I don't fully understand these things: -What is meant by "creating realities" in this context? -What does it mean that the center "makes demands" and why can only one demand be made at a time? -How can we know that those with the greatest power of deferral always ends up in power? The paragraph in question: >What generates power, and gives one person power over others? Here as well we must think in terms of proximity to the center. The first instance of human power was on the originary scene, where a group of newly formed humans collectively deferred their desire and allowed a new reality to emerge at the center. This provides us with a model of human power: creating realities by following the lead of the object at the center of shared attention, rather than rivalrous desires. Power is always differential because some members of any group, in any situation, will exhibit greater powers of deferral: they will be able to stop and examine a situation while others are rushing in, and t
People acting together itself creates a reality--there is an agent in the world who wasn't there before, and there is therefore a world for that agent that wasn't there before.
The center is what we are all focused on when we interact in some way. We create this center by representing it, and we represent it by deferring appropriation. Insofar as we defer appropriation, we have conferred upon the center the power to "demand" that we do so. Think about a few people looking a photograph together. If they speak about the photograph, they are treating it as something worth talking about, and therefore as something that has its own "integrity" and as something people can see different ways. The photograph is, then, "demanding" that we look at it carefully, that we don't close off the space of interpretation prematurely (that would be "appropriating" it). I speak in this way to avoid the impression that we just decide, on our own, what to look at and talk about--we are embedded in a socially created world that *compels* our attention in all kinds of ways. The center only makes one demand because there is one especially dangerous desire that must be deferred above all in any particular case--so, its command is to defer that desire. Anything else it might command will follow from that.
Regarding your last question, that is really an axiomatic definition of "power"--it's what power intrinsically is. In a situation where everyone who is terrified, the one who is less terrified, or able to act coherently in spite of being terrified, will be the one everyone follows. This is the most fundamental form of power. Now, of course, this will not always apply to the person who ends up with power--in fact, very often, maybe more often than not, it will be people with inferior capacity for deferral who will end up ruling. But this is possible because the institutions those individuals can then commandeer are based on previous acts of enhanced deferral, ultimately many generations worth, if the institution has in fact managed to endure. Even then, those people with lesser deferral capacity who manage to take power most likely exercised superior deferral within the specific institutional base that happened to be closest to power. So, for example, let's say the secret police carry out a coup in some country and place the individual (not necessarily the formal leader of the organization) who led the coup in power. That individual may not have shown greater powers of deferral than, say, some war hero who was never anywhere near the heights of power--but he probably exercised, in a superior form, the kind of deferral that gets you close to the levers of power within the secret police. He built alliances, waited until it was right to take out an enemy, refrained from avenging himself on someone who tried to eliminate him if that revenge didn't serve his interests, etc.
It does, thanks. The only thing I still can't quite wrap my head around is this: >The center only makes one demand because there is one especially dangerous desire that must be deferred above all in any particular case--so, its command is to defer that desire. Anything else it might command will follow from that. I understand this in principle but I cannot think of an example of this, would you mind? Love your blog btw
Let's say a group of guys are playing football. It's a very competitive game and there's tension between the two teams. Things are starting to get heated--guys on one side make some dubious hits, and then someone on the other side escalates. So, the question is whether the game, and everything implicit in the game (friendship, camaraderie, sportsmanship, etc.--the "transcendent" rules of their interaction) can be sustained, or whether it's going to become a brawl, or even just broken up with bitter feelings. Some of the guys, from both sides, want to step in and make things right. How? Well, there are no general prescriptions here--it's a "call" that needs to be made on the field. Someone has to identify one particular trouble spot--say, a grudge between a respected player on one side and an equally respected player on the other side. If that gets turned around, the situation can be dramatically transformed. Someone will have to identify this trouble spot and take steps toward resolving it (*how* will depend on who everyone is). The idea is that there is always one spot like that--the "dangerous desire" here is the desire for supremacy or honor for which each of the two players is willing to risk the good will of all. So, whoever identifies and addresses this trouble spot is obeying a command from the center. How so? He is remembering (and recreating) the way a previous analogous situation was resolved--a teacher, or coach, or father stepping in and reconciling contending parties not through force but by modeling an equally honorable, and ultimately more honorable, form of behavior. That voice and maybe gesture or posture he "extracts" from the past tells him what to do--*commands* him.
Does that make sense?
