I no longer believe we can talk about left and right and make any sense at all of what's going on. For me now it is the establishment v everyone else. It is The Machine v The People. The left has been subsumed into that which it once at least nominally was against or at least wanted to keep in line. There are many politically homeless people now being defined as "the far right" and though them falling into the Trump camp frustrates me, I can understand, if you don't have a lot of understanding of how the system works, how there is something there that seems different and new. There is certainly valuable info you will get there that you won't in, say, any of the world's dessicated labour parties, whose flaccid ideas about how to fix things always end up supporting the machine. People are legit frustrated that govts are pouring immigrants into overburdened cities because they're not doing the things immigration requires, like building enough infrastructure. Calling those people "far right" is to fall in line with what the establishment says about anyone who questions it. Left and right definitions are not only dead now, but they're damaging to the efforts of everyday people trying to break free from the industrial machine.
I really hear ya. Our language itself is becoming almost unusable, in large part because of how those in the Establishment are abusing it. Calling anyone with even a skeptical mind about Establishment policies "far right" or even "right" denies the reality that many of us, some of who have long identified as being on the left, are experiencing.
Then, taking terms like misinformation that have some practical application and adding in new terms like mal-information ---true information that is inconvenient to the Establishment---basically destroys any trust in the idea of misinformation. Now, they've added "cheap fake" to "deep fake" and are going to basically blend the two terms together so that we'll doubt anything we see through our media. It's all a real clusterfuck for our sensemaking.
In the end, though, as much as I found this article valuable and worth reading and reflecting on, I think there was some missed opportunity in recognizing just how corrupt and slimy the Establishment has become, and that includes their many mouthpieces in the media. I feel like that has to be a part of the overall consideration here, because while the article is reasonably clear that the technocrats aren't going to offer a solution and that the Establishment and political left lack political imagination, I still feel like it has a hint of suggesting that the institutions themselves can be saved. I'm more and more convinced they can't, and that we're heading into a radically different, decentralized future than the one we've all grown up in.
Heartily agree. It is easy to underestimate how much they're toying with us. It's really disgusting. I was thinking yesterday how the last time I voted Labor here in Australia was in 2007 and at that time I was still thinking in terms of saving our institutions. What a difference 17 years of being fucked in the face makes! Decentralized local economies sounds utopian but it's just sensible to me, really. Humans cannot handle very much power, better to spread it around :) I actually feel more hopeful about the future than ever before now 8 know they're feeding us lots of crap. Funny old life, huh.
As a guy who is moving into a second life (I'm 51) as an astrologer, I'll just say that with the Pluto transit into Aquarius for the next 20 years, that big shift alone tells me that decentralization IS the name of the game. (There are other signs from the heavens, too, that point to this).
The point is, despite so much of our collective experience of the past few decades being very challenging, I do believe it's all been happening for a reason and one of those reasons is to prepare us for this shift.
Thus, like you, I'm more hopeful about the future now than I've been for most of my adult life, though much of that hope is grounded in a growing awareness that the human story is so much richer than we often give it credit for, and the arc of history is definitely NOT something that can be controlled by a few unconscious nincompoops who claim to be our leaders.
A good start to finding a better way forward could be to rise above the polarizing, reductionist, and charged labels of “far right” and “progressive” — and our tendency to use them as convenient baskets for disqualifying by default any views, people or groups we see as unpleasant or disagreeable (typically by associating them with truly horrific acts or disastrous policies cherry-picked to make the case of our choosing). Cognitive distortions and biases abound in this minefield. I have yet to hear anyone define these terms in a way that is constructive, which makes it quite difficult (if not impossible) to frame any solutions atop their shaky ground.
Standing here together at your sun-dappled crossroads, let’s begin to add more nuance and dimensionality to our critical thinking and social debate. Let’s become less “meta” about political labeling, less emotionally influenced by story, and get more real about specific issues, diving beneath the partisan chop at the surface. Let’s start giving more weight to actions than words; let’s focus on solutions to our large-scale coordination challenges, set clear, nonpartisan metrics for proving them out, and continually pivot towards what works — whether or not the findings fit neatly into your or my personal model of the world.
It's a pleasure to read some of your articles and I appreciate your efforts in pulling in disparate sources, and yet... Like so much I read from the pro-diversity/ multicultural and center left writing trying to put sense into the actions of the right and their winning streak in the public domain.
I identify as a nowhere/anywhere person and I have had to pay quite the price for that in terms of social capital over the years. Always the outsider who was white privileged, but also politically disenfranchised unable to vote, and with opinions that were often dismissed as out of touch with the locals. I was childless for a long time and it was insinuated to me by the political classes where I lived for a long time that I wasn't a real human until I had children and understood the drives of parents to secure privilege for their children.
A benevolent totalitarianism ruled all the countries where I wanted to go and live because of the social privileges handed to every resident. Free health care, social security payments for unemployment and disability and old age. My ancestors were breathless in their graves when they considered what privileges I have attained from their efforts.
The system worked in my favour and mostly still does, though the "good old days" of unquestioned support from the state/technocracy are gone.
I am WEIRD and yet it is the institution's failure to adapt to a changing world that has made it/them unworkable.
The rule of Law has weakened to the point of parody in the US (our imperial masters). The trickle down effect may not work for capitalism, but for justice, the precedents of brazen unlawfulness, is only growing. Everyone thinks they can make their own laws, mafia family style, within the kin networks you describe.
WEIrds don't truck like that. The only thing holding the internationalist in equilibrium is the rule of law and prescription of privilege. Without it we are undone and we will disappear because our networks are geographically dispersed. Political authority is primarily a localised sovereignty underwritten by the occupation of any given street, block, neighbourhood, or area (southside, Northside etc.) Political authority can't really ethically defend anything else, IMO.
