Good one, on both your parts, thanks. I'm eager to check out the book. And it's fun to see Razib's hippie side start to emerge. Y'all have me thinking of John Gray, btw. Here's a recent piece. Here's an interview. Stephen Toulmin often makes some similar points: that there were really two strands to modern thought -- a more rough-hewn one (represented in his scheme by Rabelais and Montaigne), and then the math-physics-Descartes one. In his view, we've overvalued the second (all due honor to it, of course) and lost too much touch with the first. Here's a good interview with him.

mike,

i found webb's book interesting. that doesn't imply i agree with him. fundamentally, even if i disagree with webb's vision, i think it is important to engage and understand anti-modern thinkers like him because they are part of the contemporary scene.

I wasn't taking you to agree with him. I was taking you to be interested and open. Having a misgiving or two about liberal modernity, or seeing the dark side of it as well as the sweetness and light, or seeing the role it plays in creating its own opposition ... All of that doesn't mean you're against modernity. It just means you're sensible and not-blind. Besides, do any of us really have to be cheerleaders for one side or the other? The cosmic basketball game is going to go its merry way no matter which side we're cheering for. So why not observe, learn, and enjoy?

If you ever get around to John Gray or Stephen Toulmin, let me know how you react. I think you might enjoy Toulmin's "Cosmopolis" a lot.

well, i might have more free time this summer than i have had for the past year, so who knows. the word "open mind" has many connotations. i might have to post on that so that some of them are disabused, at least in my case :)

1. The Islamists, the Christian Right, the indigenous activists-none of these are offering an alternative vision that speaks to humanity at large, rather than just to (some of) their own people.

2. Lessons at the level of public policy on how one treats individuals are rather more complicated. Prodding individuals along different paths according to their supposed inborn temperaments gets quite messy, even dangerous. It may work quite well just to create the diversity of spaces, send signals about the many different aspirations we value (and mean it!), and then let people do as they wish.

Anybody else find these two statements in conflict? Seems to me that enabling the multiplicity of the first leads directly to the second. Think local, act local, allow people to choose their own local.

Razib, thanks for another great interview. I'm rushing to read the book.

Unfortunately, I suspect the human "urge to join other people" is (perhaps instinctually) joined to the "gang up and kick someone's butt and take their stuff (if not kill them)." Not everyone is like this, and I still hold that intellectual (what was once termed "spiritual" or "philosophical") types of people are not so tribalistic. And maybe that's an indirect effect of intellectuals being *less* tied to institutional life than everday "salarymen." Which, again, suggests that something deep in the machinery of "civilization" sets person against person.

One question I had reading this exchange was about how you actually protect those nooks and crannies in which alternative cultures can survive. My impression is that liberal democracies are destructive to these nooks and crannies mainly by offering their inhabitants more appealing choices. I mean, Mennonites and Amish continue to exist in the US, there are still cloistered orders of Catholic monks and nuns, and the odd hippie-ish commune. Nobody's sending the cops around to break those communities up; the threat comes because their members have a choice about whether to leave, and modern society is pretty good at offering appealing choices of that kind.

Isn't this the kind of "persecution" the Pilgrims fled when they went from the Netherlands to the American colonies?

albatross: From here:

Amish defection rates have dropped from a high of ~60% in the mid-20th century to 5% today.

The macrocosm can host a myriad microcosms.

i think webb would fundamentally say that "choice" is overvalued in liberal democracies. again, i disagree, but his view isn't that strange, on a deep level both the Right and the Left oppose unmoderated free "choice," with only pure libertarians acceptings its dominion over other values. i enjoyed webb's book in part because i think he came out and elucidated in detail what many conservatives and liberals of a communitarian bent really think.

Razib: Do you think that Webb understands *that* you value choice and what that means/how you value it? Does he understand that from your perspective, or at least from mine, what he is saying sounds awfully like "I choose for the world to be like I say, my choices should matter and those of people I disagree with should not."

