When logic is finished with its good work, best to yearn and long for intuition and the assurance that can only come from a connection with the Divine!
Very good piece! Also impressive how simply you can articulate all of this lol. I tried so hard in the lost heroic age series but didn’t have the words! Love finding writing like this where it articulates something I could not fully explain. The systems themselves reinforce from the top and the bottom! In our systems and timeline of understanding it’s all been within this age though. The driver of many of our complicated systems of governance or finance is extreme material accumulation. This is what was unique about post lycurgian sparta… they were able to simplify the system and increase the complexity of man and bonds. This is in direct contrast to Athens that had extreme material excess and bureaucracy… but a better navy because their emphasis was trade. Sparta partially destroyed itself by taking loans from Persia to hold Athens, entering the world of the trader and inviting it in. It’s a never ending, self perpetuating system. Spartans reminded me a lot of the dynamic of early fatalism minus the castles and though the castles allowed for less violence needed to control, they also eventually lead to more rapid decadence and the need for money lenders. This all reminds me of the myth from the end of the heroic age where they came into contact with extreme wealth and trade and started to turn inwards and destroy each other, turning hero’s into mercenaries (that’s what I believe the myths around Hercules were and also the building of Troy’s walls was the introduction of martial mimetics which are both complex and complicated).
Very good with pointing out the personality types, the cognitive functions are so accurate more so than the types themselves. The INTJ has a primary cognitive function of introverted intuition and an auxiliary of extroverted thinking. Both of these tend to simplify and reduce in a very linear way of thinking. My primary cognitive function is extroverted intuition which differs greatly from introverted intuition that it’s constantly taking and integrating more, sees everything as interconnected and woven together in a living manner that changes while introverted intuition tried to find a single causal rule. My auxiliary cognitive function is introverted feeling so taking continually changing external complexities and processing them through internal meaning and values. It’s funny to me because even those like INFJ have more similarity with INTJ in their primary cognitive function of introverted intuition than me (ENFP) even though the INFJ and I share the NF. ENFPs tend to think more similarly to ENTPs and ENTJs. Cognitive functions are very telling of how people understand reality and the world around them.
So back to fuedalism, we basically lost the control aspect of the warrior or heroic but kept the ability to trade. War then became a function of trade and this reinforces more war and more innovation that then can be traded. It’s a negative feedback loop and in it even if it’s emergent, there is an extent that the system is still more complicated than complex since people are interchangeable within it. So I will have to look more into this theory, but I’m glad to have learned of it from this article. It also seems that this S curve can be hijacked or redirected but that requires self sacrifice (like Lycurgus) as a catalyst compared to external sacrifice like in a crisis within material mimetics.
You start to describe the influence within a system requiring simplicity in effective messaging but the problem that is more telling of a complicated than complex system. Complicated systems need simple emotional impulse and tedious user manuals or interchangeability, complex systems need meaning but still complexity in message and formation of meaning is key. There is some type of interplay currently between complicated systems and complex emergence, where the emergence is increasingly ungrounded and through methods that are increasingly trends (which can easily change). If there is an inherent issue in the system and its folding along a trajectory of both complication following complexity trying to correct itself what we would see is an acceleration between revolutions. I totally agree on element theory being too simplistic, but there is something missing in complexity theory too. You’re basically describing the open ended nature of the folding metaziegtist I talked of, but it’s not entirely open in the sense that it still folds always with complicated systems of the trader enveloping enveloping emerging complexity of the heroic in a new pattern. Every acceleration seems to lead to less natural order and Heirarchy, more fluid trade or money change or hyper production in the case of communism and less freedom of the warrior caste.
Great article. I have no problem with, nor take any offence to the ‘drawbacks’ of being INTJ. Truly it is the waiting, and inability to affect the necessary changes that is difficult to let go of. Engineers don’t idle well. And to the rest of the world, you’re welcome.😉
Good article, but it doesn't exactly push back against elite theory, does it? Instead, I see an opening towards a new definition of "elite": someone with the privileged means to respond to emerging needs. This could be existing elites morphing to take advantage of some new crisis, or new elites with different skills and sensibilities, but regardless it seems to preserve the basic intuition of elite theory, namely, that history is driven by elites.
Put another way, elite theory treats of the efficient causes of revolutions (who is doing it? elites). Your theory treats of final causes (why are they doing it? to satisfy an emergent need).
Having read Neema Parvini's Populist Delusion, I don't think elite theory has any problem with acknowledgement of complexity theory. But people who are of the impressed by Elite theory haven't defacto started learning how to model complex systems.
An excerpt to prove my point (just read point 1)
On this score, in The Machiavellians, one thing Burnham does add to the elite
theorists is his own idea of how revolutions take place:
There is revolutionary change
(1) when the élite cannot or will not adjust to the new technological and social forces;
(2) when a significant proportion of the élite rejects ruling for cultural and aesthetic activities;
(3) when the élite fails to assimilate promising new elements;
(4) when a sizeable percentage of the élite questions the legitimacy of its rule;
(5) when élite and non-élite reject the mythological basis of order in the society; and finally
(6) when the ruling class lacks courage to employ force effectively.