It is philosophy of justice that has fallen into disrepair. Social justice warriors don't quite seem to have enough knowledge of the philosophy of justice and little wonder. The Field has been reduced to a sub faculty takeover by law students who endlessly do "mens rea" exercises.
Sovereignty is barely explained or talked about at all. The privileges that we all enjoy in "the West" spring from justice principals of sovereignty, common Law, and Natural Justice (which can be observed in animals and humans alike).
I really need to write an article about this. So many things fall into place regarding our current social maladies.
The green warriors speak of new forms of social justice, mostly from a utopian ideologi which fails to ground itself in the glue that holds the West together. Privilege and its roots in the rule of Law.
Thanks Morten, great thoughts - I'd read that article if you write it. I wouldn't say I'm center-left though, and my position is more complicated than being 'pro' or 'anti' multiculturalism, which I hoped to show in the piece. In any case I think your points around the decline in the philosophy of justice is really interesting - and probably applies to many other domains that hold Western values together.
I want to learn more about the philosophy of justice as I often find myself pondering just how we can have a truly just society that respects individuals as divine, unique Beings AND recognizes the importance of healthy environments for us all to live in.
Personally, even though I live in a very peaceful part of one of the safer countries in the world (Japan), I don't feel I life in a safe, collective environment ever since I was roused out of bed by 13 police officers and whisked off to jail for 45 days. That story is too long to go into, but the experience left me profoundly shaken by just how inhumane these nation-states can be to individuals, even if it may be light-years better than it was decades or centuries ago. Ultimately, living in these massive, impersonal collectives known as nation-states where the state has a monopoly on violence...well...that doesn't feel like a TRULY just system for individuals to thrive in.
Anyway, yeah, man, go ahead and write that article! I'd read it! I really DO need to learn more about all of this.
One of the most attractive (and addictive) aspects of WEIRDness is freedom from the social constraints that come with kinship ties. It’s not easy to give up the freedoms that come with ‘independence’, but that independence is illusory. As a “virtual”, I am utterly dependent on ‘physicals’ with whom I have no conscious relationship. We WEIRDo’s are going to have to do our own grieving of at least some of those freedoms before we can lean into what interdependence and reciprocity might look like going forward.
Thanks Cesca :) - great points - I wonder if that's why hippy communes and other alternative 'non WEIRD' attempts at community have failed in the West so often... skipping a step and trying to have the best of collectivism and the best of individuality without going through a ritual to transition to something new.
Really appreciate the depth of looking and investigating in this beautiful piece. Thank you very much for that. At the same time, i think that a key point regarding immigration was possibly missed, which is that immigration doesn't just happen by itself, but is deliberately caused and generated by the crimes, abuse, exploitation and atrocities of the capitalist rulilng class in the non-western world, who literally use it as a weapon against the 99%, against both working class non-westerners and working class westerners.
And as the ruling class always do with every single issue, they use this issue too to pit the 99% against each other.
The Big Money capitalists profit from their generated mass immigration in two significant ways - one is that it provides them with cheap labour force which is easey to exploit as new immigrants are willing to work for little and are usually not unionized (plus it forces the local workers to accept lower pay and to avoid strikes, becasue the capitalists have an army of immigrants ready to call on to break the strike and replace striking or disobedient or rebelliois workers or those who demand higher pay. It's a massive win from tne ruling class perspective).
And the second way that the capitalists use mass immigration is by fomenting discord and telling the local (and largely misinformed) working class that's it's those evil marxists communist leftists who are responsible for the immigration and for the immigrant competition for their jobs (because apparently the leftists hate the working class, according to this line of propaganda) and so you need to vote for the right in order to save yourself and your family from the diabolical plans of the leftists who wish to hurt you through immigration.. It is absolutely not a problem for Big Money if the working class votes for the far right, becasue the far right is mostly focused on identity politics and doesn't challenge in any serious fundamental way the rule of Big Money capitalists (all historical examples show that Big Money capitalists and the far right always cooperate. In many cases they are one and the same).
So not only do the ruling class capitaliats massively profit financially from immigration, but they also get to score massive political wins through it (by cynically pretending to be tbe ones who will protect "the people" from those evil scary immigrants who are coming to take your jobs and your women, the very immigrants that the Big Money capitalists themselves brought in and use as a weapon agaimst the working class..
So immigration is essentially the gift that keeps on giving for the ruling class - thry both profit financially off of it, AND they get to politocally shift the population to the right.. What more could they possibly ask for?!)
I think this might a blind spot in your otherwise fascinating essay.
Second thing I'd like to say is that i think your point (which was made in just one quick sentence, as if it is a given) needs to be further explained and explored. The point where you said something along the lines of 'there is no going back from the multicultural world and the change in the composition of european societies'. And therefore we need rituals to grieve (and bury) the european societies that were, so that we move with less friction into the new multicultural less-white reality in europe..
Without going in greater depth and explanation into why it should be so, then this statement has the sound of the authoritarian insensitivity of the ruling class, who claim 'this is how it's going to be becasue i said so'. Yes, you are less insensitive than the ruling class becasue you add the need for grieving and ritual in order to make the transition into a new european society more smooth and less traumatic, but you don't seem to tackle the question of why the transition must happen in the first place (transition which seems to be largely imposed by the ruling class, as shown in the links above). And tackle this question we must, becasue this is precisely what gives fuel to the far right...
I'm quite sure that this sort of statement ( we're not going back, but here are grieving rituals to make this transition less traumatic and more smooth) is not going to be very convincing for the vast majority of the local working class, who will rightly ask you 'why?' 'Why do you say that there is no undoing of what the ruling class imposed on us?'
I personally don't support this stance and don't want to go to a pre-multicultural world, but nonrtheless i think you'd have to come up with a better reasoning than just saying 'there's no going back and that's that' if you want to stop the drift towards the destructive poison of the far right.
Not only is this statement not going to convince anyone but i'm quite sure that it is going to alienate large portions of the working class.
