Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the spare time as podcast, I'm your host Youngsville in particular, and this podcast is meant to give Oxford students of whatever age or degree the ability to talk about passions they have in academia, anything that they find interesting. They don't have to study it. Sometimes it's simply their hobby. Sometimes they are experts and sometimes they are or they will be or are becoming one of the leading thinkers in the topics that we talk about.
Today's topic is conservatism. Which is very vague and a lot of people talk about it, but few people know what it actually means. My two guests today are Edward McLarin, who is a second year student at Keble College studying English and being the progressive thinker and leader that he is. He's also the president of the Oxford University English Society. So welcome, Edward.
And also with me is I felt I was reading four different economic and social history where he focuses on international financial history.
His broader research interests stretch from financial history to finance, financial economics, business history and and many more years previously previously studied history, political science and economics at the University of Tubingen in Germany, Harvard University and the University of Oxford in the latter place where he gained his masc in economic and social history in twenty eighteen. Welcome, guys. We will jump into the conversation shortly.
We have actually just already we've started and you will find us in the middle of a conversation. So the gears are already churning and people are turning out brilliant thoughts. At least the other two are not so sure about myself. But we'll get to that. So what we will talk about is conservatism, both its history but also its philosophy.
What does it mean? How has it how has it developed? And we will scratch many different sides of it and even come to how psychology and conservative conservatism are shown to be linked and what the combination and the connexion between those two is also how it relates to new technology and how the pandemic and social media have affected people's political outlook. So it's going to be a very interesting episode. We have prepared notes, all of us, and we've read each other's notes.
So this just to know where we're coming from. And yeah, we were chatting and you caught us in the middle. So here's our discussion. And as always, you know, at the end, give us a subscribe to our podcast and also give us feedback and criticism. We're always interested to to hear and to learn more about what you think, how we could make it better. But for now, please enjoy our episode with Ed and other.
I want you to listen to me not just long or as bombastic, but secondly, he's no longer a follower of Marx. He's loving Engels instead. Science is interesting. You don't agree. You can [INAUDIBLE] off. So as we are speaking on this, Ed, I think you were making a brilliant point about the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, something something like that. Well, I would say the point was necessarily brilliant, but it was concerned with the elusiveness of conservatism as one of its key components.
The Stanford Dictionary of Philosophical Terms, I think it's called, summarises this point excellently. There's this paragraph compared to liberalism and socialism, conservatism has suffered philosophical neglect. Many deny that it is an ideology or even a political philosophy regarding it.
Instead, as a disposition that resists theoretical expression for them to being to be saying that means that there is quite a significant problem on our hands with categorising what is really one of the big three ideologies besides leftism centrism, slash liberalism. And I think this can be summarised pretty well in another academic article that of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Conservatism, or conservative, originated in the tends in the writings of René Vicomte, the Chateaubriand as an explicitly anti revolutionary pro Borbon restoration line of thought. And yet, nonetheless, what I find so interesting about it is that when you look at how this etymology is laid out, you have three different meanings.
Seemingly from the very beginning. You have one A the holding of conservative principles, the tendency to resist great or sudden change, especially in politics, adherence to traditional values and ideas. Be the specific the doctrine or practise of the Conservative Party of Great Britain emerging slightly later, but still a party categorisation in postrevolutionary France. And then you've got the dictionary definition to which is the biological one, the tendency to resist evolutionary change.
So right there we have three categorical well, three distinct categories of what conservatism is in a general sense. Great. So that is already a good introduction to some of the origins and also the complexity of the term.
And problematically, I would say that conservatism means something very different, depending on what time you look at and the place that you are actually referring to, especially if you look at today's United States and you use the conservative, the term conservative, there is something probably very different to what you just described and what you probably refer to also as some of the ideas of Edmund Burke.
I really liked both of your notes and they were really helpful for me to get a good understanding of what a conservative means or can mean. I also like the way you just structured it into liberalism. I think you said leftism and conservatism and welfare. Could you also what would you what would you think are some of the hallmarks of conservatism? What if you if you look at the term, how would you go about defining it or giving some sort of insights into what should be understood under it?
Yeah, I think I think building on what I just started to to go on about might be to in my mind and in what I what I read in the last couple of years and months building up, I'd say it's not only an elusive concept based on based on definitions and such compared especially to what what that called leftism or classical liberalism, which lit up more, you know, ideologically defined and have not, as you just said, you can change that much in there in their particular essence,
you know, liberalism with a focus on individual freedom and then, you know, taking it further towards stress on free market, free individual choice and a small part of the state that's basically around, you know, forcing property contracts and enforcing contracts in general. Whereas conservatism in my in my view and what what about what I think represents that is a bit more of a pragmatic tradition, a bit more of a tradition that comes of a very bottom up.
Social, social tie, construct, social, what Edmund Burke, for example, called his little platoons, you notice these ties in between people that then form defined specific political issues that they want to focus on and that they are approaching,
but not in an, you know, coherent ideological view. But more about, you know, one specific issue that concerns a a set of people on a you could say micro and then go on to the macro level of the nation that that's formed out of these, you know, smaller constructs and the trying to approach those by the, you know, culture, shared norms, values and so on that are important for these for this view, which obviously, you know, change over time.
That's why you have in my view, that's like changing concept of conservatism over time, much more than in the US, like more ideological based political directions. Wonderful. That is, those are some of the most important points that I also picked up on. I would I would like to go into detail about two things that you said, because they they are very, in my mind, at least very crucial to the concepts and something I didn't think too much about before.
And those are the ones you said just as bottom up structure of society. Can you can you just briefly explain what you mean by that and then what? It's not in what would be the opposite and also how this idea of little platoons maybe is to be understood, because I think those are two absolute core concepts. And I think if we can get our audience on to to understand those concepts, that's going to be very helpful for and for understanding classical conservatism.
Better, I would think. Yeah, I think and at please, please join in whenever you see fit. I just going to start with your second question, because I think it relates to the first one.
And then so the little platoons, as far as I understood them in Boksburg, basically, you know, they represent this idea that society as a whole is a you know, society as a whole is bound together by small ties, by ties amongst, you know, family, amongst close friends, amongst social connexions, on the micro level, on the individual level, indeed.
And these relations, you know, they depend on on on trust, on affection, you know, affection amongst amongst friends, amongst family, amongst colleagues and so on. And this is basically the foundation of society. You know, society isn't and isn't an elusive concept.
Let's get that get put on to some people living together in a certain area or something, but rather the opposite, which is, you know, this idea of bottom up again is some people forming together these social ties based on their relationships and on their norms and the on the on the on the on the mutual trust and so on.
And, you know, the idea I think that that puts up there is basically that without these, you know, social ties on the micro, on the individual level of function that are actually functioning based on this mutual trust and affection, society could not work in the way it should be working or that should be working towards the what we say, like common good or overall, overall good for society.
It's also the place, you know, it's also the place where the traditions form and traditions play an important role because these little platoons are, you know you know, I'm a building individual case, for example, where I'm from a very small village in Germany originally. And, you know, you have you basically know everyone in the village.
