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I. Bentham’s Bulldog
Blogger “Bentham’s Bulldog” not too long ago wrote Shut Up About Slave Morality.
Nietzsche’s idea of “slave morality” (he writes) is only a dysphemism for the standard morality the place you’re not dangerous and merciless. Proper-wing edgelords use “rejection of slave morality” as a justification for badness and cruelty:
When individuals object to slave morality, they’re simply objecting to morality. They’re objecting to the notion that it’s best to care about others and doing the appropriate factor, even when doing so doesn’t materially profit you. Now, one can constantly object to these issues, however it doesn’t make them any type of Nostradamus. It makes them morally poor, and in addition typically philosophically confused.
The tedious whinging about slave morality is only a approach to move off not caring about morality or taking ethical arguments significantly as some type of subtle and cynical myth-busting. However it’s not that within the slightest. Nobody is duped by slave morality, nobody buys into it due to some type of deep-seated ignorance. Those that observe it achieve this due to a mix of social stress and a real want to assist out others. That’s, in actual fact, not in any manner weak however a noble impulse from which all good actions spring.
Some right-wingers have responded to the piece, however their responses are principally “however I like being dangerous and merciless” – which appears to show Bulldog’s level.
I feel we will do higher – that it’s attainable to make a case towards “slave morality” that doesn’t depend on being pro-badness and cruelty. I’m an skilled on Nietzsche (I’ve learn a few of his books), however not a world-leading skilled (I didn’t perceive them). So take all of this as a riff on the idea, reasonably than a information to Nietzsche’s unique intent.
II. Friedrich Nietzsche
At first (says Nietzsche), the phrase “good” was synonymous with “noble” – ie the virtues that made the the Aristocracy higher than the serfs they dominated. This was manner again within the Bronze Age, so your mannequin for a noble must be Achilles, Agamemnon, and so on.
The wonderful noble delights in being robust, wholesome, and virile. He lives in a fantastic palace and wears shining golden armor. He could also be cultured, subtle, and even sensible. He’s nice at the whole lot he does, and harbors ambitions to turn into even better, perhaps conquer a kingdom or two. He’s highly effective, skillful, and awe-inspiring. Life is sweet!
Worth programs naturally circulation from elite to commoners. However a commoner can’t do a lot with this type of grasp morality apart from conclude “yeah, I suck”. Commoners are poor, sickly, and reside in mud huts. They’re unlikely to attain many targets past “not die”, they usually’ve most likely had their spirits crushed. However “I suck” isn’t a psychologically steady proposition. So someday across the Iron Age, the slaves began engaged on a morality of their very own, one the place they’re the nice guys and the masters are the losers.
Slave morality says that the robust are tyrants, the wealthy are grasping, and the formidable are puffed-up braggarts. The wisest man is he who admits he is aware of nothing; the strongest man is he who conquers his personal wishes; it’s simpler for a camel to move via a needle and so forth. God loves the common-or-garden, the salt of the earth. The worst factor you are able to do is attempt to pridefully rise above your fellows (cf. Tall Poppy Syndrome); the perfect factor you are able to do is to reduce your self, via strategies sacred (fasting, celibacy, self-flagellation) or mundane (giving to charity, serving your fellow man).
Nietzsche speculates that slave morality originated with the Jews (an particularly downtrodden and persecuted race) however caught on after the rise of Christianity. Someday across the fall of Rome it took the lead over grasp morality, and it’s been gaining ever since. As time goes on, slave morality will turn into an increasing number of dominant, grasp morality will fade right into a dimmer and dimmer reminiscence, and in some unspecified time in the future we’ll come to what he calls the Final Man – somebody so utterly poisoned by slave morality that he worships mediocrity, feels no emotion however envy, and refuses to ever do something as a result of doing issues appears insufficiently humble.
In its place, Nietzsche proposed the Superman. This idea is complicated, everybody will get it flawed, and I will even get it flawed. Typically it sounds just like the Superman is the man who brings grasp morality again in type. Different occasions it seems like he reconciles each programs, retaining the perfect elements of every. Nonetheless different occasions, it seems like he transcends them completely.
However (asks Bentham’s Bulldog) why do we want this man? Isn’t slave morality, with its concern for charity, peace, and equality – merely appropriate? Isn’t grasp morality – with its barbarian warlords bragging about how their golden palaces make them higher than peasants – simply flawed?
I need to give two linked destructive views on slave morality earlier than coming again to Nietzsche’s query of whether or not there’s one thing higher than both possibility. First, slave morality as ensmallening. And second, slave morality as an try to keep away from optimistic judgment.
III. Ozy Brennan
Grasp morality favors the large. Individuals with extra stuff – extra virtues, abilities, accomplishments, wealth and energy – are higher. In a grasp moralist society, every particular person is challenged to embiggen herself. Those that fail are judged worse than those that succeed.
Slave morality favors the small. It doesn’t overtly, in so many phrases, problem the person to ensmallen herself. It simply arranges the incentives in order that they must.
Ozy Brennan has a self-help submit, The Life Objectives Of Lifeless Individuals. It’s framed as psychological well being recommendation. Possibly you’re some type of responsible/anxious doormat kind individual. Your targets are issues like:
I don’t need to make anybody mad.
I don’t need to damage anybody.
I need to take up much less house.
I need to want fewer issues.
I don’t need to fail.
I don’t need to break the foundations.
I don’t need to offend anyone
I don’t need to have upsetting feelings.
I need to cease having emotions.
Ozy factors out that lifeless individuals obtain these targets higher than the residing ever may. In case your life objective is to be extra like a lifeless individual, that’s a pink flag for being a responsible/anxious doormat who wants to achieve some self-confidence.
They counsel changing a few of these with the types of targets the place residing individuals outperform corpses. For instance:
I need to write an amazing novel.
I need to be an excellent father or mother to my youngsters.
I need to assist individuals.
I need to get a elevate.
I need to study linear algebra.
I need to watch each superhero film ever filmed.
Ozy could be very good and mainly by no means will get in comparison with barbarian warlords. Nonetheless, this essay is a grasp morality manifesto. Slave morality is targets for lifeless individuals. Corpses aren’t grasping. They don’t oppress anybody. They by no means damage individuals. They don’t stand out, or attempt to be higher than anybody else, or categorical satisfaction. Slave morality is about compulsively making your self smaller, weaker, much less distinctive, and fewer disruptive to anybody else – which makes corpses the acknowledged consultants.
