The more complex our social arrangements are, the more effort is needed to keep them running.  This belonged to the common sense of social life long before it was codified in physics as the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  Living creatures die; so do cities, nations, and civilizations. 

The principle is true even when our social arrangements harmonize with the inclinations of our nature.  For example, human nature is made with a view to marriage, friendship, and family life.  We seek them, and we go to great lengths to maintain them.  Even so, all sorts of things can go wrong with them.  Marriages may unravel.  Friends may fall out.  Family members may become estranged.

But the principle is especially true when our arrangements are contrary to the inclinations of our nature, and we are trying to compensate for the tension.  To give but a single example, this is why socialism has never worked.  People are not utterly selfish, but neither are they entirely unselfish, especially toward strangers.  As G.K. Chesterton remarked, utopian schemes “take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones.  They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motor-car or balloon.”

One would expect the tendency to disorder to be greatest when social arrangements are both increasingly complicated, and increasingly unnatural.  Hackers couldn’t have kept our ancestors from building cooking fires, but it is very difficult to keep them from knocking out the electrical grid.   Men and women are able to get along reasonably well when their mutual expectations are in line with what they are really like, but when they aren’t, the war between the sexes passes from playful metaphor to dread reality.

Unfortunately, the way we “fix” broken complicated systems today is to invent control systems, and the way we fix those is to invent controls on the controls, ad infinitum.  Consider record keeping.  When all information was on paper, it was pretty easy to lock it up.  Now that information is on increasingly interconnected and permeable computer systems, employees have to be rigorously trained to keep the smoke from leaking out of the bottle of data.  In recent years, as a university professor, I’ve been required to take ten short courses on various aspects of information security, the most recent of which had eight modules.

That’s not to mention a total of nine other courses mandated for all university employees, in things like workplace discrimination and harassment, ethics and “compliance,” “staying healthy in a changing environment,” and something called “social engineering,” which I can’t remember.

None of this was required when I began teaching.  The controllers consider the change progress.  Eventually we will spend more time on required training than on doing our job.  And yet I don’t think we are behaving any better.

Now think of just a few of the other kinds of smoke that have to be kept in their bottles.  Manufactured viruses, both biological and electronic.  Artificial intelligence.  Terrorists.  Genetic modification.  The ideological transformation of education.  Connecting computer chips to the nervous system.  New kinds of social malcontents.  Universal, ubiquitous surveillance.  The weaponization of the justice system.  Addictive media.  Identity thieves.  Vandals and thugs in low places and high.  These things are not like everyday disorder.

I am not preaching gloom and doom.  To say that the present order of things can’t last much longer is not to say that we can do nothing about how disruptively its passing takes place, or what replaces it.  But it is going to pass away.

You know what happens to a house of cards when the air in the room is disturbed.  The breeze is picking up.

Recently, as we were visiting his church out of town, an acquaintance who works hard to bring in the sheaves greeted me and my wife with the friendly remark, "I like people who believe in something."  I wondered:  Do the people we casually describe as believing nothing literally believe nothing?  Or do they believe something after all?

The usual view is that regarding both particular beliefs and belief in general, a person either believes something, disbelieves it, or suspends judgment.  I think this way of viewing the matter is too simple.  Regarding belief, people act out commitment and  belonging in at least four different ways.

The first way is alethic commitment:  Committing and belonging because of considered belief that a thing is true.

The second is social commitment:  Committing and belonging because of a sheer need to commit and belong, simply taking for granted that the thing must be true.

The third is conformity:  Acting in a way that simulates commitment and belonging, not disbelieving the thing, but never really considering whether it is true.

The fourth is cynicism:  Acting in a way that simulates commitment and belonging, even though believing the thing untrue, just because one has something to gain.  For example, one may strike a religious pose among Christians, or an atheist pose among atheists, in order to “get along.”

To some extent, these four categories bleed into each other and are confused with each other.

