Tag: rhetoric

What’s Missing? Trust or Influence

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Post-COVID, we’re told trust in science is eroding. But perhaps the real autopsy should be performed on the institution of public discourse itself.

Since the COVID-19 crisis detonated across our global stage—part plague, part PR disaster—the phrase “trust in science” has become the most abused slogan since “thoughts and prayers.” Every public official with a podium and a pulse declared they were “following the science,” as if “science” were a kindly oracle whispering unambiguous truths into the ears of the righteous. But what happened when those pronouncements proved contradictory, politically convenient, or flat-out wrong? Was it science that failed, or was it simply a hostage to an incoherent performance of authority?

Audio: NotebookLM podcast discussing this topic.

Two recent Nature pieces dig into the supposed “decline” of scientific credibility in the post-pandemic world, offering the expected hand-wringing about public opinion and populist mistrust. But let’s not be so credulous. This isn’t merely a crisis of trust—it’s a crisis of theatre.

“The Science” as Ventriloquism

Let’s begin by skewering the central absurdity: there is no such thing as “The Science.” Science is not a monolith. It’s not a holy writ passed down by lab-coated Levites. It’s a process—a messy, iterative, and perpetually provisional mode of inquiry. But during the pandemic, politicians, pundits, and even some scientists began to weaponise the term, turning it into a rhetorical cudgel. “The Science says” became code for “shut up and comply.” Any dissent—even from within the scientific community—was cast as heresy. Galileo would be proud.

In Nature Human Behaviour paper (van der Linden et al., 2025) identifies four archetypes of distrust: distrust in the message, the messenger, the medium, and the motivation. What they fail to ask is: what if all four were compromised simultaneously? What if the medium (mainstream media) served more as a stenographer to power than a check upon it? What if the message was oversimplified into PR slogans, the messengers were party apparatchiks in lab coats, and the motivations were opaque at best?

Trust didn’t just erode. It was actively incinerated in a bonfire of institutional vanity.

A Crisis of Influence, Not Integrity

The second Nature commentary (2025) wrings its hands over “why trust in science is declining,” as if the populace has suddenly turned flat-Earth overnight. But the real story isn’t a decline in trust per se; it’s a redistribution of epistemic authority. Scientists no longer have the stage to themselves. Influencers, conspiracy theorists, rogue PhDs, and yes—exhausted citizens armed with Wi-Fi and anxiety—have joined the fray.

Science hasn’t lost truth—it’s lost control. And frankly, perhaps it shouldn’t have had that control in the first place. Democracy is messy. Information democracies doubly so. And in that mess, the epistemic pedestal of elite scientific consensus was bound to topple—especially when its public face was filtered through press conferences, inconsistent policies, and authoritarian instincts.

Technocracy’s Fatal Hubris

What we saw wasn’t science failing—it was technocracy failing in real time, trying to manage public behaviour with a veneer of empirical certainty. But when predictions shifted, guidelines reversed, and public health policy began to resemble a mood ring, the lay public was expected to pretend nothing happened. Orwell would have a field day.

This wasn’t a failure of scientific method. It was a failure of scientific messaging—an inability (or unwillingness) to communicate uncertainty, probability, and risk in adult terms. Instead, the public was infantilised. And then pathologised for rebelling.

Toward a Post-Scientistic Public Sphere

So where does that leave us? Perhaps we need to kill the idol of “The Science” to resurrect a more mature relationship with scientific discourse—one that tolerates ambiguity, embraces dissent, and admits when the data isn’t in. Science, done properly, is the art of saying “we don’t know… yet.”

The pandemic didn’t erode trust in science. It exposed how fragile our institutional credibility scaffolding really is—how easily truth is blurred when science is fed through the meat grinder of media, politics, and fear.

The answer isn’t more science communication—it’s less scientism, more honesty, and above all, fewer bureaucrats playing ventriloquist with the language of discovery.

Conclusion

Trust in science isn’t dead. But trust in those who claim to speak for science? That’s another matter. Perhaps it’s time to separate the two.