Thanks for this - I'll look into those two essays. And to your other point - yes that sentence probably could have used further context. What I mean is that practically the solution to 'undoing' multiculturalism would be something fairly horrific - mass deportation (based on what - genetics?) or creating a two-tiered society where some people have privileges that others don't, which would go against classical liberal values, which are the very thing many feel are being undermined by multiculturalism in the first place. There's also no going back because European culture is already influenced by other cultures at a fairly deep level - it would be like trying to remove salt from water.
Wow, thanks for this awesome piece. You articulated so many things I struggled to put into words. Also I loved how you sank into different ages and scenarios.
Closing my eyes… I’m 27 and I just feel that we will make the shift happen. My whole body just radiates this knowledge know. True fuel for the soul.
Made me remember what Michael Ende said in “Die Unendliche Geschichte”. He’s looking forward to the day when we finally see our collective struggle in every fable and fantasy and reality become one.
Ali, I am grateful to you for the time and research you put into this thoughtful article. I plan to read it a second time as well as the pieces you linked to because with elections on the horizon, this is such a timely and important topic.
Being a U.S. citizen, what came up for me was the notion of ancestral and intergenerational grief. Unlike Europe, the U.S. is a young country made up almost entirely of immigrants, some who came by royal decree, but many who left their homelands to escape persecution, famine, or simply to build a better life. Did these immigrants fully process the grief of having to leave their homelands, having to abandon their roots and connections to place, even if they left purely by choice? I know they formed enclaves and neighborhoods based on shared culture and heritage (examples include the Irish of South Boston and Hell’s Kitchen in New York, Little Italy in New York, the German town of Frankenmouth in Michigan, the Swedish towns in Minnesota and North Dakota, the French cities in Louisiana due to the Louisiana purchase by the French, and of course the numerous “Chinatowns” and Asian districts all over the country), but did these people ritualistically grieve the loss of place? Or were they too busy simply trying to survive to make space for this grief?
In the case of my own family, I don’t think so. My maternal great great grandfather’s father was a Prussian Baron who demanded his 21 year old son marry the 40 something window next door in order to subsume her lands and expand his estate. My great great grandfather refused. He was disowned by his father and kicked out of the family. He left wearing his velvet suit and buckled shoes and nothing else. As he worked his way across Germany to England and then sailed to the U.S., he was known as the poor little rich boy. Did he grieve? Or was his grief buried in order to survive? My maternal great grandfather was an Irish Protestant from Ulster. He left Ireland when he was 18 to escape “The Troubles” and never looked back. He refused to talk about Ireland. Clearly, he repressed his grief. My paternal ancestors all came from Germany and the Netherlands and settled in Michigan. During World War I German was not allowed to be spoken so they gave up their mother tongue. Did they grieve? Instead, I think they attached themselves fully to this new world, homesteading and working in the Michigan salt mines to build a new life. When I meditate on this and use my imagination to step into the perspectives of my ancestors I can feel the unprocessed grief.
The connection to U.S. soil runs deep in our intergenerational DNA. No wonder there is a rural/city divide in this country based on physicalists and virtualists and a strong sense of rugged individualism and independence…it was a survival strategy rooted deeply within us over time and perhaps strengthened by unprocessed grief.
Among many other things our Western European ancestors could have learned from the Indigenous peoples living here was how to engage in ritualistic grief as the native tribes continue to do to this day. I wonder how American politics would look today had there been space for this grief? Is it too late? Can we make space now for the grief of our ancestors?
Thanks Leslie! And what an ancestral story - thanks for sharing that. Made me think how many millions more there are like it in the US. As a European I've always been fascinated that US sporting events they say the pledge of allegiance or play the national anthem - it feels like there needs to be more explicit patriotism to create a social bond in a country so young, and I also wonder what it would be like if all that energy were also given to recognising the past. Traditional Irish music is absolutely full of songs about people leaving to America during the famine - it's presented as this wonderful place free of hunger and the yoke of the church, so I wonder how many immigrants came carrying a fantasy that masked the pain...
Yes, carrying a fantasy that masked the pain of leaving, but then upon arrival being hit with the cold hard reality of Ellis Island processing, followed by what it actually took to survive in the New World. No time or space for grieving the old.
I remember saying the Pledge of Allegiance and listening to the national anthem every morning in elementary school. I was taught to love my country and be grateful for my freedom. From this perspective, I can understand the grief of what to many feels like a loss of freedom and gratitude. And I was taught a winner’s version of history that excluded so much of the real story. From this perspective, I can understand the grief and anger of the far left who believe that institutionalized racism and capitalism has silenced their stories.
As a fellow Yank who has now expatriated to Japan, I've thought--and felt--deeply on this unprocessed grief of my home country, so much so that I feel like in the summer of 2020 when all the statues were being knocked down and I was "locked down" in Japan, I felt almost like I was cosmically assigned to process some of that ancestral grief. It's hard to really put my finger on how I KNOW that's what happened, but I can say it was a period of about eight weeks (June-July 2020) unlike any other in my life in which I felt this deep cry of sadness, the unheard voices of history speaking across the big blue Pacific to me, often bringing me to tears that were NOT mine...but I was in a time and place where I was able to process it so I eventually just accepted that was my "job" and became a servant to it.
That might all sound a bit high falutin', and maybe it is, but it's not meant that way.
Anyway, to bring it back to the present and my actual autobiography, in reference to your paragraph about the Pledge of Allegiance, as a kid growing up in the nuclear-threatened 1980s and being forced into those rituals, I always felt a deep resistance to and resentment toward them. For one thing, i get the absolute heebie jeebies any time I hear human voices speaking lines in unison, but I think it was deeper than that, I think I was recognizing that kids that age are being indoctrinated because none of us had a CHOICE in the matter.
