1 00:00:00,870 --> 00:00:06,900 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the spare time as podcast, I'm your host Youngsville in particular, 2 00:00:06,900 --> 00:00:20,490 and this podcast is meant to give Oxford students of whatever age or degree the ability to talk about passions they have in academia, 3 00:00:20,490 --> 00:00:26,370 anything that they find interesting. They don't have to study it. Sometimes it's simply their hobby. 4 00:00:26,370 --> 00:00:36,240 Sometimes they are experts and sometimes they are or they will be or are becoming one of the leading thinkers in the topics that we talk about. 5 00:00:36,240 --> 00:00:47,080 Today's topic is conservatism. Which is very vague and a lot of people talk about it, but few people know what it actually means. 6 00:00:47,080 --> 00:00:49,450 My two guests today are Edward McLarin, 7 00:00:49,450 --> 00:00:58,690 who is a second year student at Keble College studying English and being the progressive thinker and leader that he is. 8 00:00:58,690 --> 00:01:04,930 He's also the president of the Oxford University English Society. So welcome, Edward. 9 00:01:04,930 --> 00:01:15,040 And also with me is I felt I was reading four different economic and social history where he focuses on international financial history. 10 00:01:15,040 --> 00:01:19,390 His broader research interests stretch from financial history to finance, financial economics, 11 00:01:19,390 --> 00:01:25,480 business history and and many more years previously previously studied history, 12 00:01:25,480 --> 00:01:29,530 political science and economics at the University of Tubingen in Germany, 13 00:01:29,530 --> 00:01:38,740 Harvard University and the University of Oxford in the latter place where he gained his masc in economic and social history in twenty eighteen. 14 00:01:38,740 --> 00:01:43,930 Welcome, guys. We will jump into the conversation shortly. 15 00:01:43,930 --> 00:01:49,600 We have actually just already we've started and you will find us in the middle of a conversation. 16 00:01:49,600 --> 00:01:56,890 So the gears are already churning and people are turning out brilliant thoughts. 17 00:01:56,890 --> 00:02:02,560 At least the other two are not so sure about myself. But we'll get to that. 18 00:02:02,560 --> 00:02:09,620 So what we will talk about is conservatism, both its history but also its philosophy. 19 00:02:09,620 --> 00:02:20,440 What does it mean? How has it how has it developed? And we will scratch many different sides of it and even come to how psychology 20 00:02:20,440 --> 00:02:27,730 and conservative conservatism are shown to be linked and what the combination 21 00:02:27,730 --> 00:02:33,550 and the connexion between those two is also how it relates to new technology and 22 00:02:33,550 --> 00:02:39,250 how the pandemic and social media have affected people's political outlook. So it's going to be a very interesting episode. 23 00:02:39,250 --> 00:02:43,480 We have prepared notes, all of us, and we've read each other's notes. 24 00:02:43,480 --> 00:02:48,190 So this just to know where we're coming from. 25 00:02:48,190 --> 00:02:55,210 And yeah, we were chatting and you caught us in the middle. So here's our discussion. 26 00:02:55,210 --> 00:03:04,180 And as always, you know, at the end, give us a subscribe to our podcast and also give us feedback and criticism. 27 00:03:04,180 --> 00:03:09,820 We're always interested to to hear and to learn more about what you think, how we could make it better. 28 00:03:09,820 --> 00:03:16,960 But for now, please enjoy our episode with Ed and other. 29 00:03:16,960 --> 00:03:27,160 I want you to listen to me not just long or as bombastic, but secondly, he's no longer a follower of Marx. 30 00:03:27,160 --> 00:03:31,810 He's loving Engels instead. Science is interesting. You don't agree. 31 00:03:31,810 --> 00:03:40,410 You can [INAUDIBLE] off. So as we are speaking on this, Ed, 32 00:03:40,410 --> 00:03:47,970 I think you were making a brilliant point about the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, something something like that. 33 00:03:47,970 --> 00:03:58,140 Well, I would say the point was necessarily brilliant, but it was concerned with the elusiveness of conservatism as one of its key components. 34 00:03:58,140 --> 00:04:04,800 The Stanford Dictionary of Philosophical Terms, I think it's called, summarises this point excellently. 35 00:04:04,800 --> 00:04:10,530 There's this paragraph compared to liberalism and socialism, conservatism has suffered philosophical neglect. 36 00:04:10,530 --> 00:04:14,730 Many deny that it is an ideology or even a political philosophy regarding it. 37 00:04:14,730 --> 00:04:22,140 Instead, as a disposition that resists theoretical expression for them to being to be saying that means that there is quite a 38 00:04:22,140 --> 00:04:29,760 significant problem on our hands with categorising what is really one of the big three ideologies besides leftism centrism, 39 00:04:29,760 --> 00:04:42,420 slash liberalism. And I think this can be summarised pretty well in another academic article that of the Oxford English Dictionary. 40 00:04:42,420 --> 00:04:52,270 Conservatism, or conservative, originated in the tends in the writings of René Vicomte, 41 00:04:52,270 --> 00:05:02,070 the Chateaubriand as an explicitly anti revolutionary pro Borbon restoration line of thought. 42 00:05:02,070 --> 00:05:12,360 And yet, nonetheless, what I find so interesting about it is that when you look at how this etymology is laid out, you have three different meanings. 43 00:05:12,360 --> 00:05:20,160 Seemingly from the very beginning. You have one A the holding of conservative principles, the tendency to resist great or sudden change, 44 00:05:20,160 --> 00:05:24,270 especially in politics, adherence to traditional values and ideas. 45 00:05:24,270 --> 00:05:30,990 Be the specific the doctrine or practise of the Conservative Party of Great Britain emerging slightly later, 46 00:05:30,990 --> 00:05:34,980 but still a party categorisation in postrevolutionary France. 47 00:05:34,980 --> 00:05:41,700 And then you've got the dictionary definition to which is the biological one, the tendency to resist evolutionary change. 48 00:05:41,700 --> 00:05:52,470 So right there we have three categorical well, three distinct categories of what conservatism is in a general sense. 49 00:05:52,470 --> 00:06:02,460 Great. So that is already a good introduction to some of the origins and also the complexity of the term. 50 00:06:02,460 --> 00:06:09,300 And problematically, I would say that conservatism means something very different, 51 00:06:09,300 --> 00:06:15,820 depending on what time you look at and the place that you are actually referring to, 52 00:06:15,820 --> 00:06:20,280 especially if you look at today's United States and you use the conservative, 53 00:06:20,280 --> 00:06:21,360 the term conservative, 54 00:06:21,360 --> 00:06:33,510 there is something probably very different to what you just described and what you probably refer to also as some of the ideas of Edmund Burke. 55 00:06:33,510 --> 00:06:44,670 I really liked both of your notes and they were really helpful for me to get a good understanding of what a conservative means or can mean. 56 00:06:44,670 --> 00:06:51,510 I also like the way you just structured it into liberalism. 57 00:06:51,510 --> 00:06:56,430 I think you said leftism and conservatism and welfare. 58 00:06:56,430 --> 00:07:01,590 Could you also what would you what would you think are some of the hallmarks of conservatism? 59 00:07:01,590 --> 00:07:13,020 What if you if you look at the term, how would you go about defining it or giving some sort of insights into what should be understood under it? 60 00:07:13,020 --> 00:07:20,490 Yeah, I think I think building on what I just started to to go on about might be to in my 61 00:07:20,490 --> 00:07:28,410 mind and in what I what I read in the last couple of years and months building up, 62 00:07:28,410 --> 00:07:36,180 I'd say it's not only an elusive concept based on based on definitions and such 63 00:07:36,180 --> 00:07:41,730 compared especially to what what that called leftism or classical liberalism, 64 00:07:41,730 --> 00:07:55,980 which lit up more, you know, ideologically defined and have not, as you just said, you can change that much in there in their particular essence, 65 00:07:55,980 --> 00:08:01,380 you know, liberalism with a focus on individual freedom and then, you know, 66 00:08:01,380 --> 00:08:11,100 taking it further towards stress on free market, free individual choice and a small part of the state that's basically around, 67 00:08:11,100 --> 00:08:16,680 you know, forcing property contracts and enforcing contracts in general. 68 00:08:16,680 --> 00:08:27,570 Whereas conservatism in my in my view and what what about what I think represents that is a bit more of a pragmatic tradition, 69 00:08:27,570 --> 00:08:35,670 a bit more of a tradition that comes of a very bottom up. 70 00:08:35,670 --> 00:08:47,040 Social, social tie, construct, social, what Edmund Burke, for example, called his little platoons, 71 00:08:47,040 --> 00:08:59,310 you notice these ties in between people that then form defined specific political issues that they want to focus on and that they are approaching, 72 00:08:59,310 --> 00:09:03,660 but not in an, you know, coherent ideological view. But more about, you know, 73 00:09:03,660 --> 00:09:11,940 one specific issue that concerns a a set of people on a you could say micro and 74 00:09:11,940 --> 00:09:16,950 then go on to the macro level of the nation that that's formed out of these, 75 00:09:16,950 --> 00:09:25,290 you know, smaller constructs and the trying to approach those by the, you know, culture, shared norms, 76 00:09:25,290 --> 00:09:31,680 values and so on that are important for these for this view, which obviously, you know, change over time. 77 00:09:31,680 --> 00:09:36,810 That's why you have in my view, that's like changing concept of conservatism over time, 78 00:09:36,810 --> 00:09:42,520 much more than in the US, like more ideological based political directions. 79 00:09:42,520 --> 00:09:51,450 Wonderful. That is, those are some of the most important points that I also picked up on. 80 00:09:51,450 --> 00:09:57,630 I would I would like to go into detail about two things that you said, because they they are very, 81 00:09:57,630 --> 00:10:03,930 in my mind, at least very crucial to the concepts and something I didn't think too much about before. 