Praxeology and Identity

Konrad Graf released a fresh article on nature of praxeology recently, and if you've taken any interest in what praxeology is, you should read it. It works as a solid introduction into this little corner of ideas, providing a helpful dose of clarity.

The first thing to notice is how individualistic such thought is. Graf clearly lives on an individualist plane, which is obvious even before he actually states it mid-way through the piece, and turns the thing into a stump speech for libertarianism. Like many others, Graf is a pure autonomy lover who reviles force. It's very simple: Pushing people to do things they don't want to do is bad because you're pushing people to do things they don't want to do, which is bad. Libertarians assume that society has no greater good than individual liberty. The reason they do that is, of course, because they have generally accepted that any "greater goal" is chimerical, an excuse for authoritarian behavior and nothing more. To use the old, repugnant terminology split, these are people interested in negative freedom, not positive freedom.

At the end of the day, this is a perspective that says Nozick was wrong, and man really does want to get his own Experience Machine, provided that machine knows enough to give us the occasional ego-boosting challenge as well as pure bliss.

If this doesn't pass the sniff test for you, then join the club.

It's not wrong, per se; I wouldn't be interested in praxeology if it was. Naturally, people want to be in control, setting their own goals and driving towards those goals at their own pace, seeking a sense of "flow" which lives between frustrated overwork and bored underwork. But there has to be an out for the unexplained, non-solipsistic elements of life, and Graf provides it, saying,

Even for goals that had originated elsewhere, say, in the person’s organizational leadership or as a client request, flow effects could still be found if the person proactively invested themselves in such goals, “made them their own,” as opposed to acquiescing.

God, I hope so. If we can't jump in to a necessary task with an understanding of their value, and find ways to own this work that we don't necessarily choose, then just about any group-based activity will never cause anything but misery. No matter your political inclinations, this would be a problem; it can hurt private business and family as much as government.

But Graf insists that the problem is muted, because people make goals which are decided outside themselves to be their own. They get invested in the decisions of others. They give themselves the impression that whatever the group is making them do is what they want to do. So... why? And how?

Well, because people identify with the groups they are a part of. They trust the people in them, including, dare I say it, authority figures. Their values are in line, as the shared inputs of culture, including symbolism and expectations, come into play. Some of this identity relies on individual, utilitarian thinking, like the decision to join a company just to make money. But in cultural terms, the people you grew up around will affect, not just your happiness within the context of your value system, but your value system itself. You pick up what is good and worth pursuing from the reinforcing experiences of your life, which are largely cultural. The saying goes, "you can take the farmer out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the farmer."

This matters for a couple of reasons. First, you have to understand the nature of praxeology; what's basically being said is that you can best understand people by their actions, which indicate their preferences, rather than trying to do what the West has been doing with philosophy and psychology since Socrates: trying to understand what is "truly" rational and inform people of it. A sensible, level-headed person can easily look at this and come to the rather striking conclusion that praxeology really is self-evident and that academia is trying to fit round pegs into square holes in a manner similar to what religion does. Academic philosophy is seeking "truth" in values for the sake of making human affairs work better, which comes down to message discipline as to what constitutes truth. Praxeology is seeking to understand, and understand alone, no normative judgment. This is economics at its essence; if there's a way to understand values in an objective sense, then this is it.

And this is also what I like about praxeology. By looking at rationality this way, the "rationalist" model of Western thought gives way to different interpretations of what is rational, inherently subjective interpretations that do not point towards any deeper truth that can lead to a utopia. Praxeological rationality can be culturally variable, and in fact it must be culturally variable, given that value is individually variable and yet will be more closely shared by people with similar life experiences.

Graf makes praxeology out to be a new way of thinking, but it isn't quite so dramatic. Really, it's merely subjectivism in values put into practice; if you can believe that all preferences are subjective and there is no "right" way to evaluate existence, then you understand praxeology. There's nothing new in saying that you can figure people out better by their actions than by anything else. But the importance of identity needs more elaboration, because as it stands, not enough people are paying attention to it.

The Economy as Replacement for Faith

Understanding the importance of this perspective might be difficult, so try to imagine this:

A large, wealthy secular country communicates with, and trades with, an economically weaker but strident Muslim country. Over time, the relationship results in the Muslim people seeing a degradation in the adherence to their own ways and a move towards Western individualism, as Western ideas - which serve the interests of the individual - get adopted by people who would rather avoid the strictures of their native culture. Is this bad? Well, if you're a Westerner, you probably won't think so, as these changes will be along the lines of appealing to your values. They're becoming more like you. If you're a traditional Muslim, then your culture is dying. It's an overtaking, a destructive attack on the identity of your people. That your people, as individuals, are choosing it would probably look more like fast-talking salesmen bribing people with easy answers than "progress".

And that's exactly what it is. Western secular ideas, democratically reliant on popularity among individuals, must sell well first and foremost, so ideas that are "happier" and give the sense of liberation gain big traction here as a matter of systematic bias. We prefer the short-term pleasure over the long-term investment that requires present sacrifice. Religion, it must be noted, could easily be viewed as a mechanism for convincing a people to place the long-run view, longer than the course of their own individual lives, over the short-run view. It's certainly not always successful, but the metaphysical basis gives an ace card to the leadership who wants and needs serious discipline and commitment from the populace.

Look at market economics long enough, and it becomes quite clear that market economies are replacements for other forces which, in the past, organized society. Religious faith or force give way to simple, broadly effective material bribery, easy to quantify and arrange through property rights, albeit capriciously granted property rights with no real legitimacy outside of democratic fiat.

In spite of Graf's heavy-handed defense of said property rights, it's easy to see what he calls "individualism" in the sense he describes it as being a preference, just like the Muslim preference, for how society organizes itself, nothing more. If this is the case, then praxeology is not so much the answer to why property rights = good, so much as a systematic way of thinking that clarifies the problem of their legitimacy. And the problem is that until one single ideology comes to dominate the world without question, conflict is inevitable, so there will always be those who dislike the current state of affairs.

That's even more true if, like me, you assume hierarchy to be inevitable and equality to be ridiculous. Say what you want about the rigors and inequalities of Islam, but religion blunts this problem in cultures where metaphysics can grant legitimacy to authority; it addresses the reality that the preferences of some will have to give way to the preferences of others. Even within a culture, some will have more power than others and some will be pissed off about it, and diminishing this as jealousy changes nothing if you admit that the inevitable interdependency that results in market societies grants undue leverage to those with certain skills or types of property.

Graf briefly spoke of "timescale", an important concept here. Western culture looks incredibly decadent because it lacks the justification necessary to convince people to work for the future on a long timeline. You won't find people who will come out and say that they don't care about society beyond the length of their own lifespan, but in a culture with no conception of God, where people increasingly aren't having children and are studiously avoiding any talk about unsustainable environmental practices and unsustainable entitlement programs and generally stupid finance, how can you avoid coming to the conclusion that they really don't give a shit?

