Feedback explains how occupations and industries align politically
By: Lorenzo M Warby
Tags: Big Tech, History, Education, Politics, Free Speech

Why those who struggle with the physical world lean conservative and those who deal with the abstract lean progressive.

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/charts-show-the-political-bias-of-each-profession-2014-11

In his book A Conflict of Visions, economist Thomas Sowell sets out two visions of human nature and social possibilities that drive much of politics: the unconstrained or utopian vision, whereby human society could achieve unparalleled harmony and felicity if people were freed from various social constraints, and the constrained or tragic vision, whereby human nature, the demands of creating and maintaining social order and of wresting wealth from nature, operate as fundamental constraints that any social order has to deal with.

What are indeed enduring constraints, and how amenable particular constraints are to human action, is not always obvious and can change over time. Western civilisation has gone through the emancipation sequence — abolishing the slave trade and slavery, Jewish emancipation, adult male suffrage, votes for women, women’s liberation, civil rights, gay liberation — largely because constraints changed, including increasing ability to contest claims about what are, or are not, enduring constraints and what society’s trade-off equilibria should be.

The above chart summarising the pattern of political donations by industry and occupation, shows this conflict between the constrained and unconstrained visions playing out in contemporary US politics. Though there is no reason to think that the patterns are much different in other developed democracies.

Progressivism trumping liberalism

As contemporary progressivism has become increasingly, indeed, in its source writings, proudly, illiberal, I am going to partly substitute progressive for the liberal label above, as it far better describes the dynamics of politics which derives from the unconstrained vision. In particular, how much such politics is directed to, or derived from, a notion of the transformative golden future (progressivism) rather than a commitment to general human freedom and autonomy (liberalism). Though inflated notions of harms from words, so that restrictions on speech and ideas are claimed to be needed to defend human autonomy (at the cost of restricting human autonomy, but only “bad” autonomy) can be a bridge from liberal to progressive politics.

A fundamental concept of critical theory and derivatives, the various critical constructivist theories such as critical race theory, is that true social harmony and felicity can only be achieved if all oppressive ideas and structures are eliminated. With oppressive ideas being defined as anything that is taken to inhibit “progress”: that is, achievement of the transformative golden future. This explicitly includes any dissent from the precepts of, or derived from, critical theories. Hence, any politics derived from critical theory or its derivatives, as contemporary progressivism increasingly is, is thereby fundamentally opposed to freedom of speech and thought. This is very clear in writings such as Herbert Marcuse’s seminal, and increasingly influential, essay Repressive Tolerance. (The essay is available online here.)

Attempting to, and regularly succeeding, in getting people sacked or suspended for violating linguistic taboos, is a profoundly illiberal style of politics. But it fits perfectly in with the idea that a transformative golden future is possible if oppressive ideas and structures — that is any ideas or structures that are not directed to, or that fail to facilitate, achievement of said transformative golden future — are eliminated.

It is also a logical inference from Michel Foucault claiming that social dynamics are fundamentally matters of power. If arguments are not about trying to find the truth, or bargaining to achieve mutually compatible ends, but just expressions of power in a society dominated by oppressor-oppressed relations, then of course the “proper” thing to do is to suppress all those who express or “support” the “power relations” of oppression.

As I have previously discussed, the politics of the commitment to the transformative golden future has an enormous rhetorical advantage. For the transformative golden future, being a thing of the imagination, can be far more morally perfect than anything that is a result of the inevitable trade-offs trying to build something in the world must entail.

Indeed, there is a ready-made, and oft-applied, pattern of critique by progressives of anything that does, or has, existed. Take some such thing, ignore why it exists, what trade-offs and constraints it has had to deal with, compare it to some moral principle or principles without any serious consideration of its function or the constraints it has had to deal with, prove that it fails to entirely conform to the nominated moral principles and condemn it as illegitimate for doing so. To someone committed to the transformative golden future, this is a perfectly reasonable way to proceed, as all such constraints can be superseded when the golden future is achieved. If you are more concerned with how and why things work (or don’t), it is less impressive.

Commitment to the transformative future has powerful motivation behind it. Not only does it have unbeatable moral grandeur because of its imagined lack of moral blemish, commitment to such moral grandeur reflects its splendour back on to those so committed. This further motivates dismissing as impermanent and dispensable all constraints that might dim said grandeur.

Pursuit of the transformative golden future is held to be inherently morally ennobling. (Above all, by those so committed.) Political activism, progressive political activism, becomes the highest moral calling, as it is directed towards achieving the transformative golden future that is the ground of all morality and of all positive meaning.