Examine Achilles (grasp morality) to among the early Christian saints (slave morality). Achilles needs private glory. He seeks private glory by being the perfect – the strongest, probably the most good-looking, probably the most expert in warfare – and by doing nice deeds of renown. He had probably the most stunning armor, the most popular girls, and the perfect troopers. When Agamemnon offended him, he was keen to let all of Greece perish to piss him off and restore his honor.
The early Christian saints positively didn’t need private glory – if anybody had tried to glorify them, they might have stated one thing very pious like “I’m solely a humble servant of God, it’s He who must be glorified”. They’re remembered primarily for his or her excellence in ensmallening themselves. They would quick till they turned residing skeletons, take vows of silence, or brick themselves in a tiny cell and spend the remainder of their lives there. They’d wash the ft of lepers out of humility, put on sackcloth to verify they didn’t get overly proud about their clothes, and whip themselves bloody in the event that they caught themselves having wishes. Different religions’ saints are even worse – the Buddhists would attempt to meditate themselves into nonexistence!
At the least the saints had the excuse that they have been ensmallening themselves so God may fill them up with His personal glory. But when you ensmallen your self, you’ll simply find yourself anxious, depressing, and devoid of accomplishments.
And a minimum of the saints have been doing this as a result of they genuinely believed in it. For Nietzsche, the essence of slave morality is the herd intuition – ie a distributed mob of individuals saying “you had higher ensmallen your self if you recognize what’s good for you” as a type of sinister backscratcher membership. A person would possibly ensmallen themselves due to private fealty to slave morality. However extra usually they’re doing it lest they appear to be Tall Poppies – individuals who defect from an unstated social consensus that everybody ensmallen themselves, and so earn the envy and hatred of their friends.
IV. Edward Educate
The opposite helpful manner to consider slave morality is as a package deal of concepts that lets individuals keep away from optimistic judgment.
(by “optimistic judgment”, I imply judgment based mostly on whether or not somebody has accomplishments – versus “destructive judgment”, judgment based mostly on whether or not somebody has prevented inflicting hurt)
This comes from the identical place because the embiggening critique. If individuals could be judged on their accomplishments, then it looks like it’s best to exit and get some accomplishments, ie embiggen your self. If individuals can solely be judged on their harms, it looks like it’s best to attempt to keep away from inflicting hurt, ie ensmallen your self. So one other manner to consider slave vs. grasp morality is as coefficients on the traditional utilitarian equation, good = advantages – harms. Grasp moralists obese the advantages time period; slave moralists deal with the harms.
In a second, I’ll listing some methods for avoiding optimistic judgment, however first, a warning. All good protection mechanisms comprise a component of fact. Individuals deploy these methods as a result of they’re usually true. I’m not saying that these are all false issues individuals solely imagine for psychological causes – simply that in case you discover somebody who appears obsessive about them, deploying them much more usually than the reality appears to warrant, perhaps there’s one thing psychological happening.
You obsess over the concept the system is rigged. That is an obsession reasonably than a delusion – the system might very properly be rigged, however you care about it manner an excessive amount of. The extra rigged the system is, the much less you may choose anybody positively for succeeding in it.
You imagine that each one virtues are subjective, meaningless, and sort of a grift. Intelligence” is only a measure of the way you do on IQ assessments; “well being” is fatphobic and ableist; “onerous work” is a rip-off by Puritan Boomers to stigmatize non-neurotypical learners. Once more, these are obsessions and never delusions – it’s actually affordable to query conventional metrics of success – however in some unspecified time in the future it turns into an try to keep away from judgment as a result of all potential judgment requirements are corrupt.
You interpret any try to speak about good issues, pursue good issues, or (God forbid) obtain good issues as a bid for standing, and pre-emptively attempt to reduce it down. You unfold rumors about anybody who appears higher then you definitely. In the event that they make an excessive amount of cash, they’re a shady profiteer; in the event that they’re too good, they’re an IQ-obsessed r/IAmVerySmart techbro; in the event that they’re too fairly, they’re a slut. Your objective is to unite all of the envious individuals right into a Tall Poppy Police who agree that profitable individuals suck, to stop anybody from doubtlessly judging you as worse than them.
You do the whole lot satirically. If you happen to did one thing non-ironically – wrote a deep poem that laid your whole being naked, dedicated whole-heartedly to a political place you really believed in – you’ll be opening your self up for judgment. As a substitute, you talk solely by tentatively placing out little feelers, after which, the second somebody begins to frown, retracting them with a “Haha, trolled, I used to be solely joking”. If anybody else does issues non-ironically, you deride them as “pretentious” and “cringe”.
You substitute the traditional cost-benefit calculus with your personal model that ignores advantages and obsesses over harms. Scientific geniuses, lofty reformers, nice altruists – all of their actions most likely damage a few individuals alongside the best way to revolutionizing society, so solely individuals who have by no means finished something in any respect are really pure. If everyone who has achieved issues is a foul individual, then you definitely win by default.
You turn into collectivist. You demand that each motion be finished solely after getting unanimous non-hierarchical collective approval. If somebody is allowed to behave individually, their motion would possibly go properly, after which they would appear higher than you. Or somebody would possibly ask you why you weren’t doing any good particular person actions. Subsequently, anybody who acts individually must be tarred as an conceited defector who refuses to cooperate and hates different individuals, and the collective ought to move legal guidelines banning no matter they did.
You imagine that individuals must be judged not by their actions, however by the purity of their concepts. Actions are troublesome and your actions could be dangerous, so that you positively don’t need to be judged on these. However concepts are simple, and you’ll all the time imagine that your concepts are probably the most pure of all. Additionally, anybody who acts on the planet or achieves one thing most likely is lower than 100% slave moralist, so in case you choose individuals based mostly on who has the purest slave moralist concepts, you’ll all the time be higher than anybody with accomplishments.
Once I first learn Nietzsche, my query was: why fear in regards to the grasp/slave dichotomy? Positive, perhaps this was the best way ethical codes first fashioned throughout the Bronze Age; who cares? You’ll be able to love excellence and be altruistic. It doesn’t take some Superman to mix them – you may simply take the nice elements of every. Proper?
I feel Nietzsche would have two solutions:
First, you don’t choose your ethical commitments like meals at a buffet. You deploy them as psychological protection mechanisms. You deploy slave morality when life has overwhelmed you down and also you need to preserve a few of dignity. You don’t select which subparts to swallow; you get whichever bits are load-bearing in your private dignity-maintenance venture.
