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The Licensed Human Being Replaces the Responsible Citizen
I’ve got COVID again, and I feel lousy. I can’t concentrate, and I don’t feel like putting together a post. But Rufus posted a link to a fantastic article by Michael Esfeld, which got my propeller spinning. Well, it’s not spinning too fast right now, but it’s trying. Anyway, please read the whole article. It’s dense, but take your time — it’s worth the effort. For example, check out this passage from the middle of the article (emphasis mine):
This construction of a postfactual reality is furthermore postmodern in that it reverses the relationship between rights and the state: in the modern epoch, it was the task of the state to protect fundamental rights. In the postmodern regime, the state grants freedom as privilege for conformity. The mechanism that seduced many academics that have no sympathy with intellectual postmodernism is this one: it is suggested that by pursuing one’s normal, everyday course of life, one endangers the well-being of others. Every form of physical contact can contribute to the spread of the coronavirus. Every activity has an impact on the non-human environment that can contribute to life-threatening climate change.
Presenting habitual, everyday ways of life as endangering others is what the construction of a corona as well as of a climate crisis and the fear and hysteria fueled by these constructions serve to do. Science can be used for this in the same way as religion was in premodern times: with model calculations in which the parameters can be arbitrarily adjusted, and any version of disaster scenarios can be painted on the wall. The dominance of models over evidence fits perfectly with the postfactual construction of reality in actually existing postmodernism.
One then frees oneself from the general suspicion of harming others through one’s everyday course of life by acquiring a social pass – such as the vaccination pass or another form of a certificate – by which one shows one’s compliance with the regime. The licensed human being thereby replaces the responsible citizen. Rewards for conformity take the place of basic rights.
Again, he packs a lot of ideas into a relatively brief article, so it’s hard to summarize. But that’s a lot to consider in just three paragraphs. He points out that one way to get people to forfeit their personal freedom in favor of centralized power systems is to convince them that everything they do hurts someone else.
Modern free societies are based on the premise that you can do whatever you want as long as you don’t hurt someone else. Well, what happens once we agree that everything we do hurts someone else? Well, that’s the end of the free society, obviously. At that point, we clearly need governmental oversight. Over absolutely everything. From energy policy, to infectious disease management, to income redistribution, and so on and so on.
There is no limiting principle to such thinking. Once we agree that everything we do hurts someone else, then there is nothing that the government cannot reasonably and ethically control. Obviously.
He then explains the importance of models – climate change models, COVID death prediction models, and so on. Use models to predict impending catastrophe. Then use more models to “predict” how much the government “intervention” is likely to “help” the “catastrophe.”
By emphasizing models over facts, our betters can do better than just responding to crises with ever more state control – they can create those crises themselves in the form of models. Thus they control the entire loop. Much easier to manage than trying to solve actual problems that tend to be unpredictable and difficult to control. Reality is unpredictable like that. So models are better.
And since at this point the government is creating the illusion of the problems they want to leverage, that same government can also create the illusion of virtue among the most compliant of its citizens, by granting them some limited degree of the freedom they just forfeited, in exchange for doing as they’re told:
Ok, our models say that COVID is going to kill tens of millions of Americans this year. Our models also say that if you get a vaccine, that number will be reduced to tens of thousands. If you agree to get your vaccine, we will allow you to have dinner out at Applebee’s. You’re welcome. Click the Facebook link to send your campaign contributions.
Some of these model-generated crises are created out of whole cloth, like global warming. Others are exaggerated or tweaked to get the desired impact, like COVID.
But regardless, this is a powerful tool:
Convince people that their every action hurts someone.
Create models to convince people of impending doom if they don’t do what the government says.
Take control of society bit by bit, always with the pretension of helping people, so people don’t notice the loss of their freedoms.
Run for office on the popularity of giving the people a bit of their freedom back in exchange for compliance.
If my brain was working, I’d write a long, complex post about Mr. Esfeld’s article. But lucky for you, dear reader, I’m going back to bed.
You’re better off reading the original, anyway. It really is brilliant. Very concerning. But brilliant.
I look forward to hearing your perspectives on his ideas.
P.S. Thanks for the link, Rufus. Awesome stuff.
Published in General
Otherwise known as politicians and journalists.
There are many people who don’t seem to learn from their OWN previous experience, let alone that of their society. I believe the term meta-cognition has been applied referring to one’s ability to analyze their own thinking processes. The level of this skill varies a lot from person to person.
And also varies a lot from organization to organization. (Following a bad subway accident in DC, the NTSB report actually said of MetroRail: “This organization seems to have a learning disability.”)
To learn from experience at the level of a total society requires serious historians, serious journalists, serious academics…all of which are in sort supply.
I agree with this. I would point out that COVID affected everyone much more directly than the other examples, and created a lot more fear, I think. The other stuff was sort of just, out there…
It was just out there, and thus more obviously phony.
Who see lots of money to be made off it. Especially govt grants for new models.
Great article, Doc – and plan to slow down a bit while reading it, to catch all of it. It’s dense but delicious.