Yes, this is a faith system.

There is no information from the future and it can be imagined to be as perfect as one likes. The golden transformative future thus acts as God — the source of meaning, the ground of morality and the ultimate authority. Indeed, it operates as a source of divine authority: the divine being the realm of ultimate authority from which there is no accuracy feedback.

Political activism to bring about the golden transformation future thus operates as a priesthood and key theorists as its prophets. We are absolutely dealing with a faith-system operating according to religious dynamics. With heretics, blasphemy, infidels and, if institutional circumstances permit, inquisitions.

Markers of being of the smart and the good

This energising motivation, grounded in an imagined future so much better than anything that has or does exist, reaches beyond those explicitly committed to the transformative golden future, or to any particular theory of the transformative golden future. Derivations of these theories emerge out of this highly motivated reasoning and activism to be re-packaged as being what the smart and the good believe.

Once such derivative beliefs are established as markers of being smart and being good, then anyone who aspires to being of the smart and good has profound status, cognitive identity and self-image reasons to buy into such marker-precepts. (And to be seen to so buy into.) In doing so, they also buy into the required-for-such-status consequence that those who fail to endorse what the smart and the good believe are morally and cognitively delinquent, as it must follow that they are either not smart, not good, or both.* This has become central to how elite media functions — it sells narratives that tell you what the smart and good folk believe, and who (as being of the smart and the good) you get to despise for not being of the smart and the good.

In order to protect the signal of being of the smart and the good, dissent has to be de-legitimised. Hence pile-ones against those who dissent, because if such dissent is accepted as legitimate, then the markers of being of the smart and good lose their value. Pile-ons and denigration of dissent and dissenters are ways to protect the strength of the signals of being of the smart and the good.

Having bought into these markers of being of the smart and the good, folk have then also bought into being motivated to block themselves from noticing anything that casts doubt on the precepts that define the smart and the good. This is bad for the general health of public and intellectual discourse, but excellent for the status strategy. A salient example of this pattern is that the more highly educated, “liberal” (i.e., progressive) one is, and the more trusting of the mainstream media, the worse informed one is of the patterns of police shootings in the US.

It is not only a problem of a general pattern of not-noticing. Much of the mainstream media is playing, and playing to, the same status strategy. A playing, and playing to, that is manifested in the huge increase in recent years in the use of racial terms in US mainstream media. This is a measure of the expanding influence of critical race theory, and its derivative status strategy of anti-racism as being a prime marker of being of the smart and the good.

Abstracting progressivism

If one works in an occupation or industry that deals with abstract ideas, or other products of the imagination, then faith in the transformative golden future, and its derivative markers to establish one is of the smart and good, is a very natural fit. Particularly if being of the smart is very much a matter of professional self-image. Who does not want to see themselves as being of the smart and the good?

Looking at the chart of political donations above, we can see that not only are the industries and occupations of abstraction and imagination strongly predominantly progressive in their politics, they are far more intensively progressive than any industry or occupation leans conservative. The industries and occupations of the cultural commanding heights are, in terms of active politics, overwhelmingly progressive. If politics is downstream of culture, then much of the patterns of contemporary institutional and public politics makes sense.

Those who buy into the unconstrained vision (or its derivatives) are very likely to be more motivated to care about, and be active in, politics. Their very sense of status and cognitive identity is strongly inclined to be activated by, and motivate, political action. Much more so than folk with different views of the world, of society, of human possibilities, of politics.

The social power of being more systematically motivated about politics is real, as this thoughtful piece on the institutional spread of “wokeness” (i.e., contemporary progressivism derived from critical constructivist theories) sets out. The piece is, however, marred by the silly claim that progressives care more about the future of their society than do conservatives. Being much more motivated to engage in political action, because it is tied up with one’s sense of status and cognitive identity, is not remotely the same as caring more about the future of your society. Indeed, a profound contempt for one’s own society, and its heritage, can be extremely politically motivating. Especially as part of rejecting present and past in the service of the transformative golden future.

There is a sense in which wanting to de-legitimise and overturn the American project is very much caring about the future of the society you are currently in, but not in the sense that of identifying with the society as it is, or has been. This is not about a continuing future for that society, but a radical break from what has come before, and all the achievements and strivings that embodies.

Caring more about politics is not the same as caring more about the future of one’s country. Politics is not the only way to care about, or invest in, the future of one’s society. Indeed, the more pervasive and intense competition over the positional goods of politics are in a society, the worse that society is likely to become.

