.

.
Library of Professor Richard A. Macksey in Baltimore

POSTS BY SUBJECT

Labels

Saturday, March 5, 2022

Notes on Populism

August 27, 2020

https://counter-currents.com/2020/08/notes-on-populism/

Notes on Populism

Greg Johnson

 

Norman Rockwell, Study for “Freedom of Speech”

Populism seeks to rescue popular government from corrupt elites. Naturally, the elites strike back. The most common accusation from elite commentators is that populism is “anti-democratic.” As Yascha Mounk frames it, populism is “the people vs. democracy.” I argue that populism is not anti-democratic, but it is anti-liberal. (See Donald Thoresen’s review of Mounk’s The People vs. Democracy here.)

Many critics of populism accuse it of being a form of white identity politics, and many critics of white identity politics accuse it of being populist. Populism and white identity politics are distinct but sometimes overlapping phenomena. I will argue, however, that populism and white identity politics complement one another, so that the strongest form of white identity politics is populist, and the strongest form of populism is identitarian. But first, we need to clarify what populism really is.

Political Ideology or Political Style?

One of the more superficial claims about populism is that it is not a political ideology but simply a “political style.” An ideology is a set of principles. A political style is a way of embodying and communicating political principles. The idea that populism is merely a political style is based on the observation that there are populisms of the Left and the Right, so how could it be a unified ideology? Of course, there are also liberalisms of the Left and Right, but this does not imply that liberalism is merely a style of politics rather than a political ideology.

Principles of Populism

Just as Right and Left liberalism appeal to common political principles, Right and Left populists also have the same basic political ideas:

  • All populists appeal to the principle of popular sovereignty. Sovereignty means that a people is independent of other peoples. A sovereign nation is master of its own internal affairs. It can pursue its own ends, as opposed to being subordinated to the ends of others, such as a foreign people or a monarch. The sovereignty of the people is the idea that legitimate government is “of the people, by the people, for the people,” meaning that (1) the people must somehow participate in government, i.e., that they govern themselves, and (2) the state acts in the interest of the people as a whole, i.e., for the common good.
  • All populists politically mobilize on the premise that popular government has been betrayed by a tiny minority of political insiders, who have arrogated the people’s right to self-government and who govern for their own factional interests, or foreign interests, but not in the interest of the people as a whole. Populists thus declare that the political system is in crisis.
  • All populists hold that the sovereignty of the people must be restored (1) by ensuring greater popular participation in politics and (2) by replacing traitorous elites with loyal servants of the people. Populists thus frame themselves as redeeming popular sovereignty from a crisis.

Two Senses of “the People”

When populists say the people are sovereign, they mean the people as a whole. When populists oppose “the people” to “the elites,” they are contrasting the vast majority, who are political outsiders, to the elites, who are political insiders. The goal of populism, however, is to restore the unity of the sovereign people by eliminating the conflict of interests between the elites and the people.

Ethnic and Civic Peoplehood

There are two basic ways of defining a people: ethnic and civic. An ethnic group is unified by blood, culture, and history. An ethnic group is an extended family with a common language and history. Ethnic groups always emerge in a particular place but do not necessarily remain there. A civic conception of peoplehood is a construct that seeks to impose unity on a society composed of different ethnic groups, lacking a common descent, culture, and history. For instance, civic nationalists claim that a person can become British, American, or Swedish simply by government fiat, i.e., by giving them legal citizenship.

Ethnic nationalism draws strength from unity and homogeneity. Ethnically defined groups grow primarily through reproduction, although they have always recognized that some foreigners can be “naturalized”—i.e., “assimilated” into the body politic—although rarely and with much effort. Civic nationalism lacks the strength of unity but aims to mitigate that fact with civic ideology and to offset it with strength in numbers, since in principle the whole world can have identity papers issued by a central state.

A civic people is a pure social construct imposed on a set of particular human beings that need not have anything more in common than walking on two legs and having citizenship papers. Civic conceptions of peoplehood thus go hand in hand with the radical nominalist position that only individuals, not collectives, exist in the real world.