Praxeology can tell us what people value, and then you can say, for reasons of blunt humanism, that people should have opportunity to pursue it. But to state the blindingly obvious, not everyone can have what they want at the same time, even in shallow material terms. All these philosophies and ideologies and moral concepts and systems of authority and structure did not develop in a world where they had no value. They are not parasitic memes. They are core to a society's identity, and we need them.

Frustration and Negative Freedom

I can be pissed off all I want to.

I know that gay marriage is going to be passed. The change represents another step in the process of downgrading commitments from critical cultural institutions into the emotional bouquet of flowers to be tossed after they wilt, but no matter. This has been a long time coming, going back to at least the advent of birth control and more likely to the 1940's, the start of the quiet sexual revolution that came into full view in the 60's. That's what people want. They want their connections to one another to be intense and infinitely blessed by others. Then they get tired of those particular organs and move on, sex made cheap despite our professed desire for commitment. It doesn't directly affect me.

I can go on about the value of organized religion to society, regardless of the existence of deities, but there's no point. This generation is deeply hostile to religion, regardless of its big-picture positives. They blame normal human conflicts of interest and normal human prejudices on religion, and think themselves above such things, no matter how obviously absurd that is. But as religious society sees its sense of identity vilified anew every time it turns on the television or reads a mainstream news article, the continued loathing for anything representing the old continues apace, masquerading as logical humanist concern for the species and attracting more attention from those seeking any reason to dismiss social arrangements and strictures, so they can live for their own desires.

I can say whatever I want about the inconsistencies, incompetence, or hypocrisies of democracy, feminism, egalitarianism, institutional media and education, and any other subject I want. I can blah blah blah forever, and it doesn't matter. This, evidently, is important, that I have this "right" to bitch.

Some of the reason for this perception of importance is the influence of a guy named Isaiah Berlin. I've read plenty of his ideas, and it seems as if I should like this man. His comprehension of language is rooted in Wittgenstein's ideas. He plays with the concept of supervenience. He traces ideas historically. Right up my alley. But Isaiah Berlin pushed the establishment of the concept of negative liberty, which screwed up too much shit. You know negative freedom:

Today, negative freedom IS freedom to most people.

Berlin knew that values clash but still thought that values pluralism was possible, which is the most hopelessly misguided opinion one can possibly have about the nature of values. Hope. Hope was his problem. He must have never really lost a fight. You can't believe in the potential of values pluralism if you've seen your own culture's future falling apart.

Of course, the idea is attractive. We can minimize conflict by creating a situation where people can value whatever they want to value, think how they want to think, where tolerance is itself the goal. But for a variety of reasons, such an existence is unsatisfying.

The most obvious is this: after you've said that people cannot tell one another what to think and believe, you start to understand how and why people come to think and believe as they think and believe. So what is a condition where ideas can float around without direct command or regulation from a higher authority? You know what this is called: a market. Ideas move on a market, attention is the currency, and like in a market, there are winners and losers. Ideas live and die, and in adopting some over others, we determine the market power of ideas and shape the future.

We don't like to think of ourselves as dictating the future from where we are. The value of freedom has roots in Judeo-Christian ethics; we aren't supposed to control people, only "let their better natures run free". But that idea only has power today because our forefathers believed in it, which goes to show, there's no substitute for success. If you realize this, and if you realize that your identity is bound to your values , and your values are losing ground, the frustration can be extreme. You're watching the legacy that makes you who you are die slowly.

This isn't Hegelian, there is no thesis-antithesis-synthesis bullshit going on here; there is only one worldview versus another, and time favoring one side. No compromise is ever equal; negotiation is biased in favor of power. What would they take from my worldview to incorporate into theirs, anyway? Anything relevant would contradict the opposing perspective. That's why it's opposing.

My view is one of the individual being small in comparison to the larger institutions of human society, of people throwing themselves into interdependencies without the modern capriciousness that makes everything short-term self-interest. Calling gay people's relationships "marriage" undermines this, as the purpose of marriage that actually gives sensible cause to two people being bound together forever - children - makes no sense in this context. It furthers the perception of marriage as some sort of step towards self-actualization and happiness, which changes expectations in a bad way for the future of the institution. With religion, it's more of the same. Despite the numbers, with about 80% of America claiming to be Christian, this country is not religious at all. We promote a perspective of people subscribing to a religion because they feel like it, not because it's a necessary social institution that allows for a unified view of moral expectations and accountability. Anyone who still sees religion in the latter context is hardly one of the majority; they are more likely considered fundamentalists and get a chuckle from normal people. Religion is not taken seriously here.

If you subscribe to negative freedom as valuable in its own right, then this shouldn't matter. I can believe what I want, so what does it matter if other people do the same and we don't agree?

It matters. When the law is a product of democratic popularity contests, and image is manipulated by the media, you will realize eventually that negative freedom empowers the ideas that sell the best to the least rigorous and respectable minds and that the entire system tends to fall to the level of the lowest common denominator. Just because I can do what I want as an individual, that this principle is protected for me by society, doesn't mean that I have a society. It's extremely alienating to live among people who don't share your values.

I know why Judeo-Christian morality is popular in the marketplace of ideas, because I know what it's like to hate those with power. Being powerless is fucking enraging, and it's enraging because your mortality is bound to your identity, not simply your corporeal self. You will die as an individual, and you can accept that reality on some level. But it's different to know that you and what you stood for will be forgotten.

For those playing the home game, I hope you're enjoying your frustration as much as I'm enjoying mine. There's nothing to really DO about it: you can yell and scream, throw punches at a punching bag, get drunk, get high, or if you're really into it, protest the best way we know how: Facebook posts. Why not? Even if you decided it was important enough to start a fucking revolution, you always have that knowledge in your rational mind that you're being stupid and, at the end of the day, your voice is just a single blip on the public relations radar. Eventually, your rational mind will re-acquaint you with what matters. It will remind you that you have very, very little control over your world, and that you are subject to others, many others, who don't agree, making decisions on the basis of what can be sold to the lowest common denominator.

You, in other words, are irrelevant.

If you really care about something, if you feel that you should be able to identify with your society and shit has gone horribly wrong and you have the drive to try and change it, this irrelevancy is the worst possible experience you can have. It eats you from the inside, kicks you in the balls on occasion, strips the meaning from your life like the skin flayed from Saint Bartholomew. It is hell. But you have to deal with it.

So what you do is, you internalize it. All the physical exertions to "get it out of your system" end up only fatiguing you until you no longer care, a temporary condition. Fatigue is merely a drug, creating temporary respite, like a dose of Zoloft; in a sense, every human being dies from an overdose.

Isaiah Berlin recognized lots of the problems with freedom and merely wanted a conversation along honest terms. Were it not for his damned hope, he might have figured out that this was impossible; someone, somewhere, is always on the losing end of cultural change and in a sense, there is always some type of violence done in the victories. For people who recognize how identity works, success is not a matter of internal perceptions; it's a matter of real, tangible gains. Not making them constitutes real failure, no matter the personal element of the experience.

