Oversocialization and Two Minutes’ Hate
Institutionalized Leftist Dominance in Manila’s Establishment
All essays published before July 2022 are considered obsolete. Kindly wait for the upcoming book.
Editor’s Note: Sandalan ning Katimawan does not condone terrorist activities, but recognizes the extreme value present in Theodore Kaczynski’s writings despite disagreements regarding the Establishment’s origin.
Nomadic Prolet has made a reply to this article here.
The Managerial Establishment through Blurred Lenses
Theodore Kaczynski’s manifesto Industrial Society and its Future posits that the Industrial Revolution ruined the telos of man with regards to survival, and forced him to adopt surrogate teloi to pass the time. As points regarding his claims, Kaczynski brings up the logical extreme of what he calls Industrial Society.
Leftism, he notes, comes from a specific psychology. The first tendency he calls “feelings of inferiority”, which we can summarize as envy. Self-hatred from having less drives leftists into masochistic tendencies, whether getting run over by a carriage to promote women’s suffrage or obeying society’s strict rules and regulations no matter how overbearing just to present oneself as politically correct.
The second tendency is much more relevant to our discussion. Oversocialization both comes from and leads to the first tendency. Kaczynski himself explains it best:
Psychologists use the term “socialization” to designate the process by which children are trained to think and act as society demands. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning part of that society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists are over-socialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel. Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are not such rebels as they seem.
Industrial Society and its Future, Paragraph 24
It is cliche to say that democracy is fake and is bread and circuses for the masses. Of course, one easily also sees that Leftism, despite being rebellious, is a dominant force in society today.
The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to get off his psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually he is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of society. Generally speaking, the goals of today’s leftists are NOT in conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses mainstream society of violating that principle. Examples: racial equality, equality of the sexes, helping poor people, peace as opposed to war, nonviolence generally, freedom of expression, kindness to animals. More fundamentally, the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty of society to take care of the individual. All these have
been deeply rooted values of our society (or at least of its middle and upper classes for a long time. These values are explicitly or implicitly expressed or presupposed in most of the material presented to us by the mainstream communications media and the educational system. Leftists, especially those of the oversocialized type, usually do not rebel against these principles but justify their hostility to society by claiming (with some degree of truth) that society is not living up to these principles.Industrial Society and its Future, Paragraph 28
Hence those who lead society today were rebelling against it decades ago, while those rebelling against society today will lead it in a few more. Cancel culture is but a temporary yet telling acceleration of this tendency – creative destruction halts more and more, and entropy now starts setting in as differences and all cause for envy dissipate.
Kaczynski now paints Leftism as but a symptom of a larger disease. He claims that Industrial Society, as he calls the post-Industrial Revolution world, was able to make attaining basic needs much easier, and hence man started looking for surrogate activities to cope with this loss of purpose. With Existentialism, man now needed to look for his own, to go above good and evil and make his own path lest he fall to his despair and become the hedonistic last man. This self-serving hunt for purpose, however, failed for higher ideals mixed with passion led to failed utopias and even greater conflict. Kaczynski claims that modern technology needs to go away not in a political, but an anti-technological and social one to ensure man returns to good processing and living.
Missing the Trees for the Forest
Unfortunately, Kaczynski diagnosed the illness to cause the pathogen. His painting of Industrial Society is simply one sketch of Centralization and Managerialism. As Neo-reactionaries know, culture is downstream from politics, not the other way around. The conditions which Kaczynski points to are a consequence of the Revolution of Mass and Scale and eventual atomization, spurred on by a top-bottom process.
To illustrate, we use one of what Kaczynski calls surrogate activities. Science and academia in general has existed for much longer than Industrial Society. Hence the Scholastics discovered precursors to modern calculus, political theory, and physics, among others. Imperial Chinese bureaucracy favored those proficient in Confucian classics. The Roman Stoics, Plotinus and his students, Socrates and his lineages, all these engaged in so-called surrogate activities without an inkling of Industrial Society. Neither were they always free of worry from food or other basic needs. In the most extreme case, the Great Famine and the Black Death hit Europe in the 14th Century, when the Scholastics continued their thought and growth. The Renaissance saw the death rate skyrocket, while painters and musicians idled away performing their surrogate activities. Song Dynasty China faced multiple threats from the North, eventually falling to Mongol invaders. Indeed, Kaczynski overestimates how much effort biological basics need, for man has always found other ways to pass the time besides survival.
