Peak Democracy.

Roissy was in fine form the other day with his take-down of the pyjamaboy and the associated left mindset. However, one bit of his piece disturbed me, and that was comment he quoted from Randal Parker's blog. "If we had real democracy":

The elite support democracy but democracy of the sort the Western industrialized nations have in which all but the most trivial decision-making processes have been removed from elected representatives and placed in the hands of unelected judges, bureaucrats, and trial attorneys.

Populism is in complete opposition to this type of democracy. If the people could vote directly on each individual issue, they’d support all these things: an end to almost all immigration, legal and illegal, and sending back people in the country illegally. Strong defense, but non-interventionist foreign policy. Strong tariffs on just about everything to put American workers back to work. Tough crime laws and severe prisons. Death penalties after one month. Gun ownership, but with licensing. Removal of vagrants from the streets. Forcing the mentally ill into institutions. Equitarianism not egalitarianism. Forced government jobs for everyone who can’t find one in the public sector. An end to affirmative action. You get the idea, they are on the opposite side of the elites on all issues.

Yeah, sure.

By and large, the elections in Western Countries are free and fair. Political and policy change is only an election away. If people were seriously pissed off about current policy they would look for alternatives. They don't. Third party politicians and their parties rarely make any headway. Every cycle of the electoral process offers a chance for change, and yet with every cycle the incumbents remain the same.

Conservative pundits, despairing of the slouch to the left,  proclaim that the public are being "tricked" and that if only the public could be better informed then people will see the errors of their ways. Bit like arguing that the way to lose weight is by more information about diet. Despite the plethora of diet books, magazine articles and internet sites, how exactly has that notion worked out?

The current political landscape is the way it is because voters have voted for it. Yeah; sure, the voters may complain about illeagal migrants but they sure as hell love the government largesse. And when it comes to a tradeoff between national good and personal interest it always ends up being a tradgedy of the commons.

Here in Australia, the electoral cycle would swing between the economic incompetence (usually through largesse) of the Left, followed by the unpopular but necessary austerity legislation of the Right. The "system" was balanced. However, the net result of several cycles of this political pattern has resulted in the Left being percieved as the "caring" party whilst the Right is seen as heartless amongst the mind of the local mass-man.  Astute Conservative politicians here have recognised that there is little to be gained by being fiscally responsible, especially when the electoral margins are tight, as it will ensure electoral wipeout and have also begun with the social security largesse.  The system is now in a positive feedback loop.

The reason why there is always some second rate tool heading a Western Government is because a good man is unelectable. Any good politician, genuinely concerned for the interest of his nation, given the current state of the West, would have to implement anti-populist policies and would thus be thrown out in the next electoral cycle. In trying to convince the people with rational arguments for his policies, he would pass the microsecond attention span of Joe Sixpack, and besides, X factor and American Idol are on. He's also boring. Not like the football.

Thought experiment. In imagining who pyjamaboy would vote for, is not Obama the perfect fit? Could you see him voting for Reagan or Eisenhower?

Mencken laughs to scorn.

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. 

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Hope and Change. Pyjamaboy-Obama. Menken's prophecy is realised.

And for the poor bastards who bled for democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan--I weep for thee. Here is the wiki article on Support for Gay Marriage in the U.S.

That even 50% of American would support a notion,that as little as 20 years ago was though of as ridiculous,  would confirm Menken's notion that American is nation of morons and repudiates Randal Parker's commentator. Amongst my friends here in Australia, I can't believe the amount of positive talk I'm hearing from people who only years ago thought such a notion insane.

The fact is that popular opinion on the subject has swung because the Left has, through a carefully thought out psyche ops, program "convinced" the "rational" voter. The convincing has involved nothing more that simplistic, childish pseudo-philosophical arguments, careful media presentation and soppy sentimentality. It was an appeal to the emotions and not the brain. Classic Advertising 101.  The fact that the public have fallen for them is not proof of Left trickery but public stupidity. Con men are most successful with morons. That's not to say that the Left are "conspiring to trick the public"---they believe their own bullshit, it's just that their smart enough to realise that when it comes to convincing the "common man" they've got to aim for heart, which is easy, since he hasn't much of a head.