And the ties amongst these people are very strong based on exactly these traditions that are built up amongst these people, which basically done, you know, leads to leads to their integration in the overall community again. Yeah, I'd say that's as much as I could to that.
And then again, as I said, like this goes up to the bottom bottom up approach, whereas, you know, on the top down approach, it's more about which is probably, you know, more common amongst the progressive and the left wing philosophical traditional political tradition where you have like an idea of society as a macro construct of where you want to go, of where you want people to to to act in a certain way based on, you know,
rules that are that are that are made and laws are passed based on an idea where you want to have your society towards and society there. Understood more on the macro level than on this individual closed micro level. Splendid. Thank you. Oh, absolutely. I just wanted to put the particular issues that Rafael was discussing in some detail into a historical context.
I've already brought up the French Revolution, but if we're going to talk about Edmund Burke, who is really the conservative master intellectual in the modern sense, then we have to mention that perhaps the most politically significant book he wrote about the little platoons was published in 1790 as as an account against the growing chaos over in France.
And it is widely acknowledged today is still predicting the horrors of the terror, the final climax of revolutionary violence that was formerly totally unexpected.
And he does this by directly contrasting what we come to know later as the little platoons idea with the Jacobins idea of society, an intellectual cabal invading the public space and not only uprooting public rules, tradition, no moss to use the Greek legal term from Xenephon, Plato and Aristotle, meaning names and laws, but also the little people, the civilians, the second and third estate and even below who these traditions have grown out from.
That's the crucial part of this conservative cosmology. We might even say, since it expands into various forms of theology. Traditions are valuable and inherent precisely because they emerge from groups of people, from circles you have yourself, your family, your town, your city, county, nation. And if those links are severed, then at least according to Burke, what happens is you get this extremely dangerous, rationalistic society.
And the reason we can tell that this is still incredibly relevant to conservatism is the language of emergency that is consistently evoked. One of Margaret Thatcher's most brilliant campaign slogans when she was just running for parliament in the 1950s, I think was a vote right. To save what's left, you have to conserve these little structures, these elements of glue in society that are represented by the mass.
Otherwise everything is going to collapse. And for this reason, it's also important to clarify that while conservatism seems to have this immense faith in community tradition and the collective, so on and so on, people like Burke did not believe in a priori value judgements like Kant. They felt that tradition was quite a delicate substance that had to be maintained and Burke would say pruned in order to make sure that society runs itself.
So this spawned not only in Bach's time, but also in the subsequent ages when he was translated into German and, as I've said, popularised by people like Michael Oakeshott in the 20th century into a great prejudice against social change. And I mean that word prejudiced and prejudice, in more than one sense, an opposition to new orders purely to maintain the society and associates as they are because.
As Nosik eventually said, it seems as if the state is built upon this great flaming dark anarchy and it could collapse at any particular point, I'm paraphrasing great. Now, I think Adria did a great job on putting it in the proper historical context of Burke's work, maybe one additional point building on that and his perception of, you know, Burke's perception of the French Revolution, which was, you know, very much influenced by the work of Rousseau.
And I think it's quite interesting. I think it's in Roger Stratton's book on conservatism explained quite well this relation between, like, you know, the Austrian idea of of of freedom of of the state building, of a social contract, and in his idea that actually, you know, is is quite contrarian to to what Burke puts forward in the sense that, you know, it's it's disregard of executives like traditions that then became,
you know, in the French Revolution were abandoned or basically, you know, destroyed more or less. So I think it's just interesting to you also to add to this not only on a political basis, but also on a philosophical basis between, you know, this revolution based on the ideas of Rousseau versus Burke's comments. I would also add that Burke's argument is taking place between not just two but three revolutions. The man was awake in parliament, deriving from the slow and moral cattle drive.
You know, you want to represent and control the mass. You're driving the cattle. And he was very much in favour of the American Revolution and was a great fan of Jefferson, if not Thomas Paine. And the reason he admired Jefferson was because the man had a great education and understanding of the common law tradition in England.
What he essentially did in making the amendments and I shouldn't use that were making the additions to constitutional documents was to ingratiate the figure of traditional law without necessarily a traditional monarchy. And the recent book, as I think I suggested, was comfortable doing this. And why other people were comfortable doing this was because England had done the same thing during the Glorious Revolution.
They had removed the Catholic King James the second and negotiated a Bill of Rights in 1889 with Queen Anne that would permit them certain liberties. I love this point, especially because I think it's a very, very deep rooted point in not only like, you know, you see not only in his philosophical tradition, but it's very, very deep rooted, this idea of what Scruton calls trusteeship for, you know, the future generations by inheriting what what came from the generations before.
And I mean, you see it in the idea of in Christianity about the Holy Trinity and so on. You can infer from that or you can you can see it and basically a lot of other different mythologies. For example, the Greek idea of the three skulls and so on, of the three Norns reading, the past, the present and the future.
Together with this principle, the idea of, you know, you're not a free individual in the sense that it's only what's the maxim of your actions is not only about you, but it's based on what came before you and what comes after you, which should be the guidance towards your actions. I really like that point that you just mentioned with the ancient traditions, especially because even if I remember correctly, even the gods, the Olympians were bound by the Moirai and by the fates, so to speak.
And even they had some overarching principles that had come before them, basically, you know, from from the Titans that came before the Olympians and some of the rules that were set by, I guess, by supernatural concepts and principles.
Anyways, an unscheduled question that just arose and that you guys mentioned or danced around, possibly even already discussed, but I would like to go into more detail in is the question of if we talk about laws and how they come into into the present, what do you think Burke and other thinkers like him would have thought of the common law tradition versus something like the European Court of Justice that has only recently begun its work?
And what do you think their concerns or their opinions on that would be? And how would a traditionally conservative thinker view those institutions? With respect to growing up in a common law system or no respect either rule, it's important to recognise that such systems only tend to come about when the country can either afford it or the country is old enough to trust in itself,
to trust in the things that have emerged over time. I think that Berk's crucial problem with Ikeja law, for instance, would be similar to the problem that many early conservatives or even conservative Wick's had with John Locke, with the idea that certain rights had to be guaranteed. And in order to guarantee those rights, you had to make a kind of pact with God. This is what he talks about and his two treaties of liberty. That's the grounding of all rights.
And to find a modern equivalent for it, we could just say the disrespecting of tradition in these very large international bodies, but would have cringed if he saw Spain, for instance, being represented by the same officials as France. These are very deep. So these are very, very deeply rooted differences between national identities.
And for BRK, it would suggest in the same sense that brings up a different dassin, a different mode of being for each national identity or at least some sort of realms of existence. So reconciling these realms and simply trying to flatten them out, he would regard is ultimately destructive and dismissive and illegitimate because the little platoon basis is not there. And it's not just back. It's people like Samuel Johnson as well, who was arguably a lot more conservative than he was.
Johnson didn't like the American Revolution very much solely because he was far more concerned with the literary or metaphysical aspects of the nation and particularly the English colonies. So if one separated that he felt or we might all be in danger of fragmenting, I don't put as much stock in that idea. But it does show you what the the conservative standard viewpoint has been then and often how similar it is to now. I just remembered a talk by Roger Scruton.