Indeed, Kaczynski repeatedly blames on technology its users’ actions. An overbearing government needs no industrial technology, only that people are subservient and unintelligent enough to not see cracks in the facade. The more powerful in a land dispute will inevitably bully the other one, whether it is with a stone, a sword, an AK-47, or a nuclear missile. Great irony pervades his manifesto, for he talks repeatedly about government interference yet never stops to think that top-bottom processes have been spiraling modernity ever downwards. So while Kaczynski’s The System’s Neatest Trick describes the Establishment’s actions and needs well, it never accurately describes the Establishment itself. Elite Theory and the Iron Law of Oligarchy see Industrial Society as yet another manifestation of how power affects human action. It thus quite unfortunate that Kaczynski has fallen into the midwit trap of missing the trees for the forest.
Technology can be Used against its Master
Kaczynski claims that modern technology is too important for modern society to embrace only the good parts instead of the bad. For one example,
Conservatives and some others advocate more “local autonomy.” Local communities once did have autonomy, but such autonomy becomes less and less possible as local communities become more enmeshed with and dependent on large-scale systems like public utilities, computer networks, highway systems, the mass communications media, the modern health care system. Also operating against autonomy is the fact that technology applied in one location often affects people at other locations far way. Thus pesticide or chemical use near a creek may contaminate the water supply hundreds of miles downstream, and the greenhouse effect affects the whole world.
Industrial Society and its Future, Paragraph 118
Unfortunately, Kaczynski has blamed the consequences of the Revolution of Mass and Scale once again on technology. Sure, one can blame the Revolution on technology, but one needs that link in-between lest the whole chain fall apart. A factory affecting a downstream community is no more or less different than those washing their clothes or dumping manure upstream. The difference is that the latter knew not to do that there, or at the very least suffered the consequences from the village. That factories
Managerialism simply used technology the same way the Manila Establishment used Tagalog culture. However, one can be used against its master while the other cannot. Tagalog culture lies in the World of Forms – an abstraction from common institutions and practices that the Tagalog people cherish. Using it will gain the same results as “liberals are the real racists”-type argumentation, for its telos lies elsewhere. Similarly, voting and elections will not work, for the Establishment was built to support its makers only.
Technology, however, used to be a bottom-top process, a consequence of ingenious men and their patrons. Today that patron is the government, who funds all basic research without regard to risk or reward, only how premise interests the judge. Private patrons, however, are more selective, more choosy. They knew what basic research or invention to fund for they had purpose. Even the purest of Mathematics can be pursued for its own sake, or even for baser reasons, for Mathematics’ deductive nature ensures that further works needs to be done whatever the application. Indeed, technology is completely accidental to a society, or to time period, or to a family – it is how they use it, for what purpose, and for how long that sets it into form.
The Managerial Establishment as the Real Culprit
Aristotle knew that true human flourishing entailed the right ingredients going for the right purpose. A man had his body and biology going not just for external procreation, but for leadership, strength, camaraderie. A woman had hers not just for internal procreation, but for harmony, warmth, support. True human fluorishing thus needs the right mix as Aristotle explains:
And the same thing appears to follow from its self-sufficiency, for the complete good seems to be self-sufficient. And by the self-sufficient we mean not what suffices for oneself alone, living one’s life as a hermit, but also with parents and children and a wife, and friends and fellow citizens generally, since a human being is by nature meant for a city. But one must take some limit for these connections, since by stretching out to ancestors and descendants and friends of one’s friends they go beyond all bounds; but this must be examined later.
