Philosophy Why Individualism is False

[Navarro]

Not to mention the ceaseless complaining that everybody who disagrees with him is an evil sophist deliberately misrepresenting his views. And the constant repetition of the initial assertions as if they constituted a valid counter-argument ...

Speaking of sophism ...

When confronted by an extreme example of the degree to which the arrogance and abuses of a feudal rulership-class set inherently above the common people can reach, instead of trying to argue that in his system such abuses will be prevented somehow (though he also said that in another post, without giving any hint of a means as to how this would be achieved) our interlocutor adopts an ... interesting strategy. He adopts a two-faced position, of denying the charges:

Given how highly regarded peasants were in Japan due to providing food for the samurais and daimyos, I highly doubt that your characterization of feudal Japan is accurate.

Yeah, I'm still not convinced you're right on this. And you fail to realize: all of the problems we have today can be blamed on how we went away from this kind of society. The problems I pointed out with individualism are real, even if my positive solution to them has flaws. Or do you deny this?

And simultaneously claiming that the perpetrators were justified in their actions and the victims kinda had it coming by, you know, bumping into them on the street:

That's pretty much a feature of every society's privileged classes. The modern equivalent of this would be anti-discrimination laws and hate speech laws. Societies that didn't have some kind of privileged class like this were bizarre anomalies in world history. This is hardly the same as "samurai could just kill peasants in order to practice his swordsmanship."

==*==

To understand just how alien our interlocutor's mindset is, we should take a look at this scene:



To the individual in question, Loki is the hero in this scene. The exiled prince of two cosmic kingdoms, come to bring the Earth under his rule (it doesn't matter how bad he is as a ruler in either the moral or pragmatic sense, what matters is that he's unquestionably in charge). Those he intimidates into kneeling are dutifully playing their role in the feudal order. And the old man who bravely stands up to this superhuman figure ... is not only a villain, but the worst of all villains. He defies Loki's Thanos-granted feudal authority over Earth and the "harmonious" order he brings. And when Loki tries to kill him - he, like the Japanese Samurai who could legally kill peasants for any number of trivial reasons, in Itnol's worldview - is morally in the right. Because the old man didn't "respect mah authoritah".

I mean, it's hilarious how our interlocutor has so swiftly abandoned any pretense that the feudal rulers are meant to be governed by any manner of ethical or religious code. When you can kill people for bumping into you, and do so regularly ... that's pretty much the definition of arbitrary power wielded in an unjust manner, and his response? "Eh, rank hath its privileges". The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must. Our interlocutor's ideal ruling class aren't Christian knights so much as Nietzschean ubermenschen - they need not worry about God's prescriptions against murder or Christ's teachings on turning the other cheek (indeed, they can even be openly hostile to the Christian religion, as the Samurai class largely were, and the "tech overlords" who he glowingly presented as the new feudal lords lean in that direction), they just need to be selected in an un-democratic manner and be sufficiently brutal to anybody who gets in their way to earn at the least his faint approval.

He would rather live under Diocletian or Caligula than any of the American Presidents.

==*==

I don't appreciate you talking down to me like I'm some child, Hastur. As far as you know, we're the same age. Nor did I ever imply that the modern day doesn't have its good points. Nor did I ever express a desire for utopia. So your "advice" doesn't really do much. It just comes across as pretentious.

You certainly claim to be able to solve all the problems of the modern world. If that's not a desire for utopia, what is?

And you fail to realize: all of the problems we have today can be blamed on how we went away from this kind of society.

Can be blamed. Not can be proven to stem from. Having demonstrated that you don't know how or why the transition from feudalism during early modernity took place, you're in a poor position to draw a moral lesson from it or try and draw a line from it to the problems the modern world faces.

The problems I pointed out with individualism are real, even if my positive solution to them has flaws. Or do you deny this?

Your "positive solution" is "hand all power back to an arbitrary (both in the sense that they're arbitrarily chosen, and that they can do whatever they want) overclass of rulers, who will not be subject to any moral, religious or legal code (and indeed may even be anti-religious!) but will somehow be kept in check anyway. Then put the majority of the population in de facto slavery to this overclass of arbitrary rulers (extending to the overclass being able to kill any of the majority for reasons amounting to 'he bumped me on the street!'), but there will still be popular sovereignty, somehow."