Dear Adam, I have a criticism of your points here, which is that, even if GA is correct, it feels like you’re doing the equivalent of trying to build a bridge using quantum physics. Modern society is just governed by things that are not reducible to ostensive signs, in my view. One model which I think serves better to understand western societies than GA is the so-called ‘JQ’. Take the example of an average Fortune 500 company in the USA. It might have been founded a couple generations ago by a guy, and at some point a board of directors was created. That board was composed mainly of group ‘X’, which was 90% of the population, and group ‘Y’, which was 1.5% of the population. So far so good. Now consider that group Y is highly ethnocentric, while group X is not very ethnocentric. What happens when it’s time to replace people? Group X decision-makers will choose people largely with respect to merit and % of population, while group Y will disproportionately choose people also of group
The model of power I worked through above explains, first of all, why there are such things as "universities" in the first place. This institution is one of the best examples of an institution based on immense moral and intellectual capital, accumulated over centuries. Now, once we have an established, influential institution, and once it becomes newly elevated to an institution crucial to determining social success, an enterprising group, whether an ethnic minority or some other group, has a powerful incentive to increase its own power by hijacking all the power accumulated in that institution. Even if Jews are as ethnocentric as you say, that would not exclude the possibility that their powers of deferral, when it comes to running the institution, is greater than that of the gentiles they are displacing. Indeed, in selecting other Jews, they could simply be selecting those exhibiting greater capacity for deferral. At the other extreme would be the possibility that Jews have figured out some mechanism for controlling the institution against the best interests of the institution itself--just like a group of Wall St. traders could leverage the funds to take over a company, sell off all its assets, make a fortune and leave the company an empty husk. In this case, the Jews could only be running the universities into the ground, or making it profoundly dysfunctional in some way. This kind of power can't last for long--even if what counts for a "long" time for an institution with so much social investment as the universities is not easy to say. Of course, the actual situation could be anywhere in the middle. So, the model of power I'm proposing provides us with a good question to ask: looking at how Jews run the universities (assuming, for the sake of argument, your claim that that is in fact what is going on) will tell us what we need to know about the nature of the power they exercise. It seems to me a better method than relying on silly articles from the Unz Review. (If Jewish college admissions officer overwhelmingly and presumably deliberately favor Jewish applicants, wouldn't at least some Jews know about it? Is it a conspiracy without conspirators? Or just "structural anti-Genitlism"? And where are all those people trying to expose this scandal who have been shot down by the Jewish media? Presumably the non-Jewish admissions officers know something about this--perhaps they have all been selected out?) At any rate, the only way the model of power I have proposed could be refuted by any of this is if an institution seized by an anti-social group with purely ethnocentric interests nevertheless continued to flourish as the kind of institution it was intended to be. If Jews have unscrupulously seized power in the universities and are using that power solely to feather their own nests and reward their own they will exercise that power very poorly and we will see the results. If their interests have been ethnocentric along with some other concerns as well, that will also be evident, if we learn how to look for such evidence. And this will also be true if, as if far more likely the case, Jews exercise significant power in the universities along with other groups.
As to why both parties have supported Israel, it's probably for a similar reason that both parties have supported NATO and Saudi Arabia and many other countries. Israel proved itself useful to the Western alliance by opposing Soviet allies during the Cold War (and testing a lot of US made weaponry in the process) and posing an obstacle to Iran in particular afterward. The turn toward a pro-Israel US policy came immediately after the Six Day war, in which Israel demonstrated its far superior military prowess vis a vis the Arab states, and well before American Jews had organized themselves along solidly pro-Zionist lines (that Israeli victory was a spur to that process as well). The US went with the winner, and the Israelis bet, correctly, on the US in the Cold War.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I would like to respond to a few points: 1. On Israel, your explanation simply begs the question. Israel has been in the western sphere, yes, because it was created under the auspices of Western political power. But why? Why was a tiny global minority able to constrain the greatest empires of the age to just give it land, political sovereignty, and military protection, all for free? Has there ever, in all of history, been another example of this? The only explanation for this is that said group had a vast degree of influence over the decision-making processes of the empires, a fact which only bolsters my original point about Jewish power. This reality _precedes_ the creation of Israel, and, in fact, is a necessary condition for it. 2. On group incentives, I disagree with this view. I don’t think it is logistically possible for every member of a group to be thinking all day “let’s increase my group’s power” consciously. That may occur at the lev
You're not really interested in my basic argument, which is why there is "power" in the first place; only in how already existing power can be seized and used for purposes antithetical to its founding purpose. So, lets reduce things to the minimum. Your theory seems to be that "in-group preference" is the source of power. So, everywhere we look, historically, those with greater in-group preference should have power over those with less. This would have to include ruling groups within an ethnically homogeneous community. And all "in-group preference" would have to be identical--there'd be no need to make further distinctions here. You should then help the alt-right develop this theory of power.
I am interested in your model and basic argument. What I am saying is that I think you are overextending its ability to explain things; that's why I present to you a case of a group holding power which is clearly not able to be fully explained by capacity for deferral. I have no problem entertaining multiple models of power, and while I do think that in-group preference is critical (how can you hold power if you have no concept of 'group'?) that doesn't oblige me to advance this as the _only_ model for power. What I am interested in is establishing what compatibility these ideas really have with far right or altright beliefs. You will have to be able to address the kinds of things I have been bringing up in order to claim that your model is more general than mine, or you will have to concede that the explanatory power of your model is simply limited in its ability to diagnose all of modern society--which is fine! What a task that would be! But let's be honest here. Are you able to e
A group with greater solidarity than another group can certainly advance in power in certain situations. In-group solidarity is itself a form of deferral--enough members of the group must have resisted opportunities to defect. Enough members of this in-group must also be better at some of what that institution requires than enough members of another group for that first in-group to gain entry and establish dominance. They must, that is, identify some principle, or center, in that institution to which they are devoted, and for the sake of which they defer other possible actions. We have to talk about what the institution is for, and what the usurping in-group understood it to be for. In that way we could analyze a specific situation