Ethics, Book 1 Chapter 7
Kaczynski’s idea of self-sufficiency now falls apart, for man needs these goods, and technology serves one way to obtain them. One needs no internet to meet friends, but a conversation by the local bus stop or train station may suffice. Technology’s being has no telos built into it beyond what it was built for – it is value-free, and only the purpose of its use itself needs to be scrutinized. Hence why Tagalog culture cannot be salvaged – it was built from the start to benefit women and their managerial husbands. Same with the Managerial Establishment, or Communism, or anything else similar.
Kaczynski thus fails to see how atomization came about from the Revolution of Mass and Scale, and itself lead to crowding and mass society. Top-bottom procedures with their rules and regulations were needed not to preserve technologically-built societies, but to serve the Managerial Establishment and the professional-managerial class. Envy and oversocialization are necessary for the professional-managerial class to proceed. Hence why being “professional” is suddenly a civic virtue – the professional-managerial class made it so. Straightforwardness, curtness, and directness – typically masculine traits – fell prey to the woman-propped Establishment which made subtlety, meandering, and doubletalk important. Indeed, Kaczynski fails to see that Big Government and Big Business go hand-in-hand:
Conservatives’ efforts to decrease the amount of government regulation are of little benefit to the average man. For one thing, only a fraction of the regulations can be eliminated because most regulations are necessary. For another thing, most of the deregulation affects business rather than the average individual, so that its main effect is to take power from the government and give it to private corporations. What this means for the average man is that government interference in his life is replaced by interference from big corporations, which may be permitted, for example, to dump more chemicals that get into his water supply and give him cancer. The conservatives are just taking the average man for a sucker, exploiting his resentment of Big Government to promote the power of Big Business.
Industrial Society and its Future, Paragraph 65
In fact, most regulations are only necessary because the government allows joint-stock limited liability corporations in the first place. These regulations themselves now need more regulations, because the government believes that only it can solve what itself caused. The only reason the government lets these entities even exist is because letting someone else manage one’s wealth is so much easier – bureaucracies popped up in Early Modern centralized absolute monarchies for this exact reason. Again, like Mamelukes, this class usurped traditional society and made themselves rulers. Modernity is ultimately the age of bureaucracy, of professionals, of mangaers, of rules and regulations – technology is only accidental to it, and could help either that or traditional society. In fact Kaczynski himself shows that he gets this to some degree:
Behavior is regulated not only through explicit rules and not only by the government. Control is often exercised through indirect coercion or through psychological pressure or manipulation, and by organizations other than the government, or by the system as a whole. Most large organizations use some form of propaganda to manipulate public attitudes or behavior. Propaganda is not limited to “commercials” and advertisements, and sometimes it is not even consciously intended as propaganda by the people who make it. For instance, the content of entertainment programming is a powerful form of propaganda. An example of indirect coercion: There is no law that says we have to go to work every day and follow our employer’s orders. Legally there is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild like primitive people or from going into business for ourselves. But in practice there is very little wild country left, and there is room in the economy for only a limited number of small business owners. Hence most of us can survive only as someone else’s employee.
Industrial Society and its Future, Paragraph 73
However, Kaczynski instead blames technology instead of its users, which makes sense considering his rather deterministic and even materialistic view of how institutions and history work. Indeed, Kaczynski contradicts himself in two points:
Modern society is in certain respects extremely permissive. In matters that are irrelevant to the functioning of the system we can generally do what we please. We can believe in any religion (as long as it does not encourage behavior that is dangerous to the system). We can go to bed with anyone we like (as long as we practice “safe sex”). We can do anything we like as long as it is UNIMPORTANT. But in all IMPORTANT matters the system tends increasingly to regulate our behavior.
Industrial Society and its Future, Paragraph 72
Here Kaczynski shows how he knows that culture is downstream of politics. Despite saying this, Kaczynski goes on to claim that this kind of action is impossible and falls to despair:
A new kind of society cannot be designed on paper. That is, you cannot plan out a new form of society in advance, then set it up and expect it to function as it was designed to do.
Industrial Society and its Future, Paragraph 105
Economically speaking, this is true. Culturally speaking, however, top-bottom changes happen regularly – the Managerial Establishment and its dominance is but one proof of this. Only power restrains power, but the lack of other powers through the monopoly of violence allowed this system to succeed. Priests of power who treat it as God will do their best to keep it, hence why the Party members were the most monitored, most pressured in 1984.