Assuming the problems of the 8th to 16th centuries (which are those of vastly lacking bureaucratic and military logistic structures, which is what gave birth to feudalism in the first place) are those of the 20th and 21st is an exercise in folly. I mean feudalism itself didn't originate from the starting point of "how do I justly order society" but "how do I ensure that the heavy cavalry which are critical to my military success (and hence, my remaining on the throne) can arrive on time and come when called", so this is to be expected.

EDIT:

You claim you want to do away with consent of the governed, but retain "popular sovereignty". Unfortunately, the phrases are synonymous:

Popular sovereignty is the principle that the authority of a state and its government are created and sustained by the consent of its people, through their elected representatives (Rule by the People) or by them directly, who are the source of all political power.

...

The central tenet is that the legitimacy of rule or of law is based on the consent of the governed.

Furthermore, the concept was developed by the Enlightenment political thinkers you've constantly expressed your opposition for:

It is closely associated with social contract philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

...

Benjamin Franklin expressed the concept when he wrote, "In free governments, the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns"

Popular sovereignty in its modern sense is an idea that dates to the social contracts school (mid-17th to mid-18th centuries), represented by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), John Locke (1632–1704), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), author of The Social Contract, a prominent political work that clearly highlighted the ideals of "general will" and further matured the idea of popular sovereignty

There was the School of Salamanca advancing the idea from a specifically Catholic angle, but you might not like their conclusions:

The School of Salamanca distinguished two realms of power, the natural or civil realm and the realm of the supernatural, which were often conflated in the Middle Ages through granting royal control of investiture of bishops, or the temporal powers of the pope. One direct consequence of the separation of realms of power is that the king or emperor does not legitimately have jurisdiction over souls, nor does the pope have legitimate temporal power. This included the proposal that there are limits on the legitimate powers of government. Thus, according to Luis de Molina a nation is analogous to a mercantile society (the antecedent of a modern corporation) in that those who govern are holders of power (effectively sovereigns) but a collective power, to which they are subject, derives from them jointly. Nonetheless, in de Molina's view, the power of society over the individual is greater than that of a mercantile society over its members, because the power of the government of a nation emanates from God's divine power (as against merely from the power of individuals sovereign over themselves in their business dealings).


At this time, the monarchy of England was extending the theory of the divine right of kings—under which the monarch is the unique legitimate recipient of the emanation of God's power—asserting that subjects must follow the monarch's orders, in order not to contravene said design. Counter to this, several adherents of the School sustained that the people are the vehicle of divine sovereignty, which they, in turn, pass to a prince under various conditions. Possibly the one who went furthest in this direction was Francisco Suárez, whose work Defensio Fidei Catholicae adversus Anglicanae sectae errores (The Defense of the Catholic Faith against the errors of the Anglican sect 1613) was the strongest defense in this period of popular sovereignty. Men are born free by their nature and not as slaves of another man, and can disobey even to the point of deposing an unjust government. As with de Molina, he affirms that political power does not reside in any one concrete person, but he differs subtly in that he considers that the recipient of that power is the people as a whole, not a collection of sovereign individuals—in the same way, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theory of popular sovereignty would consider the people as a collective group superior to the sum that composes it.

Gabriel Vázquez (1549–1604) held that natural law is not limited to the individual, but obliges societies to act in accord and be treated with justice.

For Suárez, the political power of society is contractual in origin because the community forms by consensus of free wills. The consequence of this contractualist theory is that the natural form of government is either a democracy or a republic, while oligarchy or monarchy arise as secondary institutions, whose claim to justice is based on being forms chosen (or at least consented to) by the people.

Either your grasp of political theory is so poor you really shouldn't be writing essays about it, you actually don't intend to retain popular sovereignty, or ...

a party or even an individual dictator may claim to represent the will of the people, and rule in its name, pretending to detain auctoritas

"Popular sovereignty" is to be retained in a purely talismanic manner, with the new feudal ruling class claiming to rule in the name of "the people" like the communist party does in Red China or did in the former USSR.

 

[Navarro]

Sorry, for the quadruple-posting, y'all. The sheer level of ignorance mingled with a disturbing level of amorality and disregard for reality just overwhelmed me, like the visage of Great Cthulhu.

 

[Deleted member 88]

I mean ideally in a feudal system, the serfs would have their needs ensured and wouldn't need to be bothered with the anxieties and complexities of ruling.

A benevolent and gracious aristocracy, would protect their bodies with the church protecting their souls. The church would also protect the souls of the nobility, and the nobles would defend the physical bodies of the Clergy.

The peasantry would sustain them both.

