History interpreted as left singularities

History is one damn thing after another, and any attempt to make sense of it necessarily leads to leaving out lots of important stuff.  Thus making sense of it by looking at it in one way does not necessarily falsify making sense of it by looking at it in another way.

The trend from around fourteen hundred AD to the present has been for states to become ever stronger.  On the other hand, was not the trend from four hundred AD to one thousand AD. Of course, it might be a bad idea to bet against a trend that has been running strong for well over six hundred years, but here is why I am betting against it:

That trend, from 1400 AD to the present, has in large part been driven by what I call left singularities.  Leftism enforces ever greater leftism, so society moves leftwards ever faster, until things blow up.

Leftism is Phariseeism.  A leftist is supposedly holier than you are, and so you should obey him.  Leftists then compete each to be holier than the other, so Leftism’s religious roots are swiftly left behind, as leftism becomes ever more extreme.

The first leftist movement began as the false popes of Avignon, which became French leftism, which became revolutionary leftism, the red terror, and the war in the Vendee, which became Bonapartism,

Although the French Revolution was supposedly purely political without obvious religious elements, the war in the Vendee, and Napoleon’s war in Spain were openly religious wars.  The objective was to force the people at gunpoint to attend churches with priests appointed by one side, and murder those that attended churches with priests appointed by the other side, a goal that rapidly became as genocidal as the thirty years war between protestants and Roman Catholics, and was accompanied  by similar religious rhetoric.  You might have thought the false popes were still in Avignon.

Bonapartism self destructed, and was conquered by anglosphere leftism, thus the French wound up with government modeled on the mother of parliaments imposed on them.  Ever since then, the French regime has been a pallid echo of anglosphere leftism, but the final step following their left singularity was a major step rightwards, since anglosphere leftism of that time was well to the right of French Revolutionary leftism.

Similarly, leftist Czars succumbed to a left wing movement of their own creation that led to their own overthrow and execution, eventually resulting in Stalin, who halted the ever leftwards movement, announced that utopia had arrived, and there would be no further movement leftwards or rightwards.

If Stalin had not put a stop to it, Russia probably would have gone all the way to Pol Pot style socialism under Trotsky.

Stalin placed Russia in political stasis, which eventually cracked.  Russia was initially conquered by anglosphere leftism, attempting a rerun of what was done to France, but today’s leftists are less virile than the Duke of Wellington, and Russia may well be rejecting the foreign imposition.  Still, today’s Russia is in form and rhetoric anglosphere leftist.  The political differences between today’s America and today’s Russia are roughly comparable to the difference between anglosphere leftism at date X plus ten or twenty years, and anglosphere leftism at date X, an utterly trivial difference when one considers that anglosphere leftism has been moving left for over two hundred years.

Anglosphere leftism originated from the Puritans, and was heading into a left wing singularity with the civil war, the commonwealth, and the execution of Charles the first.  Oliver Cromwell took fright at the sight of the levelers and, like Stalin, froze things, heading off the looming chaos.  After Cromwell’s death, General Monck reversed the left wards movement, creating a theocratic monarchy based on latitudinarian (tolerant) Anglicanism.

Some Puritans were purged from government, academy, and the Church, and the rest saw which side their bread was buttered on, and quietly decided that they were not only latitudinarian Anglicans, but always had been latitudinarian Anglicans,

Similarly, I expect that if we get a reactionary restoration in the US today, 99% percent of the gender studies movement will cheerfully agree that organizations generally function better with male leadership. (After one percent of them have been fired)

Under this excellent system (theocratic monarchical latitudinarian anglicanism) British colonialists, pirates, merchants, slavers, and adventurers conquered most of the world, and Britain created the scientific revolution and the industrial revolution.

Then in the late Georgian or early Victorian period, the ever leftwards slide resumed, perhaps starting with the inability of George the Fourth to penalize queen Caroline for not submitting, failure to perform her marital duties, and flagrant adultery.  (Whatever happened to that stick no thicker than a woman’s thumb?)

The trouble was that they were too latitudinarian.  Leftists, once in power, did not make the same mistake.

Because the anglosphere left singularity lagged behind the others, having been paused for a century and a half by the restoration, it tended to occupy the rubble when other left singularities collapsed.  The movement to ever stronger states has in large part been a movement ever left, and to ever greater anglosphere domination.

The ever leftwards movement eventually killed off science shortly after World War II, replacing it with state sponsored religion dressed in lab coats. Peer review and consensus means that instead of the experimenter telling the scientific community what he sees, the scientific community tells the experimenter what he sees.  As with Wikipedia, believing one’s own eyes constitutes original research, and we should supposedly leave original research to the trained professionals.

