On Power, Authority, and Legitimacy

One of the supreme guiding principles of Tradition and neoreaction is that of the restoration of right order within society.  We live in an age in which far too many ideologies and political movements are seeking to “immanentise their eschatons.”  Unfortunately, since you can only have one utopia at a time, this struggle of theories leads to a great deal of social disorder.  This is especially the case when many of these ideologies refuse to bring themselves into accord with fundamental realities about the way societies, and even human beings, really work.  Those of us on the reactionary Right desire to obviate the obvious results of all of this confusion by seeking a return back to hierarchy and order.

As a result, we reject the innovations which have arisen out of the Enlightenment and its revolutionary bastard children.  The social disorder introduced by the false god of “Liberty” leads to revolution, passes through democracy, and results in the entropic heat death of a society addicted to equalitarianism and radicalised individualism.  It is toward this end that all of the children of Whiggery – whether modern liberalism or modern conservatism/libertarianism – inevitably regress.

Yet, what will really restore order?  A partial answer to this question, at least, will be provided by gaining a right understanding of the relationship between power, authority, and legitimacy within a society.  These three concepts are often conflated in modern writing.  Yet, they are not the same.  However, they are related in that they form a three step ladder ascending toward good governance and right social order.

What is the Natural Aristocracy?

In previous posts, I have mentioned something which I refer to as the “natural aristocracy,” which should form the leadership caste within a well-ordered polity.  My views on social order demand the rejection of democracy and allied systems which “spread around” authority within a society, leading to increased social entropy and an unnatural, increasingly non-functional social system.  Instead, authority and power should be concentrated in the hands of that “wise few” whose energies and abilities are used to provide guidance and direction to a society so that it may be provided with competent, good government and that it may retain rational social structures which are in line with the natural order of things.

Typically in human history, aristocracies have consisted  of those who are considered nobles by birth (hereditary aristocracy) or else who gain and keep power through their access to wealth and other resources (plutocracy).   While these do not always coincide completely with the natural aristocracy of which I’ll be writing, there is a great deal of consequential overlap, which I will discuss below.

When we talk about an aristocracy being “natural,” what we don’t (or at least shouldn’t) mean is that there is some group of people who are “inherently” superior to their fellows in society, as through genetics or some other deterministic means.  Rather, we should understand the term to be describing those who make the effort to adopt, cultivate, and perfect certain traits and capabilities in their own lives that will “naturally” make them stand out from and excel the general run of the masses, simply because the possession of these derived traits will make one superior to those who lack them.  In other words, it is not an aristocracy that exists through no merit of its own.  Rather, it is an aristocracy that rises to the top as the cream does from the milk, through nourishing their inborn traits by self-discipline while fostering new ones through effort and activity. 

Conservatives are Agents of Social Entropy

When discussing macroscopic systems, it is common to see the term “entropy” employed as a way of describing the tendency of a system to progress towards greater disorder.  In our everyday lives, we are familiar with the fact that as machines are used, for instance, they tend to break down.  Likewise, we all have observed that a building, if left to itself, will eventually decay and fall apart due to the actions of nature.  In each case, we see a progression from order to disorder, from usefulness to disusefulness.

The scientific definitions of entropy are somewhat different, and more precise, than this colloquial sense of the term.  However, they still tend to reinforce the macroscopic, empirical sense of entropy which most of us would recognise.  There are two primary definitions which physicists use to describe entropy: the thermodynamic and the statistical.  In the first, entropy is thought of as the tendency of a system to reach thermal equilibrium on the microscopic scale – within a system not already in equilibrium, heat flows from the hot portion to the cold portion until a new equilibrium temperature is reached, accompanied by an increase in entropy within the overall system.  It is useful to think of this increase in entropy as “energy dispersal,” and entropy can be viewed as an increase in heat that is unavailable to do work – i.e. it is waste heat, it cannot be harnessed to drive mechanical or chemical processes within the system.