In theory this is a great system because everyone is working in a way that benefits both themselves and the other classes.

In practice the clergy became corrupt and worldly-who shepherd's the shepherds to paraphrase the famous line? If the clergy have six mistresses and are selling Church property like a stock broker on crack, then whither the souls of the peasantry?

What happens if the nobility are more interested in their own squabbles and ambitions than protecting the peasantry, either from themselves or other nobles?

How does the merchant class fit it? Or class distinctions amongst the peasantry? Gentry and farm hands.

The feudal system failed to function ideally because the self reinforcing system didn't account for or failed to manage these aspects.

How can @The Name of Love prevent this from happening again? How can he work out all the kinks and make sure the duke and the bishop don't lose sight of why they are where they are and what their obligations are?

 

[Navarro]

In theory this is a great system because everyone is working in a way that benefits both themselves and the other classes.

In practice the clergy became corrupt and worldly-who shepherd's the shepherds to paraphrase the famous line? If the clergy have six mistresses and are selling Church property like a stock broker on crack, then whither the souls of the peasantry?

What happens if the nobility are more interested in their own squabbles and ambitions than protecting the peasantry, either from themselves or other nobles?

I mean, he's made it clear in this thread and others that he doesn't particularly care about the moral behaviour of his neo-feudal rulership class, merely that it exists and is unquestionably in charge. It need not even be Christian or particularly well-disposed towards the Christian faith (as seen by his presentation of the SV tech barons as a potential neo-feudal rulership class, ironically from an article that was sounding the alarm against this possibility).

At best, the clergy is a shell of its former self that exists only to justify the rule of the neo-feudal rulership class and pass down morality laws to be followed by the peasantry. At worst, the neo-feudal rulership class actively persecutes the faithful, as their ideological ancestors did in Japan. There are kings, but they're more like figureheads or firsts-among-equals than actual rulers. The lords frequently depose a king who seems to be centralising too much, with concomitant civil wars resulting in mass deaths among the peasantry. None of them care - it's often only peasants that are dying. Lords only ever get captured and ransomed. Advanced technology is strictly restricted to the lords, because peasants shouldn't live like lords - it's like the year 1215, but with iPods. Because of this, they lack the infrastructure to make new technology, and can barely maintain what they have.

Things like moral prohibitions on arbitrary murder are for the peasants in his ideal society (given that he seems to have no real moral reaction to the Samurai doing such in medieval Japan), and if peasants shouldn't live like lords, neither should lords live like peasants. I mean, there are going to be things like a ban on pornography and such, but even if the lords aren't explicitly made immune to it, it isn't going to be enforced against them. So behind the veneer of Christian piety and traditional values we really have ...

But with crucifixes possibly scattered here and there for aesthetic purposes.

How does the merchant class fit it?

Merchants don't exist, it is immoral to gain wealth by any means other than physical labour (except when the neo-feudal rulership class is collecting rents in the form of labour from their serfs. Then the accumulation of wealth from rent is totally and absolutely justified).

Or class distinctions amongst the peasantry? Gentry and farm hands.

Those don't exist. There are lords and there are peasants. It's immoral for peasants to try and live like lords. Peasants who try to live like lords are guilty of disrespecting the lords, and get casually murdered by noblemen as they pass by, so that the peasantry are certain who's on top. This is perfectly legal - the lords are a privileged class, after all, and they deserve their privileges.

How can @The Name of Love prevent this from happening again? How can he work out all the kinks and make sure the duke and the bishop don't lose sight of why they are where they are and what their obligations are?

He can nuke the merchant class to make sure they can't conspire with would-be-evil-centralising-kings to usurp the rightful place of the glorious neo-feudal ruling class. Perhaps he can do this by literally nuking the cities that are the source of their power. But at any rate, the world is one of villages and castles. Maybe this will ensure the Nietzschean-hellscape-masquerading-as-a-traditional-Catholic-society lasts forever. It probably won't.

 

[FriedCFour]

And the killing of peasants just to test swords was indeed a phenomenon, though an illegal one -not that this mattered, since:

A. Contrary to your claims in other threads, making something illegal does not make it unthinkable or physically impossible.
B. The authorities (until the Edo period) did not care about enforcing the laws against tsugijjiri, since the victims were "worthless" peasants and merchants.

Do you have any evidence at all that this was widespread? This reeks of revisionist prima nocta and small pox blankets type shit. And no, just because a word exists doesn’t make it common. It’s a politically useful tool the same way small pox blankets are. Defenestration also has a word for it, it’s also not exactly super common to throw political opponents from the windows.