He's I think he's now deceased, but I think but only recently and he gave a talk in Germany at the I don't know, something like the institution of conservatism, hostis conservatism or something like that. And he talked about the problem with the European Union in the sense without being too political, which is very easy to get into.
But just the basic point that if you think of conservatism as an organism that grows organically and that basically has wisdom in it, that's immune to rationalisation to a certain point, then how could it be that you create a chord from scratch with people who have such different individual organisms, if you will, and subject them into a No. One chord? And I think that is the point that Ed also mentioned.
And I would think that is problematic and being coming from from a civil law background in Germany, we have. Um, a slightly different system where we would create laws as we saw them fit and then we would try to use those laws to solve problems. However, the common law perspective would would be that you just let the courts decide. And then over the centuries and possibly millennia, you have a body of decisions that you can draw from in order to solve similar problems.
And that is in as far as I understand it, and I don't know if I read this somewhere from you, Ed, overfilling one of either of your notes, that could be sometimes I forget where I get my ideas or if I read it somewhere else. But that seems like the Archerd typical is that a word archetypical source of conservatism, because it's basically it evolves naturally, as Toby Ladka from Shopify once said, it's an emergent system. So it just like maybe like artificial intelligence in a way.
What do you guys think? But I think it's important to clarify that the conservative tradition that we can trace back to the Greeks, or at least Greek etymology puts puts this this special emphasis on technik, on on knowledge that his technique vs. knowledge that is no mosse and likely inherited or emergent from one's role.
If you're if you're looking at Germany specifically, the country went through such a terrible crisis in the 20th century that it essentially had to start from kind of year zero spot with its authority. And you can argue, more controversially, that most of Europe had to do the same thing just to restore confidence in itself. But this this requires a huge amount of ideological emphasis and focus.
And it's not necessarily the same as what is, you know, just evolutionary, what will produce itself or seem to produce itself no matter what. But on a specific note, in relation to the European Union Commission, especially recently, there has been a a data law change or at least proposed data law change from the UK that seems to reveal some of the problems with this particular conservative attitude, or at least its inability to maintain itself in the modern world.
And what I mean by this is that the EU has always been 10 or 20 years ahead of the UK in data protection law. It's had to manage a much bigger system. It's fairly obvious why. But for that reason, the EU was capable of exercising this soft power over UK during the late 90s and 2000s as the as the dataflow market increased. I think it's something like 75 percent of the service industry's data flows are transferred with the European Union.
And now the European Union has this immense legal tradition, or at least basic legal tradition that the UK does not possess so that they can negotiate not only adequacy agreements for whether or not the UK is fit to trade with the EU outside or in outside or in the European Union as a member state, but also in the very precise mythological terms that we established earlier.
You can't just make a common law argument about this kind of thing. Technology is very existential for conservatism because it demands authority. And if the authority there is international or globalised, there's no way you can simply, you know, point to a document 700 years old with really no connexion to, I don't know, let's say, iPhone manufacturing and electronic exposure at schools and so on screen exposure and say, oh, look, we're going to be our own authority on it.
So I think there has to be a certain legitimacy, a certain conservative legitimacy in bodies like the European Union with respect to these matters. And that's going to force conservatism to change if it wants to stay relevant at all, which it might not. But we'll see. I love the point about applying that to to a modern day, a modern day, a problem.
I just wanted to add to to my thoughts based on my perception of this kind of, you know, common law versus civil law issues based on I kind of always try to to think of them as as a bit of a resemblance of the difference between rationalism and empiricism in intellectual traditions and enlightenment.
Basically, you know, the common law representing more of a, you know, trial and error empiricist approach, whereas the civil law system probably resembles a bit more of a rationalist idea where you try to to fit something based on reasoning. Obviously, it's it's just a maybe even a skewed perception.
But I think it's an interesting way to think about it based on, you know, what we just about what you add and what you just pointed out based on the importance of of tradition over a significant period of time on this trial. And error doesn't work from from scratch that well for for the system to work well in the common law system. Brilliant. I hadn't I never thought about this, but it makes sense. I don't know if there are any arguments against viewing it that way.
And I'm sure and I'm sure it's more complex in practise. But it does make a lot of sense when you when you say like this that the civil law background seems to be at least if you break it down to the basics, something more, something like a planned entity that you construct on in in an ivory tower, if you will. And the other thing is just something that you get by certain heuristics from hundreds of years of experience.
That is. And it's very interesting that the problem nowadays, of course, with the EU is that the EU, at least in I mean, it's a weird amalgamation of both where you have a central court who's who has a sort of a precedent system where you actually have to look at their decisions. And it's more important than the actual legislation. And it's complicated. But but apart from that, that's a that's a really great way of framing it.
And very interesting. This distinction that we've made between kinds of laws, I think.
Connects very nicely to one of the biggest divides that we see develop in what discipling would call the counter enlightenment period, that between people who eventually establishment figures, let's say William Haslet, William Wordsworth, not necessarily philosophers, but people that converted after they saw Vidacare and so on, and those individuals that really went all the way with the violence or with their support of violence and yet somehow maintained a strange kind of conservative bent.
There were some individuals, even before Berk's time, that billin again called the true founders of Romanticism.
These were herter. And and harder, of course, was this very, very strong German nationalist, perhaps the first one that referred to ideas analogous to Schmitt's description of NamUs and the necessary defence of prejudice in order to keep society around, but also a very strange, semih, revolutionary attitude to what society should be that completely clashed with what Burke was going for.
The other big example before. But of course, also influencing people after Berk's time was Harman, who was a religious scholar, religious man, and he might say he was formerly a drunken, mad man. He updated himself, who was a great influence on the writings of Gerta and also a neighbour of Immanuel Kant.
And we can summarise this very strong distinction between romantic, anti rationalist, almost conservatism and empiricists rationalist enlightenment thought by just considering one of their discussions, supposedly Kant was going out on his walk, I think for Piana, as he always was known to do, and he bumped into Harman and he said to Harman, again, I'm not quoting directly. Wouldn't it be great if we could just take a science, find all the answers to it and get rid of it, just dismiss the thing?
And Hodgman was horrified by this. He said absolutely not. No, no, no, no, no. Maybe Kant walked off then, but his rationale was, we live in a high darrian practically or preheating Garryowen temporality where nothing can be solved. And in order to behove behold a fourfold vision of reality that is imaginative and inspiring and connects us to human beings and their emanations to become a little more blackfin,
we have to leave certain things up to chance. But but this this is the rationalist, sorry, romanticist element of conservatism coming through. You could even say pre fascist as as George Steiner would argue. I realised my chronology has been a bit all over the place here, but it's a very important distinction. And speaking of German thinkers and Noma's, I remember an interesting part of your notes, Edge, where you spoke of Schmidt, would you?
