“For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue,” Lewis writes. “For magic and [today’s] applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious…”
It reminded me of a section from Why Not Try Freedom by Leonard Read
Causes of Authoritarianism,
FAILURE: Inadequate Development of Self
Every individual is faced with the problem of whom to improve,
himself or others. The aim, it seems to me, should be to
effect one's own unfolding, the upgrading of one's own consciousness
- in short, self-perfection. Those who don't even try or, when
trying, find self-perfection too difficult, usually seek to expend
their energy on others. Their energy has to find some target.
Those who succeed in directing their energy inward - particularly
if they be blessed with great energy, like Goethe, for instance
- become moral leaders. Those who fail to direct their
energy inwardly and let it manifest itself externally - particularly
if they be of great energy, like Napoleon, for instance - become
immoral leaders. Those who refuse to rule themselves are usually
bent on ruling others. Those who can rule themselves usually
Your characterization of what you call "liberalism" or the "liberal" tradition is too generic; you name no names, other than Locke, and even there you go wrong: the first Treatise isn't an argument against patriarchy, it's an argument against Robert Filmer's analogy of political authority to parental (specifically fatherly) authority. Locke's argument against Filmer's analogy is absolutely not an argument against parental (or patriarchal) authority as such. And to imply that Locke was in any way, by some imagined extension, opposed to the authority of "reality" is also pretty misguided. Berkeley attacked him, after all, precisely for excessive attachment to reality and not taking his empiricism to the extreme idealism Berkeley arrived at. True, Locke was skeptical of science (though in later editions of the Essay he does allow that his friend Newton was onto something), and that skepticism does indeed appear to have been motivated by a kind of suspicion of authority. But a similar dialectic between exactly this sort of empiricist skepticism of authority (especially of ancient authorities such as Aristotle) and the creative impulse of coming up with theories to account for the evidence of "reality" plainly visible or measurable characterizes the whole modern development of science from Galileo through Huygens through Newton and beyond; even Einstein said he found the skeptical doubts of Ernst Mach toward the scientific tradition highly stimulating to his own thought process.
There is undoubtedly one thread in the whole complex and polyphonic history of liberalism that could be interpreted in a way that you want to attribute to the whole tradition, but that thread is a quite recent excrescence (and I think mostly an American one -- "liberalism" still means something quite different in America from what goes by that name in Europe, even including Britain). In pre-20th century liberalism, e.g. notably in Mill, but then even in Hayek, and certainly in both Nozick and Rawls, the responsibility component remains high-profile, and especially the responsibility to an agreed reality plays a central role.
So yes, the trends you observe are there, they are dire and threaten all civilization, and need to be understood. But I see the liberal tradition (apart from certain recent perverse outgrowths) as largely opposed to them.
In the USA we have severe decline: extreme levels of violence; incompetence in public school teaching; out of control homelessness; both parties utterly corrupted by $$$ in D.C.; destruction of families; a procedural type of democracy that just doesn’t work. Consider, e.g., basic, consistent and effective law enforcement. Whereas in civilized societies it is generally safe to go outside for a walk.
These traditions of political thought are not finely individuated enough for this distinction to apply here with any precision. The terms are vague. There have been social-democratic (even socialist) influences within the liberal tradition going back even to Adam Smith, but certainly to Mill, and Hobhouse, who thought of himself as a liberal, looks like an outright social democrat to me. Many current American "liberals" would be called social democrats in Europe. Likewise there are liberal currents within social democracy. So at these borderline cases they are hard to distinguish sharply. That said, I'd have felt more comfortable if Crawford had blamed the totalitarian tendencies he discerns on socialism and social democracy rather than liberalism; that seems historically more accurate.
(You can of course set up your own sort-of clear criteria, not weighed down by these historical usages, e.g. those who care more about equality than freedom are social democrats while those who care more about freedom are liberals -- but there again it gets ambiguous when you get into details. In practice, equality of opportunity is actually much harder to distinguish from equality of outcomes than meets the eye.)
This is really good but I don't think it helps your argument to sound one-sided. It's true that "social justice warriors" are one slice of the loss of reality. But this attitude has affected conservatism as well.
We see this in all kinds of ways--whether it be the idea that everyone is a Marxist now, or that Hillary Clinton was ingesting the blood of babies in the basement of a pizza shop, or in the belief that people are getting abortions even after babies are born.
My point is not to target conservatives but rather to expand on the ideas you lay out here. Your piece here takes on too much of a partisan lens and it loses some of its potency as a result.
This loss of reality, becoming unmoored from some grounding in fact based living, is spread out across our culture even from those that reject classic liberalism. In fact parts of the New Right think we went wrong in the Enlightenment and yet have also become detached from reality outside the self. Visions of a Christian nationalism overthrowing the ancien regime, of political enemies led to the gallows, of streets being entirely unsafe to walk infest the illiberal right.