 

[Navarro]

Do you have any evidence at all that this was widespread? This reeks of revisionist prima nocta and small pox blankets type shit. And no, just because a word exists doesn’t make it common. It’s a politically useful tool the same way small pox blankets are.

Tsujigiri - SamuraiWiki

wiki.samurai-archives.com

Tsujigiri was the practice of a samurai striking down unarmed passersby (almost always a peasant, merchant, or other members of a lower class) in order to test the sharpness of a sword, determine the effectiveness of a new fighting style, or simply to experience the thrill of killing someone.

Tsujigiri literally means 'crossroads cutting', referring to the fact that practitioners would often lie in wait for their victims at crossroads. Despite tsujigiri being declared a capital offence by the Tokugawa bakufu, these attacks became increasingly prevalent during the Edo period when armed combat was no longer an outlet for samurai to engage in. Kabukimono gangs were notorious for this type of attack, indulging in these assaults for little more than kicks. Fuwa Kazuemon of the 47 Ronin was known to carry out tsujigiri assaults. Tsujigiri and similar types of assaults were a key reason for the formation of yakuza gangs in an attempt by commoners to defend themselves.

Tsujigiri: A Japanese word you don't see in other languages

Tsujigiri is a word you don't see in other languages. It describes a ghastly samurai practice that, thankfully, never made it out of Japan.

www.tofugu.com

Tsujigiri always involved swords and gore, but it started off as a more honorable medieval term related to bushi and traditional duels. Then the term evolved as the practice devolved, and by the Warring States Period (1467-1600), tsujigiri became a dishonorable act. Samurai and kabukimono (rogues) turned it into a horrific popular pastime.

The reasons for tsujigiri varied, but usually the swordsman slashed at an unsuspecting victim to try out his new katana, to practice a new move, to test his strength, or just for the sheer thrill of it. There was even a superstition floating around that said performing tsujigiri on 1,000 people would heal illness. The victims were usually merchants or peasants.

It is also a well-documented historical fact that the Samurai had the legal privilege of kiri-sute gomen (literally, "permission to cut and leave"), that is to arbitrary kill members of the lower-classes who they deemed had offended their honour. In that context, tsujigiri is not particularly out of the norm.

 

[LifeisTiresome]

SNIP

Do you have any evidence at all that this was widespread? This reeks of revisionist prima nocta and small pox blankets type shit. And no, just because a word exists doesn’t make it common. It’s a politically useful tool the same way small pox blankets are. Defenestration also has a word for it, it’s also not exactly super common to throw political opponents from the windows.

Sorry to interrupt you guys, but can you give me some info about the smallpox blankets thing? Did it happen?

 

[Navarro]

Sorry to interrupt you guys, but can you give me some info about the smallpox blankets thing? Did it happen?

There was one incident of it carried out by the British to break the siege of Pittsburgh by native Americans. Which was probably ineffective.

 

[FriedCFour]

Tsujigiri - SamuraiWiki

wiki.samurai-archives.com

Tsujigiri: A Japanese word you don't see in other languages

Tsujigiri is a word you don't see in other languages. It describes a ghastly samurai practice that, thankfully, never made it out of Japan.

www.tofugu.com

It is also a well-documented historical fact that the Samurai had the legal privilege of kiri-sute gomen (literally, "permission to cut and leave"), that is to arbitrary kill members of the lower-classes who they deemed had offended their honour. In that context, tsujigiri is not particularly out of the norm.

Again not seeing a lot of evidence of it being widespread, and there is a massive difference between “I can kill anyone I want for any reason” and “violating the social customs towards those who are above you can receive the death penalty.”

 

[Navarro]

Again not seeing a lot of evidence of it being widespread, and there is a massive difference between “I can kill anyone I want for any reason” and “violating the social customs towards those who are above you can receive the death penalty.”

Not "I can kill anyone I want for any reason" but "I can kill anyone I want if I deem them to have offended me".

Just like the Roman paterfamilias couldn't kill his children or sell them into slavery for any reason, but only if they were congenitally deformed, a girl, or angered him somehow. I guess that's acceptable to you too? (Even the Romans seemed to realise that they were wrong in this area, and abolished these rights of patria potestas in the time of Hadrian).

That an act was reasonable within the social context in which it took place does not make it moral (this also holds true for the modern day, with abortion and such, just so you don't think I'm simply slamming the past for being the past).