And second, you will not be concerned with slave morality, however slave morality is concerned with you. Grasp morality isn’t concerned with you – the masters are out attaining issues and conquering locations, they’re not going to take day out of their day to show missionary and “convert” you to grasp morality too. However slave moralists are obsessive about ideological purity and invested in slicing down anyone who’s much less slave moralist than they’re. Even in case you discover it simple to keep away from your self, you must be ready to reside in a slave morality world.
V. Jason Crawford
Nietzsche’s unique dichotomy was aimed on the particular person stage, the place individuals with psychological drives compete with one another for standing. It doesn’t naturally switch to the concept of societies. There’s a type of trivial switch the place you may think about superpowers boasting of their prowess and tiny city-states claiming the geopolitical sport is rigged, however that doesn’t appear attention-grabbing to me.
Once I consider grasp/slave morality on the stage of societies, I consider the slave moralist herd intuition to implement their slave morality on everybody else. This shall be a characteristic of all societies – you possibly can argue it’s what society/civilization is – however some could have it greater than others.
Jason Crawford, one of many pioneers of Progress Research, writes a few type of mid twentieth century vibe shift.
Within the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Western civilization was busy attempting to embiggen itself. A few of this was literal. In America, we had Manifest Future, our God-given proper to stretch from sea to sea (my sometimes-hometown of Berkeley was named after the man who coined the slogan “westward the course of empire takes its manner”). Europe had colonialism, the White Man’s Burden, and ultimately lebensraum.
However among the embiggening was metaphorical. We believed within the cult of progress. We’d maintain big World Festivals, the place we tiled entire cities with stunning monuments known as issues like The Temple Of Equipment or The Altar Of Motive. They’d have elaborate friezes of classical goddesses blessing railroads or holding sheaves of mechanically-reaped wheat. Inside, tens of hundreds of males would come from each nook of the Earth to behold the most recent innovations making our lives richer, safer, and simpler. It appeared like we have been heading for a Utopia of limitless loads, and our solely accountability was to deliver that nice day ahead as quick as attainable and unfold our greatness to as-yet-unenlightened corners of the world like Africa and Tibet.
We erected wonderful Artwork Deco skyscrapers, and boasted of how shortly they went up. We constructed the Empire State Constructing in a yr and the Golden Gate Bridge in 4. The interiors have been bursting with coloration, decoration, and extra classical goddesses representing Trade and Ingenuity or no matter. We held ticker tape parades for the wonderful aviators and astronauts bringing us to ever-further corners of the world.
After (?) the trauma of the World Wars (?), one thing flipped. As a substitute of embiggening ourselves, we started to ensmallen. We changed World’s Festivals with “World Expos”, which Wikipedia describes as “much less targeted on know-how and aimed extra at cultural themes and social progress”. Of the few innovations that did characteristic, an increasing number of have been “inexperienced tech” – machines geared toward decreasing the harm we have been doing to the world.
The classical goddesses bought changed by murals of strange employees, then abstractions, then nothing. The final ticker tape parade for a person was 1998; since then the (comparatively few, comparatively small) parades have all been for lessons of individuals (NYC’s most up-to-date was for “COVID-19 Important Staff”).
Our buildings turned smaller and duller. Final month’s Works In Progress journal tried to analyze why. Some economists have blamed “Baumol’s value illness” – as industrialization makes some issues (like shopper items) cheaper, different issues (like expert labor) turn into comparatively dearer. So perhaps the rising value of expert labor put buildings just like the one of many overlooked of attain. However Works In Progress discovered that wasn’t true; if something, industrialization has made fancy buildings cheaper. They concluded that it was “a narrative of cultural selection, not of technological future” – in different phrases, individuals stopped wanting spectacular buildings. The vibes have been flawed, or one thing.
Intellectuals began feting concepts like degrowth. Degrowth says that it’s gross, grasping, and unsustainable to need financial progress. As a substitute, we should always intentionally purpose for financial regress, till First World GDPs are nearer to these of South America or Africa. Advocates are cautious to emphasise that so long as we take commonsense steps (like implementing socialism), this gained’t pressure anybody to starve to loss of life, simply do away with our ineffective luxuries – and in some sense, wouldn’t that make us higher off?
The promised future utopia was changed by nearly unbroken dystopianism. World warming will kill us all, or perhaps we’ll be caught in a cyberpunk world of hopeless soul-crushing inequality. Technological advance is attention-grabbing solely insofar because it brings our cyberpunk hell nearer and (unfairly) enriches some billionaires alongside the best way. The one vivid spots are occasional acts of voluntary ensmallening – energy crops cancelled, merchandise banned, indigenous tribes successful little authorized triumphs over modernity.
Stay-people targets like “construct big skyscrapers!” and “go to the moon!” may have been adopted up with even better live-people targets like “tile the desert with photo voltaic crops”, “create genetically-engineered superbabies”, “get one billion Individuals”, or “remedy all illnesses”. As a substitute, they’ve been changed by dead-people targets like “don’t harm the standard character of communities” or “don’t harm the surroundings”.
Elements of this vibe shift nonetheless confuse me, however the zoomed-out model appears clear sufficient. The previous pro-embiggening world was complicit in ethical catastrophes – racism, colonialism, the Holocaust, the destruction of a lot of the pure world. In some unspecified time in the future these atrocities caught as much as and outpaced its very actual accomplishments, and society stopped being pleased with itself and shifted to a harm-reduction method. No person comes out and says outright that hurt discount essentially has to imply doing as little as attainable and attempting to make your self smaller and fewer spectacular and sadder and uglier till you curl up right into a tiny level and disappear. However “slave morality” and “grasp morality” are attractors; if you choose too onerous for a part of one, you find yourself with the entire package deal.
VI. Andrew Tate
I initially needed to elucidate to Bentham’s Bulldog why slave morality wasn’t clearly “the nice one” and grasp morality “the dangerous one”. Lest I come down too onerous and get you pondering that grasp morality is clearly “the nice one”, let’s discuss Andrew Tate.
In case you’ve been below a rock your entire life, Andrew Tate is a masculinity influencer. He’s a former world champion kickboxer who pivoted to self-help, offered scammy programs on enterprise and relationships, and bought wealthy. A few of his programs apparently really helpful beating up girls (I’m undecided if this was supposed to assist your online business or your relationship), and when individuals confronted him on this, his response was all the time “I’m robust and profitable and personal a Bugatti, which makes me higher than you, you pathetic weakling failure”. He was credibly accused of rape (by “credibly” I imply that he despatched one of many victims a textual content message saying “I like raping you”) and when individuals tried to cancel him over this, his response was all the time “I’m robust and profitable and personal a Bugatti, which makes me higher than you, you pathetic weakling failure.” Lastly he was indicted on one billion counts of sexual assault, human trafficking, and being a normal scumbag of a human being; he’s presently awaiting trial.
