Q: We were talking a bit about what you referred to as Redemptionism or Revolutionary Utopianism, which you said is an attempt to escape from the brain's randomness which is the very source of human adaptability. Is that an accurate summary?
A: Yeah, that about sums it up.
Q: We then discussed the Individual who you described as a randomly assembled package of interests, adding that when that randomly assembled package of interests is introduced into an institution, the smooth working of the institution becomes impossible. So far, so good? Anything you’d like to add?
A: So far, so good. What I would add to that is what was also discussed in Part IX. And that is, directions given from above and feedback from below necessarily threaten to destabilize the position of the ndividual of the institution, their “politics”, as it were. And what that means is that both instructions and feedback are distorted, one on the way down, the other on the way up.
Q: Ah, right. And that leads to a situation of resentment and contempt, no?
A: That’s right. The view from below regards the higher levels as a hindrance to the lower level’s aggression, while the higher levels view the lower levels as fundamentally incompetent.
Q: And the result is?
A: Well, one result, by far the most important, is that this increases the randomness within an institution, and paradoxically, can either destroy it or make it more viable, more adaptable.
Q: Why is it by far the most important?
A: Because it's the result with the greatest impact on adaptation, which is what it's all about.
Q: Before continuing could you go into that a bit more, about adaptation?
A: The question to ask is Why does anyone do what they do?
Q: And the answer is?
A: Because it's how they adapt themselves to the world, or visa versa. But, from the above question comes an even more important one, Is our method of adaptation itself adaptive?
Q: Good question. With the exception of yourself I'm not aware of anyone asking that question. Why do you think that is?
A: Because they're afraid of the answer, of course. Or, actually, and probably more accurately, they've never thought about it.
Q: To get back to our summary, I asked if there wasn’t a further, more profound consequence following all of the above and your answer - cultural transcendence. So, could we take it from there?
A: Alright. Well, to quote Peckham, this fundamentally unsatisfactory condition of the irresolvable conflict between individual and institution yields on the part of a few individuals the behavioral phenomenon known as cultural transcendence.
Q: And this has to do with Romanticism, no?
A: That’s right. The importance of the Romanticism of the early 19th century is that a few innovative Romantics discovered and established within Western culture (The Land of Whiteness) the basic behavior pattern of cultural transcendence.
Q: Could you talk a bit about what this involves?
A: Sure. Cultural transcendence arises from the judgment of Explanatory Collapse or the failure of ideologies. And that judgment of Explanatory Collapse is itself the result of Trauma.
Explanatory Collapse is followed by Alienation from the culture and its social institutions.
It's important to make a distinction between the pseudo-alienation that started to become popular in the 60's and has continued to this day, and the genuine alienation of cultural transcedence.
Q: What's the difference?
A: The pseudo-alienation of the Left is not alienation at all, but polarization. The polarized individual has properly grasped their culture as incoherent, but their response is not self-ironic. So their attempt to become coherent, or to innovate an alternative, is to simply glom on to a set of values that are already in the culture.
Q: Is this why you're not of the Right or Left?
A: Yes, of course. The Right and Left are respectively like an older sibling who used to rule the roost but, as a result of having become stuck in the mud, is now completely dominated by their crazy, spoiled and overbearing younger sibling who doesn't really know who or what he or she is, but knows that they hate their older sibling. It's as if the two are stuck in their own trance by an unconscious agreement so as to avoid facing the fact that they are two sides of the same coin and that it's the coin that has to go.
Q: And what is the coin?
A: That both have emerged from the same ideological family. The family of origin being the 18th century Enlightenment. What this means is that both the Right and Left emerged from the same Enlightenment metaphysic which is that of perfect adaption.
The culturally transcending Individual knows full well that perfect adaptation is an impossibility, and for this reason is dangerous to whatever chances of survival we might have, and perhaps those chances aren't too great. It very well may be.
The truly alienated Individual sees themselves as part of their culture. They see that not only the Right and Left, but more profoundly and more importantly, both Personality and Culture, as two different names for two different perspectives on the same data - human behavior - and the Self that lies behind the social roles we all must play as a price of admission into society. And now we're back to where we left off - the subject of Alienation.
To this Individual cultural transcendence is the only solution to alienation. The polarized individual, on the other hand, has no self to realize. For the genuinely alienated Individual a self-ironic perspective has already created a mode of a Self. Such a self is one for whom none of the roles in the culture are adequate, since each reflects the culture's incoherence. The polarized individual, however, readily accepts a well-established, socially structured role, such as that of the "rebel" or "outcast." The alientated Individual plays their roles self-consciously and ironically, since to exist they must play a role. The polarized individual, and this is the key point, identifies self with the role. That's why for all of one's initial sympathies with them the Lefty-type of "rebel" is so wearisome, repellent and obnoxious, because they're so fake.
In any event, that Alienation is then followed by Cultural Rejection and Social Withdrawal, reducing one’s social interaction to the minimum. Alienation, Cultural Rejection and Social Withdrawal permit the Behavioral Randomization, which allows the culturally transcending Individual to select a promising Emergent Innovation. After that, Small Group Behavior follows. Meaning, the Individual collects or becomes a part of a small group of supporters, and begins propagandizing the cultural emergent or innovation or creativity.
