How England Sees Itself

Unfortunately, I’m a bit too short of time to participate in this thread properly. It’s a nice coda to our earlier discussion, though.

One thing that I think it shows is that although liberalism makes a big deal about having eliminated prejudice, this isn’t really the case. Not only in the sense that older prejudices are still here, but also in that liberalism adds some of its own—against conservatives, against the past: anybody who isn’t already a liberal, basically.

That’s because it’s almost impossible for people not to form some common ideas about the world as such, and so, despite its protests, liberalism privileges particular values just like all the other belief systems.

What’s different about liberalism is that if it’s not rational, it has to go. This gives it a claim to objectivity, but also a kind of inhuman, cyborg quality.

This is well demonstrated by the discussion here. Looked at rationally, people in the middle of society should vote left or liberal and not conservative, because their interests are better served by the liberal-left. And since rationality is the highest standard of knowledge, this is a definitive judgement—i.e., it’s not wishy-washy subjective knowledge, it’s a fact; the kind of thing academics can sign-off against. All of which makes the behaviour of the people in the middle seem bizarre and inexplicable. Don’t they get it? They must be stupid or vindictive or something.

But the desirability of rationalism and rule by experts is itself a subjective judgement: it can’t be gotten from logic or verified by controlled experiment. Even though, rationally speaking, people may be better off under liberalism according to some metric; they may still prefer to live in a more traditional society, with shared values and norms.

Consider Luka’s “gaylords”. In the past, homosexuality was a criminal offence (though if baboon’s figures are correct then the actual number of people who went to jail is not large). But the fact that homosexuality was criminalised is not the whole story of society’s views of homosexuality. Because in the past, there was a common view about morality, and homosexuality was thought to lie outside it. There was a collective opinion about the wrongness of homosexuality.

From the perspective of modern liberalism, this collective opinion looks arbitrary, judgemental and unnecessary—which, of course, it is. So, we did away with it, or tried to. Lots of other things looked arbitrary, judgemental and unnecessary, so we did away with them too. Now everyone can say for themselves what’s right and wrong, and no one’s individual preferences are any better than anyone else’s.

But it just so happens that shared values, norms, understandings, affiliations, ideas about right and wrong, the good and the true, are what makes people a community, and not just an aggregate of consumption units sharing only a commitment to self-definition and a post-code. So we ended up abolishing our society altogether, because it didn’t make rational sense. Woops. On the other hand, who would complain? Only a Nazi or a Daily Mail reader or something, and we can ignore them. Plus, we’ve got all this nice shit and we can do whatever we want with it, so we must be winning.

Also, if you're going to ask, "why does middle America vote Republican?", you should ask, "why do coastal rich vote Democrat?"

Thanks Vim, you are much more patient and articulate than me, that's a precise diagnosis.

People do vote conservative for non-economic reasons. After all, one of the supreme conservative texts is Burke's polemic against the French revolution, which was about tradition and order. The Tories are a class-based interest group within the Parliamentary system, but they are also associated with conservatism, which isn't necessarily simply class-based (in a strict Marxist sense) but also ties in tradition, values, culture, behaviour, religion, sovereignty and foreign policy. Don't forget that "conservative" was a set of ideas and principles tagged onto the Tory party in the 19th C. It's not inconceivable or sick that the middle and working classes should vote Tory in this broader picture, or that there should, say, be Conservative or Liberal Trade Unionists to oppose Scargill's tactics in defence of their members' interests. Trade Unions, for example, were very skeptical of Labour and its Socialist objectives in the first half of the century.

I think the thing to remember is that Thatcherism is an ideological aberration in Tory history, as New Labour/Blairism is a pragmatic aberration in Labour history.

(Burke was Whig, and defended the American Revolution.)

vimothy said:

Also, if you're going to ask, "why does middle America vote Republican?", you should ask, "why do coastal rich vote Democrat?"

