Belonging Again II.1 (Book 1, Chapter IV, Section 3)

Richard Boothby in his lecture on Lacan and Das Ding, given October 18th 2023 at Philosophy Portal, noted how we might approach the gods as a “mode” by which the Real is revealed. Religions then mark out zones of “not understanding” on which our lives depend (like a space of “free speech”); we cannot understand everything, and yet our lives are deeply impacted and shaped by what we cannot understand. All we can do is ‘make our sacrifice and hope for the best,’ as Dr. Boothby put it. Similarly, perhaps we cannot fully understand Childhood or why some people become mentidivergent while others fall under Affliction; perhaps it will always be a mystery why exactly some people are “intrinsically motivated” and others aren’t, as it might always be a mystery for why we seem “essentially lacking” and capable of self-effacement, as it might always by strange that we can be River-Holes and White Boxes. But we don’t need to fully understand these phenomena, only trace out “zones” or “situations” (Leibniz) in which the likelihood of their emergence and happening is higher. We might not know why in one Cave prisoners are less likely to “leave on their own” while in another Cave they are more likely to leave, but if we can at least observe a difference between these Caves, we will see a way to approach “the problem of scale and spread” which so deeply concerns us in Belonging Again. Works by O.G. Rose will indeed attempt describing why we can “leave Plato’s Cave on our own” in more detail and what kind of subjects we must be (and in what kind of reality) so that this might be possible, but here observing a difference between the Caves (A/A) and “zones” (A/B) would be enough. In what environment or “meta-architecture” are we more likely to see an emergence of mentidivergence, Attention, A/B and Children? Under what conditions? What might the “zones” look like around the Unknowability which we must choose to interpret as either a “pure nothingness” or Apophatic Mystery (thus possibly making ourselves “openings” for negentropy)? Are there “zones” which might inspire ever-more people to courageously make Absolute Choices?

What many are calling “The Liminal Web” online might be seen as a “zone” which may or may not be conditions in which people can become different kinds of subjects who are perhaps more A/B than A/A, and the Liminal Web could be this even if we don’t fully understand why it works or how. As I will attempt to show, I think we can find reason to believe something like the Liminal Web has worked historically and lead to profound socioeconomic change (what Deirdre McCloskey calls “The Great Enrichment”), and furthermore there is reason to believe that “systems don’t take care of themselves” (that they are all ultimately abyssal), and thus everything rides on a “human element and contingency,” mainly the nature and conditioning of our subjectivity. Are we under Affliction (A/A) or capable of Attention (A/B)? Language we will use later in this book is Discourse and Rhetoric, with Affliction aligning with Discourse while Attention aligns with Rhetoric, and so we will be asking, “Do the ‘zones’ of our world incubate Affliction/Discourse or Attention/Rhetoric?” Our answer to this will suggests what kind of subjects we are helping birth into the world, upon which the question of if we might “spread Childhood” rides. (Much rests on how we relate to “lack” and “nihilism,” RSI).

Discourse is the zeitgeist which spreads Affliction (A/A), while Rhetoric is the art which spreads Attention (A/B), and the spread of Rhetoric and Attention requires a deconstruction of the “subject and object divide” into a world where we see “systems/subjects” (which means we must arrive at a new concept of the subject and of system). This would be for us to “spread Childhood,” and honor Nietzsche, but here I would like to take a moment to address what David McKerracher tells us in Timenergy, mainly that ‘Nietzsche is not our friend.’¹⁵³ Though we are mainly framing our investigation as “spreading Childhood,” Nietzsche couldn’t care less if the working class or average person gained “leisure,” Childhood, or what McKerracher calls “timenergy.” Nietzsche knew like Marx that ‘leisure time [was] the basis of all qualified culture,’ which is required if we are to gain “zones of Unknowability” with which Childhood might be cultivated, but arguably ‘Nietzsche sought to hoard leisure for the few at the expense of the many.’¹⁵⁴ Nietzsche was even ready to ‘enslav[e] the Third World’ if needed, writing on the West striving for leisure that:¹⁵⁵