Q: So, just to put it in a neat bundle and to make sure I understand what you're saying about cultural transcendence, we have the following:
Trauma
Explanatory Collapse
Alienation
Cultural Rejection
Social Withdrawal
Behavioral Randomization
Emergent Innovation
Small Group Behavior
Is that right? Am I missing anything?
A: No. You're not missing anything. That's about sums it up.
Q: Would it be safe to say that this is what you've done, that you have engaged in a self-conscious act of cultural transcendence?
A: That is what I've done and continue to do. Yes.
It's important to add, however, that it wasn't self-conscious at first. But eventually it has to be. You've got to have a clue. You've got to know what you're doing and why you're doing it or you'll proceed blindly. You can only grope in the dark for so long before you start working against yourself. Meaning your actions won't lead to anything fruitful and satisfactory. Of course, even a self-conscious act of cultural transcendence can be dangerous, even deadly. But it'll definitely be that if you don't have a clue.
Q: How can the alienated Individual accomplish or achieve a cultural transcendence?
A: By creating a new role.
Q: Isn’t this kind of what you’ve done with PRC?
A: It’s exactly what I’ve done with PRC. And to be able to do this (Small Group Behavior) with PRC I had to go through the other parts of cultural transcendence we've discusssed by myself.
Q: So both you and PRC are in the Romantic Tradition?
A: Very much so.
Q: And the new role you created was a new kind of consultant?
A: That's right.
Q: In what way is your role as a consultant new or innovative?
A: Because my consultancy is based on cultural transcedence.
Name one consultant out there who even knows that phrase, let alone what it entails and why it's worth the trouble it takes to do it, and why it's so valuable for all involved, not just the individual. And not just the role of the consultant either, but all of the social roles I play. From the role of man, the role of husband*, the social role of the Individual, and even the role of the citizen.
*By the way, I'm not my wife's partner, I'm her husband, which is yet another word Identity Politics wants to abolish, exactly because they're so polarized and therefore either too ignorant or too lazy, or too cowardly, to take the risk to engage in a self-conscious act of cultural transcendence, like I have.
Q: What else would you add about cultural transcendence?
A: The Romantic emergent innovation or cultural transcendence, in whatever form it takes, is a deconversion from what Peckham refered to as a hypostatized redemptionism, and that deconversion leads to a conversion into a permanent de-conversion. In short, cultural transcendence is a conversion into a permanent de-conversion.
Q: What is hypostatized redemptionism?
A: Any final answer, like the kind you get from your average Revolutionary Utopian or Idealistic Reformer.
Q: Could you give an example?
A: Marxism, The Frankfurt School, Identity Politics, CRT.
Q: What's wrong with them?
A: The short version?
Q: The short version.
A: Intellectually they don't make sense and socially they don't work?
Q: Why not?
A: Because, intellectually, every one of those explanatory systems are dependent on metaphysical pseudo-entities like racism, sexism, anti-semitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and now, as if out of nowhere, transphobia.
Q: So?
A: So the all important question, What is there in the world that these words direct us to locate and inform us about? is never asked or answered, ever (except of course here).
Q: And socially?
A: And socially it follows that since the very question that keeps us and our explanations of the world grounded in reality, which is our one truly common bond, is never asked, we have no way of correcting our mistakes, because, as long as we believe in those explanations and irresponsibly call them the truth, we can never admit that we're even making mistakes. And that is why all utopias need a Scapegoat. They can't function without one.
By the way, to the above list you can add the three Abrahamic religions and The CCP. Now you can see what I'm really after and why cultural transcendence has such long-term value for all of us.
Q: So your position is that the best solution to the problems created by human behavior, specifically to the human addiction to abstract absolutes, is cultural transcendence?
A: Yes. But it must always be remembered that no institution works well, or perfectly, whether authoritarian or democratic.
Q: Why not?
A: Because there's always a conflict, an incoherence, between the task or mission of the larger institution and the stability of the individual.
Q: Why is that? What accounts for that conflict or incoherence?
A: Because, as we said before, any innovation is going to be seen as a threat to the individual. Just as, correspondingly, any challenge to authority is seen as a threat to that authority.
Q: What kind of threat to the Individual?
A: The threat to the individual is the dissolution of their persona.
And it takes the richest possible development of the Individual at the highest cultural level, the level that I operate out of, to make such dissolution both tolerable and profitable.
Q: Ah. And that’s what makes you so amazing?
A: If by “amazing” you mean superhuman, yes.
Q: But for us mere mortals it is still possible to reach your level of superhuman achievement and success, no?
A: Hmmm. Maybe. That’s kind of pushing it though.
But, yeah, I guess it’s possible for them to shake the thick mud of conformity and complacency off of their boots long enough to stop scapegoating and begin climbing the mountain so as to get a better glimpse of me on the top picking my ass* as I search my mind for a solution to life’s many problems. Yeah, I guess so.
*A particularly attractive and not at all uncommon instance of limiting the range of behavior.
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