Laughter in heaven

Politics or metapolitics

It’s been an interesting couple of days since I mentioned my admiration for the writings of NS Lyons, and Mattias Desmet. Since I now discover that, if I am to do anything else with my life, I just can’t keep up with the flow of comments, interesting as they are, I think it might be best for me to make a few general observations, which of course, as is the nature of generalisations, may not apply in all cases. And then I must let the matter drop. I am still gauging how much time I can give to Substack alongside other commitments. I do apologise if people comment and now find I have not replied – look at it as my genuine wish to do so coming up against the exigencies of everyday reality. Forgive me, and do not draw personal conclusions.

What seems to have happened is that some of you kind people who hitherto liked the person that they believed me to be, as evidenced in my writings, interviews and podcasts, were suddenly disconcerted by the discovery that I might have a different take on the current complex sociopolitical scene from their own. That is, I think, a fair summary of what I have read so far. I don’t mind disconcerting people: it’s part of what I do, disconcerting and perhaps re-concerting differently! But the unavoidable conclusion is that there is a belief that anyone who seems to be thoughtful must (surely?) adhere to a set of beliefs that I call the ‘current narrative’. This may not necessarily be a conscious conviction of the individuals themselves, but it is in the Zeitgeist, and it is unfortunately influential. Indeed if you even question it, you may become a pariah. Objectively, that is very odd. The general assumption during my lifetime has been that people’s political views might vary very widely, without any adverse imputations on either side.

There are various things I’d say at this point. The most obvious is that this is, precisely, the view that I think needs ‘problematising’, and lies at the basis of many disagreements in the current sociopolitical sphere, including the one under discussion. That is why the genuinely thoughtful and perceptive views of people like Lyons and Desmet need to be very widely heard, even if they initially come as a bit of a shock. By the way, Desmet is charged with the unspeakable crime of being liked by people said to be on the ‘right’ (whatever that term now means – and I think it should be abandoned). I have been told in the past that people on the ‘right’ also like my stuff. Good: people on the ‘left’ definitely do, too. Isn’t that great? Maybe it shows I’m onto something. Or maybe it shows how hopelessly outdated these left/right terms are. But no! It’s time for the ‘guilt by association’ Olympics. And I am now associated with Desmet. Who gets the gold medal, him or me?

One of the many difficulties here is a logical fallacy of self-confirmation: people who like X are said to be on the ‘right’ by definition, otherwise why would they like X? X is said to be on the ‘right’ because he is liked by those same people (you know, the ones ‘on the right’). What does it matter whether they are ‘right or ‘left’, since intelligent and good people can be found in either camp, and neither camp has a monopoly on truth or goodness? In any case, I am dearly glad to be associated with Mattias Desmet, as a man of personal warmth and intellectual insight, whose position is not associable with any political faction, but philosophically and psychologically deeply grounded. His master work, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, needs to be read by all of us. Much of it alerts us to the dangers we are under in assuming our own governments will always have the good of their citizenry at heart. And they don’t, which is why their ‘fact-checkers’ may not be as impartial as we might naively think. It’s all so loaded, alas.

I am now in my 70s, and it never occurred to me at any stage in my life that a dear friend, or good colleague, would necessarily share my political views; and not because there was ever anything unusual about my beliefs – far from it. I would characterise myself as being a liberal-minded conservative with a small ‘c’, someone who believed in the continuity of a culture, showed respect for the ‘little man’ in the face of powerful agglomerates, who wished to be true to his ancestors while leaving a better world to his descendants, and wished for a society that was fair to all without prejudice, and treated those who are genuinely at a disadvantage compassionately. This position used to be pretty much plum in the middle of the political spectrum, where so-called right and left met, and was opposed only to either extreme of the spectrum. There is a website – I now forget its name – where you are asked about a couple of hundred questions about sociopolitical matters, and the programme places you in one of four quadrants on the basis of your answers. When I visited it a couple of years ago, I admit I was slightly surprised when it turned out that my views were considered to lie in the most liberal progressive sector (it is worth stating that this was an American website), but on reflection I believe it was correct. However, by now that same sector will have moved on, to be sure, and be occupied only by those who are clever enough to believe six ridiculous and impossible things before breakfast.