Technology continued to advance, but after 1972, in ever fewer areas.  In one area after another, the advance in technology has come to a stop.  Last man on the moon, 1972, tallest buildings in the west, 1972.  Coolest muscle cars around then.  Progress continues in some areas, most strikingly in computers and telecommunications, but in one are after another, progress stops.   DNA reading continues to progress.  DNA writing, maybe not.  In the outposts of fallen empire technology has continued to advance in some areas abandoned by the west.  Cool tall buildings continue to be built in Shanghai, Singapore, and Dubai, but in the center of anglosphere, when the two towers fell, they could not be rebuilt, and London looks ever poorer, ever shabbier, ever more early twentieth century.  Stockholm is in a timewarp from the pre war period.

The anglosphere left is moving ever further leftwards ever faster.  Trees do not grow to the sky.  At some point, I hope short of Pol Pot leftism, it has to collapse.

With good luck, a reactionary regime might be reconstructed, as general Monck did.  With moderate luck, a Stalin might freeze the system for a while. With bad luck, we will probably be conquered by a Caliphate or China, or just overrun by bandits, pirates, and adventurers like the Roman empire in the West.  I think that Europe will mostly go Caliphate, parts of the US will create reactionary regimes, and the rest of the US will resemble Latin America.  If we are lucky, parts of the US will resemble the wild west.

In the collapse scenario much of the world will become protectorates of the new Chinese empire, as is already happening in Africa.  The rest will be patchwork of monarchies, aristocracies, good anarchy, bad anarchy, and general chaos.  Russia will chart its own path.  At present, Russia is not a favorable environment for high technology despite the abilities of many Russians, and it has a rather long history of not being a favorable environment for high technology.

This is a dark age scenario, or mostly dark age scenario. One way to avoid it would be a reactionary restoration, similar to that which General Monck brought to England.

As a non believer, I cannot see anything wrong with restoration Anglicanism, Anglicanism from the restoration to the early Victorian period. A fine prosocial religion, which supported order, private property, the family, the rule of law, the pursuit of truth, and the authority of the father. Under the rule of restoration Anglicanism, we had the industrial revolution, the scientific revolution, and British colonialists conquered most of the world. That was period of greatness on par with Golden Age of Classic Greece. What is not to like?

It taught the ten commandments, in particular:

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbours wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbours.

It also taught that all men were created unequal:

Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colors,
He made their tiny wings.

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

In other words, since (before Darwin) the natural world was obviously the product of divine design, social inequality was also the product of divine design.

And women also unequal to men

then shall the Curate say unto the Man.

. Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour and keep her, in sicknes and in health and forsakeing all other, keep thee only unto her so long as ye both shall live ?

Then shall the Priest say unto the woman.

. Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him, in sickness, and in health, and forsakeing all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live ?

Alas, Christianity is likely dead beyond possibility of revival.

Today Ed School serves the function of the theocratic church. To teach children, one needs to be credentialed, and the credential is primarily certification of political correctness. My libertarian inclination is Separation of Church and State: that we should shut down Ed school, indeed burn them to the ground, salt the earth where they stood, and make possession of such a credential a horrid secret resembling former membership in the Hitler Youth or the Waffen SS.

That is the libertarian solution, separation of Church and State, but Restoration Anglican theocracy was overthown because it was excessive tolerant of its enemies. The reactionary solution is to reverse the politics enforced by the ed credential: all previously issued credentials authorizing people to teach children would be invalidated, and credential holders invited to take a “refresher” course. I expect most of them would get the same high marks on the refresher course as they got on the original course, piously declaring that slavers and pirates brought civilization and Christianity to the heathen backward peoples with the same confident certainty as they previously piously declared that today’s capitalism rested on the ill gotten gains stolen from non whites by those pirates and slavers. Indeed, most of them would scarcely notice the change in the curriculum. They could recycle their previous essays using a word processor macro that replaces “Four legs good, two legs bad” with “Four legs need supervision by two legs”.

We would also teach those seeking educational certification “Economics in One Lesson”, microeconomics, which they would probably find a good deal harder. Microeconomics tells us that the rich, other than those on the revolving door between regulators and regulated, and cronys of politicians, actually earned their money. Now that we can no longer argue divine design, have to teach microeconomics.

But really, such an outcome seems unrealistic to me.  General Monck’s program rested on an influential class of well armed and respected gentlemen with extensive family connections.  By and large, today, family, the fundamental building block of society, has collapsed. We should perhaps think about ways of establishing order from the bottom up, following a total collapse during which the overclass/underclass alliance manifests as both blacks and police looting anyone sinful enough to look after himself and his family, as after the Katrina disaster, rather than Moldbuggian fantasies of restoring order from the top down.  There is no  ring of Fnargl.  Order is hard to build from the top down, for the top has nothing to stand upon.

After the Katrina disaster blacks, government employees, and the underclass, mostly blacks and government employees, predated upon the middle class.  Imagine that the disaster is that the government has no money to pay its underclass and employees, or far too much entirely worthless money, and there is no General Monck on a white horse.  Start with heads of households who have land, gold, guns, and food, and are unenthusiastic about involuntary sharing.   Starting from that, build a society in which political power is in the hands of solvent heads of households.