Hell, I remember in JHS we had a literature teacher---Mrs. Bower---who was an odd cookie, and she refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and how the kids thought this was SO scandalous. I probably tacitly agreed with those who were outspoken in their critique of her, but I know I remember also thinking, "Good for her."
Thank you Ali, Sensemaking 101 alumnus here. As a “tradigital” visual artist & designer, my process is relatable combining traditional, analog practices like drawing with digital mediums such as VR into a “third way” only possible through their synthesis.
I’m interested in creating works that conceptually envision the third realm of the collective imagination you point towards and I’m open to potential collaborations exploring this.
Thank you for your many insights, a lot in here. Just a couple of thoughts, here in Australia at least - the 'media' and information sphere is largely dominated by 'minority' groups. i.e. the 'left - woke ism' vs the 'right - or alt-right'. These 2 groups who dominate account for generally only around 25% of the population. The rest of the 75% are nuanced and do not necessarily act or account themselves as predominately one or the other. It depends on the issue at hand. Any real concerns or points of criticism are quickly written off as alt-right or woke when it is absolutely not one or the other. Unity is the right ultimate goal - unity of shared humanity but, and I say a very large but, much is to be worked out in how that plays out before even grief can be brought to bear. Immigration is a huge issue at the moment but to dismiss the concern as only what the alt-right views are is to lose sight of some realities and practicalities in practice. It can be a slippery slope either way. For some further thought - you in your own neighborhood do not leave the front door open to any one and absolutely anybody to enter into your house. Nobody does this. Everything is complex and also fractal.........................................that requires further discussion.
Ali, this was an extremely thought-and-soul provoking piece and I've probably used up much of my thunder by reading many of the very thought-and-soul provoking comments and writing my overly long responses to those.
But I just wanted to make sure I made sure I shared my appreciation for your effort on this in a separate comment and, then, yes, perhaps say (more than) a few things, too (things I may have already said in other comments...forgive me!, lol).
Initially, like some of the other commentators, I found myself a bit put off by your use of the terms "far right" at the start of the article. This was mostly because those labels feel less and less useful and more and more weaponized to describe anyone who questions the mainstream. And then too often, I feel like even well-aware humans like you loosely use the terms when writing about global affairs without addressing just how problematic they are.
However...
I continued reading the piece and found myself shifting. For one thing, as a fellow writer on these topics, I have also used---and love--the technique you employed of flashing back to different parts of your life story to break up the main narrative, but add heart and personality to your article. (Also, I LOVE how you use humor in your photo captions---something I've also been doing for a while---adding some humor into these otherwise heavy posts is essential!)
But more than that, you helped me remember that, of course, there is a "right-wing" response to what's going on, and the votes in Europe, the US and around the world, putting in individuals and parties who are speaking up for nativist, nationalistic perspectives are, for the most part, votes for a regressive kind of social structure, a return to a world that maybe never was. Using the lens of Integral as you did was useful for me because this return to Traditional is, well, a dead-end street from my perspective. (Instead, we gotta follow the Integral "recipe" of finding the true, the good and the beautiful in Traditional and discard the false, the bad and the ugly---but right-wing parties don't suggest that!).
Thinking about it, I suppose because part of my journey over the past decade or so has been to integrate some of that Traditional perspective, I've found myself defending what they are saying, especially when the post-modern Green folks label people who have such views "racists," "deplorables" and all the rest. Part of my defense of such folks is not only do I have more understanding of where they are coming from, but I've made friends with a fair number of Traditionals, and, well, they are, like all of us, complex human beings but I don't boil down their defense of country (and God) as being informed by hatred. Not usually and definitely not mostly.
All that said, I am a guy who was Postmodern Green in my college years in the 1990s and I moved to Japan in 2004, married a Japanese woman and have two teenage, multi-cultural kids. And I've basically NEVER felt any sense of allegiance to these human-created nation-states. In fact, I feel great resistance toward them based on my direct experience of some of their negative manifestations. Thus, I simply CANNOT support any political party that says the alternative to the ridiculous Dr. Evil technocratic globalists is to close borders and put my love back into my country.
What country? Japan? Not even a citizen here? America? Ya mean, the real Evil Empire that has spent the past century spreading war across the globe, be it with weapons or economic policies? No way! One reason I moved to Japan in 2004---and have stayed here---is so I don't have to pay one dime in US taxes to support that regime.
Last---and yes, this is too long for a comment, but your article really does deserve this kind of engagement, IMHO---when at the end of the article, you called for the artists of the world---yup, I'm one of those---to work on broadening our political imagination to creating a Third Way....well, that felt like a...ahem...Call of Duty to me. For at least a decade, I've thought maybe the main reason I rejected my native, individualistic, nationalistic United States and immersed myself in this very collective culture of the Far East was to see if I could be a part of creating a synthesis between valuing the individual and honoring the collective. Your article has helped me remember this "assignment."
Anyway, those are my thoughts and feelings for now, and I'm sticking to them! Thanks for helping bring them out of me. I'll report to duty at 600 pronto...but Hell No, Sir, I won't buzz my hair! LOL.
"You can’t tell people to move with the times if you don’t let them first grieve for what they have lost." That's a "money quote," Ali. You continue to "go boldly," as Captain Kirk would say, because you perspective is the whole of history rather than a sliver on a timeline. I hope that some who enjoy your insights will wander over to my own Substack for a little dim sum: https://awhill.substack.com
"The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost for none that now live remember it."
I no longer believe we can talk about left and right and make any sense at all of what's going on. For me now it is the establishment v everyone else. It is The Machine v The People. The left has been subsumed into that which it once at least nominally was against or at least wanted to keep in line. There are many politically homeless people now being defined as "the far right" and though them falling into the Trump camp frustrates me, I can understand, if you don't have a lot of understanding of how the system works, how there is something there that seems different and new. There is certainly valuable info you will get there that you won't in, say, any of the world's dessicated labour parties, whose flaccid ideas about how to fix things always end up supporting the machine. People are legit frustrated that govts are pouring immigrants into overburdened cities because they're not doing the things immigration requires, like building enough infrastructure. Calling those people "far right" is to fall in line with what the establishment says about anyone who questions it. Left and right definitions are not only dead now, but they're damaging to the efforts of everyday people trying to break free from the industrial machine.