Status games

The unconstrained vision is very well set up for status and power games. Precisely because the animating vision is so morally splendid, it is very easy to generate a sense of profound moral commitment, but also a sense of moral grandeur. This can then be parlayed into a sense of moral prestige and, in order to achieve the golden future, patterns of social dominance.

The grandeur of the moral claims can, however, also lead to a pervasive cheapening of moral discourse. For instance, the notion that, say, a lesbian of African descent with a tenured position in an elite university is “marginalised” and “oppressed” profoundly impoverishes moral language. If such a person is “marginalised” and “oppressed”, what are we to say about the situation of a slave, or the inhabitant of a labour camp, or the experience of a Russian serf?

The appropriation of the language of oppression by not merely inhabitants of the most prosperous, most technologically capable, socially free societies in human history but by particularly institutionally advantaged members of such societies is profoundly offensive and highly self-indulgent. It is self-indulgent self-aggrandisement (“look at me, I am so oppressed!” “look at me, I am speaking for the oppressed!” “look at me, I am fighting oppression!”) that hugely cheapens the public moral compass in the service of a performative collective narcissism, an ostentatious display of moral status. It also has a (likely not coincidentally) disorienting effect on anyone who might want to express different views and concerns.

Being very effective status strategies, very effective to harnessing prestige and wielding dominance, is at the core of how critical theory, and its derivatives, are also mechanisms of career advancement and social domination by holders of the “correct” sort of human capital. Ones that are particularly suited for, indeed likely to select for, toxic actors. Any powerful status strategy, particularly one with such minimal signalling costs, will attract, indeed select for, toxic actors.

There is a very strong element of self-deception involved, so that people see the moral splendour they commit to and don’t see the status plays they are engaged in. This self-deception is carried off by manipulating salience, especially moral salience, so as to hide what is going on from others and from themselves. As a Polish psychiatrist observed, having spent decades observing the putatively “progressive” politics of Stalinist and post-Stalinist Poland dominated by pathological personalities:

Unconscious psychological processes outstrip conscious reasoning, both in time and in scope, which makes many psychological phenomena possible… Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political Ponerolology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes, p.163.

By being very consciously aware of the moral grandeur of the vision, and moral commitment involved, a lot of status games can be played without ever acknowledging to oneself or others that that is what is also going on. Indeed, that such status plays may be providing a great deal of the reinforcing feedback and incentives.

We can tell, however, that the status strategy is, at bottom, a much stronger motivator than moral concern because, in any clash between the two, the status strategy, with its very strong protection-from-conformity-effects, almost invariably wins. Indeed, one of the things that distinguishes dissenters on the “left” is their refusal to play the status strategy.

There are other consequences from this focus on the transformative future and expansive conceptions of oppression. If you define all constraints as oppression, so as being malign social constructs, that naturally leads to various levels of science denialism, as science explores the structures of things and constraints flow from the structure of things.

The notion that constraints are embedded in structure of things (as science demonstrates in various ways) is inherently opposed to the unconstrained vision. Lysenkoism is an inherent, pathological tendency of golden, transformative-future progressivism. As, for example, trans activism is currently demonstrating. Though the Lysenkoist implications of transformative-future progressivism are invading medicine much more widely.

Enduring constraints

Which brings us to the tragic or constrained vision. This cannot be simply labelled “right wing” or conservative, as some very liberal-minded or politically progressive (but not progressivist in the sense defined above) folk operate within this vision. Anyone who accepts that we are products of, and still subject to, evolutionary processes buys into a key element of the tragic or constrained vision, no matter how “left” their politics are.

Nevertheless, conservative thought is very much grounded in the tragic or constrained vision. But so is the liberal tradition.

The basis of the tragic or constrained vision is that constraints are real. That there are features of reality, and of us, that are not seriously plastic to human action and that we have to simply deal with, and act within, if we are to be effective. Particularly, if we are to be effective in promoting human flourishing or any achievable notion of the good.

Now what those constraints actually are, and how plastic or not they are to human action, is much debated. This is much of the ground of dispute between liberals, conservatives and various tragic-vision authoritarians. While they may argue over the constraints, and where the practical limits are, that there are such constraints and practical limits is a bedrock assumption all these traditions share.

Looking at the chart of patterns of political donations by industry above, we can see that the most politically conservative (so most constrained-vision) industries are mining and agriculture. They are immersed in the effort to wrest value from nature. They deal with the reality of physical constraints every day. Their daily feedback from their work tells them that constraints are real and pervasive. Of course they are much more inclined to conservative politics.