And the reason, the connexion to theology. Can you briefly touch on that? Absolutely. I think, first of all, we should get out there that unlike Spiegler, who just voted for Hitler, if such a thing can be said because he believed in Static's cesarian regimes and Heidegger who to get wanted in academic promotion, think of that what you will, but later renounced his Naziism. Schmidt remained committed throughout most of his most of his life.
And still, if you're going to study Nazism or rather study Schmidt, you have to sign a wager that you're not going to use his work in a bad way. That is the significance and danger of what we're talking about. So it's the area where conservatism enters a very dangerous field, but significantly and his ideas are not only rather adjacent to what Burke was talking about, but but strangely even postmodernist.
At the same time, he wrote this two volume book called Political Theology, the first book or first volume, the concept of the political being the most significant.
And in this text, he suggested that and this is both of them, that all of the old political, social and might we might even say spiritual structures that had given way or given command to a mythical Judeo-Christian God in order to be utilised today to any significance that replace God with a lawyer had to replace God with the supreme law of the system.
In this way. He's also often compared to mystical racist thinkers like Julius Savola, who emphasised all of this very, very occult, anti Christian Nazi stuff because he thought that was a good way of establishing this before the law legal precedent in society. But but Schmidt suggests in the concept of the political as well, that most of our interactions as a society are based on this friend enemy dichotomy.
There are certain people that we must treat as our friends that we must respect because of their ethnic similarities to ourselves. And there are other people who we might personally get on with, but who we must disregard and maltreat because they are different.
You can smell the horrific anti-Semitism through the pages of the work, and yet it itself shows a glimmering, terrible example of how the prejudice that people like BRK defended and common advocated in practise, becoming something rich and horrific in a true systematic political nature. This is conservatism gone rotten, gone technological in the most dangerous of ways.
How what you say to which is you say that that's a result based on, you know, the lack of of know common, let's say let's say a common value structure, a value system in the sense of VEBER based on, you know, the decline of of faith of Christianity, that that left Aslak, left this void of of of a fundamental truth or fundamental axiom that could give a hole to a hole to two to people where they actually,
you know, long for something better, can define what you said as a maxim of ultimate truth, ultimate good or ultimate bad, or is that is that something that would that would be like inherent in conservatism, no matter in what kind of society? I don't know. Maybe even a name in a still religious society that still has, you know, this value system in place.
Excellent point, I would say, since you're referring to decline so much, we either have to talk about Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which is a remarkably conservative but also anti Christian text. Or we can talk about Ausborn Spangler's The Decline of the West. And I think Spiegler probably has it in this one.
Spangler's whole idea was that the rotch you've identified, the the moral rot resulting in in these exclamations of fascism actually set in a whole lot earlier, even before the the fantasy ekler literary period at Spangler's argument is this is in the 20th century, that the whole need to colonise for the West to expand and absorb other people's cultures into its own was to nurture the wound of its own impotence.
The the the sheer disbelief that was beginning to form in the values in the know most of its nations. So there's one way of reading it. I'm using a conservative thinker because it's the most appropriate to the topic. Might not necessarily agree, but he certainly in the same canon as someone like Schmidt. The other way of reading it is the very nature way. Or I might, I should say mock nature way. Nature is, of course, talking about how we have to become Übermensch.
We have to get out there, achieve things in a bottle, as well as an intellectual way throughout his his work, especially beyond good and evil, and thus spake Zarathustra. But the anti Nietzschean way of going through this is simply to suggest that not everybody is that concerned. Not everybody is that concerned with the Aristotelian life of the mind, with achieving your sandal wearing significance in a world of nothingness and so on and so on.
One of Oakshott best points it's alluded to in the new Bentham and it's directly addressed in rationalism in politics, is that there are some people that can be conservative by disposition, people who are blacksmiths or farmers or farmers nowadays who are farmers because their great grandfathers and great grandmothers were farmers and that lived tradition that non-taxable technological inherent knowledge and awareness of society.
That natural little little platoon, if we can call it that, is a lot stronger and more evident to them than these very, very strange and challenging books that not everyone has the time for existential crisis necessary to read. So I think it's it's an argument that is predicated on a certain position of privilege or status. This whole with the moral rot has set in and such and such. This is this is really quite aristocratic language.
And I'm not accusing you of of using it, but I have heard this argument many times, and that does seem to be the basis for much of it. No sense since. I mean, yeah, I would have only I would have only gone on about like, you know, the fallacies of conservatism, you know, also in its relation to the fallacies of of, um, sorry, I just put an end to the fallacies of other, you know, let's say, political ideologies for or for that matter by you.
Yeah. Because I think it actually relates to to what we were just following on based on, you know, this view of conservatism. Leading to the dichotomy in a certain sense, as you pointed out, which is basically, you know, the main fallacy or the main problem, many people, I think even today are trying to to to identify as the worst part of conservatism, this idea of the hatred of hatred or the the on that I don't even know how to say to disliking.
I'd say for for outsiders, for for people outside of these communities, societies with it's tradition based on these little platoons and so on compared to, you know, just the foreigners, to the people moving into not sharing these values, not assimilating to the values and traditions that are that are in place.
And I think it's and I'm sorry just to interject and this is actually a good point, because people often when they talk about conservatism and in the father's sense of the word xenophobia, so a fear of the of the strange or the foreign doesn't always mean people from outside one's cultural circle. It can mean if you go into I don't know, you seem to come from a small town. I come from a small town as well, very small town.
And so sometimes even if you are as German or whatever, as national, as you know, typically stereotypically of your country as you want, if you go to a new small community, you will be regarded as a as a foreign element to some degree. And this is something very human. And it's not necessarily it's easily you know, it easily gets thrown into a pot with racism and policy ideas.
But it's actually a very basic human idea. I mean, we had that and when we when people still were nomadic in in most parts of the world and you probably still had distrust of strangers because you didn't know you had informed. As we said earlier, we hadn't formed a sort of a social bond or a social contract. You had to prove that you were trustworthy. And so that's I'm glad that you touched on this point, but sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, it's a great point.
The thing is and I don't know what to say. I don't know what to relate it to. But first of all, the point you address about the friend, you know, being even in the same society but in, let's say, different platoons or different villages for that matter, and then moving to another village and being immediately regarded as someone foreign to to that community applies only to a certain degree.
I'd say, you know, there's definitely, you know, a kind of, let's say, suspicion or kind of, you know, initial negative reaction towards that. But, you know, if you if you are from a, let's say, similar tradition, if you are from a, you know, based on a culture that is upholding certain values that are actually shared also amongst this community, then the second reaction is not going to be negative again, probably. So you know that the time element here is quite important.
Whereas you you know, when you have someone from a completely different value coming in with a different value structure, with the different value system, with a different set of traditions, of shared norms, trying to trying to live that out in this new context, then that's going to be a bigger problem where assimilation doesn't work in that in that way because you have this inherent conflict. That would be my point on that.
And the other point would be just, you know, what would I try to emphasise at the beginning that, you know, it's it is actually, you know, innate in human culture to have this fear or let's say this, the suspicion inherent based on our development over the centuries and in fact, many years, obviously. But, you know, based on this. Based on this.
