A Gentle Introduction to Mencius Moldbug Part 5: "The Devil and Samuel Johnson"
But how does this notion of The Cathedral help us to understand the dynamics of history and the reason why societal consensus always shifts to the left? What creates the left wing tendency in history?
To answer this question by way of analogy, I digress to an almost forgotten English political party: the Whigs.
Now, while Whig party’s political objectives are now almost forgotten (and not relevant for this talk), they and 19th century sympathizers were famous for first pointing out the constant tendency in history towards of reform and “progress”; a tendency that only goes in one direction. Since the party’s demise this view has become known as the infamous “Whig view of history”.
A funny, anachronism that can provide insight to the leftward force in history can be accomplished by juxtaposing the “Whig view of history” with Samuel Johnson's famous quote about the Whigs, namely that, Lucifer was the first Whig.
Now, while I think Samuel Johnson's original point was that Lucifer was the first rebel against the Crown (the Crown here being associated with God), might not Dr. Johnson’s quote be better used to help us understand as of yet unexplained leftward direction in history?
Perhaps we might incorporate a Luciferian element into our analysis. Rather than assuming that history moves left because the left is always correct, might we assume that history moves left because the left is always evil?
At first it seems like we have replaced an explanation that is overly flattering to progressives (“the moral arc of history!”) with an explanation that is overly flattering to conservatives (“The left is demonic!”). Still, if we vary our analogy and move from theology to physics, we might inquire whether the fundamental time-dependent force in history is not analogous to the fundamental time-dependent phenomenon in physics. What physicists call entropy.
What if progress and the leftward motion in history is simply entropy, disillusion, degeneration. Just like a teacup, in nature, shatters once knocked down but does not, in nature, reassemble itself; perhaps the tendency of all things to become more left-wing is a type of shattering, a type of winding-down a phenomenon where social institutions slowly degrade as time progresses.
Under this explanation, the leftward bias in history (or “Whig view of history”) does have a certain Luciferian nature. On this view, progress is simply a move towards chaos as time inevitably goes forward. As society ages, institutions are not so much improved by progress as they are slowly torn down, stripped of their fundamentals and worn out.
As Moldbug put it, Cthulhu swims slowly, but he always swims left.
Certainly the entropic explanation has a certain parsimony to it. Things of their own accord tend to wind-down, tend to fall apart. Institutions decay over time, just like all things in the physical world. We don't need a further explanation.
The association of the left with entropy and degeneration also goes a way explaining why the left tends to win over time, and also why we can identify what is left-wing and what isn't before it actually does win. When we see the leftwing trend in history we are not clairvoyant. We are not seeing the future any more than we are seeing the future by noticing that a teacup, once smashed, is not going to reassemble itself.