I really hear ya. Our language itself is becoming almost unusable, in large part because of how those in the Establishment are abusing it. Calling anyone with even a skeptical mind about Establishment policies "far right" or even "right" denies the reality that many of us, some of who have long identified as being on the left, are experiencing.
Then, taking terms like misinformation that have some practical application and adding in new terms like mal-information ---true information that is inconvenient to the Establishment---basically destroys any trust in the idea of misinformation. Now, they've added "cheap fake" to "deep fake" and are going to basically blend the two terms together so that we'll doubt anything we see through our media. It's all a real clusterfuck for our sensemaking.
In the end, though, as much as I found this article valuable and worth reading and reflecting on, I think there was some missed opportunity in recognizing just how corrupt and slimy the Establishment has become, and that includes their many mouthpieces in the media. I feel like that has to be a part of the overall consideration here, because while the article is reasonably clear that the technocrats aren't going to offer a solution and that the Establishment and political left lack political imagination, I still feel like it has a hint of suggesting that the institutions themselves can be saved. I'm more and more convinced they can't, and that we're heading into a radically different, decentralized future than the one we've all grown up in.
Heartily agree. It is easy to underestimate how much they're toying with us. It's really disgusting. I was thinking yesterday how the last time I voted Labor here in Australia was in 2007 and at that time I was still thinking in terms of saving our institutions. What a difference 17 years of being fucked in the face makes! Decentralized local economies sounds utopian but it's just sensible to me, really. Humans cannot handle very much power, better to spread it around :) I actually feel more hopeful about the future than ever before now 8 know they're feeding us lots of crap. Funny old life, huh.
As a guy who is moving into a second life (I'm 51) as an astrologer, I'll just say that with the Pluto transit into Aquarius for the next 20 years, that big shift alone tells me that decentralization IS the name of the game. (There are other signs from the heavens, too, that point to this).
The point is, despite so much of our collective experience of the past few decades being very challenging, I do believe it's all been happening for a reason and one of those reasons is to prepare us for this shift.
Thus, like you, I'm more hopeful about the future now than I've been for most of my adult life, though much of that hope is grounded in a growing awareness that the human story is so much richer than we often give it credit for, and the arc of history is definitely NOT something that can be controlled by a few unconscious nincompoops who claim to be our leaders.
A good start to finding a better way forward could be to rise above the polarizing, reductionist, and charged labels of “far right” and “progressive” — and our tendency to use them as convenient baskets for disqualifying by default any views, people or groups we see as unpleasant or disagreeable (typically by associating them with truly horrific acts or disastrous policies cherry-picked to make the case of our choosing). Cognitive distortions and biases abound in this minefield. I have yet to hear anyone define these terms in a way that is constructive, which makes it quite difficult (if not impossible) to frame any solutions atop their shaky ground.
Standing here together at your sun-dappled crossroads, let’s begin to add more nuance and dimensionality to our critical thinking and social debate. Let’s become less “meta” about political labeling, less emotionally influenced by story, and get more real about specific issues, diving beneath the partisan chop at the surface. Let’s start giving more weight to actions than words; let’s focus on solutions to our large-scale coordination challenges, set clear, nonpartisan metrics for proving them out, and continually pivot towards what works — whether or not the findings fit neatly into your or my personal model of the world.
Our future depends upon it.
It's a pleasure to read some of your articles and I appreciate your efforts in pulling in disparate sources, and yet... Like so much I read from the pro-diversity/ multicultural and center left writing trying to put sense into the actions of the right and their winning streak in the public domain.
I identify as a nowhere/anywhere person and I have had to pay quite the price for that in terms of social capital over the years. Always the outsider who was white privileged, but also politically disenfranchised unable to vote, and with opinions that were often dismissed as out of touch with the locals. I was childless for a long time and it was insinuated to me by the political classes where I lived for a long time that I wasn't a real human until I had children and understood the drives of parents to secure privilege for their children.
A benevolent totalitarianism ruled all the countries where I wanted to go and live because of the social privileges handed to every resident. Free health care, social security payments for unemployment and disability and old age. My ancestors were breathless in their graves when they considered what privileges I have attained from their efforts.
The system worked in my favour and mostly still does, though the "good old days" of unquestioned support from the state/technocracy are gone.
I am WEIRD and yet it is the institution's failure to adapt to a changing world that has made it/them unworkable.
The rule of Law has weakened to the point of parody in the US (our imperial masters). The trickle down effect may not work for capitalism, but for justice, the precedents of brazen unlawfulness, is only growing. Everyone thinks they can make their own laws, mafia family style, within the kin networks you describe.
WEIrds don't truck like that. The only thing holding the internationalist in equilibrium is the rule of law and prescription of privilege. Without it we are undone and we will disappear because our networks are geographically dispersed. Political authority is primarily a localised sovereignty underwritten by the occupation of any given street, block, neighbourhood, or area (southside, Northside etc.) Political authority can't really ethically defend anything else, IMO.
It is philosophy of justice that has fallen into disrepair. Social justice warriors don't quite seem to have enough knowledge of the philosophy of justice and little wonder. The Field has been reduced to a sub faculty takeover by law students who endlessly do "mens rea" exercises.
Sovereignty is barely explained or talked about at all. The privileges that we all enjoy in "the West" spring from justice principals of sovereignty, common Law, and Natural Justice (which can be observed in animals and humans alike).
I really need to write an article about this. So many things fall into place regarding our current social maladies.
