The Left’s Gordian Knot
Bury felt that “a satisfactory social order [may emerge] by the impersonal work of successive generations.” Still, this does not alter the fact that the deepest gradients of the human psyche are distressingly permanent. Nicoló Machiavelli was probably right when, in his seminal treatise The Prince, he posited the immutability of human nature, arguing that men “have and always had the same passions, and therefore of necessity the effects must be the same.” Words of provable wisdom, which our socialist reformers, with their belief in the infinite malleability of human substance and their conviction that natural givens are merely social “constructs,” have neglected to everyone else’s cost. University of Ottawa scholar Janice Fiamengo put it well in an article for the American Review of Canadian Studies: “social hierarchies can be changed by human institutions, but hierarchy itself, stemming from human nature, is probably ineradicable, whatever the triumphalist prophets of progress might declare.”
In short, what the Left has never been able to come to terms with is the Gordian knot of human nature. It will not be unravelled, resisting every effort to separate its strands. As David Horowitz said in a recent speech at the University of North Carolina:
The obstacle to the realization of all progressive utopias is human nature. You can read all of the Marxist and leftist texts ever written and never encounter a consideration of…why it is so difficult to produce a society of human beings that is fundamentally different from the way human beings have lived since the beginning of recorded time.
Therefore, confronted with an intractable dilemma, leftist thinkers and political activists must have recourse to what is known as the “Alexandrian solution,” that is, rather than acknowledge an insoluble complexity, they take a sword to the knot and, like Alexander the Great in Phrygia, slice it in half. This is not a solution but an act of violence and a kind of cheating which does not resolve the problem but merely exacerbates it, creating in the long run more suffering than it purports to redeem.
The Gordian knot of human nature will not be untangled. The Left does not possess the magic touch of Shakespeare’s Henry V, who “Turn him to any cause of policy,/The Gordian knot of it he will unloose.” Nor, as those of a conservative bent understand, does anyone. The desire to cut through the recalcitrant coil of man’s character leads only to eventual harm and mutilation, to which the demise of every socialist experiment on record abundantly attests. There is no such creature as the “New Man.” No matter. Our socialist utopians are convinced they will ultimately succeed and so continue to interpret every disaster they have inflicted upon their victims as a sign of inevitable future success.
To adapt an aphorism from Nassim Taleb’s The Bed of Procrustes, the Left is to human welfare as prostitution is to love. An episodic satisfaction is inexorably followed by human degradation masking as social enlightenment. This is, of course, as good as it gets for the ideological Left. This is as bad as it gets for the rest of us.
David,
You have slandered prostitution, which is an essential service.
The left is not.
Kudos!
It had to be said and you beat me to it!
seconded
and i’ve always likened the gordian knot to the way the left creates legislation– layer upon layer of fabricated nonsense which can only be undone by the focused will of someone strong enough to see the bs for what it was and not be hindered by roadblocks and smokescreens masquerading as rules
To paraphrase that great thinker Winston Churchill ” If you are not a Socialist in your youth you have no HEART but if you are STILL a Socialist when you are mature you have no BRAIN’. This is self evident when you just look at all the Left wing moonbats.
Actually it was Francois Guissot(1787-1874) who said: Not to be a republican at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.
Later, French PM Georges Clemenceau(1841-1929): Not to be a socialist at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.
And yet utopianism is institutionalized in the incoherent U.S. Democratic Party: the “pragmatic” Party that has absorbed what used to be known as the Left. To talk about unchanging human nature is an occasion for stoning the speaker. I wrote about the impossibility of pleasing all the “liberal” factions here: http://clarespark.com/2012/04/06/diagnosing-potus/.
For an 18th century French philosopher, “republican” was associated with the French Revolution, decapitating the rich and Robespierre.
It had nothing do to with republican/democrat demarcation in todays USA politics. This is why the original phrase didn’t lost its meaning over time.
Excellent post. What I find amusing is how the ideological Left still has this “moral” influence, after all the repeated and unmitigated disastrous failures they created? These days leftists smartly deny that Stalin was a leftist. How intellectually dishonest can that be? And the tactic is to destroy Western civilization from within, for instance, by the postmoderist academic delinquency.
But, maybe that very same fallible human nature is what explains the persistence of dystopian utopianism from people that should know better by now. Like evil, stupidity cannot ever be completely erradicated.
If Stalin had better PR, we probably would have seen his images in those Occupy derelict camps last year, instead of the images of that Stalin wannabe Che Guevara.
You are right…
Che looks awfully cool with that beret, scruffy beard and unkempt hair…
Uncle Joe was too much of a Geezer to win the approval of those stupid youngsters. (or the pathetic Oldsters in pony-tails, still trying to bang the coeds with tales of Revolution)
These days leftists smartly deny that Stalin was a leftist.
Yet, by the same token, I’ve seen many people right here at PJM describe Hitler as a socialist and, in effect, “the same” as Stalin, Mao and the rest.
Hitler sent nearly 4 million men – including Germans and other Axis soldiers – against the Soviet Union On June 22, 1941 yet some allegedly right-wing folks see Hitler and Stalin as two sides of the same coin. The large majority of all deaths in WW II happened on the Russian Front. The Soviets are currently believed to have lost roughly 28 million people, including over 10 million civilians, on that front. That’s more than half of all the deaths in WW II.
Stalin and Hitler were both <b<totalitarians but I’m at a loss to see how anyone can make a convincing case that they had the same ideology aside from a mutual lust for violence and power at any cost. Their respective societies clashed horrifically, which would surely not be the case if they were the same.
You are totally right in the sense that the Soviets had to bear most of the death burden of Hitler´s war of extermination. And they basically sacrificed millions to defeat nazism.
OTOH, one has to remember some points. First, the German communits helped undermining the Weimar Republic, which they hated with the same intensity as the nazis. In this sense they contributed signigicantly to the nazi take over (and do did the social democrats, conservatives and christians). Also, the Soviets made a non-agression pact with the nazis, in which they split Poland in half. When the nazis invaded Poland the Soviets did too, and they began killing the Polish with gusto, Katyn being the most famous example.
Worse of all, Stalin, by the time of the nazi invasion (that he couldn´t believe and didn´t prepare for by sheer stupidity), he had already perpetrated
his unimaginable series of purges, killings, genocide, famines, etc against his OWN PEOPLE. This grotesque criminality also weakened the Soviet military, whose officers had been purged by one of Stalin´s bouts of paranoia.
