Follow me on Twitter: @FromKulak The key difference between Left and Right is that the Left believes in Equality whereas the Right believes in Quality. This sounds like a Glib joke until you remember the ancient meaning of "Quality"... Men of quality, nobility, distinction excellence, achievement... you can read stories of knights in works such as Le Morte De Arthur turning to each other after a duel in which both were wounded but survived, and praising each other's "Quality" promising to sing of each other's distinction, such that all future challengers will know of their quality before ever they meet them. In this Malory was continuing a tradition of noble friendship and respect that even in his time was 3500 years old, dating back to Gilgamesh, and the duel between that first Hero and Enkidu, the wildman who'd become Gilgamesh's dearest friend. Though Malory could not have known how old his inspirations were...
My cerebellum loves your thesis. Alas, my cerebrum has been in nitpicking mode in the half hour or so since I first read it.
Memories surface, and cry out to say you are close but without cigar. I have memories of Dollar General ads on Rush Limbaugh's radio show, and of "conservatives" defending junk food and mass produced American beer. I have memories of cheese eating Progressives who favored craft beers, classical music, and expensive wines. NPR was left leaning even when it still had class.
High Church Protestantism is associated with modern liberalism and faggotry. Hardcore right wing Protestants often sing repetitive Maranatha "music" chants in buildings whose beauty is surpassed by the local Best Buy.
Memories surface of Ayn Rand -- Ms. Enlightenment on Meth -- condemning Medieval art with its scary gargoyles and extolling the bodybuilder art of ancient Greece.
Memories surface of Enlightenment movements reviving the classical styles of the ancients. Pre Brutalist Washington D.C. comes to mind.
Memories surface of early free market thinkers being in favor of meritocracy over inherited privilege. My pineal gland groks a similar pattern today, with the "Left" being a coalition of billionaires, inheritors of old money, banksters, and Hollywood woketards, while the "Right" is a coalition of truckers, tradesmen, and geniuses who cannot get a job in academia.
There there are memories of reading Douglass Hyde's "Dedication and Leadership." Communists were able to infiltrate and control many organizations because they were willing to put in higher quality work because they had an ulterior motive.
----
In conclusion, I'd say you are onto something very important. An additional political dimension at the very least. But your ultimate conclusion is not quite on the mark. Some refinement is in order.
I think you mistake cultural markers and signalling for the values in and of themselves.
Or rather Quality as "refinement" (a very narrow type of quality (good vs. Bad)) vs. Quality as "Distinction" (an incredibly expansive conception (soft vs. Coarse, which might not have an obvious value outside someone's specific value set))
For example Rush limbaugh defending junk food isn't a statement on the quality of the food, as food... its a statement of the Quality of Freedom and hpow he want's American freedom to be so expansive even waistlines can't contain it.
You'll notice this if you order a "Texas Sized" item a a texas restaurant... they push it's excess to the point it has a quality all its own... certainly isn't my idea of "Quality" but there's an extreme desire for distinction... To be "The Biggest" or "the bestest", even if its on some insane dimension no rational person would want to, outside the novelty.
Same with Rand, she desmisses medieval art, not because she hates beauty, but because she's pursued her narrow conception of beauty so far and so hard she won't alllow herself to recognize something outside it... like a rare cephalopod that's pushed itself and adapted to a depth so deep it can no longer survive direct sunlight.
Whereas so much of left wing culture is a desire to avoid destinction, to avoid standing out, to be the man without qualities outside a vague acceptability.
Now this isn't universal, ultimately every left-winger must be a hypocrite, or atleast not ideologically consistent... they do look for their little distinctions, and successes and desire to rise and succeed... but you look at Left-wingers who have the same definitions and standards of class... are serving the same flavours of cheese at their fancy dinner parties... who really kinda dread changing their styles or anything that might be percieved as garish... there's a profound crabs in a bucket mentality that doesn't want to do anything that might stand out lest they get hammered down.
You see this in their fashion especially... Every progressive style basically exists to destroy distinction and make attractive girls look as frumpy and undistinguished as the fat or ugly girls. you have cgorgeous hair? Cut it military boy short. Gorgeous symetrical face? Put a bunch of Asymmetrical metal in it. 20/20 vision with goregeous blue eyes? Have some ironic Horn-rimmed nerd glasses. Perfect skin? What about a tattoo.
Left wing culture is capable of very deep refinement and social signaling... but its all about preventing natural excellence, or distinction shine through. Whereas crass conservative spaces are all about being excessive enough that quality is either revealed or embarassment results.
Say what you will about truck-nuts... You're instantly judging the man who steps out of that truck and he's invited you, challenged you, to judge his manliness by putting them there.