As a practical matter, what you advocates of more-choice-always-and-everywhere are stuck wrestling with is that there will always be people who want no such thing. (Or who, while willing to play along with some such thing to some extent for the sake of economic progress, don't want the whole "choice" mania intruding on certain areas of life.) Push choice a little too far and they'll push right back. Enforce choice, and they'll point out (with some reason) that you aren't enforcing choice, you're enforcing your preferred regime.

This resembles one of the fundamental conundrums of liberal society: what if one element in a liberal society wants to undermine or take down (or take over) that society? How can you be "liberal" about that element? But if you get firm and enforcer-like vis a vis that element, you then lose your "liberal" credentials.

My man John Gray is good on these questions, as is Wilhelm Ropke.

Razib: Do you think that Webb understands *that* you value choice and what that means/how you value it? Does he understand that from your perspective, or at least from mine, what he is saying sounds awfully like "I choose for the world to be like I say, my choices should matter and those of people I disagree with should not."

yes.

i found it kind of odd that his idea of an improved quality of life in liberal society would be iPods and Lexi all around.. certainly having those things would not be very satisfying if you were dead and starving.. before we start handing out the apple products, i would suggest that people might be more satisfied by things like good food and medical care.. if everybody received medical care at the highest standard currently available (including whatever zillions of drugs that keep magic johnson looking like a football player) and delicious organically grown spinach salads, would something still be missing?

Coffee Mug: “if everybody received medical care at the highest standard currently available (including whatever zillions of drugs that keep magic johnson looking like a football player) and delicious organically grown spinach salads, would something still be missing?”

I’m guessing yes. After the basic needs are satisfied people find other reasons to be unhappy. I believe the brain evolved to be dissatisfied. Over time people take for granted what they have and they envy others. The degree to which this occurs in an individual is partially determined by genetics.

Eventually I expect biotech will be available to tune “happiness”. At that point happiness may be disconnected from life events. (Imagine you could tune your own happiness so that studying math was more pleasurable than sex. My guess is that such a self-adaptable brain control system would be unstable. It would quickly lead to non-functional behavior.)

He seems to attribute too much power over behavior to ethics - like the WSJ op-ed page saying the Muslims in the banlieues are burning cars because of French labor laws. Or that if the Muslims converted to Christianity, they would commit less crime. I guess it must be the American black Muslims doing all the crime here in the USA.

And he doesn't demonstrate why the engineered fellow is a poor one. Agreed, the two latter traits in large quantities can be bad. But intelligent people tend to be more moral (a matter of correlations, not my ethics).

Parts of the left grovels about the temperament of our society, our materialistic excesses. Yet how many people would actually join their ranks and ponder the virtues of A Theory of Justice or The Republic? As for the right, I ask, is belief in the falsities of (certain) religions laudable? It may be that those of our society have always preferred this society, albeit with misgivings, and that the past is no guide because it lacked the wealth to do so. I do not know.

I guess the sense I got from the discussion was that many people found a lot of personal happiness and satisfaction in living in those more traditional kinds of communities, with religious and social conventions that were pretty well established, everyone knowing his place, etc. And I think that's absolutely true--those things are good in a lot of ways. Knowing your place in the world, having family who will always guard your back and take care of you if you fall down, having a religious faith that comforts you when you're suffering and pushes you to treat other people well when you're in good shape, all those things are valuable.

But it's important not to lose sight of why those things have been falling apart. Traditional religious values provide a certain level of certainty, structure, etc. But they may also mean that if you're gay, there's no place at all for you. Or that if you're a woman who sleeps with her boyfriend before marriage, your male relatives are honor bound to kill you. Or that you are pretty constrained in your choices about what to do with your life, because lots of personal choice just doesn't mix well with a society where family ties and tradition are everything. Or that people who find themselves doubting traditional religious doctrine don't ever say so out loud, for fear of losing their friends and family.

I'm very sympathetic to someone who says "You have lots of freedom, but here are some things to consider about how to use it--you may really miss the community and family values you're walking away from." I'm not too sympathetic to someone who says "Your freedom is destroying these communities and value systems that rely on your being forced to stay in them for their power. Therefore we're going to take away your freedom to leave." I wonder where Webb comes down on this, though Razib's earlier comment gave me some sense of this.

