patrick.net

Having dipped a few of their mandibles in to test the waters with other lessons from China, the West’s managerial elite seem to have concluded that they now have the tools and latitude to begin implementing a similar system here. Although not yet anywhere near as comprehensive, this nascent system shares the same fundamental characteristics: using public-private coordination and “social governance” to collapse any distinction between public and private life, thereby greatly raising the risks for public non-conformity and dissent from the narrative. ...

How far might this all go? While the powerful realm of financial flows is today’s focus, there is no reason to think that, on the current trajectory, the same dynamics won’t be applied, in a united front, to every other sector of our economy and society. If someday soon people find themselves evicted from their insurance policies for speaking out of turn online (or associating with too many people who do), apartment leases come with ideological morality clauses, and airlines unite to ban customers with the wrong beliefs from traveling, we shouldn’t be surprised – this will simply be the behavior of a hardening managerialism seeking stability through mechanistic control over all the details of life. ...

New technologies, like AI and, especially, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) will only continue to make this kind of granular control more and more possible.[22] And all that which can possibly be used will be used. A few months ago, a man found himself completely shut out of his digitally controlled “smart home” by Amazon after a delivery driver accused his doorbell of saying something racist.[23] Why would Amazon bother to do this? Because they can do this; and so, in the end, under a managerial regime, they must do this. As our managers find that every day it feels easier and easier to “solve” problematic people with the click of a button, they will not be able to resist hitting that button, hard and often. ...

In the West, progressive managerialism softly strangled democracy to death over a century of manipulation, hollowed it out, and now wears its skin. In the East, the imported virus of communist managerialism wiped out a once-great civilization in a river of blood, then crystalized into the cold, hard machine that now rules the lands of China. ...

Managerialism has today conquered the world so thoroughly that to most of us it may seem like the only possible universe, the very water in which we swim. With our history rewritten and our minds conditioned, just as Orwell (and other prophets) predicted, we now struggle even to perceive its existence, yet alone to break through the iron paradigm of managerial thinking and recognize that, as both a form of government and a way of being, it is in the human experience something wholly new, abnormal, tyrannical, and absurd. ...

Sharing the same managerial hubris, tempted by the same growing technological powers and desire to engineer the mind and soul of Man, sheltering the same elite insecurities and delusions, and seeking to head off many of the same challenges, China and the West are today both leading the charge for that resurgence from different directions. Even as they roil and clash, each – hard and soft, modernist and post-modernist – is in its own way converging on the same destiny: the same socially engineered submission of everything human, real, and free to technocratic nihilism and the false reality of an all-encompassing machine-government – to a total techno-state.

It’s in my view now clear that humanity’s great task of the 21st century remains fundamentally the same as that left unfinished in the battles of the 20th: to reawaken and reassert the flame of the human spirt and reclaim its tradition of and natural right to self-governance. And then with that spirit, wielding the fire and sword of true human love and freedom, truth and right reason, to rise up in counter-revolution against the evil of its archenemy and tear the false order of managerialism and all its poisonous ideological spawn root and branch from the world forever.

One thing I've noticed is that the managerial classes WANT their kids to get pozzed with woke in Private Schools.

It's the engineers, chemists, etc. that are not in management that get upset over Whole Math and CRT and Queer Theory in those Private Schools. As non-managers, they don't see all the 'benefits' of signalling in memos from HR and DEI and everything else; they're working on actual projects.

“We think of this country as having a political divide, but we are actually not divided politically,” she told The Post. “The real divide in this country is along class lines — between an over-credentialed college elite and the working class.”

Though she has a PhD herself and admits to being “100% of the class I critique,” she’s motivated to give a voice to the working class who, she says, have been robbed of a platform by politicians and journalists from the elite echelons of society.

“I simply cannot stand to see the good-hearted working-class people of this country smeared by the left that sold them out,” she said. “We simply have evicted the working class from public view. We just don’t hear from them anymore, even though they represent most Americans.”

Ungar-Sargon’s extensive interviews for “Second Class” reveal a common thread: that working-class Americans, regardless of their personal characteristics or political affiliation, generally agree on which political reforms would improve their lives.

The author realized that working-class Americans largely share the same view on stricter border control and trade tariffs that favor domestic industry.

“The open border hurts them economically in a very real way by driving down their wages — and that’s obvious to people, whether they are Democrats or Republicans,” she explained.

Curtis Yarvin, as part of his explanation of the cathedral, describes such an adaptation, which he labels a “dominant” idea, as one that “validates the use of power.” The system is always eager to adopt and perpetuate such ideas or narratives. In contrast, a “recessive” idea is one that “invalidates power or its use.” Such an idea is radioactive. As a simple example, a public health bureaucrat who advocates that the public health bureaucracy needs to be handed near unlimited power so that it can respond to the threat of a virus is a prestigious hero to the whole bureaucratic system for making them all more important and powerful. A public health bureaucrat who says publicly that the same virus isn’t actually dangerous, and that no action by the public health bureaucracy is really needed, is a traitor to the whole system.

there is literally no one on earth so stupid as the wise fool indoctrinated into dogma they have mistaken for comprehension and erudition.

they will fight tooth and claw against any disagreement or refutation because it not only invalidates their ideas but also their sense of self.

this is the core danger of the midwit education trap:

you're not actually that smart, but you have been told that you are and led to expect that if you act a certain way and espouse a certain set of ideas, that others will treat you as if you are “smart.”

it's a cargo cult.

the truly smart may have their ideas challenged and not only grow from this but relish it. their intellect is critical and adaptable. it flowers under dissent and refutation which represent an opportunity to demonstrate and validate one's capacity.

the end idea is not the signifier; the ability to perform the process of getting there is.

but the midwit cannot do this. he has memorized an answer that he cannot derive. he can only repeat it upon demand. challenge is a direct status threat and risks exposure as a midwit by being unable to "perform the process of getting there."

couple "if i am proven wrong, i no longer have any way to look educated" with "and the backrub circle of my similarly situated peers will shun me if i disagree with them," and you get a recipe for inflexible dogmatism which, i fear, has become a primary product of the modern adult daycare system DBA "secondary education." ...

so when "the experts" all suddenly change their tune and say "oceania has always been at war with eastsasia!" or "vaccines were never supposed to stop the spread!" those taken in all have no choice but to pivot and believe (or at least to espouse belief). they lack the tools to do anything else and their ego seeks to defend their unearned status.