I have memories of a different variety of left. Yes, there was an ugly, low quality, left: socialist realism, modern classical "music", etc. But it wasn't universal.
And the left used to be the home of creatives. "Think different" and "Question authority" used to mean something. Saturday Night Live used to be funnier than the 700 Club.
You have unearthed another important political dimension. You are entitled to a neener dance and a Big Brain Award.
This is more than an academic kudo. It is useful information. I want to separate the potentially populist leftists from the conformunists, and you have just provided an important slicing angle.
> Memories surface of Ayn Rand -- Ms. Enlightenment on Meth -- condemning Medieval art with its scary gargoyles and extolling the bodybuilder art of ancient Greece.
Another thing that always bothered me. Can we stop pretending Gothic architecture isn't hideous? Gothic architecture got its name because at the time people saw it for the architectural vandalism that it was and compared it to the vandalism committed by the Goths. It's telling that eventually a whole literary genera developed that deemed horror stories the most thematically appropriate stories to set inside Gothic buildings.
Gothic grotesques are, well, grotesque, their presence is always justified with claims that well-placed ugliness enhances beauty, the exact claim defenders of modernist monstrosities make.
Documentaries about Gothic churches always emphasize the innovative construction techniques used to let more natural light into the church, well modern glass and steel construction lets even more natural light in.
You can't beat stained glass, real wood, stone, gratuitously soaring spaces and complexity. I'll tolerate a few kinda cute gargoyles with their actual functionality and humor for that.
The left doesn’t believe in equality. If they did there would be no affirmative action, no racial quotas, and no support for socialism. They believe in equity, racial preferences and force.
should you distinguish between equality in negative rights vs equality in outcome -- a product of an individual's quality? Certainly those two things are not mutually exclusive. You can have equal (negative) rights along with very unequal, quality-differentiated people.
Excellent points Kulak. I would like to point out though what I am sure you are already cognizant of, but the "all men are created equal" of the American Founders is still arguable, and should be argued well, from the right. That argument being that the Founders were English gentlemen, and they wrote that phrase with the very specific understanding that they were asserting their natural, God-given rights as English gentlemen to self-govern. It was an "equality" of the "quality," an aristocratic gentry entrenching a republican governing instrument for their children and children's children. Now, of course, we all know how that has played out unfortunately, and how quickly the Constitution of 1791 was usurped (1861). . . However, the principle still stands regardless that the Constitution of 1791 was a right-wing instrument. Yes, it was more liberal than outright monarchy, but it still was borne from an explicit contemplation of essentially total rule by an honorable class of gentlemen aristocrats, with a rung on the ladder for the industrious/bright/self-made man to rise up to the table.
Excellent and I want to say obvious only it’s not or it wouldn’t need to be said.
OT: Is it just me or is something wrong with the Twitter algorithm that makes your great threads show up repeatedly in the timeline? I like what you write but I’m not sure I need to see it three times while briefly scrolling down. Don’t want to tell it not to show your stuff so I assume there’s nothing to be done.
Yeah, exact same multi post thread will reappear two or three times in one session of scrolling. It only happens occasionally when I’ve been reading a lot so I can believe it’s just an algorithmic quirk because of something I’m doing.
>a radical protestant metaphysical claim about the equal nature of the human soul, which has never been directly observed
This is not Protestant doctrine; it is Patristic Catholic-Orthodox Christian doctrine rooted in Platonism, that the Reformation failed to shed away, unlike image worship, dead men worship and the like.
From the moment you declare that "the soul" is the image and glory of God, and not Man, the biological human male [Genesis 1:27, 1 Corinthians 11:7], you get leftism.
From the moment you declare that the identity of a man is not in his material body, his genes, his blood, but "the soul, his divine spark" you can ascribe infinite value to any human being (after all, it is eternal and divine!), whereas if man is a meat machine, simply animated via the Breath of Life (Ruach in Hebrew and Pneuma in Greek), appraisal is easy, just like with any other machine. What can it do, how much does it cost, what is his shelf-life?
Look at the Rabbinics and the mental double backflips they have to do to compatibilize their Soul Doctrine with their own ethnic supremacism, by claiming that there are animal souls and divine souls, and only their guys have that second soul. IIRC, the Mormons have something similar.
Get rid of metaphysics, get rid of the Soul Doctrine, go full Sola Scriptura, pure exegesis, zero mysticism, zero scholasticism, and the philosophical foundations of leftism (egalitarianism) will vanish.
But no one in any church has the balls to do that, because there's too much grift in letting people feel like they're unique and special and have free will.
What's a good book to read to get an intellectual history of "equality"? Is it really a Western idea, or is it something that was a undercurrent in many civilizations but managed to get the upper hand in the western one only?