I forgot to say, at times he sounds here like Murray and Herrnstein in The Bell Curve, although I suppose the sentiment is a common communitarian one.

"Knowing your place in the world"
A very Tory notion, although even our liberal society needs much of it. The education establishment acts as if anyone can become anything, irrespective of ability. That may be a source of dissatisfaction - being told you can do anything when you repeatedly fail when you acting on that.

I guess I'm not very sympathetic to the kind of traditionalism that Webb is in favor of. I left a conservative place when I was 22 (graduated from college near my hometown) to go out and find my own way in life. It has been very fulling and I have never looked back.

Yes, some people want the certainty and community of living in a traditional society. There are plenty of places in the U.S. where you can find this. Others (like myself) demand complete openess and unlimited opportunity. There are plenty of places in the U.S. you can find this as well.

I have not read Webb's book. So, I do not know where he comes down on this. However, those of us who are the "open-seekers" are quite content to allow the traditionists to be traditionalists. The traditionalist, on the other hand, do not seem to be content with us to be us. In other words, we are into peaceful co-existance. They are not. This is the fundamental issue of public debate as far as I'm concerned and tells me eveything I need to know about people like Webb.

This line of thinking suggests that they need something from us. Generally, when someone wants something from me, they usually offer something in return. Webb needs to come up with something he can offer to me in order to get me to "be like him". If he can't, as far as I'm concerned, he and people like him are not worth me giving them the time of day, let alone any other kind of attention.

The thinking of people like Webb suggests that his kind of "traditionalism" is inherently fragile. I find it difficult to believe that anything that is this fragile could be robust enough to be, how should I say it, sustainable?

Therefore we're going to take away your freedom to leave

webb is actually arguing for an open-borders world state where movement should be easy. legally at least. breaking out of social bounds, well, different ?.

It may be that those of our society have always preferred this society, albeit with misgivings, and that the past is no guide because it lacked the wealth to do so. I do not know.

Webb (who incidentally prefers to be addressed as Milord Ayatollah) prefers to believe otherwise, although I tend to agree with you regarding human nature. However, as another poster pointed out above, fundamentally Webb is not sympathetic to choice-for-choice's-sake. For a man who believes in a metaphysically-derived system of ethics, human preferances are mere impulses to be reined in and properly channeled. of course, there will always be space for mere preferances - even the most traditionalistic society would allow people the choice between tea or coffee I'd presume. Liberals draw a distinction between the public and the private, but a Confucian "virtuocrat" like Webb does not really see that distinction. There really is no sacrosanct "private sphere" per se. Choices are permissible only to the extent that they do not interfere with the overarching moral project (ideally embodied in the State). Thus any objection mounted on the basis of "choice" is not really relevant because he does not accept the moral equality of choices.

Of course, even the most dogmatic Libertarian would disallow the "choice" to disembowel one's neighbors. But for modern liberals such restrictions on choices on drawn on the basis of physical existence, whereas for Webb all choices are intrinsically ranked according to a metaphysical moral order.

I had an interesting debate with him once. Considering the following scenario as a mental exercise: Supposed you are an astronaut lost in space who happens to stumble across an abandoned space station. THere's enough provisions on board for you to live out the remainder of your life but you'll essentially be a society of one cut off from all human contact. Are you still bound by any rules of morality? Webb insisted yes - because for him these rules are both timeless and placeless.

I read the exchange with interest.

To David Boxenhorn: I'm not so sure there's a tension between my desire to see a diversity of spaces for ways of life, on the one hand, and my critique of present resistance movements as being too insular. The diversity of spaces I have in mind is institutional spaces, such as local communities with enough power to make participation vital, educational institutions that inculcate substantive virtues rather than only expertise, and the like. The problem with the insularity and fragmentation of the Islamists, the Christian Right, and others, is that they leave unchallenged the overall patterns of global culture and power relations--which put traditionalist forces everywhere on the defensive. So yes, I want all the diversity of the Amish, the madrasahs, etc--but for that to flourish, we need a hospitable global polity, which will only come about if traditionalists who are now divided start working together.