82 00:10:03,930 --> 00:10:10,380 And those are the ones you said just as bottom up structure of society. 83 00:10:10,380 --> 00:10:16,800 Can you can you just briefly explain what you mean by that and then what? 84 00:10:16,800 --> 00:10:27,210 It's not in what would be the opposite and also how this idea of little platoons maybe is to be understood, 85 00:10:27,210 --> 00:10:36,930 because I think those are two absolute core concepts. And I think if we can get our audience on to to understand those concepts, 86 00:10:36,930 --> 00:10:42,150 that's going to be very helpful for and for understanding classical conservatism. 87 00:10:42,150 --> 00:10:50,680 Better, I would think. Yeah, I think and at please, please join in whenever you see fit. 88 00:10:50,680 --> 00:10:54,300 I just going to start with your second question, because I think it relates to the first one. 89 00:10:54,300 --> 00:10:59,970 And then so the little platoons, as far as I understood them in Boksburg, basically, 90 00:10:59,970 --> 00:11:08,610 you know, they represent this idea that society as a whole is a you know, 91 00:11:08,610 --> 00:11:15,270 society as a whole is bound together by small ties, by ties amongst, you know, family, 92 00:11:15,270 --> 00:11:21,690 amongst close friends, amongst social connexions, on the micro level, on the individual level, indeed. 93 00:11:21,690 --> 00:11:31,410 And these relations, you know, they depend on on on trust, on affection, you know, 94 00:11:31,410 --> 00:11:37,230 affection amongst amongst friends, amongst family, amongst colleagues and so on. 95 00:11:37,230 --> 00:11:42,930 And this is basically the foundation of society. 96 00:11:42,930 --> 00:11:48,210 You know, society isn't and isn't an elusive concept. 97 00:11:48,210 --> 00:11:57,600 Let's get that get put on to some people living together in a certain area or something, but rather the opposite, which is, you know, 98 00:11:57,600 --> 00:12:06,570 this idea of bottom up again is some people forming together these social ties based on their 99 00:12:06,570 --> 00:12:12,150 relationships and on their norms and the on the on the on the on the mutual trust and so on. 100 00:12:12,150 --> 00:12:26,070 And, you know, the idea I think that that puts up there is basically that without these, you know, social ties on the micro, 101 00:12:26,070 --> 00:12:34,050 on the individual level of function that are actually functioning based on this mutual trust and affection, 102 00:12:34,050 --> 00:12:42,870 society could not work in the way it should be working or that should be working towards the what we say, 103 00:12:42,870 --> 00:12:49,710 like common good or overall, overall good for society. 104 00:12:49,710 --> 00:12:59,280 It's also the place, you know, it's also the place where the traditions form and traditions play an important role because these little platoons are, 105 00:12:59,280 --> 00:13:11,790 you know you know, I'm a building individual case, for example, where I'm from a very small village in Germany originally. 106 00:13:11,790 --> 00:13:16,560 And, you know, you have you basically know everyone in the village. 107 00:13:16,560 --> 00:13:26,520 And the ties amongst these people are very strong based on exactly these traditions that are built up amongst these people, 108 00:13:26,520 --> 00:13:36,970 which basically done, you know, leads to leads to their integration in the overall community again. 109 00:13:36,970 --> 00:13:41,350 Yeah, I'd say that's as much as I could to that. 110 00:13:41,350 --> 00:13:47,500 And then again, as I said, like this goes up to the bottom bottom up approach, whereas, 111 00:13:47,500 --> 00:13:52,270 you know, on the top down approach, it's more about which is probably, you know, 112 00:13:52,270 --> 00:13:58,330 more common amongst the progressive and the left wing philosophical traditional political 113 00:13:58,330 --> 00:14:07,090 tradition where you have like an idea of society as a macro construct of where you want to go, 114 00:14:07,090 --> 00:14:15,640 of where you want people to to to act in a certain way based on, you know, 115 00:14:15,640 --> 00:14:26,740 rules that are that are that are made and laws are passed based on an idea where you want to have your society towards and society there. 116 00:14:26,740 --> 00:14:33,610 Understood more on the macro level than on this individual closed micro level. 117 00:14:33,610 --> 00:14:45,970 Splendid. Thank you. Oh, absolutely. I just wanted to put the particular issues that Rafael was discussing in some detail into a historical context. 118 00:14:45,970 --> 00:14:50,500 I've already brought up the French Revolution, but if we're going to talk about Edmund Burke, 119 00:14:50,500 --> 00:14:54,610 who is really the conservative master intellectual in the modern sense, 120 00:14:54,610 --> 00:15:02,110 then we have to mention that perhaps the most politically significant book he wrote about the 121 00:15:02,110 --> 00:15:16,330 little platoons was published in 1790 as as an account against the growing chaos over in France. 122 00:15:16,330 --> 00:15:26,670 And it is widely acknowledged today is still predicting the horrors of the terror, 123 00:15:26,670 --> 00:15:37,420 the final climax of revolutionary violence that was formerly totally unexpected. 124 00:15:37,420 --> 00:15:49,000 And he does this by directly contrasting what we come to know later as the little platoons idea with the Jacobins idea of society, 125 00:15:49,000 --> 00:15:57,760 an intellectual cabal invading the public space and not only uprooting public rules, tradition, 126 00:15:57,760 --> 00:16:08,320 no moss to use the Greek legal term from Xenephon, Plato and Aristotle, meaning names and laws, but also the little people, 127 00:16:08,320 --> 00:16:18,250 the civilians, the second and third estate and even below who these traditions have grown out from. 128 00:16:18,250 --> 00:16:25,450 That's the crucial part of this conservative cosmology. 129 00:16:25,450 --> 00:16:30,160 We might even say, since it expands into various forms of theology. 130 00:16:30,160 --> 00:16:39,160 Traditions are valuable and inherent precisely because they emerge from groups of people, 131 00:16:39,160 --> 00:16:48,430 from circles you have yourself, your family, your town, your city, county, nation. 132 00:16:48,430 --> 00:16:59,410 And if those links are severed, then at least according to Burke, what happens is you get this extremely dangerous, rationalistic society. 133 00:16:59,410 --> 00:17:09,640 And the reason we can tell that this is still incredibly relevant to conservatism is the language of emergency that is consistently evoked. 134 00:17:09,640 --> 00:17:22,300 One of Margaret Thatcher's most brilliant campaign slogans when she was just running for parliament in the 1950s, I think was a vote right. 135 00:17:22,300 --> 00:17:33,430 To save what's left, you have to conserve these little structures, these elements of glue in society that are represented by the mass. 136 00:17:33,430 --> 00:17:36,640 Otherwise everything is going to collapse. And for this reason, 137 00:17:36,640 --> 00:17:45,730 it's also important to clarify that while conservatism seems to have this immense faith in community tradition and the collective, 138 00:17:45,730 --> 00:17:53,560 so on and so on, people like Burke did not believe in a priori value judgements like Kant. 139 00:17:53,560 --> 00:17:59,560 They felt that tradition was quite a delicate substance that had to be maintained 140 00:17:59,560 --> 00:18:04,600 and Burke would say pruned in order to make sure that society runs itself. 141 00:18:04,600 --> 00:18:13,240 So this spawned not only in Bach's time, but also in the subsequent ages when he was translated into German and, 142 00:18:13,240 --> 00:18:22,000 as I've said, popularised by people like Michael Oakeshott in the 20th century into a great prejudice against social change. 143 00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:25,720 And I mean that word prejudiced and prejudice, in more than one sense, 144 00:18:25,720 --> 00:18:35,600 an opposition to new orders purely to maintain the society and associates as they are because. 145 00:18:35,600 --> 00:18:38,120 As Nosik eventually said, 146 00:18:38,120 --> 00:18:51,170 it seems as if the state is built upon this great flaming dark anarchy and it could collapse at any particular point, I'm paraphrasing great. 147 00:18:51,170 --> 00:18:59,240 Now, I think Adria did a great job on putting it in the proper historical context of Burke's work, 148 00:18:59,240 --> 00:19:04,250 maybe one additional point building on that and his perception of, 149 00:19:04,250 --> 00:19:14,550 you know, Burke's perception of the French Revolution, which was, you know, very much influenced by the work of Rousseau. 150 00:19:14,550 --> 00:19:26,360 And I think it's quite interesting. I think it's in Roger Stratton's book on conservatism explained quite well this relation between, like, you know, 151 00:19:26,360 --> 00:19:41,330 the Austrian idea of of of freedom of of the state building, of a social contract, and in his idea that actually, you know, 152 00:19:41,330 --> 00:19:53,000 is is quite contrarian to to what Burke puts forward in the sense that, you know, it's it's disregard of executives like traditions that then became, 153 00:19:53,000 --> 00:20:00,530 you know, in the French Revolution were abandoned or basically, you know, destroyed more or less. 154 00:20:00,530 --> 00:20:07,310 So I think it's just interesting to you also to add to this not only on a political basis, 155 00:20:07,310 --> 00:20:19,790 but also on a philosophical basis between, you know, this revolution based on the ideas of Rousseau versus Burke's comments. 156 00:20:19,790 --> 00:20:28,280 I would also add that Burke's argument is taking place between not just two but three revolutions. 157 00:20:28,280 --> 00:20:33,830 The man was awake in parliament, deriving from the slow and moral cattle drive. 158 00:20:33,830 --> 00:20:37,190 You know, you want to represent and control the mass. You're driving the cattle. 159 00:20:37,190 --> 00:20:47,420 And he was very much in favour of the American Revolution and was a great fan of Jefferson, if not Thomas Paine. 160 00:20:47,420 --> 00:20:58,580 And the reason he admired Jefferson was because the man had a great education and understanding of the common law tradition in England. 