The Church of Pareto: How Economics Learned to Love Collapse

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—or—How the Invisible Hand Became a Throttling Grip on the Throat of the Biosphere

As many frequent visitors know, I am a recovering economist. I tend to view economics through a philosophical lens. Here. I consider the daft nonsense of Pareto optimality.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast of this content.

There is a priesthood in modern economics—pious in its equations, devout in its dispassion—that gathers daily to prostrate before the altar of Pareto. Here, in this sanctum of spreadsheet mysticism, it is dogma that an outcome is “optimal” so long as no one is worse off. Never mind if half the world begins in a ditch and the other half in a penthouse jacuzzi. So long as no one’s Jacuzzi is repossessed, the system is just. Hallelujah.

This cult of cleanliness, cloaked in the language of “efficiency,” performs a marvellous sleight of hand: it transforms systemic injustice into mathematical neutrality. The child working in the lithium mines of the Congo is not “harmed”—she simply doesn’t exist in the model. Her labour is an externality. Her future, an asterisk. Her biosphere, a rounding error in the grand pursuit of equilibrium.

Let us be clear: this is not science. This is not even ideology. It is theology—an abstract faith-based system garlanded with numbers. And like all good religions, it guards its axioms with fire and brimstone. Question the model? Heretic. Suggest the biosphere might matter? Luddite. Propose redistribution? Marxist. There is no room in this holy order for nuance. Only graphs and gospel.

Jevons warned us…that improvements in efficiency could increase, not reduce, resource consumption.

The rot runs deep. William Stanley Jevons—yes, that Jevons, patron saint of unintended consequences—warned us as early as 1865 that improvements in efficiency could increase, not reduce, resource consumption. But his paradox, like Cassandra’s prophecy, was fated to be ignored. Instead, we built a civilisation on the back of the very logic he warned would destroy it.

Then came Simon Kuznets, who—bless his empirically addled soul—crafted a curve that seemed to promise that inequality would fix itself if we just waited politely. We called it the Kuznets Curve and waved it about like a talisman against the ravages of industrial capitalism, ignoring the empirical wreckage that piled up beneath it like bones in a trench.

Meanwhile, Pareto himself, that nobleman of social Darwinism, famously calculated that 80% of Italy’s land was owned by 20% of its people—and rather than challenge this grotesque asymmetry, he chose to marvel at its elegance. Economics took this insight and said: “Yes, more of this, please.”

And so the model persisted—narrow, bloodless, and exquisitely ill-suited to the world it presumed to explain. The economy, it turns out, is not a closed system of rational actors optimising utility. It is a planetary-scale thermodynamic engine fuelled by fossil sunlight, pumping entropy into the biosphere faster than it can absorb. But don’t expect to find that on the syllabus.

Mainstream economics has become a tragic farce, mouthing the language of optimisation while presiding over cascading system failure. Climate change? Not in the model. Biodiversity collapse? A regrettable externality. Intergenerational theft? Discounted at 3% annually.

We are witnessing a slow-motion suicide

We are witnessing a slow-motion suicide cloaked in the rhetoric of balance sheets. The Earth is on fire, and the economists are debating interest rates.

What we need is not reform, but exorcism. Burn the models. Salt the axioms. Replace this ossified pseudoscience with something fit for a living world—ecological economics, systems theory, post-growth thinking, anything with the courage to name what this discipline has long ignored: that there are limits, and we are smashing into them at speed.

History will not be kind to this priesthood of polite annihilation. Nor should it be.

Last Word on Nexus

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Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus is a masterclass in well-constructed rhetoric. A gifted storyteller, Harari wields his prose with the finesse of a seasoned polemicist, but his penchant for reductionism undermines the very complexity he claims to dissect. As a historian, he undoubtedly grasps the intricate web of historical causality, yet he distils it into convenient dichotomies, cherry-picking points to prop up his preferred narrative. He doesn’t just oversimplify history – he commits the cardinal sin of overfitting the past to predict the future, as though the arc of history bends neatly to his will.