 

[Scottty]

It's bad enough to have the death penalty for arbitrary, trivial things.
Even worse for someone to be allowed to be judge, jury and executioner at his sole discretion.

 

[Navarro]

It's bad enough to have the death penalty for arbitrary, trivial things.
Even worse for someone to be allowed to be judge, jury and executioner at his sole discretion.

"But it's okay because it made sense within the strict honour system of feudal Japan!"

Yeah, and killing club-footed infants makes sense within Amazonian tribes for whom they're just useless mouths to feed because they can't contribute to the tribe's hunts, but that doesn't make their acts of infanticide moral, which is what this is really about.

 

[FriedCFour]

"But it's okay because it made sense within the strict honour system of feudal Japan!"

Yeah, and killing club-footed infants makes sense within Amazonian tribes for whom they're just useless mouths to feed because they can't contribute to the tribe's hunts, but that doesn't make their acts of infanticide moral, which is what this is really about.

Nice, that has nothing to do with anything I said. You made a stupidly historically inaccurate point and I just wanted to correct that.

 

[The Name of Love]

Okay, wow, I think that this thread has certainly devolved into you guys just strawmanning my position and getting away from the fundamental problems I see with individualism while changing the topic to "see if I can't twist Lovely's words into something that fits whatever I hate."

The entire idea that I want to go back to feudalism just because I find something good in medieval philosophy or politics is kind of absurd, for one thing. And I see an awful lot of that in this thread.

I honestly don't know where to begin, given how all of the people here are just sort of making all these different points. It does make it difficult for me to form a single post that encompasses all of the critique, so I apologize if I'm generalizing. But I just don't see anything resembling a disagreement with my actual post. Just mindless aiming at strawmen. To give to examples.

Your argumentation thus far, is to assert things, and use appeal-to-authority arguments. If you continue in this pattern, you can expect to be talked down to a lot, because your arguments are, quite frankly, terrible. Even children can make more effective 'appeal to emotion' arguments, but your usual fare doesn't even rise to that level.

You habitually refuse to accept any evidence that doesn't fit your preconcieved notions, and you constantly try to define terms and language in ways that will make you win by default.

The best conclusion I can come to, is that you are the ideological footsoldier of tyrants. If you're lucky, you'll rise up through the ranks, and be a Bishop or Inquisitor for whatever ideological movement you end up being useful to, but one thing I can say for sure, is that nothing I've seen you arguing for will be of any benefit to people's souls, health, or prosperity. Excepting the prosperity of tyrants.

To the individual in question, Loki is the hero in this scene. The exiled prince of two cosmic kingdoms, come to bring the Earth under his rule (it doesn't matter how bad he is as a ruler in either the moral or pragmatic sense, what matters is that he's unquestionably in charge). Those he intimidates into kneeling are dutifully playing their role in the feudal order. And the old man who bravely stands up to this superhuman figure ... is not only a villain, but the worst of all villains. He defies Loki's Thanos-granted feudal authority over Earth and the "harmonious" order he brings. And when Loki tries to kill him - he, like the Japanese Samurai who could legally kill peasants for any number of trivial reasons, in Itnol's worldview - is morally in the right. Because the old man didn't "respect mah authoritah".

I mean, it's hilarious how our interlocutor has so swiftly abandoned any pretense that the feudal rulers are meant to be governed by any manner of ethical or religious code. When you can kill people for bumping into you, and do so regularly ... that's pretty much the definition of arbitrary power wielded in an unjust manner, and his response? "Eh, rank hath its privileges". The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must. Our interlocutor's ideal ruling class aren't Christian knights so much as Nietzschean ubermenschen - they need not worry about God's prescriptions against murder or Christ's teachings on turning the other cheek (indeed, they can even be openly hostile to the Christian religion, as the Samurai class largely were, and the "tech overlords" who he glowingly presented as the new feudal lords lean in that direction), they just need to be selected in an un-democratic manner and be sufficiently brutal to anybody who gets in their way to earn at the least his faint approval.

He would rather live under Diocletian or Caligula than any of the American Presidents.

These aren't arguments at all. They are just slander. No evidence is given for these assertions, they are just presented as if fact because I disagree with the liberal ontology. Because I think that individualism ignores human sociality and can easily lead to totalitarianism due to an overreliance on a central state (something none of the people here have refuted, by the by), and because I bring up medieval aristocrats as an example of a Subsidiary, I somehow want some kind of aristocratic paganism? If anyone could actually bring up how they got that from what I said, that'd be very helpful. Until then, I fear I'm being pigeonholed into something I am not. Imagine if I tried to pigeonhole Navarro and LordsFire as a couple of bomb-throwing, misanthropic anarchists or some nonsense. That's the equivalent of what I see happening here to me.