Has every minority in history dealt with this? Probably; one side or the other has to learn to bite their tongue, and I've never said it was easy or that minorities have had an easy road. But the recasting of the problem along the line of people just making their choices in a world made right by negative freedom pisses me off more than anything. I've dealt with the consequences of conflict before, both on the winning and losing side, and the worst times are when you are lied to. I'd love an honest fight, where the conflict could be exposed instead of manipulated, where the soldiers can salute each other on the battlefield at the end of the day. But I won't get it.

Update, 16 Aug 2015: I come back to this post regularly, and the underlying feels always remain valid. That lowest common denominator keeps running the show. The pretty lies pour into the general consciousness without hesitation. The hell of having a strong identity continues to burn hotter. I keep looking for "drugs" that dull such pains and find nothing; trust me, don't start a business, thinking that such small enhancements in control and authority will help you find satisfaction. There is no escaping it. I've come to despise the perspective of negative freedom, even more than this article shows. It's practically a guarantee of intellectual shallowness and the worst kind of individualistic selfishness. 

It's not like I was wrong about the trends. Gay marriage has been approved by the Supreme Court. A recent poll has the number of self-professed Christians in America declining hard from 80% to just over 70%. And the arguments supporting it are sophomoric trash. I can't find a way to despise it any less, no matter how normal it gets.

I would love to wake up to all this being a bad dream, this deep hostility I have to the cultural status quo. But I wrote this almost two years ago, and it's stunning how little things have changed. I think I'm going to hold this perspective for the rest of my life. If I ever have children, I'll be sorely tempted to tell them to avoid unvarnished truth and pursue ideas that make them feel good, especially if the child is a girl. No one will call them on it. 

Egalitarian Angst

Optimism is cowardice.               -Oswald Spengler

Wealth inequality is at a high point in contemporary times, with people's perceptions of wealth distribution completely out of step with reality.
Of course, this would not have been possible if it weren't for creditors suckering people into making terrible decisions with debt. All we want is to be debt free!

It's college's fault, amirite?

When it comes to earning money and not just having it, people are pissed about their jobs for a variety of reasons:
Record numbers of people are dissatisfied with their job.
Fast food workers don't think they're earning enough.
Working in America just sucks.
We can help you define exactly why your job sucks. Take all those shitty, whiny excuses and make them sound less pathetic with this handy guide to excuses that sound sophisticated and legitimate.
Lots of this would be much better if employers would just do nice things, like double people's wages. Would you like to know more?

From what I can tell, you would like to know that this is the fault of those terrible people in the 1%, and that as a matter of basic justice, you and The Peoplez should have more of the wealth.

Okay, let's talk about that for a second. Because I have precisely zero sympathy for any of this, and the information constantly being presented on this subject just annoys the living hell out of me.

What This Actually Means

Do you know what most of these figures mean?

It sounds straightforward. It means that 1% of the population has 40% of the wealth, and therefore, 40% of the stuff, and because of that inequality, they have the power. 

This is only sort of true... if you're really materialistic about what power means. Actually, even then, it isn't that true. They're just statistics, and the tales of GDP figures are hopelessly skewed by Fed policy.

The figures belie the reality that money is cheap, so the figures are inflated at the top as we shovel newly-printed money into the bond market, trying to keep interest rates low and create investment and jobs. The figures belie that the technology has made most labor worthless and cheapened everything to the point that we simply don't need any more of anything. The figures belie that production is already being carried out with such intensity through the global economy that resource depletion is becoming a problem and we're leaving piles of garbage in the Pacific Ocean the size of a flyover state.

What the figures mean is that the rich are playing a game of asset exchange that involves evaluation and risk, with the vast majority of those assets in their possession being investment goods that produce what normal people in this country buy. This means farmland, industrial equipment, research facilities, and of course, truckloads of stocks, bonds, ETF's, futures, and all the ownership on paper that does not translate into direct control but shows confidence or a lack of confidence in the future earnings of certain fields, gauged by econometric analysis. 

Most people can't even pronounce this.

The figures do not mean that the rich are taking food out of your mouth and keeping you from buying a new TV, which is what most people care about. The wealth of the rich is in assets, and those assets hardly change the material quality of life for the rich at all. Yes, they have 300 times the wealth that the average American does, on paper. Assuming you're employed, you drive an air-conditioned car to work where you do things that are a pain in the ass, you eat three meals a day, sleep on a mattress, use a functional computer on the same internet everyone else uses, and your TV is maybe 42". These figures do not mean that the rich are arriving at work in cars over 300 times nicer than yours, that they eat 900 meals per day, that they sleep on a bed of nude supermodels, play on a secret model of Cray supercomputer connected to the SuperNet, and that they watch TV on a surface the size of a city block. 

When it comes to consumer goods that actually mean something to quality of life, the distribution is just fine. In fact, it's ridiculously cushy. Money is power in the economy, and the rich are doing what they're supposed to do with power: investing it for the sake of expanding it. 

How do people get their hands on these goods without jobs? Well, we create pointless, white-collar busywork for lots of them, but for the rest, we give them credit cards. The placement of the dollar as the world's reserve currency is probably the only thing keeping other, more fiscally disciplined countries from abandoning us.

We're doing everything we can for people without simply giving up on individual accountability. Bailing out the banks was not done because corruption; it was done precisely because allowing them to fail would have crushed the job market. People trusted the investors stupidly and without due diligence, and because of it, we needed them far more than they needed us at crunch time. You can say that society owes people opportunity all you want, but opportunity runs on a sliding scale, with hopeless at the bottom and guaranteed success at the top. How much more can we do for you without taking every ounce of consequential risk away?

I just read a Popular Science print article with a millennial kid complaining that the cars offered today aren't good enough, because they destroy the planet, cost too much, and don't drive themselves.

Even if cars weren't the most recycled products on Earth, with radical improvements in fuel efficiency and emissions over the last forty years while rising only marginally in price, this kid is bitching because he has to drive a car. People who lost their virginity in a Model T are still alive, but the modern car just isn't fucking good enough!

If the wealth in this country were redistributed tomorrow in the way the inequality video showed, the result would be that, instead of people having a materially better quality of life, they would have, at best, a few minutes of relaxing knowing that their bills-and-mortgage woes were over. Those debts they rang up without having a dependable way to pay them off would be handled. For a while. Then they would try to spend the money. Then we would witness the biggest explosion of inflation in the history of man. Redistributing several trillion dollars doesn't mean that several trillion dollars worth of goods suddenly comes into existence. It means that the prices for everything balloon up as all these people with more dollars try to use them to buy the exact same number of goods that were in existence. Any stimulus effect would take time to increase production, and would be complicated by having to draw labor from a populace that thinks it is far more wealthy than it was and far less willing - for now - to accept jobs featuring unpleasant labor.

If the people who agree with those egalitarian sentiments think that this wealth distribution should stay more equal, and not revert back to inequality because of people's bad decisions, then they are precisely arguing that individuals should not be accountable for their economic actions, and that those in charge owe them help unconditionally.

