tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686340074869994423.post6180761162354601393..comments2024-01-09T04:30:53.856-08:00Comments on Jacob ex machina: Pro-Civilization and the New RightUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686340074869994423.post-10396078838306252482018-11-05T14:16:07.076-08:002018-11-05T14:16:07.076-08:00You and your readers might also like to review htt...You and your readers might also like to review http://www.procivilization.comAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17762919994517668132noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686340074869994423.post-42681109793186845192018-04-14T11:27:29.735-07:002018-04-14T11:27:29.735-07:00A mutual friend brought your blog to my attention,...A mutual friend brought your blog to my attention, and I immediately resonated with it. I was planning to reply to this article to suggest that you check out the work of David Chapman. I read "The Death of Interchange" and noticed that you mention him with regards to deconstruction, and then I noticed that you two had an exchange of Tweets a while back. I think the first piece of yours that I read was "Wrestling with God" in which you mention "fluidity". That immediately reminded me of Chapman. Chapman said that he enjoyed "Pro-civilization" in which you take his "there are no spiritual/existential problems" approach only problems that can be addressed rationally without going to extremes. I'm a huge fan of Chapman and have been trying to figure out how to introduce him into the NRx community for the past year or so. "Pro-civilization" starts that. NRx is primarily about statecraft, but emphasis on Christianity (eternalism) is one block that I face. You state that you hold a "meta-position", so you must be aware of Chapman's writings on meta-rationality (or meta-systems). Glad to have discovered you. <br />AnsatzAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07996745499176305751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686340074869994423.post-89639827656701056062018-04-09T10:55:21.247-07:002018-04-09T10:55:21.247-07:00"Political blogging is a dead genre"
No..."Political blogging is a dead genre"<br /><br />No, obsolescent, not dead ;-)Perry de Havillandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10758633865197253580noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686340074869994423.post-23218549948423653422018-04-07T03:57:40.655-07:002018-04-07T03:57:40.655-07:00Rue Des Quatre Vents:
I think you are right that w...Rue Des Quatre Vents:<br />I think you are right that welfare and regulatory incentives are part of the issue, but it's far from the whole issue. In Denmark, where I know the context best, descendants of non-western immigrants are still about 3x more likely to have a criminal sentence than people of Danish origin even after controlling for employment status. Controlling for education, parental income etc also leave large gaps.Lasse Birk Olesenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18264109946560068348noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686340074869994423.post-37096457270084001152018-04-05T14:57:51.735-07:002018-04-05T14:57:51.735-07:00History gives us examples of civilizations that ar...History gives us examples of civilizations that are both monocultural and multicultural. However, the multicultural examples tend to be empires that have a clear dominant culture - Roman, British, Carthage, Ottoman, the Abbasid Caliphate. <br /><br />History gives no precedent of a nation with an elite held together by the common denominator of self-hatred or guilt, as in the modern West. It seems that this will undermine any attempt to weave together a unifying culture. <br /><br />Today, we've seen Singapore manage a multicultural society with grace through a semi-authoritarian regime that was sharply pragmatic about both majority and minority racial grievances. Unfortunately, this formula is likely to be impossible to port to the West, where intricate rules of political correctness prevent us from talking or even thinking clearly about cultural conflict. For reasons that I believe stem from electoral strategy, minority grievances are fanned and exaggerated. When polled, Americans say that race relations are worse than they were 15 years ago, although I'd guess that discrimination in society is less. This is how to mismanage a multicultural society. <br /><br />High-trust societies are beautiful things. In Tokyo, I hear that people don't lock their bikes and let their young children travel the Subway on their own. In San Francisco, I've seen parents stop their kids from playing in grass for fear of heroin needles.<br /><br />It seems like the really nice high-trust societies today are homogenous. However, I don't know that it has to be so. For example, if you mixed two high-trust cultures in a city, would the city have high-trust norms? Could a sufficiently determined government impose high-trust norms on a diverse population? As far as I know, nobody has done this kind of analysis to really understand the underlying factors. And we are probably too politically correct as a culture to be capable of researching these questions.Authorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11736144527337505272noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686340074869994423.post-81624085394322243732018-04-05T14:12:00.755-07:002018-04-05T14:12:00.755-07:00The welfare & regulatory state complicates imm...The welfare & regulatory state complicates immigration by destroying the best