So let's take a chill pill here.

 

[Navarro]

Okay, wow, I think that this thread has certainly devolved into you guys just strawmanning my position and getting away from the fundamental problems I see with individualism while changing the topic to "see if I can't twist Lovely's words into something that fits whatever I hate."

Ah, as I predicted. I'll snip the whining from here on out.

The entire idea that I want to go back to feudalism just because I find something good in medieval philosophy or politics is kind of absurd, for one thing.

I mean, when you blame its passing for all the issues the modern world faces, and suggest that the tech barons of Silicon Valley will make an adequate replacement (very odd given that they aren't exactly well known for being traditionalist or devoutly Catholic, both things which I believe are important to you) it's hard not to think so.

I honestly don't know where to begin, given how all of the people here are just sort of making all these different points.

Here are my arguments in neat, bullet-point order:

-Feudalism is not an ideal template for a society but something that emerged in unique technological-social circumstances.
-Feudal aristocrats given no check on their power can commit some truly outrageous abuses
--Would you be willing to suffer those abuses, TNOL?
-Given that you view the notoriously Catholic and deeply traditionalist tech barons (that was sarcasm, BTW) of Silicon Valley as (at the very least) a strong candidate for the neo-feudal ruling class, this suggests that you don't particularly care about whether they follow the Christian religion.
--This opens doubts on whether you actually expect the new feudal ruling class to abide by Christian moral teachings, especially given that you are also remarkably silent on the role of the Church in the medieval feudal system.
--Given your previous statements on the absolute subservience of the ruled that they should have towards their rulers and your known admiration for Mencius Moldbug's political theories, this suggests that your ideal society is similar to his, which notably explicitly places the tech barons as a neo-feudal ruling class.
---Which means that your society's ideological core isn't Catholic teaching, but Nietzscheanism LARPing as such.
-You claim that all accumulation of wealth other than by physical labour is immoral, especially rent-seeking.
--This definition includes something so innocuous as an author wanting to earn proceeds from the publication of his book.
---And at the same time you have no problem with the fact that the medieval aristocracy's economic base was rent-labour from tenant-serfs, who were forbidden from leaving the property and in fact treated as part of it.
--This also means that your ideal society has no merchant class, when merchants were a critical part of the wider medieval economy.
-Feudalism's end didn't involve the rise of absolute monarchies, given that it also ended in countries that never had them.
--It has more to do with the revival of the public sphere that collapsed with the fall of the WRE along with advancements in military technology.
--So your complaints about the "usurpation" of the merchants ring hollow, given that they were just reclaiming what had been "usurped" from them by the warrior-aristocracy centuries prior.
--It certainly doesn't resemble your morality tale about evil kings scheming with merchants to overthrow righteous feudal lords.
-The medieval period wasn't a time of mellow social harmony born from unquestionable hierarchy, but of great political and military strife across Europe between the nobility and their kings, the kings of Europe and each other, the nobility and each other, the nobility and the Church, the kings and the Church etc.
-You claim that your ideal society would eliminate consent of the governed but retain popular sovereignty. They're essentially synonyms.
--Popular sovereignty was created as a concept by Enlightenment thinkers whose influence you view as baleful, and Catholic political thinkers who would probably strongly disagree with you. What do you mean when you say you want to retain it?
---The most obvious conclusions are that either you don't understand what it means or you mean it in the same way communist parties claim to stand for "the people".
-The world of 1215 cannot exist with the technology of 2020, because technology is a key part of the context that helps to shape political ideology.
--So the technology of 2020 would have to be destroyed in an orgy of luddism, or restricted to the aristocratic class as a privilege of such (you have previously stated that your ruling class should explicitly have legal privileges over those of the peasantry).
---If the latter, they would probably eventually lose the ability to make new pieces of advanced technology, and in time to maintain the examples they have left.
- Noblesse oblige is not something that warrior elites all have and merchant elites all lack

Because I think that individualism ignores human sociality and can easily lead to totalitarianism due to an overreliance on a central state (something none of the people here have refuted, by the by),

That may well be a problem, but you offer no true solution for such.

and because I bring up medieval aristocrats as an example of a Subsidiary, I somehow want some kind of aristocratic paganism

?

