Comments on “Systems of meaning all in flames”

I would be very interested in hearing some references for all this. How much of this is your own conclusions and what got you thinking along these lines? Is this well known in some field, or are these novel ideas? I don’t mean this in the sense that loosely referenced output is non-academic and thus bad. If I understood correctly, you’re writing this partly because a satisfactory account of meaning(ness), or meaning in a general, non-academic thinker compatible sense has not been written. So maybe a nice general book about it doesn’t exist.

Still, I would be grateful if you could point to some of your favorites, particularly about changes in meaning on a societal level.

capitalism caused the world-wide Great Depression* *Or, at any rate, this was widely believed

It’s kind of amazing the extent to which this is still widely believed. In this case it seems totally obvious this is wrong. The great depression was caused by monetary policy, not “capitalism” or “regulation” or whatever word you want to use for the opposite of capitalism is.

But it’s not just this case, we wind up in the same epistemic tarpit with almost every economic woe. Our actual system is not either purely capitalistic or purely anti-capitalistic, so whenever anything goes wrong, both sides can make up their own counterfactual to justify why capitalism is the problem or the solution. But I think usually the real problem is something technical like monetary policy, rather than something that fits on the ideological spectrum of bigger vs. smaller government.

That’s not to say I don’t have an opinion on the bigger vs. smaller government ideological tug of war, I just don’t think it’s has the importance people generally attribute to it. A big but well run government will outperform a small but ineffective one.

Hi David, I’m really enjoying this series!

Something you mention (that “ecstasy is the natural antidote to the sense that administering the systematic self… is exhausting”) to me points to the source of our culture’s myriad addictions and obsession with all other forms of externally induced choicelessness (like falling in love, becoming a follower of a cult, etc.). Maybe this is similar to your argument about eternalism “simulating” choicelessness.

In a world where everyone is conditioned to act out multiple irreconcilable selves, there’s this urge to be seized by a passion or intensity or desire (by whatever means) that renders us unable to make choices… That gets us off the hook and lets us revert to a one-dimensional self that makes decisions unconsciously.

The systematists are right to have misgivings about addictive/compulsive/thoughtless behavior, but banning cults and drugs and whatnot doesn’t really address the problem. Maybe I’m going off on a tangent here. Basically, I think the problem with “fluidity” is that it’s mostly experienced as terrifying groundlessness, which just drives people to seek out choicelessness, which of course doesn’t work in a post-choiceless world, which just results in more turmoil!

David, I was wondering if you are familiar with Alvin Toffler’s book, “Future Shock?” Seems like humans are continually trying to ‘replicate’ their surroundings as a means to psychological security (predictability gives some comfort that things are just right).

I’m thinking that the rate of change that the industrialized world experiences, would make it almost impossible to latch onto any thing of permanence or certainty. I wonder if the sense of permanence is connected our sense of meaningfulness?

Anyway, good topic!

I find it slightly odd that your history here seems largely centred on changes in Europe. At other times you focus solely on America. What is happening in America at this time?

Empires funded the development of European systems and wars in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Britain nowadays could not afford to fight a major war! We can not really afford our minimal contribution to the Imperialist wars in the Middle-East. As European imperialism was falling apart and Europe becoming more inwardly focussed, America was rising as an imperialist power and taking an increasingly active and interventionist role in other nations. You don’t seem to cover this.

The first “modern” war fought by multiple global powers was 1795 to 1815, in which America was a bit player for a brief period ca 1812. France may have had its revolution, but they also had Napoleon. America did not have a Napoleon! The break down of systems in Europe and America is a wholly different social dynamic isn’t it? America does not start from a Feudal base. In WWI the leaders of half the major powers are first cousins whose grandmother was Queen Victoria! In this time USA rises to become a world power, rather than falling away from being one like most of Europe.