The green warriors speak of new forms of social justice, mostly from a utopian ideologi which fails to ground itself in the glue that holds the West together. Privilege and its roots in the rule of Law.
Thanks Morten, great thoughts - I'd read that article if you write it. I wouldn't say I'm center-left though, and my position is more complicated than being 'pro' or 'anti' multiculturalism, which I hoped to show in the piece. In any case I think your points around the decline in the philosophy of justice is really interesting - and probably applies to many other domains that hold Western values together.
I'd also like to read that article, Morten!
I want to learn more about the philosophy of justice as I often find myself pondering just how we can have a truly just society that respects individuals as divine, unique Beings AND recognizes the importance of healthy environments for us all to live in.
Personally, even though I live in a very peaceful part of one of the safer countries in the world (Japan), I don't feel I life in a safe, collective environment ever since I was roused out of bed by 13 police officers and whisked off to jail for 45 days. That story is too long to go into, but the experience left me profoundly shaken by just how inhumane these nation-states can be to individuals, even if it may be light-years better than it was decades or centuries ago. Ultimately, living in these massive, impersonal collectives known as nation-states where the state has a monopoly on violence...well...that doesn't feel like a TRULY just system for individuals to thrive in.
Anyway, yeah, man, go ahead and write that article! I'd read it! I really DO need to learn more about all of this.
Another wonderfully astute piece!
One of the most attractive (and addictive) aspects of WEIRDness is freedom from the social constraints that come with kinship ties. It’s not easy to give up the freedoms that come with ‘independence’, but that independence is illusory. As a “virtual”, I am utterly dependent on ‘physicals’ with whom I have no conscious relationship. We WEIRDo’s are going to have to do our own grieving of at least some of those freedoms before we can lean into what interdependence and reciprocity might look like going forward.
Thanks Cesca :) - great points - I wonder if that's why hippy communes and other alternative 'non WEIRD' attempts at community have failed in the West so often... skipping a step and trying to have the best of collectivism and the best of individuality without going through a ritual to transition to something new.
Really appreciate the depth of looking and investigating in this beautiful piece. Thank you very much for that. At the same time, i think that a key point regarding immigration was possibly missed, which is that immigration doesn't just happen by itself, but is deliberately caused and generated by the crimes, abuse, exploitation and atrocities of the capitalist rulilng class in the non-western world, who literally use it as a weapon against the 99%, against both working class non-westerners and working class westerners.
And as the ruling class always do with every single issue, they use this issue too to pit the 99% against each other.
The Big Money capitalists profit from their generated mass immigration in two significant ways - one is that it provides them with cheap labour force which is easey to exploit as new immigrants are willing to work for little and are usually not unionized (plus it forces the local workers to accept lower pay and to avoid strikes, becasue the capitalists have an army of immigrants ready to call on to break the strike and replace striking or disobedient or rebelliois workers or those who demand higher pay. It's a massive win from tne ruling class perspective).
And the second way that the capitalists use mass immigration is by fomenting discord and telling the local (and largely misinformed) working class that's it's those evil marxists communist leftists who are responsible for the immigration and for the immigrant competition for their jobs (because apparently the leftists hate the working class, according to this line of propaganda) and so you need to vote for the right in order to save yourself and your family from the diabolical plans of the leftists who wish to hurt you through immigration.. It is absolutely not a problem for Big Money if the working class votes for the far right, becasue the far right is mostly focused on identity politics and doesn't challenge in any serious fundamental way the rule of Big Money capitalists (all historical examples show that Big Money capitalists and the far right always cooperate. In many cases they are one and the same).
So not only do the ruling class capitaliats massively profit financially from immigration, but they also get to score massive political wins through it (by cynically pretending to be tbe ones who will protect "the people" from those evil scary immigrants who are coming to take your jobs and your women, the very immigrants that the Big Money capitalists themselves brought in and use as a weapon agaimst the working class..
So immigration is essentially the gift that keeps on giving for the ruling class - thry both profit financially off of it, AND they get to politocally shift the population to the right.. What more could they possibly ask for?!)
All the details regarding the above are in these two thorough and fully-referenced essays https://johnspritzler.substack.com/p/illegal-immigration-to-the-us-myth
And here
https://johnspritzler.substack.com/p/illegal-immigration-and-revolution
I think this might a blind spot in your otherwise fascinating essay.
Second thing I'd like to say is that i think your point (which was made in just one quick sentence, as if it is a given) needs to be further explained and explored. The point where you said something along the lines of 'there is no going back from the multicultural world and the change in the composition of european societies'. And therefore we need rituals to grieve (and bury) the european societies that were, so that we move with less friction into the new multicultural less-white reality in europe..
Without going in greater depth and explanation into why it should be so, then this statement has the sound of the authoritarian insensitivity of the ruling class, who claim 'this is how it's going to be becasue i said so'. Yes, you are less insensitive than the ruling class becasue you add the need for grieving and ritual in order to make the transition into a new european society more smooth and less traumatic, but you don't seem to tackle the question of why the transition must happen in the first place (transition which seems to be largely imposed by the ruling class, as shown in the links above). And tackle this question we must, becasue this is precisely what gives fuel to the far right...
I'm quite sure that this sort of statement ( we're not going back, but here are grieving rituals to make this transition less traumatic and more smooth) is not going to be very convincing for the vast majority of the local working class, who will rightly ask you 'why?' 'Why do you say that there is no undoing of what the ruling class imposed on us?'
I personally don't support this stance and don't want to go to a pre-multicultural world, but nonrtheless i think you'd have to come up with a better reasoning than just saying 'there's no going back and that's that' if you want to stop the drift towards the destructive poison of the far right.
Not only is this statement not going to convince anyone but i'm quite sure that it is going to alienate large portions of the working class.