As for the comparisons of nazi-fascism with communism. Well, they were surely different in some basic respects. Communism was suppose to be the heir of French Revoluion´s ideas, including the Enlightenment, supposedly being for progress, freedom, humanity, etc. In this sense nazi-fascism was the opposite as it was authoritarian, reactionary, anti-democratic, anti-intellectual, anti-individual and anti-universality. But they were both collectivistic totalitarianism, callous social engineers and fanatical zealots. Many nazi-fascists were ex-communists;socialists, including Mussolini and Goebbels.
And both were ready to destroy Western civilization to bring up the “new men”, despising “bourgeois culture” and all its realizations, such as parlamentary democracy, the rule of law, individual freedom, basic universal humanitarian principles and all they considered “sentimental weakness” that blocked the arrival Paradise.
To a descendant of Poles like myself, there is no difference. They were just rivals for the same patch of dirt, both eager to exterminate Polish patriots and enslave the survivors.
“Violence and power at any cost”are quite a substantial connection. Toss in dictatorship and murder of dissidents and opponents and it’s usually called Statism. Among other things. The ideology was the cover for each, different in details but irrelevant to control, a resurgent, revanchist Greater Germany, a international workers movement for the Soviets. Net, what was the real difference?
Hitler and Stalin were not enemies. They were competitors. Once you understand that, the left/right dichotomy fades away.
Excellent point. Stalin can’t really be understood without Hitler, and vice-versa. The idea that they wouldn’t fight if they were essentially the same is laughable. Recommended to all: “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.”
A reading of The Road to Serfdom by Hayek should alleviate all your doubts about whether the Nazis were socialists. It also must be remembered that Nazism and Communism were both products of German philosophic thought and had common roots.
Even Clausewitz in On War was pro-Socialist since he believed Capitalism destroyed men beyond the point of being adequate soldiers but opposed socialism when it sought to overthrow the state and its capacity for warfare.
Germany was as socialist leaning as it gets.
Mr G.said “It also must be remembered that Nazism and Communism were both products of German philosophic thought and had common roots.”
Same can be said of the “progressive” movement here in the US. It started with Woodrow Willson and Tedddy R. and has only gotten worse from there.
Henry,
“I’m at a loss to see how anyone can make a convincing case that they had the same ideology aside from a mutual lust for violence and power at any cost.”
You just answered it.
Any other “issues” between their respective “ideologies” is window dressing.
Anybody can set up any political spectrum they want. But as a freedom loving American from the tranditional Right, the one I learned from my father, and that makes sense to my understanding of Right and Left is that total government is on the Left defined as total totalitarianism, and anachy is on the Right, very little or no government. A spectrum of polar opposites cannot have totalitarians at both wings. Makes not sense. Fuedalism, Aristocracy, Socialism, Communism and Fascism have no total identity among them, but are all leftist dogma that have strong, totalitarian governmetn at their center, regardless of the different intellectual traditions that allowed them to spawn. The individual and his or “rights” is obviously subordinate to the needs of rulers under such systems. The Weak constitutional government is the opposite, where the rights of the free, individual, purusing his faith whether it be holy or profane, religious or atheistic, have a paramount claim to the public interest. Free elective democracy, republicanism, libertarianism, conservatism, principled and ethically based anarchy (in the US of these traditional values) free, equal and universally distributed market captialism based on broad equal ownership without cronyism or oligopolistic power are then of the right, not totalitarianism. OK some have never been tried and probably never will, but the direction of the freedoms and anti-government powers of the Right are clear so to me Hitler can never be a man of the Right, anymore than Stalin or Mao. Keep the leftists on the sides of the power hungry elites (the Left) cuz that’s what they were and that’s where they belong. The Right is reserved for the pure of heart who want freedom, indendence, and full economic power and liberty for everyone, more or less equally distributed, where govenment power is mostly unnecessary. This is the political spectrum as I understand it and that’s why I will live and die a Man of the Right. As to those of the Left, confusion to them everywhere, since that is the intellectual tradition they spring from and adhere to solely in order to get power.
I suppose with a superficial glance at the world, you could make the intellectually dishonest mistake of saying Hitler wasn’t a socialist. Of course, his own party’s name should be a dead give away: “The National Socialist Worker’s Party”.
The word “Socialist” could give you a clue. The fact that it was a Union should be another flag.
How about the fact that the people of Hitler’s Germany knew they didn’t actually own their own property, business or lives? The people knew the government could drag them from their homes in the darkness (or the daylight for that matter) and then the State, or its bureaucrats, could do what it liked with said property. That’s not very collective, is it?
Man, yeah. You sure trumped all that common sense knowledge by pointing out that two Socialist dictators were in competition with each other….WOAH! Wait a minute. If Stalin and Hitler were in “competition” with each other, that would make them both Capitalists!
Holy crap! You just blew history wide open. Everything we thought we knew about Russia and the Communists is wrong….Communist = Capitalist
Why didn’t I see it before? What a fool I’ve been. Pardon me while I rush to sell off all my personal crap, so I can take up a collectivist life on a commune in Kalifornia.
The Left and the Right are but two sides of the same elephant. Their seemingly inevitable conflict always reduces to a tragic misdirection from real underlying problem(s), or from real opportunities for human progress (new inventions, new scientific knowledge). Whatever the common man’s human nature gets out of thinking in terms of Left and Right, the leaders on either side should know better and work together for the common good. “Survival of the fittest” is not the way to lasting peace or human progress; the determined sowing and reaping of increased knowledge of the truth, in every field, is the key to good government. Currently, the task everywhere is to relinquish old dogmas (like the “eye for an eye” mentality of the ancient world, so well brought to the forefront today by the sorry example of backward-looking Islam, and many “fundamentalists” in other religions). If you want to improve the world, recognize that “survival of the fittest” and “an eye for an eye” are two sides of the same, false, coin.
Well, reciprocity is the basis of stability in human society. And that´s what I think is behind the “an eye for an eye” principle, so it´s a pro-civilization idea, if adopted with due care and proportionality. On the other hand, “giving the other cheek”, particularly to the ones that want you dead, is completely stupid and will not help one´s fitness whatsoever. That´s why nobody, not even Christians, EVER applied this crazy principle.