Tate has, in some sense, many good qualities. He’s robust, athletic, and motivated. He earned tens of tens of millions of {dollars} via hustle and onerous work. He’s charismatic and compelling and, earlier than his arrest, was one of many Web’s most iconic influencers. I feel grasp morality has to approve of all these items.
Nonetheless, he’s clearly a jerk. That is precisely the state of affairs that Nietzsche believes slave morality developed for – letting me really feel contempt for somebody who’s stronger and richer and extra profitable than I’m – and yup, now that I’m on this state of affairs, I discover myself positively concerned with an ethical system that lets me do that.
The plain compromise goes one thing like:
We are able to genuinely respect that Andrew Tate has the numerous good qualities listed above.
But additionally, his impulsive mood and fragile ego are dangerous qualities even by the requirements of grasp morality.
And his violence, misogyny, and boastfulness are dangerous qualities by any morality with even the smallest consideration for altruism and customary decency.
Subsequently, we will really feel contempt for him.
I don’t have something higher than this apparent compromise, however I’m not happy by it.
I wish to find yourself with an general destructive view of Tate. And if I do a easy calculation, (virtues – vices), then it looks like if his nonmoral virtues have been robust sufficient, they may overcome the ethical vices. If Tate was a actually actually good kickboxer, he would possibly nonetheless find yourself within the black. It appears way more intuitive to say that no quantity of nonmoral virtues could make up for his ethical vices. However now we’re again on the full slave moralist package deal once more! Some “compromise”!
Additionally, suppose Tate wasn’t a rapist, he was just a few kickboxing champion who was a jerk to individuals on-line and always posted about he was higher than them due to his Bugatti. I nonetheless need to really feel contempt for him! Now we now have to price the vice of “boastfulness” so negatively that it overwhelms all attainable optimistic virtues, which seems like some sort of ridiculous straw man of slave morality.
All these issues would go away if we gave up on unified assessments of individuals. Then we may classify Tate as an excellent kickboxer who additionally occurs to rape lots of people. But when we quit on unified assessments, aren’t we giving up on the very risk of heroes? Isn’t this simply the slave moralist denial of judgment?
Additionally, I feel Nietzsche would say one thing one thing vitalism. He appeared to assume there was a coherent conceptual unity between being robust, being expert, and being some type of unconstrained wild one that didn’t care what lesser individuals thought. Is there some sense through which Andrew Tate loses some genuinely beneficial advantage, nonetheless small, if he turns into a standard civilized one that says please and thanks and is basically respectful to everybody? Does he turn into much less highly effective, in some sense the place powerfulness is sweet? Is he much less capable of obtain his future of being wonderful? I’m genuinely not sure what Nietzsche would have considered Tate, however it most likely isn’t one thing so simple as “he must be nicer”.
I’m apprehensive this nonetheless isn’t coming off strongly sufficient. You’ll be able to argue “grasp morality is about being robust and good; slave morality is nearly preserving your pathetic little emotions”. However most of life is individuals’s pathetic little emotions. Individuals have confirmed over and over that their selections – about what to do, what to purchase, who to vote for, even what to die for – rely extra on what lets them really feel dignity and self-respect than on any purely materials concerns.
Occasionally, often on 4chan, you see an precise bully actually going at it, unrestrained. Some sort of shock jock, saying “Word to unattached liberal girls above 40: you’re ugly hags who’ve misplaced your probability with males and all of your eggs have dried up and no person will ever worth you anymore, it’s best to both beg for some fats alcoholic man to take you in since that’s the one man you will get, or resign your self to being a cat woman rising previous with nothing to do however dwell in your regrets and what may have been.” Exterior of 4chan, there’s a type of common alliance towards these individuals, which the remainder of us be part of instantly and unconsciously. Is that this the dreaded “herd” of “slave morality”? If that’s the case, lengthy reside the herd.
VII. Cotton Mather
Advantageous. Possibly we do want a Superman to kind this out. What are our choices?
Preliminary query: the place do the Puritans fall on this dichotomy?
On the one hand, they’re Christian, so that they have a powerful slave morality heritage. They talked loads about humility, altruism, frugality, and self-discipline.
On the opposite, they positive did discuss them loads. The Puritans have been satisfied that virtues have been actual and good. They have been satisfied that some individuals had extra of them than others, and that made these individuals higher.
The Puritans would have burnt you on the stake in case you accused them of believing within the Promethean human spirit conquering the pure world. However they did type of imagine in it – a minimum of sufficient to imagine it was their ethical mission to colonize a virgin continent.
My objective right here isn’t to discover the bizarre Puritan theology round who was an excellent individual (no person, we’re all extremely sinful, however God chooses to redeem some individuals via no advantage of their very own, after which these persons are genuinely higher off and do fewer sins). Somewhat, I need to study two completely different types (ranges?) of slave morality.
Within the first kind, you substitute the masters’ virtues with completely different virtues. However these virtues are nonetheless actual. You’ll be able to nonetheless embody them kind of properly. This type of creates a brand new hierarchy. The Puritans wouldn’t have revered a Bronze Age barbarian warlord. However they did respect the native minister. And the native minister was most likely a wise, competent, disciplined, hard-working man. Out of your respect for the native minister, you may rebuild civilization. As a substitute of obeying a warlord, you obey the minister, out of respect for the God and the values that he represents.
Within the second kind, you discover that the primary kind is simply one other hierarchy of masters. You (the wretched of the earth) was contemptible since you have been weaker and poorer than the warlord. Now you’re contemptible since you’re much less virtuous and disciplined than the minister. Even when there’s no native minister, everybody’s nonetheless retaining monitor of the way you stated the phrase “darn” as soon as and are due to this fact unsuitable for God’s kingdom. So that you resolve to reject not simply the masterly virtues (power, wealth, and so on), but in addition the slavish virtues (continence, dignity, altruism) in favor of . . . no virtues? The advantage of hating different virtues, which reveals that you simply’re enlightened to the true nature of the world the place all virtues are faux?