In a democratic society, the foundation material of the body politic is an idiot.

It's high time Conservative, especially Christian commentators, re-evaluate their approval of non-qualified democracy. Remember how Christ was put to death.

That's right, by democratic vote.

Commissar

Jason Richwine recently put up a rather good post over at Politico.  Why can't we talk about IQ should really be titled Why cant we talk about certain things?

In my mind, the IQ debate is settled. Overwhelming scientific evidence validates the concept, as does personal experience.  Only those who deliberately turn a blind eye to the data can assert that there isn't a genetic component.  Environment does play a role, though you can't put in what God's left out. Still, I'm not a IQ Calvinist who believes in genetic predestination, there are ways to by-pass innate stupidity but that is for a different post.

What struck me about Richwine's piece was it's explicit, but confused, attack on The Cathedral.

At stake here, incidentally, is not just knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but also how science informs public policy. The U.S. education system, for example, is suffused with mental testing, yet few in the political classes understand cognitive ability research. Angry and repeated condemnations of the science will not help.

What scholars of mental ability know, but have never successfully gotten the media to understand[ED], is that a scientific consensus, based on an extensive and consistent literature, has long been reached on many of the questions that still seem controversial to journalists.

Here is where I think he starts to go wrong. Richwine seems to be running on the assumption that science hasn't done enough to convince journalists about the truth of their claims, or, that there is an onus on scientists to convince journalists. Richwine doesn't seem to realise that the role of journalists has changed. Whilst the traditional role of journalists was to objectively report the facts, the role of the modern journalist is to police "approved" culture. He seems to be running on the assumption that "more convincing" or communication is required by the scientists. This a typical victim response. Most good natured people, when involved unexpectedly in a conflict, tend to rationalise the event by blaming themselves, in someway, for the events. He doesn't seem to realise that he is up against a malevolent beast.

Snyderman and Rothman then systematically analyzed television, newspaper, and magazine coverage of IQ issues. They were alarmed to find that the media were presenting a much different picture than what the expert survey showed. Based on media portrayals, it would seem that most experts think IQ scores have little meaning, that genes have no influence on IQ, and that the tests are hopelessly biased. “Our work demonstrates that, by any reasonable standard, media coverage of the IQ controversy has been quite inaccurate,” the authors concluded.

Now, most of the people that I know who became journalists weren't the sharpest tools in the shed, and given their limited cognitive powers it's to be expected that some of them would get things wrong. However, the systemic nature of their misrepresentation is not an act of isolated stupidity but of systemic disinformation. i.e. they're lying. The same could be said for discussion on issues such as gay marriage, immigration and crime. 

For too many people confronted with IQ issues, emotion trumps reason. Some are even angry that I never apologized for my work. I find that sentiment baffling. Apologize for stating empirical facts relevant to public policy? I could never be so craven. And apologize to whom — people who don’t like those facts? The demands for an apology illustrate the emotionalism that often governs our political discourse.

Here we come to the crux of the matter. As Ortega y Gasset argued most professionals are really noting more than mass-men, i.e cognitive misers. The liberal cognitive miser has a mind hermetically sealed to facts or opinions which contradicts their world view.[Ed: As does the conservative cognitive miser] Emotion, rather than logic, is the method of discourse amongst the hive mind. Nice and good are conflated as are uncomfortable and evil.  

What causes so many in the media to react emotionally when it comes to IQ? Snyderman and Rothman believe it is a naturally uncomfortable topic in modern liberal democracies. The possibility of intractable differences among people does not fit easily into the worldview of journalists and other members of the intellectual class who have an aversion to inequality. The unfortunate — but all too human — reaction is to avoid seriously grappling with inconvenient truths. And I suspect the people who lash out in anger are the ones who are most internally conflicted.