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Because they'd rather give up a little more of their own wealth to pay for public-sector jobs and social security because it decreases their likelihood of being burgled or mugged? Because they actually feel some sense of altruism and are aware that the system that has allowed them to amass wealth exists on the basis of a large pool of poorly-paid labour? White guilt? A desire to live in a country that's not a theocracy? All sorts of reasons.

and (ii) they're intent on destroying in community (which at least Thatcher was honest about; this new generation have jettisoned even that honesty).

Another thing to mention is that this is not accurate, fair or true. Thatcherites didn’t wish to destroy communities; this is not what they meant by "society". They were targeting the State support of constituencies that they believed propped up interest groups within specific communities, for example, South Wales miners, to the detriment of the country and other communities, for example, local entrepreneurs or Midlands shopkeepers. This was half political and half ideological. The policies were disastrous in practice, but they certainly didn’t intend to destroy local communities, whom they believed to be their natural supporters, if only they knew it. But it did, of course. Hence the New Labour corrective. Cameron Conservatives have taken Thatcherism + Blairism and have tried to tweak and reform both tendencies -- essentially, the philosophy behind The Big Society. A doomed attempt to refine and continue the two. In the real world of banking and EU meltdown this has become both irrelevant and extremely important, paradoxically. I am more with Ed Balls than George Osborne on the remedy, but I am no expert. I know nothing about the sums, but I get the social policy implications (legal aid "reform" is quite grotesque, for example) and can easily grasp the politics behind it. There is a clear logic there, which isn't heartless: even within this group of Etonions, it is relentessly middle class.

craner said:

I do think that some of you are prone to underestimating the fact that there are other reasons for voting conservative than economics, sadism and sadomasochism.

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More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.

Droid, of course, is a particularly advanced human specimen, as we can glean from his clear identfication with the Palestinian cause.

vimothy said:

One thing that I think it shows is that although liberalism makes a big deal about having eliminated prejudice, this isn’t really the case. Not only in the sense that older prejudices are still here, but also in that liberalism adds some of its own—against conservatives, against the past: anybody who isn’t already a liberal, basically.

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Well on a purely logical level I don't think it's possible to be favour of literally everyone. It's like Goedelian incompleteness. If you're convinced that all people of whatever ethnic group are fundamentally equal then you can't think that a neo-Nazi has an equally valid ideology to a non-Nazi. It's not just a case of someone you can respectfully disagree with, you are forced to the position that they are fundamentally wrong. Being in equal favour of all demographics and also in favour of people who are highly prejudiced against those demographics isn't a political position, it's apolitical laziness and is not a position to be taken seriously.

vimothy said:

What’s different about liberalism is that if it’s not rational, it has to go. This gives it a claim to objectivity, but also a kind of inhuman, cyborg quality.

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I'm not sure about this. A key liberal principle is religious tolerance, isn't it? It would be a funny sort of liberal who wasn't in favour of people being allowed to practice whatever they liked as long as they weren't bombing abortion clinics or waging jihad - even if the archetypal liberal is probably an atheist or agnostic hirself. That's without even taking into account the rise of a "pro-faith Left" in recent years, although whether most people in this scene would call themselves liberals or not, I don't know.

vimothy said:

This is well demonstrated by the discussion here. Looked at rationally, people in the middle of society should vote left or liberal and not conservative, because their interests are better served by the liberal-left. And since rationality is the highest standard of knowledge, this is a definitive judgement—i.e., it’s not wishy-washy subjective knowledge, it’s a fact; the kind of thing academics can sign-off against. All of which makes the behaviour of the people in the middle seem bizarre and inexplicable. Don’t they get it? They must be stupid or vindictive or something.

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Not necessarily - although obviously some of them are, as are people from all social backgrounds. Misinformed and biased by propaganda would be closer to the mark. One thing that cannot be denied is that the vast majority of national newspapers in Britain, both in terms of number of titles and circulations figures, are decidedly to the right of centre.

Not that a left-leaning opinion piece in the Observer is any less a piece of propaganda than a right-leaning opinion piece in the Sunday Times, but if you look at the overall degree of influence on public opinion there is definitely an imbalance.