161 00:20:58,580 --> 00:21:08,420 What he essentially did in making the amendments and I shouldn't use that were making the additions to constitutional 162 00:21:08,420 --> 00:21:17,990 documents was to ingratiate the figure of traditional law without necessarily a traditional monarchy. 163 00:21:17,990 --> 00:21:22,640 And the recent book, as I think I suggested, was comfortable doing this. 164 00:21:22,640 --> 00:21:28,220 And why other people were comfortable doing this was because England had done the same thing during the Glorious Revolution. 165 00:21:28,220 --> 00:21:40,820 They had removed the Catholic King James the second and negotiated a Bill of Rights in 1889 with Queen Anne that would permit them certain liberties. 166 00:21:40,820 --> 00:21:48,410 I love this point, especially because I think it's a very, very deep rooted point in not only like, 167 00:21:48,410 --> 00:21:52,880 you know, you see not only in his philosophical tradition, but it's very, 168 00:21:52,880 --> 00:21:59,420 very deep rooted, this idea of what Scruton calls trusteeship for, you know, 169 00:21:59,420 --> 00:22:05,960 the future generations by inheriting what what came from the generations before. 170 00:22:05,960 --> 00:22:12,020 And I mean, you see it in the idea of in Christianity about the Holy Trinity and so on. 171 00:22:12,020 --> 00:22:20,600 You can infer from that or you can you can see it and basically a lot of other different mythologies. 172 00:22:20,600 --> 00:22:29,390 For example, the Greek idea of the three skulls and so on, of the three Norns reading, the past, the present and the future. 173 00:22:29,390 --> 00:22:35,390 Together with this principle, the idea of, you know, 174 00:22:35,390 --> 00:22:45,260 you're not a free individual in the sense that it's only what's the maxim of your actions is not only about you, 175 00:22:45,260 --> 00:22:53,090 but it's based on what came before you and what comes after you, which should be the guidance towards your actions. 176 00:22:53,090 --> 00:23:02,210 I really like that point that you just mentioned with the ancient traditions, especially because even if I remember correctly, 177 00:23:02,210 --> 00:23:08,780 even the gods, the Olympians were bound by the Moirai and by the fates, so to speak. 178 00:23:08,780 --> 00:23:15,050 And even they had some overarching principles that had come before them, basically, you know, 179 00:23:15,050 --> 00:23:30,140 from from the Titans that came before the Olympians and some of the rules that were set by, I guess, by supernatural concepts and principles. 180 00:23:30,140 --> 00:23:41,930 Anyways, an unscheduled question that just arose and that you guys mentioned or danced around, possibly even already discussed, 181 00:23:41,930 --> 00:23:53,390 but I would like to go into more detail in is the question of if we talk about laws and how they come into into the present, 182 00:23:53,390 --> 00:24:03,980 what do you think Burke and other thinkers like him would have thought of the common law tradition 183 00:24:03,980 --> 00:24:10,910 versus something like the European Court of Justice that has only recently begun its work? 184 00:24:10,910 --> 00:24:18,290 And what do you think their concerns or their opinions on that would be? 185 00:24:18,290 --> 00:24:26,480 And how would a traditionally conservative thinker view those institutions? 186 00:24:26,480 --> 00:24:32,780 With respect to growing up in a common law system or no respect either rule, 187 00:24:32,780 --> 00:24:39,350 it's important to recognise that such systems only tend to come about when the 188 00:24:39,350 --> 00:24:45,590 country can either afford it or the country is old enough to trust in itself, 189 00:24:45,590 --> 00:24:57,500 to trust in the things that have emerged over time. I think that Berk's crucial problem with Ikeja law, for instance, 190 00:24:57,500 --> 00:25:04,940 would be similar to the problem that many early conservatives or even conservative Wick's had with John Locke, 191 00:25:04,940 --> 00:25:09,350 with the idea that certain rights had to be guaranteed. 192 00:25:09,350 --> 00:25:13,520 And in order to guarantee those rights, you had to make a kind of pact with God. 193 00:25:13,520 --> 00:25:19,340 This is what he talks about and his two treaties of liberty. That's the grounding of all rights. 194 00:25:19,340 --> 00:25:28,700 And to find a modern equivalent for it, we could just say the disrespecting of tradition in these very large international bodies, 195 00:25:28,700 --> 00:25:36,560 but would have cringed if he saw Spain, for instance, being represented by the same officials as France. 196 00:25:36,560 --> 00:25:45,080 These are very deep. So these are very, very deeply rooted differences between national identities. 197 00:25:45,080 --> 00:25:53,060 And for BRK, it would suggest in the same sense that brings up a different dassin, 198 00:25:53,060 --> 00:26:00,620 a different mode of being for each national identity or at least some sort of realms of existence. 199 00:26:00,620 --> 00:26:04,550 So reconciling these realms and simply trying to flatten them out, 200 00:26:04,550 --> 00:26:14,240 he would regard is ultimately destructive and dismissive and illegitimate because the little platoon basis is not there. 201 00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:20,870 And it's not just back. It's people like Samuel Johnson as well, who was arguably a lot more conservative than he was. 202 00:26:20,870 --> 00:26:26,750 Johnson didn't like the American Revolution very much solely because he was far more concerned 203 00:26:26,750 --> 00:26:32,690 with the literary or metaphysical aspects of the nation and particularly the English colonies. 204 00:26:32,690 --> 00:26:40,550 So if one separated that he felt or we might all be in danger of fragmenting, I don't put as much stock in that idea. 205 00:26:40,550 --> 00:26:50,840 But it does show you what the the conservative standard viewpoint has been then and often how similar it is to now. 206 00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:54,530 I just remembered a talk by Roger Scruton. 207 00:26:54,530 --> 00:27:03,440 He's I think he's now deceased, but I think but only recently and he gave a talk in Germany at the I don't know, 208 00:27:03,440 --> 00:27:08,060 something like the institution of conservatism, hostis conservatism or something like that. 209 00:27:08,060 --> 00:27:18,650 And he talked about the problem with the European Union in the sense without being too political, which is very easy to get into. 210 00:27:18,650 --> 00:27:33,350 But just the basic point that if you think of conservatism as an organism that grows organically and that basically has wisdom in it, 211 00:27:33,350 --> 00:27:39,470 that's immune to rationalisation to a certain point, 212 00:27:39,470 --> 00:27:49,250 then how could it be that you create a chord from scratch with people who have such different individual organisms, 213 00:27:49,250 --> 00:27:52,760 if you will, and subject them into a No. 214 00:27:52,760 --> 00:27:57,410 One chord? And I think that is the point that Ed also mentioned. 215 00:27:57,410 --> 00:28:06,610 And I would think that is problematic and being coming from from a civil law background in Germany, we have. 216 00:28:06,610 --> 00:28:18,610 Um, a slightly different system where we would create laws as we saw them fit and then we would try to use those laws to solve problems. 217 00:28:18,610 --> 00:28:25,960 However, the common law perspective would would be that you just let the courts decide. 218 00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:37,720 And then over the centuries and possibly millennia, you have a body of decisions that you can draw from in order to solve similar problems. 219 00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:44,720 And that is in as far as I understand it, and I don't know if I read this somewhere from you, Ed, 220 00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:52,480 overfilling one of either of your notes, that could be sometimes I forget where I get my ideas or if I read it somewhere else. 221 00:28:52,480 --> 00:29:02,560 But that seems like the Archerd typical is that a word archetypical source of conservatism, 222 00:29:02,560 --> 00:29:14,380 because it's basically it evolves naturally, as Toby Ladka from Shopify once said, it's an emergent system. 223 00:29:14,380 --> 00:29:19,780 So it just like maybe like artificial intelligence in a way. 224 00:29:19,780 --> 00:29:29,320 What do you guys think? But I think it's important to clarify that the conservative tradition that we can trace back to the Greeks, 225 00:29:29,320 --> 00:29:35,980 or at least Greek etymology puts puts this this special emphasis on technik, 226 00:29:35,980 --> 00:29:48,820 on on knowledge that his technique vs. knowledge that is no mosse and likely inherited or emergent from one's role. 227 00:29:48,820 --> 00:29:52,690 If you're if you're looking at Germany specifically, 228 00:29:52,690 --> 00:30:02,290 the country went through such a terrible crisis in the 20th century that it essentially had to start from kind of year zero spot with its authority. 229 00:30:02,290 --> 00:30:11,710 And you can argue, more controversially, that most of Europe had to do the same thing just to restore confidence in itself. 230 00:30:11,710 --> 00:30:18,550 But this this requires a huge amount of ideological emphasis and focus. 231 00:30:18,550 --> 00:30:29,570 And it's not necessarily the same as what is, you know, just evolutionary, what will produce itself or seem to produce itself no matter what. 232 00:30:29,570 --> 00:30:38,290 But on a specific note, in relation to the European Union Commission, especially recently, 233 00:30:38,290 --> 00:30:46,420 there has been a a data law change or at least proposed data law change from the UK 234 00:30:46,420 --> 00:30:51,580 that seems to reveal some of the problems with this particular conservative attitude, 235 00:30:51,580 --> 00:30:55,870 or at least its inability to maintain itself in the modern world. 236 00:30:55,870 --> 00:31:04,810 And what I mean by this is that the EU has always been 10 or 20 years ahead of the UK in data protection law. 237 00:31:04,810 --> 00:31:09,100 It's had to manage a much bigger system. It's fairly obvious why. 238 00:31:09,100 --> 00:31:25,450 But for that reason, the EU was capable of exercising this soft power over UK during the late 90s and 2000s as the as the dataflow market increased. 