The martyrs beg to differ, and it was martyrdom that overturned the Roman Empire, not force. The zeal of a martyr wins many converts.
Slim comfort to the martyr, I’m afraid.
I´m not history expert, but I have serious doubts about martyrdom being the main cause of Roman Empire´s collapse.
Not the fall of the empire, but it’s eventual conversion to Christianity was through the sacrifice of the Martyrs.
Well, was Constantine´s decision caused by the christian martyrs? Never heard of that viewpoint. Maybe it was just lack of sleep and his hallucination about the cross. Or he´d have changed his mind if he lost that battle. And there were those babarians at the gates. And the size of the empire. The fossilized bureaucracy and corruption. Etc, etc. Still I can´t see the christian martyrs as a crucial factor. But, maybe an hitorian would have more in-depth info about that.
It seems to me that you start by disparaging partisanship and then say we should unite around liberal ideology. Obama did the same thing – we are not red states or blue states, but then when he was elected he embarked on a liberal agenda. Similarly, “bipartisanship” meant agreeing with him.
You suggest we give up old dogmas, and this is definitely a progressive notion. Conservatives believe that truths can be found in the classics and traditions evolve for a reason. Liberals believe the nature of man can be molded, so “progress” requires getting rid of the past.
You suggest leaders should work together for the common good, echoing Wilson’s analogy that government works like an organism, all parts in harmony. This ignores all the arguments about human nature and the need for checks and balances. Lincoln said all people experience trials and tribulations but if you want to test the true character of a man, give him power.
You disparage “an eye for an eye” yet strength promote peace.
You disparage “survival of the fittest” as not promoting peace. Perhaps not, but it is a natural law and one should ignore it at one’s own risk. And I disagree that it is not a basis for progress – nature has been using it for millenia to adapt life to an ever-changing environment.
Finally, you mention that science is the basis for good governance. That is merely a rehash of the German bureaucracy concept endorsed by Woodrow Wilson. There is considerable doubt that we need to come together to promote science. Friedman (“Free to Choose”) notes that science advances organically, without central planning. And if left alone, it will produce goods and services that people want.
Nowhere in this treatise is there mention of the core function of government; to preserve freedom.
So, as Elton John sang, “I’ve seen that movie, too.”
You seem to want see whatever you want to see, dude. Reality is complex, and that´s what Solway´s text was all about.
I think we all see what we want to see. My comments were directed at the Harry Dale Huffman post, not the Solway column (which I found to be very insightful).
OK, I apologize. I thought it was addressed to my posts.
Just a comment about your post, if you allow me: Science per se is no guarantee of good governance, but good governance needs to be informed by good up-to-date science (not by cranks nor pseudo-scientific voodoo). Moreover, Science does have an internal code of ethics that include important values such as: openess, disciplined skepticism, self-criticism, objectivity, intellectual honesty, clarity, testability, truth-seeking, logical coherence, etc.
SerJew, glad we got that straightened out. It was a misunderstanding, so no apology needed. I agree that science is supposed to have a code of ethics – but would add that it has no code of moral principles. Scientists are free to do what they do because they can. However, that’s peripheral. I would suggest that the basic framework of government needs to be informed of the basic nature of humans, as Locke pointed out. Government should not allow the concentration of power nor should it grow so large that it dominates the society. To the extent that administrative functions are needed, they may certainly benefit from science and technology. But the people may benefit directly from science without the intervention of government.
“science is supposed to have a code of ethics – but would add that it has no code of moral principles.”
Albert Einstein agreed.
“One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source… The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high goal which, with our weak powers, we can reach only very inadequately, but which gives a sure foundation to our aspirations and valuations… Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts. According to this interpretation the well-known conflicts between religion and science in the past must all be ascribed to a misapprehension of the situation which has been described… Now, even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Albert Einstein
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
Liberty-clinger: Einstein was most probably an atheist, or at least a Spinozist. He was never quite clear about his philosophical position in this respect, and he loved to make nice little phrases of “God thinks or does or doesn´t this and that”. He was also a pacifist and a socialist, which once again shows that geniuses can be quite naive and even stupid in other fields.
Liberty-Clinger, thanks for the excellent post.
SerJew, cannot a statement stand or fall on its own merits without need to resorting to psychoanalysis of the person? I often see liberals resort to this sort of “discredit the messenger” tactic when they can’t argue the substance of an issue.
“SerJew, cannot a statement stand or fall on its own merits without need to resorting to psychoanalysis of the person? I often see liberals resort to this sort of “discredit the messenger” tactic when they can’t argue the substance of an issue.” Kermudjin
Sorry, but now we disagree. Whose messenger I´m supposing to be discrediting? Maybe you are doing just that with that innuendo about liberals?
Anyways, I just pointed out that Einstein had some pretty naive viewpoints about politics, bordering on stupidity. And his phrases about God were totally irrelevant to his works on physics. That´s has noting to do with psychoanalysis (that IMHO is just pseudo-science) and everything about the content of the previous message, as much is used and abused about those Einsteinian musings.
The Political Left and Right are not alternate halves of the same elephant. The Political Left and Right can and often do operate independently and contrary to each other and just as often contrary to the common good. The halves of the elephant must, of necessity, operate in coordination. The overwhelming majority of humans are conservative, or there would be far fewer, the remainder are insane Reactionaries. Liberals harken back to a simpler time of communal living, when there were conservatives and Tiger Chow!
In my lifetime (a very short 35 years) I find a lot of truths in simple statements. My favorite list of simple statments that hold the most truth are in the 10 comandments themselves. I feel like I’m bringing down the IQ level of the group that has posted here. I have read and understood what everyone is trying to get at. It is all very eloquently spoken and carries a lot of weight with the great minds that have been given voice. The problem lies in the fact that most people don’t think in such deep terms and are easily lost when they come across others that talk in such a way. I fully believe that the most profound thoughts can be conveyed in a short statement that almost anyone can understand. I came to believe this when I was told of the KISS rule when I was younger.
I was in the Marine Corps as an avionics technition. I struggled at first when trying to trouble shoot broken equipment. Then a suprising thing happened. One day it all just clicked. The answer to almost everything I have encountered in life could be identified in two simple consepts.