But I see little value in speculating further about causes. Change is what’s needed. And the first thing for reporters, commentators, and non-experts to do is to stop demonizing public discussion of IQ differences. Stop calling names. Stop trying to get people fired. Most of all, stop making pronouncements about research without first reading the literature or consulting people who have.

The role of The Cathedral is to police the prevailing culture and punish dissent, particularly through putting pressure on employers to rid themselves of those who upset the culture.  Given the moral cowardice that comes part and parcel with modern corporate and academic culture employment for influential academics who buck the system becomes impossible. They become culturally neurtralised.

The internet is the enemy of the media. Traditional media structures involved a centralised collecting agency, filtration of the news and dissemination to a public which had no other sources of information. A man's weltanshcauung was thus powerfully shaped by the titans of media. The internet  bypasses the Cathedral's power.  Cue Washington Post.

It's interesting the Richwine recognises this as well.

Not all the media coverage was divorced from real science. Journalists such as Robert VerBruggen and Michael Barone wrote insightful reaction pieces. And the science-oriented blogosphere, which is increasingly the go-to place for expert commentary[Ed], provided some of the best coverage.

I suppose that the most important take home message from Richwine's post is that engagement with the media is going to be counterproductive, especially to those of the right.  Some blog commentator seem keen for media attention but I think that this desire is unwise.  I think its important for the nascent New Right/ Dark Enlightenment/Neo Reactionaries not to worry about sudden media exposure and the publicity it brings. The movement needs to establish roots which are deep, wide and strong. Just like undergound movements in occupied countries, we need to establish our bona fides by personal contact through person to person spread. Anyone who embraces the media is likely to end up as its lunch.

We are the new rebels.

The Biological Vote.

As mentioned in our previous post, most people tend to be Cognitive Misers. i.e. System 1 thinkers. It's important to point out, however, that it's a mistake however to think that System 1 responses  constitute actual thought.  Rather, they're pre-established cognitive solutions (heuristics)--both genetic and learned--which are summoned under the appropriate circumstances.  It's more a higher order reflex than actual cognition. The thing about System 1 thinking, though, is that it is not only a response mechanism but also an interpretive one; the brain tries to fit novel stimuli into "best fit" patterns that correspond to previous experience.

It is this type of thinking is also the cognitive basis for stereotypes. When President Obama bemoaned the fact that women would clutch their handbags when he entered a lift, he really was arguing against human nature. Women, who had previously had negative experiences with black males, will upon meeting an unfamiliar black man, take a defensive posture. It's not racism it's System 1 thought.  System 1 judges a book by its cover.

The whole thing about System 1 is that its operations tend to be pragmatic and its solutions "good enough". Understanding is less valued than just simply getting by. The problem is, though, that getting by is not good enough when you actually have to understand what is going on.

Take, for example, the phenomenon of stalling in flight.  The natural instinct of a pilot, in response to a failure of lift by the wings, is to pull the nose of the aircraft up. This, however, is precisely the wrong thing to do and pilots are therefore trained to act counter-intuitively (against System 1) and push the nose down in order to regain lift. System 1 thinking can thus lead to tragic situations where it is inappropriately applied and is inadequate in complex situations


Which brings us back to democracy and its constituent element; the voter. There is convincing sociological research to show that the average voter is factually clueless when it comes to being informed about politics.There is also  convincing evidence that he is a cognitive miser. So, how then does our basic unit of enlighten democracy make his decisions on the great questions of the day?

Emotion is the overriding influence in System 1 thought Action and interpretation is orientated around emotional congruence. If it feels intuitively right, it is right.  The party, or policy, that most aligns with the emotional state is the one that earns our miser's vote. The neuroscience of emotion is thus fundamental in understanding mass political orientation.

For instance, there is convincing evidence that political orientation has a strong heritable component.
Lots of studies have consistently demonstrated differences in personality between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives being more anxious prone and order focused whilst liberals tend to be more carefree and threat ignorant. Conservative cognitive misers will therefore find emotional congruence with strong definitive leaders with definite goals and plans, i.e authoritarian figures, liberals on the other hand, will find congruence in those whose policies push their neurobiological buttons.