The post WWII years were a time of economic boom in the industrialised West, and the USA had no rebuilding to do! Apart from Pearl Harbour, no bombs fall on USA in either war. Industrial production is never interrupted. As Bill Bryson says in his memoirs of growing up in the 1950s, the USA when straight from making tanks and bombs, to making cars and fridges without any pause. Liberalism meant that the wealth was spread around. Keynesian economic theory meant that general prosperity increased dramatically (which is why increasing inequality now looks so heinous). Access to education improved. Child labour was eliminated. Longer schooling and delayed entry into the workforce produced the teenager. Unionised labour produced the weekend and leisure time. Mass media emerged. Women joined the workforce enmasse. The standard of living rose, especially in the USA. How do these major themes in society relate to a view of society tearing itself apart?

Under “ecstasy” you don’t mention the millennia long practice of drinking alcohol. Its a problematic lacuna, isn’t it?

Another distinction is between American and European philosophy. In the early 20th Century Europeans to gravitated towards positivism or nihilism; Brits retreated into solipsism; Asia was still largely mired in mysticism; the Middle East revived fundamentalist theology; but American philosophers became pragmatists (and thank goodness for that!).

However, the thing that most struck me about this account was what was happening in science during this period. As social systems were supposedly breaking down, we see major paradigm shifts in science, but these lead to greater and greater systematicity. Building on evolution, studies of electro-magnetism, and atomic theory, from 1900 we see the emergence of relativity, quantum mechanics, electronics, radio communications, big-bang cosmology, DNA and NeoDarwinian genetics, plate tectonics, and so on. The defining knowledge and tech of our times emerge during this period. Unification is a major project. Time & space; matter & energy; etc.

My sense is that this essay is not history so much as rhetoric. You seem to be selectively retelling history in order to fit the narrative you have already outlined. You’re trying to convince us that general history supports your social theory. You can’t really do that by cherry picking.

More specifically your comments on avant-guard art do not convince me. Take Duchamp for example. He might have shocked a handful of insiders at the time, but he remained unknown to the masses until he was assimilated by the mainstream, commodified, and reproduced enmasse. Commodification and mass-production are far more important and significant in the history of art than the avant-guard. Mass-production democratised art, but also rendered it banal and two-dimensional. Arguably, this is the most important historical theme in 20th Century art. The antics of artists have become more extreme in the effort to be noticed, but the art-world continues to commodify art without a blink. And now social media commodifies our lives.

As for John Cage, well, other American composers come to mind. Elvis Presley was a far more significant influence on society than Cage was. Woody Guthrie was far more radical in his sensibilities. Duke Ellington a more interesting composer. Cage was a one-trick pony, and ironically his one famous piece– 4‘33’‘ –is perhaps the least understood work in the art music canon, e.g. it’s not about silence, it’s about ambient sound. Cage wanted to take the composer out of composition, and the results are largely execrable. His reputation as an exciting composer is all too abstract, because there was nothing exciting about the actual music, which was routinely awful. Elvis by comparison was extremely exciting, if not terribly original. Listen to some of those early Elvis recordings and they still fizz! Guthrie was more truly selfless because he was focussed on other people and their struggles rather than lost in an individualistic intellectual pursuit of non-existence. Ellington, though popular in his day, innovated in ways that influenced music outside his own genre and across time, e.g. without Ellington, Gershwin wouldn’t exist.

I also would say the invention of cinema and the rise of Hollywood is a more significant cultural phenomena than any of those you chose to highlight. But it runs counter to your narrative, because it united people at a time when you say they were fragmenting.

I don’t disagree with the premise you are exploring. Society clearly is atomising. And maybe fluidity is the answer (though fluidity is a higher level property so the metaphor of decreasing structure breaks down at that point). The trouble is that you’ve long since stated the conclusion that you intend to reach in your writing and I think this has doomed you to agreeing with yourself as you fill in the gaps.

I can’t help wishing that this book was finished, in print, and able to be read from beginning to end. But at least I can harass the author via comments :-)

Your expanded comments on history only reinforces my view that you are telling the story to fit the conclusion you have already arrived at. This is called confirmation bias.

The Victorian rationalist-eternalist view that they could provide Absolute Truth, absolute certainty, complete understanding, and perfect control—that conclusively failed.

