Curtis Yarvin and political systems
Curtis Yarvin is an American blogger whose work I have been following for a while now. I am not sure any of my readers would be familiar with him the best I can hope for is that they may have seen his name come up among their based friends, well I am not even sure about that. Anyway, for those who haven’t heard of him, he is the father of the alt-right movement that has been stemming on the internet since the emerge of liberal nihilism let’s say. Ishan don’t you identify as a classical liberal yourself? Identify I mean that is just one of those words which are just so SJW but yes I do identify as a classical liberal. Though I am also someone who likes to explore ideas from both sides of the aisle however radical they may be and in the case of Yarvin it is pretty radical I must say.
Curtis Yarvin proclaims to share ideas with the Italian school of political science, you know the school of philosophers like Machiavelli, among others.
In this essay, I wish to explore Yarvin’s thoughts on the different political systems and see how if at all aspects can be applied to make sense of the times we live in.
Yarvin recently gave an interview to an online magazine- IM 1776, considering the brevity of the interview the host was able to pack some really poignant questions which I haven’t seen Yarvin answer otherwise. The first of such questions was on Ernst Jünger and a concept Jünger discusses in his book Eumeswil. This pertinent question was on a distinction between an anarchist and an “anarch”,
Junger distinguishes between the “anarch”, who remains aloof from power and strives to retain his mental independence from it, and the “anarchist”, who acts out his resistance to power, usually because of uncontrolled desire for power.
Having made the distinction, at least the manner in which Jünger saw it, in the interview Yarvin points forth an example that I think will help in consolidating the concept,
But while the anarch always complies, he never submits. Being ordered to wear a turban cannot in any way make him a Sikh; not only that, it cannot in any way make him an anti-Sikh. Power owns his body, but has no purchase at all on his soul
This is something I find remnants of in the writings of Mahatma Gandhi. I have been reading anything and everything on Gandhi or by Gandhi of recently. And the last book I read was The Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi, it is obvious how much of an impact it has had on his ideas. Something I’ve been able to take away from my reading of the Gita is the concept of non-attachment, for all the verses I’ve read and tried to make sense of as much as I can that is, non-attachment is something I see in virtually all the verses.
I find semblance in Krishna’s non-attachment philosophy and the approach taken by Jünger when he talks about his concept of an anarch. Another such anarch that comes to mind is Tolstoy, another intellectual who had a massive impact on Gandhi’s life. Tolstoy’s core emphasis lies on the battle one faces to be one that is internal. This obviously disbands violence and takes the approach of ahimsa. If one is to really contemplate the philosophy of ahimsa it is actually quite Machiavellian in some sense as pointed out by Michael Malice in his conversation with Lex Fridman. Michael states that with a non-violent approach one is able to lay a foundation that precedes them of having moral superiority over the other. Meaning that even if one takes a blow from an individual when they go to bed at night they know that they haven’t done anything wrong yet having made their point.
Though the matter of contention for me, for the most part, has been if change is possible without action, even of the kind that is true to ahimsa principles. Yarvin’s critique of my incessant need to create change would in his eyes label me as someone who is power hunger. Yarvin believes that everyone who goes to universities nowadays when asked to write a statement of purpose is expected to present how they would like to change the world. Yarvin sees this as pornographic to its core. This is because when you want to create change in the world you want to set it in an order you deem appropriate, this implies a never-ending cycle wherein one feels they are actually a part of something when in fact they actually aren’t. For power lies in the hands of a select few no matter the democratic consensus. Yarvin argues that democracy much like porn is exciting however in the end, it is all fruitless. More on this later.
I think this aside was necessary as with an individual who sees themselves as anarch isn’t bothered by matters that are taking place around him. For he is simply sticking to his duty. An example that comes to mind is of a conversation I was listening to between Amit Varma and Manoj Kewalramani, Amit refers to Manoj as “The China Dude” so I presume we shall do the same. The China Dude mentioned his time working and traveling in China where he often had conversations with the locals regarding politics and the Chinese state as it was, and surprisingly enough there was one manner of response that he got accustomed to,
That is for the people in Beijing to take care of
For the locals had subsumed the order of things and didn’t find it necessary to busy themselves with irrelevant questions which they would have no impact on. It’s like telling you telling the gardener how gardening must be done. This approach of laying off all responsibility to the state is liberating as well as extremely scary at the same time.