1. follow the path of least resistance. Everything in nature is lazy. It all follows the least restrictive path to get to it’s intended goal. This can be seen from the preditor catching the weakest and/or sickest meal. To a person accepting a govt hand out. So in nature’s survival of the fittest applys. It takes ability and willpower to strive for more than the minimum but even then everyone will look for the easiest way to achieve those goals.
2. everything relys on input and output, so when looking for an answer to a problem you must first find where and what the source of the disruption is before being able to fix anything. I aproach everything in life this way. When trying to fix a piece of equipment and I had a falty output I had to trace back to where I had a good input usually where there is a good input and an output of the mechanism is faulty then that mechanism was bad and needed replaced. Although replacing that mechanism can be difficult, untill it is replaced then the problem will never be resolved. This usually leads to the phrase “To do the samething over and over again expecting a different result is a mark of insanity.” This is also seen in liberalism/progressivism.
Going on to another simple statement the “eye for an eye”. I fully believe in it’s brother statement “to do unto others as you whould have done unto you.” to disreguard one of these statments is to also ignore the other. Because it is imperative in todays modern society to have consiquences for actions or anarchy would reign and civilization would stop. Even nature has its laws of order and dosen’t bend to the evil of anarchy.
As for coming together for the common good, there is no such thing as a common good when dancing with the devil. The devil does ride the coatails of good intentions.
Sorry for any spelling errors and poor phrasing. I struggle with both when writing.
Semper Fi Simple man….
Good catch on pairing the “do unto” and “eye for eye” thing.
Most see it as one OR the other, not both.
Its both.
Teach THAT in the schools, and all the fusses we have would soon dissapear.
Simple enough.
Well done. The left must believe we are all Nurture – no Nature. However, as religious people know, there can be no earthly paradise. And if you firmly believe in evolution, you should also understand that our species evolved a certain way, filling a niche, we are simply what we are – no more, no less. It is hubris to believe we are somehow different in our core, basic behaviors from our ancestors that lived 10,000 years ago and more. What our large brains have given us is an evolving society, as we continue to search for one that best fits our species and it’s nature as it has evolved to be.
Well, we surely are a bit different from our ancestors. Evolution is always at work and there are plenty of evidence that we´re different, even from our 4.500 years ago, at least culturally, and a bit genetically too. Of course, we also keep our layers from the evolutionary past, for instance, basic emotions that help us cope with new challenges but to which we inevitably pay a huge price.
Technology has changed and because of it, there have been some minor alterations of human psyche but because of this, I went to Amazon.com and bought a bunch of translated Roman texts. When I started reading some of Cicero, I was amazed at how it could have been written five minutes ago. I suppose, to be fair, to get the ancient flavor to it, I would have to be able to read it in its original Latin. But to me, if I had not known it was written 2,000 years ago, and the mind and society from whence it came, I would easily see it as a train-of-thought very much like today.
Even evolutionists admit that change takes place over a great period in the tens of thousands of years and such. But I think that humans have largely been the way we are now, even 4,500 years ago. Proclivities and desires still haunt our basic center and though you can say that a man in 3300 B.C. would desire a flashy car is to ignore that part of the human psyche that craves a more basic need. Whether it’s fame, attention, respect. 3300 years ago, whatever stimulus that caused that reaction in people would be desired by the egoist.
I also say that, if it was at all possible, you could take a Roman citizen of average intelligence, bring him to the present, teach him to drive that car and use all the technology fairly easily. Our day-to-day tasks haven’t changed all that much. And, if you go pre-industrial revolution, the farmer of 2,000 years ago would be very much at home on a farm of 1850.
So it’s the technology and scale of things that has changed, not the people.
Thieves were thieves.
Politicians were politicians. (But I repeat myself)
Builders, farmers, seafarers, (although pilots is a new one, I’ll admit)
Weavers
Furniture makers and so on.
Indeed, look at people’s surnames and often you’ll find a clue as to where they came from and what their ancestors did.
Wheeler
Wright
Miller
Scribner
And so on. But surnames are more of a 10th century affectation.
But overall, people of the past had the same desires, needs, imperfections that we have today.
I think one can be pretty sure there were genetic changes in humans in the last thousands of years. It happens all the time. By recombination, drift, etc. Small changes but detectable. Some are macroscopic, such as changes in dentition as people are no chewing hard stuff anymore. Moreover, brain and culture interact somehow, so necessarily there´ll be some changes in this respect too. But I agree that most changes in humans in the last, say 4000 years was brain-and-culturally-driven.
Air conditioning.
Power Steering.
Left wing feminists….
Take away the first two, and the last would never have evolved.
Reminds me of a very enlightening encounter I had with woman who wore her communist sympathies and fantasies with pride. During a conversation about the ills of society I remarked that human nature always triumphs. Her response: I don’t believe in God. Took me but a moment to realize that for the left there is no such thing as “human nature”. Because that would mean a template and a template has to be created. The idea of God is an inconvenience for them. After all the competition is unfair if He were the opponent. So presto! He must be “disappeared”. The left does not like to admit to the existence of human nature but they have also made “psychology” the explanation of all things. So if there is no such thing as human nature, then why bother with human psychology? Because it suits a purpose: the continued march leftward.
Atheism and materialism are necessary and sufficient for the left. If we are merely meat puppets whose consciousness is an epiphenomena of electrical activity in the brain matter, then it is unfair that some be happy and productive and others not, and the problem is a fault of and thus the responsibility of the whole of society of meat puppets to ameliorate.
But, if we are more than meat puppets, if this meat puppet phase is in reality a learning experience toward some higher purpose, then we are ill-advised to mess with it on any grand scale without knowing the curriclum.
I question whether atheism is definitive of the left; that is, if by atheism, we mean a rejection of a metaphysical Agency for the world.
I consider myself both an atheist and also, a firm ‘right winger’. I reject a metaphysical Agent governing the world, but I strongly support the concept that the world operates according to an innate logic, reason, even, a ‘distributed Mind’. One has only to consider the intricate filiations and co-dependencies of the physical, chemical and biological realms to reject that this is due to randomness.
I would describe the Left as indifferent to this biological and physical view of the world; they see it instead as a strictly material reality amenable to control by man. They thus see it, as they see all human beings, as Other to themselves who are, by their own description, the Wise People. So, the environment is a victim, as are ethnic groups, class groups, racial groups, etc, etc. They control all these groups because these groups – all of them, lack Mind, lack the ability to look after themselves.