You do want socialism. 

Cue the bitching about people getting paid fairly for their work.

Work and Play

There is one simple message that the modern labor economy is telling you: we don't need you anymore.

Not even close. The technology is such that a small number of people can feed, clothe, and house you, even hooking you up with cellphones and Nikes, without your input. They just have no reason to do so, no input that justifies provisioning the hoard, as there is no return exchange. 

This doesn't apply to everyone, of course. Engineers still command an income, as that job is necessary and damned difficult to do well. Maths are involved. No surplus of engineers in this world.

But everyone else, you're just lucky to have a job at all. McDonald's workers, baristas, retailers and shelf stockers, all of them, lucky. Striking doesn't matter. Anyone with an IQ over room temperature can do your job, so you can be replaced too easily to have the slightest leverage. Why empathize with them when there are millions who would do the work if given the chance?

If this were a cohesive and exclusive society with a labor shortage, where individuals were expected to uphold arrangements and it was well-acknowledged that people needed each other's efforts, then the question of appropriate pay would have some philosophical punch to it. But it isn't. It's extremely one-sided to expect the rich to ignore the benefits of globalized labor and new technology while normal people take advantage of the benefits of globalized production. The Peoplez do not work together to boycott or buy American, any more than they get together to assure their products are safe, ethically manufactured, or environmentally conscious. They want government to provide that service for them, in the name of justice. There's no discipline, only entitlement. They want to be served.

Employers should respect you? Why? You don't respect them, and their position in the world should command far, far more respect than yours. The only way you can say otherwise is to say that the system, intrinsically, is unjust and illegitimate.

But no one's saying capitalism is inherently unjust, right?

Yeah. You are. When you say that you want these little minor increases in pay, this marginal increase that shouldn't affect the competitive bottom line of the company, do you really think you're going to be happy there, at that ratio of corporate earnings to wages, for the rest of time? 

I'd be disappointed if that were the case. I'd prefer to think that somewhere along the line, there was a strategy for empowerment a little more sophisticated than just guilt-tripping those mean people in the suits and making them look bad by going on TV, all to get a 5% raise and that alone. The slippery slope is a classic maneuver of progressives; a little now, reset the expectations higher, then repeat and the expectations can go higher still. Some people in America likely consider the granting of mandatory wage hikes to be the economic equivalent of given up the Sudetenland. 

There are at least two fallacies that need to be addressed. One is from the inequality video, and it concerns itself with socialism not working "because people need an incentive to work hard". Then it places getting rich as the incentive, so some inequality would still be fine. In doing so, poverty seems to be eliminated.

No humanist wants to hear this, but the functional incentive of capitalism isn't for everyone to get rich. Everyone, even Republicans, knows this. The incentive is not extraordinary success; it's avoiding failure. If there is no risk of destitution and helplessness, where the individual finds himself or herself completely at the mercy of those who have not failed, then there is no motivation to work jobs you don't want but the market demands. The wild success of capitalism is not its strength. The risk of failure is its strength.

Dreams motivate children... until the next reality show comes on TV. Fear motivates adults.

The second, related fallacy is that increasing wages will increase productivity by increasing motivation. Just like the "getting rich" motivation doesn't work, this one doesn't either, not without other people getting comparatively less. 

Economically, the "efficiency wage" results in greater productivity. But it's not like it creates this productivity by simply filling the worker with good feelings. It creates this motivation by giving people something to lose. There has to be a willingness and explicit authority to fire people for this to work. The fashionable talk about how a comfortable lifestyle makes workers better rested or something, leading to efficiency, is filled with bad premises. In a culture where judgment hardly exists, people work as hard as they need to. If you pair either good or bad wages with an excessively secure job, then the productivity will not be exceptional, as everyone who has ever worked for the government knows. Unions will argue about this until you point them towards Detroit in the mid-1970's, when they'll get distracted by having to make excuses.

That entire discussion relies on high wages relative to the norm. You boost everyone's wages to the norm, granting a temporary stimulus, and also creating a new norm. Costco workers appreciate their wages now, but if Wendy's workers made the same wage, then would they still think their pay exceptional? Of course not. New gripes would be just around the corner, the perception of good treatment will be dulled by everyone else getting the same treatment. 

I'm probably not supposed to talk about that, because realism is too negative. People don't want reality. And God help us, this country is a democracy.

Some people argue that we should have more time off, but I'm quite sure that the majority of Americans don't care about that, and that's why they don't complain much about it. Family is dying, culture is dying, TV programming sucks. Why would you want to go home? At least at work, you're making money while you're miserable.

Fact of life: you're going to have to do what society values, not what you want to do. Jobs that are interesting and fun, or really important, are jobs that a lot of people want and therefore, you'd have to compete for one of them. This will not change because you believe you have a right to a certain form of work on the grounds of finding happiness. The economy doesn't exist to provide you with satisfying work.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: no one owes you shit. Everyone in America, liberals and libertarians alike, blames today's problems on corruption at the top, but it's not at the top. It's at the bottom.

Relativity and Wealth

Am I being too hard on The Peoplez? Too negative? Not selling myself well?

Well, here's an Asian baby with a puppy to make you feel happy for a second:

All better? No? Whatever. 

Try to understand: I'm a historian. History.

My knowledge of how people lived up until the last couple hundred years in terms of material welfare makes what we see now an epic, orgasmic paradise that NONE of us deserves. For most of the history of Western civilization, average people never bathed, had no health care or education, were lucky to eat meat once a week, would not have understood the modern concept of entertainment, walked everywhere because they couldn't afford a horse, had a fireplace instead of HVAC in the thatch-roof house they shared with the livestock, and still gave thanks to a supposedly-loving God every day simply because they were alive.

If one of the founding fathers were brought to the modern day from 1783 and given a chance to walk around and meet people from all walks of life for a couple of weeks, then told that the quality of life people were leading wasn't good enough because paper assets were inequitably distributed among individuals and customer service jobs aren't good enough, then my guess is, he would laugh in your face. Then he would borrow ten dollars to go down to Golden Corral and stuff himself full of endless food, turning a loving gaze towards the chocolate fountain. He might lament the lack of spirituality and civic virtue, but the idea of people need more stuff or people have to work too hard would be idiotic to him.

Oh, but that's the wrong attitude! Things should always get perpetually better!

Fuck off. 

The modern generation, by its own standards of morality, is so totally inferior that I simply can't relate to them or respect what they have to say. The standards can only get so low, the restrictions so loose, before it's time to stop boosting the kids' self-esteem. 

Given that such large numbers of people have abandoned family organization, organized religion, community obligation, any sort of duty felt towards, or discipline in service of, a higher good than their own selective sense of personal empathy, I think this world is far, far too good for you. You have so much that better people missed out on, and you can't stop bitching about it. No one looks at themselves as spoiled or materialistic, but they are. They've just become excessively good liars.

What's the point of all the wealth, of the release from cultural restraint, when people aren't grateful for it?