The higher the “social constraints” elements of the work of an industry, the more politically liberal it tends to be. Social constraints are, at least to some degree, amenable to human action. The stronger, therefore, is likely to be the appeal of supporting human autonomy. Especially a notion of human autonomy less grounded in the constraints of tradition. Hence the more liberal patterns of politics in such industries.

Liberalism, autonomy and discovery

But liberalism does not deny the reality of constraints. It is grounded in a view of human nature that both exalts human autonomy while also holding a certain, grounding suspicion about human nature and respect for the limitations of human action. Why do liberals push freedom? Because that respects human autonomy but also entails denying that there is some group out there who can be trusted with systematic power over others.

Liberalism famously sees public discourse as a vehicle for discovery. We are constrained by what we do not yet know, but might yet find out. Testing ideas in open discourse permits, given such constraints, discovery to take place. Liberalism has been comfortable with private property and markets because they support human autonomy, operate as far more effective discovery mechanisms and limit the power of some over others.

There is much truth in the liberal vision. For instance, markets and commerce are not good mechanisms to promote bigotry. It is why oppressive systems have always sought to impose limits on the market and commerce. Racial segregation, for example, required systematic state action because market processes will not deliver segregation. Indeed, various oppressed groups have often found the consensual patterns of commerce much kinder to them than the coercive structures of politics.

One of the great rhetorical advantages of the unconstrained vision, the politics of the golden transformative future, is that it de-legitimises all the grounds from which one might derive liberal or conservative politics. Pointing to any constraint that gets in the way of the golden future can so easily be portrayed as complicity in whatever ills the golden transformative future will dispense with, as being a sign of being an -ist or a -phobe.

Whether it is claiming that human nature limits what is possible, that wresting value from nature limits what is possible, or that the requirements of social order limit what is possible, any such argument can be charged as being complicity in oppression. If appeal to the constraints of human nature, the constraints of social order, the constraints of wresting value from nature, are all illegitimate due to being complicity in oppression, then there is no ground from which liberal or conservative arguments can be made. There is nothing for them to gain purchase from that upholders of the progressive faith need pay any attention to.

Of course, attempting to argue people out of a faith system is a notoriously unfruitful activity.

Unconstrained imagination

From mining and agriculture to law and pharmaceuticals, there is fairly clear more-conservative-to-more-liberal pattern of industries, directly connected to what sort of feedback their workplaces have to deal with, from the more physical to the more social.

Then we come to four industries clustered together that are much more intensely skewed in their politics than the 12 conservative-to-liberal industries: newspapers and print media, online computer services, academics and the entertainment industry. These are, in the contemporary world, the cultural commanding heights industries. They are also extremely social industries that do not directly have to deal much with wresting value from the physical world or (in any strong feedback way) problems of social order. That is done for them by other industries.

They are industries of the abstract and the imagined above all else. They are made for the politics of the unconstrained vision. Especially for belief in a golden transformative future. The combination of abstraction and lack of reality-feedback naturally encourages the idea that all constraints that in any way impede the golden transformative future are dispensable.

Their attenuated reality-feedback also means that they are also made for status-strategy politics based on markers of being of the smart and the good. Especially given their intensely social nature, and their focus on abstraction and imagination. There is much greater capacity to select for agreement over competence, as what is “good work” has a high “what other folk in this industry believe is good work” element to it.

Especially for claims that have no direct feedback-from-reality penalty for being wrong, but have a potentially high conformity-penalty.

For instance, in terms of how career advancement works, an academic is only wrong if other academics agree that they are wrong. But that also applies to a somewhat startling extent within media, as the years of the Russiagate nonsense taught those who were paying attention.

An extreme instance of lack of reality-feedback is provided within academe by education faculties, where pedagogical ideas repeatedly demonstrated not to work are nevertheless simply re-packaged and re-pushed. Mainly because they are too convenient for status strategies based on a sense of moral grandeur from transformative activism. Which have been imparted in ever more intense forms to generations of school teachers and university administrators.

One would think that box-office receipts might provide strong feedback in the Entertainment industry, but the flow of funds are so high that there is patently considerable cushioning effect from such box-office feedback. (If one is publicly funded, then that effect is almost entirely eliminated.)

The flow-of-funds cushioning effect is even more pronounced in Big Tech. The motivation-feedbacks of the combination of moral self-image and status strategy have turned out to be, again and again, far more powerful than market feedback.

Asking the question, what are the reality feedbacks in this industry? turns out to explain a lot about the patterns of politics in an industry.

* Applying the language of Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug), wielding the weapon of setting what it is the good and smart people believe is a key way what he calls the Cathedral operates.