“I question whether atheism is definitive of the left; that is, if by atheism, we mean a rejection of a metaphysical Agency for the world.”
Agreed. I´m also an atheist and this accusation that “without God anything goes” is tired and out-in-synch with reality. Religionists, atheists and bhuddists etc can be scoundrel and criminals. There´s ample proof of genodical behavior perpetrated by deeply religious people. Also, the XXth
century murdereres killed religionists and non-religionists alike: the communists basically killed themselves in droves thinking they were destroying class enemies; the nazis killed the racial untermenschen, who for them were centrally the Jews, religious or not.
Moreover, Stalin was an ex-seminarist; Hitler was brought up a catholic; Goebbels had a Jesuit education. One wonders what kind of religious education was it that molded such monsters. Also, Germany was a deeply christian nation, but both denominations enthusiastically embraced nazism.
“I consider myself both an atheist and also, a firm ‘right winger’. I reject a metaphysical Agent governing the world, but I strongly support the concept that the world operates according to an innate logic, reason, even, a ‘distributed Mind’. One has only to consider the intricate filiations and co-dependencies of the physical, chemical and biological realms to reject that this is due to randomness.”
Well, “distributed Mind” is another name for “metaphysical agent”, or am I missing something here? And surely, what science teaches us is that the World does seem to have its Laws that we try to uncover and understand. And this includes aspects of randomness. There *are* laws of randomness too, and that´s part of what Probability Theory deals with.
As for the left scientific pretentions, well, they didn´t even get XIX-century science right. They just used the prestige of science to get adherents.
No, I wouldn’t consider that ‘distributed Mind’ is another name for ‘Metaphysical Agent’. A metaphysical Agent is external to the physical or material and therefore, is not distributed within that material.
I’m an Aristotelian, not a Platonist. The former has ‘Mind’ as an integral part of the material, while the latter is able to separate the two (Form and matter).
“No, I wouldn’t consider that ‘distributed Mind’ is another name for ‘Metaphysical Agent’. A metaphysical Agent is external to the physical or material and therefore, is not distributed within that material.
I’m an Aristotelian, not a Platonist. The former has ‘Mind’ as an integral part of the material, while the latter is able to separate the two (Form and matter).” ETBA
I still don´t get it. For all we know, minds exist as some complex functions of “advanced” primates nervous systems, particularly, human brains, particularly linked to the neocortex. There are no such thing as brainless minds (no pun intended here) nor can I fathom what you mean by “distributed Mind”, except as a metaphorical way to describe the products of culture, such as books, technology, musical scores, etc.
ETAB: “I reject a metaphysical Agent governing the world, but I strongly support the concept that the world operates according to an innate logic, reason, even, a ‘distributed Mind’.”
From the point of view of a Christian believer I would say that your version of atheism is one which accepts the Spirit of God (the Holy Spirit) but which rejects God the Father and God the Son. The Spirit of God is truth and reason, and also life, love and creativity. The Spirit of God leads to man’s infinite and therefore equal value – and therefore man’s equal rights to life, liberty and fruit of labor in pursuit of happiness. Any atheist who believes that a Godless universe is one which somehow draws all men to truth, reason, life, love and creativity is a good atheist – because he has in effect accepted the Spirit of God. By faith I believe God (and only God) will sort out the judgment of each man’s eternal destiny – both the religious and the atheist – starting with each man’s acceptance or rejection of His Spirit of truth, reason, life, love and creativity.
Or maybe you are a good religionist by your accepting that basic human decency is totally compatible with the atheistic philosophical viewpoint.
Liberty-Clinger, you wrote: “The Spirit of God is truth and reason, and also life, love and creativity. The Spirit of God leads to man’s infinite and therefore equal value – and therefore man’s equal rights to life, liberty and fruit of labor in pursuit of happiness”. That’s a nice outline; thanks.
Let me restate something from above:
Any atheist who believes that a Godless universe is one which somehow endows all men with infinite and therefore equal value, and draws all men to truth, reason, life, love, liberty and creativity, and therefore endows all men with equal rights to life, liberty and fruit of labor in pursuit of happiness, is a good atheist, because he has in effect accepted the Spirit of God.
God is defined as the ultimate power in the Universe that is greater than the power of ETAB or the person defining God. You sound like you agree there is such a power. So how can you be an Atheist since you believe in the power that carries the definition of God. I understand we can hold some limited heavily circumscribed and self-serving view of God as a bearded Viking with a shield and a hammer, but excluding one definition of God does not make an Atheist since then we all would be Atheists and I am certainly not one because I know I did not create the Universe in the Big Bang and I am not the greatest power in the Universe with that power being reserved for God. So I am sorry. Alot of people declare themselves to be Atheists but I don’t believe any of you are authentic. You must be talking about something else since I don’t know how you can say there is no power in the unververse or outside the universe greater than yourself. Does not compute. I guess I am an A-atheist who does not believe in atheists.
In a Godless world would all men possess equal value? In a Godless world would all men be endowed by nature with equal unalienable rights to life, liberty and fruit of labor in pursuit of happiness? What is to prevent the law of nature from turning into the law of the jungle if there is no God of nature, since, as Friedrich Nietzsche believed, God is or should be dead, and man therefore is primarily motivated by his animal will to power?
Atheist Me vs. My Christian Neighbor
My neighbor is a church going communist. I am a right-wing, don’t-tread-on-me, liberty loving atheist. I consider him morally low (he steals from his elderly mother and mooches off of everyone) and I try to live an upright and moral life. I believe in right and wrong, good and evil. He seems to believe that there are no such things, only different points of view.
I really don’t believe you can make a connection to beliefs in God and political beliefs.
Randy.
A “churchgoing communist” is within the realm of physical possibilities.
Reverend Wright comes to mind. One does not need to possess morals in order to enter a building…
mere legs will suffice, or perhaps a wheelchair if you limbs are as crippled as your character
But a Comminist CHRISTIAN is simply not possible.
By your description, this neighbor seems to simply a prick and a hypocrtrite.
A Prius, and a faded ‘Obama ’08″ bumper sticker, would prove beyong all doubt this contention..
Oh! But Obama is different.
Thank you for this column.
DS: “In short, what the Left has never been able to come to terms with is the Gordian knot of human nature. It will not be unravelled, resisting every effort to separate its strands.”