I used to have this map on my wall:
It’s Progressive-era propaganda in regards to the superiority of the American North over the South, however I discover it most attention-grabbing for its listing of virtues. It begins with Liberty, then strikes on to Free Speech, Intelligence, Obedience To Legislation, Information, Equal Rights, Free Faculties, Contentment, Love Of Nation, Philanthropy, Benevolence, Happiness, Endurance, Charity, Religion, Hope, Pleasure, Trade, Sobriety, Morality, Justice, Advantage, Fact, Honor, Peace, Mild, and Immortality.
I respect the Progressive virtues due to how skew they’re to many of the moral programs I encounter. They’re not leftist (Love Of Nation? Trade? Morality?) or rightist (Equal Rights? Free Faculties?). They’re not Nietzschean grasp moralist (Philanthropy? Contentment? Benevolence?) or slave moralist (Trade? Information? Honor?). They’re Christian-ish, however not hair-shirts-and-self-flagellation Christian or God-n-guns-megachurch Christian. They’re the sort of Christians who you may sort of inform are going to finish up supporting eugenics in just a few years.
I feel I might classify them as a first-form-slave-morality liberalism, whereas many of the liberalism you encounter nowadays drifted a minimum of a bit into the second kind.
I’m not 100% on Crew Early twentieth Century Progressive, however they provide me hope that there are weird-yet-coherent groupings of virtues we haven’t even imagined.
I really feel the identical manner about some previous Soviet posters:
These are clearly left-wing, within the sense that they’re literal Communist propaganda. However to the trendy eye there’s one thing off about them, one thing that makes you need to name them right-wing and even fascist. They’re daring and optimistic. Regardless that the commissars who commissioned them most likely rejected some conventional or capitalist conception of advantage, they nonetheless firmly insist that there’s one thing type of like advantage or energy which is attainable and good.
I feel these are first-form posters, and that almost all trendy leftism is second-form. I feel in case you needed to group barbarian warlords, Puritans, Soviet communists, and trendy leftists on a Nietzschean/geneaological/aesthetic axis, it might go:
(Barbarian warlords) | (Puritans, Soviet communists) | (trendy leftists)
So one very weak compromise – hardly even a compromise, because it predates Nietzsche – is to attempt to stick to first-form slave morality, within the hopes that many of the issues come from the second.
VIII. Ayn Rand
“Is Ayn Rand a Nietzschean?”- the best thread within the historical past of boards, locked by a moderator after 12239 pages of heated debate.
There’s an actual reply right here. Rand began out respecting, perhaps even loving Nietzsche. She as soon as stated that:
[Nietzsche’s] Thus Spake Zarathustra is my Bible. I can by no means commit suicide whereas I’ve it.
…which perhaps reveals extra about her psychological state of affairs than I anticipated from the reply to a “who’s your favourite thinker” questionnaire. However in a while she broke from him. It’s onerous to determine her actual place – she has a foul behavior of treating anybody who disagrees together with her in any tiny element because the Antichrist, such that it’s onerous to determine whether or not she thinks of somebody as a 99% fellow traveler or an arch-enemy.
Nonetheless, there are substantial variations. Nietzsche is extra chaotic – he expects the superior man to defy all exterior guidelines in favor of his personal wonderful future. However Rand is hooked up to guidelines – most of all of the epistemic guidelines of Motive, but in addition the standard ethical tenets like “don’t kill” and “don’t steal”. Nietzsche’s masters take the Ron Swanson method to justifying their actions:
…whereas Rand’s masters are liable to giving twenty-page-long arguments for why no matter they’re doing is the appropriate selection in line with Objectively Right Ethical Legislation.
Rand’s method has numerous benefits. The Nietzschean grasp, like Andrew Tate, is an terrible man to have round. It’s onerous to suit him right into a functioning civilization, besides perhaps an autocracy with him as autocrat. Nietzsche’s pitch is “hey wonderful individuals, it’s best to attempt to turn into this man”, by no means “hey regular individuals, it’s best to help my venture of making these guys, out of your personal self-interest.” The latter wouldn’t move the chortle take a look at.
Rand’s masters, whereas nonetheless most likely very worrying to be round, have been tamed. They observe civilized guidelines of honesty and nonviolence – not, after all, as a result of they’re too weak to defy them, however as a result of following civilized guidelines is objectively the best factor of all. As a substitute of competing in battle and leaving a path of bloody corpses, they compete in Capitalism and go away a path of high-paying jobs and wonderful shopper items. They’re not doing to serve you – “I ought to serve the little man” is slave moralist bulls**t. However, by coincidence, their wonderful actions are doing you a service. They may solely invent rocket ships to enact their Promethean conquest of nature and show their very own greatness. However you continue to get to trip in a single.
Rand additionally spares extra of a thought (or a minimum of an afterthought) for the little man. Capitalism wants all kinds – even the corporate janitor genuinely contributes to no matter wonderful accomplishments are happening, and deserves to be ok with themselves. She needs everybody to be the perfect, most formidable, and most fighting-for-their-own-aesthetic/moral-vision they are often. But when meaning being the corporate janitor, that’s high quality. And in case you love rockets and also you consummate that love by turning into the janitor for a rocket firm, the Objectively Right Ethical Legislation is 100% on board. I’m not a Nietzsche scholar, however I feel it is a extra productive reply than Nietzsche has for this query.
The drawback of Rand’s method in comparison with Nietzsche’s is that it solely works in case you imagine her proofs about why the Objectively Right Ethical Legislation is certainly goal and proper – most of which appear to me to be both hand-wavy or balderdash. In any other case the entire thing breaks down – why is probably the most masterful factor to be a positive-sum capitalist as a substitute of a negative-sum warlord? Rand actually actually needs to justify a peaceable, wonderful, positive-sum society, to the precise individuals most able to benefiting from defecting towards it, with out bringing in altruism or the widespread good at any level. It’s a particularly sympathetic objective. However I don’t assume she makes it.
Nonetheless, because of this I’m keen on her. If you happen to actually learn her books – versus skimming them whereas subvocalizing “that is that evil lady who loves selfishness” below your breath the entire time – it’s apparent that she believes, with a deep and burning perception, that good issues are good. She actually actually needs to assume that you could objectively persuade individuals to help a peaceable, wonderful, positive-sum society, with none trace of the psychologically-toxic slave morality that typified the USSR she grew up in. When individuals react to her books with loathing – with out even a trace of fondness – I get suspicious that they’ve gotten so deep into slave morality that thy can’t acknowledge goodness when it hits them over the pinnacle with a sledgehammer. Elsewhere, I wrote:
Edward Educate (Sadly, Porn) is known for making up faux novels to criticize, and it’s a little identified incontrovertible fact that the "Ayn Rand" character together with all her novels are 100% his work. They function as a diagnostic take a look at based mostly on his psychodynamic principle of envy.
