outrun its evolutionary adaptations, whose institutions are increasingly run by people insulated from consequences, and whose conventional parties no longer speak for the rooted majorities they once claimed to represent. The essay therefore works both as a useful map of the present and as a reminder of why your longer body of writing is worth going back to: you ground it in evolutionary, biological and historical realities. The authors you listed, even though their descriptions are insightful and varied, and they all have explanations based on their specific way of looking at the world, it feels to me they are dealing with abstract humans, as they mostly miss the root of explanatory power - the evolutionary process that brought us here and made us who we are as humans, in our best and our DSA worst.
Terrific analysis of the Hollow Men. Thanks.
I think it’s pretty clear from history that if the Anywhere class doesn’t offer some concessions to the populist movement some sort of violent unrest is locked in. They have taken on the form of the medieval Catholic Church (which funnily enough seems to happen in the institutions of all historically Protestant countries) and the Reformation is bubbling away, probably to an explosive point.
Look at it as Reformation Part II. Luther proposed a new God over the old Church. The woke propose a new god over the old one, called EQUALITY. But as in all previous cases it is not necessary to actually LIVE one´s faith, just declare it.
I guess this makes the internet and social media the new Gutenberg Press.
The needs are eternal—ritual, group bonding, redemption and atonement, millenarian fantasies, scapegoating etc—but the new technology seems to create a brand-new market (or even brand-new ecosystem) for these needs to be reinvigorated, reimagined and then to create the symbiotic relationship between the needy proles and the new class of opportunists, moral/spiritual entrepreneurs and self-proclaimed messiahs, who arise to conquer this new world.
Our Social Justice moment is a sort of post-God mashup of Calvinism and Marxism, with all the same intense destructive energy of past religious uprisings, based on a fundamentalist form of egalitarianism that can never be achieved, thus never doubted or abandoned.
And, like you said, admission is free as long as you promise to post the right hashtags or wear one of the revolutionary bangles (BLM sticker and/or keffiyeh). Who could pass up this deal? Moral superiority plus meaning and purpose for almost nothing!
https://youtu.be/yLiPPtxKRAA?si=WycjbR4bmIzdkQde
Yes any historian worth their salt can see the obvious parallels. But even more so, America itself seems to frame everything via the 17th century wars of religion, probably because most of its founding stock were from that time. It’s Roundheads and Cavaliers on repeat.
Great minds think alike! :)
Thanks for all your great work...
The form of the reformation plays out almost daily in all facets of our culture. It seems it is the only way we can organise ourselves.
Sometimes we even experience a Prohibition as in America during the 1920's, only to completely forget all about it after it´s all over. Just like covid!
Mate, you are a fucking Katana, slicing though layers of bullshit to reveal the truth. Or perhaps a Claymore or broadsword would be a better choice of blade?
I admire your fearlessness in speaking the often unpalatable truth.
Anyway, thanks for that, as always. I regard you as one of the great public intellectuals of our time. If/when you come to Canberra, which is my AO, I would be very pleased to shake your hand, buy you a beer, offer you a bed etc.
Aaand...that comment was directed at Mr Warby, which may not have happened due to some Substack Tomfuckery.
Thank you. Haven’t been back to Canberra for years, but would be delighted to take up your offer if I do visit.
May I suggest Neil Postman's Technopoly on the tendency for technological change to unsettle culture.
Found this, which reinforces your recommendation.
https://juliangirdham.substack.com/p/neil-postmans-technopoly
From the chart on math, science and reading scores, it appears that the only people dumber than the Palestinians are the people immigrating there. Makes sense.
Great essay. I have always felt the PMC class need the problems to continue to exist. The first order of any organisation is its own survival which creates a conflict of interest. You capture this conundrum very well.
The feminisation of institutions with a philosophical change of direction plays a larger part in the equation IMHO - weakened accountability, equity outcomes, consensus enforcement through speech codes etc. I would appreciate your thoughts.
And a propos of explanatory foundations, a few observations from Steve Stewart-Williams:
https://www.stevestewartwilliams.com/p/the-science-of-ticklishness - some statistics that go along with Lorenzo's discourse.
1) "How anti-racism can increase racism" - no kidding: when racists on behalf of some group attack another group in an "anti-racist" way, what do you expect? And was that not the progressive flaming-out of it that started during the Obama presidency? For the reason that we had just elected a black president - for two terms - so how do you get the progressive vote from now complacent blacks and various minorities if you don't reawaken a fear of non-existent racism?
2) "The Declining IQ of University Students" - the average IQ of US undergraduates dropped from around 120 in 1940 to about 102 now. Additionally, in 1940 only 5% of adults in the United States held a college degree, and 42.8% of Americans ages 25-39 had a bachelor's degree or higher in 2024. Meaning almost half of the graduates are now below IQ 100, and instead of ~5% of the population back then, the number of college graduates is closing in on half the population. With correlated future job achievements on jobs they are not capable of performing (or earning "unemployable degrees" for which they are not capable or interested to pay the loans back - so give us socialism and loan forgiveness). While receiving all the indoctrination. What a way to overproduce an entitled, scornful retard elite? Also, based on the trend, it well may be that in 1900 the college graduate IQ level may have been even higher.
From other sources:
1) From X, "In 2022, Nature Human Behavior published an even more atrocious editorial in which they essentially asserted that they would censor articles that came to the wrong conclusions about sex and race differences." https://x.com/EPoe187/status/2095530576501440979?s=20 . So much for the data Cremieux uses to support his opinions on sex differences - the IQ equalitarian ones.