“The individual is only a cell… power is collective. The individual only has power in so far that he ceases to be an individual… If he can make complete utter submission; if he can escape from his identity; if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all powerful… Can you not understand that the death of the individual is not death; the Party is immortal… You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do, and will turn against us; but we create human nature.” George Orwell — 1984
The left, as does the right, defines itself in how it also defines ‘others’.
The left defines others as ‘identifiable collectives’ made up of homoogeneous sets of people with each group defined primarily by one major characteristic: skin color, ethnicity, religion, economic class. They rarely complicate these sets by multiple criteria.
The self-identification of themselves by’the left’ is their removal from the hard data base of daily reality into a realm almost entirely conceptual; this is the realm of the bureaucrats, the academics, the activists – this turns out to be any and all people whose economic lifestyle is protected by government.
Within this isolate bubble, the left observes those identity groups outside the bubble; it keeps them outside for conceptualization is considered a specific characteristic only of those Within The Leftist Realm. You will recall Obama reminding Others that they reject His healthcare plan only because they ‘do not understand it’; and, they fail to understand His Will because they ‘cling to religion and other ignorances’.
A key self-definition of the left, who define themselves as the only ones capable of this intellectual observation of Others is: Compassion. That is, in order to maintain a distance and superiority to Others, you must assert that these Others are unworthy, are lesser beings. You do this by declaring your compassion for them as they are weak, ignorant, filled with superstition and etc. You define yourself as their Caregivers.
The right defines Others as ‘identifiable individuals’; the right rejects collective identities. This, by the way, means that the right cannot, by definition, be racist. Such a characteristic can only belong to someone on the left.
The right, which sees people as individuals and not groups, then sets up normative life goals for individuals; finishing school, getting a job; raising a family. These are all viewed as responsibilities of the individual. However, inequality of both ability and result are accepted as normal characteristics of humans, and there is no shame either in being very wealthy or very poor. The Left considers that both ends of the scale are shameful and must be eradicated by the State.
So, the left, in a sense, has no scale of evaluation for individuals. They accept no differences among individuals in intellect, abilities, energy, desires. Instead, they set up human beings in a two-leveled hierachy. The top realm is the conceptual realm where they live, heady and supreme in their ability-to-know-what-is-best; the rest of the population are all non-conceptual and ignorant…and live in collectives defined by that characteristic. It is the Duty of the Left to Care For these lesser beings.
The comparison between the upper class of the 18th and 19th century, of the class of European nobles whose wealth never ever came from their own work but from inherited land – and the modern left whose hands are equally untainted by work, is obvious. Equally obvious is their contempt and disdain for the ‘workers’ and ‘those in trade’ – whom they gather into homogeneous and faceless, nameless groups, and whom they define as inadequate victims, needy, and requiring their CareGiving and Supervision.
Very nicely put, ETAB. I’ve long known that the Left is a lie, using their supposed ‘compassion’ for people as a manipulative tool that camouflages their lust for power – while they steamroller the very people they pretend to defend.
And thank you Mr. Solway for an insightful, well written analysis.
Dear ETAB
Brilliant and compendious analysis.
David Solway
…as we have all learned to expect from him.
A brilliant piece, ETAB. One among many, I’ve come to find, admire and appreciate.
The left looks down on their victims and villains, up at totalitarian revolutionaries and across only at fellow cultists.
The right looks up at God, looks down on compromisers and across at members of the choir.
The center looks up at honest analyzers, across at the unbiased and down on flame-throwers.
Treading with caution against overreach in each group, the last group needs to beware of appeasement and fickleness. The second needs to beware of proselytizing, rigidity and closed-mindedness or narrow-mindedness.
The first group would need to beware of treason, if they weren’t bathed in it already by definition already.
The largest difference between the treasonous first group and the other two, is that the two latter groups do not need fraudulent “inventions” to continue to exist. The first group, if it cannot find appropriate “victims and villains”, must invent them for the continuation of their very existence. That existence then, exists solely on bootstrapping its own fraud and inveighing against those imaginary demons.
It overreaches for villains, gins up phony victims and then creates the Imaginarium Ideology that “saves” the latter from the former…by throwing compassion crumbs at their feet and laurel wreaths at themselves for being such “good” people. This “goodness” comes replete with awards ceremonies and prizes and commendations. The emotional trinket parade is the waterfall of cheap applause that replenish the narcissists spirit, the acknowledgement of their mighty “contributions” to “mankind” or “womankind” or “personkind”.
And the difference, David, between the prostitute and these folks, is, the prostitute is getting the OTHER person off by their faking they are really into what they are doing.
I’m reading Carlyle’s “The French Revolution”, written, I think, in 1834.
The exact parallels should frighten us all.
Actually, it should frighten Obama, most of all.
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9
And that isn’t a negative or hopeless thing, it is a starting point for building a working model.
Very good Mr. Solway. The Gordian Knot of human nature was recognized by great thinkers eons ago; Augustine, Calvin, Luther, Moses. The “fall” and its attendant guilt is denied by the left. The answer is obvious – repent! But it is so hard to admit that we’re wrong:-)
Have a blessed Passover and Easter.
I’ve been listening to this crap from one of my son’s friends. He, of course, got it from his parents. It’s well-intended, idealistic “reasoning” unfettered by such mundane considerations as economic end results obtained by similar experiences in the recent past. In fact, he told me the health care systems in Canada and England are ideal.
He’ll get over it. I’ve started him on some basic economics. I can’t forgive the blazing ignorance of his father, who is involved in writing the health care law.
His daddy has been telling him that the systems in Canada and England work better than ours.
Actually, his daddy is wrong.
There is one key problem with socialized medicine: money. That is, it cannot fund a full health service that would provide comprehensive tests for a preventative focus. It can only fund the less expensive ‘current care needs’. This means the usual germ-caused illnesses, the traumatic injuries, the severe stages of diseases.
The US system, funded by consumer insurance, leaves decision-making up to the customer so to speak. Therefore, the individual can ensure that he has multiple tests for various side aspects of his complaint, can obtain second and third opinions and so on. In Canada and the UK, such requests for tests and second opinions ‘cost the government money’ and therefore, the individual cannot ask for them – only the general physician can do so, and this doctor must show that these are not requests but vitally necessary.
Then, even if the general physician requests further tests, these can take up to a year to be scheduled.