Feel better soon.
Your pal,
Christo McCracken (of The Clan McCracken)
Oh, we learned it. The problem is that everyone who understood it died in the Great Famines of the late 1990s, when global surplus population vastly exceeded food production capabilities even in the developed world, and hundreds of millions in America, Europe, and Asia starved to death.
Just like Paul Ehrlich said they would.
Magnificent. YES.
I can’t take credit a Frenchmen. A gosh-darn Frenchmen of all people figured it out.
What Mark said!
I know! I can’t get over the French-ness either. It’s just so incongruous.
FTFY.
Yes, they do, and it’s proved by the ideas they hold. You are petty and short-sighted; they embrace humanity and see the glorious future. You are mired in the ideas of the past that keep us from running towards utopia; they stand on firm soil suitable for building the new foundations. You are interested in creature comforts; they, having these already, dismiss them as objectives unworthy for the noble human, or distractions that keep us shackled to old paradigms. You are tribal, inasmuch as you love family and community; they are supranational, since only the brotherhood of man can triumph over our divisions and squabbles.
Also, you go to the scaffold and await the blade to fall; they get 20 livres weekly from the firm that supplies the baskets into which the heads fall.
How about those French legislators and their appointed agents go and make a lovely little workers paradise without guillotines and government force. Eventually everyone will join and never shut up about it so I’ll join. Like a reluctant fan to Squid Games.
I believe that the whole ideal of postmodernist/ socialist collectivist agenda, is an oversimplification. No gradation or Nuance or subtlety, everything in that worldview is an either/ or, proposition. As you so eloquently put that if we say that guns should be legal for law-abiding citizens to own, they simply think that guns are bad and need to be abolished. If you even mention that you are slightly conservative, they would view you as being right wing extremist.
Personally I can’t imagine having everything in life be a simple dichotomy. To oversimplify anything that is slightly outside of your rigid orthodoxy, is tantamount to heresy. Limiting that which is a allowable for consideration, is to limit your understanding of the world around you.
We have a surfeit of intellectuals. The republic would be greatly improved by NOT having a new generation of them.
Doctor – if this is what and how you write feeling lousy, you win a prize. Somebody get this guy a Ricochet hat or mug or something!
Outstanding article and very alarming that this is where we find ourselves because it’s all true and getting worse. Recognizing the illness as you have, is the first step. The world is sickly, and it’s self-imposed. We have to do everything we can to push back and reverse this diabolical turn. The remedies need to be discussed too, and implemented now. Thank you for the link and your thoughts. Wishing you a speedy recovery.
It’s true. Sitting here in my library, thinking about how there are only two sexs causes immeasurable harm to all the citizens of the United States. Therefore, I must be forcably re-educated to get my mind right.
But seriously, this type of thinking reminds me of the butterfly effect, where a seemingly small event in one location can cause a large event in another location and time. I reject the butterfly effect on the grounds that it is not logical, as I do the assumption that everything I think or do harms others . . .
I think, in a sense, you’ve got that right since the butterfly effect is part of chaos theory and the Left seems enamored with things based on chaos rather than ordered rational approaches.
Whenever I see a disaster scene in a movie or television program, I am struck by how little the ivory tower left thinks of their fellow Americans. They do see us as inferior, panicky, selfish, stupid people who need their control. We are the chaos they need to impose their will on.
We are the carbon they want to reduce.
If we let stand the Left’s interpretation of how science is conducted, we are doomed.
Actually they do believe they are made of different stuff: I believe they subscribe to Plato’s myth of the metals: “those naturally suited to be rulers have gold, those suited to be guardians have silver, and those suited for farming and the other crafts have bronze.” Since they are of Gold and Silver and not bronze they would say they have the responsibility to rule over the rest of us.
Great observation!
The current collectivist-ideology-based ruling class are right about one thing: there is a wide range of inborn talents, including intellectual capacity and leadership.
Their main error is in thinking that any human or organization of humans is so superior in talents as to be capable of running a slave plantation, or a society where the great mass of the people are treated as farm animals in a vast experimental farm, that makes the slaves better off in the long term than they would have been were they free.
Aristotle said that some men were fit only to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters. – C.S. Lewis
True, that is much shorter than the way I wrote it. But my way is not as easy to understand.
Meaning: excellent Comment!
I was surprised to have a PI with an MD, PhD from Harvard in my graduate program who had not had any statistics courses. As a science undergrad, I had statistics, and then had it again at two graduate levels, the second one calculus-based (that was fun–first day of class the professor derived the Gaussian curve and said that anyone who hadn’t followed it didn’t belong in the class). I also had symbolic logic as an undergrad, in the philosophy department, and read Popper and Kuhn. Great fun! Algebra and calculus should not be dropped, particularly for science majors, but statistics should be required of all college students. A basic version of it should be taught to high school students as well. I’m sure there’s some junk class that can be dropped from the requirements to fit 3 credits of stats. Absolutely critical knowledge along with basic arithmetic and reading.
For the TL:DR people, the money quote is bolded.