We've become a society with nothing more than utility maximization for a sense of purpose. Happiness, and only happiness in its most shallow and consumerist form, is all that this culture can legimitize as a goal. But happiness cannot be had as a direct matter except by the people who really know themselves well, and the people who know themselves well are the ones who have experienced real struggle and pressure. Life can be, and is, too easy. Many people know this in theory, but can't grasp it. You can mouth the words, but not embrace the suck.

A culture with a legitimate hierarchy and identity would not require people to soul-search every time they make a life decision. People from that kind of culture would know that redemption will not be found in personal choice, but in something considered sacred that the individual makes himself subservient to. It's legacy that drives, that gives value and satisfaction, and if the only legacy you can imagine is to make life a little more comfortable for others before you up and die, then you're legitimately fucked. Oswald Spengler envisioned societies as organisms with shared values, visions, goals, purposes, an identifying art that characterized their worldview. According to him, a young culture creates, lives with purpose, and wanes when the creative drive runs out. Thus it passes through the old age of "civilization" and dies.

Spengler's name is still known, but his theses have never been considered academically legitimate. Some of the fathers of the "open society" concept so beloved now thought his work to be "pointless", which says much about how strong the addiction to optimism can be in liberal cultures. But good intellectuals - ones which can systematize and deconstruct with equal dexterity, like Wittgenstein and Baudrillard - often seem to be pessimists. You don't need to be particularly creative to look at American culture today and see Roman decadence in our frivolousness, our disdain for family, or materialism, our loathing of the past and of social order that in any way constrains the individual. This is the kind of society that uses terms like justice, equality, and liberty as an excuse to democratically demand more for people who do nothing of value. It never seems to occur to most people that the individual might be radically overrated, especially to himself.

The desperation to save capitalism is higher here in this country than anywhere else for a reason; that's who we are. That's all we are. There's nothing more to us than consumers with too much empathy. There's no sense talking about the problem as if there's a solution. Any serious change would require fundamentally changing our cultural character in a way that the average person takes on more responsibility, not less. As a matter of principle, we won't stand for it. Spengler was right, if a little early; stick a fork in the West.

It's done.

A Tale of Two Conservatisms

Back from my two weeks with the guard, and I find myself with a touch more energy than when I left. The inactivity of the summer, with more planning than doing, took a toll on me I did not realize. I'm glad to have the structure of the guard. Meanwhile, I've also started my last full semester at the university, which is thus far incredibly irritating. This will not be a good semester to express opinions.

Today, the topic will be the ontology of conservatism. My experience leads me to identify two different strands of the idea of what it means to be a conservative, and while these definitions may not work for everyone, that's in the nature of creating labels and defining terms, which is itself a political exercise. But having a reference for what words mean is also necessary to think cohesively, so this might help define a reader's perspective. Later on, another post will do the same for liberals.

Conservatism as Status Quo

The most basic and intractable meaning of conservatism is to resist change.

This tells us a number of things. First, it tells us that those who oppose conservatism fundamentally disagree with the idea that society, as it stands, is fair and just. Of course, fairness and justice run on a sliding scale for almost everyone, with hideously unjust on one side and flawless on the other, both extremes being ludicrous. But conservatives are less willing to risk the integrity and basic ideas of their society for the sake of putting wild idealism into practice, which in praxeological terms, should tell us quite clearly that they value it more and see the odds of reaching greater excellence through serious change as being slim.

These people generally think you should calm the fuck down and accept reality as it is.

The ideal promotes stability as a value in itself. Consistency, being able to hold rational expectations and deal with the world accordingly, is worth fighting for from this perspective. Elderly people often hold this position.

It looks nearly arbitrary: whatever's here now is good, and changing it is not. WHY it's good is mostly a matter of my personal disposition and greater logic isn't the point. Neoconservatives in the Irving Kristol vein subscribed to this way of thinking, and while they made good points on the social value of religion, they dropped the ball severely by accepting elements of the welfare state, simply because it had already become the status quo.

With American politics, the tendency of conservatives to simply try to put on the brakes of what leftists consider progress has given them the problematic reputation of doing nothing but saying no. On race, gender, consumer protection, and environmental issues in particular, conservatives get tarred as scum all the time. Unless you fundamentally disagree with the goals of affirmative action and environmentalism, the bleating of the right looks a lot like stick-in-the-mud naysaying or political corruption, without principle, as if the disagreement was just a brave side versus a cowardly side and nothing more meaningful.

And in the case of politicians, it frequently isn't any more meaningful. They are, after all, politicians, and their entire existence stands in contrast to the other element of conservatism which is understood mostly by its opposition to most ideals of prevailing moral sense.

Conservatism as Hierarchy

If you're looking for a definition of conservatism with more meat on its bones, there's no need to waste time trying to find it in the sphere of democratic politics, or even in modern ideas at all. The more solid definition of conservatism is the dark definition, the one that won't win beauty contests.

This perpetually strong definition of conservatism is to accept and support the hierarchy of the society you identify with. This isn't simply saying "no" to change: quite the opposite, these types of conservatives frequently see their side as not being properly in charge, but think they should be, so they can be every bit as radical, activist, loudmouthed, and self-righteous as any given leftist. This is where your joiners and your patriots hang around.

Importantly, this isn't simply saying that you identify with a culture. Everyone identifies with a culture of some kind. It's identifying with a culture that explicitly endorses a hierarchy, accepting it. It's an anti-liberal perspective which specifically does not embrace egalitarianism or any of its resulting ideas.

If status quo conservatism applies the brakes, then this form of fascist conservatism defines the cardinal direction of the car. It wants to make society more hierarchical, more masculine, more driven to ordered empowerment.

And I don't mean fascism as an insult. 

The modern consensus seems to hold that fascism sees the state as primary, but going back to the point of this post, that's not set in stone. The modern concept of the state is far newer than the fasces, and what it symbolized, which is namely a hierarchical order regardless of the exact form. Jack Donovan calls himself an anarcho-fascist, which makes no sense if you can't grasp this but perfect sense otherwise.

This ideal is so disgusting to so many people that calling it sane might get you spat on, but it's always there. This is what happens when you place more value on the group, with its traditions and identity and systems, than on the individuals in it, and therefore find it sensible to require sacrifice from individuals to preserve it. This is what happens when you believe that the people in charge should be there and should have power. When children tell their parents to go fuck themselves, this is your impulse to throw all your sweet-natured understanding out the window and swing a paddle.

It isn't irrational, particularly given that the existence of moral and judicial thought in society comes from agreements, from people subordinating themselves to ideas and cultural values. These values are to be defended by a hierarchy. This conservatism makes the individual a part of the whole on explicit, honest terms. It might seem distasteful, but hierarchy is inevitable and not everyone is stuck in denial of this.