‘One could perhaps think of satisfying his desires and massively introducing barbaric Asian and African populations, so that the civilized world continues to use the services of the uncivilized […]’¹⁵⁶

What Nietzsche wrote was wrong. Yes, but then McKerracher makes an important point: ‘Nietzsche is actually onto something […] At least Nietzsche owns up to the reality of the situation […] Nietzsche comes right out and tells us what the objective situation is, taking the side of the parasites rather than the easy way out.’¹⁵⁷ Many of us in the West rely on labor and “slaves” for our standard of living while acting like we do not, and in this way perhaps Nietzsche is more honest? This doesn’t make what Nietzsche wrote moral, but have we found a way yet to sustain our standard of living without relying on a working class that is drained of all “timenergy” (to use McKerracher phrase)? This suggests why the problem of “spreading Childhood” is so pressing, even if Nietzsche himself seems to have thought it was impossible (hence for Nietzsche the reliance of Children on slaves). In this way, to consider “the spread of Childhood” is to consider something Nietzsche himself may not have considered. For Nietzsche, there was no way to “spread Childhood” — considering the question might have been a fool’s errand. If so, we will be fools.

If we cannot “spread Childhood,” then we might be stuck with Nietzsche in a way that resonates with Daniel Tutt’s work, which asks us to consider Nietzsche not ‘[a]s a friend and co-conspirator […] [but] as a parasite,’ which is to basically say that Nietzsche is an elitist whose project requires a working class (deprived of timenergy) to sustain those elites.¹⁵⁸ Nietzsche fights and resists equality and socialist tendencies, which isn’t ‘to cancel Nietzsche,’ but instead to take seriously the difficultly of “egalitarian leisure at scale.”¹⁵⁹ This is fair, for indeed I do not think Nietzsche provides us thinking on how we might address “the problem of scale” in “spreading Childhood,” and indeed Nietzsche seems to accept a “slave class” as necessary for sustaining elite Children (as Tutt and McKerracher point out). If we are to say this is wrong of Nietzsche, then I believe it is our responsibility to show and argue for an alternative that doesn’t fall into totalitarianism, Discourse, and/or Affliction. That is the attempt of Belonging Again (Part II), which is the effort of “addressing” Belonging Again (Part I).

‘I don’t know if timenergy can actually be reclaimed en masse’ — what McKerracher writes here is what I feel about “Childhood en masse.”¹⁶⁰ But I resonate with what McKerracher tells us next:

‘I genuinely fear for and feel a terrible sadness for all the hundreds of millions of children who are, on a daily basis, told they cannot explore their interests and hone talent for its own sake; who are told that they are inferior and destined to failure if they can’t force themselves to care about the arbitrary interests of others from period to period all day every day from week to week for decades.’¹⁶¹

Nietzsche might give us Childhood but not the resources to spread his Childhood to all children — to provide that is what we will attempt. We must. Nobody reads. ‘If nobody can really read, then who cares if books are censored? They’re wasted on us […]’¹⁶² If they are not to be wasted on us, we must resist the desire to be “intelligible” and “understood” (for example), for this is when we cease to strive ‘not to be defined by identitarian categories’ but instead want ‘recogn[ition] [from some] big Other.’¹⁶³ This is for us to follow Discourse instead of Rhetoric, to give up “useless space” which makes possible a Deleuzian “line of flight” that we might say we want but receiving proves terrifying and something we can then try to disown. If we seek “belonging” in definability, we risk failing in our effort to “belong again” in this ‘insane world where nobody […] belongs.’¹⁶⁴ We are to “belong” in a way which negates/sublates old ways: we are to “belong” and find “meaning” in Childhood. ‘We have a need to feel like we belong,’ but that need today is not being met or is being fed by “the junk food” of tribalism, “capture,” ideology, or the like.¹⁶⁵ ‘We also have a need to feel like we are becoming better at things and giving back to our community,’ hence the need for training, “gymnasiums,” and Childhood in general.¹⁶⁶