Harari offers binary possibilities, but his worldview is anything but ambivalent. He is a Modernist to his core, a devoted evangelist of Progress™ with a capital P. His unwavering faith in the forward march of human civilisation betrays an almost theological zeal, as if history itself were a teleological engine hurtling toward an inevitable destiny.

More troubling, though, is his tendency to step beyond his lane, veering into the treacherous territory of the Dunning-Kruger effect. He confuses the illusion of control with actual control, mistaking correlation for causation and influence for omnipotence. The result? A grand narrative that seduces with its elegance but crumbles under scrutiny – an edifice of certainty built on the shaky foundations of conjecture.

In the end, Nexus is a fascinating read, not because it reveals an immutable truth about our future, but because it so brilliantly encapsulates the ambitions – and the blind spots – of its author.

What is Information?

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I question whether reviewing a book chapter by chapter is the best approach. It feels more like a reaction video because I am trying to suss out as I go. Also, I question the integrity and allegiance of the author, a point I often make clear. Perhaps ‘integrity’ is too harsh as he may have integrity relative to his worldview. It just happens to differ from mine.

Chapter 1 of Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus, ironically titled “What is Information?” closes not with clarity but with ambiguity. Harari, ever the rhetorician, acknowledges the difficulty of achieving consensus on what ‘information’ truly means. Instead of attempting a rigorous definition, he opts for the commonsense idiomatic approach—a conveniently disingenuous choice, given that information is supposedly the book’s foundational theme. To say this omission is bothersome would be an understatement; it is a glaring oversight in a chapter dedicated to unpacking this very concept.

Audio: Podcast related to this content.

Sidestepping Rigour

Harari’s rationale for leaving ‘information’ undefined appears to rest on its contested nature, yet this does not excuse the absence of his own interpretation. While consensus may indeed be elusive, a book with such grand ambitions demands at least a working definition. Without it, readers are left adrift, navigating a central theme that Harari refuses to anchor. This omission feels particularly egregious when juxtaposed against his argument that information fundamentally underlies everything. How can one build a convincing thesis on such an unstable foundation?

The Map and the Terrain

In typical Harari fashion, the chapter isn’t devoid of compelling ideas. He revisits the map-and-terrain analogy, borrowing from Borges to argue that no map can perfectly represent reality. While this metaphor is apt for exploring the limitations of knowledge, it falters when Harari insists on the existence of an underlying, universal truth. His examples—Israeli versus Palestinian perspectives, Orthodox versus secular vantage points—highlight the relativity of interpretation. Yet he clings to the Modernist belief that events have an objective reality: they occur at specific times, dates, and places, regardless of perspective. This insistence feels like an ontological claim awkwardly shoehorned into an epistemological discussion.

Leveraging Ambiguity

One can’t help but suspect that Harari’s refusal to define ‘information’ serves a rhetorical purpose. By leaving the concept malleable, he gains the flexibility to adapt its meaning to suit his arguments throughout the book. This ambiguity may prove advantageous in bolstering a wide-ranging thesis, but it also risks undermining the book’s intellectual integrity. Readers may find themselves wondering whether Harari is exploring complexity or exploiting it.

Final Thoughts on Chapter 1

The chapter raises more questions than it answers, not least of which is whether Harari intends to address these foundational gaps in later chapters. If the preface hinted at reductionism, Chapter 1 confirms it, with Harari’s Modernist leanings and rhetorical manoeuvres taking centre stage. “What is Information?” may be a provocative title, but its contents suggest that the question is one Harari is not prepared to answer—at least, not yet.

Banality of Evil

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I thought I was done wittering on about Brian Thompson, the late CEO of United Healthcare, but here we are. His name lingers like the corporate perfume of systemic rot—an enduring testament to how we’ve elevated unethical behaviour into performance art. It got me thinking: what if we brought back a bit of old-school accountability? In Ancient Rome, outlaws lost their citizenship, legal protections, and status as people. That’s right—booted out of polite society. Meanwhile, we’ve done the opposite: we hand out golden parachutes and slap their faces on business magazine covers.

