Thread by @Meaningness

🇺🇸 In the run-up to the last election, I wrote several pieces about politics from a meta-rational point of view. I’m going to tweet links to some of them as a thread over the next few days.

🇺🇸 Our current political divide is rooted in the culture war that began with the New Left & hippie counterculture in the 1960s-70s, versus the Evangelical counter-counterculture of the 70s-80s.

To better understand, I wrote a memetic history of that war: meaningness.com/countercultures

🇺🇸 The two countercultures, though apparently opposed, were strikingly similar attempts at solving the same fundamental problems of meaning—which are still unresolved.

My history of that attempt and its failure is long, so I will tweet only selections…

🇺🇸 Countercultural conflict brought about a fundamental redefinition of “left” and “right” in politics. We’re having another fundamental realignment now… more about that later. meaningness.com/political-left…

🇺🇸 Why we are fighting a culture war—

and how we can stop. meaningness.com/counterculture…

🇺🇸 “Tribal, systematic, and fluid political understanding”: Getting past both in-group self-interest and ideology to develop dynamic, functional social institutions meaningness.com/metablog/polit…

🇺🇸 A concrete plan to save democracy by separating policy from tribal culture warring. meaningness.com/metablog/virtu…

I wrote this shortly before the 2016 election partly as satirical, absurdist entertainment.

Since then, I've increasingly thought it should be taken seriously.

"Politics is not about policy," in the memorable words of @robinhanson, channeling @tylercowen . Instead, it's about who gets how much ritual status.

overcomingbias.com/2008/09/politi…
overcomingbias.com/2008/07/is-ide…
marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…

I suggested fixing politics by dividing the practical and symbolic functions of government, and giving everyone a say in either one or the other—your choice each election.

The 2016 campaign season was evidence that the Court of Values would preside over a circus of outrageous buffoons. I suggested that might be the very thing that makes the scheme work...

I have changed my mind. Separating the practical work of government from the festival of contrived outrage is critically important, yes.

But we do *also* critically need a functional Court of Values that somehow must also be separated from the culture war.

A good society is one in which most people have a sense that we're moving forward together and that most people are contributing. America, and the rest of the postmodern world, have lost that.

Lockstep conformity is not necessary or desirable; widespread vague agreement is.

(h/t @palladiummag, which played a major role in changing my thinking about this.)

I believe that we actually already have widespread, albeit vague, agreement on what constitutes a good society. Empirical research corroborates this.

What we don't have is common knowledge that we do agree.

We don't have that because vast industries benefits from obscuring it.

What can be a forum for mutual acknowledgement of shared purpose? For deepening agreement through exploration of social possibilities?

How can that be insulated from those malign interests who profit from social discord?

🇺🇸 My 2016 essay on political realignment is holding up well, I think.

The definitions of left vs right originating in the 1960s-80s counter-cultures became irrelevant.

A new split is apparent: between communal and systematic values.

meaningness.com/metablog/commu…

Before 2016, both parties coddled their bases with the tired rhetoric of the prior divide (monism vs dualism), but their actions increasingly obviously favored the status quo corrupt, ineffectual, unjust systemic institutions.

In 2016, the Democratic Party Establishment narrowly maintained control over its anti-systematic Progressive wing. The Republican Party Establishment failed.... and here we are again.

Most Americans recognize that our current political class is entirely dysfunctional and has to go.

Unfortunately, there is no Plan B. Destroying corrupt institutions ("abolish the police," "drown the government in a bathtub") sounds great until you think through consequences...

De facto, the Democratic establishment is now the conservative system-retaining party, & the Republicans are the radicals bent on destruction.

This was an accident, & may not be a stable realignment.

But the last major realignment was also an accident... meaningness.com/political-left…

As a thought experiment, what might be a stable communal vs. systematic realignment?

Middle American Republican professionals & business owners depend on systemic institutions, & will tolerate only so much government dysfunction.

Can Democrats take them by promising stability?

Trump is doing surprisingly well with Blacks and Hispanics this time.

Can the Republicans take them by giving the whole anti-systematic population what it wants—health care and subsidized working-class jobs—irrespective of race?

In this scenario, the swing vote might be the desk-job lower middle class.

On the one hand, their wages have been flat for decades, their future is bleak, and they resent the upper middle classes' undeserved economic success. Vote against this corrupt system!

On the other hand, their desk jobs are the metabolism of the wildly inefficient status quo, which wastes the time of half the population in processing forms. Sweeping away corrupt institutions would eliminate millions of bullshit jobs. What else can they do? Vote for the system!

The status quo and systemic collapse are both obviously awful, and having two parties that advocate two awful paths might be awful.

However, it would clarify that those are the options the political class now offers us, so a third alternative is needed...

And a period of dynamic tension between advocates of corruption and destruction might stave off collapse while forcing some reform—

Buying us time to figure out what we want instead, and how to get it. meaningness.com/fluidity-desid…