Form of understanding of society as a community of different small micro networks where you can actually integrate yourself and where you can actually they can actually if you apply if you adhere to the shared norms and maybe even add to them, then you can have successful integration. So I think it's it doesn't have to be framed all in a negative way.
Well, I find this section fascinating because that's, of course, an angle of conservatism that totally rejects it, that encourages some form of individualistic atomisation, I'm thinking principally about the neo lips and some of the neo cons, the readers of Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek and von Mises, little less, although he's just as influential.
But this particular model upheld a kind of transient Moralez, just as in the case of Adam Smith and his Wealth of Nations, where you would manage your own moral system by yourself as an individual and then the collective would just be presumed around you if there wouldn't be this dynamic or almost inevitable conflict that developed between you and the rest of the society when the little platoon,
like you would say, was snipped off. And that's precisely what we can say, that via the innovation of the free market encouraged an inherent split in conservatism between the values based side and the market based side, which didn't used to exist. Some of us will remember that Engels really admired and Benjamin Disraeli because he was capable of abiding by the principle of noblesse oblige. He was capable of saying, we have to look after the have nots. This obligation completely disappeared.
You could say that this precisely and say after William F. Buckley sock it to the left and unite the right stuff and was a fringe movement until remerging recently in Internet right wing communities that are really a consequence of that kind of fragmentation. We don't like capitalism. What we want is a restoration return to market, that kind of nonsense.
I love that. Yeah, maybe I don't want anyone to circumvent the Internet because I think it's a brilliant point and the brilliant string of sort of further go into, um.
But if we're talking about, you know, if you're talking about locality and about, you know, the importance of the importance of these micro networks and Internet connexions and their relation to what conservatism actually defines, then I think I'd love to bring in the point about, you know, what I what I think, oh, what's his name again?
Is it Paul or David? Good to see. It's David Gotthard with the idea of, you know, the the the new political divide is not any more about, you know, left and right or something, but it's actually about, you know, anywhere and somewhere where you have this, you know, new this new divide based on not not the idea of people who have something and people who don't have something.
And if we need to if a society needs to get over the clash of these classes, but rather, you know, the people who actually still have a connexion towards the local community, towards the locality in which they are situated.
And on the other hand, you know, these anywhere's is like what you may be also addressing this Internet generation, this generation or not even generation, but, you know, this part of society that transcends these local local dependencies and these local ties towards, you know, a model of more more focus on on individual freedom of your own, in following your own interests, living your life wherever you want without a, you know, specific relation and a specific tie towards a small community.
But also then again, on the coming up over there, you know, building on your model and not only to the small community, but obviously then also to the. And to to to your continent and so on, so I just wanted to throw that and. Well, to contribute a bit more on that particular point, as I've said before, technology is essential in this respect because it replaces or at least mediates the influence of the real community of individuals. But you're forced to live with that.
You're simply next to the element of no that Schmidt would just call property or community, at least according to the commenter, Michael Milliman. It takes that away and puts in its place this realm of digital avatars that are often organised by not necessarily the same background,
but the same viewpoint. And when a young person, Azumah, is spending a lot more time, especially post pandemic with these people, with these beings that represent people as opposed to individuals and collectives in their own community, it degrades these platoon connexions.
And I think it has this rather strange mutant effect on modern politics that commenters like Angela Nagel have described in relation to the 2016 American election, where people are actually more enthused by their online radicalised group. For that is the very basis of politics than they are by the people that are actually around them. The effect in Trump's case is fairly evident.
Nagl is one that legitimately argues he was elected because of his his union wizardry and his inability to appeal to the dynamics of 4chan transgression, but also how modern politics the world over starting with the US, has essentially become characterised not by traditional conservatism or any form of traditional liberalism or Marxism against one another, but rather a form of 4chan versus Tumblr in real life, the least intellectual and most reactionary.
No wonder it's produced many, many people on both sides of the aisle that are opposed to the technological generations of the free market, because this basis for politics does not give many opportunities for compromise. Oh, that's brilliant. That was actually the connexion I was thinking about when you made your point. I mean, I think it's absolutely fascinating because it's not only a development, you see, you know, in the UK or you see it. I mean, I know the US, the UK and Germany quite well.
And in all of these countries, in the conservative, what parties claim to be conservatives, are all of them moving into the direction of, you know, away from this idea of more emphasis on liberal enterprise and on free markets, free states and more emphasis on, you know, actual state involvement in the process of building, building up yourself and building up the society, which, you know,
then again relates to relates to the idea of this change and conservatism that we were talking about at the beginning of this plot, because, you know, it's a rather recent development.
But so when you think about the 80s with Thatcher, Reagan and so on in Germany, you still had a strong emphasis, especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification on these on the on this basic, you know, success of free markets and all that, say in the German context, the success of social market economy, as we called it, well against communism. And then you have this turnaround, basically, you can say to argue to what degree.
But certainly there is this trend around in the last basically 30 years. Great. I want to I wanted to discuss two more points. And after that, I personally would just leave it to you guys to discuss any further information that you find relevant. And I'm going back a little bit back to some of the intellectual foundations. I found something, Ed, that you wrote regarding the difference between Burke and a French thinker called domestic.
Very interesting. They both had similar views on what to do about how to. How to. Act politics or how to rule and govern. But they had different ideas of the nature of humankind and of man, I don't know if you remember what I'm referring to, but I would have found that very interesting and insightful. I would like to spend a little bit of time talking about it. Domestic is not exactly my area of expertise, but we can summarise the differences between him and Burke in two points.
First of all, one of the main things that everybody talks about in the political textbooks about Burke is that he's open to evolutionary change, not revolutionary change. The state. The society is really just a plant to him. It's a very beautiful plant, but it is a plant that one has to treat and look after for the maestre at the actual regime is really the ultimate form of government because it's the only form of government that he sees as functional.
So he's far less open to change. And because, of course, he is a Frenchman and he is an aristocrat, he felt the differences, the changes that went on in Enlightenment, France, much faster than Burke did. And for this reason, he claims that enlightenment thought of which Scruton, for instance, argues that Burke was a part was inevitably incarnated in the terror. And it wasn't only its logical consequence, but it was its its divinely decreed punishment.
So they are adjacent thinkers, but the difference seems to be where they originated and also where they originated in terms of background. Burke is a much more interesting thinker than some people give him credit for, at least in terms of where he's from, because he was initially Irish and he was picked on for being Irish once in a while. And Samuel Johnson Circle, whereas the MISTERA was sort of pure blooded, slithering overlord from the start, I should say.
He was half Italian and half French, but they were all very, very high up and wonderful. What about his idea of how rules come about? And how would it work? And so so I know we've talked about this battuta concretised, what would you say is Berk's idea where customers come from and rules and should come from? And what would you think domestic? Where does he believe the rules come from?
We can furthermore suggest that while Burke, as I have said, did not believe overall in apriori judgement and thought they emerged through tradition, or as I would say, apriori judgements are parasites on tradition. De Mistura felt that such a thing as a divine well did exist in reality, and this could be embodied directly through a more ad hoc legal system at the beck and call of the monarchy. And he used this argument to oppose the legitimacy of revolutionary constitutions and documents.
