I have never seen the word mystical to mean or be anything worth caring about. And that includes on this thread.
Anytime I come across it all I can see is:
a) a concern to subsidize certain narratives
b) a Platonization / codification of ones own mind or aesthetic practices
c) an attempt to obfuscate anything concrete stated (nihilism / skepticism)
d) long winded BS about “personhood” to backdoor an ethical system in somewhere
If you care more about “traditional” (whatever that means) narratives than Reaity TV orwhatever, so be it - package the product up and call it “mysticism”; but it is just that, a temporal product based off of consumption and my desires…just like a Whopper, and it will always be categorized as such. It holds nothing outside of “consumer product” or “esoteric language” to perserve power and social status.
It’s only necessary and a product if it sells, and even than only to the satisfaction of a consumers’ needs - just like a Whopper. So McMysticism is fine, I suppose - frankly I think arguments can be had that these are reactionary views by shepards and hill people which arebound to be bred out by the progressive and inherenty “demystifying” market process and the imperatives it implies, but that’sa different story.
While I do agree with this, it does not seem that Clayton is using the word mystical in the standard meaning of magical. It seems like he is talking about it in the sense of mysterious, or unknown. Clayton’s goal is to come up with an alternative method of demystifying (I totally used that word on purpose!) the political and economic realms. There are a lot of libertarians who are obsessed with rationalism, and to large degree that’s a good thing. The thing is, most people don’t really care to study the implications of one worldview over another. For most people, it is a waste of time to engage them on hyper-rationalist (is there even such a thing?) grounds. But it’s not any better to engage them on a pure emotional level either.
So, I think what Clayton is getting at is that it while structured knowledge is incredibly useful, not everyone cares to be or even can be an expert in everything. People must rely on the word of other experts. And while we do rely on the words of experts, we should not just ditch previous knowledge just because it is traditional.
Maybe it might make sense if we look at etiquette. The etiquette in Burger King is entirely different from the etiquette at the Ritz. Maybe the kind of etiquette at the Ritz is not right for the kind of place BK is. But what we shouldn’t do is also do away with all etiquette just because it’s done at the Ritz. People shouldn’t shove others at BK. Maybe it’s okay to swear or not put your napkin on your lap at BK, but there is a reason etiquette exists, and we shouldn’t just throw it away because it’s traditional.
Maybe etiquette is a bad example. I don’t know. But I don’t think Clayton is trying to come up traditional or magical ideas for the sake of tradition or magic.
All of the above plus liberalism. Allow me to recap the progression in my thinking to help clarify:
I started by studying economics, mostly as a by-product of my interest in politics. As I got into it, realized that the way the world actually works is almost the exact opposite of what we’re taught in school, Sunday school, college, etc.
As I got deeper into economics, I was dissatisfied with the implied legal theory in, for example, Rothbard’s EoL or Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics. So, I started studying law+economics, i.e. David Friedman’s stuff plus my own research directions.
Even here, I began to realize that law is just a piece of something even bigger… human culture in the most general sense, that is, as it is the expression of human nature.
Then I returned to the question of why is it that people tolerate oppressive, tyrannical governments? Wouldn’t it be smarter to just say no? You can’t even apply public-choice arguments to solving this problem because there are not costs to saying “no”, it’s just a matter of saying “no”. Given that the costs of agreeing to be exploited by the State are so high and the costs of refusing to be exploited are so low, it is truly puzzling how the State can get away with it.
My conclusion is that the State is a memetic parasite that has hijacked pre-existing patterns of tolerated coercion that are “hardcoded” into human nature. This is a mix-up of Molyneux’s theory of the State (the State exists as part of a cycle of inter-generational child abuse, which is the root cause) with Rothbard/Hoppe’s (the State exists as a result of propaganda and an appeal to the baser instincts of the masses, that is, to escape contractual obligations and avoid legitimate rents).
My view is a synthesis of these: the State’s existence depends, in part, on the methods of inculcation which our brains are wired to accept from our parents as children and, in adulthood, our elders/superiors. These methods (e.g. mild parental physical punishment, scolding, intimidation, inculcation of fear of the unknown, etc.) evolved to solve problems in the Ancestral environment prior to our settling down in the Agricultural Revolution. Once we became sedentary and began to significantly alter the natural environment, humans started to be born into an alien environment. Some of our brain wiring is now “maladaptive” in the sense that we don’t need to be scared witless by stories of big spooky demons lurking in the woods to warn us away. In the Ancestral Environment, it really was that dangerous. But now we have GPS, for example. It just doesn’t make sense to be freaked out by the dark, scary woods anymore.