239 00:31:25,450 --> 00:31:34,510 I think it's something like 75 percent of the service industry's data flows are transferred with the European Union. 240 00:31:34,510 --> 00:31:39,310 And now the European Union has this immense legal tradition, 241 00:31:39,310 --> 00:31:46,360 or at least basic legal tradition that the UK does not possess so that they can negotiate not only adequacy agreements 242 00:31:46,360 --> 00:31:56,140 for whether or not the UK is fit to trade with the EU outside or in outside or in the European Union as a member state, 243 00:31:56,140 --> 00:32:03,250 but also in the very precise mythological terms that we established earlier. 244 00:32:03,250 --> 00:32:13,150 You can't just make a common law argument about this kind of thing. Technology is very existential for conservatism because it demands authority. 245 00:32:13,150 --> 00:32:18,970 And if the authority there is international or globalised, there's no way you can simply, 246 00:32:18,970 --> 00:32:25,210 you know, point to a document 700 years old with really no connexion to, 247 00:32:25,210 --> 00:32:36,190 I don't know, let's say, iPhone manufacturing and electronic exposure at schools and so on screen exposure and say, 248 00:32:36,190 --> 00:32:39,790 oh, look, we're going to be our own authority on it. 249 00:32:39,790 --> 00:32:47,770 So I think there has to be a certain legitimacy, a certain conservative legitimacy in bodies like the European Union with respect to these matters. 250 00:32:47,770 --> 00:32:53,980 And that's going to force conservatism to change if it wants to stay relevant at all, which it might not. 251 00:32:53,980 --> 00:33:04,430 But we'll see. I love the point about applying that to to a modern day, a modern day, a problem. 252 00:33:04,430 --> 00:33:12,560 I just wanted to add to to my thoughts based on my perception of this kind of, you know, 253 00:33:12,560 --> 00:33:24,380 common law versus civil law issues based on I kind of always try to to think of them as as a bit of a 254 00:33:24,380 --> 00:33:34,010 resemblance of the difference between rationalism and empiricism in intellectual traditions and enlightenment. 255 00:33:34,010 --> 00:33:42,260 Basically, you know, the common law representing more of a, you know, trial and error empiricist approach, 256 00:33:42,260 --> 00:33:55,130 whereas the civil law system probably resembles a bit more of a rationalist idea where you try to to fit something based on reasoning. 257 00:33:55,130 --> 00:34:00,620 Obviously, it's it's just a maybe even a skewed perception. 258 00:34:00,620 --> 00:34:05,720 But I think it's an interesting way to think about it based on, you know, 259 00:34:05,720 --> 00:34:18,410 what we just about what you add and what you just pointed out based on the importance of of tradition over a significant period of time on this trial. 260 00:34:18,410 --> 00:34:28,040 And error doesn't work from from scratch that well for for the system to work well in the common law system. 261 00:34:28,040 --> 00:34:33,260 Brilliant. I hadn't I never thought about this, but it makes sense. 262 00:34:33,260 --> 00:34:37,610 I don't know if there are any arguments against viewing it that way. 263 00:34:37,610 --> 00:34:42,140 And I'm sure and I'm sure it's more complex in practise. 264 00:34:42,140 --> 00:34:52,490 But it does make a lot of sense when you when you say like this that the civil law background seems to be at least if you break it down to the basics, 265 00:34:52,490 --> 00:35:01,730 something more, something like a planned entity that you construct on in in an ivory tower, if you will. 266 00:35:01,730 --> 00:35:09,020 And the other thing is just something that you get by certain heuristics from hundreds of years of experience. 267 00:35:09,020 --> 00:35:16,550 That is. And it's very interesting that the problem nowadays, of course, with the EU is that the EU, at least in I mean, 268 00:35:16,550 --> 00:35:24,710 it's a weird amalgamation of both where you have a central court who's who has a 269 00:35:24,710 --> 00:35:29,720 sort of a precedent system where you actually have to look at their decisions. 270 00:35:29,720 --> 00:35:34,780 And it's more important than the actual legislation. And it's complicated. 271 00:35:34,780 --> 00:35:39,950 But but apart from that, that's a that's a really great way of framing it. 272 00:35:39,950 --> 00:35:51,280 And very interesting. This distinction that we've made between kinds of laws, I think. 273 00:35:51,280 --> 00:36:01,510 Connects very nicely to one of the biggest divides that we see develop in what discipling would call the counter enlightenment period, 274 00:36:01,510 --> 00:36:10,240 that between people who eventually establishment figures, let's say William Haslet, William Wordsworth, 275 00:36:10,240 --> 00:36:16,450 not necessarily philosophers, but people that converted after they saw Vidacare and so on, 276 00:36:16,450 --> 00:36:23,080 and those individuals that really went all the way with the violence or with their 277 00:36:23,080 --> 00:36:31,210 support of violence and yet somehow maintained a strange kind of conservative bent. 278 00:36:31,210 --> 00:36:40,990 There were some individuals, even before Berk's time, that billin again called the true founders of Romanticism. 279 00:36:40,990 --> 00:36:49,360 These were herter. And and harder, of course, was this very, very strong German nationalist, 280 00:36:49,360 --> 00:36:56,290 perhaps the first one that referred to ideas analogous to Schmitt's description 281 00:36:56,290 --> 00:37:03,760 of NamUs and the necessary defence of prejudice in order to keep society around, 282 00:37:03,760 --> 00:37:14,650 but also a very strange, semih, revolutionary attitude to what society should be that completely clashed with what Burke was going for. 283 00:37:14,650 --> 00:37:26,470 The other big example before. But of course, also influencing people after Berk's time was Harman, who was a religious scholar, 284 00:37:26,470 --> 00:37:29,380 religious man, and he might say he was formerly a drunken, mad man. 285 00:37:29,380 --> 00:37:39,640 He updated himself, who was a great influence on the writings of Gerta and also a neighbour of Immanuel Kant. 286 00:37:39,640 --> 00:37:47,860 And we can summarise this very strong distinction between romantic, anti rationalist, 287 00:37:47,860 --> 00:37:56,590 almost conservatism and empiricists rationalist enlightenment thought by just considering one of their discussions, 288 00:37:56,590 --> 00:38:02,500 supposedly Kant was going out on his walk, I think for Piana, as he always was known to do, 289 00:38:02,500 --> 00:38:07,840 and he bumped into Harman and he said to Harman, again, I'm not quoting directly. 290 00:38:07,840 --> 00:38:15,310 Wouldn't it be great if we could just take a science, find all the answers to it and get rid of it, just dismiss the thing? 291 00:38:15,310 --> 00:38:19,240 And Hodgman was horrified by this. He said absolutely not. No, no, no, no, no. 292 00:38:19,240 --> 00:38:22,960 Maybe Kant walked off then, but his rationale was, 293 00:38:22,960 --> 00:38:29,800 we live in a high darrian practically or preheating Garryowen temporality where nothing can be solved. 294 00:38:29,800 --> 00:38:36,010 And in order to behove behold a fourfold vision of reality that is imaginative and inspiring 295 00:38:36,010 --> 00:38:42,550 and connects us to human beings and their emanations to become a little more blackfin, 296 00:38:42,550 --> 00:38:55,510 we have to leave certain things up to chance. But but this this is the rationalist, sorry, romanticist element of conservatism coming through. 297 00:38:55,510 --> 00:38:59,770 You could even say pre fascist as as George Steiner would argue. 298 00:38:59,770 --> 00:39:06,150 I realised my chronology has been a bit all over the place here, but it's a very important distinction. 299 00:39:06,150 --> 00:39:17,580 And speaking of German thinkers and Noma's, I remember an interesting part of your notes, Edge, where you spoke of Schmidt, would you? 300 00:39:17,580 --> 00:39:25,290 And the reason, the connexion to theology. Can you briefly touch on that? 301 00:39:25,290 --> 00:39:37,560 Absolutely. I think, first of all, we should get out there that unlike Spiegler, who just voted for Hitler, 302 00:39:37,560 --> 00:39:47,700 if such a thing can be said because he believed in Static's cesarian regimes and Heidegger who to get wanted in academic promotion, 303 00:39:47,700 --> 00:39:54,270 think of that what you will, but later renounced his Naziism. Schmidt remained committed throughout most of his most of his life. 304 00:39:54,270 --> 00:40:05,880 And still, if you're going to study Nazism or rather study Schmidt, you have to sign a wager that you're not going to use his work in a bad way. 305 00:40:05,880 --> 00:40:11,190 That is the significance and danger of what we're talking about. 306 00:40:11,190 --> 00:40:16,230 So it's the area where conservatism enters a very dangerous field, 307 00:40:16,230 --> 00:40:31,020 but significantly and his ideas are not only rather adjacent to what Burke was talking about, but but strangely even postmodernist. 308 00:40:31,020 --> 00:40:37,470 At the same time, he wrote this two volume book called Political Theology, 309 00:40:37,470 --> 00:40:42,540 the first book or first volume, the concept of the political being the most significant. 310 00:40:42,540 --> 00:40:51,690 And in this text, he suggested that and this is both of them, that all of the old political, 311 00:40:51,690 --> 00:41:03,510 social and might we might even say spiritual structures that had given way or given command to a mythical Judeo-Christian God in 312 00:41:03,510 --> 00:41:16,950 order to be utilised today to any significance that replace God with a lawyer had to replace God with the supreme law of the system. 313 00:41:16,950 --> 00:41:28,320 In this way. He's also often compared to mystical racist thinkers like Julius Savola, who emphasised all of this very, very occult, 314 00:41:28,320 --> 00:41:40,350 anti Christian Nazi stuff because he thought that was a good way of establishing this before the law legal precedent in society. 315 00:41:40,350 --> 00:41:50,970 But but Schmidt suggests in the concept of the political as well, that most of our interactions as a society are based on this friend enemy dichotomy. 316 00:41:50,970 --> 00:41:57,570 There are certain people that we must treat as our friends that we must respect because of their ethnic similarities to ourselves. 