To Change the World by Dr. James Hunter can be seen as his own “address” to the sociological realities he saw unfolding, as he famously described in coining the term “culture war” and in channeling the work of thinkers like Peter Berger and Philip Rieff. The book is interested in how ‘religious faith [might be] possible in the late modern world,’ which also explores ‘how do believers live out their faith under the conditions of the late modern world?’¹⁶⁷ Hunter is mostly examining how Christianity can influence and participate in culture, which leads him to broader understandings of how culture is shaped at all. ‘[E]verything hinges on how we understand the nature of culture,’ he writes, and the hope of Belonging Again (Part I) was to provide that understanding, which is to say if we do not understand the tension and interplay between “givens and releases,” we cannot move forward.¹⁶⁸ Hunter discusses the importance of values, ideas, and choices in shaping cultures, but where in culture these values, ideas, and choices reside is central. Many Christians try to shape culture through evangelism “from the ground up,” but Hunter does not see the historic evidence for this proving effective. Christians cannot just tell people about Christianity if they are to change culture, as Children cannot just tell people to be Children. Sure, Children might have values, ideas, and choices which could help us transcend Affliction, but none of that “culture of Childhood” will necessarily go anywhere. More is indeed.

Hunter emphasizes that culture is changed through institutions, networks of influence, systems of power, and the like, and “grassroots” and “ground-up” efforts only prove effective to the degree they move into those areas. If Children want to change the culture, they must move into places where they influence “cultural production” and “cultural capital” and then prove “faithfully present” in those spaces (to use Hunter’s invaluable terminology). If Christians emphasize all these areas as “sinful,” they might think it holy not to seek “faithful presence,” which for Hunter is problematic, for this thinking is for Christians to give up the culture (as it would also be for Children). Hunter makes another key observation:

‘Interestingly, th[e] emphasis on values, choice, and spiritual renewal has also predisposed nearly everyone to focus on politics as the central means of changing the world. The reasoning goes like this: bad law is the outcome of bad choices made by individual politicians, judges, and policy makers. Thus, changing the world requires that individual Christians vote into office those who hold the right values or possess the right worldview and therefore will make the right choices.’¹⁶⁹

Like Hunter’s own work does, Belonging Again (Part I) hopefully made clear why this is a terrible mistake which will likely cause Pluralism to undergo self-effacement (such as in “Equality and Its Immoral Limits”). To win at politics is to win at force, and this will not be to change hearts and minds. Robert George is right that “law teaches,” and if Christians change the law to make it favor them, this could help “teach us” that Christianity is good — but then we will attempt to “stimulate culture” with law versus “create culture” (a distinction we will elaborate on when we discuss Keynes), and not only will this favor Affliction and Discourse (perhaps arising to a “Christian Affliction,” horrifyingly enough), but it means every election will be a battle for who is able to “softly nudge” people in the direction of their worldview.

Where “creating culture” is overlooked or deemphasized, power can run in to fill the void, and those “values and choices” would seem to be the opposite of politics, and ironically without culture they can become “captured” by politics and power. This seems to be what happens when we are “disabled by Discourse” and the zeitgeist, as Ivan Illich will discuss, and so disabled we cannot “make culture” only “employ power and law” to change the world into what we want it to be. But how we change the world changes how the world changes, and if we change it through means of Discourse, Affliction, and A/A, so the world will be “captured” and not change as we think it does. Discourse will seem challenged as it prevails.

Dr. Hunter in Chapter 1 of his book considers the Conservative Christian perspective of “changing the world” and makes a case for why it is entirely mistaken in Chapter 2, which has implications for “spreading Childhood.” He argues that there is no necessary correlation between the size of a community and its influence (‘as David Hollinger has shown [for example], the contribution of the Jewish community to science, literature, art, music, letters, film, and architecture is both brilliant and unrivaled. And these contributions were made in a context often defined by open, aggressive, and malicious anti-Semitism […]’), and yet the Evangelical strategy suggests that cultural influence is tied to community size (please note Jewish communities suggest the primacy of culture, a point Malcom Collins also explores in The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion).¹⁷⁰ Size doesn’t necessarily hurt, of course, but it guarantees nothing, a point which can be comforting, for it means we don’t need everyone to join our effort for the effort to “spread Childhood” to change culture out of Affliction. But the point is also befuddling, for if culture is not shaped by size, what changes it?