The instrument presents an image of some distinctive individuals attaining nice issues who do not apologize for his or her greatness, and doesn’t explicitly ask the affected person – I imply, reader – for his or her opinion.
If the reader has no robust opinion, or says one thing like "Good for them, I assume," she passes the take a look at. "I like these individuals and can use them as a job mannequin" additionally passes. Some particular criticisms (see beneath) may additionally move.
If the reader says "Ah, people who find themselves higher than the pathetic sheep round them, similar to I am higher than all of the pathetic sheep round me!", she . . . nonetheless passes the take a look at. That is not what it is testing for!
You fail the take a look at in case you completely freak out about some mixture of the Rand characters themselves and the potential existence of conceited individuals who establish with the Rand characters. The key is that it isn’t a screening take a look at for the sort of people that would get featured on /r/iamverysmart. It is a screening take a look at for the sort of people that would touch upon /r/iamverysmart, ie the self-designated Tall Poppy Police, ie the individuals who construct their ego off being the enforcers of the rule that you simply’re not allowed to look higher than anybody else.
These individuals’s primary psychological stance is to hate individuals who appear too wonderful. They do not consider it in these phrases. They consider it as calling out vanity, though in case you look too intently you may discover their definition of vanity covers anybody who appears wonderful and however does not spend all their time apologizing and abasing themselves and denying it. The brilliance of Educate-Rand is how he-she attracts this tendency to the foreground
For instance, why the entire "Objectivism" factor? Not as a result of worth is essentially utterly goal, however as a result of the concept any worth would possibly ever be even partially goal freaks out the Tall Poppy Syndrome individuals. Point out worth in any respect, they usually say you should be attempting to secretly smuggle within the assumption that you’re extra beneficial than different individuals (and due to this fact you’re much less beneficial than different individuals, and due to this fact they’re higher than you).
The identical is true of Motive. Point out that Motive exists, they usually’ll interpret it as a declare that you simply, the one rational individual, are claiming to all the time be proper and infallible. However (they retort) truly no person is aware of something, and the one sensible persons are the individuals like them who humbly admit this.
(how do you resolve what’s true with out Motive? By bias-based-reasoning – "You say X, however I can think about a manner that might come from a spot of believing you are higher than different individuals, due to this fact, Not-X is true. You say that is a logical fallacy? That should come from a spot of believing you are smarter than everybody else and the one one that can use Details and Logic.")
The Educate-Rand take a look at is designed to catch the type of one that, if somebody says that on a proper triangle a^2 + b^2 = c^2, responds with "Oh, so that you’re claiming to be some sort of proper triangle skilled who’s higher than the remainder of us? You actually need to work on that vanity drawback! Tremendous cringe!" Any criticism of the guide that does not come from this explicit place is irrelevant to the take a look at and does not rely towards your grade.
(which is sweet, as a result of the books are dangerous in quite a lot of methods. However that is high quality – Rorschach blots do not additionally must be nice artwork!)
Nonetheless, I don’t assume she’s the superman (superwoman?) who efficiently transcends the dichotomy Her philosophy is simply as robust as its proofs of Goal Correctness, which I contemplate weak. With out these, you want some subjective motivation to attach issues collectively – of which altruism is the preferred.
But additionally, don’t we like altruism? Once we’re bestriding the Earth like colossi, engaged on our wonderful rocket ships to colonize the universe, isn’t a part of what we’re pondering “that is going to revolutionize humankind and make everyone higher off?” If you happen to pressure your self to reject that motivation, to only repeat “no no no, I’m solely doing this as a result of rockets are actually large and make cool explosions”, aren’t you slicing out part of your self, in precisely the best way Nietzschean masters are purported to attempt to keep away from doing?
I discover one thing very compelling about Rand. I feel she goes among the approach to answering the Andrew Tate objection to grasp morality. However she’s a method and never an finish. An actual superman must determine some approach to reintroduce primary human kindness.
IX. Matt Yglesias
Yglesias’s mantra – “good issues are good” – is just too excellent and profound to return from anybody aside from an esoteric grasp of Nietzschean philosophy.
Nietzsche wrote within the Nineties. There have been nonetheless actual nobles and emperors strolling round; communists had not but began calling capitalism “late capitalism”. Positive, his world was most likely some type of weak compromise between grasp and slave morality, however it was completely different from our weak compromise. Our weak compromise was cast via dialogue and warfare with fascism’s novel tackle grasp morality and socialism’s novel tackle slave morality. I consider Yglesias – who combines an insistence that good issues are good and a proclivity for embiggenment with commitments to democracy, the welfare state, and the poorest amongst us – as considered one of its most self-conscious proponents.
The compromise goes one thing like:
Everyone seems to be equal earlier than the legislation, earlier than the metaphorical throne of metaphorical God, and in some poorly outlined philosophical sense. This is essential. It’s our headline outcome. Every part else must be interpreted in mild of this central truth.
That having been stated, some persons are clearly higher at particular restricted abilities and virtues than others.
Most abilities are partly genetic and partly environmental. We’ll grudgingly let scientists examine this and publish their outcomes, however everybody ought to play up the environmental element as a lot because the science permits, and awkwardly sidestep the genetic element, with a view to defuse “innate superiority” claims.
If somebody occurs to finish up unusually expert or highly effective, that’s high quality, they deserve some restricted respect, they usually can preserve their abilities and energy. In change, they need to be humble, not declare any sort of elementary superiority, and discourage hero worship. In the event that they’re compelled to attract consideration to their benefits, they need to discuss how they benefited from privilege, and the way tens of millions of individuals with the identical abilities are unfairly languishing in poverty.
The existence of wealthy individuals could be challenged, however can in the end be defended on the grounds that they create jobs and beneficial merchandise for the plenty. Wealthy individuals owe a debt to society for creating the situations through which they will flourish; by coincidence, this debt precisely matches the present tax price of their jurisdiction.
The worth of technological progress, financial prosperity, and cultural sophistication will also be challenged, however could be equally defended insofar as they enhance the lot of the worst-off and enhance equality. For instance, GDP progress is sweet because it lifts individuals out of poverty; new discoveries in regards to the nature of the mind are good since they may in the future produce Alzheimers medicine; artwork is sweet since it might embrace underrepresented teams or educate some sort of lesson about social progress.