He saw them as trying to elevate man to God and therefore had none of it. Great, that helped a lot to to, I think, frame frame as ideas, and I find I found exactly that part interesting and that basically they that Domestos thinks that it is divinely inspired or it comes from rules come from a divine source. And as far as I understand it, that Burke somehow thinks of it as organically grown.
And what I wrote down is that I got from your notes also that the message was sceptical about humans being able to follow rules, which is something I have thought about a lot personally. I just think about sometimes. Do you think? It is do you even think it makes sense to abolish traditional systems of power like monarchy and absolutism in that form, and can we even trust humanity to follow rules?
And that that is probably because I've thought about this so much myself and I read it in your notes addressed. I think I don't think I read that somewhere, even though probably it's probably a basic trope in political history or science that that really hit me.
And also that that both Burke and domestic thought that by lack of if you if you have rules as imposed, for example, by arbitrary means, for example, after the French Revolution, if you if you would think of it that way, then either a lack of custom or a lack of divine guidance would lead to bad behaviour amongst the populace.
And that is very interesting, because I would try to put myself into a position of power where I what if I had the choice to either give people their own freedom or to continue with a system that has sort of worked? Would it be better to try to give the people, the rural people, the power to rule over themselves? Or do I fundamentally think that people are unable to follow rules? So you have to enforce them basically by the corridors that they are allowed to walk in and to think?
And sometimes I have had these problems, for example, when I found like a like a social club or something or like a social start-up. And I also think should I how much how much leverage should you give individual people? Should you micromanage and to what degree? And I think that those are fundamental questions that a lot of people still have to grapple with, even in business and politics and even in family. Sometimes, you know, if you organise something in a larger family, what do you do?
And so that is why I found it so interesting that smart people like the Messman work had these ideas. And we have been struggling with this for centuries. That's that's kind of why why I bothered you so much with this. Well, what you're talking about in precise terms sounds a lot like, again, this Oberlin's idea of positive and negative freedom, negative freedom, where you're free simply because you're allowed to exist in a particular state run.
Simmons example is Amy Winehouse drinking too much and then not wanting to go to rehab and positive freedom where you're controlled in such a way that you become free or that you feel free. Some people feel liberated by rehab. I can imagine it's not like that. And obviously it's impossible to make an absolute distinction based on generalities. You have to keep the case in mind for these sorts of things if you're going to be a good statesman.
Nonetheless, what I find interesting about my thought pattern here is that it immediately links back to Burke's idea of common law. At least we can have certain exceptions. At least we can make room for changes. We can have a pretty constitutional living constitution in one way or another. And it's that kind of openness and reliance on tradition that the conservative suggests, whether or not he acknowledges it, that judgements pertaining to positive and negative freedom can take place.
This is something that liberals like John Rawls like to talk about a lot as a lot as well. So it's not exclusively right wing territory, but it's certainly something to bear in mind. The other thing to consider is simply how authority is exercised through the ages. It's a time for a change. Not talking about conservatives. I'll bring up Deluce and Michelle Fuyuko and their ideas pertaining to societal mechanisms of control.
One of few coast kids in the order of things is that there is a significant difference between how mediaeval societies are run in that very hierarchical. But usually if you give your views to the monarch or governor of your area as a peasant or serf, they'll give you some time alone. And furthermore, you'll be able to organise how exactly you work to begin with this.
BIFULCO does not happen anywhere near as much in the 19th century because the the dorm and the workhouse are right next to one another and the private becomes political. The personal becomes political. In the worst possible sense, it becomes subject to regulation. Deluce theorises during the 1970s and 80s well into the future. He sees right where we're going or where humanity was going.
At that point. He expands on Fusco's argument and describes what he calls a fourth stage, the Society of Control, where everything is in a singular room, where the prison, the hospital, the school, the canteen are essentially a singular place. And we might like to think of that as the computer room that everybody was stuck in during the coronavirus pandemic.
These different scenarios emerging with the with the dynamics of history, with the what we might call a galion, Gaist determines extremely which forms of authority can be enacted. And for that reason, logically, I think we have to abide by something fairly similar to Berk's evolutionary position. If we're going to advocate anything conservative at all in that, we bear in mind the time and then we act.
We don't, you know, do the do the herd effect and desperately try and and close off technological implementation. That just can't work. Awesome. I feel I don't want to cut you off, but I would have another question for you. Maybe I read something into it, I do that sometimes, so I apologise. Maybe that's why it's not become quite clear, but it certainly, let's put it like this in the notes certainly inspired me.
All right, so and the final question I personally have is something that you pointed out in his notes, which I found interesting, and I vaguely remember having read something about this before, but, yeah, I had certainly forgotten about it. And that is the very interesting topic of psychology and tendency to vote conservative as a conservative. And you you mention a few interesting studies in points about this.
And of course, we don't have to get too technical. I am not sure I would follow anyways. But as much as you you would want to go down into detail. Can you tell us something about the relationship between psychology and what people do? Yeah, sure. I mean, let's let's try to broaden it again as well. I mean, psychology, of course, as a field is trying to in general trying to deduce what the essence of human beings is in its in its very essence.
And I think most of the philosophers we were talking today about and we mentioned quite a few are indeed, you know, trying to figure out that as well, not only on an individual basis, sometimes on a larger basis, trying to decipher what what are these fundamental things that move us, you know, for example, in Adam Smith's Adam Smith's wonderful or what's it called not the Wealth of Nations, but the are as you know,
it certainly will see the theory of moral sentiments now about it, that the less well known, but way better, to be honest. And actually Smith I mean, he thought this was his Muguruza, but I think for some reason the other one caught up. But anyway, I mean, he basically, you know, he comes from this idea. What are these things that that humans you know, what what motivates humans in their behaviour and in their in their human essence.
And, you know, all these philosophers come up with different conceptions. But, you know, you can apply that to psychology as well. And the psychology of it at last, you know, as a discipline which evolved so much over the last 100 and 100 years, came up with this idea of trying to in behavioural and social psychology, trying to basically, you know, build these fundamental categories of human nature and the human nature of the human spirit.
Whereas, you know, you have these big five model that is very, very common. You know, these conceptions of like, you know, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and basically trying to rape people on this scale, which has been done over, I don't know, decades with lots and lots of studies, lots of lots of data points.
And then obviously a lot of follow up studies were made based on these based on these categories, you know, seeing how people who are high in certain traits will behave in the in the real world. And regarding political behaviour, I think the most interesting finding is that these five traits, which, you know, are a model to represent human human behaviour, human spirit, to some degree at least, does not in any way predict very well political outcomes except for one trait,
basically, and that's conscientiousness. So people that are high in conscientiousness, which is a trait associated, you know, with basically what we were describing about the importance of following rules, the importance of of being, you know, being a reliable person off, of being someone who does a job well, does whatever job he's doing, it's trying to do his best, is trying to deliver, is trying to, you know, be a reliable source.