317 00:41:57,570 --> 00:42:05,730 And there are other people who we might personally get on with, but who we must disregard and maltreat because they are different. 318 00:42:05,730 --> 00:42:14,760 You can smell the horrific anti-Semitism through the pages of the work, and yet it itself shows a glimmering, 319 00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:23,370 terrible example of how the prejudice that people like BRK defended and common advocated in practise, 320 00:42:23,370 --> 00:42:30,900 becoming something rich and horrific in a true systematic political nature. 321 00:42:30,900 --> 00:42:37,400 This is conservatism gone rotten, gone technological in the most dangerous of ways. 322 00:42:37,400 --> 00:42:44,370 How what you say to which is you say that that's a result based on, you know, 323 00:42:44,370 --> 00:42:50,620 the lack of of know common, let's say let's say a common value structure, 324 00:42:50,620 --> 00:43:04,620 a value system in the sense of VEBER based on, you know, the decline of of faith of Christianity, that that left Aslak, 325 00:43:04,620 --> 00:43:19,500 left this void of of of a fundamental truth or fundamental axiom that could give a hole to a hole to two to people where they actually, 326 00:43:19,500 --> 00:43:29,670 you know, long for something better, can define what you said as a maxim of ultimate truth, ultimate good or ultimate bad, 327 00:43:29,670 --> 00:43:37,900 or is that is that something that would that would be like inherent in conservatism, no matter in what kind of society? 328 00:43:37,900 --> 00:43:52,120 I don't know. Maybe even a name in a still religious society that still has, you know, this value system in place. 329 00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:58,480 Excellent point, I would say, since you're referring to decline so much, 330 00:43:58,480 --> 00:44:09,130 we either have to talk about Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which is a remarkably conservative but also anti Christian text. 331 00:44:09,130 --> 00:44:14,800 Or we can talk about Ausborn Spangler's The Decline of the West. 332 00:44:14,800 --> 00:44:19,180 And I think Spiegler probably has it in this one. 333 00:44:19,180 --> 00:44:23,440 Spangler's whole idea was that the rotch you've identified, 334 00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:32,860 the the moral rot resulting in in these exclamations of fascism actually set in a whole lot earlier, 335 00:44:32,860 --> 00:44:40,960 even before the the fantasy ekler literary period at Spangler's argument is this is in the 20th century, 336 00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:53,800 that the whole need to colonise for the West to expand and absorb other people's cultures into its own was to nurture the wound of its own impotence. 337 00:44:53,800 --> 00:45:04,360 The the the sheer disbelief that was beginning to form in the values in the know most of its nations. 338 00:45:04,360 --> 00:45:10,960 So there's one way of reading it. I'm using a conservative thinker because it's the most appropriate to the topic. 339 00:45:10,960 --> 00:45:16,660 Might not necessarily agree, but he certainly in the same canon as someone like Schmidt. 340 00:45:16,660 --> 00:45:22,660 The other way of reading it is the very nature way. 341 00:45:22,660 --> 00:45:27,880 Or I might, I should say mock nature way. 342 00:45:27,880 --> 00:45:32,110 Nature is, of course, talking about how we have to become Übermensch. 343 00:45:32,110 --> 00:45:39,310 We have to get out there, achieve things in a bottle, as well as an intellectual way throughout his his work, 344 00:45:39,310 --> 00:45:44,170 especially beyond good and evil, and thus spake Zarathustra. 345 00:45:44,170 --> 00:45:50,890 But the anti Nietzschean way of going through this is simply to suggest that not everybody is that concerned. 346 00:45:50,890 --> 00:45:54,850 Not everybody is that concerned with the Aristotelian life of the mind, 347 00:45:54,850 --> 00:46:02,050 with achieving your sandal wearing significance in a world of nothingness and so on and so on. 348 00:46:02,050 --> 00:46:12,340 One of Oakshott best points it's alluded to in the new Bentham and it's directly addressed in rationalism in politics, 349 00:46:12,340 --> 00:46:17,230 is that there are some people that can be conservative by disposition, 350 00:46:17,230 --> 00:46:23,560 people who are blacksmiths or farmers or farmers nowadays who are farmers because their great grandfathers and great 351 00:46:23,560 --> 00:46:32,230 grandmothers were farmers and that lived tradition that non-taxable technological inherent knowledge and awareness of society. 352 00:46:32,230 --> 00:46:44,380 That natural little little platoon, if we can call it that, is a lot stronger and more evident to them than these very, 353 00:46:44,380 --> 00:46:53,080 very strange and challenging books that not everyone has the time for existential crisis necessary to read. 354 00:46:53,080 --> 00:46:58,900 So I think it's it's an argument that is predicated on a certain position of privilege or status. 355 00:46:58,900 --> 00:47:03,220 This whole with the moral rot has set in and such and such. 356 00:47:03,220 --> 00:47:05,560 This is this is really quite aristocratic language. 357 00:47:05,560 --> 00:47:14,240 And I'm not accusing you of of using it, but I have heard this argument many times, and that does seem to be the basis for much of it. 358 00:47:14,240 --> 00:47:21,350 No sense since. I mean, yeah, I would have only I would have only gone on about like, you know, 359 00:47:21,350 --> 00:47:29,240 the fallacies of conservatism, you know, also in its relation to the fallacies of of, 360 00:47:29,240 --> 00:47:41,610 um, sorry, I just put an end to the fallacies of other, you know, let's say, political ideologies for or for that matter by you. 361 00:47:41,610 --> 00:47:57,110 Yeah. Because I think it actually relates to to what we were just following on based on, you know, this view of conservatism. 362 00:47:57,110 --> 00:48:06,470 Leading to the dichotomy in a certain sense, as you pointed out, which is basically, you know, the main fallacy or the main problem, many people, 363 00:48:06,470 --> 00:48:13,940 I think even today are trying to to to identify as the worst part of conservatism, 364 00:48:13,940 --> 00:48:24,560 this idea of the hatred of hatred or the the on that I don't even know how to say to disliking. 365 00:48:24,560 --> 00:48:30,530 I'd say for for outsiders, for for people outside of these communities, 366 00:48:30,530 --> 00:48:36,230 societies with it's tradition based on these little platoons and so on compared to, 367 00:48:36,230 --> 00:48:41,900 you know, just the foreigners, to the people moving into not sharing these values, 368 00:48:41,900 --> 00:48:48,650 not assimilating to the values and traditions that are that are in place. 369 00:48:48,650 --> 00:48:54,320 And I think it's and I'm sorry just to interject and this is actually a good point, 370 00:48:54,320 --> 00:49:02,180 because people often when they talk about conservatism and in the father's sense of the word xenophobia, 371 00:49:02,180 --> 00:49:09,020 so a fear of the of the strange or the foreign doesn't always mean people from outside one's cultural circle. 372 00:49:09,020 --> 00:49:14,030 It can mean if you go into I don't know, you seem to come from a small town. 373 00:49:14,030 --> 00:49:16,910 I come from a small town as well, very small town. 374 00:49:16,910 --> 00:49:26,930 And so sometimes even if you are as German or whatever, as national, as you know, typically stereotypically of your country as you want, 375 00:49:26,930 --> 00:49:33,110 if you go to a new small community, you will be regarded as a as a foreign element to some degree. 376 00:49:33,110 --> 00:49:44,390 And this is something very human. And it's not necessarily it's easily you know, it easily gets thrown into a pot with racism and policy ideas. 377 00:49:44,390 --> 00:49:53,930 But it's actually a very basic human idea. I mean, we had that and when we when people still were nomadic in in most parts of the world and 378 00:49:53,930 --> 00:49:58,130 you probably still had distrust of strangers because you didn't know you had informed. 379 00:49:58,130 --> 00:50:02,930 As we said earlier, we hadn't formed a sort of a social bond or a social contract. 380 00:50:02,930 --> 00:50:10,310 You had to prove that you were trustworthy. And so that's I'm glad that you touched on this point, but sorry. 381 00:50:10,310 --> 00:50:15,930 Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, it's a great point. 382 00:50:15,930 --> 00:50:22,610 The thing is and I don't know what to say. 383 00:50:22,610 --> 00:50:32,330 I don't know what to relate it to. But first of all, the point you address about the friend, you know, being even in the same society but in, 384 00:50:32,330 --> 00:50:35,750 let's say, different platoons or different villages for that matter, 385 00:50:35,750 --> 00:50:45,170 and then moving to another village and being immediately regarded as someone foreign to to that community applies only to a certain degree. 386 00:50:45,170 --> 00:50:59,060 I'd say, you know, there's definitely, you know, a kind of, let's say, suspicion or kind of, you know, initial negative reaction towards that. 387 00:50:59,060 --> 00:51:07,520 But, you know, if you if you are from a, let's say, similar tradition, if you are from a, you know, 388 00:51:07,520 --> 00:51:16,430 based on a culture that is upholding certain values that are actually shared also amongst this community, 389 00:51:16,430 --> 00:51:24,410 then the second reaction is not going to be negative again, probably. 390 00:51:24,410 --> 00:51:28,010 So you know that the time element here is quite important. 391 00:51:28,010 --> 00:51:37,850 Whereas you you know, when you have someone from a completely different value coming in with a different value structure, 392 00:51:37,850 --> 00:51:42,740 with the different value system, with a different set of traditions, 393 00:51:42,740 --> 00:51:49,240 of shared norms, trying to trying to live that out in this new context, 394 00:51:49,240 --> 00:52:02,160 then that's going to be a bigger problem where assimilation doesn't work in that in that way because you have this inherent conflict. 