The Stupid Party and the Evil Party
We’ve all been reflecting on the state of political discourse in our nations of late, and this post by Bionic Mosquito about the Spanish Civil War seems particularly poignant. I’m hoping it doesn’t get that bad, but just in case it does, this post from Aidan MacLear is worth pondering.
As for me, what stands out about the past couple centuries is the left-right paradigm which seems to be at the heart of every political struggle. In previous centuries we saw plenty of civil wars and revolutions, but to translate, say, the Blues versus the Greens in Constantinople requires a second-year History course covering both theology and the popular sports of the day. All of the contemporary struggles – at first impenetrable because of the differing labels – wind up slotting into categories which have correlates in the modern setting. It’s yet another case of:
Half-wit: it’s Left vs Right!
Mid-wit: politics is a complex interwoven set of policies and interest groups.
Full-wit: it’s Left vs Right.
Or, as they’re often called, the Stupid Party and the Evil Party.
This is a concept worth exploring – to examine where these instinctual labels come from, and why it is that Left vs Right seems to be the modern paradigm which all politics follow. Let’s start with the Big Five and the psychology of politics.
Of the Big Five Personality Traits – Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (O.C.E.A.N) – the first two are highly correlated to one’s political leanings. Conservatives tend to be low in Openness (imagination, artistic interests, emotionality, adventurousness, intellect, and rule-freeness) and high in Conscientiousness (self-efficacy, orderliness, dutifulness, achievement-striving, self-discipline, cautiousness); Liberals are the exact opposite. As for the author, I score extremely high in both (90 and 93 out of 100, respectively), so I don’t really find a home in either party (and I’ve speculated before that the High Openness, High Conscientiousness is the ‘free-market libertarian’ perspective).
If we were able to go back to previous eras, I don’t think we’d see the same pattern in personality types between the competing interest groups; in this era we keep seeing the same pattern. So why the consistent divide? The simple answer is: technology. The more technology you have, the more technology you can invent. And over the past 400 years – especially the past 200 – especially the past 50 – the exponential foom has taken over.
As an illustration of what I’m talking about – have you ever wondered where the alternative to the Metric system, the Imperial system came from? It was a 17th century project to standardize the weights and measurements used in commerce. Prior to that, every different unit had its own measurement – ingots, bushels, barrels – creating an incoherent mess. And sure enough, there were two sides to the debate over standardization; the technocrats, who delighted at the increase in efficiency, and the recalcitrants who viewed it as just another excuse for the Crown to tax them. Sounds like something with modern correlates, doesn’t it? Who do you think won?
It’s this bifurcation on technology which makes one party stupid, and the other party evil. Let’s run through a few examples that’ll wind up with everyone hating me:
Pornography: One side wants to ban it. The other proclaims that sex work is real work. Meanwhile I keep asking the question of how do you ban pornography when every single one of us has a porn studio in their own home (cell phone + your filthy, naked body), and the Internet makes any and all information ubiquitous? Heck, because I couldn’t figure out how to connect my phone to my computer with a cable, I built a web-server to transfer my photos using wireless! To the other side I’d ask, if porn and sex work are so fantastic, what’s with all the data showing the diminished life-outcomes which come from it? One side wants to go back to 1950, back before it was affordable to print high-colour glossies, the other side wants to adopt every incoming change, without consideration of the wisdom of the past.
Premarital Sex: Fact: the Birth Control Pill exists, condoms are cheap and effective (at preventing pregnancy – not so great against STIs), and antibiotics have made fatal infections less dangerous.
What do you think this all means for how we conduct ourselves sexually?
One side wants to impose draconian psychological punishments to regulate that most-dangerous of our impulses. The other wants to careen wildly into the future, while ignoring the less-obvious consequences of rampant promiscuity.
Immigration, Travel, and Community: It wasn’t that long ago when most people never travelled more than 90 miles from where they were born – and even those who did, usually only did it with one adventure. Today, you can get anywhere in the world via a 12 hour flight.
This is great, it frees up human genius to go where it’s needed. This is terrible, it tears apart communities, and allows corporations to exploit the third world, while depressing wages at home. One side wants to put a complete stop to it – the other wants to open up all the doors, regardless of the toll it will take on human lives.
Thus we have the Stupid Party and the Evil Party.
The Stupid Party notes that we shouldn’t throw out the wisdom of our ancestors – and they’re right – but they fail to take into account that the world was structurally different back then. Whether or not it was better is debatable, but even if you cede the argument that the past was better than the present, it doesn’t mean that we can live in it. Intelligent solutions which acknowledge the structural changes are necessary; demanding that we go back to a time before cell phones is pointless, and it’s why the Stupid Party always loses.
The Evil Party, meanwhile, embraces any and all change right out of the gate, without consideration for the vulnerable people who are torn apart by the gears of progress: the working class people who are laid off, the children born out of wedlock who are denied a father, the singletons who suffer depression because of a lack of community. Not only do they ignore them – being the Early Adopters that they are, the Evil Party figures out a way to exploit them. Hey, why not buy the Buggy Whips at pennies on the dollar and repurpose them as sex toys?
So there you have modernity in a nutshell. One group fighting progress, while the other uses progress to benefit themselves at the expense of others. Perhaps what we need is more people who think about progress intelligently, who figure out ways that it can be used to liberate mankind rather than to destroy it, and who work to implement moral methods.
Nuclear power plants, or nuclear bombs: the political system says “Why not both?” It’s up to individuals to make the former more likely than the latter. In the end, it boils down to individual conduct. What are you doing to make the future a better place?
GOP delenda est.
The Evil-Stupid divide is a concise, pithy, and accurate characterization. My only problem with the post (content in the philosophical sense) is its focus on the stupid masses, as if they are relevant and moreover relevant to any ‘solution’. If I read mother nature correctly, they (and we) are all perfectly disposable. Of course a la game theory the stupid is losing to evil and, as Afterthought says, GOP delenda est (the GOP must go). I’d like to see all the human garbage go. No solution can keep them. The best approach we could have with that assumption is what Ted Kaczynski said: go back to the horse and buggy. That would neutralize the inclination of the masses by taking away their affluence and so their luxury of imperial power. The government infrastructure would be limited, and that would also block government ascendancy without consent. However, as a progressive (little ‘p’), why should I go backwards when millions of antiquated units could be sent 6 feet down? The challenge is to develop a new civilized Western we with all the synergy and cybernetic power that the ruling class + useful idiots have. It will be a long organic process, best case. As may be clear, I don’t understand the half-wit, mid-wit, full-wit progression. I am more concerned about the govering-governed division, but that would be very manageable without the investment in left-right, so I don’t discount the problem of the left-right divide. They can eliminate each other for all I care. I will not be fighting shoulder to shoulder with the narrative dumbasses who blocked me from obtaining career and family. Let their careers and families face doom for the foundation they chose for themselves and me. They all thought they were so smart, and still do. The content on talk radio has gotten so moronic (perhaps excluding Rush, not following closely) that I can’t stand it. I need some fake semblance of a social connection. This is it. :)
I suppose a way of looking at it is that the stupid/evil paradigm is just a dog and pony show to keep the masses engaged.