Elites adopt trends early to distinguish themselves from the masses. This imbues the trend with prestige, which soon attracts imitation from below. Elites cannot associate with lowbies, and so they abandon the trend. No matter how much they once cherished a piece of fashion or furniture, they will discard it the moment it fails to demarcate them from the vile hordes.

The internet now enables elite conventions to diffuse rapidly through every layer of society. It doesn’t take long for the proles, and even the lumpen-proles, to copy and counterfeit elite trends. This creates a frantic chase and flight dynamic: low-status individuals chase high-status individuals by imitating their conventions, which forces high-status individuals to take flight. ...

There is, in other words, an inexorable tendency for everything to become proletarianised in advanced industrial society. This tendency can be called ‘Prole Drift’. Just as entropy condemns all ordered systems to disorder, Prole Drift condemns all status symbols to proletarianisation.

Now, you’re probably thinking: This status stuff is so complicated. How do I demarcate myself from the vile hordes without having to constantly adopt new trends? How do I make sure I’m not doing anything proleish, vulgar, déclassé, or tragically middle-brow? ...

In short, the upper-upper favour inconspicuous rather than conspicuous consumption. They practice deliberate restraint, choosing items that whisper rather than shout wealth. Their houses are hidden behind large hedges, and their clothing bears no visible logos or branding. This ‘quiet luxury’ countersignals the nouveau riche, who engage in money-drenched boasting. ...

The third characteristic of the UMC worth examining is their luxury beliefs. Rob Henderson defines luxury beliefs as ‘ideas held by privileged people that make them look good but actually harm the marginalized.’

Luxury beliefs, like luxury goods, are expensive. A consultant in the Harris Farm Halo can afford a 2-year lockdown; a small-business owner cannot. A lawyer living in Berkeley Hills can afford to defund the police; someone living in South Chicago cannot. An ‘artist’ (i.e., the son of rich parents) in Fitzroy can afford to reject monogamy; a stay-at-home Mum with three kids cannot.

In short, luxury beliefs signal both cultural capital (familiarity with trendy academic ideas) and economic capital (insulation from their consequences). ...

Mids tend to parrot the luxury beliefs of the upper–middle class. They talk about things like ‘white privilege,’ oblivious to the irony that they themselves aren’t particularly privileged.

Unlike the UMC, the mids aren’t economically insulated from the consequences of their luxury beliefs. The middle class girlboss, for example, will girlboss too hard to be marriageable, but not hard enough to actually be successful. She ends up as a childless thirty-something, clinging to a middle-management post in a government bureaucracy.

Luxury beliefs, like luxury goods, are subject to Prole Drift. Middle class emulation has severely reduced their cachet. As DeepLeftAnalysis observes:

"If you tracked the average parental income of women with blue hair, it probably peaked around 2007, when it was associated with above average ‘privileged’ parents, and now it has crashed to the point where women with blue hair are decidedly part of the underclass. No luxury left in that signal."

The mids are expected to be inoffensive and characterless. Virtually no latitude is permitted to individuality or even the milder forms of eccentricity. The proles, by contrast, can say and think what they like. This is perhaps best demonstrated by their choice of bumper stickers. Drive past any building site in Australia, and you’ll see utes adorned with ‘Mud Slut,’ ‘CUNT,’ and ‘PatrolHub’ (styled after the Pornhub logo). Suffice to say, if a mid adorned their Subaru Forester with such stickers, they’d quickly be contacted by HR.

Furthermore, the proles aren’t expected to use corporate gobbledygook. When someone wastes their time, they can say ‘I’m not here to fuck spiders’, instead of ‘let’s prioritize activities that align with our core objectives.’ When someone makes a mistake, they get called a fucking idiot, instead of receiving a passive-aggressive email about ‘opportunities for improvement.’ And perhaps best of all, they don’t need to live in constant fear of saying something ‘culturally unsafe.’ They are free to think and say what they like. Why are the proles granted this freedom? I think George Orwell provided the answer in 1984.

In 1984, the Party makes no attempt to indoctrinate the proles. This is because they do not fear them. To quote Orwell:

"What opinions the proles hold, or do not hold, is looked on as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect. In a Party member, on the other hand, not even the smallest deviation of opinion on the most unimportant subject can be tolerated." ...

In the past, high status and fertility were positively correlated. Only the wealthiest could afford to have large families. Large families were, therefore, upper-class coded. Today, high status and fertility are negatively correlated. Why is this?

Johann Kurtz argues ‘that in a modern liberal paradigm, having children provides a lower status payoff than competing pursuits.’ In other words, women prioritise career advancement, travel experience, and educational achievement, because these confer more status than motherhood.

Kurtz convincingly argues that the fertility crisis can be explained by status. Or rather, lack of status. Being a stay-at-home Mum is increasingly seen as embarrassingly low-status. Even if one finds this analysis unconvincing, it is difficult to deny the immense influence that status dynamics exert over our decision making.