The rejection of reality is something to fight back against but to understand it one has to actually think outside politics. It's not uncommon historically for humans to have little grasp on truth or fact or logic. Why were seeing a return of it now even amongst those who claim that society has lost its way--that's the question.
Hi Matthew, I read all your books except one (The World beyond...) and I have been to the UnHerd Club when you visited London. But I do like to a nice ride in my car as well; could I enjoy both at the same time? Please, be so kind to make your entries via your Substack Archedelia available via audio. I would almost say 'Why We Drive' is because we can listen to podcasts and don't feel guilty about the time spent.
Wonderful discussion. I've been a fan since Shop Class as Soul Craft, and I'm so glad to see you on Substack now. FYI I've written about our "accelerating reality crisis" as well. In my view, the coming of postindustrial society was the key inflection point: we've gone from a society organized around solving problems in the physical world (keeping physical scarcity at bay, farming and manufacturing) to one organized around solving problems in our own heads (coordinating with other people and figuring out what kind of person to be). No longer anchored in the objectivity of the physical world, it's easy to drift off and get lost. https://brinklindsey.substack.com/p/the-retreat-from-reality
Thank you for that last paragraph, which I found very moving. I was interested to see Tolkien's name come up, and I wonder if you might find this relevant (and forgive the self-promotion). In short I'm not sure it's "liberalism" that is to blame. Liberalism was always founded on an understanding that freedom has consequences and will be constrained by reality. The problem is really the combination of liberalism with a kind of pastoral or managerial vision of power, by which the state exists to make everything better and ameliorate every risk. These are really the consequences of secularism, I think, whereby the state has to derive its legitimacy from 'being benevolent' rather than divine right. https://newsfromuncibal.substack.com/p/on-classical-liberals-and-conservatives
The accusation that needs to be addressed is liberalism's various tendencies for creating the conditions for arrested development. This phenomenon is obvious, and unless it is not just acknowledged but countered the Enlightenment project is doomed. It's that simple.
Dal mio diario: (Sera) „C'è una via d'uscita? Mi sono avvicinato all'intuizione che fonda il pensiero di Lewis. Esiste un ordine creato, di cui non siamo gli autori. E, cosa fondamentale, quest'ordine è buono. Perché il suo autore è buono e lo ha creato per amore. Se si ha la fortuna di essere colpiti da questa esperienza (che viene regalata a sorpresa), è come bere un acido. Sotto la sua influenza, si ha la sensazione di aver ottenuto l'accesso percettivo allo strato più fondamentale, che è sempre stato lì in attesa di essere notato“ (Matthew Crawford, The reality crisis, 11.4.23). L’ordine creato di cui parla Crawford corrisponde a quella dimensione del dono dell’essere come amore gratuito di cui parlo spesso e di cui ho parlato questa mattina. Una via uscita da che cosa? Dal liberalismo, dalla modernità che ha certamente una sua legittimità, ma che deve essere anche criticata radicalmente. L’essere dell’uomo non è libero perché può scegliere tra diversi prodotti (per esempio tipi di musiche, che i giovani sentono oggi senza soluzione di continuità), ma perché può essere obbediente al „senso necessario dell’essere“, che non è l’oggetto del sé liberato del liberalismo, ma dell’essere obbediente, dell’uomo che riconosce maestri e padri, una tradizione, una realtà fuori di sé e che nell’attrito con essa, nel conflitto, impara cosa significhi il reale. Oggi abbiamo a che fare con un infantilismo infinito che pretende di avere sempre ragione. Insomma gente che non è capace a vivere fuori dal loro contesto „famigliare“ e che pretende di spiegarti cosa sia il reale e cosa sia moralmente adeguato. Certo nella „vita comune“ ci sono pur sempre momenti di bontà, perché grazie a Dio non possiamo ridurre la realtà alle nostre rappresentazioni (idee), ma stare con dei quindicenni, oltre alla gioia della loro giovane vita, fa anche vedere la brutalità di quella tirannia di cui parla Crawford. Per essi il reale è noia, e non si accorgono che proprio la noia è ciò che potrebbe salvarli dal non senso della loro vita. Per non morire di noia, muoiono di manipolazione… (traduzione in inglese con deepL.
Pure Crawford, really great! It seems to me the valorization of choice has gutted the mechanism by which humans make meaning out of obstructing reality.
What's disturbing is in the past we usually had people to speak up and remind us of what's real but across the board there's very few of those people. And every time we think we find one they say or do something insane.
What a marvellous enlightening interview.