An ethnic people is much more than a social construct. First of all, kinship groups are real biological collectives. Beyond that, although ethnic groups are distinguished from other biologically similar groups by differences of language, culture, and history, there is a distinction between evolved social practices like language and culture and mere legislative fiats and other social constructs.

Ethnic peoples exist even without their own states. There are many stateless peoples in the world. But civic peoples do not exist without a state. Civic polities are constructs of the elites that control states.

Populism and Elitism

Populism is contrasted with elitism. But populists are not against elites as such. Populists oppose elites for two main reasons: when they are not part of the people and when they exploit the people. Populists approve of elites that are organically part of the people and function as servants of the people as a whole.

Populists recognize that people differ in terms of intelligence, virtue, and skills. Populists want to have the best-qualified people in important offices. But they want to ensure that elites work for the common good of the polity, not for their own factional interests (or foreign interests). To ensure this, populists wish to empower the people to check the power of elites, as well as to create new elites that are organically connected to the people and who put the common good above their private interests. (For more on this, see my “Notes on Populism, Elitism, and Democracy.”)

Populism and Classical Republicanism

When political scientists and commentators discuss the history of populism, most begin with nineteenth-century agrarian movements like the Narodniki in Russia and the People’s Party in the United States. But nineteenth-century populism looked backward to the republics of the ancient world, specifically the “mixed regime” of Rome.

Aristotle’s Politics is the most influential theory of the mixed regime. (See my “Introduction to Aristotle’s Politicshere.) Aristotle observed that a society can be ruled by one man, a few men, or many men. But a society can never be ruled by all men, since every society inevitably includes people who are incapable of participating in government due to lack of ability, for instance the very young, the crazy, and the senile.

Aristotle also observed that the one, few, or many could govern for their factional interests or for the common good. When one man governs for the common good, we have monarchy. When he governs for his private interests, we have tyranny. When few govern for the common good, we have aristocracy. When the few govern for their private interests, we have oligarchy. When the many govern for the common good, we have polity. When they govern for their factional interests, we have democracy.

It is interesting that for Aristotle, democracy is bad by definition, and that he had to invent a new word, “polity,” for the good kind of popular rule that was, presumably, so rare that nobody had yet coined a term for it.

Aristotle recognized that government by one man or few men is always government by the rich, regardless of whether wealth is used to purchase political power or whether political power is used to secure wealth. Thus popular government always empowers those who lack wealth. The extremely poor, however, tend to be alienated, servile, and greedy. The self-employed middle classes, however, have a stake in the future, long-time horizons, and sufficient leisure to participate in politics. Thus popular government tends to be stable when it empowers the middle classes and chaotic when it empowers the poorest elements.

Finally, Aristotle recognized that a regime that mixes together rule by the one, the few, and the many, is more likely to achieve the common good, not simply because each group is public spirited, but also because they are all jealous to protect their private interests from being despoiled by the rest. Aristotle was thus the first theorist of the “mixed regime.” But he was simply observing the functioning of actually existing mixed regimes like Sparta.

One can generate modern populism quite easily from Aristotle’s premises. Aristotle’s idea of the common good is the basis of the idea of popular sovereignty, which means, first and foremost, that legitimate government must look out for the common good of the people.

Beyond that, Aristotle argued that the best way to ensure legitimate government is to empower the many—specifically the middle class—to participate in government. The default position of every society is to be governed by the one or the few. When the elites govern selfishly and oppress the people, the people naturally wish to rectify this by demanding participation in government. They can, of course, use their power simply to satisfy their factional interests, which is why democracy has always been feared. But if popular rule is unjust, it is also unstable. Thus to be stable and salutary, popular rule must aim at the common good of society.

The great theorist of popular sovereignty is Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his On the Social Contract, Rousseau claims that the General Will is the fount of sovereignty and legitimacy. What is the General Will? The General Will wills the common good. The common good is not a convention or construct of the General Will but rather an objective fact that must be discovered and then realized through political action.