2) So, here is a study on human sex differences: https://x.com/jonatanpallesen/status/2096606283805634801?s=20
Does not this imply a fundamental difference in cognition between men and females of the species, and as a corollary that the elements of IQ tests, what is omitted, and the balancing of verbal and non-verbal elements (only by a few points)? No one disputes the "fatter tails" (of the Gaussian distribution) though. Because, it is implausible it is all just "the feelings" that differ.
Here is another one - PISA tests are scored on 15 year old - meaning girls are pretty much matured, and boys need another couple of years on average to get there. So, with all the praise of girls outperforming boys in school - on aggregate, even on average boys significantly outperform girls on math and science. And don't give me "they are just not interested, but if they were, they would be better than boys": https://x.com/marcportermagee/status/2097291533762301994 Because, if they were uninterested for the last 100K years, that what adaptation and selection works on - being better at something, which does not apply if a sex does not do something at all and is not interested in doing. Also, argument that they were just historically excluded from pursuits that engage cognitive adaptations that when sciences arrived were applicable leads to the same genetic adaptation result.
Another pernicious manifestation lately is grading bias favoring girls vs boys for the same answers: https://www.stevestewartwilliams.com/p/boys-are-falling-behind
- and - Rob Henderson "by four years of age, girls tend to think that boys are academically inferior to them...teachers often see their female students as academically superior...they see things this way even when aptitude tests show the opposite pattern for their classes."- https://x.com/robkhenderson/status/2097526137836429649?s=20
So, it started with amazement not unlike watching a dancing bear: "The marvel is not that the bear dances well, but that the bear dances at all" and ending up believing that bears are dancing better than the ballroom dancing competitors. Or, in other words, it started with belief that if we keep repeating the "girl power" it will become reality; instead the belief itself detached from reality became the truth "good people" believe in. One of dozens of such beliefs in the woke religion catechism.
3) And now US socialists, you cannot make it up, "the more dysgenic, the better": https://x.com/thestustustudio/status/2096267045033640073?s=20 Yes, the spiteful mutants wearing black "Covid" masks in 2026.
Talking about dysgenics, here is another DSA meeting: https://x.com/ima_pseudo41406/status/2096342218399428881?s=20 These are the vanguard who want to change the world to their liking.
Say goodbye to the civilization.
"42.8% of Americans ages 25-39 had a bachelor's degree or higher in 2024."
As W.S. Gilbert said, If everybody's somebody, then no-one's anybody.
When things get tough for Somewheres, there’s a tendency towards hostility to those perceived to be “not on our side”. Populous immigrant groups are often observably different in race & culture. They also act as a proxy for frustration with the Elites who feel distant & untouchable.
And the very fact that you're talking about "somewheres", the implicit understanding being that it doesn't matter where they are from as long as it's somewhere, should be a signal that the you've already concede the point to the anywheres.
If you stop looking at a screen, things actually seem pretty normal most of the time.
I am not sure that Charlie Kirk and Anne Widdecombe would agree with you. Most people continue to live pretty normal lives: but that is true across much of history. Until, of course, it’s not.
Yes, but isn´t the motivation behind these crimes always the big screen of life, where the feeling of being left out becomes simply unbearable? Doesn't really need to be a screen; could be raging headlines on cheap newsprint. It all depends on the technology of identity making, as would say "Hair" Professor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1wHOhJpyic
civilization is a thin veneer.
I enjoyed the analysis, but you gloss over the biggest issue for national populists: what the electorate wants is impossible. It's basically a rejection of trade-offs: no immigration, reduced global trade, subsidies and tariffs to protect local industries so we can have the manufacturing job, stable or reduced taxation for the "middle class", no data centers, but still solid economic growth that can pay for en expanded safety net. All of this with soaring government debt and anemic growth everywhere except for the US. But I guess trade-offs are just a lie invented by technocrats and "experts"
Australia experienced quite a long period where the politics of trade-offs were managed well.
A lot of the problem is elite refusal to acknowledge trade-offs. For instance, that there are any costs to immigration. Or that having both Net Zero AND mass immigration is obviously incoherent.
With Covid we experienced an utter failure of technocratic “management”.
Elite institutions have pissed their credibility away by engaging in various forms of performative moral absolutism, at times just outright lying (see the Fauci diaries), or abusive refusal to consider that there are other concerns that have to be considered. The increasing resort to censorship (I am sorry “worrying about misinformation”) is having the effect that censorship normally has—increasing distrust and alienation, while breathing life into conspiracy theories.
Elite fecklessness is so much of the problem.
Yes. The fact is that too many of the elite are not elite at all, just bureaucrats.
"unaccountables" is certainly a much more accurate description
At this point there is no upside to (or trade off from stopping) third world immigration. Start there.
Know nothing about Australia but I have voted in the United States off and on through my adult life, and I have never seen an election between candidates who represented in their speech or written views or party platforms or voting records, one or the other side of these things you call trade-offs.
We’ve literally never been asked.
If they ever decided to ask, they would make sure they had stocked the electorate just so.
Oh, look they have.
They want open buffet, and to lose weight.
Always appreciate such posts that condense a lot of our political follies and explain them by using ideology
I defy you to find any common ideological thread among Piketty, Goodhart, al-Gharbi, Henderson, Turchin, Miniter and Davies. The social dynamics explain a great deal about who has what ideology, both because of which ideologies resonate and who gets selected into various roles.