We should always use checks, balances, vetocracy, and redistribution to restrict the facility of any particular person to some ceiling, though individuals can disagree on how excessive the ceiling shall be and proper now it’s fairly excessive.
Slave morality hates energy/excellence and refuses to justify it. Grasp morality says energy/excellence is its personal justification, and the remainder of us must justify ourselves to it. Liberalism says that positive, we will most likely justify energy/excellence, so long as it stays inside affordable bounds and doesn’t trigger hassle.
Slave morality ignores advantages and units the significance of harms at infinity. Grasp morality ignores harms, and units the worth of “advantages” (not that it might consider it in these phrases – greatness doesn’t exist to profit others) at infinity. Liberalism accepts the traditional, finite utilitarian calculus and tries to steadiness advantages towards harms.
A last secret of this compromise is that grasp morality and slave morality aren’t excellent opposites. Grasp morality needs to embiggen itself. Slave morality needs to really feel safe that everybody agrees embiggening is dangerous. The compromise is that all of us agree embiggening is dangerous, however go away individuals free to do it anyway. So half of Western mental output is criticisms of capitalism and neoliberalism, but capitalism and neoliberalism stay hegemonic. All people agrees to hate billionaires; additionally, billionaires are richer than ever.
This isn’t an entire resolution – positive, we’re a free nation, however we’re additionally a democracy, and if individuals hate one thing too a lot they will ban it. However add within the utilitarian justifications above, and it type of hangs collectively.
X. Richard Hanania
So liberal democracy is an uneasy compromise between slave and grasp morality. One pure interpretation is that the left is the social gathering of slave morality, and the appropriate of grasp morality. I respect how instantly Richard Hanania proves that flawed.
Richard is an honest-to-goodness Nietzschean grasp moralist, one of many final you’ll discover. Like Rand, he tries to mix Nietzschean grasp morality with a civilized society and obedience to legislation. In contrast to Rand, he’s not obsessive about presenting a bunch of multi-step proofs exhibiting precisely the way it works, and truthfully I’m undecided of the precise particulars. I discover him attention-grabbing insofar because it clearly works inside his personal head and he’s clearly coming from a spot of aesthetic coherence. He writes:
We are able to name my philosophy Nietzschean Liberalism. The Nietzschean half consists of the next beliefs.
Simply as intelligence, an ethical sense, aesthetic appreciation, and different components place people above animals, some people are in a really deep sense higher than different people.
Society disproportionately advantages from the scientific and creative genius of a choose few. An vital objective of presidency and public coverage is to channel their energies in productive instructions and go away them free to pursue their missions.
As confirmed by trendy behavioral genetics, heredity is the dominant pressure behind human variation.
Egalitarian ideology and issues over what is named “social justice” are primarily pushed by ugly instincts, particularly envy and emotions of inferiority.
Whereas all rational beings should be utilitarians to a point, everybody has non-utilitarian commitments. The most effective ones put an emphasis on magnificence, freedom, and progress, reasonably than pleasing supernatural beings, fealty to some “pure” order, the glorification of imagined communities like nations, or equality of outcomes.
To date so predictable. He haltingly endorses the liberal compromise as one of the best ways to make it work:
Markets and democracy are the perfect forces ever found for pushing forward with the inventive destruction essential for human progress.
Even extraordinarily flawed or restricted human beings can nonetheless have a lot to contribute to society because of the miracle of the division of labor. There may be fortunately no want due to this fact to show in the direction of concepts that contain incapacitating or repressing giant numbers of individuals, with the comparatively few criminals amongst us being the exception.
Human nature is just not so dangerous that collectivist and egalitarian ideologies are all the time going to be prevalent among the many plenty. They merely have to be shielded from cancerous concepts that make them a menace to progress, which come from each the appropriate and left. Considerably paradoxically, democracy does a reasonably good job of this relative to different programs.
Okay, so right-wing man claims to be Nietzschean, why am I saying this disproves one thing about partisan politics?
Hanania is horrible at being right-wing. He’s pro-choice, pro-immigration, pro-euthanasia, pro-vaccine, pro-globalism, pro-Ukraine, atheist, and helps the current responsible verdict on Trump. As with Donald Trump, he’s residing proof that right-wingers will welcome anybody sufficiently offensive with out caring about their coverage positions.
My impression of Hanania is that his Nietzscheanism is extremely deep, principled, and heartfelt, whereas his right-wing-ness is at finest an alliance of comfort. This adequately explains most of his positions:
He’s pro-immigration as a result of he’s obsessive about wonderful/proficient individuals and needs them to return to the US and use their abilities extra successfully.
He’s pro-vaccine as a result of he appreciates the Promethean triumph of know-how over the pure world.
He’s pro-euthanasia as a result of he’s disgusted by the concept of illness and weak spot. It feels intuitively apparent to him that after you’re sick and weak there’s no level in residing and also you’d reasonably die.
He began out as pro-Russia as a result of he thought Russia was stronger and extra vigorous than the West. When Russia failed in its preliminary invasion, and Ukraine outperformed everybody’s expectations, Hanania flipped to Ukraine’s facet, as a result of he realized that Russia was incompetent, Ukraine was brave, and the West’s cultural package deal made it extra highly effective and spectacular than its autocratic opponents. Additionally, I’d anticipate he was disgusted by Putin’s coverage of sidelining/arresting proficient individuals in his authorities to stop them from threatening his energy, and was anxious to modify to the facet that does much less of that type of factor.
In the meantime, as Hanania has observed, MAGA Republicans are slave moralists. They need the proficient (high-skilled immigrants, economists, artists, intellectuals) to be completely yoked to an underclass of overweight conspiracy-theorist hillbillies. They’re elevating tariffs to guard weak American corporations from stronger international opponents, banning IVF and vat meat and any know-how that makes them uncomfortable, and attempting to retvrn to some sort of crunchy natural notion of life which most likely doesn’t even have any skyscrapers. Even the appropriate’s so-called Nietzschean vitalists are principally LARPing steppe nomads as a substitute of constructing rockets.
There isn’t any Nietzschean political social gathering. There isn’t even a correctly Nietzschean subculture or coalition. It’s simply Richard Hanania and a handful of his Substack followers.
XI. Sid Meier
I stated above that the liberal compromise was utilitarian-flavored. Slave morality can grudgingly accommodate motion, advantage, and distinctive habits if these are justified as ultimately being good for the weak. I additionally stated that the liberal compromise concerned quite a lot of saying stuff that no person is predicted to imagine or observe.