395 00:52:02,160 --> 00:52:03,740 That would be my point on that. 396 00:52:03,740 --> 00:52:10,130 And the other point would be just, you know, what would I try to emphasise at the beginning that, you know, it's it is actually, you know, 397 00:52:10,130 --> 00:52:16,970 innate in human culture to have this fear or let's say this, 398 00:52:16,970 --> 00:52:27,440 the suspicion inherent based on our development over the centuries and in fact, many years, obviously. 399 00:52:27,440 --> 00:52:33,530 But, you know, based on this. Based on this. 400 00:52:33,530 --> 00:52:48,890 Form of understanding of society as a community of different small micro networks where you can actually integrate yourself 401 00:52:48,890 --> 00:52:57,890 and where you can actually they can actually if you apply if you adhere to the shared norms and maybe even add to them, 402 00:52:57,890 --> 00:53:07,160 then you can have successful integration. So I think it's it doesn't have to be framed all in a negative way. 403 00:53:07,160 --> 00:53:13,250 Well, I find this section fascinating because that's, of course, 404 00:53:13,250 --> 00:53:22,850 an angle of conservatism that totally rejects it, that encourages some form of individualistic atomisation, 405 00:53:22,850 --> 00:53:28,460 I'm thinking principally about the neo lips and some of the neo cons, 406 00:53:28,460 --> 00:53:40,880 the readers of Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek and von Mises, little less, although he's just as influential. 407 00:53:40,880 --> 00:53:53,690 But this particular model upheld a kind of transient Moralez, just as in the case of Adam Smith and his Wealth of Nations, 408 00:53:53,690 --> 00:54:04,370 where you would manage your own moral system by yourself as an individual and then the collective would just be presumed around you if there 409 00:54:04,370 --> 00:54:15,710 wouldn't be this dynamic or almost inevitable conflict that developed between you and the rest of the society when the little platoon, 410 00:54:15,710 --> 00:54:22,940 like you would say, was snipped off. And that's precisely what we can say, 411 00:54:22,940 --> 00:54:35,690 that via the innovation of the free market encouraged an inherent split in conservatism between the values based side and the market based side, 412 00:54:35,690 --> 00:54:39,530 which didn't used to exist. 413 00:54:39,530 --> 00:54:54,710 Some of us will remember that Engels really admired and Benjamin Disraeli because he was capable of abiding by the principle of noblesse oblige. 414 00:54:54,710 --> 00:55:00,960 He was capable of saying, we have to look after the have nots. 415 00:55:00,960 --> 00:55:05,000 This obligation completely disappeared. 416 00:55:05,000 --> 00:55:16,670 You could say that this precisely and say after William F. Buckley sock it to the left and unite the right stuff and was a fringe 417 00:55:16,670 --> 00:55:26,180 movement until remerging recently in Internet right wing communities that are really a consequence of that kind of fragmentation. 418 00:55:26,180 --> 00:55:33,120 We don't like capitalism. What we want is a restoration return to market, that kind of nonsense. 419 00:55:33,120 --> 00:55:35,540 I love that. Yeah, 420 00:55:35,540 --> 00:55:49,940 maybe I don't want anyone to circumvent the Internet because I think it's a brilliant point and the brilliant string of sort of further go into, um. 421 00:55:49,940 --> 00:55:55,400 But if we're talking about, you know, if you're talking about locality and about, you know, 422 00:55:55,400 --> 00:56:13,090 the importance of the importance of these micro networks and Internet connexions and their relation to what conservatism actually defines, 423 00:56:13,090 --> 00:56:22,550 then I think I'd love to bring in the point about, you know, what I what I think, oh, what's his name again? 424 00:56:22,550 --> 00:56:32,030 Is it Paul or David? Good to see. It's David Gotthard with the idea of, you know, the the the new political divide is not any more about, 425 00:56:32,030 --> 00:56:39,800 you know, left and right or something, but it's actually about, you know, anywhere and somewhere where you have this, you know, 426 00:56:39,800 --> 00:56:49,670 new this new divide based on not not the idea of people who have something and people who don't have something. 427 00:56:49,670 --> 00:56:59,000 And if we need to if a society needs to get over the clash of these classes, but rather, you know, 428 00:56:59,000 --> 00:57:09,500 the people who actually still have a connexion towards the local community, towards the locality in which they are situated. 429 00:57:09,500 --> 00:57:18,530 And on the other hand, you know, these anywhere's is like what you may be also addressing this Internet generation, 430 00:57:18,530 --> 00:57:21,380 this generation or not even generation, but, you know, 431 00:57:21,380 --> 00:57:35,360 this part of society that transcends these local local dependencies and these local ties towards, 432 00:57:35,360 --> 00:57:47,990 you know, a model of more more focus on on individual freedom of your own, in following your own interests, 433 00:57:47,990 --> 00:57:57,710 living your life wherever you want without a, you know, specific relation and a specific tie towards a small community. 434 00:57:57,710 --> 00:58:02,780 But also then again, on the coming up over there, you know, 435 00:58:02,780 --> 00:58:06,340 building on your model and not only to the small community, but obviously then also to the. 436 00:58:06,340 --> 00:58:15,520 And to to to your continent and so on, so I just wanted to throw that and. 437 00:58:15,520 --> 00:58:22,000 Well, to contribute a bit more on that particular point, as I've said before, 438 00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:33,320 technology is essential in this respect because it replaces or at least mediates the influence of the real community of individuals. 439 00:58:33,320 --> 00:58:34,510 But you're forced to live with that. 440 00:58:34,510 --> 00:58:44,590 You're simply next to the element of no that Schmidt would just call property or community, at least according to the commenter, Michael Milliman. 441 00:58:44,590 --> 00:58:56,440 It takes that away and puts in its place this realm of digital avatars that are often organised by not necessarily the same background, 442 00:58:56,440 --> 00:59:10,720 but the same viewpoint. And when a young person, Azumah, is spending a lot more time, especially post pandemic with these people, 443 00:59:10,720 --> 00:59:24,700 with these beings that represent people as opposed to individuals and collectives in their own community, it degrades these platoon connexions. 444 00:59:24,700 --> 00:59:32,020 And I think it has this rather strange mutant effect on modern politics that commenters 445 00:59:32,020 --> 00:59:38,530 like Angela Nagel have described in relation to the 2016 American election, 446 00:59:38,530 --> 00:59:44,710 where people are actually more enthused by their online radicalised group. 447 00:59:44,710 --> 00:59:52,120 For that is the very basis of politics than they are by the people that are actually around them. 448 00:59:52,120 --> 00:59:57,730 The effect in Trump's case is fairly evident. 449 00:59:57,730 --> 01:00:04,360 Nagl is one that legitimately argues he was elected because of his his union 450 01:00:04,360 --> 01:00:09,340 wizardry and his inability to appeal to the dynamics of 4chan transgression, 451 01:00:09,340 --> 01:00:15,640 but also how modern politics the world over starting with the US, 452 01:00:15,640 --> 01:00:22,780 has essentially become characterised not by traditional conservatism or any form of traditional liberalism or Marxism against one another, 453 01:00:22,780 --> 01:00:33,520 but rather a form of 4chan versus Tumblr in real life, the least intellectual and most reactionary. 454 01:00:33,520 --> 01:00:42,160 No wonder it's produced many, many people on both sides of the aisle that are opposed to the technological generations of the free market, 455 01:00:42,160 --> 01:00:48,640 because this basis for politics does not give many opportunities for compromise. 456 01:00:48,640 --> 01:00:54,370 Oh, that's brilliant. That was actually the connexion I was thinking about when you made your point. 457 01:00:54,370 --> 01:01:01,120 I mean, I think it's absolutely fascinating because it's not only a development, you see, you know, in the UK or you see it. 458 01:01:01,120 --> 01:01:04,750 I mean, I know the US, the UK and Germany quite well. 459 01:01:04,750 --> 01:01:14,080 And in all of these countries, in the conservative, what parties claim to be conservatives, are all of them moving into the direction of, 460 01:01:14,080 --> 01:01:27,130 you know, away from this idea of more emphasis on liberal enterprise and on free markets, free states and more emphasis on, you know, 461 01:01:27,130 --> 01:01:38,710 actual state involvement in the process of building, building up yourself and building up the society, which, you know, 462 01:01:38,710 --> 01:01:48,310 then again relates to relates to the idea of this change and conservatism that we were talking about at the beginning of this plot, 463 01:01:48,310 --> 01:01:50,630 because, you know, it's a rather recent development. 464 01:01:50,630 --> 01:02:00,550 But so when you think about the 80s with Thatcher, Reagan and so on in Germany, you still had a strong emphasis, 465 01:02:00,550 --> 01:02:10,960 especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification on these on the on this basic, 466 01:02:10,960 --> 01:02:15,930 you know, success of free markets and all that, say in the German context, 467 01:02:15,930 --> 01:02:21,670 the success of social market economy, as we called it, well against communism. 468 01:02:21,670 --> 01:02:27,610 And then you have this turnaround, basically, you can say to argue to what degree. 469 01:02:27,610 --> 01:02:32,300 But certainly there is this trend around in the last basically 30 years. 470 01:02:32,300 --> 01:02:37,300 Great. I want to I wanted to discuss two more points. 471 01:02:37,300 --> 01:02:47,190 And after that, I personally would just leave it to you guys to discuss any further information that you find relevant. 472 01:02:47,190 --> 01:02:53,170 And I'm going back a little bit back to some of the intellectual foundations. 473 01:02:53,170 --> 01:03:04,030 I found something, Ed, that you wrote regarding the difference between Burke and a French thinker called domestic. 