A Gentle Introduction to Mencius Moldbug Part 9: "The Return of History"
Here we have discovered another correspondence between Mencius Moldbug’s theory of government and the very frequently revived idea of civilizational “cycles”, the growth, life and death of cultural groups.
Over the course of centuries, The Cathedral, or the cultural consensus of a civilization, has a tendency to move towards deconstruction, antinomianism, and the left. In our case, the Christian civilization, this process begins with the Reformation. Then slowly, the Cathedral sheds the external arrangements, promises, and customs that have given it life in the past. Until, at some point, it sheds necessary cultural apparatuses, and it begins its phase of decline.
Here Mencius Moldbug points to how this occurred in Christian civilization. The initial reformed Protestantism transformed first into a socially progressive minded Christian activism, then to a general liberal-progressive sentiment with no spiritual principles attached, and now finally to progressive consensus obsessed with deconstructing the very civilization that gave it birth. A brief review of the reigning consensus at Harvard and Yale will tell this story very clearly.
Our story is a tale as old as time. And it is very much the same cycle we hear talked about from Spengler and older thinkers.
Now since we are more or less done with explaining the theory, perhaps we can return to our own society and the contest between left and right. Can Moldbug’s theory help us answer our questions about this fundamental division?
What is the fundamental difference between the left and right as they exist in politics today? Who is correct? And who, if any, should we support?
What is the left and the Democratic Party? They are the representatives of the inner party of The Cathedral, the societal consensus, they are the force that drives progress, and our civilization as a whole.
What is the right and the Republican Party? They are the representatives of the outer party, the token resistance. They apply the brakes to the Cathedral’s progress that slows its course without stopping or changing it, they disagrees with the mainstream in a way that is acceptable to the Cathedral itself. They are the loyal opposition.