With this shift in the environment, we became vulnerable to memetic exploitation through propaganda. And this, I think, is what explains how it is that human beings can so happily accept intolerable exploitation at the hands of the State. The propaganda theory alone doesn’t work because there would be no reason for the propaganda to keep working, and working, and working. Somebody would have figured out it was all a sham thousands of years ago and that would have been the end of the State. But it’s like the Energizer bunny of society, it just keeps on going. And I think that’s why we need to understand the maladaptedness of the human brain to the modern environment. This is what explains how the system can keep going despite the glaringly obvious insanity of it all.
So, if the problem goes that deep, it seems to me that any “solution” will have to address it at a level just as deep. Just because we are maladapted to the modern environment doesn’t mean we cannot adapt to it at all. This is the miracle of the human brain… it seems to be infinitely malleable to any environment it can physically exist in. You’re using your caveman hands to type on a QWERTY keyboard… evolution had no conception of a QWERTY keyboard and yet, magically, here we are, tapping away messages to each other. So, the situation is not truly hopeless. It’s just subtle.
What I think liberalism is missing is the wider view of human nature, the part that includes singing and dancing, friends and family, childbirth and death. It is a highly left-brain (rationalistic) view of the world. And what the touchy-feely, religious side is missing is the insights of liberal philosophy - that human society really is inherently harmonious (this isn’t just wishful thinking), that voluntary exchange is positive-sum, that variation and specialization are a boon to everyone, that voluntary trade is to the benefit of everyone, that ownership and private-property are the basis of material prosperity and the escape from the brutal clutches of Nature which this has enabled, and so on.
But the reason I put “solution” in quotes is that I don’t think this is the kind of problem that can be just “solved” through analysis, like the problems of physics or even economics. The problem is just too big and all-pervasive to be solved. Any solution will not really be a solution so much as a discovery… a discovery of the conditions which enable the emergence of truly free society, not as a Utopia, not as an egalitarian paradise, not even as a place where everyone is “equally free” in some sense but in the sense of the absence of the gross, blatant distortion of the social order imposed by the State.
The only place to begin, then, is with the individual, the family and the community-in-the-small - but first with the self. And that’s where some kind of religious/mystical/whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it activity and study comes in. The idea of daily meditation is to prepare oneself to encounter the problems in the day on a calm and sure footing, so as to secure the best outcome. But this is no different than the idea of rational calculation in economic theory - the businessman encounters his opportunities and risks and then calmly, cooly calculates the best choice available to him. So the two concepts are joined in one. Cf Altucher’s Daily Practice.
One final question remains and that is: Why the hell aren’t any religions serving this need today? I think part of the answer is that religion was the first industry to be monopolized by the State for a reason. I think the other part of the answer is that some are serving it, just in very small ways or in localized exceptions to the general rule that escape wider notice. But I think there’s a lot of room for improvement and expansion. Never has there been a greater need for true spiritual guidance and mystical teaching (I mean mystical in the sense used above) that caters to the needs of people, teaches them how to defend themselves from the ideological parasitism of the State and teaches them how to secede, as an individual, family or small-community, from the Statist social order with moral finality.
I agree with the point that it’s a market phenomenon and, hence, just a product like any other. But some products are better than others, even at the same price (e.g. a BMW versus a Cadillac). I’m not espousing any “meta-narrative” here, just an idea for a “new product” on the “religious services” market, if you will.
What I think liberalism is missing is the wider view of human nature, the part that includes singing and dancing, friends and family, childbirth and death. It is a highly left-brain (rationalistic) view of the world. And what the touchy-feely, religious side is missing is the insights of liberal philosophy - that human society really is inherently harmonious (this isn’t just wishful thinking), that voluntary exchange is positive-sum, that variation and specialization are a boon to everyone, that voluntary trade is to the benefit of everyone, that ownership and private-property are the basis of material prosperity and the escape from the brutal clutches of Nature which this has enabled, and so on.
That sounds remarkably like the prevailing attitude of the 19th century.
Perhaps we should look at what destroyed it?
Conventional wisdom says the war was responsible, that the war opened up a chink in the armor of 19th century civilization through which the evil collectivist barbarisms of the 20th century were permitted to enter.
