CONSERVATISM -> REACTION -> PROPERTARIANISM (TESTIMONIALISM)
—“Reaction is foremost about embracing reality. An objective reality exists apart whatever stories men may tell themselves. This reality is harsh and bitter as we live in a fallen world. Reality can be denied temporarily, but will always win in the end.”—
[I] thought it was a good opportunity to talk about the relationship between Reaction and Science.
(a) Reaction is an articulate criticism not a solution, and what solutions Curtis provided are afterthoughts – which is why we never talk about them seriously.
(b) Reaction provides a language – a terminology of criticism. Which is good. Not just for signaling one another, but because the terminology provides a consistent argumentative structure for ongoing development of ideas – and leaves behind a cannon of ideas easier to learn and whose meaning is easier to maintain over time. Terms frame arguments. And members of reaction have succeeded in framing the argument. To defeat an idea, we must be able to name it and discuss it. That effort was successful.
(c) But Reaction is stated in Continental (moral) and rational philosophical language. Just as the opposition relies upon Continental (moral) and rational philosophical language. It is NOT stated in scientific language free of moral loading and framing, nor is it stated in the Anglo Analytic (scientific) language. It is an argumentatively moral and rational criticism, not a legal, analytic, and scientific alternative. Criticisms are necessary because they motivate us as all good ideology should, but solutions are necessary also, because they can be stated operationally, and put into place operationally, and the rule of law can institutionalize them over long periods of, because they are ‘calculable’ statements rather than ‘interpretable’ statements.
(d) The opposition uses pseudoscience. And reaction uses science to counter their pseudoscience – thanks to the revolution started by Pinker. And that corresponds to our history: The Aristocratic Egalitarianism of our European and indo-european ancestors, manorialism as an economic and political system, conservatism as a political philosophy, are each objectively scientific processes (observation, trial, error, and reaction), using the scientific method of cooperation (rule of law, common law, property rights, independent judiciary),
(e) Conservatism as an intellectual movement failed, in no small part, because our scientific civilization was still reliant upon the rational moral language of our religious ancestors. Reaction is the first meaningful improvement in conservative (aristocratic) argument in decades.
But, ’embracing reality’ is done in the language of correspondence with reality: science and the philosophy of science: analytic philosophy. Science has evolved to become the universal language of truthfulness. In no small part because it is laundered of moral loading, framing, and justification. Morality and Rationalism are allegorical and sentimental technologies. Science and Analytic philosophy are procedural, operational, existential, and unloaded technologies. Morality may be inspiring but science is actionable. I can make a legal contract – a constitution – that is hard to break. But I cannot make a moral analogy that survives the same attacks.
(f) The next evolution of reaction must be not one of improving our loading and framing – although that is necessary for moral antagonism that encourages people to take up arms – but one of articulating the revocation of the errors of the enlightenment in actionable, scientific, analytic, and legal terms.
These scientific, analytic, LEGAL and therefore AMORAL terms, are not as inspiring as the pervasive moral indignation we can load in continental rationalism. They are not as easy to understand, either. And we will require even more new terms. But they are much more precise tools for the construction of a set of demands for a set of institutions that will restore our ancient scientific civilization to its original direction as the guiding language of mankind.
Finish the transformation of the scientific civilization to the language of science.
Liberty in our lifetimes.
Curt Doolittle,
The Philosophy of Aristocracy
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine.