Speculation
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Steelmaning Yarvin
The need to steelman Yarvin came to my while I was running a few days ago.
The best I can come up with is a modification of Kling’s civilization/barbarism axis, to wit, his contribution can be described as:
Assume the world slides back and forth on a spectrum of civilization and barbarism. Each increase in civilization comes with a decrease in barbarism, and vice versa (both have benefits, structure, dynamism, equilibrium, etc). Yarvin can be thought of as contributing the thought that civilization can decay in place. The benefits of civilization can decrease with no increase in barbarism. Basically a decrease in structure without an increase in dynamism.Now that I’ve written that out (in less than 45,000 words) I will go back to disliking Yarvin.
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Ideas to explore
- Ideology as the usable consensus of extreme personality types – see my “Let’s Kill Hitler” book idea. Basically the ideology evolves not as the continuation of first principles, but as a series of compromises on the part of part of the extreme personalities involved – basically the ideology is whatever allows a certain collection of extreme personalities to work together. Cooperation is the important thing – not the consequences. An extreme ideology will be composed of extreme members and so forth. See the the alt-right and modern wokeness. This seems graphable.
- Historical changes and atmospheric pollutants – this idea needs more research, but ideological and religious extremism tracks quite nicely with leaded gas and high tobacco usage. A doubtful relationship – but seemingly possible.