Failures of Christians to shape culture can be interpreted by Conservatives and the Right as ‘Christians are just not trying hard enough, acting decisively enough, or believing thoroughly or Christianly enough’ (the same could be said of Children).¹⁷¹ No, this is wrong: an ineffective strategy won’t work no matter how hard we try. But the more it fails, the more Christians are blamed, for ‘the burden of responsibility and action resides with the individual Christian and it is up to them to be better and do more to change the world.’¹⁷² This is a receipt for pathology, tribalism, and paranoia, and it can lead to hopelessness, nihilism, and even deconstruction: ironically, the Christian effort to “change the world” can thus lead to a dissolving of Christianity. The same could happen with Childhood via an emphasize on being more Childlike, mentidivergent, philosophical…if we are not careful.

Where does this notion of cultural change come from that Hunter sees as so erroneous? Well, it aligns with what we often find in Conservatism, which tends to support Capitalism:

‘[t]he model of culture change on offer […] implicitly operates within the framework of a market populism. Change comes through the random aggregation of individual actions and choices in a free market of options. What matters for the Christian in this approach to culture, is entering into the marketplace with the creation of new cultural goods. The direction and purpose and coherence of cultural creation matter less because, in the end, it will be the market that determines what succeeds or fails.’¹⁷³

This is simplistic. It is not necessarily the case that “the best ideas prevail” in the end: it is the ideas which “faithfully reside” in systems of influence and power. “Faithful presence” is a key concept to Hunter’s thinking, and basically he argues that Christians need to make their way into places of power and influence and prove “faithful to the values and ideas of Christianity” in those spaces. In this way, Hunter is not saying that ideas don’t matter, but that it also matters where ideas are, and if they are not found in networks of influence, they cannot change the culture. Ideas deeply matter, but which ideas deeply matter depends on where the ideas are present.

Everything Hunter argues regarding Christians applies just as well to Children, and Hunter is not arguing that Christians need power if by that we mean “gain political sway,” but that Christians need to “faithfully be” where power is found as Christians. Likewise, those who happen to be Children right now for reasons we might not yet understand are those who will need to move into places of influence and “faithfully be Children” if the culture is to shift in a direction that might “spread Childhood.” If this is what is required to overcome “The Meta-Crisis” and “The Great Stagnation,” then this is a matter of great sociopolitical consequence. If a failure to spread “intrinsic motivation” will lead to social collapse, then Children reaching places of cultural influence and faithfully being Children (which will not be easy, please note, and easily require training say through classes at Philosophy Portal, Voicecraft, Theory Underground, Other Life, Parallax…) is a matter of great and dire consequence. But what does that mean, and how might we go about it? Indeed, those are the questions which “the problem of scale” must take up.

If we don’t like what Nietzsche wrote (that David McKerracher rightly critiqued), I think it is our responsibility to answer Nietzsche with a way to “spread Childhood” (a counter-response which Nietzsche might have happily received). The response will require us to create conditions of “zones of Unknowability” (as possible if Children are “faithfully present” in networks of influence), which are “zones of Gödel Points” in which “essentially incompleteness” can no longer be denied (“plausible deniability” runs out). This is where a River-Hole is possible and mentidivergence could emerge to address Rational Impasses; this is where Attention (A/B) can break through Affliction (A/A), but at risk of great pathology and self-effacement — but this is a risk we must prepare for given “the loss of givens” and approach of the Technological Singularity. We must prepare ourselves now, but how? Sure, we can know that we need to spread the conditions in which people can “leave Plato’s Cave on their own,” but that doesn’t mean we know how to socially, and even if we do come up with a method, do we have any historic evidence to believe it will work versus hopeful speculation (which risks oppression and totalitarianism)? I think so, which will bring us to Deidre McCloskey, who can give us confidence that a “faithful presence” in “zones of Unknowability” which incubate Childhood is a sound strategy.