No institution or movement can get anywhere in this world without functional specialization and the requisite trust of someone in power that it requires. That includes political parties and movements. What finally pushed me completely away from the political left in America was the massive clusterfuck that was the Occupy Wall Street movement: the spoiled, stupid children involved revealed themselves as such when they turned out to be completely incapable of agreeing on any actionable plan or internal organization. They didn't so much push for a different form of governance as for the current power players to simply give them more of everything. In the real world, getting things done in the face of conflicts of interests requires that some people lead, as a simple matter of specialization. Nothing works without it. This naturally results in inequalities of power.

Conservatives accept this, and do not fight the realities of hierarchy in itself. They push to have their side be THE hierarchy, supporting it. The culture and the hierarchy that develops from its principles are, from this perspective, inseparable. Conservative libertarians, for example, typically believe that with the government doing less to promote a secular, pseudo-socialist agenda, legitimate authorities in business or religion will make a comeback. They frequently support the notion that businesspeople deserve to have significant power, since they consider the market system to be workable and good, worthy of preservation. The same can be said of religion.

Now, the status-quo conservative and the fascist conservative are not necessarily opposed to one another. Quite the opposite, in most societies throughout history, they have reinforced one another: willingness to follow orders and sacrifice for your country or family, fulfilling obligations of trust and obedience, is quite compatible with wanting to preserve it. The difference only seems to come up when you separate the maintenance of your house from following the dictates of those in charge. But that brings up an interesting question about our culture specifically.

The American Issue

Thus, we as Americans are at an impasse. Why? Because of ideas like this:

True or False?

This country, more than any other, holds ridiculous levels of allegiance to the ideals of equality, freedom, and justice on those terms. Notwithstanding the possibility that freedom and justice are essentially opposed to one another, simply believing that your country's ideology is one that is both anti-hierarchical and fair begs an awful lot of questions about how that's supposed to work out. If people get what they deserve for their efforts or screwups, and everyone should get the same thing even if they obviously don't, then what exactly is that saying about your system?

Americans have branded their culture's authorities as anti-authorities in the same way that 7-Up branded itself the "Un-Cola" back in the day. Conservatives scream about freedom more than anyone else in politics, and many Americans believe, really believe, that authorities in America are supposed to serve people, not rule them. That, of course, is fucking ludicrous, the ultimate inversion of the meaning of those words, not to mention practically absurd. Exercising justice and resolving conflicts of interest fundamentally means wielding power, and some people will be on the losing end of it. That shapes culture. But a huge portion of American ideology depends on the ideal of equality and freedom being compatible; other notions, like objective justice, are ideas intended to legitimize such ridiculousness, and they've been successful enough to convince a lot of people. We believe American exceptionalism to mean that we're the people who don't need rulers, and it's perfectly natural for such thinking to evolve into thinking that we don't need bosses, fathers, pastors, cops, and basically any other authority figure. 

So from the perspective of conservatism as pro-authority, the real question becomes, is there such a thing as an American conservative?

And if so, HOW? From the notion of conservatism as hierarchy, there can be no such thing. The vast majority of Americans want politicians who directly reflect popular opinion and popular moral interpretation, not the personal views of those in positions of power. We might say we want integrity, but that's only if the ideals are in line with our own. We require our "leadership" to be a bunch of vacuous tools with no sense of themselves; saying otherwise is masturbatory bitching, as the complainers are invariably using their opinion as the reference point for the correct opinion. Both business and government hierarchies require popular approval to operate, so the mechanics of the systems do not allow for any serious consistency except in the Prom Queen sense of the word.

In an earlier post, I referred to the conservative as a firefighter. Clearly, this places emphasis on conservatives as preserving the status quo, so I do think it's feasible to look at American conservatives as real and active. There are good things about modern American culture. But it's not just preservation.

Those of us who believe that American culture made a wrong turn somewhere, or even believe that there is something fatally nonsensical about the concepts of freedom and equality that comprises the American identity, are not simply running around trying to put out fires. We are also fully willing to start controlled burns in places where the existing structures are of low quality and need to be replaced. Stupid ideas can be tossed out. This gives some conservatives a lot in common with leftists and might seem to make the fundamental meaning of being a conservative disappear in the mix of eclectic preferences for cultural design, but beneath this perception is the fundamental concept of conservatism: hierarchy is not what we should be trying to destroy, but is rather a tool to allow society to organize and pursue a world in line with greater values.

In this sense, you can call me a conservative.

New Business Card

If you come across this card at any time during your travels, then you know I've been around.

Expect a lengthy break from blogging after Monday, as my obligations to the Guard come around. Two weeks learning the ins and outs of my recently-acquired Bradley Fighting Vehicle await. 

mmmmmmm..... BFIST...

Jackass Journalism

CNN aired a report recently called Rehab Racket, and I caught part of it while eating lunch the other day. The show resulted from a big-time, one year investigation, and it reminded me why I loath television and the media with an unholy passion.

It wasn't the reality of the case; I have no problem believing that the rehabilitation industry is all sorts of fucked up, particularly since the report focused on California.

It was the presentation.

They were playing the "hard-hitting journalism" bit. There was one scene with a reporter trying to walk into the back door of a rehab center with his camera crew, simply by announcing who he was and what he was doing. It's so shocking when he isn't allowed in, as if they have something to hide! A later scene shows the reporter and camera crew following an executive around as she pointedly ignored the repeated, grating questions aimed at her and the constant re-positioning of the crew to get a shot of her downcast face. Finally she stops and talks to them, and why even bother listening to the conversation?

Call it "hyperdrama": we gotta do something to make a paperwork-driven investigation interesting, so of course, it's time to harass the shit out of people to provoke a reaction that makes them look fucking terrible. Welcome to the news business!

I HATE that shit. Not simply because it's confrontational, which is usually unnecessary but sometimes unavoidable. I hate it because it has nothing to do with the truth of the matter, and repeatedly shows both the idiocy of the general populace and the intrinsic corrupting lack of critical sensibility endemic to a world dominated by the attention economy.

The chief shitheel of this type of "journalism" has to be Michael Moore. I will never forget the final scene of Bowling for Columbine, with Moore having scammed his way into an interview with Charlton Heston, then pegging him with questions demanding an apology for a post-shooting rally in Michigan, which Heston quite rationally responds to by getting up and walking the fuck away. All the while, Moore is calling after him, voice sadly pleading, "Mr. Heston? Mr. Heston?"

God, it was fucking disgusting. It's just pure manipulation. How is there a living human who's bullshit detector doesn't explode when they see this? Because I knows, know, that some people reading this have seen that crap and thought it was a good report, very impactful. Those people are why Heinlein was right about democracy. I can't give a shit about freedom of the press, guys. I understand a general concern for the freedom of information, but the concept of the press as cultural watchdogs sucks. They're helping to drag it to the lowest common denominator. I have a very hard time giving a shit about newspapers being bought out or disappearing altogether. Burn that shit to the ground, for all I care; the institutional press is garbage.

If I see Moore in person, I might stab him. I wouldn't shoot him, which would just turn him into more of a martyr. Besides...

guns are too quick...

For those who haven't figured this out, I think you should stop watching shit like that. Do it now. The more aggressive and emotional the report, the less you should pay attention to it.

