A Gentle Introduction to Mencius Moldbug Part 8: "The Final Destination"
In addition to progress versus degeneration, there's another way to view the struggle between antinomian and pronomian forces, and that is as a transfer between two modes of survival.
Originally evolving and living in a harsh natural environment, human beings needed norms, disciplines, and structures to ensure that they would survive. And this need for norms persisted when the threats to human well-being shifted from the natural world to those posed by war and other human rivalries.
In this sense, technological development acts as an exchange, replacing internalized human discipline, rules, and organization with external physical technologies that can offload some of the work. When we invent the lever and the pulley, the discipline put on our muscles can be loosened.
As we invent inscription and writing on stone tablets, we lose the discipline needed to memorize and carry on long oral traditions.
Sometimes technology replaces one discipline with another (such as literacy and writing replacing memorization). Other times, as in the case of modern technological entertainment, a core human discipline is eroded entirely. As technology increases, modern man becomes increasingly atomized, sedentary and isolated, losing his contact with both the land and his fellow man. In this sense technology, and the subsequent increase of progressive influence on culture, is a double-edged sword, increasing our wealth but eroding our humanity through the destruction of norms. We rewrite the rules, orders, disciplines, and promises that would otherwise allow our society to survive under harsher conditions.
This is the fundamental decadence of progress. And in Moldbug’s conception, technological innovation covers up the degeneration and social disorder that would otherwise be obvious. More fundamentally, in the progress of technology and antinomianism, there is no guarantee that loosening of the rules and the destruction of promises is only going to remove superfluous social institutions, and norms that limit the emergence of technology.
As the victories of the antinomian left occur again and again, as it is further vindicated by technological progress, the demands of the left accelerate. The activists will begin to tear down more norms and rules until they begin to cut into living tissue, until they begin to destroy the organization that society needs to generate the very technological advance that progress needs to continue.
History has a leftward direction but there's no guarantee that it is going to be intelligent about it. Like an auto-immune disorder, at some point the fixture of progressivism attacks healthy tissue. And even while being driven by the progress of technology, there is no guarantee that the antinomian forces inspires will be good for humanity in the long run. Of course, on the surface, both of these defects seem small. However, they can become bigger since there is no implicit mechanism in society to deal with these forces once they accelerate.
And so there is a bubble mechanism built into the pattern of history itself. The growth of wealth and technology enables the victories of the left enables the victories of antediluvian forces in society. But soon, the march of progress overtakes the benefits delivered by technology and begins to degenerate and disintegrate social bonds themselves. Just like a market bubble, the societal or civilizational bubble starts by pursuing a useful valued asset, creates hype and enthusiasm until everything is oversold, and then collapses, destroying the wealth of the people who were foolish enough to invest in it.
When a bubble is in its growth period, when the market is in an upswing, when technology and wealth are abundant, there are incentives to keep things going. If you buy into a bubble, there's immediate benefit. And if you deconstruct social norms or remove rules that seem unnecessary in the short term then there is much to be gained in the short term. Therefore, an acceleration is experienced that is almost irresistible. Society will go ever further to the left, ever further into deconstruction until it begins to devour itself. And even within this process, will the leftward movement and acceleration of history always continue? Will we always proceed to further deconstruction?
Well as the economist Herbert Stein put it, if something cannot go on forever, it will inevitably at some point stop. And so for societies like ours, there are two possible endings.
In one very unlikely scenario, I hesitate to say optimistic scenario. The process of technological and wealth growth continues indefinitely, until science and technology have obliterated scarcity, and with it, any remnant of anything resembling humanity or the human condition.
In this scenario, nothing stops progress and so we will reach a type of techno-utopia, or go even further and attain what Ray Kurzweil would call the singularity, the point where technology devours humanity itself. In this scenario we will have reached some kind of culmination, some kind of perfect technology, an existence in a near godlike state. Although here, I hesitate to say “we” since whatever attains the dizzying height of existence is not going to resemble anything human.
However, in the other scenario, that is much, much, more likely, the constant progression of technology and progress will come up against some barrier that further technological development cannot solve. In this case, the progression of wealth growth will suddenly halt, the progressive bubble will burst, and civilization will take an enormous lurch backwards. And this time the sudden backwards thrust will occur in a truly catastrophic fashion.
After centuries of left wing victories there will be little remaining social organization that will be able to cushion society when it is no longer able to rely on technological growth. Like a car hitting a brick wall at very high speeds, the entire external apparatus of society will be disintegrated by the sudden stop and with it, will go the civilization and the people it deigns to protect.
And this disaster will be hard to hold back. Leading up to the catastrophe activists and administrators of the society and culture may see the disastrous fate ahead. However, these leaders may realize that they have become slaves of the process that moves society “forward” ever faster. Like a government that is experiencing hyperinflation, the short term interests of the party is to always continue, to print money to pay off short term debts regardless of the fact that the practice will lead to the death of the entire body-politic eventually.