I am a tiresome, contrary sort of bloke. I sometimes say I am the sceptic amongst believers, and the believer amongst sceptics. Do you recognise that, perhaps, in yourselves? I can’t help it; and I think it is what keeps one closer to truth and intellectually alive. There are two Zen sayings that I particularly love: ‘yes, but’, and ‘not always so’. They recognise the complexity of all human matters, and the failure that accompanies any absolute view. Other sayings I love are ‘context is everything’ (me) and ‘there are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths – it is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil’ (Whitehead). All this is boring, sure enough, for those who want simple certainties, but then wanting simple certainties has an appalling track record: let’s see, now … Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot … Also note for the record that the danger in these cases came from what was fundamentally a ‘far left’ position. It would be an absurd understatement to say that freedom of expression was not encouraged under these criminally vicious regimes.

So I like not to jump in with the in-crowd, but always to ask ‘is there another point of view here that is crucially being neglected?’ It’s a position that I find answers well to most situations in life. So please don’t be surprised if I seem somewhat contrarian. I am - not wilfully and pointlessly, I hope, but out of an intellectual and moral duty I cannot avoid or dismiss.

We now live in a world where, over the last 20-25 years, we have moved into totalitarianism. ‘Soft’ totalitarianism it may be (although some of its manifestations – de-platforming, shouting down, physically attacking, excluding, debanking, suspending, sacking, having your personal messages pored over by the police, criminalising and even imprisoning, don’t look too ‘soft’ to me); but totalitarianism it is. Hannah Arendt believed that whenever there are matters that cannot be questioned, it is already a tyranny. This is where we are now. The reason for it is the usual one: an arrogant and mediocre elite, who believe that if they could control not just deeds, but words, and ultimately thoughts, they, with their superior understanding, will bring about a better society. History, of course, makes it clear that this is a calamitous mistake; but just thinking about what it entails should make that clear without needing to go to history for confirmation.

Because the narrative cannot be questioned, and the consequences of doing so can ruin one’s life, there is now far more conformity among office-holders everywhere, including and disastrously, in what was, and traditionally has been, the ultimate bastion of free-thinking, the university. (I say nothing here of hospitals, the police, social workers, the military, and so on.) There has been, I am relatively sure, interference in information by foreign powers such as Russia that seem to wish us harm; but it cannot be denied that there has been for some long while interference from our own left-leaning elite to discredit any attempt to question the (highly questionable) tenets of its own preferred narrative. This happens in much of the mainstream press both here and in the US, in the BBC (of which we were rightly once so proud, because of its reliability and impartiality), and beyond. People such as Lyons have uncovered messages that were never supposed to see the light of day between powerful individuals intent on silencing voices that we should have heard, not only during the Covid débâcle, but beyond it. Those silenced were not all extremists but people voicing contrary views and drawing attention to uncomfortable facts. In these circumstances handy terms to bandy about, which enable one to seem as though one is not really adopting a biased position while actually doing so, are ‘extremists’, ‘right wingers’, and ‘far right groups’. That these terms are regularly used to describe positions which until 25 years ago would have been middle of the road common sense is significant; that news outlets rarely or never refer to ‘left wing extremists’ or the ‘far left’ is also significant. Apparently it is impossible in our brave new world for there to be extremists on the left. It is undeniable that public (and more recently even private) employees of all kinds are subjected to a kind of Orwellian mind control, indoctrination into the only permitted positions on all sorts of issues that are massively complex and where above all, a range of opinions must be heard. Self-denunciations are encouraged, lending an even deeper chill to proceedings. This has had a deleterious impact on intellectual and imaginative life, and induced an atmosphere of fear, in the very places where freedom of thought and speech are most valuable. So much of what matters in the human world, as opposed to that of the machine, is in essence creative. Creativity in this broadest sense will desert us if we try to trammel it.