To Coffee Mug and Fly (an unfortunate mix of pseudonyms, it seems...): Of course, my example presupposed that liberalism would deliver all the good social democratic benefits of health care and the like, along with the consumer goods. But the point stands. Scandinavian social democracies also lack many of the deeper satisfactions that more traditional societies had. This isn't just a hard-wired tendency to be unsatisfied--it has much to do with the content of certain ways of life, and should be taken on its merits.

To Albatross: Your remarks on the Amish and the appeals of a broader liberal society have a grain of truth. But one has to look at the context. Would as many Amish leave their communities if there were not so many pressures against them, if the playing field were not so tilted? Most traditional villagers around the world today would probably be much more willing to stay where they are if development came to them, through a genuine policy commitment to rural life and to providing new economic bases for those communities. On the constraining aspects of traditional life, I don't deny that there are many. Where they are needlessly restrictive, they can be revised, in the right spirit. Some of those practices probably do reflect harsher economic conditions. But I must stress that revising practices in the same spirit that originally informed them--perhaps drawing lessons from other traditional communities elsewhere as well--is quite different from the modern assumption that practices have to change on liberal terms.

To everyone on choice: I think my commitment to freedom is being understated here. I do not favour (nor do I imagine anyone with a moderately sophisticated understanding of traditional life favours) crushing people into preordained community structures. There are many ways of living virtuously, and no good reason to impose one over another. To be sure, I do not think all choices are equal. I believe that, in a way the wisdom of the great traditions largely captures, some choices are better for the character of the person making them. I also believe that a political community should be designed to tip the playing field towards better rather than worse ways of life (through institutional habituation, appropriate concentrations of cultural influence, etc). But none of that implies doing such things as repressing dissent or allocating people to certain paths in life. It is enough to push things in the right direction. In this respect, it bears noting that in most traditional societies, the state was far less intrusive for most people than it is in most liberal democracies now. Custom does a lot.
That said, I agree that there is a real difference in how I view freedom and how liberals view freedom. For liberals, freedom is a self-contained good, valuable simply because every individual should have space to make good, bad, or indifferent choices; there is no up or down within one's own character, so to speak. For me (and for other traditionalists), freedom is a means to an end. It provides space for people sincerely to embrace any of a number of worthy ways of life, and to experiment with how best to carry out those commitments in practice. That, incidentally, includes what many would call a private sphere; all traditional societies have recognised the sanctity of family life and the like. Freedom is necessary because people can't flourish without it, not because society shouldn't care what they do as long as they don't hurt anyone else. (This is akin to the Quran's urging of "no compulsion in religion," and even to the way a transitional figure like Locke spoke of religious toleration as most likely to lead to sincere belief.)
So the freedom that I should like to see in a postliberal order is quite expansive, and would probably be likely to lead to a renaissance across civilisations. Is any genuine renaissance going to come out of liberal globalisation? Hardly....

PS: Webb also signs his emails as "Your Lord the Ayatollah"...

I'm not clear on what is meant by "Global Culture War".

Is it resistance to western influence, interference, ideals and imperialism in all it's forms?

Whenever I hear the expressions "culture war" or "clash of civs" being tossed about, it is always something to do with resistance fighters-vs-western imperialists.

To Conflagrasian: The "global culture war" refers to the struggle taking place in all societies between the forces of liberal modernity and the various forces (traditionalist, populist, religious, etc) resisting it. It has nothing to do with any clash between different civilisations or cultures. That's the problem with resistance today: while those who want the liberal "end of history" do see their struggle as global, the resistance keeps fighting separate battles in the name of one or another culture or civilisation. Unless the resistances start thinking globally, they'll just keep losing ground. They certainly won't stand a chance of getting beyond the present clash to something more promising--maybe even something that some people who now call themselves liberals might find palatable....

Adam K. Webb, thank you for your thoughtful responses.

The diversity of spaces I have in mind is institutional spaces, such as local communities with enough power to make participation vital, educational institutions that inculcate substantive virtues rather than only expertise, and the like.

The only thing we need to bring about this utopia is school vouchers. In fact, it's happening already even without them. Traditionalists are thriving everywhere in the US, you just don't notice them because their absolute numbers are still small. This will change.