For the cognitive miser, it is the superficial emotional appeal that determines his vote, not an analysis of the content of party policy and its long term effects. If we take a look at German voting patterns between the wars.



Legend:
NSDAP = National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei); the Nazis
DNVP = German National People's Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei); the nationalists
DVP = German People's Party (Deutsche Volkspartei); an increasingly right-wing bourgeois party
BVP = Bavarian People's Party (Bayerische Volkspartei); a center-right party of Bavarian regional interests
Z = Center Party (Zentrumspartei); the party of Roman Catholics
DDP = German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei); a center-left liberal party
SPD = Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands); the majority socialist party
USPD = Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (Unabhängoge Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands); the independent socialists
KPD = Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands) 

A huge amount of the Nazi vote is gained by taking it away from the conservative parties in Germany. Hitler, despite a manifestly left-wing political ideology, was able to dress up his policy in a convincingly right-wing cover. The cognitive misers who were "biologically wired conservatives" joined his party in droves. (Part of Hitler's success can also be attributed to the effects of the economic depression. Cognitive misers, when placed in stressful situations tend to adopt clear cut positions. Notice the rise in the communist vote --Left wing cognitive misers.)

When I put up my post on alpha socialism, some people may have thought that it was an interpretation of politics through the lens of "Game". It was nothing of the sort. Rather, the political phenomenon of Nazism ( and communism) could be be better explained by recognising it as being an ideology in biological synchronicity with the alpha cognitive miser. Note, even being a Nobel Laureate (paging Johannes Stark ) protected one from embracing its stupidity.  But it needs to be remembered for every Rudolf Hess there was an Alger Hiss.  Nazism appealed to conservative instinct just a communism appeals to the liberal, and the American liberals spying for Stalin were just as contemptible as their Nazi contemporaries.

The problem for the right, as illustrated by the Nazi experience, is that the many of the "biological righties" can be won over to the left through an appeal to their instinct rather than reason. Nice agreeable white people, embracing the sexual and political revolution slowly, still embrace the sexual and political revolution in the end. Biological conservatism is not conservatism, and in the end the only thing that stops us sliding towards Gommorah is faith, logic and fact---not feelings.

Half-wit.

Gasset wasn't the first to notice the phenomenon of mass-man. Marx recognised his type in the lumpen-proletariat and Mencken saw his middle class equivalent in the booboise. Jesus called them his sheep. Orwell, in talking about the proles, his idea of mass-man, probably gave the best description of them:

Inner and Outer Party members are under constant telescreen surveillance in both private and public; by contrast, proles' quarters are generally free of telescreens, since they are not expected to understand their exploitation as cheap labour by the Party, and thereby unable or unwilling to organize resistance. Their functions are simple: work and breed. They care little about anything but home and family, neighbour quarrels, films, football, beer, lottery tickets, and other such bread and circuses. They are not required to express support for the Party beyond mild patriotism; the Party creates meaningless entertainment, songs, novels and even pornography for the proles—all written by machines except for pornography, which is compiled by members of the Outer Party and accessible only by workers in Pornosec. Proles do not wear uniforms, may use cosmetics, and have a relatively free internal market economy. Proles also have liberal sex lives, uninterrupted by the Party, and divorce and prostitution are permitted. Despite these personal freedoms, the Thought Police plant agents among the proles to spread false rumours and mark down and/or eliminate any individuals deemed capable of causing trouble. Prole quarters consist of rundown apartment buildings, shops and pubs. Though trade between Outer Party members and proles is nominally prohibited, all Party members participate, as proles are the only source for certain minor necessities

Unlike the others, Gasset recgonised--rightly in my opinion--that the prole mind had infected all strata of society. For Gasset, much of what made up the society's governing technocratic class; such as doctors, lawyers, professors were nothing more than highly skilled proles.

Gasset and the others were easily dismissed as elitist, but unfortunately for their detractors, cognitive science has verified their understanding of humanity.  The mind of mass-man is the mind of the cognitive miser.