Thanks for this - I'll look into those two essays. And to your other point - yes that sentence probably could have used further context. What I mean is that practically the solution to 'undoing' multiculturalism would be something fairly horrific - mass deportation (based on what - genetics?) or creating a two-tiered society where some people have privileges that others don't, which would go against classical liberal values, which are the very thing many feel are being undermined by multiculturalism in the first place. There's also no going back because European culture is already influenced by other cultures at a fairly deep level - it would be like trying to remove salt from water.
These are my thoughts too.
Powerful possibilities for grref and hope, a new path. May we find those rituals and the new way that honors the past and celebrates change.
Amen :)
Wow, thanks for this awesome piece. You articulated so many things I struggled to put into words. Also I loved how you sank into different ages and scenarios.
Closing my eyes… I’m 27 and I just feel that we will make the shift happen. My whole body just radiates this knowledge know. True fuel for the soul.
Made me remember what Michael Ende said in “Die Unendliche Geschichte”. He’s looking forward to the day when we finally see our collective struggle in every fable and fantasy and reality become one.
Ali, I am grateful to you for the time and research you put into this thoughtful article. I plan to read it a second time as well as the pieces you linked to because with elections on the horizon, this is such a timely and important topic.
Being a U.S. citizen, what came up for me was the notion of ancestral and intergenerational grief. Unlike Europe, the U.S. is a young country made up almost entirely of immigrants, some who came by royal decree, but many who left their homelands to escape persecution, famine, or simply to build a better life. Did these immigrants fully process the grief of having to leave their homelands, having to abandon their roots and connections to place, even if they left purely by choice? I know they formed enclaves and neighborhoods based on shared culture and heritage (examples include the Irish of South Boston and Hell’s Kitchen in New York, Little Italy in New York, the German town of Frankenmouth in Michigan, the Swedish towns in Minnesota and North Dakota, the French cities in Louisiana due to the Louisiana purchase by the French, and of course the numerous “Chinatowns” and Asian districts all over the country), but did these people ritualistically grieve the loss of place? Or were they too busy simply trying to survive to make space for this grief?
In the case of my own family, I don’t think so. My maternal great great grandfather’s father was a Prussian Baron who demanded his 21 year old son marry the 40 something window next door in order to subsume her lands and expand his estate. My great great grandfather refused. He was disowned by his father and kicked out of the family. He left wearing his velvet suit and buckled shoes and nothing else. As he worked his way across Germany to England and then sailed to the U.S., he was known as the poor little rich boy. Did he grieve? Or was his grief buried in order to survive? My maternal great grandfather was an Irish Protestant from Ulster. He left Ireland when he was 18 to escape “The Troubles” and never looked back. He refused to talk about Ireland. Clearly, he repressed his grief. My paternal ancestors all came from Germany and the Netherlands and settled in Michigan. During World War I German was not allowed to be spoken so they gave up their mother tongue. Did they grieve? Instead, I think they attached themselves fully to this new world, homesteading and working in the Michigan salt mines to build a new life. When I meditate on this and use my imagination to step into the perspectives of my ancestors I can feel the unprocessed grief.
The connection to U.S. soil runs deep in our intergenerational DNA. No wonder there is a rural/city divide in this country based on physicalists and virtualists and a strong sense of rugged individualism and independence…it was a survival strategy rooted deeply within us over time and perhaps strengthened by unprocessed grief.
Among many other things our Western European ancestors could have learned from the Indigenous peoples living here was how to engage in ritualistic grief as the native tribes continue to do to this day. I wonder how American politics would look today had there been space for this grief? Is it too late? Can we make space now for the grief of our ancestors?
Thanks Leslie! And what an ancestral story - thanks for sharing that. Made me think how many millions more there are like it in the US. As a European I've always been fascinated that US sporting events they say the pledge of allegiance or play the national anthem - it feels like there needs to be more explicit patriotism to create a social bond in a country so young, and I also wonder what it would be like if all that energy were also given to recognising the past. Traditional Irish music is absolutely full of songs about people leaving to America during the famine - it's presented as this wonderful place free of hunger and the yoke of the church, so I wonder how many immigrants came carrying a fantasy that masked the pain...
Yes, carrying a fantasy that masked the pain of leaving, but then upon arrival being hit with the cold hard reality of Ellis Island processing, followed by what it actually took to survive in the New World. No time or space for grieving the old.
I remember saying the Pledge of Allegiance and listening to the national anthem every morning in elementary school. I was taught to love my country and be grateful for my freedom. From this perspective, I can understand the grief of what to many feels like a loss of freedom and gratitude. And I was taught a winner’s version of history that excluded so much of the real story. From this perspective, I can understand the grief and anger of the far left who believe that institutionalized racism and capitalism has silenced their stories.
Great comments, Leslie!
As a fellow Yank who has now expatriated to Japan, I've thought--and felt--deeply on this unprocessed grief of my home country, so much so that I feel like in the summer of 2020 when all the statues were being knocked down and I was "locked down" in Japan, I felt almost like I was cosmically assigned to process some of that ancestral grief. It's hard to really put my finger on how I KNOW that's what happened, but I can say it was a period of about eight weeks (June-July 2020) unlike any other in my life in which I felt this deep cry of sadness, the unheard voices of history speaking across the big blue Pacific to me, often bringing me to tears that were NOT mine...but I was in a time and place where I was able to process it so I eventually just accepted that was my "job" and became a servant to it.
That might all sound a bit high falutin', and maybe it is, but it's not meant that way.
Anyway, to bring it back to the present and my actual autobiography, in reference to your paragraph about the Pledge of Allegiance, as a kid growing up in the nuclear-threatened 1980s and being forced into those rituals, I always felt a deep resistance to and resentment toward them. For one thing, i get the absolute heebie jeebies any time I hear human voices speaking lines in unison, but I think it was deeper than that, I think I was recognizing that kids that age are being indoctrinated because none of us had a CHOICE in the matter.