To some, Brian Thompson was a good man – apart from the insider trading, of course. He was successful, a nice guy, funny, and had a good family, and a few million-dollar homes. What else could you ask for? But his success came in the way of blood money. It seems we need fewer people who think like this, not more.

Then I recalled The Purge franchise. And sure, The Purge is a dystopian fantasy, but let’s up the stakes. Picture this: bounties on corporate villains. Not literal carnage, of course—let’s leave that for the big screen—but the return of real consequences. Instead of allowing their PR teams to smooth it all over with buzzwords and philanthropy crumbs, what if we made it socially unacceptable to be a snake in a suit? What if moral suasion—the lost art of persuading someone to do right because it’s, you know, right—actually came back into fashion?

Nietzsche nailed it ages ago. We’ve got two moral codes: one for people and one for money. And guess which one wins every time? All it takes is enough cash and the right rhetoric, and suddenly, everyone forgets who’s really getting fleeced. This is the banality of evil in its purest form: not grand acts of villainy but a shrugging normalisation of corruption. We don’t even consider it corruption. We see it as business as usual. We support and work for these businesses.

The tragedy is that we’ve become so desensitised to it that we are adept at ignoring the stench of moral failure that even calling it out feels quaint. But it’s not hopeless. Some of us still notice. Some of us still care. The real question is, how long can we keep tolerating this farce before we remember that morality isn’t just for the powerless?

Meantime, I just imagine these grubbers being stripped of power and protection, running scared from the likes of Luigi Mangioni.

Does Language Describe Reality?

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The topic of this video touches upon my insufficiency of language thesis. Tim Maudlin defends language realism but only to the extent that ‘we can use it to describe the world and that some of those descriptions are true’.

Video: Does Language Describe Reality? (IAI)

The challenge, then, is determining which descriptions are true. I’ve discussed a couple of my positions on this.

The Truth About Truth

Firstly, we can only perceive what is true as we have no access to absolute truth. The best we can achieve is an asymptotic function approaching truth, a notion that resonates with Hilary Putnam’s concept of internal realism (pdf). Putnam argues that truth is not a matter of correspondence with a mind-independent reality but is instead tied to our conceptual schemes. This means that what we consider “true” is always shaped by the language and concepts we use, making our understanding inherently partial and context-dependent. Even then, we have no way to determine how close to truth our perception is. It just has to feel true—an idea that aligns with Putnam’s pragmatic conception of truth, where truth is something that emerges from our practices and inquiries, rather than being a fixed point we can definitively reach. In terms of physics, this underlying reality may be relatively more stable than abstract concepts, which are ephemeral and shifting sands.

The Rhetoric of Truth

Secondly, given that we have no access to objective truth, we can only expect subjective or relative truths. This brings us to Putnam’s critique of the metaphysical correspondence theory of truth. According to Putnam, the idea that language can perfectly correspond to an external reality is flawed. Instead, truth is what can be justified within a particular conceptual framework, making all truth somewhat relative. This leaves us open to rhetoric—the more convincing argument wins, regardless of whether it reflects an objective reality. In fact, as Putnam’s ideas suggest, the most persuasive argument might favour an incorrect position simply because it resonates more with our internal conceptual schemes, not because it corresponds to an external truth. This has happened many times historically—or has it?

Conclusion: Language, Truth, and the Influence of Rhetoric

Putnam’s work reminds us that language is deeply connected to our understanding of the world, but it is also limited by the conceptual frameworks within which it operates. While language helps us navigate and describe the world, it cannot provide us with direct access to objective truth. Instead, it gives us tools to construct truths that are internally coherent and pragmatically useful, though always subject to change and reinterpretation. As we engage with rhetoric and persuasion, we must remain aware that the truths we accept are often those that best fit our current conceptual schemes, not necessarily those that best correspond to an elusive objective reality.