To understand what cognitive miserliness is, it's first important to understand the Dual Process Theory of human cognition.* Briefly, human cognition can be considered as two separate types of thinking.  Type 1 thinking; which is instinctive, reflexic and emotionally influenced and Type 2: which is slower, deliberate, effortful and analytic.

Now it's important to recognise that many people live most of their lives in the type 1 zone. It's best to think of type one thinking as our habitual thoughts and manners and our innate preferences. It's surprising just how successful people are by just working in this zone. Think of a high level function such as driving a car. Once proficiency in the task is mastered most people run on "autopilot" afterward. Likewise, navigating our modern comfortable and non-challenging life means that for many people life is just simply "going through the motions" i.e habitual and pre-learned responses.

Life for the cognitive miser is less about thinking and reflection but more about doing "what works" to get by in life. Short term solutions which deliver results but which are  ultimately destructive are favoured over long term ones in which reward is delayed. Practical issues dominate over the abstract and things which are emotionally congruent with beliefs are reinforced. Responding more than understanding is the order of the day.  What works now is more important than what will keep on working indefinitely.

But this same type of automatic thinking can also influence our higher order intellectual functions.
For example, most experienced doctors are able to diagnose a disease not due to complex reasoning but simple pattern recognition due to habituation.  Rare diseases which are similar to common ones are frequently missed for this reason. What's saved my hide more than once is strict adherence to diagnostic protocol instead of going with "my gut".  You're quite capable of appearing professional whilst operating on autopilot, professional qualification being no guarantee of deliberative thought. This is also why Hi-IQ is no absolute protection against outstanding stupidity.  The Hi-IQ may do better in life because their solutions may be relatively better than the solutions of others but they may not be the solutions which are optimal.

The other facet of the cognitive miser is of the importance of emotion on their "thought". Cognitive misers are strongly influenced by their emotional states and the rationalisation hamster is strong in these individuals. But more on this in another post.

The problem, as Gasset recognised, is that when these cognitive misers are given control of a complex system--Modern American Styled Democracy--is the system falls apart simply because the governing element lacks the cognitive capability to maintain it. The slouch toward Gomorrah ensures.

*Note, Stanovich convincingly describes a tripartite model of cognition which I think is more functionally rather than biologically relevant.

Revolt of the Masses:IV

Gasset's book loses steam after about mid-point and the devotes the rest of this book to the subject of the state, the cultural leadership of Europe and his proposed solution to problem of mass-man

Gasset's warns about the danger of the all-powerful-state but devotes little time to the symbiosis between it and mass-man. He puts forth the idea that the modern state, with all it's complexity, is a product of bourgeois technism. It's a weak argument, in my opinion, for a variety of reasons. A simpler approach would be to see that an enlarging state, in a democracy, is a thing of the popular will.  The public want free health, education, good police forces, public transport and so on. The provision of each of these services requires a commensurate expansion of government. Hence,  with each iteration of the democratic cycle government is almost guaranteed to expand. Gasset also recognises that tendency of mass-man is to attribute to government things he really should be doing himself. Thus, government slowly intrudes into everyday spheres of life and spontaneous social organisation is stifled. Gasset also recognises that there has to be limits to state expansion, for it cannot always be guaranteed that the states influence will be benign.

However accustomed we may be to it, the terrible paradox should not escape our minds that the population of a great modern city, in order to move about peaceably and attend to its business, necessarily requires a police force to regulate the circulation. But it is foolishness for the party of "law and order" to imagine that these "forces of public authority" created to preserve order are always going to be content to preserve the order that that party desires. Inevitably they will end by themselves defining and deciding on the order they are going to impose-which, naturally, will be that which suits them best.

It might be well to take advantage of our touching on this matter to observe the different reaction to a public need manifested by different types of society. When, about 1800 the new industry began to create a type of man-the industrial worker-more criminally inclined than traditional types, France hastened to create a numerous police force. Towards 1810 there occurs in England, for the same reasons, an increase in criminality and the English suddenly realise that they have no police. The Conservatives are in power. What will they do?