This failure only began to dawn on me in the last couple of years, and to be clear only this year when I started reading about antireductionism. I studied science at school and university, not the history or philosophy of science. I liked science precisely because it provided definite answers - though, it must be acknowledged, not always to the actual questions I had. My dissatisfaction on this score was inchoate for a couple of decades.

I would guess that most people have never heard of this failure and still see science as in pursuit of the ultimate answers. I’m sure some scientists still see themselves in this way also.

It’s a bit tendentious to say that “Kenneth Arrow proved mathematically that there is no such thing as a ‘fair’ system of government.” Arrow proved that for one (albeit fairly broad and intuitive) set of fairness criteria and one particular model of voting system.

Sorry for quibbling with a footnote, but hopefully it can be taken in the spirit of pointing out nebulosity :)

A quick post I just published about this:

• Nihilism is the fallacy of gray | Kenny Evitt

The link in “In the anxiety of relativism, as eternalism disintegrates, one doubts everything. ” seems to be broken.

However, it also created psychological alienation (discussed below) and social conflicts. The existing social system, which had been stable for hundreds of years, functioned only in an agrarian economy of peasants, aristocratic landowners, and a small class of skilled craftspeople.

This is a Marxist myth.

First, there has never been any evidence or logic to the claim that workers experienced more “alienation” during the industrial revolution than that experienced by artisans in the Renaissance, serfs during the Middle Ages, or slaves under Rome. In all cases people were necessarily “alienated” from the product of their labor when that product was sold, even independent craftsmen. Marx’s definition of “alienation” makes no reference to the ownership of the means of production, so it makes no sense to claim it’s specific to “capitalism” or would vanish if the factories were owned by “the workers”. Someone bolting carburetors onto Fords all day will not suddenly find that more fulfilling if issued a few shares of company stock.

Also, the last time the existing social system in Europe had been stable was 300 A.D.. Europe had had massive dislocations and social disruptions in the 4th (Roman civil wars), 5th (entire Roman Empire taken over by Germanic tribes), 6th (Byzantine and Arian wars, Europe devastated), 7th (Islamic invasions, North Africa cut permanently out of the European sphere, continued wars over Arianism), 8th (Frankish wars, more Islamic invasions, widespread enslavement, destruction, and forced conversion to Catholicism), 9th (Charlemagne’s construction of the Holy Roman Empire), 10th (collapse of Charlemagne’s empire), 11th (establishment of feudalism, general chaos), 12th (establishment of nobility, dynasties, social classes, and land ownership; crusades), 13th (more crusades, scholasticism, absolute power of the Catholic church), 14th (collapse of Papal power, the black death, the Italian Renaissance, rise of the middle class, the 100 Years War, many peasant uprisings), 15th (age of naval exploration begins, beginnings of nationalism, the Byzantine Empire falls, the Spanish Reconquista, African slave trade begins, printing invented, rise of the cities and city-states), 16th (intellectual Renaissance begins the labor specialization being attributed here to the industrial revolution; the Reformation; rise of absolute monarchs and royal power), 17th (the wars of religion, American colonization, agricultural revolution begins to cause unemployment among farm workers), and 18th (American and French revolutions; family farms have trouble competing in the new British free market system; the enclosure movement, mechanization of weaving, and fertilization all also decrease rural employment).

Your line about “actually-existing communism” is incompatible with communism as defined by Marxist thought. That is because communism is, according to that definition, a state of society. It does not refer to a society ruled by a communist regime.

You might consider the difference between a society that has abolished slavery, and a society whose ruling regime professes (authentically or not) abolitionism.

Another similar distinction would be that between “cosmist” and “terran” regimes – a cosmist regime would be one that seeks to colonize other planets. It organizes its society and economy toward the goal of colonizing other planets. That is distinct from both a terran regime, which does not seek to do so; and from an interplanetary society, which has actually accomplished colonization.

Communist regimes sought to create communism, with the understanding that this would require decades or centuries to accomplish. No communist regime ever did claim that they had created communism, only that it was their goal.

Andrew: David’s sentence on actually-existing communism already has a footnote attached to it to try to discourage people from making your irrelevant reply about states that never have and never can exist.