My cerebellum loves your thesis. Alas, my cerebrum has been in nitpicking mode in the half hour or so since I first read it.
Memories surface, and cry out to say you are close but without cigar. I have memories of Dollar General ads on Rush Limbaugh's radio show, and of "conservatives" defending junk food and mass produced American beer. I have memories of cheese eating Progressives who favored craft beers, classical music, and expensive wines. NPR was left leaning even when it still had class.
High Church Protestantism is associated with modern liberalism and faggotry. Hardcore right wing Protestants often sing repetitive Maranatha "music" chants in buildings whose beauty is surpassed by the local Best Buy.
Memories surface of Ayn Rand -- Ms. Enlightenment on Meth -- condemning Medieval art with its scary gargoyles and extolling the bodybuilder art of ancient Greece.
Memories surface of Enlightenment movements reviving the classical styles of the ancients. Pre Brutalist Washington D.C. comes to mind.
Memories surface of early free market thinkers being in favor of meritocracy over inherited privilege. My pineal gland groks a similar pattern today, with the "Left" being a coalition of billionaires, inheritors of old money, banksters, and Hollywood woketards, while the "Right" is a coalition of truckers, tradesmen, and geniuses who cannot get a job in academia.
There there are memories of reading Douglass Hyde's "Dedication and Leadership." Communists were able to infiltrate and control many organizations because they were willing to put in higher quality work because they had an ulterior motive.
----
In conclusion, I'd say you are onto something very important. An additional political dimension at the very least. But your ultimate conclusion is not quite on the mark. Some refinement is in order.
I think you mistake cultural markers and signalling for the values in and of themselves.
Or rather Quality as "refinement" (a very narrow type of quality (good vs. Bad)) vs. Quality as "Distinction" (an incredibly expansive conception (soft vs. Coarse, which might not have an obvious value outside someone's specific value set))
For example Rush limbaugh defending junk food isn't a statement on the quality of the food, as food... its a statement of the Quality of Freedom and hpow he want's American freedom to be so expansive even waistlines can't contain it.
You'll notice this if you order a "Texas Sized" item a a texas restaurant... they push it's excess to the point it has a quality all its own... certainly isn't my idea of "Quality" but there's an extreme desire for distinction... To be "The Biggest" or "the bestest", even if its on some insane dimension no rational person would want to, outside the novelty.
Same with Rand, she desmisses medieval art, not because she hates beauty, but because she's pursued her narrow conception of beauty so far and so hard she won't alllow herself to recognize something outside it... like a rare cephalopod that's pushed itself and adapted to a depth so deep it can no longer survive direct sunlight.
Whereas so much of left wing culture is a desire to avoid destinction, to avoid standing out, to be the man without qualities outside a vague acceptability.
Now this isn't universal, ultimately every left-winger must be a hypocrite, or atleast not ideologically consistent... they do look for their little distinctions, and successes and desire to rise and succeed... but you look at Left-wingers who have the same definitions and standards of class... are serving the same flavours of cheese at their fancy dinner parties... who really kinda dread changing their styles or anything that might be percieved as garish... there's a profound crabs in a bucket mentality that doesn't want to do anything that might stand out lest they get hammered down.
You see this in their fashion especially... Every progressive style basically exists to destroy distinction and make attractive girls look as frumpy and undistinguished as the fat or ugly girls. you have cgorgeous hair? Cut it military boy short. Gorgeous symetrical face? Put a bunch of Asymmetrical metal in it. 20/20 vision with goregeous blue eyes? Have some ironic Horn-rimmed nerd glasses. Perfect skin? What about a tattoo.
Left wing culture is capable of very deep refinement and social signaling... but its all about preventing natural excellence, or distinction shine through. Whereas crass conservative spaces are all about being excessive enough that quality is either revealed or embarassment results.
Say what you will about truck-nuts... You're instantly judging the man who steps out of that truck and he's invited you, challenged you, to judge his manliness by putting them there.
All your comment applies to TODAY's left.
I have memories of a different variety of left. Yes, there was an ugly, low quality, left: socialist realism, modern classical "music", etc. But it wasn't universal.
And the left used to be the home of creatives. "Think different" and "Question authority" used to mean something. Saturday Night Live used to be funnier than the 700 Club.
You have unearthed another important political dimension. You are entitled to a neener dance and a Big Brain Award.
This is more than an academic kudo. It is useful information. I want to separate the potentially populist leftists from the conformunists, and you have just provided an important slicing angle.
> Memories surface of Ayn Rand -- Ms. Enlightenment on Meth -- condemning Medieval art with its scary gargoyles and extolling the bodybuilder art of ancient Greece.