Rousseau distinguishes the General Will from the Will of All. The General Will is what we ought to will. The Will of All is what we happen to will. The Will of All can be wrong, however. Thus we cannot determine the General Will simply by polling the people.

Rousseau even holds out the possibility that an elite, or a dictator, can know the General Will better than the populace at large. But no matter how the General Will is determined—and no matter who controls the levers of power—political legitimacy arises from the common good of the people.

Populism and Representation

Populism is often associated with “direct” as opposed to “representative” democracy. Populists tend to favor referendums and plebiscites, in which the electorate as a whole decides on important issues, as opposed to allowing them to be decided by representatives in parliament. In truth, though, there is no such thing as direct democracy in which the whole of the people acts. Even in plebiscites, some people always represent the interests of others. Thus democracy always requires some degree of representation.

One can only vote in the present. But a people is not just its present members. It also consists of its past members and its future members. Our ancestors matter to us. They created a society and passed it on to us. They established standards by which we measure ourselves. And just as our ancestors lived not just for themselves, but for their posterity, people today make decisions that affect future generations. Thus in every democratic decision, the living must represent the interests of the dead and the not yet born.

Moreover, within the present generation, some are too young to participate in politics. Others are unable due to disability. The basic principle for excluding living people from the electorate is that they would lower the quality of political decision-making. However, they are still part of the people, and they have genuine interests. Thus the electorate must represent their interests as well.

Beyond that, there are distinctions among competent adults that may lead to further constriction of the electorate, again to raise the quality of political decision-making. For instance, people have argued that the franchise should be restricted to men (because they are the natural guardians of society or because they are more rational than women), or to people with property (because they have more to lose), or to people with children (because they have a greater stake in the future), or to military veterans (because they have proven themselves willing to die, if necessary, for the common good). But again, all of those who are excluded from the franchise are still part of the people, with interests that must be respected. So they must be represented by the electorate.

Thus even in a plebiscite, the people as a whole is represented by only a part, the electorate. Beyond that, unless voting is mandatory, not every member of the electorate will choose to vote. So those who do not vote are represented by those who do.

Thus far, this thought experiment has not even gotten to the question of representative democracy, which takes the process one step further. An elected representative may stand for hundreds of thousands or millions of voters. And those voters in turn stand for eligible non-voters, as well as those who are not eligible to vote, and beyond that, those who are not present to vote because they are dead or not yet born. The not-yet-born is an indefinite number that we hope is infinite, meaning that our people never dies. It seems miraculous that such a multitude could ever be represented by a relative handful of representatives (in the US, 535 Representatives and Senators for more than 300 million living people and untold billions of the dead and yet-to-be-born). Bear in mind, also, that practically every modern politician will eagerly claim to be really thinking about the good of the entire human race.

But we have not yet scaled the highest peak, for people quite spontaneously think of the president, prime minister, or monarch—a single individual—as representing the interests of the entire body politic. Even if that is not their constitutional role, there are circumstances—such as emergencies—in which such leaders are expected to intuit the common good and act accordingly.

Thus it is not surprising that cynics wish to claim that the very ideas of a sovereign people, a common good, and the ability to represent them in politics are simply myths and mumbo-jumbo. Wouldn’t it be better to replace such myths with concrete realities, like selfish individuals and value-neutral institutions that let them peacefully pursue their own private goods?

But the sovereign individual and the “invisible hand” are actually more problematic than the sovereign people and its avatars. From direct democracy in small towns to the popular uprisings that brought down communism, we have actual examples of sovereign peoples manifesting themselves and exercising power. We have actual examples of leaders representing a sovereign people, divining the common good, and acting to secure it.

There is no question that sovereign peoples actually exercise power for their common goods. But how it happens seems like magic. This explains why popular sovereignty is always breaking down. Which in turn explains why populist movements keep arising to return power to the people.