The problem with the line of thinking in that book is that it over-simplifies the relationship between the rulers and the ruled.
Parvini states in the opening of the book that "An organised minority always rules over the majority".
He later states that this principle holds true regardless of scale, so a group of 20 people or a nation of millions of people, they all follow the principle in the aforementioned quote.
This in of itself is such a huge misunderstanding of how power works that the book needs to be closed, and that's on page 1.
Yes, complexity theory needs adopted by the dissident right. But complexity also has a core simplicity of factors upon which the system depends. These can shift but are more conservative than one thinks -- one thinks of the work of Peter Turchin. Immiseration is one important factor; elite production is another.
Great article. It seems both complexity theory and elite theory have their places. For instance, during covid individual decisions were made to censor and destroy opposition, same with Israel. However other issues around immigration seem more system driven
>So, in conclusion, I don't think complexity analysis is quite as valuable as you think it is.
Tell that to literally any player who has real power in the world, and they'll laugh at you. The best universities, the best think tanks, big tech, palantir, etc. etc. They bathe in Complexity Theory all day long and they don't waste any thinking power outside its framework.
Game theory must be applied within the framework of complexity theory to have any epistemic value in the real world, because the world is not a predictable system, like chess for instance.
I beg to differ, you don't have a lot of autonomy if you're a money lender. The relationship between the federal reserve and America is symbiotic. Parasite and host ride together and die together.
You don't think big tech companies are power players? What is this?
The constantly collected data from the normies in our system is being fed into complex models to predict human behaviour. Everyone has a gmail account, everyone has a meta account, the smartphone is always listening.
This gives big tech power but only because the normies are using their service.
Not sure what you mean by that. Meta was developed from the bottom up and its power only increased as the utility of the service increased in value. What it is now is completely different to what it started out as.
When logic is finished with its good work, best to yearn and long for intuition and the assurance that can only come from a connection with the Divine!
Well said. The need to even take into account complexity has been missing in many discussions. Banger of an article.👏
cheers
Great article!
Cheers
Very good piece! Also impressive how simply you can articulate all of this lol. I tried so hard in the lost heroic age series but didn’t have the words! Love finding writing like this where it articulates something I could not fully explain. The systems themselves reinforce from the top and the bottom! In our systems and timeline of understanding it’s all been within this age though. The driver of many of our complicated systems of governance or finance is extreme material accumulation. This is what was unique about post lycurgian sparta… they were able to simplify the system and increase the complexity of man and bonds. This is in direct contrast to Athens that had extreme material excess and bureaucracy… but a better navy because their emphasis was trade. Sparta partially destroyed itself by taking loans from Persia to hold Athens, entering the world of the trader and inviting it in. It’s a never ending, self perpetuating system. Spartans reminded me a lot of the dynamic of early fatalism minus the castles and though the castles allowed for less violence needed to control, they also eventually lead to more rapid decadence and the need for money lenders. This all reminds me of the myth from the end of the heroic age where they came into contact with extreme wealth and trade and started to turn inwards and destroy each other, turning hero’s into mercenaries (that’s what I believe the myths around Hercules were and also the building of Troy’s walls was the introduction of martial mimetics which are both complex and complicated).
Very good with pointing out the personality types, the cognitive functions are so accurate more so than the types themselves. The INTJ has a primary cognitive function of introverted intuition and an auxiliary of extroverted thinking. Both of these tend to simplify and reduce in a very linear way of thinking. My primary cognitive function is extroverted intuition which differs greatly from introverted intuition that it’s constantly taking and integrating more, sees everything as interconnected and woven together in a living manner that changes while introverted intuition tried to find a single causal rule. My auxiliary cognitive function is introverted feeling so taking continually changing external complexities and processing them through internal meaning and values. It’s funny to me because even those like INFJ have more similarity with INTJ in their primary cognitive function of introverted intuition than me (ENFP) even though the INFJ and I share the NF. ENFPs tend to think more similarly to ENTPs and ENTJs. Cognitive functions are very telling of how people understand reality and the world around them.
So back to fuedalism, we basically lost the control aspect of the warrior or heroic but kept the ability to trade. War then became a function of trade and this reinforces more war and more innovation that then can be traded. It’s a negative feedback loop and in it even if it’s emergent, there is an extent that the system is still more complicated than complex since people are interchangeable within it. So I will have to look more into this theory, but I’m glad to have learned of it from this article. It also seems that this S curve can be hijacked or redirected but that requires self sacrifice (like Lycurgus) as a catalyst compared to external sacrifice like in a crisis within material mimetics.