The second definition is statistical and is related to the thermodynamic one in that it describes the increase in available “microstates” – specific configurations which the atoms and molecules of the materials making up the system in question may take – that are probabilistically available to the system.  The greater the entropy, the more microstates are available, with the probability of each microstate being occupied being equal with all others.  The macroscopic result is that, again, a system tends toward equilibrium, toward the greatest number of probable microstates – atomic and molecular configurations – which may exist system wide and which are reflected in the specific macroscopic quantities such as temperature and pressure arrived at in the system.  In short, disorder is more probable than order, and systems naturally tend toward it.

Why Were Medieval and Renaissance Aristocratic Republics Limited to High IQ Germanic Populations?

One of the great misconceptions that many people hold about the Middle Ages in Europe is that they were a time uniformly devoted to royalism and monarchy.   The typical picture is that of a king, attended by his retinue, waging war against other kings, each surrounded by servile knights willing to fight to the death for the honour and welfare of His Royal Majesty.  Such a picture, however, presents a woefully inadequate image of the rich tapestry that was medieval government.  Monarchy varied in its strength, and was sometimes even elective.  Quite often, aristocrats were masters in their domain and waged wars with each other upon their own authority.  Free cities abounded across the continent, many with decidedly un-monarchical governments.

More commonly than many realise, aristocratic republics of various types (designed so as to distinguish them from post-1789 “democratic republics” on the model of the French Revolution) existed at various points in medieval and early modern European history, at various places on the continent.  While varying in their details and traditions, these republics generally shared one thing in common – stable administration provided by a process in which the best men in their polities were brought to the fore and included in sharing power within their oligarchic systems.  These republics were not in any sense “democratic” as we now generally think of “republics” as being – they were neither communist shams like the “People’s Democratic Republic” of North Korea nor democratic shams like the United States of America and others around the world today.  Within them the franchise – the exercise of political authority – was held by the leading men and was generally restricted to those who had either proven themselves in battle or through political wisdom or who were successful in the (sometimes quite literally) cutthroat world of medieval commerce.

However, when considering the histories of these medieval and renaissance republics, it is striking that their existence follows a definite pattern.  Almost invariably, we find these republics existing among populations which fulfill two qualifications – high average national IQs and Germanic in culture and ethnicity.  The medieval and early modern republics which we can identify consist of the following:

There is Nothing Social about Socialism

One of the great sins of Western civilisation today is the fundamental, systematic falsehood that pervades political and social discourse at all levels.  Mendacity is the mark of our times.  This civilisational prevarication goes far beyond the day to day lies told by individuals, and even exceeds the institutional untruthfulness of the lugenpresse.  It extends to the very vocabulary in which our discourse is conducted.  The very words which we are required to use if we wish to even be understood by our fellows in society require us to implicitly affirm that which is not actually true.  To refer to “social justice” is to describe something which is neither.  To use the American political terms “liberal” and “conservative” is to ascribe traits to those who don’t believe in freedom and to those who aren’t conserving anything, respectively.  Likewise, we are required to refrain from using certain absolutely and exquisitely descriptive terms because of the false connotations which progressives have succeeded in attaching to them.

Western, and especially American, society is in sore need of the application of a principle articulated by Confucius called the “rectification of names.”  Confucius recognised that words can be systematically used to portray falsehood, and therefore to distort our perceptions of reality.  When such a thing happens, when we fail to call things by what they really are, social disorder and even chaos can erupt.  He observed in his Analects,

The Benefits of a Militia System

I am not a friend of democracy.  Indeed, I believe that democracy is one of the intrinsically worst forms of government that has ever been conceived by man.  Democracy is the enemy of genuine human liberty, of the rights of freemen to live and conduct their affairs without the interference of those who envy them and seek to destroy them to please the shiftless masses of humanity who refuse to follow the pursuit of arete, of excellence, seeking to better themselves for the good of their community.  Democracy always eventually results in the dragging down of the natural aristocrats and their replacement with demagogues and rent-seekers.