Here I will simply mention that in my view there has been a neoplastic expansion of bureaucracy in the last half century (starting, indeed, well before, but exponentially increasing more recently) and no political party has tried to cut it back, till perhaps now. Like all cancers, it is preying on its host. It is massively expensive, and that expense inflates the cost of everything ordinary people need. It stifles professional skill, free-thinking and excellence of every kind. It ensures mediocrity. Maybe pruning back bureaucracy is something that the US electorate also thought their man might have the chutzpah to attempt.

Trump is not admirable – not to me. But this was already not an admirable situation, to say the least. That culture was and remains a wholesale betrayal of our history, a manifestation of pathological self-loathing, a kind of ingratiating cowardice in the face of a bullying elite. Free speech is unusual in a world composed of largely tyrannical regimes, and it is infinitely precious. It was fought for at great cost by people in my country and the US who were brave enough to have a vision of a freer world. Until recently we were known for our passionate defence of free speech, for the equity of our justice system, for the dispassionate nature of our press and broadcasting, compared with most other countries. Not now.

This is not about Trump, principally at all. It is about something that lies much deeper. Trump’s moral character isn’t something I would even begin to defend. However being of sound moral character has never been a requirement for a politician. In a system that has stagnated and seems capable of producing only more of the same, a certain jolt may be necessary, unappealing as it may at first sight be, to allow things to free up and begin to move on. Such an impasse would certainly seem to be the case with both nominally left-leaning and nominally right-leaning governments in the UK, and I suspect the same has been the case in the US. They simply keep going along the same trajectory that the majority of the populace do not support, but when it comes to an election there are no true alternatives. I believe that when (and if) historians are able to look back on this society, they will see it as one of the most laughable that ever existed. Just look at some of the things we are asked to deny or affirm, and to do so without demur. And so, I’m sorry to say that the left have to share much of the blame for the situation we are in. It’s not all from the right. People were so sick of extreme and irrational views being enforced – not even just being suggested, but being enforced – that even the vile Trump was seen as necessary. ‘Harris is for they/them; Trump is for you’ said it all.

When one party in a balanced system takes things to an extreme, the other party will begin to go to the other extreme. Then the first party points to the second party and says ‘there – see? I told you they were extremists all along.’ And if this situation is to be resolved, it will not happen without a somewhat uncouth intrusion, since couther strategies will have been tried for a long time without getting anywhere, and with the first party simply becoming more deeply entrenched, until … Agent Orange.

In The Matter with Things, one of my themes is that nothing is so good that just more and more of it is better; that sometimes adversity is important, and resistance leads to strength. It is healthy when there are choices, debates. That’s why we need the intelligentsia – a free intelligentsia – and for my money that means courageous figures such as NS Lyons and Mattias Desmet should get a welcome hearing.

There are two beliefs that get between us and seeing what is going on. One is that we do not need to be sceptical about the ‘authorised version’ of things adopted by our own governments, and the big bodies, both intergovernmental and corporate capitalist, that are simply not accountable to us, the people. We seem to think that all problems will come from hostile powers overseas. Er, no.

And the other is the fixation that when the evil tyranny comes it will come from what people still think of as the ‘right’. It may not. It often hasn’t in recent history. I sometimes feel it’s like watching a pantomime, and dying to call out to the blockhead on stage ‘Look behind you!’ I guess this unshakeable conviction that danger only comes from the right is a relic of Marxism, and indeed reports of Marx’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

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I need to bring it all back to hemisphere theory for a moment, since some people have suggested that hemisphere theory would surely dictate that I should hold a different political position.