Declaration of Independence

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It’s July. The season of independence in the United States. Independence from the overt tyranny of Britain, but not from the tacit tyranny of their government—the government purported to be ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people‘ per Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address. As their Constitution reads, ‘We the People‘. Governments may be of the people and by the people, but governments are an emergent phenomenon as happens when oxygen and hydrogen combine just so and create water. Two gases combine to create a new substance—water. Some forget that, like water, government are a distinct element to the people that constitute it. Some think it resembles them. It doesn’t. It’s Hobbes’ Leviathan—or a Jabberwok.

In preparation for the traditional Summer season, I took to reading Derrida’s 1976 essay, Declarations of Independence. It was interesting, but I was hoping to get more from it. I decided to deconstruct the opening paragraph—the preamble—of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Deconstructing Binary Oppositions

Self-Evident vs. Non-Self-Evident

The Declaration boldly asserts that ‘these truths’ are ‘self-evident’,’ a claim that is nothing more than a rhetorical trick. By presenting these ideas as self-evident, the authors seek to place them beyond questioning, discouraging dissent and critical examination. In reality, these ‘truths’ are far from universal; they are the product of a specific cultural and historical context, shaped by the interests and perspectives of the privileged few who drafted the document.

Interrogating Assumptions and Hierarchies The Declaration of Independence asserts that certain truths are ‘self-evident’, implying that these truths are so obvious that they require no further justification. However, the concept of self-evidence itself is far from universally accepted. It is deeply embedded in the philosophical tradition of Enlightenment rationalism, which holds that reason and logic can reveal fundamental truths about the world.

  1. Philosophical Foundations of Self-Evidence
    • Enlightenment Rationalism: The idea of self-evidence relies heavily on Enlightenment rationalism, which posits that certain truths can be known directly through reason and are therefore beyond dispute. Philosophers such as René Descartes and Immanuel Kant emphasised the power of human reason to uncover self-evident truths. Descartes, for instance, argued for the self-evident nature of ‘Cogito, ergo sum‘ (‘I think, therefore I am’) as a fundamental truth (Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy).
    • Critique of Rationalism: Critics of Enlightenment rationalism, including existentialists like Friedrich Nietzsche and phenomenologists like Martin Heidegger, argue that what is considered self-evident is often culturally and historically contingent. Nietzsche, for example, contended that what we take as ‘truth’ is a product of our perspective and historical context, not an absolute given (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil).
  2. Cultural and Philosophical Contingency
    • Cultural Relativity: Different cultures and philosophical traditions may not find the same truths to be self-evident. For instance, the concept of individual rights as self-evident truths is a product of Western liberal thought and may not hold the same self-evident status in other cultural frameworks. In many Eastern philosophies, the focus is more on community and harmony rather than individual rights.
    • Subjectivity of Self-Evidence: The term ‘self-evident’ implies an inherent, unquestionable truth, yet what one group or culture finds self-evident, another may not. This variability reveals the instability and subjectivity of the claim. For example, in traditional Confucian societies, the emphasis is placed on hierarchy and duty rather than equality and individual rights, demonstrating a different set of ‘self-evident’ truths.
  3. Constructed Nature of Truth
    • Language and Context: Jacques Derrida’s concept of différance illustrates how meaning is not fixed but constantly deferred through language. What we consider to be “truth” is constructed through linguistic and social contexts. Derrida argues that texts do not have a single, stable meaning but rather a multiplicity of interpretations that change depending on the reader’s perspective and context (Derrida, Of Grammatology).
    • Social Construction: Michel Foucault’s analysis of power and knowledge further deconstructs the notion of objective truth. Foucault argues that what is accepted as truth is produced by power relations within society. Truths are constructed through discourses that serve the interests of particular social groups, rather than being objective or self-evident (Foucault, Discipline and Punish).