Hell, I remember in JHS we had a literature teacher---Mrs. Bower---who was an odd cookie, and she refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and how the kids thought this was SO scandalous. I probably tacitly agreed with those who were outspoken in their critique of her, but I know I remember also thinking, "Good for her."
Anyway, I really did love your comment!
Excellent article weaving together diverse elements. Thanks for highlighting the need for ritual, and grief.
thoughtful wellreasoned this - i can follow it all the way - something could emerge that is actually solutions
Thank you Ali, Sensemaking 101 alumnus here. As a “tradigital” visual artist & designer, my process is relatable combining traditional, analog practices like drawing with digital mediums such as VR into a “third way” only possible through their synthesis.
I’m interested in creating works that conceptually envision the third realm of the collective imagination you point towards and I’m open to potential collaborations exploring this.
https://tophersipes.com
Awesome - same impetus, different media :)
Thank you for your many insights, a lot in here. Just a couple of thoughts, here in Australia at least - the 'media' and information sphere is largely dominated by 'minority' groups. i.e. the 'left - woke ism' vs the 'right - or alt-right'. These 2 groups who dominate account for generally only around 25% of the population. The rest of the 75% are nuanced and do not necessarily act or account themselves as predominately one or the other. It depends on the issue at hand. Any real concerns or points of criticism are quickly written off as alt-right or woke when it is absolutely not one or the other. Unity is the right ultimate goal - unity of shared humanity but, and I say a very large but, much is to be worked out in how that plays out before even grief can be brought to bear. Immigration is a huge issue at the moment but to dismiss the concern as only what the alt-right views are is to lose sight of some realities and practicalities in practice. It can be a slippery slope either way. For some further thought - you in your own neighborhood do not leave the front door open to any one and absolutely anybody to enter into your house. Nobody does this. Everything is complex and also fractal.........................................that requires further discussion.
Ali, this was an extremely thought-and-soul provoking piece and I've probably used up much of my thunder by reading many of the very thought-and-soul provoking comments and writing my overly long responses to those.
But I just wanted to make sure I made sure I shared my appreciation for your effort on this in a separate comment and, then, yes, perhaps say (more than) a few things, too (things I may have already said in other comments...forgive me!, lol).
Initially, like some of the other commentators, I found myself a bit put off by your use of the terms "far right" at the start of the article. This was mostly because those labels feel less and less useful and more and more weaponized to describe anyone who questions the mainstream. And then too often, I feel like even well-aware humans like you loosely use the terms when writing about global affairs without addressing just how problematic they are.
However...
I continued reading the piece and found myself shifting. For one thing, as a fellow writer on these topics, I have also used---and love--the technique you employed of flashing back to different parts of your life story to break up the main narrative, but add heart and personality to your article. (Also, I LOVE how you use humor in your photo captions---something I've also been doing for a while---adding some humor into these otherwise heavy posts is essential!)
But more than that, you helped me remember that, of course, there is a "right-wing" response to what's going on, and the votes in Europe, the US and around the world, putting in individuals and parties who are speaking up for nativist, nationalistic perspectives are, for the most part, votes for a regressive kind of social structure, a return to a world that maybe never was. Using the lens of Integral as you did was useful for me because this return to Traditional is, well, a dead-end street from my perspective. (Instead, we gotta follow the Integral "recipe" of finding the true, the good and the beautiful in Traditional and discard the false, the bad and the ugly---but right-wing parties don't suggest that!).
Thinking about it, I suppose because part of my journey over the past decade or so has been to integrate some of that Traditional perspective, I've found myself defending what they are saying, especially when the post-modern Green folks label people who have such views "racists," "deplorables" and all the rest. Part of my defense of such folks is not only do I have more understanding of where they are coming from, but I've made friends with a fair number of Traditionals, and, well, they are, like all of us, complex human beings but I don't boil down their defense of country (and God) as being informed by hatred. Not usually and definitely not mostly.
All that said, I am a guy who was Postmodern Green in my college years in the 1990s and I moved to Japan in 2004, married a Japanese woman and have two teenage, multi-cultural kids. And I've basically NEVER felt any sense of allegiance to these human-created nation-states. In fact, I feel great resistance toward them based on my direct experience of some of their negative manifestations. Thus, I simply CANNOT support any political party that says the alternative to the ridiculous Dr. Evil technocratic globalists is to close borders and put my love back into my country.
What country? Japan? Not even a citizen here? America? Ya mean, the real Evil Empire that has spent the past century spreading war across the globe, be it with weapons or economic policies? No way! One reason I moved to Japan in 2004---and have stayed here---is so I don't have to pay one dime in US taxes to support that regime.
Last---and yes, this is too long for a comment, but your article really does deserve this kind of engagement, IMHO---when at the end of the article, you called for the artists of the world---yup, I'm one of those---to work on broadening our political imagination to creating a Third Way....well, that felt like a...ahem...Call of Duty to me. For at least a decade, I've thought maybe the main reason I rejected my native, individualistic, nationalistic United States and immersed myself in this very collective culture of the Far East was to see if I could be a part of creating a synthesis between valuing the individual and honoring the collective. Your article has helped me remember this "assignment."
Anyway, those are my thoughts and feelings for now, and I'm sticking to them! Thanks for helping bring them out of me. I'll report to duty at 600 pronto...but Hell No, Sir, I won't buzz my hair! LOL.
"You can’t tell people to move with the times if you don’t let them first grieve for what they have lost." That's a "money quote," Ali. You continue to "go boldly," as Captain Kirk would say, because you perspective is the whole of history rather than a sliver on a timeline. I hope that some who enjoy your insights will wander over to my own Substack for a little dim sum: https://awhill.substack.com
Thanks Andy! And yes I highly recommend your Substack for anyone who wants deep thinking as well as metaphorical dumplings ;)
"The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost for none that now live remember it."
-Galadriel.
Wonderful piece. Needed in post election gloominess. Will read more!