Will they establish a police force? Nothing of the kind. They prefer to put up with crime, as well as they can. "People are content to let disorder alone, considering it the price they pay for liberty." "In Paris," writes John William Ward, "they have an admirable police force, but they pay dear for its advantages. 1 prefer to see, every three or four years, half a dozen people getting their throats cut in the Ratcliffe Road, than to have to submit to domiciliary visits, to spying, and to all the machinations of Fouche." 1 Here we have two opposite ideas of the State. The Englishman demands that the State should have limits set to it.

I don't think he would be a great advocate for gun control. In my opinion, his book's intellectual analysis rapidly decreases in quality from this point on. Gasset next deals with the topic of the cultural leadership of Europe.

What is the result? Europe had created a system of standards whose efficacy and productiveness the centuries have proved. Those standards are not the best possible; far from it. But they are, without a doubt, definite standards as long as no others exist or are visualised. Before supplanting them, it is essential to produce others. Now, the mass-peoples have decided to consider as bankrupt that system of standards which European civilisation implies, but as they are incapable of creating others, they do not know what to do, and to pass the time they kick up their heels and stand on their heads. Such is the first consequence which follows when there ceases to he in the world anyone who rules; the rest, when they break into rebellion, are left without a task to perform, without a programme of life.

For Gasset, European culture is the pre-eminent culture of the world. But he senses, like many others of the time, that Euopean culture is in crisis and has become decadent.

There has been a lot of talk in recent years about the decadence of Europe. I would ask people not to he so simple-minded as to think of Spengler immediately the decadence of Europe or of the Wen is mentioned. Before his book appeared, everyone was talking of this matter, and as is well known, the success of his book was due to the fact that the suspicion was already existing in people's minds, in ways and for reasons of the most heterogeneous.

This crisis of culture reflects itself in the psychology of the ordinary man.

But what is happening at present in Europe is something unhealthy and unusual. The European commandments have lost their force, though there is no sign of any others on the horizon. Europe-we are told-is ceasing to rule, and no one sees who is going to take her place. By Europe we understand primarily and properly the trinity of France, England, Germany. It is in the portion of the globe occupied by these that there has matured that mode of human existence in accordance with which the world has been organized. If, as is now announced, these three peoples are in decadence, and their programme of life has lost its validity, it is not strange that the world is becoming demoralised.

And such is the simple truth. The whole world-nations and individuals-is demoralised. For a time this demoralisation rather amuses people, and even causes a vague illusion. The lower ranks think that a weight has been lifted off them. Decalogues retain from the time they were written on stone or bronze their character of heaviness. The etymology of command conveys the notion of putting a load into someone's hands. He who commands cannot help being a bore. Lower ranks the world over are tired of being ordered and commanded, and with holiday air take advantage of a period freed from burdensome imperatives. But the holiday does not last long. Without commandments, obliging us to Eve after a certain fashion, our existence is that of the "unemployed" This is the terrible spiritual situation in which the best youth of the world finds itself to-day. By dint of feeling itself free, exempt from restrictions, it feels itself empty. An "unemployed" existence is a worse negation of life than death itself. Because to live means to have something definite to do-a mission to fulfil-and in the measure in which we avoid setting our life to something, we make it empty

It appears to me that the core principle of Gasset's philosophy is; that for a man to live a purposeful life, he must have some ideology or standard according to which he aspires to. Gasset seems to not care too much as to what these principles are, thus to my mind he is a moral relativist, but to be fair, he rejects the standards of Fascism and Bolshevism as primitive negations of his ideal of liberal democracy; ideologies which are the product of the hive-mind of mass-man. The shadow of Nietzsche lurks throughout his thinking.

For Gasset,  Europe's demoralisation has come about as a consequence of its technical and material superabundance. As European population, wealth and technological might have expanded,  its constituent cultures have failed to keep up with their potential. Gasset argues that this relative "provincialisation" of European cultures has led to the "demoralisation" of Europe!