I like how you highlighted,
“For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue,” Lewis writes. “For magic and [today’s] applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious…”
It reminded me of a section from Why Not Try Freedom by Leonard Read
Causes of Authoritarianism,
FAILURE: Inadequate Development of Self
Every individual is faced with the problem of whom to improve,
himself or others. The aim, it seems to me, should be to
effect one's own unfolding, the upgrading of one's own consciousness
- in short, self-perfection. Those who don't even try or, when
trying, find self-perfection too difficult, usually seek to expend
their energy on others. Their energy has to find some target.
Those who succeed in directing their energy inward - particularly
if they be blessed with great energy, like Goethe, for instance
- become moral leaders. Those who fail to direct their
energy inwardly and let it manifest itself externally - particularly
if they be of great energy, like Napoleon, for instance - become
immoral leaders. Those who refuse to rule themselves are usually
bent on ruling others. Those who can rule themselves usually
have no interest in ruling others.
Your characterization of what you call "liberalism" or the "liberal" tradition is too generic; you name no names, other than Locke, and even there you go wrong: the first Treatise isn't an argument against patriarchy, it's an argument against Robert Filmer's analogy of political authority to parental (specifically fatherly) authority. Locke's argument against Filmer's analogy is absolutely not an argument against parental (or patriarchal) authority as such. And to imply that Locke was in any way, by some imagined extension, opposed to the authority of "reality" is also pretty misguided. Berkeley attacked him, after all, precisely for excessive attachment to reality and not taking his empiricism to the extreme idealism Berkeley arrived at. True, Locke was skeptical of science (though in later editions of the Essay he does allow that his friend Newton was onto something), and that skepticism does indeed appear to have been motivated by a kind of suspicion of authority. But a similar dialectic between exactly this sort of empiricist skepticism of authority (especially of ancient authorities such as Aristotle) and the creative impulse of coming up with theories to account for the evidence of "reality" plainly visible or measurable characterizes the whole modern development of science from Galileo through Huygens through Newton and beyond; even Einstein said he found the skeptical doubts of Ernst Mach toward the scientific tradition highly stimulating to his own thought process.
There is undoubtedly one thread in the whole complex and polyphonic history of liberalism that could be interpreted in a way that you want to attribute to the whole tradition, but that thread is a quite recent excrescence (and I think mostly an American one -- "liberalism" still means something quite different in America from what goes by that name in Europe, even including Britain). In pre-20th century liberalism, e.g. notably in Mill, but then even in Hayek, and certainly in both Nozick and Rawls, the responsibility component remains high-profile, and especially the responsibility to an agreed reality plays a central role.
So yes, the trends you observe are there, they are dire and threaten all civilization, and need to be understood. But I see the liberal tradition (apart from certain recent perverse outgrowths) as largely opposed to them.
In the USA we have severe decline: extreme levels of violence; incompetence in public school teaching; out of control homelessness; both parties utterly corrupted by $$$ in D.C.; destruction of families; a procedural type of democracy that just doesn’t work. Consider, e.g., basic, consistent and effective law enforcement. Whereas in civilized societies it is generally safe to go outside for a walk.
The question is whether the "certain recent perverse outgrowths" are, in fact and as you say, outgrowths, not bizarre, unrelated aberrations.
These traditions of political thought are not finely individuated enough for this distinction to apply here with any precision. The terms are vague. There have been social-democratic (even socialist) influences within the liberal tradition going back even to Adam Smith, but certainly to Mill, and Hobhouse, who thought of himself as a liberal, looks like an outright social democrat to me. Many current American "liberals" would be called social democrats in Europe. Likewise there are liberal currents within social democracy. So at these borderline cases they are hard to distinguish sharply. That said, I'd have felt more comfortable if Crawford had blamed the totalitarian tendencies he discerns on socialism and social democracy rather than liberalism; that seems historically more accurate.
(You can of course set up your own sort-of clear criteria, not weighed down by these historical usages, e.g. those who care more about equality than freedom are social democrats while those who care more about freedom are liberals -- but there again it gets ambiguous when you get into details. In practice, equality of opportunity is actually much harder to distinguish from equality of outcomes than meets the eye.)
What do you think of this?
https://haydnharries.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/135441833?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts
https://haydnharries.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/135569827?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts
This is really good but I don't think it helps your argument to sound one-sided. It's true that "social justice warriors" are one slice of the loss of reality. But this attitude has affected conservatism as well.
We see this in all kinds of ways--whether it be the idea that everyone is a Marxist now, or that Hillary Clinton was ingesting the blood of babies in the basement of a pizza shop, or in the belief that people are getting abortions even after babies are born.
My point is not to target conservatives but rather to expand on the ideas you lay out here. Your piece here takes on too much of a partisan lens and it loses some of its potency as a result.