Kaczynski goes on to set forth a plan to overthrow Industrial Society. In simplest terms, he advocates acceleration by letting a One World Economy form and installing dictators in industrially advanced states to let the inevitable inefficiency break everything down. He sees history as a straight line of instead of cyclical, and similar to Marx, envisions only one dialectical outcome through simultaneous revolution. As O’Brien would put it, the manifesto is true “as description, yes. The program it sets forth is nonsense.” We cannot pin all blame to him, however, since he had no access to the Scholastics, and Joe Sachs had not yet published his translations. Hence, we find great value in his analysis of Leftist psychology.
Manila’s Establishment and Two Minutes Hate
As we have discussed before, Manila follows global trends in Managerialism rather well. Oversocialization, in fact, took root here much faster after Tagalog culture accelerated in spread and growth. The impulse to rebel, of course, grew ever larger, allowing the Establishment’s neatest trick to play out:
All of us in modern society are hemmed in by a dense network of rules and regulations. We are at the mercy of large organizations such as corporations, governments, labor unions, universities, churches, and political parties, and consequently we are powerless. As a result of the servitude, the powerlessness, and the other indignities that the System inflicts on us, there is widespread frustration, which leads to an impulse to rebel. And this is where the System plays its neatest trick: Through a brilliant sleight of hand, it turns rebellion to its own advantage.
The System’s Neatest Trick, Part 2 Paragraph 1
Atomization causes an imbalance in social capital, where attaining such incentivizes professional-managerial behavior. Of course, doing so puts load on them, and an impulse to rebel causes herdlike behavior among the lucky few. To live in a society today thus means to follow the crowd’s impulses and be lucky to have social capital.
Many advantages do exist to social capital today, much more than human capital. Universities and colleges favor those with friends among faculty and seniors, not just here and abroad. Meritocracy in fact is no longer as highly favored – being a “people person” and “team player” is more important than skills or experience. Indeed, Kaczynski notes that the professional-managerial class prioritizes applications and standards more than thinking and prudence:
It is enough to go through a training program to acquire some petty technical skill, then come to work on time and exert the very modest effort needed to hold a job. The only requirements are a moderate amount of intelligence and, most of all, simple OBEDIENCE. If one has
those, society takes care of one from cradle to grave.Industrial Society and its Future, Paragraph 40
Instead of technology, however, we point out that what kept ennui from dawning on the academic class in preindustrial times was that the managerials and bureaucracy never existed, the service sector was divided between the academe and the working class, and known men better served public administration and judgement. The mid-tier technical knowledge never came to be for either theory, experience, or both suffice.
Hence the professional-managerial class today seeks an outlet through Leftism. No better rebellion exists than fighting a government which supports one’s ideals, for it is a rebellion against reason (logos) itself. No better example exists than Manila’s underbelly.
Manila is a fine example of a hive of scum and villainy, where the working class and the academe have followed the professional-managerial class’s behavior and now seek to cut the tall poppies, hammer down the proud nails. Tagalog culture as espoused by the Managerial Regime distills itself to its rawest, not caring about ancestry or work or sex or age, but envy and oversocialization transcending these all. A true collectivist society where no one goes against the grain while aestheticizing it, no one thinks out of the box while encouraging it, no one rebels against the government while shouting and screaming for it. Manila is where entropic Tagalog Managerialism found its final form, and is steadily approaching it. Creative destruction falls prey to envy, the big corporations are both targets and brothers in arms.
Now news coverage sensationalizes those worthy of sensationalizing, politely mentions big news, and covers up important items. Anger and hatred flow out as the tragedy unfolds on-air, ending up as post-play catharsis as the hero falls to hubris, and the tragedist media collect tips from watchers. Senator so-and-so never should have stolen the money, President this-and-that never should have made that comment. All this while big business and big government swallow up what remaining pie there is.