Populism and Democracy

The claim that populism is anti-democratic is false. Populism simply is another word for democracy, understood as popular sovereignty plus political empowerment of the many. Current elites claim that populism threatens “democracy” because they are advocates of specifically liberal democracy. (See my review of Jan-Werner Mueller’s What Is Populism? here and William Galston’s Anti-Pluralism here.)

Liberal democrats claim to protect the rights of the individual and of minorities from unrestrained majoritarianism. Liberal democrats also defend “pluralism.” Finally, liberal democrats insist that the majority is simply not competent to participate directly in government, thus they must be content to elect representatives from an established political class and political parties. These representatives, moreover, give great latitude to unelected technocrats in the permanent bureaucracy.

Liberal democracy is, in short, anti-majoritarian and elitist. Populists recognize that such regimes can work for the public good, as long as the ruling elites are part of the people and see themselves as its servants. But without the oversight and empowerment of the people, there is nothing to prevent liberal democracy from mutating into the rule of corrupt elites for their private interests and for foreign interests. This is why populism is on the rise: to root out corruption and restore popular sovereignty and the common good.

Populists need not reject liberal protections for individuals and minorities, ethnic or political. They need not reject “pluralism” when it is understood as freedom of opinion and multiparty democracy. Populists don’t even reject elites, political representation, and technocratic competence. Populists can value all of these things. But they value the common good of the people even more, and they recognize that liberal values don’t necessarily serve the common good. When they don’t, they need to be brought into line. Liberals, however, tend to put their ideology above the common good, leading to the corruption of popular government. Ideological liberalism is a disease of democracy. Populism is the cure.

Populism and White Identity Politics

What is the connection between populism and white identity politics? I am both a populist and an advocate of white identity politics. But there are advocates of white identity politics who are anti-populist (for instance, those who are influenced by Traditionalism and monarchism), and there are non-white populists around the world (for instance, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand).

However, even if there is no necessary connection between populism and white identity politics, I wish to argue that the two movements should work together in every white country. White identitarians will be strengthened by populism, and populism will be strengthened by appeals to white identity.

Why should white identitarians align ourselves with populism? Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin argue in National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy that the rise of national populism is motivated by what they call “the Four Ds.” The first is Distrust, namely the breakdown of public trust in government. The second is Destruction, specifically the destruction of identity, the destruction of the ethnic composition of their homelands due to immigration and multiculturalism. The third trend is Deprivation, referring to the collapse of First-World living standards, especially middle-class and working-class living standards, due to globalization. The final trend is Dealignment, meaning the abandonment of the center-Left, center-Right duopolies common in post-Second World War democracies. (For more on Eatwell and Goodwin, see my “National Populism Is Here to Stay.”)

The Destruction of identity due to immigration and multiculturalism is a central issue for white identitarians. The Deprivation caused by globalization is also one of our central issues. The only way to fix these problems is to adopt white identitarian policies, namely to put the interests and identity of indigenous whites first. Once that principle is enshrined, everything we want follows as a matter of course. It is just a matter of time and will.

As for Distrust and Dealignment, these can go for or against us, but we can certainly relate to them, and we can contribute to and shape them as well.

Eatwell and Goodwin argue that the “Four Ds” are longstanding and deep-seated trends. They will be affecting politics for decades to come. National populism is the wave of the future, and we should ride it to political power.

Why do populists need to appeal to white identity? It all comes down to what counts as the people. Is the people at its core an ethnic group, or is it defined in purely civic terms? Populists of the Right appeal explicitly or implicitly to identitarian issues. Populists of the Left prefer to define the people in civic or class terms and focus on economic issues. Since, as Eatwell and Goodwin argue, both identitarian and economic issues are driving the rise of populism, populists of the Right will have a broader appeal because they appeal to both identity and economic issues.

The great task of white identitarians today is to destroy the legitimacy of civic nationalism and push the populism of the Right toward explicit white identitarianism.

A European View on the War in Ukraine

 March 4, 2022 

A European View on the War in Ukraine

Olli Huovinen

The Finnish army on maneuvers.