That's the only trade that really predicts conservative voting behaviour. Quite well, I mean, at least, let's say, statistically significant. So the question then would be if our personality does indeed, you know, influence his political inclination, let's say, you know, then again, you can think about is that something that's biological or social? So you can you can basically have this whole nature versus nurture debate.
Again, that's going to go into now because I'm not an expert in either of the fields. But again, you know, this raises the question of how will this, again, influence or how might this influence to the future of conservatism in our society? No traits are indeed, to a certain degree, at least socially constructed or searched or on the other hand, biologically, biologically inherited. What does that mean, again, for for political for political preferences, for political behaviour?
I think that's the broad picture I paint here. It's a very beautiful picture, I should say, in short, to I think. Go on. Go on. A slight caveat to this. The interesting aspect to conscientiousness, besides its prediction of success generally is what it tends to mean for dynamics. There was there was what is the term for it again now?
Was a Gallup Poll survey necessary? Pew recent Pew Pew Pew Research poll done recently, which suggested that Gen Z, the rumours were ever so slightly more conservative than Gen Y Y was this because the Gen Y religious folks and therefore most likely conservative folks had more children? They they, they, they out reproduced the liberals and the leftists and so on and so on. So certainly in a world that is getting more and more concerned with infertility, I think it's pretty good film.
This is certainly something that needs to be borne in mind, while not necessarily something that inherently determines someone's natural biological connexion to conservatism. It simply seems to be a rational ideology to have if you're capable of structuring a structure in your life well within the system. If you can't do that and you're still intelligent and highly conscientious and rationalistic, it's going to be much harder.
You know, Antonio Brown, she did not go on to produce a dynasty of people. I love that because I actually I actually know a similar point based on, you know, religious beliefs, which is basically following the same lines based on the fact that, you know, very religious people tend to have more kids again as well and also tend to vote more conservative most of the time at least.
So, again, you know, I had this discussion with a friend of mine about, you know, the typical, let's say, progressive claim that's been made for basically four centuries now about, you know, the role of religion decreasing ever more, the role of church itself, of synagogues and so on, basically becoming obsolete in society. Whereas, you know, on the other hand, you do have to the basic fact that, you know, religion doesn't go anywhere just based on procreation.
Would you guys say that there has been a substitution for some of the roles that religion played earlier, that conservatism has exchanged for something else? Absolutely. We briefly or rather, I briefly brought up. Yeah, the the Carl Schmidt point God as a lawyer and so on, this this certainly has to be borne in mind in a modern sense because people have completely have completely lost trust in the state generally, and that that intellectual energy is a secondary displacement.
You know, God to state and legal system and nation and those myths then decaying. Where does it all disappear off to? We can see this in the polling. That was, again, a Gallup poll conducted in the 1940s when FDR was in office that suggested 85 percent of the American people were satisfied with government. Can you imagine that being conducted with the same result in practically any country in the world? Now, maybe Singapore will give or take Singapore.
This suggests that if we're going to suggest that that faith and belief and what Liotard would call economy exists, then it's gone somewhere. I'd really like to clarify one of the comments I made about Robert Nozick. He's very he's very pro anarchy in his book Anarchy, State and Utopia, and says that the state really only has the ability to legislate on private property and that it is your individuality that gives you the strength in order to live and determine how to live.
But as people like Adam Curtis have pointed out in their films, this is not a way to structure a collective basis for living. It does not work. So my impression is that when we look at, again, Nagel's book, where she talks about people like Anapolis Annapolis or Richard Spencer, what is being addressed there?
What she is addressing is the return of the return of the supressed, these horrific, unprocessed drives that are distinctly conservative, although negative in characteristic and also distinctly anti capitalist. They cannot be reprocessed by the free market. It is the further degeneration of what we might call the object of faith from what Nosik had formulated it into or it was formulated into in Nozick.
The question is, is it necessary to to to try and change something when it has become wretched to this extent to the party platform in in America?
For the Republicans, just being a pro Trump pit where you have to accept that the election was rigged and so on to even have a chance, or can we suggest that there are certain traditional practises that can be re-established in order to bring back or at least revive a conservative influence that is at the same time very sceptical about the free market? This is the kind of thing that Scruton talks about. Wonderful. So at this point, I have everything I wanted to ask.
I had a few other questions, but we have somehow gotten to them. Now, at this point, I realised you guys have a lot of ideas and a lot of knowledge present that you might want to air. So at this point, I just want to ask you, is this there anything we haven't talked about which needs mentioning?
I really wanted to talk about artificial intelligence, I've mentioned throughout this programme that technology is very existential to conservatism because it forces it to act to perform in the in the strangely romantic and often bloodthirsty manner in the early 19th century and midway through the 18th century that we saw from Hoda at Harman. But in A.I., this is this is more existential than it has ever been. Geocode scholar on communism said that conservatism often.
Sorry. Yeah, Jipé often tolerates tyranny because it's dedicated to nonaction in life. But when, of course, you're posited in a dynamic where galion guys, there's this spirit of history is going to literally incarnate itself in another being in a predator or competitor against humanity or something that changes the definition of what it means to be human next to genetic implementations and upgrades.
The question cannot be avoided and conservatism has to mobilise itself if it's going to do anything, if it isn't just going to leave designations of what is human and what is not human to Silicon Valley.
Transhumanist, as Newquist says of the more naturally, because this debate is not really taking place in the mainstream, besides the really crazy stuff that is cited in the most recent government innovation document about, you know, surfaces that can expand themselves and medical implementations for for for neuro link and so on. It's a debate that's taking place on the fringes between people like Nick Land and occasionally Sadique father.
She's a lot less aggressive and I think a nice human being who are Marxist and postmaster's at the same time, who abide by a very, very strong enlightenment tradition and then say, OK, this enlightenment tradition that we value and really everything that humanity has led up to needs to be incarnated in AI in order to give it purpose. This seems to be the new or at least future object of faith, which the MISTERA talks about.
And Bert likes to write constitutions around, turning humanity literally into a dehumanised blood sacrifice for this immense creation. In this respect, it's absolutely essential to focus on the key conservative essay on technology, which is Heidegger's the question of technology, which suggests that what is dangerous about tech is exactly the machines themselves. It's what he calls in framing in German. It's the same word for skeleton for basis.
And this in framing is in a sense, the attitude that one holds to technology or that a community holds to technology that is just being imagined, generated and so on and so on. And that limits how it is produced. But this is dangerous, he says, because it essentially turns other human beings around you into standing reserves for the inventors, into beings that are stored up potential to be utilised. And we see this in the very, very problematic land philosophy that I just brought up.
But there is another way of going with it. And I think this will have to be the standard position that conservatives adopt if they're going to not only engage the mass, but prevent against one form of technological semi capitalist tyranny or another.
And this is Yaquis model, which is what he calls Kozmo techniques, where the different national forms of DASSIN or even community forms of that sign of the individual existence from which in framing precipitates is borne in mind so that the technologies that emerge are capable of accommodating things like ancient Chinese medicine and do not just encroach in a deeply, deeply imperialist way on how people run themselves in different communities.