Created Equal vs. Not Created Equal

The Declaration’s claim that ‘all men are created equal’ is a blatant falsehood, a manipulative promise designed to appease the masses whilst maintaining the status quo. The glaring contradictions of slavery and gender inequality expose the hollowness of this assertion. Equality, as presented here, is nothing more than an ideological construct, a tool for those in power to maintain their dominance while paying lip service to the ideals of justice and fairness.

Creator vs. No Creator

The Declaration refers to a ‘Creator’ who endows individuals with rights, grounding its claims in a divine or natural law. This invokes a theistic worldview where moral and legal principles are derived from a higher power. However, Derrida challenges this by showing that the concept of a creator is a cultural and philosophical construct, not a universal truth.

The presence of the creator in the text serves to legitimise the rights it declares. However, this legitimacy is contingent on accepting the cultural narrative of a creator. Secular and non-theistic perspectives are marginalised by this assertion, revealing the ideological biases inherent in the Declaration. The authority of the declaration is thus shown to be dependent on particular beliefs, rather than an objective reality.

Unalienable vs. Alienable

The notion of ‘unalienable Rights’ is another empty promise, a rhetorical flourish designed to inspire loyalty and obedience. In practice, these supposedly inherent and inviolable rights are regularly violated and denied, particularly to those on the margins of society. The Declaration’s lofty language of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’ rings hollow in the face of systemic oppression and injustice. These rights are not unalienable; they are contingent upon the whims of those in power.

Conclusion

Through this deconstruction, we expose the Declaration of Independence for what it truly is: a masterful work of propaganda, filled with false promises and manipulative rhetoric. The document’s purported truths and self-evident principles are revealed as arbitrary constructs, designed to serve the interests of the powerful while placating the masses with empty platitudes.

As some celebrate this 4th of July, let us not be fooled by the high-minded language and lofty ideals of our founding documents. Instead, let us recognise them for what they are: tools of control and manipulation, employed by those who seek to maintain their grip on power. Only by constantly questioning and deconstructing these texts can we hope to expose the truth behind the facade and work towards a more genuine understanding of freedom and equality.

References

  • Jacques Derrida, “Declarations of Independence,” in Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews 1971-2001, ed. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).
  • Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
  • Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995).
  • Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  • René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Rhetoric is Truth; Morality, Emotion

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I’ve been reengaging with philosophy, though my positions haven’t changed recently. My last change was to shift from being a qualified material realist to a qualified idealist in the shape of Analytic Idealism. In most matters I can think of, I am an anti-realist, which is to say concepts like truth and morality are not objective; rather they are mind-dependent.

I’ve long been on record of taking the stance that Capital-T Truth, moral truths, are derived rhetorically. There is no underlying Truth, only what we are aggregately convinced of, by whatever route we’ve taken. As a moral non-cognitivist, I am convinced that morality is derived through emotion and expressed or prescribed after a quick stop through logic gates. Again, there is nothing objective about morality.

Truth and morality are subjective and relative constructs. They resonate with us emotionally, so we adopt them.

Were I a theist — more particularly a monotheist —, I might be inclined to be emotionally invested in some Divine Command theory, where I believe that some god may have dictated these moral truths. Of course, this begs the question of how these so-called “Truths” were conveyed from some spirit world to this mundane world. I have no such conflict.

But let’s ask how an atheist might believe in moral realism. Perhaps, they might adopt a Naturalistic stance: we have some natural intuition or in-built moral mechanism that is not mind-dependent or socially determined. I am not a naturalist and I don’t take a universalist approach to the world, so this doesn’t resonate with me. I can agree that we have an in-built sense of fairness, and this might become a basis for some aspects of morality, but this is still triggered by an emotional response that is mind-dependent.

Another curious thing for me is why non-human animals cannot commit immoral acts. Isn’t this enough to diminish some moral universal? In the end, they are an extension of language by some definition. No language, not even a semblance of morality.

Anyway, there’s nothing new here. I just felt like creating a philosophical post as I’ve been so distracted by my health and writing.