I am a Finnish nationalist who has been following the American Dissident Right for many years. I greatly admire and regularly follow many of the superb writers and sites in this milieu. However, I feel that at least some American dissidents do not fully understand the European point of view on the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Some prominent American nationalists support Russia in their war with Ukraine, while among European nationalists, especially in Eastern Europe, there is widespread support for Ukraine. I have seen arguments from the American side that people on the Ukrainian side are simply victims of liberal propaganda, while European nationalists see the support of some Americans for Russia as a sign of ignorance about European affairs.

I am arguing that it is in fact in the national interest of certain European nations to oppose Russia in their war with Ukraine. It is not my intention to turn Americans into supporters of Ukraine, but simply to show that Europeans have legitimate reasons for siding with it. I shall also look at this war in the larger context of the Pan-Western cultural war. I will not make any arguments about the war’s morality and instead focus solely on why it is in the interests of many European nationalists to support Ukraine.

It is logical for an American nationalist to support Russia. Ukraine is in the liberal sphere of influence, and the global liberal democratic system is an enemy of the Historic American Nation, Western civilization, and white nations everywhere. Therefore, supporting an enemy of the liberal regime seems like the right thing to do. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as the old saying goes. For many Americans, this war between Russia and Ukraine is a battle between a healthy conservative state and the degenerate liberal order. This is not the perspective of many in Europe, however.

My country of Finland shares a long border of approximately 830 miles with Russia. We still have conscription, with most males serving in the military for a period from half a year to a year, depending on the conscript’s role. With a population of only 5.5 million, our defense forces have an official wartime strength of 280,000 soldiers, with hundreds of thousands more in reserve to replenish losses. Our military is focused almost completely on conventional ground war, and there is only one reason why it exists at all: Russia.

Finland is not part of NATO, but does cooperate with it and is a European Union Member State. Our current government, as well as all the major parties except for one and the permanent bureaucracy, are firmly in the liberal, pro-United States camp. This means that in Russia’s eyes, we are a hostile state. In essence we have all the liabilities of being in NATO without the security guarantees that would act as a deterrent. Consequently, I conclude that there is a real chance that Russia could use military force against us.

Even if we were actually in NATO, like many Eastern European countries bordering Russia, the Russian threat would still not be completely dissipated. It is possible that the Russians might gamble that if they quickly take the Baltic countries or Finland, NATO will break up instead of going to full-scale war against Russia to liberate them. It might well turn out that there is no political will to fight for a few small European countries if the cost is a new world war that, in the worst case, could go nuclear.

Our regime upholds anti-white policies, like all the other liberal regimes. A Russian occupation is not a preferable alternative, however, nor is a puppet government or protectorate status. Losing the ability to control one’s national destiny is not something that any nationalist could accept. It is therefore in the interests of Finnish nationalists to reduce the chance of a Russian invasion, and the war in Ukraine offers a way to do this.

If the war goes badly for Russia, it will reduce Russia’s capability to wage war in the future. Firstly, there are the direct casualties and losses in equipment. Western sanctions could also cause the Russian economy to falter, likely forcing them to reduce their defense budget. Finally, large casualties and a failure to achieve their objectives reduces the government’s political capital and the desire for further wars among the population. Iraq and Afghanistan killed any desire for more war among the American population, and the same could happen to the Russians if the invasion of Ukraine ends in disaster.

An American could easily make the counterargument that this is petty European nationalism, and that it is detrimental to the larger culture war being waged throughout the West. Putting national interests above civilizational and racial interests is indeed counterproductive. Let us therefore look at what the war in Ukraine means for the larger struggle.

Ukraine is a sideshow. Whatever happens, it will not have any major impact on the global culture war. The satanic mills of the liberal leviathan will continue grinding just like before. A Russian victory will not diminish their media power, financial resources, or their hold on our institutions. Likewise, a Ukrainian victory will not increase their power in any significant way. The fight taking place within America will not be affected by whether a poor Eastern European country is retained in the liberal sphere of influence or not, just as the Taliban victory in Afghanistan did not have any real effect, either. The only consequence of a Russian victory will be a few liberal tears, which is undeniably enjoyable but quite unimportant in the culture war.