If we if we're going to talk about any kind of cultural degeneration, the one that we do need to talk about, I'm sorry if I'm pushing it a bit too long, is the Americanisation of European and international linguistics. Robert Sapolsky, this excellent psychologist and neuroscience lecturer at Stanford, talked about the real likelihood that about 90 percent of languages are going to go extinct in the next hundred years.
I have. Verified that statistic from myself, although I do trust the man and we don't even have to go that far, however, we can certainly look at the fact that the French academia, the organisation in charge of very strictly inserting true French words into the language, has had a has had an extremely difficult time trying to come up with alternatives to American figures of technological speak, texting, selfies, licking and so on and so on that have just entered the community structure.
That kind of imposing and unifying social trend does not simply buy into structures that were always there. And so if there is going to be any sort of lasting pretence of conservatism, it has to bear those technological problems in mind and sort out a better in framing to do what Heidegger says is forming a realm of art.
I love that it raises issues because, I mean, based on what we discuss and I think based on my understanding, I'd say but I mean, conservatism is always best in a sense at its strongest when when when when it's focussed on very particular specialised issues, you know, very clear, a very clear problem that concerns me as a person on a you know, on a on a micro level, what would be called, you know, in the book, in a sense, a little platoons and so on.
Whereas, you know, these are issues, as you say, forward looking that are on a macro scale. And it's hard to think along the traditional lines that we try to describe and and others about these big issues. In general, obviously, you can you can argue about, you know, how to incorporate just as you did, you know, how to incorporate certain actions into your everyday life regarding climate change.
You know how to how to recycle if we do or if we all do our duty or, you know, on the theoretical level, you know, the idea of climate change being a important issue because, you know, it's relating, again, to this idea of trusteeship, you know, leaving leaving a place that is better off still, you know, not only in an economic sense, but actually in a environmental sense as well for future generations.
So you can make a pretty good case on very specific points about that, I think from from what you said, whereas like, you know, I'm so detached from that. You know, it's obviously because it's still it's still a long, long way down the road. To be fair to that.
We actually, you know, have to think about this transend, about this idea of what these what these transhumanist, as they call them, try to try to think of this new basic, whatever it might be, hybrid or even standalone life or whatever you might call it. And it's still so far down the road that it's so hard to to get a grip on it, on a very particular issue, very particular basis.
You know, what does I mean for what would this transition towards the future of of of intelligence, of technology, of this Uber Uber technology or Uber men in a technological way, then again mean for me personally or for for my community to adopt to and to to actually, you know, take take action to towards that. That's just my thought on it. Well, you realise how your language has changed.
It's taken on this activist bent because you have to do something because conservatism as sitting on the couch and and quietly embracing life doesn't ring true. True that you that are so, so, so therefore it mobilises individuals and hopefully collectives this particular issue. And unless the conservatives will have to become relevant, if it if it wants to live at all, it can't just continue to to leech on rage while the real issues are determined by, for lack of a better word, experts.
I'm not doing this in the govey in the sense I'm bringing it up in the sense that something that could very well change the definition of humanity should be concerned with humanity. Not simply tech heads that want to turn the human being into a kind of Gundam suit, that they can fly around climate changes, I think I've suggested already.
Well, at least an illusion is such a pertinent issue to conservatism, because as I think you rightly brought up, it really emphasises the individual in relation to the society you're built up from yourself to your family, your community through little recycling activities and so on to maybe no small protest outside of BP or big ones with the whole town or the whole city to the country going carbon neutral.
This is what Scruton talked about before he died and a significant amount of detail how conservatism didn't really have to parrot the policies of the fossil fuel industry and could become its own distinct entity.
Do you guys see any chance of there being a sort of Biedermeier 2.0 period in the sense that the Internet fosters a sort of different type of intense mingling and internationalisation, that at some point people become upset with the artificial nature of these new little platoons, if you want, so that people would be drawn back into their actual local physical places in the sense as because they don't feel represented or they don't feel the the genuineness of the artificial secondary world,
as you will, or do you think that is something that is past and the future is digital, just on an anecdotal basis to date? I mean, we all have to through one and a half years of a horrible time with the coronavirus, you know, a search. And in what you would call you know, on the one hand, there's the connexion and, you know, connectedness through video platforms, all the things that we're doing at the moment, podcasting or just, you know, having phone calls to try to connect with people.
And I remember when I was working during that time, at the beginning, it was almost a it was almost a bonanza of people. And people were excited of, you know, going doing video calls, doing like an online online meetup and stuff like that. And now one and a half years later, everyone is completely fed up with it, at least in my experience.
Like, everyone just wants to wants to meet in person again, wants to connect with people actually, you know, going going out together, actually, you know, playing sports together in your in your in your in your local football team or in your local whatever sports team.
And it's it's it's just I would say, again, you know, innate thing that if you it's digital connexions can't yet I say yet substitute for what we as a community are looking for in terms of, you know, the social ties and the social interaction that we that we're craving as human beings.
And so I think that's a very good example of, you know, just what you refer to on that, actually, as still there is there's need for for for actual bonds, for actual physical interaction in the actual physical, you know, actual physical expression of these shared of the shared trust of this of these shared connexions. I don't know if it's like, you know, if this is going to change with, you know, technology evolving, maybe it's going to change.
Maybe we're going to have we're going to have such an advanced virtual reality based on based on a software in 50 years that we don't need that anymore. And we actually are all content with our new digital world and the new digital paradise. But I don't know. I can't see it yet. Let's say that.
Well, this is where a favourite criticism of the anti tech writer Samuel Butler comes in because the man is obsessed with a kind of intellectual intellectual, although not specifically class related Luddite ism, which says we have to break down the machine. We have to we have to go back to this idealised past. But precisely because that past is idealised, it seems like the kind of thing one can have.
Imagine after being processed into the way that a machine works, after having worked with a specific bit of technology for your whole life, you're still in that in framing, in that dynamic. You're not doing your own thing. And chances are, if we ever do come to the stage where we're either mostly living in a virtual world or we're all being upgraded in some form or another, the pressure is going to be on you to go along with it simply because you won't be able to compete with others.
Of course, of value based critique of that can occur and very likely will occur. Seeing as the Zoomer generation are much more in touch with the necessity of human interaction by being deprived of it, but nevertheless, technolog technological development still predicates these philosophical changes.
And so I think we're going to have to accept technology. If anything, it's more it'll be the generations to come that are concerned with this, the kids who have been prevented from having Keano in their key developing years. Great, did I hear you say zoomer as opposed to Boomer, that's genius. Is that did you come up with that? I didn't come up with the Zumiez no, that's been an Internet meme for very long time. Yeah. Oh, I love that. Yeah. All right.
Well, uh, so that is a great, uh, finishing on that topic. So thank you guys for listening to this episode of In Our Spare Time, I hope you enjoyed it. If you found it enjoyable, like to listen to another one. Please just take your time and choose any one of the other episodes we've already uploaded or subscribe to the podcast and you will get the very next one when it comes out. Other than that, we are always happy to give you a get your feedback.
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