Political Spectrum

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I am trying to avoid commenting on the recent SCOTUS decision and how it is symptomatic of how the United States remains a failed state—at least a zombie state—, so this preamble should suffice for now.

I was chatting politics into the wee hours with my son, who’s been on this earth for almost 25 years now. I consider myself to be on the left of traditional political scales. He considers himself to be on the right, but he’s trying to make sense of the scales and dimensions. He had two questions: First, ‘What are the crucial dimensions and positions that define left and right?’ Second, ‘Where do Liberals fit into the equation?’

Knowing me, he wanted to provide some context and confer with me his knowledge that would also serve to frame and anchor the conversation. A key point was to have clarified the adopted nomenclature and positioning on a theoretical map.

We started with the origins of the left-right distinction, which was barely a valid dichotomy even as it was coined in France. There was no duolith. Those on the left or right had features in common but taken holistically, this was a reductionist categorisation, as tends to happen. Exacerbating this, as it does today, still, the politicians with voices remained to the right of the unvoices masses.

He asked about the difference between freedom and liberty because his sources differentiate the two. Whilst connotation and nuance may enter the picture, etymologically speaking, freedom is a native English word whilst liberty is French via Latin. Connotatively, freedom is an absolute measure whilst liberty is granted within a political framework. Positive and negative liberties aside, liberty is an attenuator. It restricts freedom even if it allows most of the signal through. Effectively, liberty is permission by the state to act in certain ways.

By the end of the conversation, he was framing the key difference around notions of national identity and nationalism—I versus we. I shared my thoughts on the construction of identity, thus making for a poor foundation, though we both agreed that national narratives have been the impetus for much activity. (I am reluctant to insert the word progress here.)

After our conversation, I began researching dimensions established or otherwise proposed by political science. This led me to a place I found interesting—the distinction between radical, progressive, conservative, and reactionary positions. For some reason, this never really occurred to me.

I’m not sure one can employ these terms in general discussion without definition and qualification, but I feel they are useful in their own right. Typically, I view the political landscape—at the highest level and with a US-bent—as Left (communists, socialists, anarchists, progressives) and Right (conservatives, liberals, and fascists). I also know that this is imprecise, but maps always are.

This new vocabulary helps by distilling the map to this—ordered differently:

  • Right
    • Conservative
    • Reactionary
  • Left
    • Progressive
    • Radical

Conservative

Conservatives want to maintain the status quo. This is interesting usage adoption. Fundamentally, advocates of this view want to promote and to preserve traditional social institutions and practices. In Western culture, conservatives seek to preserve a range of institutions such as organized religion, parliamentary government, and property rights. Conservatives tend to favour institutions and practices that guarantee stability and evolved gradually. Adherents of conservatism often oppose progressivism and seek a return to traditional values

In Western culture, conservatives seek to preserve a range of institutions such as organized religion, parliamentary government, and property rights.

My first thoughts when I hear the term are a harkening back to the old ways—the Ozzie and Harriott mythos, white picket fences, Mom and apple pie. But this is different. Effectively, rather than reaching back, it wants to preserve the current moment in time. Where it gets more nebulous, I think, is that some people include nostalgia in the now. Duratively, perhaps a person might remember some aspect of their childhood. Though this has been lost by now, they imagine it as part of their identity. This can also extend further back as they wish some other historical aspects can be cherry-picked. Perhaps the white conservative wishes to be able to subjugate women as was the practice in the 1950s of America, but to not conserve high union participation and high marginal tax rates, as affronts to freedom (or whatever). This ends up being an exercise in selective memory and revisionist history-making.

This needs to be distinguished from a so-called traditional conservativism in the tradition of Burke or Hobbes, who want to conserve some sense of fundamental morality they feel derives from nature.

Reactionary

Reactionaries oppose whatever is in effect at the moment—the petulant toddler—but with a twist. Like the conservatives, there is a conservation effort but rather than a focus on the status quo, the focus is on status quo ante, which is a return to the old ways, tried and true.