The same thing is happening in the order of internal politics. We have not yet seen a keen
analysis of the strange problem of the political life of all the great nations being at such a low ebb. We are told that democratic institutions have lost prestige. But that is precisely what it should be necessary to explain. Because such loss of prestige is very strange. Everywhere Parliament is spoken ill of, but people do not see that in no one of the countries that count is there any attempt at substitution. Nor do even the Utopian outlines exist of other forms of the State which seem, at any rate ideally, preferable. Too much credit, then, is not to be given to the authenticity of this loss of prestige. It is not institutions, qua instruments of public life, that are going badly in Europe; it is the tasks on which to employ them. There are lacking programmes of a scope adequate to the effective capacities that life has come to acquire in each European individual. [ED]

For Europe to regain its sense of destiny and defeat its demoralisation  Gasset argues, it needs to embark on some kind of new project: a project which will inspire men. For  Gasset, that project must incorporate the ideals of liberal democracy and exceed them.  He proposes the creation of a "European man", in essence he argues for a removal of cultural provincialism by the creation of a European Union.

Hmmmm.

The Revolt of the Masses: I

A book I've been meaning to write about for a while now is Ortega y Gasset's*, Revolt of the Masses. It caused quite a stir when it first came out and appeared to be quite influential in intellectual circles for a while, but it's influence seems to have waned, partly, I believe due to the fact that European conservatism is dead and, thus, there is no one there to champion it. Secondly, it's also implicitly quite hostile to American notions of democracy and thus garners little support in the country which hosts last significant bastion of Left wing thought. Amongst learned Americans, the book is given polite acknowledgement and that's about it. The ideas presented are not engaged.

Which is a shame because the book is a powerful diagnostic tool in understanding the social maladies that beset us today. Not the the book is faultless. His writing style sometimes makes the concepts difficult to understand and he does come across as a snob, which means he will reflexively alienate many readers. His solutions to the problems, I think, history will show to be wrong. In many ways the book reminds me of those medical textbooks produced before the age of antibiotics and modern surgery: Highfaluting, great on diagnosis, terrible on therapy.

Gasset can best be described is a lover of classical liberal democracy. Liberal, in this context, is used as in the European sense. An easy way to think of what he means is by thinking of it as the types of governments and civilisation that existed in Europe during the time of the Belle Epoque.  Like myself, he too believes that this was the highpoint of European Civilisation. 

Restrictions, standards, courtesy, indirect methods, justice, reason!  Why were all these invented, why all these complications created? They are all summed up in the word civilisation, which, through the underlying notion of civis, the citizen, reveals its real origin. By means of all these there is an attempt to make possible the city, the community, common life. Hence, if we look into all these constituents of civilisation just enumerated, we shall find the same common basis. All, in fact, presuppose the radical progressive desire on the part of each individual to take others into consideration. Civilisation is before all, the will to live in common. A man is uncivilised barbarian in the degree in which he does not take others into account. Barbarism is the tendency to disassociation. Accordingly, all barbarous epochs have been times of human scattering, of the pullulation of tiny groups, separate from and hostile to one another.

The political doctrine which has represented the loftiest endeavour towards common life is liberal democracy. It carries to the extreme the determination to have consideration for one's neighbour and is the prototype of "indirect action." Liberalism is that principle of political rights, according to which the public authority, in spite of being all-powerful limits itself and attempts, even at its own expense, to leave room in the State over which it rules for those to live who neither think nor feel as it does, that is to say as do the stronger, the majority.  Liberalism is well to recall this today-is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. It announces the determination to share existence with the enemy; more than that, with an enemy which is weak. It was incredible that the human species should have arrived at so noble an attitude, so paradoxical, so refined, so acrobatic, so anti-natural. Hence, it is not to be wondered at that this same humanity should  soon appear anxious to get rid of it. It is a discipline too difficult and complex to take firm root on earth.

Writing from the vantage point of the late 1920's, he is alarmed at the decline that has taken place in European Society, a decline he places squarely on the emergence of a new type of man onto the cultural stage. He calls this man, mass-man.