In place of democracy, I advocate for aristocratic republicanism, in which the power in society – what we call “the franchise” (which may or may not include actual voting) – is held by a relatively small group of aristocrats.  Citizenship would be extended to members of the nation (ethnos), and those not in the aristocracy would still be able to enjoy traditional rights and liberties that would involve reciprocal responsibilities between the two classes.  The aristocrats would have the responsibility to the plebeian class of guiding the ship of state aright, of not involving the nation is disastrous foreign policy or invoking financial insolvency upon the state, and to refrain from interfering in the lives of the plebeians beyond what is necessary to ensure the smooth functioning of the national life.  The plebeians, in their turn, would have the responsibility to assist in defending the state both from external enemies and from internal sedition and revolution.

What I’ve outlined above describes (in rough terms, with acknowledged local variances through their evolutionary histories) such historic republican states as pre-Marian Rome, the Dutch Republic, and the Venetian (after her early flirtation with  democracy) and other Italian republics, among others.  One institution which existed in all of these states, and which helped to secure their independence from their enemies for centuries in each case, was that of the citizen militia.

Some Thoughts about Social Inertia

I am a proponent of the view that we can observe analogs to various physical phenomena within the realm of the social and human sciences.  After all, matter is merely a statistically treatable aggregation of atoms in association, and societies are statistically treatable aggregations of human beings in association.  Thus, it stands to reason that many of the phenomena we observe in the physical realm would find cognates in the social arena.  While this notion may sound rather fantastical to some, let us keep in mind that this approach has already proven fruitful for the advancement of human knowledge through the application, for instance, of principles from chaos-complexity theory (e.g. non-linearity and emergent behaviours) into social sciences such as economics, political science, and historical information science.  Likewise, there are many intersection points between discussions about “social thermodynamics” and many alt-Right and neoreactionary themes.  Below, I’d like to discuss some ideas I’ve been having about “social inertia” and how it can apply to our current social and political situations.

The principle of inertia is a well-known property of mass which was expressed in Newton’s First Law of Motion, and is often defined as “an object at rest tends to stay at rest or an object in motion tends to stay in motion, unless acted upon by an outside force.”  Inertia is an expression of the tendency of matter to remain in its current disposition with respect to motion – if it’s sitting still, it stays sitting still unless a force is applied to it.  If an object is in motion it will stay moving unless stopped (or sped up even more) by an outside force.

What’s important to keep in mind about inertia is that it is NOT describing any resistance of mass to velocity, in and of itself.  Inertia says nothing about mass “wanting to be at rest.”  What is being quantified when we discuss inertia is not velocity, but rather acceleration.  By “acceleration,” I mean the physics definition, which describes any change in the velocity of an object, whether to speed it up or to slow it down (i.e. what we colloquially think of as “deceleration” is acceleration in physical terms).  Likewise, we should understand that because velocity is a vector quantity (meaning it has both magnitude and direction), acceleration is also a vector quantity.  Acceleration can involve a change in an object’s speed, or a change in its direction, or both.

Why the Decline of America’s Average IQ is a Cause for Concern

IQ† is one of those things that some people don’t like to talk about.  Yet, for so many reasons and in so many ways, it is an important concept, on which so many things in life turn.  It is well known that there is a strong positive correlation between IQ and educational level, lifetime earnings, success in your chosen vocation, personal confidence, and (perhaps surprisingly) success in social interactions and relationships.  In general, I think people accept that a higher IQ is a good thing to have.  What causes problems, however, is when we start talking about the genetic component of IQ.  After a long period in which social scientists sought to downplay or eliminate the notion of this genetic component, more recent studies in genetics and heritability seem to have consistently found that the genetic component of IQ makes up around 60-80% of this trait.  Certainly there are other factors involved such a childhood diet, early childhood education, and so forth.  However, these are not nearly as important as many social scientists had thought (or rather, hoped) they would be.

However, it is when you delve into the realm of talking about group IQ – the statistics of IQ variability between different racial and ethnic groups – that you really begin to run afoul of the sensibilities of today’s modern equalitarians and other SJW-influenced outlets.  Indeed, discussing IQ is the single most contentious element in the debates over human biodiversity.  In many circles, the very concept of genetic IQ differences, especially between groups, leads to the sort of self-censorship that causes some to wonder if it’s “racist” to even talk about whether there are “genes for IQ” or not.  It’s acceptable to observe that the reason blacks can, on average, run faster than whites is due to genetic variances.  However, when you start observing that American whites have an average IQ around 103, while American blacks average around 85, that’s when you get put into the punishment box.