Is anybody here a fan of George Eliot?

Well on a purely logical level I don't think it's possible to be favour of literally everyone. It's like Goedelian incompleteness.

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I agree. Liberalism takes equal freedom as its ideal. But there’s an obvious problem with that: What happens when some of these equally valid preferences conflict? Who wins out? There’s no way of resolving this issue with reference to the absolute standard of equal freedom, so what actually happens tends to be arbitrary, conflicted and unsatisfactory.

One option is to look at whose preferences are most aligned with the principles of tolerance, inclusiveness and neutrality. If everyone’s preferences could be characterised in this way, there would be no conflict and everyone would be free to pursue their own desires with maximum efficiency. So it would be good to promote that as a standard of behaviour. Combating all the biased propaganda will be hard, but if people can be exposed to rational argument then obviously reason and progress will prevail in the end.

Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to tell who is the tolerant and inclusive, and who the intolerant and exclusive, in any given conflict. But that’s what all these experts are paid to figure out, so given enough time and resources, we will surely resolve these problems too.

craner and vimothy im finding intersting but also disquieting.

i know these two boys are the same age as me and come from broadly similar backgrounds. Oliver i know well, Vimothy i don't know but there are far fewer than 6 degrees of separation. i know they are at least as probably more deferential to the ideology of the age than most of us and i agree that that ideology is liberalism, in Vimothy's far-reaching, all-embracing definition of the term. i know that they are as deracinated and as alienated as any of us. what i dont understand is what they want. i can understand and even share Vimothy's belief that mass immigration has undermined the traditional sense of what it means to be an Englishman. i just don't agree that it has been for the worst and i really don't know what he proposes to do about it. i don't know and cant guess what he would wish for and i don't know what he thinks is politically possible. i think that this is an ongoing dispute between the group and the individual and that where ever the balance is struck, at whatever point society is balanced between the wants and whims of the individual and the requirements of group stability/coherency, there will be discontents. its a balancing act. so I would nod sagely along with a great deal of Vimothy's diagnosis, but would blanch, i suspect, from his plan of treatment. the cure is worse than the disease.

how England sees Herself.

the fact that rown williams and johnathan sacks are both sort of advanced-uber-libereals says a lot for v's line of argument.

luka said:

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This reminds me of this website:

http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/evilfinder/

Here are the results for 'england'

THE IRREFUTABLE PROOF: ENGLAND IS EVIL

E N G L A N D
69 78 71 76 65 78 68 <- ASCII values
6 6 8 4 2 6 5 <- all digits added
\_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_________/
6 6 8 4 4 <- final sum

Therefore, "ENGLAND" actually stands for 66844.

Write the number backwards, subtract 1887 - the year Erwin Schrodinger, cat-killer, was born. The value is now 42979.

Add 1811 to it - the year of first recorded UFO sightings in China and Japan, written backwards. The result is 44790.

Add 4791 to it - the year of Ted Bundy's first killings, written backwards. The result is 49581.

Subtract 1714 - the year Henry Mill patented the typewriter. This gives you 47867.

Flip the number backwards, then divide by 14 - the number of pieces Osiris was torn into in Egyptian mythology. The outcome is 5491.

This number, written backwards, spells 1945 - the year of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

The prosecution rests.

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baked bean pizza, that was a good concept. that's the difference between the English and the Italians. your general Italian is hopelessly hidebound by tradition. he won't let go of mamma's apron strings. The English on the other hand, are Innovators. You'd never get an Italian inventing a baked bean pizza and if one of them did the rest would call it sacrilege, they wouldn't even taste it, he'd be burned at the stake for his troubles.
That's why the Italians will never produce a Steven Hawkings, or a Carol Voderman for that matter, very patriarchal society Italy, they'd never let her out the kitchen.

"Erwin Schrodinger, cat-killer..."

Whoever came up with that shit is a comic genius whether they want to be or not.