Another thing that always bothered me. Can we stop pretending Gothic architecture isn't hideous? Gothic architecture got its name because at the time people saw it for the architectural vandalism that it was and compared it to the vandalism committed by the Goths. It's telling that eventually a whole literary genera developed that deemed horror stories the most thematically appropriate stories to set inside Gothic buildings.
Gothic grotesques are, well, grotesque, their presence is always justified with claims that well-placed ugliness enhances beauty, the exact claim defenders of modernist monstrosities make.
Documentaries about Gothic churches always emphasize the innovative construction techniques used to let more natural light into the church, well modern glass and steel construction lets even more natural light in.
You can't beat stained glass, real wood, stone, gratuitously soaring spaces and complexity. I'll tolerate a few kinda cute gargoyles with their actual functionality and humor for that.
Well said.
Ever since I was a young lad in the 90s I was always irked by "discrimination" being a dirty word.
I didn't realize it at the time, but the stage was being set to demonize "discrimination" in any forms; that is, to "notice"
The left doesn’t believe in equality. If they did there would be no affirmative action, no racial quotas, and no support for socialism. They believe in equity, racial preferences and force.
How come it took me so long to discover you?
should you distinguish between equality in negative rights vs equality in outcome -- a product of an individual's quality? Certainly those two things are not mutually exclusive. You can have equal (negative) rights along with very unequal, quality-differentiated people.
Excellent points Kulak. I would like to point out though what I am sure you are already cognizant of, but the "all men are created equal" of the American Founders is still arguable, and should be argued well, from the right. That argument being that the Founders were English gentlemen, and they wrote that phrase with the very specific understanding that they were asserting their natural, God-given rights as English gentlemen to self-govern. It was an "equality" of the "quality," an aristocratic gentry entrenching a republican governing instrument for their children and children's children. Now, of course, we all know how that has played out unfortunately, and how quickly the Constitution of 1791 was usurped (1861). . . However, the principle still stands regardless that the Constitution of 1791 was a right-wing instrument. Yes, it was more liberal than outright monarchy, but it still was borne from an explicit contemplation of essentially total rule by an honorable class of gentlemen aristocrats, with a rung on the ladder for the industrious/bright/self-made man to rise up to the table.
The left says equality ad nasueum and somehow always seem to end up in charge of dividing the pie
All animals are equal, some are equaller though
A recession may be the ultimate solution to the DEI scolds
Excellent and I want to say obvious only it’s not or it wouldn’t need to be said.
OT: Is it just me or is something wrong with the Twitter algorithm that makes your great threads show up repeatedly in the timeline? I like what you write but I’m not sure I need to see it three times while briefly scrolling down. Don’t want to tell it not to show your stuff so I assume there’s nothing to be done.
Like the same post?
that is weird.
Maybe the algorithm is closet throttling me? instead of 3 impressions across 3 people, its impressions across 1?
Yeah, exact same multi post thread will reappear two or three times in one session of scrolling. It only happens occasionally when I’ve been reading a lot so I can believe it’s just an algorithmic quirk because of something I’m doing.
>a radical protestant metaphysical claim about the equal nature of the human soul, which has never been directly observed
This is not Protestant doctrine; it is Patristic Catholic-Orthodox Christian doctrine rooted in Platonism, that the Reformation failed to shed away, unlike image worship, dead men worship and the like.
From the moment you declare that "the soul" is the image and glory of God, and not Man, the biological human male [Genesis 1:27, 1 Corinthians 11:7], you get leftism.
From the moment you declare that the identity of a man is not in his material body, his genes, his blood, but "the soul, his divine spark" you can ascribe infinite value to any human being (after all, it is eternal and divine!), whereas if man is a meat machine, simply animated via the Breath of Life (Ruach in Hebrew and Pneuma in Greek), appraisal is easy, just like with any other machine. What can it do, how much does it cost, what is his shelf-life?
Look at the Rabbinics and the mental double backflips they have to do to compatibilize their Soul Doctrine with their own ethnic supremacism, by claiming that there are animal souls and divine souls, and only their guys have that second soul. IIRC, the Mormons have something similar.
Get rid of metaphysics, get rid of the Soul Doctrine, go full Sola Scriptura, pure exegesis, zero mysticism, zero scholasticism, and the philosophical foundations of leftism (egalitarianism) will vanish.
But no one in any church has the balls to do that, because there's too much grift in letting people feel like they're unique and special and have free will.
Somebody who knows what they are talking about.
https://twitter.com/culturaltutor/status/1684465330473558016
What's a good book to read to get an intellectual history of "equality"? Is it really a Western idea, or is it something that was a undercurrent in many civilizations but managed to get the upper hand in the western one only?