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Collectivism, Tribalism, and Paganism, oh my!
“An atavistic longing after the life of the noble savage is the main source of the collectivist tradition.” —FRIEDRICH HAYEK, THE FATAL CONCEIT
On its face, that statement makes no sense. What do primitive tribes of 10,000 years ago have to do with our current fascination with socialism, fascism, and other complex modern societies? But there does seem to be some connection. I always found it odd that highly educated elites tend to sneer at my skepticism over their brilliant new concepts like organic vegetables, windmills, primitive shoes, trains, and other centuries-old ideas which, to me, seem more quaint than revolutionary. Why do those who consider themselves to be on the leading edge of society drink organic coffee from hand-thrown mugs while wearing primitive sandals over wool socks? The dichotomy is jarring.
Modern leftists are, essentially, collectivists. I suppose it’s not surprising that collectivists would yearn for the last time that collectivism made any sense, which was when humans were tribal hunter-gatherers who were completely dependent on their chief and each other to survive. Sounds awful to me, but a collectivist might see such an existence as sort of romantic. Especially if they’re as deluded as Rouseau, who remarked on how healthy and fit all the Indians were, not realizing that anyone over 25 who was not in perfect health was unlikely to survive the next winter. So any primitive Native American that Rouseau was likely to encounter was likely to be extremely healthy. All the others were already dead. But those remaining were very healthy, presumably because they were so in touch with nature, right? It must be all the organic vegetables.
It must frustrate collectivists (liberals) that collectivism thrives most where people are most dependent on one another – cities. Many collectivists live in cities, where the pollution, noise, and stress make them long for their romanticized versions of the bucolic rural lifestyle, of picking wild blackberries and churning butter, that exists mainly in their imaginations. But rural life is hard – it’s not as relaxing as collectivists generally imagine, and in reality is a lot of work. So people naturally gravitate to cities, and to jobs other than farming, in which they are not dependent on the next rain to survive.
Garden co-ops are a wonderful substitute for these people, giving them a sense of belonging to a tribe, and cooperation, and a connection to nature, without trying to survive off the land. If your kale dies, you don’t. It’s like going on vacation to a resort in the Caribbean and dipping your toe in the ocean, on your way to the pool and the swim up bar. That’s as close as I get to swimming in the ocean, and it’s as close as most people get to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Which is ok, because I would drown, and collectivists would starve. The difference, of course, is that I don’t think I’m a fish.
Modern progressivism (collectivism) is not a political movement, it’s a religion. The fastest growing, and most powerful religion in the world. And religions don’t have to make sense. I’m a Christian, and to non-Christians, much of what I believe must seem ridiculous. I can’t prove what I believe, but I BELIEVE. So I try not to criticize what I see as the goofier aspects of the religions of other people. As a man of faith, I have a certain level of comfort with that which I don’t fully understand.
But when an Ivy League educated millionaire software entrepreneur glorifies primitivism and paganism, I just shake my head. If that’s the only environment in which his ideas make any sense, perhaps he might consider some new ideas. Just a thought.
#moveon.org
Published in General
Another fine post.
Two questions: First, how do you handle adherents of modern witchdoctoring (homeopathy, energy therapy etc.) when these patients seek genuine scientific remedy for their ailments? With simple allowance for the goofier aspects of their faith or with some frustration?
Second, do you really think this progressive religion is stronger than Islam? Seems to me that the Muslim fundamentalists have healthier demographics, better recruitment and even dictate terms to the progressives within leftist coalitions. Maybe you’re right and the progressives will undermine the religious and social pieties of Muslims within their coalition but I don’t see it yet in England or the US.
Thanks again for another superb post.
Even if rural people do not farm, there are many amenities of city life that either cost more or are not available, such as: high speed internet, easy drive to food stores and gas stations, entertainment (restaurants, movies, concerts), church services, etc. So even us non-collectivists like to be close to a city.
My wife’s family had to move back into the city because the 4 children had after school activities, music lessons, etc., that made driving a car the full time occupation for her mom.
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I have always imagined that conservatives 10,000 years ago were the warriors going out of the cave everyday to slay the dragon and bring home the bacon, while the liberal effeminates stayed home to keep the fires burning. Eventually they wanted the say how the bacon was divided and yet not having braved the dangers to get it. Just saying.
After that odd start, a great piece! It showed why it makes perfect sense.
This was just great, concerning a bafflement I have also had without being able to articulate it well (or at all). The main way it slams into me is when assorted people crow about how they are liberals because they are commited to SCIENCE….I assume being a snide reference to human climate change doubters. In the meantime, they are pushing literally whatever latest cuckoo health revelations they have read, going on dubious diets, denying obvious sexual differences, and promoting other various inconsistencies.
I tend to think of collectivists as looking back to the feudal era, rather than the stone age. The stone age seems a little too anarchic for their tastes. With feudalism, you get all the pledges of loyalty, the lord being held responsible for the well-being of his vassals, the corvée and taxation, etc.
You really should wade a bit farther into the beautiful Caribbean.
Not to mention anti-vaxxers.
Should we view the concept that it is collectivism of the people on the Left that is the problem, or should we view their problem as being an absence of logic? Including how they usually have no understanding of math or budgeting and certainly none regarding economics.
Eridemus points in a comment above to their embrace of the science-y theory of Global Climate Change as one problem resulting from the Leftist’s lack of real knowledge.