You start to describe the influence within a system requiring simplicity in effective messaging but the problem that is more telling of a complicated than complex system. Complicated systems need simple emotional impulse and tedious user manuals or interchangeability, complex systems need meaning but still complexity in message and formation of meaning is key. There is some type of interplay currently between complicated systems and complex emergence, where the emergence is increasingly ungrounded and through methods that are increasingly trends (which can easily change). If there is an inherent issue in the system and its folding along a trajectory of both complication following complexity trying to correct itself what we would see is an acceleration between revolutions. I totally agree on element theory being too simplistic, but there is something missing in complexity theory too. You’re basically describing the open ended nature of the folding metaziegtist I talked of, but it’s not entirely open in the sense that it still folds always with complicated systems of the trader enveloping enveloping emerging complexity of the heroic in a new pattern. Every acceleration seems to lead to less natural order and Heirarchy, more fluid trade or money change or hyper production in the case of communism and less freedom of the warrior caste.
Cheers. Interesting input
Reductionism tends to go hand in hand with epistemic hegemonies that flatten our ability to perceive and act effectively in highly complex systems. I wrote about this recently: https://substack.com/@theliminallens/note/p-177776382?r=dvftt&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Interesting piece
Great article. I have no problem with, nor take any offence to the ‘drawbacks’ of being INTJ. Truly it is the waiting, and inability to affect the necessary changes that is difficult to let go of. Engineers don’t idle well. And to the rest of the world, you’re welcome.😉
cheers
Good article, but it doesn't exactly push back against elite theory, does it? Instead, I see an opening towards a new definition of "elite": someone with the privileged means to respond to emerging needs. This could be existing elites morphing to take advantage of some new crisis, or new elites with different skills and sensibilities, but regardless it seems to preserve the basic intuition of elite theory, namely, that history is driven by elites.
Put another way, elite theory treats of the efficient causes of revolutions (who is doing it? elites). Your theory treats of final causes (why are they doing it? to satisfy an emergent need).
Or maybe I'm missing something.
Having read Neema Parvini's Populist Delusion, I don't think elite theory has any problem with acknowledgement of complexity theory. But people who are of the impressed by Elite theory haven't defacto started learning how to model complex systems.
An excerpt to prove my point (just read point 1)
On this score, in The Machiavellians, one thing Burnham does add to the elite
theorists is his own idea of how revolutions take place:
There is revolutionary change
(1) when the élite cannot or will not adjust to the new technological and social forces;
(2) when a significant proportion of the élite rejects ruling for cultural and aesthetic activities;
(3) when the élite fails to assimilate promising new elements;
(4) when a sizeable percentage of the élite questions the legitimacy of its rule;
(5) when élite and non-élite reject the mythological basis of order in the society; and finally
(6) when the ruling class lacks courage to employ force effectively.
Respectfully, I beg to differ.
The problem with the line of thinking in that book is that it over-simplifies the relationship between the rulers and the ruled.
Parvini states in the opening of the book that "An organised minority always rules over the majority".
He later states that this principle holds true regardless of scale, so a group of 20 people or a nation of millions of people, they all follow the principle in the aforementioned quote.
This in of itself is such a huge misunderstanding of how power works that the book needs to be closed, and that's on page 1.
Yes, complexity theory needs adopted by the dissident right. But complexity also has a core simplicity of factors upon which the system depends. These can shift but are more conservative than one thinks -- one thinks of the work of Peter Turchin. Immiseration is one important factor; elite production is another.
Great article. It seems both complexity theory and elite theory have their places. For instance, during covid individual decisions were made to censor and destroy opposition, same with Israel. However other issues around immigration seem more system driven
more theoretical abstraction, yeah, that’s the trick
>So, in conclusion, I don't think complexity analysis is quite as valuable as you think it is.
Tell that to literally any player who has real power in the world, and they'll laugh at you. The best universities, the best think tanks, big tech, palantir, etc. etc. They bathe in Complexity Theory all day long and they don't waste any thinking power outside its framework.
Game theory must be applied within the framework of complexity theory to have any epistemic value in the real world, because the world is not a predictable system, like chess for instance.
Funding both sides of a war is certainly a power play from an elite.
So is conquering your adversary in a war using borrowed money.
This behaviour between many different power players is explained by complexity theory. Nobody is in charge here.
I beg to differ, you don't have a lot of autonomy if you're a money lender. The relationship between the federal reserve and America is symbiotic. Parasite and host ride together and die together.
You don't think big tech companies are power players? What is this?
The constantly collected data from the normies in our system is being fed into complex models to predict human behaviour. Everyone has a gmail account, everyone has a meta account, the smartphone is always listening.
This gives big tech power but only because the normies are using their service.
Not sure what you mean by that. Meta was developed from the bottom up and its power only increased as the utility of the service increased in value. What it is now is completely different to what it started out as.
Cheers. Hope to catch it when it's done
I alerted him about your response, am looking forward to your article as well!