Yet – IQ effects are real.  This has been most extensively investigated in recent years by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen (a psychologist and a political scientist, respectively), culminating in their books IQ and the Wealth of Nations and IQ and Global Inequality. They observed the strong positive correlation between average national IQ and national wealth as expressed through per capita GDP, GDP growth, and other economic indicators.  Basically, the higher the average IQ of a nation, the richer, more productive, and more innovative the nation’s economy is.

When We Talk About Tradition, What Do We Really Mean?

Tradition is one of those terms that’s easy to use, but hard to define.  Everyone has their own particular idea of what it suggests, and then, of course, there is the fact that one nation’s general set of traditions may be vastly different from another’s.  So in my discussion below, I’m going to implicitly use the term to mean “Western” traditions.  When we talk about the traditions of the West, what do we really mean?  Are we longing for a turn away from the sort of technological society which we have built since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution?  Are we merely talking about a return to simpler days of our nostalgia?  What is being said?

I believe we can say that even outside of the realm of Neoreaction and Tradition, there is an increasing sense of dissatisfaction among many Westerners with the direction in which our societies are going – a dissatisfaction that is arising from a rightward direction.  For many, this sense may be inchoate and inarticulable, but it’s there.  Others may be able to give voice to their complaints, but only inadequately, or in the wrong directions, mistaking symptoms for causes.   It’s fine to discuss the symptoms, but let us not mistake them for the root origins of the many sicknesses that afflict the West which result from turning from our traditions.

There is a strong strain among those who long for a return to the “good ol’ days” to equate modernity (for that is really what we’re condemning) with technology and/or science.  In many ways it is similar to the “noble savage” mythology that has persisted for centuries in Western thought.  Technology itself is bad and dehumanising; primitivism is good and natural and in line with the human spirit.  In many ways, then, the Amish and other pietistic sects who reject modern technologies are the most authentically Western among us.

Things That Have Helped to Destroy America’s Social Cohesion (Part 2) – Generationalism

Part 1 – The Suburbs

One of the most corrosive trends in modern America is that of generationalism.  By this term, I mean the tendency to divide up the body of the American people into different generations – Millennials, Generation Xers, Baby Boomers, etc. – which are then set against each other or otherwise encouraged to isolate themselves from those of different ages and experiences than themselves.  Typically this involves encouraging people of one generation to despise – usually for superficial reasons – those in other generations.  The older generations look at the millennials and think they’re all a bunch of lazy whiners living in Mom’s basement.  Millennials look at the older folks and see helpless dinosaurs who couldn’t use an iPhone if it meant saving their own lives.

Obviously, there has always been the interplay of youth versus old age for as long as man has walked this earth.  The aged have often been mystified by the willingness of youth to disregard experience and good sense, while the young have often been exasperated by the strictures placed upon them by their elders.  This is a fact of human existence that we can find all the way back in Old Testament times and even earlier – archaeologists have found Sumerian clay tablets detailing just this strife between a father and his son.

However, modernism’s encouragement of generationalism is a different creature from this earlier human experience.  For most of human history and throughout traditional societies, whether Western or otherwise, there was still a fundamental unity between the young and the old.  It was always assumed that while the young would sow their wild oats (formalised, for example, in the Amish Rumspringa), they would eventually then settle down to learn from the experiences of their elders, who would pass on the torch of civilisation to the up-and-comers who would successfully take that torch and pass it on when they grew old themselves.  People were aware of different and successive generations, but these were not matched against each other.  Quite the opposite – each generation was taught to follow that which came before, taking on the responsibilities of manhood and civilisation when their time came.  In medieval Europe, a 15 year old young man was already apprenticing to learn a trade or working on the farm.  He was not viewed as someone who was to be treated differently than his elders.  Indeed, he was already pretty much an adult.  Our forebearers had no time or patience for teenage angst, and nobody would have gotten away with acting like a very special snowflake.