I'm not speaking of Loki the norse god, but Loki the Marvel Comics character. I can readily distinguish between the two fictional characters, so I don't actually think you're a pagan or advocate for such. I brought him up because he uses rhetoric very similar to yours and expresses the arrogance and brutality of the aristocratic class at their worst.

If anyone could actually bring up how they got that from what I said, that'd be very helpful.

Don't try and pretend the context of this discussion doesn't exist. In the past you spent an entire thread arguing that rulers are owed a kind of absolute subservience by their subjects, in the context of a blatant historical situation of malfeasant and arbitrary rule. This strongly suggests that no tyrant exists who you not find excuses for supporting wholeheartedly in their struggle against the evil Liberal (and I don't mean that in the modern American sense) menace.

Imagine if I tried to pigeonhole Navarro and LordsFire as a couple of bomb-throwing, misanthropic anarchists or some nonsense.

I mean, it's obvious that I'm not an anarchist given my posting history on this site against anarchists who showed up here. It's not nearly so obvious that you don't support a demented neo-feudalist Nietzschean hellscape.

 

[Crow gotta eat]

Please explain why communism didn't come about in the history of medieval feudalism, please?

Well, actually, there were some proto-communist systems that came out during the medieval days, which we now call the medieval communes, while back then they were just called communes.

Medieval commune - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"According to Adalberon, society was composed of the three orders: those who fight (the nobles), those who pray (the clergy) and those who work (the peasants). In theory this was a balance between spiritual and secular peers, with the third order providing labour for the other two. The urban communes were a break in this order. The Church and King both had mixed reactions to communes. On the one hand, they agreed safety and protection from lawless nobles was in everyone's best interest. The commune's intention was to keep the peace through the threat of revenge, and the Church was sympathetic to the end result of peace.

However, the Church had their own ways to enforce peace, such as the Peace and Truce of God movement, for example. Some communes disrupted the order of medieval society in that the methods the commune used, eye for an eye, violence begets violence, were generally not acceptable to Church or King. There was an idea among some that communes threatened the medieval social order. Only the noble lords were allowed by custom to fight, and ostensibly the merchant townspeople were workers, not warriors. As such, the nobility and the clergy sometimes accepted communes, but other times did not. One of the most famous cases of a commune being suppressed and the resulting defiant urban revolt occurred in the French town of Laon in 1112."

Edit: And yes, I know I used Wikipedia which wouldn't exactly accepted in most academic circles, but my point is that they existed. And they sort of started in a generally mutualistic fashion, which socialism and communism sort of envisioned itself, even if the communes themselves weren't full on socialists or communists.

 

[almostinsane]

This is why I advocate for more decentralized government control - not because I'm for "limited government" as an ideal, but because I think people should try setting up societies that can work better than what we currently have.

I'm actually interested in this train of thought. What, in your view, would be a good society to "try out"?

 

[Free-Stater 101]

I'm actually interested in this train of thought. What, in your view, would be a good society to "try out"?

That may well be a problem, but you offer no true solution for such.

I mean, it's obvious that I'm not an anarchist given my posting history on this site against anarchists who showed up here. It's not nearly so obvious that you don't support a demented neo-feudalist Nietzschean hellscape.

And this is the root of the problem with this thread and the other thread in politics: https://www.the-sietch.com/index.ph...rad-verbally-owns-american-conservatism.3221/

[U]The Name of Love[/U] to Your credit you do point out their are understandable flaws in some conservative argument's, Yes, absolute individualism is not perfect and Yes, Conservative groups do often betray the values they supposedly enshrine but that's were the good parts of your argument's always fall apart.

The main problem with the argument's that I have seen you repeatedly make is that you far too often point to problems and then demand swift and immediate change even if it's to societies determent or if you even have a way to succeed in doing so.

Yes, individualism has it's flaws, but how exactly are you proposing we fix it as a problem? Yes, Consevatism has it's flaws, but what are you proposing replace it as a ideology exactly?

And the above is you main problem, you tell people that you want to replace the system and you want it torn down, yet when you are asked you always get incredibly vague and then then when people inevitably 'misconstrue' your argument you get defensive and respond.

"see if I can't twist Lovely's words into something that fits whatever I hate."