474 01:03:04,030 --> 01:03:13,900 Very interesting. They both had similar views on what to do about how to. 475 01:03:13,900 --> 01:03:19,340 How to. Act politics or how to rule and govern. 476 01:03:19,340 --> 01:03:27,380 But they had different ideas of the nature of humankind and of man, 477 01:03:27,380 --> 01:03:35,270 I don't know if you remember what I'm referring to, but I would have found that very interesting and insightful. 478 01:03:35,270 --> 01:03:41,300 I would like to spend a little bit of time talking about it. 479 01:03:41,300 --> 01:03:53,210 Domestic is not exactly my area of expertise, but we can summarise the differences between him and Burke in two points. 480 01:03:53,210 --> 01:04:03,980 First of all, one of the main things that everybody talks about in the political textbooks about Burke is that he's open to evolutionary change, 481 01:04:03,980 --> 01:04:08,630 not revolutionary change. The state. 482 01:04:08,630 --> 01:04:13,740 The society is really just a plant to him. 483 01:04:13,740 --> 01:04:26,810 It's a very beautiful plant, but it is a plant that one has to treat and look after for the maestre at the actual regime is really 484 01:04:26,810 --> 01:04:32,390 the ultimate form of government because it's the only form of government that he sees as functional. 485 01:04:32,390 --> 01:04:45,380 So he's far less open to change. And because, of course, he is a Frenchman and he is an aristocrat, he felt the differences, 486 01:04:45,380 --> 01:04:53,000 the changes that went on in Enlightenment, France, much faster than Burke did. 487 01:04:53,000 --> 01:04:59,270 And for this reason, he claims that enlightenment thought of which Scruton, 488 01:04:59,270 --> 01:05:06,350 for instance, argues that Burke was a part was inevitably incarnated in the terror. 489 01:05:06,350 --> 01:05:14,420 And it wasn't only its logical consequence, but it was its its divinely decreed punishment. 490 01:05:14,420 --> 01:05:29,300 So they are adjacent thinkers, but the difference seems to be where they originated and also where they originated in terms of background. 491 01:05:29,300 --> 01:05:34,940 Burke is a much more interesting thinker than some people give him credit for, at least in terms of where he's from, 492 01:05:34,940 --> 01:05:40,070 because he was initially Irish and he was picked on for being Irish once in a while. 493 01:05:40,070 --> 01:05:50,390 And Samuel Johnson Circle, whereas the MISTERA was sort of pure blooded, slithering overlord from the start, I should say. 494 01:05:50,390 --> 01:05:58,220 He was half Italian and half French, but they were all very, very high up and wonderful. 495 01:05:58,220 --> 01:06:04,910 What about his idea of how rules come about? 496 01:06:04,910 --> 01:06:11,750 And how would it work? And so so I know we've talked about this battuta concretised, 497 01:06:11,750 --> 01:06:19,280 what would you say is Berk's idea where customers come from and rules and should come from? 498 01:06:19,280 --> 01:06:30,960 And what would you think domestic? Where does he believe the rules come from? 499 01:06:30,960 --> 01:06:43,890 We can furthermore suggest that while Burke, as I have said, did not believe overall in apriori judgement and thought they emerged through tradition, 500 01:06:43,890 --> 01:06:52,970 or as I would say, apriori judgements are parasites on tradition. 501 01:06:52,970 --> 01:06:58,410 De Mistura felt that such a thing as a divine well did exist in reality, 502 01:06:58,410 --> 01:07:09,480 and this could be embodied directly through a more ad hoc legal system at the beck and call of the monarchy. 503 01:07:09,480 --> 01:07:16,290 And he used this argument to oppose the legitimacy of revolutionary constitutions and documents. 504 01:07:16,290 --> 01:07:24,010 He saw them as trying to elevate man to God and therefore had none of it. 505 01:07:24,010 --> 01:07:30,250 Great, that helped a lot to to, I think, frame frame as ideas, 506 01:07:30,250 --> 01:07:37,390 and I find I found exactly that part interesting and that basically they that Domestos 507 01:07:37,390 --> 01:07:44,380 thinks that it is divinely inspired or it comes from rules come from a divine source. 508 01:07:44,380 --> 01:07:50,320 And as far as I understand it, that Burke somehow thinks of it as organically grown. 509 01:07:50,320 --> 01:07:59,740 And what I wrote down is that I got from your notes also that the message was sceptical about humans being able to follow rules, 510 01:07:59,740 --> 01:08:04,450 which is something I have thought about a lot personally. I just think about sometimes. 511 01:08:04,450 --> 01:08:18,550 Do you think? It is do you even think it makes sense to abolish traditional systems of power like monarchy and absolutism in that form, 512 01:08:18,550 --> 01:08:22,150 and can we even trust humanity to follow rules? 513 01:08:22,150 --> 01:08:28,930 And that that is probably because I've thought about this so much myself and I read it in your notes addressed. 514 01:08:28,930 --> 01:08:41,050 I think I don't think I read that somewhere, even though probably it's probably a basic trope in political history or science that that really hit me. 515 01:08:41,050 --> 01:08:52,960 And also that that both Burke and domestic thought that by lack of if you if you have rules as imposed, 516 01:08:52,960 --> 01:08:58,060 for example, by arbitrary means, for example, after the French Revolution, 517 01:08:58,060 --> 01:09:07,870 if you if you would think of it that way, then either a lack of custom or a lack of divine guidance would lead to bad behaviour amongst the populace. 518 01:09:07,870 --> 01:09:16,060 And that is very interesting, because I would try to put myself into a position of power where I what if I had the choice 519 01:09:16,060 --> 01:09:21,550 to either give people their own freedom or to continue with a system that has sort of worked? 520 01:09:21,550 --> 01:09:28,240 Would it be better to try to give the people, the rural people, the power to rule over themselves? 521 01:09:28,240 --> 01:09:32,170 Or do I fundamentally think that people are unable to follow rules? 522 01:09:32,170 --> 01:09:39,580 So you have to enforce them basically by the corridors that they are allowed to walk in and to think? 523 01:09:39,580 --> 01:09:48,640 And sometimes I have had these problems, for example, when I found like a like a social club or something or like a social start-up. 524 01:09:48,640 --> 01:09:54,340 And I also think should I how much how much leverage should you give individual people? 525 01:09:54,340 --> 01:09:56,920 Should you micromanage and to what degree? 526 01:09:56,920 --> 01:10:06,100 And I think that those are fundamental questions that a lot of people still have to grapple with, even in business and politics and even in family. 527 01:10:06,100 --> 01:10:09,450 Sometimes, you know, if you organise something in a larger family, what do you do? 528 01:10:09,450 --> 01:10:16,000 And so that is why I found it so interesting that smart people like the Messman work had these ideas. 529 01:10:16,000 --> 01:10:25,970 And we have been struggling with this for centuries. That's that's kind of why why I bothered you so much with this. 530 01:10:25,970 --> 01:10:37,580 Well, what you're talking about in precise terms sounds a lot like, again, this Oberlin's idea of positive and negative freedom, 531 01:10:37,580 --> 01:10:43,280 negative freedom, where you're free simply because you're allowed to exist in a particular state run. 532 01:10:43,280 --> 01:10:51,710 Simmons example is Amy Winehouse drinking too much and then not wanting to go to rehab and positive 533 01:10:51,710 --> 01:11:00,530 freedom where you're controlled in such a way that you become free or that you feel free. 534 01:11:00,530 --> 01:11:07,490 Some people feel liberated by rehab. I can imagine it's not like that. 535 01:11:07,490 --> 01:11:16,320 And obviously it's impossible to make an absolute distinction based on generalities. 536 01:11:16,320 --> 01:11:23,510 You have to keep the case in mind for these sorts of things if you're going to be a good statesman. 537 01:11:23,510 --> 01:11:33,650 Nonetheless, what I find interesting about my thought pattern here is that it immediately links back to Burke's idea of common law. 538 01:11:33,650 --> 01:11:38,390 At least we can have certain exceptions. At least we can make room for changes. 539 01:11:38,390 --> 01:11:44,790 We can have a pretty constitutional living constitution in one way or another. 540 01:11:44,790 --> 01:11:51,470 And it's that kind of openness and reliance on tradition that the conservative suggests, 541 01:11:51,470 --> 01:11:59,660 whether or not he acknowledges it, that judgements pertaining to positive and negative freedom can take place. 542 01:11:59,660 --> 01:12:03,740 This is something that liberals like John Rawls like to talk about a lot as a lot as well. 543 01:12:03,740 --> 01:12:08,360 So it's not exclusively right wing territory, but it's certainly something to bear in mind. 544 01:12:08,360 --> 01:12:14,370 The other thing to consider is simply how authority is exercised through the ages. 545 01:12:14,370 --> 01:12:17,570 It's a time for a change. Not talking about conservatives. 546 01:12:17,570 --> 01:12:27,050 I'll bring up Deluce and Michelle Fuyuko and their ideas pertaining to societal mechanisms of control. 547 01:12:27,050 --> 01:12:32,420 One of few coast kids in the order of things is that there is a significant 548 01:12:32,420 --> 01:12:37,850 difference between how mediaeval societies are run in that very hierarchical. 549 01:12:37,850 --> 01:12:48,050 But usually if you give your views to the monarch or governor of your area as a peasant or serf, they'll give you some time alone. 550 01:12:48,050 --> 01:12:54,260 And furthermore, you'll be able to organise how exactly you work to begin with this. 551 01:12:54,260 --> 01:13:02,240 BIFULCO does not happen anywhere near as much in the 19th century because the the dorm 552 01:13:02,240 --> 01:13:07,430 and the workhouse are right next to one another and the private becomes political. 553 01:13:07,430 --> 01:13:13,130 The personal becomes political. In the worst possible sense, it becomes subject to regulation. 554 01:13:13,130 --> 01:13:20,790 Deluce theorises during the 1970s and 80s well into the future. 555 01:13:20,790 --> 01:13:26,180 He sees right where we're going or where humanity was going. 