Liberating because as with Yarvin’s point of political pornography, individuals don’t have to be worried about what’s happening, what bill regarding agriculture just got passed in the parliament. I think if you ask most political scientists as to what the best form of governance is, they would tell you that unquestionably it is a benevolent king.
Though and perhaps this is what readers of Yarvin can never get behind which is to say his insistence on divine right monarchy amongst his comments on race which I guess we’ll save for another day.
Who can say if the king is going to be benevolent? What if he is not or even if he is and one goes down the path of divine right monarchy, who is to say his offspring would be?
Hence even though I hear some of the arguments of the aforementioned political system I simply don’t see how it wouldn’t fall soon than say democracy.
A pushback that Yarvin makes to these claims is that democracy as a system is relatively new and even with the current implementations of the same aren’t truly capturing the essence of democracy rather present to us a weird corporate-styled oligarchy. As an aside, in political science different political systems have different groups who hold power. Monarchy- rule of the one, Oligarchy- rule of the few, Democracy- rule of the many.
Yarvin’s critique of modern democracy stems from the fact that in the United States, media and academia act as “The Cathedral” one of the many Yarvinisms which by the way recently also featured on Fox News. Anyway, as Yarvin sees it even if one may see it as one person one vote, what is actually taking place is that as The Cathedral is in charge with the widespread of news and information and can be seen as the beholders of knowledge. Yarvin sees The New York Times and Harvard to be more influential than any governmental body.
Why is this a problem one may ask? Yarvin sees this to create a vacuum of responsibility as he doesn’t see a proper chain of command. This means that institutions that make up Curtis’s cathedral can sway the public whatever way they please and pay no brunt for their actions. As a result, when we say that the president of the United States holds power, they fail to recognize the institutional boundaries that are presented with the job as Obama too writes in his new book, how he felt chained in the presidency and had to undergo several layers of bureaucracy to get anything and everything passed. So when people say that a president in the world times holds the same amount of power as say Roosevelt or Lincoln they are mistaken as even though the inherent the same chair the power presented isn’t even one-tenth of what a president had in the yesteryear.
Though even with the flaws of democracy of which there are many I still find Curtis’s solutions of having a centralized stream through which information is channeled to be counterproductive as for isn’t that only giving out one chain of thought? This is what Micheal Anton pointed out too as a critique of a centralized mechanism of presenting information in a society. Though Yarvin stresses the fact of how he saw individuals like Anton and others with the same chain of thought be more Aristotelian whereas he considered himself to be more from the school of Plato, sticking to the Greek analogy.
The way in which Aristotelian thought differs from that of Plato is that it provides more importance to how a society lives whereas Plato would consider it how so important how a society lives but rather how long it lives, in other words, Aristotelian artistry vs Plato’s efficiency. Let me paint of picture however much that is possible, obviously, this is something Plato would not approve of but hey, he is not here ;)
Aristotle’s belief structure emphasizes the individual being able to express themselves in whatever manner they so like as in his case that is what is essential in producing great art. Plato on the other hand believes that a perfect city/society will not have art, as he sees art as being inefficient and not surviving a purpose in furthering the species. Plato’s Republic where virtually everything is taken care of by a philosopher-king, from the day one is born they are groomed in a manner that they aren’t so much the kids of their parents but the kids of the society at large. The kids will be taught and brought up together with other children and assigned a profession which their attributes so match, in line with an efficient outlook that Plato presents.
This is where I see Yarvin may have linked Junger’s ideas of an “anarch” when he talks about divine right monarchy, Plato among other principles which detach the individual from the process.
Perhaps Yarvin’s thinking is right? Maybe we are just riding this dopamine influxed system which gives us the illusion of having power whereas as he links with the writings of Pareto, James Burnam, Thomas Carlyle among others that power has always been concentrated with a small minority of individuals and that is just how it is going to be.
Though I don’t know maybe it’s this dopamine demanding romantic in me who still thinks that however improper the current order may be and how there still may be disadvantages for individuals in society to voice their opinion I think this aspect of one being able to voice their opinion we should still preserve as long as that’s possible. As Yarvin identifies that no political system lasts forever. So until this experiment of democracy ceases we should at least try to make sure the founding principles are still intact.