When the fact is that you aren't being proactive in offering your solution to the problem, only pointing out the flaws in the present system of thought or governance before stating it needs to go and when somebody point's out the vast problems that that would cause you say. "Yes, but the way you have been doing it is wrong!" and then when we demand a straight forward answer of what you want exactly or how you plan to achieve it, you sometimes will either ignore the question or flat out admit that you don't know the answer.

Now all that being said, while I admit that I like Navarro I will admit he/she went a bit too far in getting in close and personal along with other posters to the point of a dog pile, but that doesn't excuse their logic out of hand.

Now, if you want to be respected by other users the best way would be to formulate or explain.

1. How your theoretical system would work. (Completely)
2. The ways by which we could realistically achieve this system.
3. And address possible flaws to it without being dismissive.

If you don't do the above nobody is going to take your ideology seriously. Heck, even as much as everybody here hates Marx most of them will at least admit that despite it's huge flaws the Communist Manifesto at least does a good job of showing how or where Marx's wanted the world to go and furthermore explained the way he thought it could be achieved going into detail on the subject that's how his ideology got so popular in the first place.

 

[Scottty]

I think I'll share some of my own musings, here.

-Feudalism is not an ideal template for a society but something that emerged in unique technological-social circumstances.

This.
Back in the Middle Ages when medieval thinkers were developing their political philosophy, feudalism and monarchy were what they knew. So much of their ideas presupposed it as the default form of government, rather than as one of many possible forms.
Which leaves anyone who buys too much into those old ideas poorly-equipped to deal with constitutional government, elections, political parties, checks and balances, etc etc.

But there's another layer underneath that...
A few centuries earlier, and political thought in Western Europe took for granted a world in which all of humanity lived under a single worldwide government. Rome ruled the world. (Technically they might have known that there were places were Rome did not rule, but those places didn't matter, because only "barbarians" lived there. Their conception of the world pretty much extended only to the boundaries of the Empire.)
Christianity had gone from being a persecuted minority, to being declared The Official State Religion Of The Roman Empire. All subjects of the Empire were expected to be Christian, and all Christians were expected to be loyal subjects of the Empire.
(Which meant that if you were a Christian living in, say, Parthia, you were SOL.)

Then in the era of feudalism, the world government that those earlier doctors took for granted was gone. And the barbarian chieftains who had established their own new realms upon the ruins were not too keen on the idea of restoring it - unless of course they personally got to be the new Caesar.
And gradually the barbarian conquerors developed their kingdoms into a new system, that adapted and changed over time, as the needs and resources required. New technologies changed the old rules. And old brutal ways were replaced with more refined and cultured ones.

But Roman Catholicism cannot help itself. It's the ghost of the Roman Empire, doomed to keep trying to re-animate the corpse. And the various kings of Europe played along when it suited them, or dictated terms, or simply gave Rome the finger when its demands became too contrary to their own needs.
Meanwhile, the Byzantines were sitting over in their corner going "LOLwut? But we're the Empire! Hello? Still here!"
Until eventually they weren't there anymore. But then the Orthodox simply found a new place to be their Rome - and the silly game goes on.
Do they all forget that Jesus said: "My kingdom is not of this world." ?

Meanwhile, someone like TNOL (who I don't think really desires or intends the dystopian outcome his ideas as stated would lead to) is following medieval Latin thinkers in going back to before Rome, splicing in ideas from the era of pagan Greek city-states. And those had their own politics, their own conception of "might makes right".
Plato's fantasy ideal state, for example, looked a bit like Sparta on steroids. Well, at the time, Athens, the home city of all the thinky windbags, had lost a longish war to the Klingon Empire of their time - the rival city-state of Sparta.
Political theory that smells strongly of an attempt by the author to ingratiate himself with those in power is nothing new.

Not that independent city-states are in and of themselves a bad idea. The Greek model of every place being free to try out whatever crazy form of government it likes has something to be said for it.

After all, there is no one perfect form of human government to be had in this world. All of them are makeshifts.
There will not be true godly government until Jesus returns.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

My kingdom is not of this world." ?

this this this so much this

After all, there is no one perfect form of human government to be had in this world. All of them are makeshifts.
There will not be true godly government until Jesus returns

I'd go one step further and say that if you belive in the concpet of tha amberhamic God at all, you pretty much have to accept the fact that this phisical reality is inherantly imperfect by nature of it being physical. Most protastants such as myself belive Once Jesus returns all of reality as we know it will be undone, "rolled up as a scroll" according to revelations, with ever man and woman being judged according thier deeds which means really in the end all of this squabbling is pointless.