I read the footnote. Hence my explanation of what Marxists mean by the word. Seems the author is unfamiliar with the terminology.

Andrew: David is discussing the nature of different belief systems, and in particular the nature of systems of centralized power in which individual liberty is devalued. Claiming that we should consider the “ideal communist state”, rather than the states actually brought about by communist doctrines, is like claiming we should evaluate feudalism as a political system judging by the conditions that would prevail after Christ’s return and reign on Earth.

Bad Horse writes:

Claiming that we should consider the "ideal communist state", [...] is [dumb]

I agree.

Note, however, that nobody here made such a claim.

evaluate feudalism as a political system judging by the conditions that would prevail after Christ's return and reign on Earth.

I’m glad you brought up Christianity. It is useful to explain the point I was making before. Hopefully more clearly this time. Christianity, like Marxism, has words in its nomenclature that refer to states that have not come into existence. In particular you refer to “Christ’s reign on Earth,” also known as the eschaton, or the second coming, or the rapture.

Now, I would claim that if we were going to talk about feudalism, we should not call it by the name of “the second coming,” or by the name “the eschaton,” or by the name of “Christ’s reign on Earth.” Instead, we should call it something else (perhaps “feudalism,” perhaps not, but just not something from Christian ideology that refers to a future state).

In the case of communism, I wouldn’t even go so far as to make the analogous claim. I just point out that if we do call (e.g.) the USSR “communism,” we’re simply using different terminology than Marxist terminology. The USSR didn’t refer to itself as “communism” because it used the Marxist terminology.

Therefore, when Marxists say something like “the USSR was not communism,” they are saying something that is true, but that you (and others) are not understanding, because you do not understand what they mean when they use the word “communism.”

I will add that the Marxist definition is well-justified by the fact that it exists in a category along with capitalism and feudalism. We define feudalism and capitalism in terms of the structure of the society and its economy, not in terms of the ideology of the ruling class or the future intended for it by that ruling class. Communism, according to Marxist theory, is a classification in the category of such classifications. There are lots of other terms in this category. (Several of them, including “capitalism,” share with “communism” the unfortunate homonym of the ideology sharing the name of the status that the ideology promotes.)

It’s acceptable to have more than one meaning for a word, but to accept that is also to recognize that it is unacceptable to insist that other people are using the word in the same way you are, especially when it helps you interpret what they’re saying as dumb.

Andrew: I understand your point. But the communists who say we should use “communism” to refer to the theoretical final state are being dishonest, for at the same time they associate the term with their own party, their own current government, and their current political plans. It is a cheap ploy to shine up their totalitarian states with unearned reflected glory from a future every bit as fictitious as the Second Coming.

To avoid confusion, “communism” must apply to governments formed by people who call themselves communists. If they say it should not, then they should stop calling themselves communists.

I will also note that the term “capitalism” has also never been defined in a way that is consistent with the way Marxists use it. To conform to the Marxist myth of history, “capitalism” would need to refer to free-market institutions of the 19th century and later, yet most Marxist definitions would define the earlier absolute monarchies of Europe and the Roman and Egyptian Empires as “capitalist.” Some Marxists even call fascism “state capitalism”, which is particularly revealing as fascism is economically quite similar to communism.

The fact that you think it’s “revealing” betrays ignorance. “State capitalism” was originally coined to describe the USSR. That is the whole point of that term. Describing the USSR has always been and still remains the #1 use of the term by Marxists/communists/leftists/etc.. The similarity is not some kind of irony that you picked up on as an original observation.

To avoid confusion, "communism" must apply to governments formed by people who call themselves communists. If they say it should not, then they should stop calling themselves communists.

No, to avoid confusion, you must interpret other people correctly no matter whether they use words the way that you think they should. What you are doing here is not avoiding confusion, but trying to justify being deliberately confused when people don’t use words in the way you demand. I don’t really get it. Your attitude makes discourse impossible. You are violating the rules of rational discourse, so to speak.