People in general are collectivists. Political parties, as primitive and counter productive as they end up being, seem to be an eternal feature of modern American life. So are communities based around religions of one sort or another.
They are differences in the collectives based on locale and other factors. A person who grows up in the MidWest and then lives in Scandinavia finds out that they are not considered the “new kid on the block” because they moved to Bergen Norway six months ago. They are considered the new kid on the block because they haven’t had family who has lived in Bergen continually since 1818.
Also you might want to actually interact with archeologists and others who have studied the Native American tribes here in California. For example, before the Gold Rush days began, the Pomo Indians of Northern Calif often lived to 90, and some even went on to be 100 or 105. They had a diet rich in nuts, berries, deer, elk and even did fish farming. So the concept that the Native peoples died earlier is a false one. And some archeologists think many various ethnic groups of primitive man lived longer than earlier experts gave them credit for.
Also we have had topics (can’t find right now) on the roots of college “diversity” as an end goal. And a smart post somewhere mentioned how the left hates American football mainly because no one else plays it, hence applauds the kneelers sullying its appeal.
Another post got to the main taproot: that globalists fear American nationalism since it threatens their attempt to make the world homogenous. The elites don’t live in areas where illegals are allowed to break zoning or voting rules which citizens are not allowed to do, and they want open borders because they almost prefer foreigners over Americans. Diversity worship would naturally be comfortable with letting in whoever wants to come regardless of case or motive.
Doesn’t all of this fit with the OP idea of the collectivist’s dream being a big waring blender full of humans holding hands in a John Kerry borderless world? (Forget for a moment that they contradict it themselves with exceptions for trans-being, hijabs etc. That is just a step on the way). So I’m still stumped on the point or appeal of it. Is such a world of total blending and redistribution just magically supposed to be inherently free of violence and war? It certainly seems to have sprouted in the background and become the holy grail without debate about the cost to individuality, progress, and overall wealth.
I think the only answer is that most people don’t want to be individuals, believe that progress is automatically guaranteed (or provided by government), and trust that their portion of redistributed wealth (and health benefits) will still be plenty comfy. I guess the magical gifts mixed with the ease of giving up an unsought state of responsibility could look like a great deal.
Thanks @quakevoter!
I am a hired consultant. I give advice, but what they do is up to them. I’ve noticed that even die-hard alternative medicine fans generally come to me and take my advice when something really serious happens. Never the other way around. I find that interesting – I have a post rattling around in my brain on that and related topics.
You make good points. But I do think that progressivism is more dominant. For example, how many Catholic schools could you name? 10? Maybe 20? Progressivism has more schools to educate youth in the proper religion – it’s basically ALL the schools, in every class, with few exceptions. And you could argue that progressivism already controls the USA, Canada, Mexico, most of Europe, and much of the remaining continents. You make a good point, but I take a different view.
The reason that many primitive cultures have short life expectancies is that their perinatal death rate is so high, and that brings down their average live expectancy a lot. There are still cultures in Africa that don’t name their children until they’re 4 years old, because so few make it that far. Also, the work they engage in tends to be dangerous, so a lot of young adults die in accidents. And a lot of young women die in childbirth. And so on.
The oldest people on the planet have always been around 100 years old. Every village would have a few really old people. Our maximum possible life expectancy hasn’t changed. What’s different now, at least in western countries, is that a higher percentage of our population lives a long time, so our life expectancy, statistically, as a society, is a lot longer.
Statistics like that will be impossible to collect on cultures that died out years ago.
Brilliant statements contained above.
A friend of mine, an engineer and inventor, talks about how in his last year at college, in 1974, he needed money for books. So he got himself a job to pick apples in the orchards outside Spokane.
He was able to get $ 6.25 for every so many bushels he picked. (I am forgetting the unit he cited.) Today, due to rampant immigration in the Spokane area, were he to go out and work the orchards, he would still receive some $ 6.25 for that same number of units.
This is the “loving and humane” effect that the all inclusive Leftists have wrought on our society. But hey, on the other hand, when they are eating at the newest sensation in dining out inside any of America’s large cities, they are very nice to their hispanic busboy. So that fact alone should make up for the depression in wages that they have brought about and that they themselves will never experience.
I’ve always been perplexed at the Left’s glamorizing the past. Your theory on collectivism makes sense, particularly because none of the rest of their ideas do. Thanks, Dr.
But…the swim up bar is in the pool…
Color me skeptical. Most of the indigenous peoples in North America in those days didn’t keep careful track of birth years like we do, and nobody really knew how old they were when they died. In some cases there was documentary evidence of their activities at a younger age, which gave some basis for estimating lifespan. But even in those rare cases (usually of leaders who interacted with our government) the best that could be done was an estimate. And it wasn’t uncommon for Americans who were writing local histories to assign a long lifespan to individuals in cases where the best evidence is of a much shorter life. Living outdoors the way indigenous people did will often make a person look older than someone who lives mostly indoors. This is true also among European-Americans who spend much of their life outdoors.
Conservatives have traditionally been respectful of the past. Ask Edmund Burke. I suppose some could call it glamorizing.
Jonah Goldberg explains the nature worship and our worship of actors via the same romantic root. Feelings.
Nature gives people the feels like actors and free love give people the feels. It may be hard for many of us to accept but feelings are all.
This is a longer intellectual speech but it goes into the dark origins of environmentalism.
You might want to put it on a podcast since it’s long but it gets to a lot of important things.