Essentially, a govt run and funded health care system’s costs must be severely constrained to focus only on immediate health care needs; multiple tests, opinions and anything other than superficial preventative care are outside of its fiscal abilities.
ETAB, Of course you are right. As econ 101 tells us that price is the mechanism by which supply meets demand. Once you have removed the price mechanism, no substitute system can respond as efficiently and therefore shortages, rationing, and “death panels” are the inevitable result. Such ignorant folly for the technocrats to actually think they can create a system that works better than the market.
The only bone I have to pick with this argument is that it paints the left with too wide a brush. I have a number of friends, relatives and acquaintances who self-identify as liberals who actually received classical liberal educations. It is convenient to define the opposition in generalities, but ultimately counterproductive. I sincerely doubt if society will ever segregate itself into political parties that exclusively forswear either high “utopian” ideals or crass “materialistic” pragmatism.
Thanks for the thoughtful column but: Ultimately we live with Behavior in spite of Philosophy. It doesn’t matter how right the Right is in their philosophy if they don’t get off their duff and cast votes. In Germany 8 million true-beleviers elected Hitler to take over the other 72 million Germans who allowed them to do so through passivity. How did that turn out for you ? Yes, Germany was a Democracy with voting rights. The Left wins when they get out the vote. In November we will get what we allow.
Please vote. Great column and so many good respondants. Thanks.
There are those on the left, and the right that think along the same lines. That man is basicly good, and man can be his own god. That is what the New Age is all about. Plus, those who embrace this New Age thought hate those who do not believe as they do.
For example, those nasty unwashed Americans clinging to their weapons, and Bibles. These individuals in the millions believe in a G-d that created man. That man turned it’s back on G-d, and now humans suffer until the word made flesh is sent back to earth to rule as he won the right to do so. These individuals will have to be reprogramed somehow.
Perhaps, teaching the youth evolution will help destroy those unwashed Americans belief in a G-d. Attacking marriage, breaking up the home which they believe is a G-d given refuge from the world system will help speed the process of disrespect to one’s mother or father. Sex, and birth outside of marriage will create a government plantation of Marxists, and murdering human young, called Abortion will keep individuals depressed not seeking their G-d out of shame. Bring in Homosexuality as a correct life style, and those unwashed Americans can be denounsed as haters. To help destroy this type of culture illegal aliens with their third world marxism will increase the government plantation, and pour in millions of moon god worshiper murdering their daughters, demanding foot baths, etc… to create hate, and discontent will bring change. Then, embrace globalism to ship jobs overseas for pennies, which will help make these people poor. Increase the debt by destroying the housing market with socialism, and the New Age will be on them.
Now, how to get those weapons? Government gun walking which will make American gun laws appears loose. But, don’t tell anyone or those nasty Bible thumpers will vote for the Tea Party, and push back the New Age to a later date.
Fox News Hires Supporter Of Jeremiah Wright And Derrick Bell
http://www.westernjournalism.com/fox-news-hires-supporter-of-jeremiah-wright-and-derrick-bell/
That’s how far and balanced works. And I disagree with the comment in he link that Fox is moving left. Now, let’s hold our breath waiting for CNN or MSNBC or PBS or the rest to hire a conservative.
Delicious prose Mr. Solway. Democrats refuse to account for the depravity of man, thus the party of slavery, segregation and abortion tries to assert itself on self-imagined moral high ground. Thank you for your clear thinking David, keep writing please.
A cloud passing over the sun is a Gordian Knot to the liberal Left since they live in a world of unreality. Just as racialist views left Alexandria a city of two Christianities ripe for conquest, so will this addiction to trusting and distributing morality by skin rather than actions has left the Dem Party in charge of a tottering and defenseless edifice, ripe to be toppled by peasants and farmers by the simple expedient of having too many children and then marching illegally to America armed with cries of ‘racism!’ I have a right to be here. There can be no defense when reality is simply adjusted to one’s whims.
Good post, but leftists won’t read it and this is a shame because they would learn something if they opened their closed minds just a little. Usually, they only show up at conservative websites to counter posts critical of Obama, which means every single one. This one merely touches on the kinds of fallacies that animate O.
Lefties should bear in mind that O will probably get only get so much done with his czars and bureaucrats. If he doesn’t succeed in transforming the country into a socialist paradise a second term could turn out to be the worst thing that ever happened to the Democratic Party. Do lefties really care or is the beauty of the project their primary motivation for supporting him? One wonders.
How wise and beautifully written!
It continues to surprise me that commentators such as Mr. Solway attribute the behaviours of the totalitarian leftists, typical liars calling themselves liberal, democrats and feel your pain compassionate, to their feelings of guilt at their privileges. I say behaviours because who knows or can know what they really think, what they really believe.
Where and in what ways do they display any semblance of guilt or feelings of inadequacy? Words? Talk is cheap, especially for these privileged why are NEVER required to practice what they preach. Of course it is now fashionable – and who was it who made it fashionable – to parse persons’ conduct via cod-psychology. To display one’s own tolerance and humanity, i.e. high civilisation, by attributing to plainly destructive and injurious actions affecting other people, who cannot or will not fight fire with fire, to some humane basis.
These totalitarian leftists made sissies of us in our accepting their language for public discourse. Beginning with their restrictions on free speech and opinion. Using the fist of law to assure their victory in stopping expression of words or opinions not acceptable to them. From that first test they continued developing to their now evident complete control – down to light bulbs – of the populations they putatively “love”. Did they read Rousseau without their blinkers?
Bizarre that their compassion has been accepted as compassion. When did compassion become compelled by persons and their strange laws punishing
e.g sexual, racial, ethnic, gender etc “harassment” whatever that is. You note all these laws enforced arbitrarily in the extreme pour encourager les autres. How guilty do you think they are now that their successes have gone to their heads. That they’re no longer camouflaged? None of their control freakery speaks to me as guilt but
Directly and deliberately test cases as to how much free Americans tolerate and permit the theft of their rights. Americans now, if they dare look closely see that the privileged in education, politics, propaganda, entertainment and all civic institutions, bored with their easy lives and privileges hanker for excitement.
What greater excitement than a war? A civil war, brother against brother, in which they are either the generals behind the front or sit out on the sidelines or tell the story. As the adolescents they wish they still were – reliving their days of glory during their “revolution” where nobody was shooting back. For disruptions of other peoples’ lives they can cause to relieve their boredom at their privileges. They’ve tested for the past half century. Their tests have shown them Americans, the free-est people on the planet and thus prime target for predators, Americans tolerate much. And have played into their hands by their acceptance of these overgrown infants malicious controls of their houses. Throughout this past half century.
