Asking The Consilience Project for Perspectives on Communication
I’m at Stanford Director’s College. In a talk about what went wrong with Enron, Charlie Munger (vice-chairman of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway) told a thought-provoking joke about Max Planck.
After winning the Nobel prize, Max Planck went around Germany giving talks. His chauffeur heard the talk so many times that he had it by heart, and so one time, he asked Max Planck if he could give the address. Planck agreed, they changed places, and the lecture came off famously. But then came the Q&A, with the very first question being one that the chauffeur had no hope of answering. The chauffeur replied: "I'm surprised to hear such an elementary question on high energy physics here in Munich. It's so simple, I'll let my chauffeur answer it."
(Munger actually referred to this not as a joke but an “apocryphal story.” How nice if it were true!)
I’m aware of the Feynman Technique and trying to practice it as best as possible.
1. Identify the topic.
2. Teach it to a child.
3. Identify your knowledge gaps.
4. Organize your explanation, simplify it, and refine it.
Am I lacking something fundamental when I speak with my more fanatical ideological friends from the extreme right and left sociopolitical realms? Is my condition genetic, or am I simply inept?
How can we get people interested in imagining things outside contexts more likely to excite them?
The Keyhole To The Light
After listening to Daniel Schmachtenberger and Nate Hagens talk on a recent The Great Simplification Podcast episode, I reached out to The Consilience Project to see if they had materials regarding my communication concerns.
My note to The Consilience Project’s contact form:
I have been researching perspectives on the Right for the last eighteen months. I followed Daniel Schmachtenberger's advice, teased the algorithms on various platforms, and discovered activities from growing social networks on the New Right, New Traditionalists, Alt-Right, Extreme Right, and Save Western Civilization movements. I am uncertain how large or impactful any or all of these groups are or might become, just as I am uncertain as to how large The Woke Mob actually is and how dangerous they are to our global culture. We are all slaves to fashion to some degree, and fashions always change.
My main concern is how to bring information to people involved in these movements that might help them have a better informed, and nuanced perspective on the problems we are facing that they feel are most salient. OKAY, so many of them are informed and have nuanced views concerning their topics, but can we find a bridge towards more understanding of various perspectives that are essential to any project concerning our future? I sense we are barred from any kind of synthesis by extreme ideological myopia. People from polarized positions always blame their opposites for being ideological extremists while maintaining their own grasp of reality as sacred.
I am also concerned with communicating with less educated and well-read people in the WEIRD world who may share our intuitions. (Feynman's explaining things to fifth graders without insulting someone's intelligence.)
When I was seventeen, my father said, "You think he cannot explain himself, but that's not so; he lacks the cultural audacity to do so."
What are the best ways to build bridges with these communities? Is it even possible? Why do many of my Rightist or Reactionary acquaintances find people as benign and loving as Nate Hagens or Jamie Wheel, for example, confusing and inaccessible? It seems as if they are unable to tune into our message. It's white noise, ignorant or antagonistic to them. I'm unsure if it's a language or style issue or if they are stuck in a particularly confrontational perspective. (Hobbsien in the broadest sense.) Or, perhaps, my kind of people are wrong.
(The far Left is annoyingly much the same in temper.)
I will share this network with you as an example. There are many others.
https://polmatch.com/. It is, perhaps, the antithesis of Jim Rutt's Game B platform.
OREL -Polmatch Project: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLDPjq0bVvLg-CsRJAwnbgg
A conversation with Christien Perennialist Aarvoll and Greg Orel of Polmatch: https://youtu.be/RVGvi9b8xLY
Will people attracted to this type of pathos ever be interested in our content? I am most interested in learning what version of Western Civilization they adhere to (it’s a big basket) and what their culture is. What are their solutions to specific problems? As much as I rummage around in their sandbox and play in their playground, I am still unsure about the particular values that animate their definitive version of Western Culture. I have recently read several books by their ideological patriarchs. I have been well acquainted with "the literature" throughout my life.
Are these merely niche playgrounds for acting out childish catastrophizing, another form of entertainment, a game, or could these groups with their passionate beliefs be signs of a more significant, ominous cultural trend brought on by the terrible challenges our global civilization faces?
(Many New Right pundits call Progressives Fascists who advocate tyranny and want plebs and proles reduced to serfdom.)
Many of the influencers within these movements are scholarly and serious intellectuals/entertainers with profound influence in Right-leaning communities. These "leaders" could make Lane Craig and Sam Harris blush. I'm thinking of Jay Dyer's Orthodox Christian scholarship and Curtis Yarvin making Gish Gallop look like a trot on dressage ground. ;-)
(I was very disappointed with Jim Rutt's interview with Curtis Yarvin on The Jim Rutt Show. I don't feel he engaged Curtis enough.)
I should add that I don't identify with Right Wing or Left Wing movements—I am not a neo this or a "trad" that. I am a humanist who loves the miracle of the web of life. I stand with people like Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jamie Wheel, and Nate Hagens. I want our human adventure on earth to continue for many more generations. This is not to say that my friends on the Right don’t.
This is my website: https://www.globehackers.com/
www.cospolon.eu
With love and admiration for everyone involved with The Consilience Project, Steven