Unless the resistances start thinking globally, they'll just keep losing ground.

Where are they losing ground in the 1st world?

I do agree that a more decentralised system of education (preserving adequate public funding through vouchers) might do a good deal to allow traditional subcultures to flourish. But I doubt that that would change the overall balance of power in society at large. The centres of economic, political, and cultural power would continue to be dominated by people of a certain mercenary and iconoclastic temper. The point is not to get certain niches; the point is to challenge broader assumptions about what the future global culture is going to look like. That requires political power, in more than just one country or region.
The traditionalist forces are very much losing ground. Maybe not at the same rate in the global North as in the global South (simply because so much of the damage has already been done), but they're still on the defensive. Take the Christian Right, for example. They are one coopted political bloc within a party that is far more taken with big business than with bible-thumping, when it really comes down to it. And the megachurch followers seem just a little too at ease with the prosperity of the exurbs to consider them really part of a global resistance.

Mr. Webb,

Thank you for responding again. I have a feeling that we are in broad agreement about a lot of things. If you want a feeling for where I'm coming from, you can look at these two posts that I wrote for this blog a while back.

But, I don't understand why you think that "traditionalist forces are very much losing ground" - Islamists the Christian Right, Hindu nationalists are all modern forms of traditionalism. They are still very new movements. They, as well as others, like Amish, Mormons and "Orthodox" Jews, are all robust and growing fast, and will almost inevitably be more important in the future than they are now. While it's true that within the liberal establishment, liberalism seems to be growing more extreme, how can I not conclude that traditionalist forces are very much gaining ground?

But, I don't understand why you think that "traditionalist forces are very much losing ground" - Islamists the Christian Right, Hindu nationalists are all modern forms of traditionalism. They are still very new movements. They, as well as others, like Amish, Mormons and "Orthodox" Jews, are all robust and growing fast, and will almost inevitably be more important in the future than they are now.

the numbers of the "Christian Right" are greater than they were a generation ago, but they are also far more similar to the mainstream than a generation ago. if traditionalism was gaining ground in the USA one would predict, for example, that there would be reduced tolerance for homosexuality and premarital sex. i don't see the trends going in that direction. the 'victory' of traditionalists is somewhat like the inevitable problems that will occur due to resource exhaustion. theoretically it is a no-brainer, but the inevitable keeps getting pushed back a generation.

OK, I suppose they've gained some ground in the sense of more visibility and a few niches, compared to a generation ago. But one can't project those trends out very far, particularly when the broader cultural pressures are so obviously the other way. Razib's point about them being more similar to the mainstream is very true as well. If one looks at the Christian Right, particularly on a political level, one finds that their commitments tend to be framed as a laundry list of specific positions on specific hot-button issues: anti-abortion, anti-homosexual marriage, pro-school voucher, anti-UN. They're not, by and large, presenting a comprehensive vision of human flourishing that goes beyond pushing within the existing political system for a few policy positions. Catholic social thought does this more effectively (and takes up the economic justice aspect more honestly), but it doesn't have anywhere near the political base.

if traditionalism was gaining ground in the USA one would predict, for example, that there would be reduced tolerance for homosexuality and premarital sex. i don't see the trends going in that direction.

I think that it all depends how you look at things. If you take a top-down view, I agree with you. But if you take a bottom-up view, i.e. from the point of view of the various movements themselves, you see groups that are growing in numbers and ability to present "a comprehensive vision of human flourishing" to their own members.

OK, I suppose they've gained some ground in the sense of more visibility and a few niches, compared to a generation ago. But one can't project those trends out very far, particularly when the broader cultural pressures are so obviously the other way.

I guess that this is where we differ in our goals. I am perfectly happy with the idea of a liberal matrix as a super-culture, as long as it permits cultural heterogeneity, and the ability of the individual to choose. I think that, given that environment, we will see evolution toward a more human-friendly culture. In economics, where things move much faster, you often see a niche-product take over the center. Such a thing can (and I think, inevitably, will) happen at the cultural level as well.