None of these examples of these feel your pain compassionates speak to me of guilt – any guilt for anything they do or have done.
life is ever at war with itself
Strongly agree with the article and most of the comments.
How anybody in the Beltway thought they could take principles (as it were) of Content and Method from the alien political universe of Marx-Lenin and impose them upon the deliberative democratic politics of the Framing Vision is one of the great questions for us.
But the Dems had their own problems after 1965. They had broken up the New Deal demographic coalition and they needed some fresh demographics … they embraced all sorts of new ‘identities’ as fresh demographics groups (race, gender, ethnic-immigrant, youth … all subgroups of that Identity revolution). But as the government decided to go beyond the legitimate task of taking apart the matrix of state-laws that supported Jim Crow, and get into the project of cultural terraforming and rooting out what many here rightly note is ‘human nature’, it simply created Leviatha (from the ‘sensitive’ and liberating and ‘liberal’) Left while Leviathan (from the neocon Right) also took advantage and returned.
There is and always has been an anti-American authoritarianism inherent in the Left’s ideological basis. Because a) if most of The People ‘just don’t get it’, then why bother listening to them? And because b) the natural thrust of any ideology and its presumed ‘certain knowledge’ is not to open up matters to deliberation but rather to impose such marvelous ‘knowledge’ forthwith – in which cause your intentions, being presumed ‘good, justify anything.
Recall the Abolitionists who would rather have no country than one that allowed slavery to go on one more minute (eerily echoing the secessionists: if there couldn’t be a country with slavery, then they weren’t going to stay in it a minute longer). And the ideological mindset is the same in both cases, and also reflects the ‘revolutionary’ mindset of Marxism-Leninism: if we have the ‘knowledge’ then our vanguard-elites have no more important duty than to impose it forthwith for the (presumed) good of everybody … or at least everybody except those designated as ‘enemies of the revolution’ (in the past 40 years around here that would be ‘patriarchal macho dominant oppressive males’ and the womenfolk who also ‘just don’t get it’ and all the working and middle class ‘bourgeois’ folk who also ‘just don’t get it’).
Then in 1972 when the Dems re-badged themselves as the ‘party of women’ for the presidential election, they were rejected at the polls 49 States to one. But instead of accepting the rather robust input of The People, the Dems doubled-down: if The People ‘just don’t get it’ then clearly ‘deliberative democratic politics’ was not the way forward. (Nor am I suggesting that in 1972 all of those voters were male and they simply outvoted all the females.)
So the Dems (joined in a few years by the Republicans to make it ‘bipartisan’) came up with what has become the political gameplan for the past 40 years: pander to the various Identities for votes, giving them whatever they want and giving in to all their demands; pander to the corporations for cash contributions to PACs. Meanwhile, use all the government money you can print to keep everybody soused with the idea that the government was simply making the country both more ‘liberated’ and more wealthy all the time.
But the cash has finally run out (except if you print more green paper). But what can the Beltway do now? Back out on their vote-deal with their ‘bases’? Back out and give back all the cash they’ve already banked in their PACs? The Beltway has now bipartisanly indentured itself to both Big Identity and Big Money. Trying to talk sense to it is like trying to tell the Chicago Board of Aldermen that Capone’s Mob was running rampant and they had to stop it. Not gonna happen.
What The People do now is the 64-dollar Question.
I’d also add that the real Question isn’t about Separation of Church and State or about Relgion-vs-Goverment. The real Question is the relationship between Ideology and Democracy. And the Beltway is now soused with ‘ideology’ from the Left rooted in the Marxist-Leninist universe or neocon ideology rooted in the ancient interests of Leviathan (that the Framers had caged with the Constitution and the Framing Vision).
“The reason is, or should be, obvious. Man himself does not change in his essential being: envy, sloth, selfishness, cupidity, resentment, and deception are as much a part of the human genome as charity, love and imagination”
I have always said that communism, marxism, socialism, fascism (also an ideoology of the left) and all other centrally controlled governments – works well if people have no emotions. But they do not work for extended periods of time because of human emotion.
Reading these comments reminds me of the elephant and the blind men, each of which encountered a different part but couldn’t agree that they were all partly right but still did not”see” the elephant.
Whatever the philosophy they all believe in the rule of law, their law. Man may be controlled by law but he is not ruled by law. He is ruled by choice, his choice. discipline shows the proper choice.
Freedom and Liberty are not synonymous for they have distinct functions. You can be at liberty to do some things not allowed to others or at other times but freedom is without restriction.
All Utopias try to rule by law with no liberty of choice by the individual. The Christian has a choice at any and all times and this in anathema to the world so he is hated of the world. None of these Utopias give an incentive to choose freedom.
We are not complete till we have made that choice known as conversion. But with that choice we have power to govern our own spirit and thus have peace.
Perhaps only a few will understand this but I know there are those who do understand and they are definitely in the minority.
Our Constitution is not law but is the author of law but the lawbreaker must be dealt with by force for he is not open to reason.
Again, I am in agreement with most of what you have written here. The faults of the left are clear. But I would like to see you one day address the question of the difference between human nature and human consciousness. Surely human consciousness has changed over the centuries. The ancient Hebrews or Greeks or Egyptians did not see the world in the same way as we do today. Not even close. Presumably, it is the changing consciousness that causes changes in human societies. Leftists typically attribute everything to economics, and even some conservatives can fall into that trap, but the culture is primary. The question might be: What has changed about human consciousness, and what changes are necessary in modern Western societies to meet the needs of those changes. It should be clear enough that our modern institutions have not been functioning very well, and much of that has to do with the fact that they are run by collectivists rather than individualists. How are we to change this?
To be clear, let me add that the main reason so-called progressives,or leftists, are in fact reactionaries is because they think of people in groups or tribes, something that was true in the West a thousand years ago. It is truly backward looking. You might say that we have evolved in a way that we are now individuals in a way that we never were before. You can even see that in the development of Western art, and once you become aware of that, you should realize that left wing thinking is discredited. Its view of the world becomes dangerous and destructive wherever they try to bring it about, nearly always by force, even if the force is subtle.