Throughout my life I’ve been fascinated by political epistemology. I have probably occupied most positions on most big issues at one point or another in my life and the question of how people come to ‘know’ things, and the process by which people form beliefs, is my paramount concern.
Many North Koreans ‘know’ that their regime is justified and correct, for instance. To us in the West, it is among the most indefensible power structures which exist today. Is it POSSIBLE that they are right, or at least more right than we would ever acknowledge? Are there objectively accurate facts which are not known or accessible to us which could support a pro-North Korean outlook? Are there coherent political values which would lead one to sympathize with that nation?
I doubt it… but I’m not sure. I’ll give you an example, to leave the realm of generalities. Nick Bostrom is a philosopher concerned with existential risk. One of his thought experiments is the ‘urn of inventions’ (described in his paper The Vulnerable World Hypothesis, linked below). In this hypothetical model, every possible invention open to humanity sits in an urn, concealed from us, until it is developed and begins to be implemented and spread (at which time it’s too late to place it back into the urn). Each invention is depicted as a ball, of different hues: white, grey, or black. White inventions (balls) have effects with almost no direct downside… like modern desalinization processes, or the development of penicillin. Grey balls (which represent the vast majority of balls in the urn) are mixed: they have significant benefits for humanity but have serious risks and incumbent harms. Examples of this might be the internal combustion engine or the invention of synthetic opiate drugs.
The Urn of Inventions'
Perhaps, though, there are black balls in the urn: technological devices or pathways which ONLY entail risk and harm. The (imaginary) example given in his paper is if nuclear explosions could be created using simple combinations of sand and glass and energy. Such a discovery would allow the generation of civilization-killing events by almost anyone. Its discovery would be the sudden appearance of a black ball. There’s currently debate about practices around gain-of-function research and the publicizing of viral genomic data. In the future, when recombinant RNA alterations or new innovations become cheap and easy do we really want the full spectrum of ebola genomes (for instance) available as publicly-available data files, fully available to anyone with a dial-up internet connection?
Aviator’s view of the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear explosion ever created-50 megatons, or 10 times the combined explosive power of every bomb, missile, and piece of ordinance used over the 5-year course of WW2
The reason I bring this up is that one of the most workable and helpful measures in response to a world with black balls in its urn would (according to Bostrom) be a kind of totalitarian state, a regime with expansive powers over research and education and privacy to address the danger of unhinged or hateful or nihilistic actors using these extremely dangerous discoveries. Such a regime might be the only way that we could still have cities and technology and education at all. In other words, in a world with black balls in its urn, North Korea might be the superior model.
We can move past Bostrom’s ideas and observe that our current hyper-technologized civilization is moving forward at an accelerating rate, putting increasing strain on human norms and family patterns and evolved tendencies of identity and group formation. Even without the potential risks of AI (something else that Bostrom has written extensively about - I highly recommend his work) perhaps our society would be better off in the long run if our individual freedoms and desires weren’t directing the course of our civilization through the arenas of representative democracy, and the market. Perhaps this level of technological growth in the context of decentralized capitalist markets is going to introduce greater and greater instability until the system reestablishes equilibrium with general collapse. Perhaps the rigid stability and neutralization of individual desires is a feature of North Korean society, not a bug?
I obviously don’t necessarily believe any of this, but I think there are a lot of thinkers active in the United States today who do support greater autocracy and command control of society on some basis or another and I think such people are usually less than totally open and transparent about their ultimate goals.
In any case, while I would say I’m 95% certain that the American model is superior to the North Korean one, I wouldn’t say I was sure. Yet I do feel sure about some things…
(The Vulnerable World Hypothesis)
Why do I introduce these questions? The biggest issues I see American society confronting right now are not questions about economic distributions or political structure. They are cultural debates about the level or unfairness and oppression in our society and the ways to address them. Anyone who believes that there is a high and built-in level of oppression in contemporary America, and everyone who believes that the ways to resolve this are a series of illiberal moves (racial discrimination, suppression of speech or expression, control of free economic or social activity, monopolization of institutions, concealment of real goals of policies or ideas, etc.) is someone who I would place within or adjacent to the category of Critical Theorist: someone who believes that the most urgent task is to tear down the current system, with less thought or urgency given to what might replace it. These thinkers and activists can also be called American University Worldview-holders or Social Justice Activists or ‘Woke’. They are instantly recognizable by their unbalanced and shortsighted critiques of the modern West and their naked drive to change it in some vague and poorly-defined direction or another. Below I will refer to this group as 'the Left’, which I do elsewhere, because the Left has been predominately captured by these ideas. I don’t think there are many dedicated Leftist organizations which are not now trying to promote these values and this narrative.