As managerials would have it, they would rather follow the rules and regulations of what to do when tragedy strikes rather than study why it happens and how to avoid it. Give thoughts and prayers, criticize those who air their thoughts and prayers as platitudes. The working man would get into action and fix the problem through persistence and trial and error. The academic would know how to fix the problem and fix it when conditions are right (even through trial and error ie with Math). The professional-managerial, however, idles by and has a higher up fix it.
Ego-boosting and posturing definitely pervade managerials, and two-minutes hate form only one ritual in this grander telos. These would never study history, or political theory, or even the most basic logical reasoning, yet would clamor for a great leader only to eat him (or her) up after a year. The cycle continues, yet never ends for they would never take the courage to leave their comfort zone and learn proper political theory – they would rather post “leave your comfort zone” on social media and try (then fail) to do something of note. Excellence requires persistence, to remain active, not to decline into entropy. As Aristotle puts it,
But it is necessary to say not only this, that it is an active condition, but also what sort of active condition it is. And something one ought to state is that every virtue, as well as bringing that of which it is the virtue to completion in a good condition, also makes it yield work of a good kind, as the excellence of the eye makes both the eye and its work first-rate, since by means of the excellence of the eye we see well. Similarly, the excellence of a horse both makes it a first-rate horse, and makes it good at running, at carrying its rider, and at holding still in the face of enemies. So if this is the way things are in all cases, then also the virtue of a human being would be the active condition from which one becomes a good human being and from which one will yield up one’s own work well.
Ethics, Book II, Chapter 6
A Case Study
We turn now to local Traditional Catholics as a case study regarding Manila. Here we see many professional-managerial tendencies – aestheticism, oversocialization, entropy – all converge. Many of these types come from the Societas Ecclesia Dei Sancti Iosephi, but what we write is relevant to all reading too.
Aestheticism manifests in their need for a sense of the sacred. True, the liturgy’s aesthetics serve to let all mortal flesh keep silent for the intellect to witness Calvary’s immortality. However, the sense of the sacred as end in itself is not the telos of the liturgy. Hence why many traditionalists declare that lex orandi lex credendi – they think that having good aesthetics suddenly clears their mind, that liturgy is a testing ground for the Faith’s doctrine, and that doctrine’s merit comes from having produced piety and sanctity through the liturgy. We let Pius XII explain better:
We refer to the error and fallacious reasoning of those who have claimed that the sacred liturgy is a kind of proving ground for the truths to be held of faith, meaning by this that the Church is obliged to declare such a doctrine sound when it is found to have produced fruits of piety and sanctity through the sacred rites of the liturgy, and to reject it otherwise. Hence the epigram, “Lex orandi, lex credendi” – the law for prayer is the law for faith. But this is not what the Church teaches and enjoins.
Pius XII, Mediator Dei Paragraph 46
Indeed, to favor the Traditional Latin Mass for its aesthetics, and to claim that the sense of the sacred produces good doctrine, is no better than Pentecostals or Charismatics blurting gibberish for the emotional high – that is the sense of the sacred for them, and claiming lex orandi lex credendi means that the Pentecostals had it right.
Instead, Pius XII notes that lex credendi legem statuat supplicandi – doctrine informs prayer. To work with the sense of the sacred first is inductive, to work with doctrine first is deductive – a complete difference. Indeed, the Traditional Mass is replete with Scriptural symbolism in its actions and gestures – doctrine informing prayer. Twentieth century innovations like dialogue Masses, singing congregations, and more only serve the illusion that the Mass is a social meal, whose social aspect is important.
This aestheticism, however, is typical of professional-managerial oversocialization looking for an outlet. The world is ugly and dirty, so traditional aestheticism serves as yet another example of the impulse to rebel. This serves at once as belonging to an identity following atomization, and keeping a safe facade to hide behind.