If so, I would still point out that this example uses the word “mystic”, cares about history, etc in terms that are more applicable to reality and people than any other definition I’ve seen. But that’s just an opinion at this point, as I don’t feel like elaborating.
If all you are doing is writing a story, gathering something to sell because you think there is some entrpreuria need for it and brand it as"mystic" -so be it…there is really nothing to argue.
If you are trying to make any philiosophical, theological, historical, scientific, customary or any other categorical claim - I think you may be in error.
As for some products being better than others (such asBMW and cadilliac), nothing can be said of such things except in extremely narrrow conditions.
Maybe it might make sense if we look at etiquette.
We can’t control etiquette, we can only affirm it. Nor can we say “ought” to it in much of a theoretical sense.
I am smelling a kind of Kantian attitude towards ethics - which may be kind of a codified liberal politeness. I don’t think it will fly. People are going to, and have rejected, radically so, because it doesn’t mean in the long run, and it is in a category where people expect it to. If something is built on nothing, it will collapse.
Clayton is saying that Austians are “logical” and not “sentimental” or whatever - I don’t think that makes much sense - or overal differenc in life for that matter. Either way, to try to write an historical narrative,rationalize and put into reasonable and inteligible perspective mysticism and mythology like this may very well be just as “logical” and against the category of the “mystic” he is trying to affirm.
As far as a concern about “lack of knowledge”:
This is taking pragmatic looks at epistemology and empiricism too far. “Lack of knowledge” only makes sense in very very limited cases, I would say any attempt to use the “totality” of the mystic and logical as one of them is a categorical error.
To quote the Bazarov character from Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons:
“I don’t see why it’s impossible to express everything that’s on one’s mind.”
And a word on these “historical narratives”:
All the postmoderns who are so concerned with narratives deconstruction and revisionism, etc are kind of correct in their own imbecilic way. There is a reason why I had to read a feminists, marxist, sexual,freudian etc critique and narrative interpretations of Shakespear, Homer, the Bible etc in lit class - because everyone knows any of this stuff that is subject to such literary interpretation doesn’t really matter anyway.
History literature ,etc are jokes. The only reason why they exist is academic subsidy and peope taking intellectualism and"tradition" way to seriously. The market eradicates this problem. There is no reason to come up with a new narrative to surplant and subvert the old ones in the dead categories that re used, that never willl work - why not just deny the category, and show how action and custom will eliminate them via the market process. There is no need for a mystic backdoor.
@vive: I enjoy your posts but in this case, to be honest, I have no clue what you’re on about. You seem to be taking too seriously the “church” metaphor I drew in the First Church of Mises thread (which this thread seems to be a continuation of). It’s just a metaphor. But I do think we’ve been “conquered” by the State in some sense, that is, that individuals have been dissociated from one another as a result of policies and laws whose purpose - directly or indirectly - is to force the individual to go through official, well-documented economic channels for any good or service he may require, thus ensuring that everything is counted and taxed (see the VAT in Europe, for example… that is the future of governance, worldwide).
“The market” doesn’t magically solve anything. It is nothing more than the sum of individual ingenuities. The problem I think that I see a market demand for solving here is providing services akin to what religions have provided for their constituents. I think it is modernist tripe that religion never did anybody any good. Of course it did, else why did it evolve? Discernment to separate the good from the bad is what is required and this is part of the service that I think people are demanding. They want good ideas about how to live life, there just aren’t any producers, or very few (LRC and affiliates, LvMI, ???).
Etiquette is like language. It is spontaneous and no one person in particular controls it. But that doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t look to understand what the rules are and learn when and how to break them. Most jobs don’t require a man to wear a suit anymore, and for many job interviews you still don’t need one. There are reasons men wear a suit or at least a blazer for many job interviews. It looks good and it conveys respect for how one dresses and respect for the people you want to work with. There are cultures and societies that don’t use the suit but have other type of formal dress.
The specific form of the formal wear is irrelevant. People can discuss what the proper way to dress is, or for what is appropriate for what occassions. And you are right, that etiquette isn’t controlled by any one person. But it would be a serious mistake for someone to not understand the proper etiquette for the various situations in life. True, sometimes it’s just embarrassing, but it can cost people jobs if they break certain rules even once.
So, someone can go through life without studying the etiquette necessary for whatever spheres of society they will be apart of, but he will find his life needlessly difficult in certain regards. Or he can learn about the proper etiquette that will be relevant to him and his life will be that much easier.
I think this is what Clayton is getting at but with myths and other stories. Sure, you could go through life thinking that the way people act on many reality tv shows is appropriate, and maybe it is for the sphere you are in. But I think it would be a great mistake for a lawyer to think that the behavior on Jersey Shore is appropriate for the courtroom or for even meeting clients.
For the most part, people learn the proper etiquette they need from relevant people when they are new to whatever sphere they are entering. But when they enter other spheres, that is when it would have been nice for them to know what the relevant etiquette is for the other spheres. Sure, maybe you can swear all you want in a bar, but try that in a courtroom or job interview and you will see that it is not appropriate.
It’s the same with these myths. You can learn about Aesop’s fables as a child so that you know about courteous and generally good behavior. Or you could belong to a society that thinks it’s morally bad for a woman to show her face in front of men, work alongside men, or even drive a car. You can study those myths and stories that lead to that sort of belief.
The principles behind the myths and stories are different. All cultures are different, but some have qualities that we like more than others. Certainly there are people who think that the customs and laws of Saudi Arabia are good (I’m looking at you, Saudi Royal Family). But for those of us who do not see those ideas as good, we ought to suggest stories and myths that lead to different conclusions.
And I’m not saying that Islam is evil or whatever. Religion is whatever the people make of it. I’m just saying that some stories, such as Aesop’s fables, generally have good and useful principles in them.
And separately, the parable of the broken window could be an example of a useful story. Sure, it’s not a myth. But it has all the elements of what make a good myth. Besides the point that breaking windows does not actually make a society richer, there is the great principle that we ought to look not only at that which is seen, but also at that which is not seen. It’s a great parable, and I think suggesting it to others is something along the lines of what Clayton is driving at.
sorry guys I think I did misread. “Mystic” is a widget right? You’re essentially just showing various ways to do an exegesis on things already in practice correct?
I’m all for that but it isn’t quite what I’m getting at. Let me quote Rothbard in EoL and compare/contrast my views with his to help illustrate:
I love that phrase, “Go thou and study and find out!” In terms of astrology/occultism, this would be “Know Thyself.”
The distinction between what you’re saying, gotlucky, and what I’m trying to describe is in the tenor of Rothbard’s discussion of natural law - natural law is something that is discovered; it is not normative. That is, it is not something that it even makes sense to speak of “persuading” people to conform to. The persuasion is something that Nature itself handles (consequences of choices… aka karmic law). The natural law theorist - that is, the student of human nature - merely exposits the facts of human nature, like a paleontologist digging and categorizing fossils.
Where I disagree with Rothbard is on the question of methodology. I don’t think an a priori methodology is suitable. Evolutionary psychology is lighting the way forward in terms of intensive scientific study of the objective facts of human nature. The trouble with the intensive approach is that it is not even close to sufficient for daily life. You already know, on the basis of intuition alone, a great deal more about human nature than you will ever learn from reading evolutionary psychology journal articles. A person who knew only the facts of human nature that can be deduced from EP would be a social outcast, an incompetent, a dolt.
If your aim is not merely to understand what Nature has already put into your skull and how it got there (the domain of EP), if your aim is instead to improve upon what Nature has given you in terms of your understanding of yourself (including your setting, that is, your position in time & space), your fellow man and the natural environment, then it is not sufficient to engage in intensive, rational, scientific study. You need more than that, you need some kind of way to organize and amplify your mystical knowledge, that is, the vast body of things you know but can’t explain or can learn without knowing how. This body of knowledge is much larger than any body of knowledge you will ever be able to acquire through intensive, rational study in large part because your brain is much better at the former than the latter. Compare the difficulty of reading and comprehending a good fiction book with the difficulty of learning topological set theory.
I will make an analogy - the difference between liberal philosophy and astro-liberalism is like the difference between mainstream Western medicine and holistic medicine. Holistic medicine does not involve denying the science or effectiveness of scientific medical knowledge - of course it’s true that antibiotics kill bacteria. But what it does urge is caution in the wholesale adoption of new remedies whose net effect on the well-being of the individual have not been fully understood. This urge is not directed at government policy or “society” or even necessarily to the medical establishment - it is directed to the individual because it is the individual who is most affected by the course of treatments he chooses. In addition, holistic medicine emphasizes the importance of prevention and overall health (including mental health, stress-reduction, not being locked into the rat-race, etc.) instead of just the cut, burn and poison approach of mainstream medicine. But when you need bypass surgery, you’re going to need someone who’s studied the science of heart surgery. So, both sides are needed to get the best overall result. The point is that blindly going along with things just because they’re labeled “scientific” or “objective” doesn’t make sense when you put action into the context of means and ends. Objectivity is not an end in itself, it is merely a means to the end of all acting beings: satisfaction.