Alethic belief bleeds into social belief, because we are social beings who cannot help but be influenced by each other.  This is why it is more important to have the right peers than to attempt an impossible immunity to peer pressure. 

Social belief blends into conformity, because we are careless beings who often live half-asleep.  This is why it is so important to inspect our thought processes, even at some risk of confusion.  

Conformity bleeds into cynicism, because we are intellectual beings who cannot remain in suspension between belief and disbelief.  As William James wrote, the mind operates with the attitude, “better face the enemy than the eternal Void!”  Even the so-called agnostic, who is says he “just doesn’t know” whether, for instance, Jesus is the Son of God, is practically committed to living either as though He is, or as though He isn’t.  Every way of living is some way of living.

In fact, universal doubt is impossible, because even when we doubt something, we doubt it for the sake of something we are less in doubt about.  I doubt that the shiny substance in my hand is diamond, because I can scratch it with a piece of steel, and I am not in doubt about the fact that diamond is harder than steel.  Since every doubt in P supposes confidence in Q, we can doubt anything in particular, but we cannot doubt everything at once.

Besides, no one would cynically simulate belief in something he disbelieved, unless, for some reason, he thought his advantage lay in “getting along” – which is, in itself, a belief.  Why doesn’t he doubt that belief?  In this sense even unprincipled people have principles, but bad ones.

Back to my priestly friend, who likes people who believe in something.  I don’t think he really meant to imply with his remark a person could believe nothing at all.  But he daily contends with the thoughtless common habit of allowing trivial and unreasonable beliefs to crowd out questions about things which are not only more important, but ultimately even more reasonable.  For the care of souls, he was looking for solutions.

Everyone believes in something, and whatever he believes, he believes it for the sake of something.  The question is what.

Hear me talking for eight minutes about Why Stoicism won't make you happy on the Catholic Culture Podcast.  (Interviewer Thomas V. Mirus.)

Allow me to update a post I wrote in 2020 about Donald Trump and social class, because the topic is broader than Trump.  Let me begin with what I said then. 

There is a lot to dislike about him.  Mr. Trump was a sneerer, mocker, boaster, and person of bad character -- and he still is.  But then-president Obama, and his then-vice president, Joe Biden, were are also sneerers, mockers, boasters, and persons of bad character.  “Why is the reaction to them so different?”  I asked.  The political classes adored Mr. Obama, liked Mr. Biden just fine, and still put up with Biden despite his obvious dementia, corruption, and incompetence.  By contrast, they despised Trump so intensely that they were willing to pull down the republic to get rid of him.  The instrumentalities of justice were weaponized against him.  Their entertainers openly made jokes about assassinating him.  The war shows no sign of ending; new assaults are launched daily.

Of course part of the difference in the reaction to these politicians is ideological.  Biden, like Obama before him, does things the political classes love, like promoting abortion, removing rules that protect the consciences of medical workers, distributing patronage to industries the political classes like, and expanding the regulatory apparatus.  By contrast, Trump appointed pro-life judges and did other things that they hate.

But that explains only part of it.  The political classes didn’t cast a hold-your-nose vote for Obama, or even for Biden; they didn’t put up with them despite their personality, vices, or bad manners.  They admired them for these qualities.  Biden has become embarrassing to them, but not because of his crudity.

I suggested in 2020 that “it’s a class thing.”   A certain kind of oafishness is considered lovable by the political classes, and not even recognized as oafish because it is their sort of oafishness.  Another kind of oafishness is considered lovable by those whom they disdain.  Obama was a smooth rich fellow who flattered the elites.  Biden is a coarse rich fellow who sneers at the common people in the same breath as he boasts of his humble origins.  The elites think this kind of talk is merely telling it like it is.

Trump is a coarse rich fellow who flatters the common people.  Since he sneers at the elites and adopts a popular tone in doing so, it enrages them.  Though all of these rulers claim to look out for the “little guy,” the difference is that Obama and Biden styled themselves as their patrons, and viewed the “little guys” as their clients.  Trump styles himself as their benefactor, and views them as his constituents.