If we fail in this effort, the alternative is something I fear Affliction and Discourse would have us try as a solution (and “our only option”) which will ultimately only benefit Affliction and Discourse, mainly some model of “central planning” using Artificial Intelligence (as we might already see in China). In Critical Mass, Philip Ball discusses how ‘[t]ools, methods, and ideas initially developed to understand how the blind material fabric of the universe behaves are now finding application in arenas for which they were never designed.’¹⁷⁴ Can physics help us predict and plan (suggesting we don’t need preparation)? Can science provide a ‘theoretical framework which underpins contemporary physics [and yet can also help us with problems like] traffic flows to how the economy fluctuates and how businesses are organized?’¹⁷⁵ Or does that suggest a hubris that has caused the world so much trouble and contributed so profoundly to Affliction and Discourse? Even if we do not support this A/A-thinking, if the world begins to fall apart, we become desperate, and this kind of thinking is all we have, it will be what we employ. Better to try something than do nothing, right? And so we will try. After all, ‘[i]f people are smothered down to billiard balls interacting through mathematically defined forces,’ and that saves us all, shouldn’t we be grateful?¹⁷⁶

‘The most urgent question, to which the physics of society can contribute,’ Ball writes, ‘is whether we can construct a society blessed with wisdom and compassion that others, often in harsher or more difficult times, were able to glimpse and to demand.’¹⁷⁷ Ball also writes:

‘A push and pull: a tension between conflicting desires. This is all it takes to tip our social behavior into complex and often unpredictable patterns, dictated by influences beyond our immediate experience or our ability to control. Regardless of what we believe about the motivations for individual behavior, once we become part of a group we cannot be sure what to expect.’¹⁷⁸

Ball tells us that ‘the physics of society is and can only be a tool, never a moral compass.’¹⁷⁹ Ball is not naïve, and I cannot blame him for turning to physics in a world many philosophers have left all “the practical work” to scientists and engineers. Ultimately, Childhood cannot be engineered without risking oppression and totalitarianism, only incubated in the right conditions, conditions which must have the possibility of failing or else they will oppress. These are human conditions. These are “zones of processing Unknowability” and must be widely available if the conditions in which Childhood can be incubated are to “spread” and increase the mentidivergence which possibly enables more people to “leave Plato’s Cave on their own” and avoid through Attention the Rational Impasse of Affliction. This will require a “faithful presence” of Children in places of influence amidst “the loss of givens” and in preparation for “The Technological Singularity,” but that will prove effective only to the degree these Children understand how best to approach “the problem of scale.” And so, to that problem we will now turn.

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Notes

¹⁵³David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 166.

¹⁵⁴David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 167.

¹⁵⁵David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 166.

¹⁵⁶David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 168.

¹⁵⁷David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 169.

¹⁵⁸David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 165.

¹⁵⁹David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 166.

¹⁶⁰David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 127.

¹⁶¹David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 127.

¹⁶²David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 128.

¹⁶³David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 89.

¹⁶⁴David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 93.

¹⁶⁵David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 107.

¹⁶⁶David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 107.

¹⁶⁷Hunter, James. To Change the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010: ix.

¹⁶⁸Hunter, James. To Change the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010: 6.

¹⁶⁹Hunter, James. To Change the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010: 11–12.

¹⁷⁰Hunter, James. To Change the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010: 20.

¹⁷¹Hunter, James. To Change the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010: 22.

¹⁷²Hunter, James. To Change the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010: 24.

¹⁷³Hunter, James. To Change the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010: 30.

¹⁷⁴Ball, Philip. Critical Mass. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006: 5.

¹⁷⁵Ball, Philip. Critical Mass. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006: 13.

¹⁷⁶Ball, Philip. Critical Mass. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006: 455.

¹⁷⁷Ball, Philip. Critical Mass. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006: 465.

¹⁷⁸Ball, Philip. Critical Mass. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006: 469.

¹⁷⁹Ball, Philip. Critical Mass. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006: 464.

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