Progressive

Progressives support social reform. Ostensibly, they don’t oppose tradition, but they feel that old structures need to be reimagined and reinterpreted in face of social and technological change. An underlying metanarrative is the notion of progress. I am not going to comment on progressivism generally and the nuances evident in the American flavour of it.

Radical

Radical politics denotes the intent to transform or replace the fundamental principles of a society or political system, often through social change, structural change, revolution or radical reform

During the 20th century, radical politicians took power in many countries across the world. Such radical leaders included Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin in Russia, Mao Zedong in China, Adolf Hitler in Germany, as well as more mainstream radicals such as Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom. Of course, Donald Trump is a more recent example in the United States.

Summary

To me, these terms operate on a gravity to now. Conservatives are heavily anchored in the familiar and seek stability. Then they see factors in the past that they imagine will also serve this purpose, so they wish to incorporate these and carry them forward. Conservatives are not unaware of the need for change, they just want to not create waves in the process.

Likewise, although placing a heavier weight on the past than even conservatives, reactionaries are not fundamentally opposed to retaining what is working currently. The term working is subjective and perspectival, so they may wish to retain something that works for them at the expense of others. This is a challenge for conservatism as well. Just because racial segregation seemed to work for an equivalent person in the past doesn’t mean it worked well for the excluded.

Like reactionaries, progressives aren’t afraid of keeping a foot in the present—and there may be plenty of lessons to learn from the past—, but they feel that given the change in the underlying terrain, some refactoring is in order.

And then there are the radicals. I suppose that radicals have different motivators, but in essence, they feel that the current implementation is substantially broken, and it needs more than a few small tweaks and a fresh coat of paint. These people are renovating rather than redecorating. They may even want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Some may wish to keep the baby.

As for me, I usually place myself in the Progressive camp, but under the definition, I am more of a radical. The system is broken. We don’t just need to delete it, we need to install a new one.

Thomas Jefferson said that the United States should rewrite the Constitution every 19 years. Why 19 years? Who knows? Given the intransigence in American politics, this would have been a disaster. And given the powers that be, the debate would be over which parts to conserve and which to progress. Being the cynic that I am, my guess is that it would devolve to worse than we have now.

DISCLAIMER: For the record, I don’t endorse the placement of the political ideologies on the horseshoe image, but I find it interesting and it grabbed my attention. I hope it grabbed yours, too.

Where to Start?

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At the beginning, of course. As I’ve embarked on this anti-agency (working title) endeavour, I am uncovering people and ideas previously unknown. In a way, this is good because people have been here before. In another way, I am left wondering what’s left unsaid.

For one thing, some of these people are highly credentialled scholars, more well-read with substantial head starts. And intelligent, qualified experts stake out their own respective turf. The more I read, the more I see the path has already been cut. Untamed areas still exist—at least for now. My goal from the start is to ignore the larger pseudo-problem anyway, so let them have their territory.

As I see it, my obstacle is one of rhetoric. My foundation is hardly a crowd-pleaser.

As I shared in my Agency Be Damned post,

  1. Humans have no material agency
  2. Power structures require the presumption of agency

Not too bad, but as I’ve shared even earlier,

  1. people are intellectually pretty unremarkable and
  2. predictably irrational

This isn’t going to be attractive to the warm and fuzzy crowd, and it comes across as a pretentious elitist and condescending irrespective of the validity of the observation. And people don’t like to be told that their baby is ugly—let alone themselves.

Ostensibly, my claim is that humans are veritable automatons too dim to be bounded to any moral code. We’re all just pawns, and any semblance of autonomy is either an illusion or not materially significant.

You are 0.00001% responsible for your actions,
so you deserve 100% of the blame or credit

You are 0.00001% responsible for your actions, so you deserve 100% of the blame or credit. Maybe this has no legs and will go nowhere. Time will tell. Meantime, I need to focus on the rhetoric and packaging and position it like a Trojan horse.