Next, one can find oversocialization in action when seeing how their views favor the Managerial Establishment. Strong government, collectivist tendencies, dichotomous support for/against the military/government/institutions, a lack of Aristotelian prudence to follow the crowd. Hence Leni Robredo is so popular among them – we need to show mercy and compassion to sodomites, we need to enact social justice for the (non-Aristotelian/Thomistic) common good, we need to favor a lack of corruption over Church teaching or poltical pragmatism or realism. And of course, these tendencies are extremely rebellious, and everyone who believes in them is favored by everyone else who believes in them. Provincials who just want to be left alone will now be forced to wear pink alongside rainbow colors, and get atomized more than Manila has already. Of course, if the great strongwoman says that vaccines aren’t mandatory, then forget if I hardheartedly supported them for the past year – let Leni lead!
If not Leni Robredo, then the gay marriage supporting military-favoring mandate imposing Marcos will serve as the perfect strongman to bring discipline and cohesion to an already oversocialized populace. Never mind that provincials don’t care who’s in charge as long as they aren’t bothered with, Bongbong Marcos will further atomize them more than Manila has already. Hatred of regionalism or favoring families will only intensify since everyone needs to chip in for the so-called “Filipino” people. Unfortunately, his foreign policy receives little credit despite being the most pragmatic and realistic of all candidates – his degeneracy and managerialism, however, gets the lion’s share.
Unfortunately, the two only cherry-pick accidental Managerial properties while retaining its final telos – mass society serving the state. The “country”, the “people”, any other abstract ideal are all myths that hide the pursuit for power. This Managerial Oligarchy has nothing else in mind but self-preservation and tax collection. Unfortunately, these midwits who prefer the sense of the sacred cannot see past accidentals into universals, and stick to a Nominalism-lite with their motte-and-bailey tactics and utter disregard for theory.
Finally, these tendencies ultimately stabilize in entropy. They wish not to go past their comfort zones and stick only to an aesthetic traditionalism, hence their hatred for reactionary tendencies. They wish not to study further theory, and only to stay in their professional-managerial rules and regulations. It doesn’t matter if you provided nothing to society by studying films and movies on taxpayer money for 13 years, at least you followed your passion and sought to preserve the Establishment. Getting hurt is a cardinal sin, even in pursuit of growth. Pursuing growth is a necessity even if it leads to hurt. Don’t waste your energy on useless things. Do useless things even if they waste your energy. Contradictory feel-good statements typical of millennials (properly defined to be born 1980-1995, not Gen Z), whose conciliation comes only with Prudential thinking: whether doing something is worth it or not.
Entropy, of course, pervades their thinking, leading them to support the Establishment, to pursue Managerialism, to have a higher-up decide for them, to not bear the consequences of their action. Manila has converged to this for a century, and the coming decade will see its end results.
True Human Fluorishing
Since we see that every city is some kind of association, and every association is organized for the sake of some good (since everything everyone does is for the sake of something seeming to be good), it is clear that all associations aim at something good, and that the one that is most sovereign and encompasses all the others aims at the most sovereign of all goods. And this is the one called the city, the political association.
Politics, Book 1, Chapter 1
The Managerial Establishment is doomed to fall, for its focus on abstract metrics and indicators can hide the rot underneath for so long. China is not a threat to anyone since its own Managerial Establishment is too busy holding together the falling enterprise. War-mongerers need only wait if their real goal is to defeat the CCP, for the CCP is doing a much better job with much better results than they ever could. Making pacts with China ought not to stir trouble, since it is best to benefit from them before they fall. The same goes with the Establishment here – it is doomed to crack this decade, and collapse in the following. Its telos serves it and only it, and no leader can salvage it. To think that elections can manage the Establishment well are futile – a chair is not meant to travel the air, a boy is not meant to fight in war, a despotic Establishment is not meant to serve or lead the people.
Hence the problems of Industrial Society need not be stamped out, for doing so only prolongs the process. One need not accelerate it either, for the shock will come too strongly for people to cope. The GOP Mises Caucus favors Archotropism: building new institutions and incentivizing local populaces to switch to them. Violent insurrections might be necessary, but building new institutions will make them much easier to carry out.
Kaczynski fell into despair and enacted an ultimately fruitless campaign of terrorism. Those who wish to see the Establishment’s fall must instead work, study, exercise, and pray – the restored order will have much use of these kinds of people who value themselves, their families, and their local communities.