Another claim is that Russia is a conservative ally of ours. The argument is that while the war itself might be unimportant, a weak Russia will mean the loss of an important ally. It is not true that Russia is our ally. They are an old-fashioned imperial state and are only interested in expanding their own power and sphere of influence. They have no desire to see our side win, and I suspect it would in fact be in their long-term interests to see the West’s decline advance to final collapse. Russia itself is not even a real nation-state, but rather a multiethnic empire with a decreasing population of white Russians and an increasing population of non-white Muslims due to birthrates and immigration.

Contrary to liberal propaganda, Russia has not provided any significant aid to European or American nationalists. Russian officials sometimes make critical comments about the West’s wokeness, but that is basically the only extent of their support. A weakening of the Russian state would not therefore affect our side adversely or deprive us of resources.

To conclude, it is in the legitimate interest of many European nationalists to support Ukraine in this war. But while the war is important for many Europeans, in terms of the larger culture war it is an unimportant sideshow. A Ukrainian victory will not adversely affect the culture war in America nor in Europe. American dissidents do not lose anything if Ukraine wins, while many European nations have much to gain.

 

 

Has Putin Inadvertently Defeated Woke, Reversed West's Civilizational Decline?

 

 

Has Putin Inadvertently Defeated Woke, Reversed West's Civilizational Decline?
03/04/2022

Earlier by Edward Dutton: Are We In The Winter of America? Will There Be A Spring?

Every cloud has a silver lining. When, in response to the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian government announced that no male aged 18-60 would be permitted to leave the country because they were to be conscripted, nobody in the West, it seems, asked: “What do you mean ‘male’? How are you defining it? Does it include ‘transmen’?” Perhaps the usual Twitter alphabet mob did ask this, but it wasn’t amplified by being reported in the Anglosphere Main Stream Media—because, all of a sudden, there was a war. Life was serious and such self-indulgent, decadent concerns were no longer considered important. Is this a Trend?

Of course, a few virtue-signallers have complained about the “racial” aspect to some of the reporting. But, significantly, this seems to be limited to America. Thus the Washington Post noted the “racist” language, criticizing the way in which

…ITV News correspondent Lucy Watson reported from a train station in Kyiv that the “unthinkable” had happened to the people of Ukraine. “This is not a developing Third-World nation,’ she said. “This is Europe.”
[‘They seem so like us’: In depicting Ukraine’s plight, some in media use offensive comparisons, February 27, 2022]

But in Britain, where the war is far closer and more real, nobody cares anymore. WaPo was citing  the BBC allowing a Ukrainian deputy prosecutor to stress that what was happening in his country should be seen as crucial in the UK because there are: “European people with blue eyes and blond hair being killed, children being killed every day.”

There was no apology for his “racist language.” And if anyone did complain, the BBC didn’t highlight it.

People who once claimed that that the West was selfish and national borders and free speech should be abolished were now proclaiming the sacrosanct nature of national borders, that every “people” has a right to their own land, that the “democratic” West with its “free speech” needed to be preserved.

Part of this was simply Machiavellian opportunism. But for many people, I suspect, a deeper shift had occurred.

I have written before about how civilizations follow seasonal cycles and about how, based on numerous measures, we are in decline. But the invasion of Ukraine, while of course terrible for the Ukrainian people, could, counter-intuitively, be “good for the West.” It could potentially slow down Western decline via a kind of Silver Age.   

How could this be? How could anything positive come of the suffering of the Ukrainians, in which innocent children have been killed by Russians bombs? [The faces of some of those killed in Ukraine as Russia's attack rages on, ITV, March 3, 2022]

Well, most obviously: Wokeness is an anti-rational, emotionally-driven force and this war has already begun to neuter it.