I feel efficient altruism is what occurs if you truly enthusiastically endorse this a part of the compromise – the half you have been purported to grudgingly settle for as an excuse for what you needed to do anyway.
Sure flavors of the liberal compromise, accepted grudgingly and half-heartedly, are psychologically poisonous. A typical one says – go obtain no matter is taken into account regular in your class. Get a level at Yale, go into finance, and get a brownstone in Brooklyn – so long as you very barely hate your self and assume that in a perfect society you wouldn’t exist.
Efficient altruists have all types of regular psychological issues – despair, anxiousness, what have you ever. However I’ve observed they’ve a lot much less of the type of poisonous self-hatred that comes from tying your self in knots round these things.
I wouldn’t have observed this if not for the motion’s enemies. Everybody naturally disagrees with their critics – however as somebody who will get criticized from numerous completely different angles, the EA critics boggle me probably the most. Not those who assume another charity is more practical; these guys are high quality. I imply those who completely ignore the place the charity goes and vomit twenty pages of the phrases “conceited”, “billionaire”, and “white”. The explanations these individuals hate efficient altruism by no means appear to attach in any respect with the explanations I discover it beneficial.
My working mannequin of those individuals’s psychology is one thing like: in case you admit that charity is sweet, or that some charities are higher than others, that’s an goal worth. Any goal worth allows you to smuggle within the declare that some persons are higher than others. These individuals’s psychopolitics focus nearly completely on slicing down Tall Poppies, and on pre-emptively salting any soil which may in the future permit a Tall Poppy to develop. An optimist would possibly say it is because their first dedication is to the final word equality of humankind, past any dedication to short-term materials welfare. A cynic would possibly say they’re fallen so deep into Avoidance Of Judgment Hell that it’s not possible for them to parse any motion or perception besides as a hostile standing declare – and that it’s not possible for them to deal with the exterior world, whether or not ravenous individuals reside or die, and so on, as something aside from a prop of their inner standing obfuscation pantomime. Whereas a standard individual would possibly hear “Invoice Gates led a tremendous anti-malaria marketing campaign that saved ten million individuals’s lives” and have some type of emotion in regards to the ten million lives being saved, these individuals solely hear the phrase “led” and turn into obsessive about the necessity to reduce Gates down a notch so individuals don’t assume he’s cooler than they’re.
However in case you do a adequate job translating from Narcissist to English, these individuals aren’t utterly flawed. Efficient altruism tries to double down on the liberal compromise: it’s permissible to embiggen your self (or your civilization) if say you’re doing it for the final welfare. This allows you to add the lacking altruism again into Rand. You could be an glorious-destiny-having billionaire, and as a substitute of utilizing your talent to pursue a imaginative and prescient of constructing a large gold mansion, you should use your talent to pursue a imaginative and prescient of creating the world a greater place. Otherwise you generally is a scientific genius, and as a substitute of transcending your fellows with arcane visions of the gears of the universe, you may work on curing malaria or one thing. I don’t assume any of this issues as a lot because the external-world perspective the place actual persons are helped in the actual world. However so long as you’re serving to individuals, I feel it’s additionally permissible to make use of it to resolve seemingly-unsolvable deep questions in regards to the narrative of your life.
I’m an skilled on Nietzsche (I’ve learn a few of his books), however not a world-leading skilled (I didn’t perceive them). And one of many elements I didn’t perceive was the psychological enchantment of all this. So that you’re Caesar, you’re a tremendous normal, and also you completely wipe the ground with the Gauls. You’re a wonderful army genius and shall be celebrated ceaselessly in track. So . . . what? Is thrashing different individuals an finish in itself? I don’t know, I assume that is the way it works in sports activities. However I’ve by no means discovered sports activities too attention-grabbing both. Additionally, in case you defeat the Gallic armies sufficient occasions, you would possibly end up ruling Gaul and making selections about its future. Don’t you want some sort of lodestar past “I actually like beating individuals”? Doesn’t that must be one thing about leaving the world a greater place than you discovered it?
Admittedly altruism additionally has a few of this identical drawback. Auden stated that “God put us on Earth to assist others; what the others are right here for, I don’t know.” In some unspecified time in the future altruism has to backside out in one thing aside from altruism. In any other case it’s all a Ponzi scheme, simply individuals saving meaningless lives for no motive till the final life is saved and all of it collapses.
I’ve no actual reply to this query – which, in case you missed it, is “what’s the that means of life?” However I do actually get pleasure from enjoying Civilization IV. And the fundamental construction of Civilization IV is “you mine sources, so you may construct items, so you may conquer territory, so you may mine extra sources, so you may construct extra items, so you may conquer extra territory”. There are sidequests that make it much less apparent. And you’ll ultimately win by finishing the tech tree (he who has ears to listen to, let him hear). However the primary construction is A → B → C → A → B → C. And it’s actually enjoyable! If there’s sufficient vivid colours, shiny toys, razor-edge battles, and danger of failure, then the sort of ratchet-y-ness of all of it, the spiral the place you’re doing the identical issues however in a much bigger manner every time, turns right into a virtuous repetition, repetitive solely in the identical sense as a poem, or a melody, or the cycle of generations.
The closest I can get to the that means of life is considered one of these repetitive melodies. I need to be completely happy so I could be robust. I need to be robust so I could be useful. I need to be useful as a result of it makes me completely happy.
I need to assist different individuals with a view to exalt and glorify civilization. I need to exalt and glorify civilization so it might make individuals completely happy. I would like them to be completely happy to allow them to be robust. I would like them to be robust to allow them to exalt and glorify civilization. I need to exalt and glorify civilization with a view to assist different individuals.
I need to create nice artwork to make different individuals completely happy. I would like them to be completely happy to allow them to be robust. I would like them to be robust to allow them to exalt and glorify civilization. I need to exalt and glorify civilization so it might create extra nice artwork.
I need to have kids to allow them to be completely happy. I would like them to be completely happy to allow them to be robust. I would like them to be robust to allow them to elevate extra kids. I would like them to boost extra kids to allow them to exalt and glorify civilization. I need to exalt and glorify civilization so it might assist extra individuals. I need to assist individuals to allow them to have extra kids. I would like them to have kids to allow them to be completely happy.
Possibly in some unspecified time in the future there’s a hidden offramp marked “TERMINAL VALUE”. However it will likely be many extra cycles across the spiral earlier than I discover it, and the journey itself is nice sufficient.
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