When I look at the current culture, I am struck by its grossly left hemisphere traits. Signs include: extreme points of view, rather than civilised debate leading to mutual understanding; the view that those who are not for us are against us (‘silence is violence’ – sorry, no, it isn’t to anyone who thinks the tiniest bit – not rushing to a position is almost a definition of intelligence); an insistence on black-and-white thinking; a complete lack of compassion for, and indeed anger and vituperation hurled at, those who disagree; self-righteousness and its cousin, narcissism; need for total control; utility/power become the only value, while greater values, including beauty, goodness, truth and love, are neglected or actively travestied; lack of all nuance; neglect of context; the triumph of theory over experience; dogmatism; loss of the broader picture; knowledge replaced by information, tokens or representations; loss of the concepts of skill and judgment; the rise of bureaucracy in their place; simultaneous abstraction and reification - either virtual maps or mere lumpen matter (there is nothing mere about matter); uniqueness banished in the rush to categorise; quantity become the only criterion, at the expense of quality; reasonableness replaced by rationalisation; a complete loss of common sense; systems designed to maximise utility only; loss of social cohesion; depersonalisation; paranoia and lack of trust; anger and aggression; playing the victim and refusing to accept responsibility for your own failings (‘society is to blame’); art become largely conceptual only; music reduced to little more than rhythm; language diffuse, excessive, lacking in concrete referents; a deliberate undercutting of the sense of awe or wonder; flow reduced to just the sum of an infinite series of ‘pieces’; the discarding of tacit forms of knowing, and in their place ‘a network of small complicated rules’ (de Tocqueville); ourselves reduced to spectators rather than actors in life (as Descartes proudly said of himself); and all this accompanied by a dangerously unwarranted optimism.

Fine! But, for crying out loud, I hear you say, surely you don’t think Trump exemplifies what has gone missing, do you? True enough, I need hardly say that Trump is not an advertisement for right hemisphere values! But we have to look above and beyond, higher and broader. At one level he’s just another manifestation of this culture, it is true, but I think there are a few important points to make about that.

First, the alternatives were not going to return us to right hemisphere values, either, but to carry us further down the same abysmal LH-dominated path we’ve been on for about 30 years at least, if not far, far longer. Exhortations to tolerance were profoundly intolerant in intent; expressions of compassion were selective and sounded good, without necessarily doing good, and sometimes doing actual harm; sentimentality, self-admiration and feeling good has been the key note of politics in recent years, and sentimentality is at its core not kind but cruel. The wolf that show its teeth is less dangerous than the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Second, the best way of jamming a runaway machine is not beatifically meditating, but shoving a spanner, another tool, in the mechanism.

Third, sometimes the left hemisphere can be defeated only by the left hemisphere, under direction from the right hemisphere.

Fourth, it takes someone as abrasive as Trump to speak uncomfortable truths. For a long time I have thought it unwise that we have let our defences atrophy. In Europe we have unreasonably expected the US to pay, in lives as well as dollars, for our defence, while we grew fat, lazy, and complacent. I couldn’t help feeling there was going to be an almighty reckoning for this one day: if you want peace, prepare for war. We imagined that somehow (sentimentality again) sheer words and spirit would carry us through. Meanwhile governments have actively cooperated in a process of attacking our sense of a coherent nation, reducing morale and belief in the (not unmixed) virtues of one’s cultural history and the way of life it gave birth to, to such an extent that a large majority of young people, we are told, would not now fight for their country - even if they were physically capable of doing so any longer. This European and British position was shameful and it must be reversed, otherwise what will those poor young people do when they suddenly realise that the tanks can’t be stopped by sitting in the road and singing. It took Trump to alert us to some uncomfortable truths. Of course, his motives are largely selfish, and I do not defend his sickening lack of integrity over the Ukraine war, and his treacherous and itself contemptible contempt for Zelensky.

Finally, I think the ultimate goal is to reinstate, if it is not already too late, many things we all know we have lost – not, it goes without saying, in the person of Trump himself, but in a shift in thinking that he may already be bringing about. In life we never know what ill follows from good motives – as we say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions; nor do we know what good may flow from something we see at the time as an ill-fated turn. I can’t read the future. Can you? I can’t even be completely certain how to read the present. Can you? If not, how about listening to as broad an array of intelligent minds as we can. Who knows, we might just learn something we had not suspected.

As one commenter reminded me, Jonathan Rowson said that ‘Iain is not political, but metapolitical’. I have no taste for politics, and I have no settled voting pattern, but I am fascinated by the aspects of our worlds and of the human mind that politics may reflect. Any ripostes to this piece will be very welcome – I stand to learn something; but I am not likely, alas, to carry on this particular conversation. I have others that are to me more fascinating still.