I think so. I think part of it is identifying what myths have classical liberal themes or really just themes that are useful to people in general, and then to promote those myths and stories for people to read. It’s a different approach to convincing people about classical liberal and modern libertarian values, as the current approach seems to be hyper-rationalism, which is a huge turn off for most people.
EDIT: Maybe not entirely. See Clayton’s above post.
@gotlucky: The lesson taught in the parable of the broken window, is useful and valid. I think it’s particularly notable how much more effective an idea is once it is translated into a parable or engaging story form - this is how your brain really works. But as useful as the lesson of the broken window is, I think that the durability of ancient myths that have long been recognized to contain deep insights into human nature is the true evidence of their quality. Many millions (billions?) of people have heard the same stories told and re-told and felt they were worth repeating again. That tells me these stories are striking a chord with the human psyche. So, internalizing those stories (forget about analyzing them, for now) is a way of reaping the benefits of their insights into human nature, even if you do not understand why they are insightful or precisely how internalizing them integrates those insights into your own being and decision-making.
The opposite can be said for propagandistic ideas and stories that reinforce them. These are also repeated by many millions of people but they are like Internet memes, at best - useless trash better left unheard. It is often difficult to tell the two apart. Many Biblical stories probably share attributes of both - deep insights into human nature and subversive elements that reinforce self-sacrificial decision-making, ideas and attitudes contrary to ataraxia. I think the easiest starting point for filtration is whether the story has been preserved in a central repository or has managed to survive “in the wild”, i.e. through folklore, folk-music, (or academia not under a central authority) etc. If lots of people independently made the choice to repeat a story for its own sake - and it’s not just scatalogical - that’s an indication that the story appeals to something within us and may contain useful insights.
I took Latin in high school, and one of the useful things we did were read the Roman myths in the original Latin (they were the same as the Greek myths). While they were somewhat simplistic, one common theme was hospitality, and the gods rewarded people who were hospitable, and sometimes even punished those that were not. It’s the same with the Jewish myths as well. Those that were hospitable were rewarded, and those that were not may sometimes even be punished (but not always).
Maybe those stories don’t have a lot of depth to them, but I don’t think they were meant to. The only deficiency I see with them is that these stories don’t tend to get into why hospitality might be a virtue. It’s just expected to be one, and that’s probably enough for the target audience of these stories.
By the way, I don’t know how familiar you are with the Parable of the Good Samaritan (I’m sure you have at least heard of it). One of the themes that actually gets lost on most people (well, at least Americans) is that the Samaritan was the one to have helped the traveller. And Samaritans were despised by Jews. A somewhat updated version of the story might take place in the 1950’s, and it might have been a southern black who helped the traveller while the whites just passed by. Or an even more updated version could be with a Muslim being the one to stop and help the traveller, while the suburban, middle class white guy doesn’t bother to stop.
That is perhaps one problem with some of the older stories, as original themes can get lost because the story itself is dated. Most people just consider someone who helps another to be a “good Samaritan”. But they totally miss the point of the story. It’s not just that whoever helps the traveller is a good person. It’s that the actual person who helped the traveller was also someone who the target audience generally despised. So maybe the audience shouldn’t be so quick to condemn a whole group of people.
Yes, I was aware of the import of the parable of the Samaritan - when I say I was raised “devoutly religious”, I mean it. I was competing in Bible verse and catechism recitations when I was in 4th grade (at a religious school). The Calvinist Protestant sub-culture is little-known but they’re kind of like the Spartans of Protestantism.
True but I guess the stories that get told and re-told like that end up getting face-lifts anyways as authors “translate” them into modern versions of them. So, it’s not really about the form of the ancient stories (their original commitment to paper) but the content. I think knowing that a story is ancient (even if it is just a re-telling of an ancient story, like Oh Brother Where Art Thou) still says something about its value in terms of insight into human nature.
I’m still watching but I had to pause and remark on his observation on the visual bias in a lot of cognitive science. So true! There is this huuuuge bias towards visual categorization as if it is definitive of what it means to mean, what it means to categorize and it is as Hofstadter says, “so mistaken.”