way to assimilate people--work. France pays people to sit around and do nothing but stir and stoke grievances. They have even less incentive to learn the language and culture if they're not interacting w/ French bosses, coworkers, and customers. Then the regulatory state makes it hard to hire people exacerbating this. A free labor market and no safety net works as a strong melting pot. Rue Des Quatre Ventshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15971354561347327243noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686340074869994423.post-62016455639066351002018-04-04T23:35:50.676-07:002018-04-04T23:35:50.676-07:00Okay. Differentiating between best minds and unski...Okay. Differentiating between best minds and unskilled immigration can address the economic issues, however cultural issues seem to be at least as important. Historically, few, if any, countries have been able to successfully host very different cultural groups in a stable society without political and cultural and, potentially, violent conflict. <br /><br />The US is constantly and awkwardly confronting claims of discrimination and racism between groups, even between groups of Christian cultures. The groups immigrating to Europe today do not share the same religious background as the host population, increasing the potential for strain. (Studies even find a positive correlation between education level and religious fundamentalism among muslims, giving the "best minds" approach a new problem.) Lebanon, Yugoslavia, and the various ethnocultural wars of Africa come to mind as examples where conflict continued to become violent. The best exception to the rule might be peaceful Singapore, where tensions between groups exist but the not-very-democratic government is able to suppress conflict.<br /><br />One measure that I imagine would be important for prociv-proponents would be trust and social cohesion, because this helps resolve conflicts. The relationship between trust and cultural/ethnic diversity is still debated, but e.g. the Putnam 2007 study and the meta-study by Dinesen & Sønderskov 2018 finds an overall negative relationship.<br /><br />My view on this is not set in stone - a few years ago I saw no challenges at all in any degree of mixing very different cultures - but it seems history has more examples of multicultural/multicivilizational societies leading to conflict than ones leading to peace.Lasse Birk Olesenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18264109946560068348noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686340074869994423.post-13142847310290129422018-04-04T10:38:53.965-07:002018-04-04T10:38:53.965-07:00I can't speak for everyone, but I'd guess ...I can't speak for everyone, but I'd guess that the US and EU have a rapidly closing window to poach most of the best minds in the world and should do so. It's good for the host countries, good for the immigrants, and may be good for the world if the imported geniuses are more productive in rich countries around other geniuses (easy to imagine how this could happen).<br /><br />I'm not going to comment about large amounts of unskilled and uncontrolled immigration, which is the primary immigration concern in retail politics today. I couldn't think through it freely without taking a serious risk of winding up blacklisted in places I'd like to work. Authorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11736144527337505272noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686340074869994423.post-67442510352945602032018-04-03T23:57:48.500-07:002018-04-03T23:57:48.500-07:00What would be the prociv stance on immigration in ...What would be the prociv stance on immigration in an American and European context?Lasse Birk Olesenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18264109946560068348noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3686340074869994423.post-16972216944025343452018-04-03T11:12:45.976-07:002018-04-03T11:12:45.976-07:00Great piece Jacob. (Leaving a comment on blogger -...Great piece Jacob. (Leaving a comment on blogger -- so 2007!) Some ideas I'd love to see you investigate more: <br /><br />(1) On the #ProCiv view, is it better for a civilization to last a long time or to reach the greatest heights of achievement? And secondly, is it better for those achievements to last rather than the civilization itself? <br /><br />For me, I tend to answer that it is better to reach the greatest heights and to have achievements that last. To take some examples: the Illiad and the Odyssey have survived the fall of not just one, but two civilizations. Now they are embraced by a third. Moreover the achievements of Athens: mathematics, philosophy, theater. Or take the plays of Shakespeare and Elizabethan England. <br /><br />While it sad that the civilizations that created these monuments have disappeared, my life is greatly enriched by their creations. So when I think about the future, I am less concerned that America should exist, or even "the West" or any particular civilization. And the length of time that civilization existed matters less to me than what their literature is, their science, their philosophy. (I profoundly prefer Athens to Rome) <br /><br />What I care more about is hoping that there are people who value such wonderful things in our inheritance, who find objects to which and through which they can live and grow and find meaning. What gifts will we pass on to our distant descendants? Rue Des Quatre Ventshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15971354561347327243noreply@blogger.com