According to the “Hierarchy of Needs” concept developed by psychologist Abraham Maslow, humans, first and more foremost, require their physiological needs—food, water, shelter—to be met. Only once these are met are they able to start worrying about personal safety, employment and property. And only once these are met do they have the time left over to be concerned about even higher needs, such as status, respect and recognition.

Following this logic, the decadence of the late twentieth and especially the early twenty-first century can be partly explained in terms of almost everyone’s basic needs on the hierarchy being met, or having been met in their key developmental years, so that they are blithely unconcerned about them.

As a result, we have seen the rise of an increasingly self-indulgent society in which more and more people are ravenously concerned about status, power, and being respected. In its most extreme and Narcissistic form, this involves people being accepted as unique and able to define who they are, to the extent of telling you what pronoun they prefer.

When basics needs are met, these issues become important, contributing to a kind of runaway individualism where we are constantly concerned about offending against people’s—apparently sacrosanct—desires for absolute respect.

Plunge us into a situation of war, however, and these needs are suddenly unimportant. Worse than unimportant, they are divisive and selfish in a context in which we must surely pull together if we wish to survive.

Thus, in a context of war we would expect Woke concerns to be increasingly ignored and even for the people who voice them to be suppressed. Anxiety also elevates our most primal instincts, such as belief in God and ethnocentrism. as I discussed in my 2012 book Islam: An Evolutionary Perspective. So we would expect these to suddenly seem more “acceptable,” just as the ITV news reporter cited by WaPo found without even thinking about it.  

In turn, the suppression of Wokeness—of extreme self-absorption, where feelings are put above truth—will make us more balanced in terms of what Moral Foundations Theory calls the Five Moral Foundations: in-group loyalty, sanctity, obedience to authority, equality and harm avoidance.

Humans are concerned with all of these Foundations because they are, from an evolutionary point of view, pack animals (hence the first three Foundations), but they also need to survive as individuals in an internally competitive pack (hence the latter two). Since the 1960s, we have become ever more concerned with individualizing values, these being the values of Leftists, according to psychologists. The specter of war will push us to the Right, meaning more of a balance and thus a greater concern with truth [Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations, by J. Graham et al., Personality Processes and Individual Differences, 2009].

Furthermore, the specter of war means that, by definition, we are competing with another group. This means that innovation starts to become far more important than “feelings.” This, in turn, means that we should start to become more tolerant of the genius-type. As I have explored in my recent book Sent Before Their Time: Genius, Charisma, and Being Born Prematurely, this is the highly creative thinker who tends to be high in autism traits and even psychopathology (poor rule following, no regard for the feelings of others). This contributes to him being both “offensive” and also highly creative, because he “thinks outside the box” and doesn’t care about offending against convention.

Consistent with this prediction, per capita major innovation—in other words, per capita genius—began to decline in around 1870, seemingly as average intelligence began to decline, and also as individualistic values gradually began to rise as the world became easier and easier.

However, there is some evidence that this decline went into reverse from about 1945. Per capita major innovation increased until the 1960s, before reverting to the previous decline [A possible declining trend for worldwide innovation, by J. Huebner, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2005].

The Cold War would be a reasonable explanation for this. It artificially recreated something of the conditions of “Group Selection” that prevailed before the Industrial Revolution, whereby groups competed with each other for limited resources and triumphed through a combination of optimum group-orientation and intelligence, including the optimum level geniuses, leading to selection across time for these traits, as I also explore in my book.

Two groups faced each other in a perilous war, so they suppressed individualism (more than they otherwise would have done), focused more on innovation (partly to defeat the enemy) and thus, briefly, reversed the process of civilizational decline.

Thus, in a very roundabout and indirect way, Putin’s war may save, or, rather, may slow down, the decline of, the West—just as the Cold War did.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

Or should that be “Every threatened mushroom cloud…”?

Edward Dutton (email him | Tweet him) is Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Asbiro University, Łódź, Poland.  You can see him on his Jolly Heretic video channels on YouTube and Bitchute.