But before we get to mass-man we've got to understand Gasset's concept of civilisation. Civilisation for Gasset was the end product of the thinking of the finest minds over the past three millenia of European history.  The rules, regulations, customs, habits, inter-relationships and social structures that had been thought out were passed on from one generation to another. The more advanced the civilisation the greater the intellectual capital invested it. Furthermore, Gasset recognised that the parts of the system were interrelated and the system could only function effectively if minds equal to the task at hand were given custody of it. 

For many reasons, but for the moment 1 am only going to stress one. Civilisation becomes more complex and difficult in proportion as it advances. The problems which it sets before us to-day are of the most intricate. The number of people whose minds are equal to these problems becomes increasingly smaller. The post-war period offers us a striking example of this. The reconstruction of Europe-as we are seeing-is an affair altogether too algebraical, and the ordinary European is showing himself below this high enterprise. It is not that means are lacking for the solution. What are lacking are heads. Or, rather, there are some heads, very few, but the average mass of Central Europe is unwilling to place them on its shoulders. [ED]

What concerned him particularly, was the cultural preconditions which gave birth to science:

But I repeat that I am astonished at the ease with which when speaking of technicisism it is forgotten that its vital centre is pure science, and that the conditions for its continuance involve the same conditions that render possible pure scientific activity. Has any thought been given to the number of things that must remain active in men's souls in order that there may still continue to be "men of science" in real truth? Is it seriously thought that as long as there are dollars there will be science? This notion in which so many find rest is only a further proof of primitivism. As if there were not numberless ingredients, of most disparate nature, to be brought together and shaken up in order to obtain the cocktail of physico-chemical science! Under even the most perfunctory examination of this subject, the evident fact bursts into view that over the whole extent of space and time physico-chemistry has succeeded in establishing itself completely only in the small quadrilateral enclosed by London, Berlin, Vienna, and Paris, and that only in the XIXth Century. This proves that experimental science is one of the most unlikely products of history. Seers, priests, warriors and shepherds have abounded in all times and places. But this fauna of experimental man apparently requires for its production a combination of circumstances more exceptional than those that engender the unicorn.

And he has a point. Inventions have come and gone throughout history, but its only Europe that gets the whole business of science going. But we need to remember that culture which keeps it going is not a given. Hitler got rid of his finest Jewish minds because the conflicted with the political necessities of Nazism. Stalin decreed Lysenkoism the official party line and our own Gaystapo have declared Global Warming an article of infallible dogma. The cultural climate which allows pure research is progressively limited by the politicisation of everyday life.

  (Lysenko with Stalin)

For Gasset, civilisation is a bit like the computer in front of you.  It in itself is the end  product of countless discoveries in physics, chemistry, metallurgy, mathematics, philosophy, electronics and so on. The fact that it is simple to operate belies the tremendous complexity in its generation. Gasset argues that, given its complexity, its upkeep and maintenance must be given to men who are trained and who understand thoroughly its operation. Note, that this is not an issue about power as much as it is about competence. Morever, Gasset recognises that a civilisation needs to be maintained by men committed to its ideals. Failing that, the jungle begins to gain ground.

Civilisation is not "just there," it is not self-supporting. It is artificial and requires the artist or the artisan. If you want to make use of the advantages of civilisation, but are not prepared to concern yourself with the upholding of civilisation-you are done. In a trice you find yourself left without civilisation. just a slip, and when you look around everything has vanished into air. The primitive forest appears in its native state, just as if curtains covering pure Nature had been drawn back. The jungle is always primitive and, vice versa, everything primitive is mere jungle.

When civilisation crumbles natural savagery reasserts itself. Gasset's thesis is thus: European civilisation is a product of over three millenia of thinking by the best minds. Each generation is handed this inheritance and builds upon it. Finally, in the late XIXth Century, this cultural heritage is passed onto the taxonomic equivalent of Rachael Jeantel: Mass-man. It is from here that the problems stem.

* Proper form would dictate that I use his surname in entirety but I felt the abbreviation necessary for stylistic concerns.