Your argument about how the word should be used, though moot, is also poor for two reasons:

1. We don’t consider a “republic” to be a government formed by people who call themselves republican, we don’t consider a “monarchy” to be a government formed by people who call themselves monarchists, or a “democracy” to be a government formed by people who call themselves democrats, or “capitalism” to be the economy in a nation where the government calls itself “capitalist,” etc., because it is much more useful to categorize governments (and economies, social structures) according to their structure rather than according to beliefs in ideals. It is also not really possible to be unambiguous about beliefs or ideals (whose beliefs count? What does a given person “really” believe? How do you handle compromises between conflicting ideals which necessarily exist in real world societies?).

I am confident that you possess the ability to distinguish between the two homonym uses for ideology and social structure that exist for every one of these terms, and therefore you could acquire the same ability for the term “communism” if only you made a choice. That is, there would be no confusion if you chose not to be confused.

1. Communism is supposed to exist in the category of economic and social structures, but not government structures.

(I used a lot of government structures in my list of ideologies that have the same name as social structures, but “communism” belongs in a separate list along with “capitalism.”)

There’s a bit of ignorance on my own part there as well, since “state capitalism” was actually coined before the USSR. Nevertheless, it is still mainly used to refer to the USSR.

Here is a pamphlet by Lenin written 1921 defending the USSR’s choice to introduce state capitalism:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/apr/21.htm

Andrews: The term “communism” refers to that done by communists and communist governments, and those goals and doctrines taught by communists and in writings that identify themselves as communist.

The fact that scattered here and there throughout these writings are vague references to a mythical perfect future state, does not mean that we should use the term “communist” to refer to said fantasy. Everyone, communists and non-communist, uses the term “communist” to refer to the beliefs and objectives of communists.

Yes, to beliefs and objectives. But that’s not at issue at all. Nowhere have we been talking about that, at all. The question is whether the economy of the USSR ought to be referred that way. (Hence “actually existing” – actual governments, economies, etc. – not “beliefs and objectives.”)

Actually, it is not even that – we don’t need to be arguing about the best use of vocabulary. That would be pointless.

The real question is whether we should misunderstand the economic idea of communism as being represented by the economic actuality of the USSR. This misunderstanding is a powerful rhetorical weapon against communist enemies, stripping them of their ability to be understood, but (I claim) by employing deliberate obtuseness we sacrifice too much. After all, we are dumbing ourselves down, in order to dumb down others on our own side, so that they cannot understand the communication of the enemy. Their incapacitation in this regard cannot truly strengthen them; knowledge is stronger than ignorance. Besides, we risk losing trust if/when we are found out.

In any case, we are certainly not arguing about whether communist “beliefs and doctrines” are “communism.” That is the homonym I mentioned before – a completely different word, spelled identically.

Capitalist beliefs and doctrines are similarly capitalism, but that “capitalism” is not a state of economic organization – it is an ideology. It is a homonym, a word with multiple definitions which nevertheless remains completely unambiguous because the context/category of ideologies is distinct from the context/category of systems of economic organization.

It is also unambiguous in the analogous case of “communism” and you can make the choice to understand that term consistently with all these other terms if only you are willing.

Don’t know if you care about mentions. If you don’t, feel free to delete this comment. I’ve linked this entire site (and this article in particular) from my Social Network Crisis Reading List. Its part of a trio of reading lists, descending down to biochemistry and network science at the base, rising through memetics and thence into politics. They’re there only to support some haphazard blog entries I’ve been writing on (cough) “related” themes (I’m interested in the mathematics of phase transitions of (social) networks. Invention of printing press, and such.)

Hi David,

I enjoyed this page. I taught a Literature of Modernism class a while back, and I could have saved myself some introductory effort by just sending my students the link. At any rate, what you write reminds me so much of this poem of Yeats’s (written in 1919), that I thought I might add it here.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Hello,

While the systematic mode worked—up to WWI—the role of “high” culture was to express and reinforce the values of the system. Great art was, by definition, morally improving. The arts tried to be pure, inspiring, and uplifting. They provided an idealized vision of the smooth workings of meaning as it was meant to be.

For this paragraph in your post, I wonder if you can recommend (and anyone else are also welcome for suggestions!) some of such artworks that worth looking at.