Some people react viscerally to one kind of oafishness, some to the other.  Very little of the reaction is about the respective vices of these politicians, though much could be said about them.  Most of it is about the respective styles of their vices.  It is very hard to wipe the smear of class from the window of judgment to see clearly.

So much I wrote then.  But there is more to say, because the “class thing” is much bigger than Donald Trump.  Let’s put it in context.

The same people who used to love the Republican and despise the Democratic Party have now flipped, for the wealthy and professional classes used to be mostly Republicans; today they are mostly Democrats.  The biggest change is that “old money” doesn’t count for much any more, because the power has shifted to new money, high-tech money.  Progressivism, understood as the ideal of rule by managerial elites who “know better,” has doubled down.  Contempt for the blue collar and middle white collar classes, otherwise known as the “deplorables,” has intensified.  People can be arrested for peacefully complaining at school board meetings, or surveilled for being religious.

Several facts have obscured the reversal in the parties’ roles.  One is that although the Democratic Party is now the party of the privileged, it still positions itself rhetorically as the defender of the marginalized.  This, despite the fact that the actual effect of its policies is to increase economic dependence rather than reduce it, establishing all sorts of classes and underclasses of governmental clients.  The second is that it retains the support of the most powerful unions, although these are no longer trade or industrial unions.  The baton has now shifted to public employee unions – who strive to make their employer still bigger, and whose officers fully accept the managerial ethos.

There is no longer any place in the Democratic Party for the deplorables to go.  However, the Republican Party bosses adhere to a milder version of the same progressive ideology that the Democrats accept.  So the deplorables have no home there either.

No wonder the deplorables are resentful.  And no wonder so many of them still admire Mr. Trump.  It’s not that they like thugs.  But if they have to be ruled by them, they would rather be ruled by their own thugs.

For your perusal, a compilation of the latest tidbits from the newspaper of what’s happenin’ now.

Self:  Actually, it is all about me.

Reality:  Thinking and saying it make it so.

Truth:  See Reality.

Sex:  Okay if it doesn’t hurt anyone.  Never hurts anyone.

Existence of God:  Doesn’t matter anyway.

Good:  What I want.

Evil, meaning 1:  What I don’t want.  Must not be done.

Evil, meaning 2:  What you don’t want.  May be done for good.  See Good.

Rights:  I get to do what I want.

Duties:  You have to let me do what I want.

Wisdom:  Knowing how to get what I want.

Justice, meaning 1:  Abolishing police. 

Justice, meaning 2:  Punishing political opponents.

Justice, meaning 3:  See Duties.

Privilege:  What I should have and you shouldn’t.

Equity:  See Privilege.

Violence:  Mostly peaceful, when committed in my cause.

Racism:  Thinking every race should be treated the same.

Voting Rights:  What dead people have in elections.

Promises:  Meaningless words that sound meaningful.

Commitment:  Not being married.

Love:  Sexual desire.

Family:  Any group of people whatsoever.

Matrimony:  Any group of people whatsoever, but with sex.

Children:  Lifestyle additions, like flatscreen TVs.

Day Care:  The golden key to childhood development.

Mothers:  Ought to be working.

Fathers:  Are dispensable.

Parents:  Need supervision by villages.

Boys:  Ought to be more like girls.

Girls:  Better version of boys.

Gender:  Whatever I want you to call me.

Women:  Some have penises, some don’t.

Men:  See Women.

Respect:   Saying what I tell you to say.

Affirmation:  See Respect.

Virtue:  Signaling that you hold the currently approved opinions.

Extremist:  Someone not holding the currently approved opinions.

Disruptive:  See Extremist.

Intolerant:  See Disruptive.

Artificial intelligence:  Soon to be the only kind.

See also:

Newspeak Dictionary

Doubleplusgood Ducktalkers

Politics and Language, Revisited

Our (Non) Racist and (Non) Sexist Constitution

So Called Inclusive Language