This loss of reality, becoming unmoored from some grounding in fact based living, is spread out across our culture even from those that reject classic liberalism. In fact parts of the New Right think we went wrong in the Enlightenment and yet have also become detached from reality outside the self. Visions of a Christian nationalism overthrowing the ancien regime, of political enemies led to the gallows, of streets being entirely unsafe to walk infest the illiberal right.
The rejection of reality is something to fight back against but to understand it one has to actually think outside politics. It's not uncommon historically for humans to have little grasp on truth or fact or logic. Why were seeing a return of it now even amongst those who claim that society has lost its way--that's the question.
Hi Matthew, I read all your books except one (The World beyond...) and I have been to the UnHerd Club when you visited London. But I do like to a nice ride in my car as well; could I enjoy both at the same time? Please, be so kind to make your entries via your Substack Archedelia available via audio. I would almost say 'Why We Drive' is because we can listen to podcasts and don't feel guilty about the time spent.
Wonderful discussion. I've been a fan since Shop Class as Soul Craft, and I'm so glad to see you on Substack now. FYI I've written about our "accelerating reality crisis" as well. In my view, the coming of postindustrial society was the key inflection point: we've gone from a society organized around solving problems in the physical world (keeping physical scarcity at bay, farming and manufacturing) to one organized around solving problems in our own heads (coordinating with other people and figuring out what kind of person to be). No longer anchored in the objectivity of the physical world, it's easy to drift off and get lost. https://brinklindsey.substack.com/p/the-retreat-from-reality
Thank you for that last paragraph, which I found very moving. I was interested to see Tolkien's name come up, and I wonder if you might find this relevant (and forgive the self-promotion). In short I'm not sure it's "liberalism" that is to blame. Liberalism was always founded on an understanding that freedom has consequences and will be constrained by reality. The problem is really the combination of liberalism with a kind of pastoral or managerial vision of power, by which the state exists to make everything better and ameliorate every risk. These are really the consequences of secularism, I think, whereby the state has to derive its legitimacy from 'being benevolent' rather than divine right. https://newsfromuncibal.substack.com/p/on-classical-liberals-and-conservatives
The accusation that needs to be addressed is liberalism's various tendencies for creating the conditions for arrested development. This phenomenon is obvious, and unless it is not just acknowledged but countered the Enlightenment project is doomed. It's that simple.
Dal mio diario: (Sera) „C'è una via d'uscita? Mi sono avvicinato all'intuizione che fonda il pensiero di Lewis. Esiste un ordine creato, di cui non siamo gli autori. E, cosa fondamentale, quest'ordine è buono. Perché il suo autore è buono e lo ha creato per amore. Se si ha la fortuna di essere colpiti da questa esperienza (che viene regalata a sorpresa), è come bere un acido. Sotto la sua influenza, si ha la sensazione di aver ottenuto l'accesso percettivo allo strato più fondamentale, che è sempre stato lì in attesa di essere notato“ (Matthew Crawford, The reality crisis, 11.4.23). L’ordine creato di cui parla Crawford corrisponde a quella dimensione del dono dell’essere come amore gratuito di cui parlo spesso e di cui ho parlato questa mattina. Una via uscita da che cosa? Dal liberalismo, dalla modernità che ha certamente una sua legittimità, ma che deve essere anche criticata radicalmente. L’essere dell’uomo non è libero perché può scegliere tra diversi prodotti (per esempio tipi di musiche, che i giovani sentono oggi senza soluzione di continuità), ma perché può essere obbediente al „senso necessario dell’essere“, che non è l’oggetto del sé liberato del liberalismo, ma dell’essere obbediente, dell’uomo che riconosce maestri e padri, una tradizione, una realtà fuori di sé e che nell’attrito con essa, nel conflitto, impara cosa significhi il reale. Oggi abbiamo a che fare con un infantilismo infinito che pretende di avere sempre ragione. Insomma gente che non è capace a vivere fuori dal loro contesto „famigliare“ e che pretende di spiegarti cosa sia il reale e cosa sia moralmente adeguato. Certo nella „vita comune“ ci sono pur sempre momenti di bontà, perché grazie a Dio non possiamo ridurre la realtà alle nostre rappresentazioni (idee), ma stare con dei quindicenni, oltre alla gioia della loro giovane vita, fa anche vedere la brutalità di quella tirannia di cui parla Crawford. Per essi il reale è noia, e non si accorgono che proprio la noia è ciò che potrebbe salvarli dal non senso della loro vita. Per non morire di noia, muoiono di manipolazione… (traduzione in inglese con deepL.
Brilliant, thank you!
Pure Crawford, really great! It seems to me the valorization of choice has gutted the mechanism by which humans make meaning out of obstructing reality.
What's disturbing is in the past we usually had people to speak up and remind us of what's real but across the board there's very few of those people. And every time we think we find one they say or do something insane.