You should never blame a subject for walking away. It's the only thing they can do. The investigators invariably come at the mark with loaded questions and accusations that they are totally unprepared to answer. The enemy controls the camera, so you can count on selective editing. And since they've been researching you and have invested such time and effort into using you as a target in their dart-throwing amusement park attraction for kids, NOTHING that the target says can possibly help. Why do you think they try to catch the exec by surprise? So they can give her a fair shot?!

No one except lockstep liberals should allow themselves to be interviewed by the mainstream press, on their terms, in front of a camera. Period. If you're a part of something that the media criticizes and you don't have professional media training, let them talk, then create a YouTube video to put out your side of it.

There is enough on the web that describes the liberal press as an echo chamber, but it's more than that. If attention is a currency - and I'm quite convinced that it is - then the mainstream media is the equivalent of the banking industry. It loans out its power of exposure to those it deigns worthy, based on both the values of the involved journalists and the marketability of the product being sold. In the theoretical broad strokes, public opinion can move the market and affect the sellers, but the sellers regularly adjust public opinion by what it places on the shelves, remaking our expectations according to what's offered, so long as the pill is just palatable enough to be swallowed. Naturally, they don't present it that way. News is presented as giving us what we want, like any good sales pitch. None of this has anything to do with objective truth.

This has happened because the new technology has allowed a centralizing of power in the dimension of information. This information infrastructure has overwhelmed the parochial cultural networks which used to create regional identity as well as passing along regional information that was limited enough to be verified and acted on. Since this world-shrinking shift, it should be no surprise that the state and local have lost power to the international and global. Even if the individual hesitates, the localized networks kept people in check with intimate relationships which enabled accountability, and that's not always fun. So the global media behemoth provides liberation of the individual from the rigors of localized interdependency as its incentive, and eventually, everyone who feels oppressed at some point in their lives - namely, everyone - hops on board at some point.

The media takes every emotionally-shared feature of humanity and twists it into a bland, broad narrative that reinforces the sense of good versus evil they want to reinforce. The details are pasted over as irrelevant. This is how emotional manipulation is done on a mass scale: crudely.

You can't do it any other way. The bigger the audience, the more broadly the net has to be cast. The standardized tricks work: you present your research seriously to encourage the impression that you are a professional, and show yourself interviewing and chasing the perps to encourage empathy. You use stock Bad Guy music in the background, or no music at all, depending on your level of seriousness. And you give little tidbits of "well, this could have been a mistake, so we carefully checked everything" to fool people into thinking you're being even-handed in your investigation.

Every time someone watches, a payment is made to them. In exchange, the viewer does not expect or even want even-handedness, not really. Once the facts have been established - or appropriately muddled - what the audience really wants is to watch the side that they've bought into kick some ass.

In a physical fight, brutal beatings of a clearly inferior opponent are taken as dishonorable. In the economic world, exploiting superior capital in hostile takeovers or dragging out court proceedings until the other side goes broke are clearly recognized as disgusting. There, in worlds run by men, we recognize the dangers of not giving all sides a sporting chance and expect restraint. But in the attention economy, dominated by liberals, where people have decided not to be conscious of the deep moral and consequential ambiguity of most situations, where the overdogs deny their own power even to themselves, they love a violent, honorless thrashing of the Chosen Demon Scapegoat. The behavior is just... primitive. I'd prefer the relative honesty of the Two Minutes Hate.

I'll take my manipulation right out there in the open.

And we should be so lucky to experience a media with the integrity of our financial sector. The financial sector loses its shit with every boom-bust cycle, which means about every sixty years. The media loses its shit as often as possible, because that's what draws eyeballs. They are not accountable for a healthy, stable society. They benefit from a crumbling foundation, which becomes film at eleven.

In the past, the ambiguity of truth in values provoked some forms of decorum when it came to argument. Debate is formalized. Academics love to say that they merely present information, not a biased cultural viewpoint. Despite our cynicism, some people still think that a formal trial actually serves the interests of discovering the truth. We still pay a very rough, dutiful attention to political conversations, supposedly without prejudging things, and scorn open hacks like Sean Hannity and Dylan Ratigan in dinner table conversation.

But they get great ratings. That's what actually matters. I really wish we could just admit that journalism is entertainment and nothing more. It can't get more obvious. After the non-stop coverage of Paris Hilton going to jail, and after realizing that most of your TV news gets delivered by chicks with great tits, what more do you need? The information economy is competitive, and they will draw you in. We don't want to know the reality; we want voyeur stimulus and ammunition for arguments. We want to win.

Now, you know they aren't on your side, so why would you listen to them? Do you think you'll be accused of close-mindedness? Why would you be considered close-minded for not listening to them, when there are so many other people in the world who's bullshit opinion you aren't listening to, who don't happen to have airtime on TV?

There are over three hundred million people in this one country alone. The press, as an institution, does very little to justify the superior attention income it gets from everyone else. Think about it as a matter of equality, for Christ's sake: why should we all pay attention to these people, focusing our minds where they say we should? Why not listen to Bill down the street? Why not listen to your grandma? The opportunity costs for spending time and effort listening to the press make it a terrible deal. These are big issues, issues other people higher in the hierarchy are supposed to handle, and the press isn't giving you the full story, ever, so why bother taking one side in a game where you have so little skin?

So, the solution is clear. Stop listening. Stop watching. Cut off the cable. Tune in to people you know and trust. Lend your ears to those who's values are close to your own. Keep your eyes local and pay attention to problems closer to you. Be a part of a community, not a make-believe global village.

Attack of the Extroverts!

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.     -This saying is older than Abe Lincoln or Mark Twain. No one is sure who first said it. 

A study observing introverts and extroverts has shown that introverts feel happier when they act like extroverts. Why? Professors of psychology, shockingly, can't figure that out. It's rather amusing to watch people who believe in a certain understanding of the mind struggle with a reality that does not conform to it, and in the process, reveal their stunning ignorance. In this case, a lack of understanding of personal motivation is making the shrinks look stupid. They assume that people find greater peace and satisfaction in simply acting naturally and being themselves, and somehow, this research doesn't corroborate that.

They aren't thinking economically.

It isn't simply about what's going on internally: the experiences of people in social situation, like parties or presentations, carry their own feedback, and people are certainly more outwardly-focused than these so-called experts are making them out to be. It's not simply the personal satisfaction of accomplishing a goal or getting a dopamine hit. Those things rely on the individual's ability to get what they want from the world around them.

So let's consider it through a different lens, one closer to social exchange theory than the feel-good dogmas of modern academic psychology.

The Marketable Man

Social interaction is made up of exchanges in the attention economy. Attention is the currency. Starting from here, think about the personalities involved.

The goal is simple acquisition of currency from a shallow perspective, but more deeply, it's the creation of relationships, the acquisition of information, shared identity, the establishment of community. The reward is empowerment through people, through the creation of social capital.