I actually do not wonder if they are right, and I am wrong. I feel more and more certain that they are not right and it’s not because of any knowledge or argument. My reasons are more general. Here they are:
The Left refuses to debate those who disagree, on ANY of the major issues - you will see progressives and liberal economists and cultural figures debating, certainly. Look at the most heated topics, though: anti-racism, gender ideology, the biomedical ethics sex change procedures for minors… these topics are NEVER honestly confronted in public unless all of the people involved are in agreement. That is a huge red flag.
The Left isn’t honest about the behavior and motivations of its activists - the (overused) psychological term here would be ‘gaslighting’ and it’s not ubiquitous but let’s use one particular example: CRT in schools. We could spend hours debating exactly what is and is not CRT but what 95% of people mean by CRT is a worldview that says that racism is still widespread, is systemic, and is so pervasive that race should be taught and dissected in many different contexts and that black and white students (and citizens) have profoundly separate and irreconcilably different experiences in this country. If you believe those things (which most of the Left does, at this point) you will probably want to instruct students in them too. Parents who disagree object, and instead of acknowledging that these ideas are being diffused through the classroom we see a blanket denial that anything is happening. Leftists have ideas that they want to spread as widely as possible, but in order to reduce friction and controversy they deny that they have any agenda whatsoever. This applies to teaching about American history and gender & sexuality and several other topics. It’s fundamentally dishonest.
The Left frames debates in terms of decency or historical progress - related to the previous item, but still different, is the moral complacency that the Left uses to shut down debate or claim moral high ground. On issues of race and gender and identity, the Left historically was correct, but their values now are exactly the opposite of what they were then (they were all involved with the expansion of the traditional liberal order of legal equality and fairness-not its restraint or overthrow). Liberals can claim historical redemption on many points. Leftists cannot. If you believe that conservatives are chiefly motivated by racism or homophobia I encourage that you find some and speak to them. I think you’ll be surprised. Nevertheless, that is often the beginning and end of the Left’s treatment of the the conservative position: they’re bigots, they’re selfish, they’re angry. Anyone who bases their worldview or public statements upon such beliefs is either deluded or dishonest.
The Left is proposing ideas and solutions which have NEVER been tried - radicals-in any society-tend to lean toward moralizing and absolutism, but the modern United States is FAR more diverse and dynamic and technologically intricate than any society which has ever existed. When we hear rhetoric about ‘dismantling’ our society we should be extremely cautious. Dismantling our society, taken literally, means to raze to the foundations its institutions and infrastructures and supply chains, which would result in the deaths of most Americans. Even a metaphorical ‘dismantling’ should provoke the questions like: ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Has this ever been tried?’ ‘Can you provide some historical examples of similar proposals and explain those results?’
The Left is moving beyond the realm of science - Any worldview which relies upon objective data and sober analysis can’t stray too deeply into insanity (although its values can still be pathological). The Left still relies on science (or at least credentialism and the ‘appeal to authority’ logical fallacy-not the same thing) for resolutions to many questions. When it comes to gender ideology, though, they are beyond the borders of science and have now become anti-science in many cases. Similarly, with questions of fairness and competition and social incentives (subjects which should be usefully informed by economics and sociology) their beliefs are now contrary to science. There is also the huge and alarming reality that many fields of social science have been corrupted by Critical Theory, and are now false epistemologies.
The Left doesn’t even appeal to truth as an ideal or a desired destination any longer - which brings us to this: in many areas of Leftist social inquiry, ‘truth’ is seen as a racist/transphobic/etc./etc. concept. They have adopted postmodern concepts of the flexibility or relativism of words and ideas, and made them universal… except when it comes to the ideas they hold dear, in which case the familiar old standards of moral worth and objective truth apply, Any worldview with glaring an nonsensical contradictions like this in its fundamental epistemology must be badly mistaken…