And a party of any kind usually comes down to a gathering of people who don't know each other all that well, but want to get into the mix. Everyone gets dressed in their coolest clothes, presenting themselves like companies issuing an IPO on the stock market.

And there's plenty of competition

They jump into an environment full of flirtations, witty rejoinders, humblebrags and low-key shit-talking. Those who are relaxed and confident, funny and attractive, they do the best. No telling what they'll look like in the morning, but hey: it's no risk, no reward when forging new speculative ventures.

The risks? You could be ignored, which means that you've wasted a little effort and been reminded that others aren't listening to you, which hits the self-esteem. Competition means that you are dealing with opportunity costs as people decide if they want to be around you or someone else. Everyone's calculations will be a little different, and the party frequently ends up divided into like-minded groups of people with things in common, a mini caste system. There is a more vivid risk, that you will be rejected or judged and that your input will end up hurting your chances of being liked, respected, listened to.

Introverts engage people carefully and selectively, whereas extroverts cast the net wide in their search for attention, playing the numbers, Roosh-style, developing the skill. And yes, extroverts get laid more, have more friends, present more effectively at work meetings, and have more connections generally.

Introverts are very conservative in their behavior, as they don't take chances and frequently expect the worst. In financial terms, they aren't doing high-risk, high-reward. They're staying alive with CD's from the bank, betting on sure things alone. They aren't constantly chatting up the pretty girl or trying to make business connections with guys up the ladder. They don't shove themselves into your face, but typically mind their business and expand their sphere cautiously. That's the result of feedback, of lessons learned: introverts, at first, do see more ways things can go wrong, are more conscientious of what they say, and calculate more, and the hesitation becomes part of their demeanor after a while.

Now, why do introverts seem to be happier when they act like extroverts? Because they DO expect the worst, and the worst rarely happens. Our culture has been pushing nonjudgmentalism for a long time now, and it's very rare for people to flat-out tell one another that they don't like them, or to shame them in some way. We are, remember, more and more a culture of niceness to the point of dishonesty or absurdity. When it comes to dealing others, we're like Thumper in Bambi: if you can't say something nice...  

The result is, when introverts do take a chance, they feel empowered. They don't need to be in love with attention to enjoy this, just like people don't have to be in love with money to enjoy having more of it. People get a kick of pleasure when things go better than expected.

That experience of better-than-expected feedback is a lot like the one I learned when I first tried out opening a small business. It looks risky from the outside, tough to pull off, and the people who get into it might seem intense, cliquish, almost like a different species. But the more you try, the more you figure out that normal people can do it if they really care, and have some drive, a decent instinct on who to trust, plus a decent idea. Both the pleasures and pains of throwing yourself out into the market have been exaggerated.

But that doesn't mean that everyone should do it.

Extroversion is Still Overrated

The thing about the commentary on the study that gets annoying is the constant references to brain biology, which constantly underrates how people are shaped by interactions. Genetics matter, but not to the point of being absolutely deterministic. And just because people are tolerant to the point of rarely being rude doesn't mean that they like everyone equally.

Sometimes, extroverts are obnoxious. When you meet one of those people who absolutely refuses to shut the fuck up, it gets annoying.

You can only say that people enjoy being extroverted when you assume the feedback they get is positive. If you're outgoing with a group that doesn't approve, then the results likely won't make anyone feel better. There's safety and growth in being a part of the group - to a degree - but the welcome isn't guaranteed just because we say everyone should be inclusive. Today, people are less likely to call you out when you say something stupid, but they still know you've said something stupid.

The researchers tend to act like everyone treats everyone the same and the only difference is in the way the subject experiences otherwise-identical feedback. That's certainly not the case: you know that smart, funny, good-looking people get treated differently than those who are not, and while shame and insult might be more rare than a polite dismissal, we are attuned to recognize when the people we're around would prefer to be around someone else. The disapproval is subtle, but it's there. I know of marriages that have ended because of these subtleties, when all the fakery in the world won't save one from another's real opinion.

So obviously, I'm not convinced that opening up to everyone creates more happiness all the time; for the introvert acting extroverted, the yields probably drop as time goes on and the expectations change. Extroverts play social games more fluently, and they will always say they're happy. They have a lot of experience marketing themselves, and they know that it's a bad idea to present a face to the world that reflects their own anxiety or frustration. The "extroverts are happy" results of the study are from self-assessments: would you expect them to tell the truth all the time? Even to themselves?

And of course, in a society so attention hungry, those who avoid the crowds will be looked at like freaks by those who don't, which just might have something to do with the results of the study. Some extroverts will hold their tongues as they judge those who value their time alone, with their weird recalcitrance and suspiciously measured behavior, but the judgment will be there. There will probably always be an impression that those who don't talk have something to hide and are less trustworthy, or they don't have anything to say at all and are less interesting. Extroverts want everyone networking all the time, because despite the measured wrongness of the idea, they think that society is more efficient, effective, and enjoyable if you do everything in groups. Minding your business? That's for standoffish dicks.

The ideal of the extrovert, and of living in an extroverted world, is an ideal where trust can be taken for granted. It's an ideal built on openness to experience, viewing people as good and each new personality as a greener pasture. An eternal optimist will always see potential in new faces, all the upsides and none of the potential downsides.

The economic view of the situation creates two different attitudes, and these attitudes can be seen as perspectives that you can take towards market economies in general. In the optimist's view of economic exchange, human interaction is a beneficial, binding, enriching fusion into a big happy family filled with people who really want to make each other's lives better, and they have only minimal concern for whether they are giving more than they're getting out of it. The other way to look at the economy is as a competitive environment with winners and losers, risks to go along with the rewards.

There is a difference between those who look at the current global economic situation and see a coming-together of disparate cultures for mutual beneficial exchange where pointless barriers are broken, and those who see a new challenge for their culture to win, where there is a real danger of ending up becoming lost in the shuffle. You can say that both are right, but in a competitive world, the latter is closer to holding an honest assessment of the situation's dangers than the former. The optimists aren't expecting to end up on the losing end, either, and that's why they can be optimistic.

These perspectives come into play when you're meeting people, too.

But would you really want a society where every individual is out there scrambling for all the attention they can get, screaming for it, never listening and barely able to wait for their turn to speak? Do you want a society where the introverts become extroverts and add their desire for attention into an overcrowded marketplace? Isn't the competition ruthless enough? We're already halfway there, so ask yourself: does it make for a better culture?

Attention is scarce, and thus its distribution will be unequal. We will always have the wallflower and the life of the party, in relative terms. The distribution of attention that comes from these differences may not be the most efficient, or productive, or morally correct by any standard. That's why cultures have formal hierarchies and organization: because when it matters, qualifications and experience give someone's input greater value than coincidentally having a talent for attracting eyeballs.

Just because they're interesting doesn't make them the right people to pay attention to. As often as not, I'd gamble that the type of people who put more effort into making sure they are heard don't put as much effort into making sure they have something of importance to say. It's the empowerment they're after, as individuals, competing. And it's often just better to tune them out, or stay at home and drink with people you know.