556 01:13:26,180 --> 01:13:35,060 At that point. He expands on Fusco's argument and describes what he calls a fourth stage, the Society of Control, 557 01:13:35,060 --> 01:13:44,390 where everything is in a singular room, where the prison, the hospital, the school, the canteen are essentially a singular place. 558 01:13:44,390 --> 01:13:52,460 And we might like to think of that as the computer room that everybody was stuck in during the coronavirus pandemic. 559 01:13:52,460 --> 01:13:58,280 These different scenarios emerging with the with the dynamics of history, 560 01:13:58,280 --> 01:14:07,400 with the what we might call a galion, Gaist determines extremely which forms of authority can be enacted. 561 01:14:07,400 --> 01:14:17,810 And for that reason, logically, I think we have to abide by something fairly similar to Berk's evolutionary position. 562 01:14:17,810 --> 01:14:26,930 If we're going to advocate anything conservative at all in that, we bear in mind the time and then we act. 563 01:14:26,930 --> 01:14:34,640 We don't, you know, do the do the herd effect and desperately try and and close off technological implementation. 564 01:14:34,640 --> 01:14:43,600 That just can't work. Awesome. I feel I don't want to cut you off, but I would have another question for you. 565 01:14:43,600 --> 01:14:46,600 Maybe I read something into it, I do that sometimes, so I apologise. 566 01:14:46,600 --> 01:14:56,790 Maybe that's why it's not become quite clear, but it certainly, let's put it like this in the notes certainly inspired me. 567 01:14:56,790 --> 01:15:06,960 All right, so and the final question I personally have is something that you pointed out in his notes, which I found interesting, 568 01:15:06,960 --> 01:15:14,310 and I vaguely remember having read something about this before, but, yeah, I had certainly forgotten about it. 569 01:15:14,310 --> 01:15:25,500 And that is the very interesting topic of psychology and tendency to vote conservative as a conservative. 570 01:15:25,500 --> 01:15:31,260 And you you mention a few interesting studies in points about this. 571 01:15:31,260 --> 01:15:37,230 And of course, we don't have to get too technical. I am not sure I would follow anyways. 572 01:15:37,230 --> 01:15:41,940 But as much as you you would want to go down into detail. 573 01:15:41,940 --> 01:15:49,170 Can you tell us something about the relationship between psychology and what people do? 574 01:15:49,170 --> 01:15:53,280 Yeah, sure. I mean, let's let's try to broaden it again as well. 575 01:15:53,280 --> 01:16:07,800 I mean, psychology, of course, as a field is trying to in general trying to deduce what the essence of human beings is in its in its very essence. 576 01:16:07,800 --> 01:16:22,710 And I think most of the philosophers we were talking today about and we mentioned quite a few are indeed, you know, trying to figure out that as well, 577 01:16:22,710 --> 01:16:36,150 not only on an individual basis, sometimes on a larger basis, trying to decipher what what are these fundamental things that move us, 578 01:16:36,150 --> 01:16:48,250 you know, for example, in Adam Smith's Adam Smith's wonderful or what's it called not the Wealth of Nations, but the are as you know, 579 01:16:48,250 --> 01:17:00,750 it certainly will see the theory of moral sentiments now about it, that the less well known, but way better, to be honest. 580 01:17:00,750 --> 01:17:12,960 And actually Smith I mean, he thought this was his Muguruza, but I think for some reason the other one caught up. 581 01:17:12,960 --> 01:17:18,300 But anyway, I mean, he basically, you know, he comes from this idea. 582 01:17:18,300 --> 01:17:27,420 What are these things that that humans you know, what what motivates humans in their behaviour and in their in their human essence. 583 01:17:27,420 --> 01:17:32,190 And, you know, all these philosophers come up with different conceptions. 584 01:17:32,190 --> 01:17:35,670 But, you know, you can apply that to psychology as well. 585 01:17:35,670 --> 01:17:47,550 And the psychology of it at last, you know, as a discipline which evolved so much over the last 100 and 100 years, 586 01:17:47,550 --> 01:17:54,180 came up with this idea of trying to in behavioural and social psychology, 587 01:17:54,180 --> 01:18:06,240 trying to basically, you know, build these fundamental categories of human nature and the human nature of the human spirit. 588 01:18:06,240 --> 01:18:12,720 Whereas, you know, you have these big five model that is very, very common. 589 01:18:12,720 --> 01:18:21,240 You know, these conceptions of like, you know, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, 590 01:18:21,240 --> 01:18:27,150 and basically trying to rape people on this scale, which has been done over, 591 01:18:27,150 --> 01:18:32,910 I don't know, decades with lots and lots of studies, lots of lots of data points. 592 01:18:32,910 --> 01:18:38,820 And then obviously a lot of follow up studies were made based on these based on these categories, 593 01:18:38,820 --> 01:18:47,820 you know, seeing how people who are high in certain traits will behave in the in the real world. 594 01:18:47,820 --> 01:18:55,440 And regarding political behaviour, I think the most interesting finding is that these five traits, 595 01:18:55,440 --> 01:19:01,500 which, you know, are a model to represent human human behaviour, 596 01:19:01,500 --> 01:19:14,850 human spirit, to some degree at least, does not in any way predict very well political outcomes except for one trait, 597 01:19:14,850 --> 01:19:23,070 basically, and that's conscientiousness. So people that are high in conscientiousness, which is a trait associated, you know, 598 01:19:23,070 --> 01:19:37,620 with basically what we were describing about the importance of following rules, the importance of of being, you know, 599 01:19:37,620 --> 01:19:46,950 being a reliable person off, of being someone who does a job well, does whatever job he's doing, 600 01:19:46,950 --> 01:19:56,160 it's trying to do his best, is trying to deliver, is trying to, you know, be a reliable source. 601 01:19:56,160 --> 01:20:01,440 That's the only trade that really predicts conservative voting behaviour. 602 01:20:01,440 --> 01:20:07,410 Quite well, I mean, at least, let's say, statistically significant. 603 01:20:07,410 --> 01:20:17,070 So the question then would be if our personality does indeed, you know, influence his political inclination, 604 01:20:17,070 --> 01:20:24,930 let's say, you know, then again, you can think about is that something that's biological or social? 605 01:20:24,930 --> 01:20:29,040 So you can you can basically have this whole nature versus nurture debate. 606 01:20:29,040 --> 01:20:38,370 Again, that's going to go into now because I'm not an expert in either of the fields. 607 01:20:38,370 --> 01:20:44,580 But again, you know, this raises the question of how will this, again, 608 01:20:44,580 --> 01:20:52,380 influence or how might this influence to the future of conservatism in our society? 609 01:20:52,380 --> 01:21:05,580 No traits are indeed, to a certain degree, at least socially constructed or searched or on the other hand, biologically, biologically inherited. 610 01:21:05,580 --> 01:21:12,360 What does that mean, again, for for political for political preferences, for political behaviour? 611 01:21:12,360 --> 01:21:18,130 I think that's the broad picture I paint here. 612 01:21:18,130 --> 01:21:24,960 It's a very beautiful picture, I should say, in short, to I think. 613 01:21:24,960 --> 01:21:30,450 Go on. Go on. A slight caveat to this. 614 01:21:30,450 --> 01:21:44,370 The interesting aspect to conscientiousness, besides its prediction of success generally is what it tends to mean for dynamics. 615 01:21:44,370 --> 01:21:50,400 There was there was what is the term for it again now? 616 01:21:50,400 --> 01:21:59,910 Was a Gallup Poll survey necessary? Pew recent Pew Pew Pew Research poll done recently, which suggested that Gen Z, 617 01:21:59,910 --> 01:22:07,050 the rumours were ever so slightly more conservative than Gen Y Y was this because the 618 01:22:07,050 --> 01:22:14,700 Gen Y religious folks and therefore most likely conservative folks had more children? 619 01:22:14,700 --> 01:22:23,490 They they, they, they out reproduced the liberals and the leftists and so on and so on. 620 01:22:23,490 --> 01:22:33,660 So certainly in a world that is getting more and more concerned with infertility, I think it's pretty good film. 621 01:22:33,660 --> 01:22:37,200 This is certainly something that needs to be borne in mind, 622 01:22:37,200 --> 01:22:45,480 while not necessarily something that inherently determines someone's natural biological connexion to conservatism. 623 01:22:45,480 --> 01:22:55,830 It simply seems to be a rational ideology to have if you're capable of structuring a structure in your life well within the system. 624 01:22:55,830 --> 01:23:03,510 If you can't do that and you're still intelligent and highly conscientious and rationalistic, it's going to be much harder. 625 01:23:03,510 --> 01:23:09,750 You know, Antonio Brown, she did not go on to produce a dynasty of people. 626 01:23:09,750 --> 01:23:17,130 I love that because I actually I actually know a similar point based on, you know, 627 01:23:17,130 --> 01:23:22,080 religious beliefs, which is basically following the same lines based on the fact that, 628 01:23:22,080 --> 01:23:33,270 you know, very religious people tend to have more kids again as well and also tend to vote more conservative most of the time at least. 629 01:23:33,270 --> 01:23:40,950 So, again, you know, I had this discussion with a friend of mine about, you know, the typical, 630 01:23:40,950 --> 01:23:45,870 let's say, progressive claim that's been made for basically four centuries now about, 631 01:23:45,870 --> 01:23:54,930 you know, the role of religion decreasing ever more, the role of church itself, of synagogues and so on, basically becoming obsolete in society. 632 01:23:54,930 --> 01:24:06,540 Whereas, you know, on the other hand, you do have to the basic fact that, you know, religion doesn't go anywhere just based on procreation. 633 01:24:06,540 --> 01:24:12,720 Would you guys say that there has been a substitution for some of the roles that religion played earlier, 634 01:24:12,720 --> 01:24:17,460 that conservatism has exchanged for something else? 635 01:24:17,460 --> 01:24:25,550 Absolutely. We briefly or rather, I briefly brought up. 636 01:24:25,550 --> 01:24:32,840 Yeah, the the Carl Schmidt point God as a lawyer and so on, 637 01:24:32,840 --> 01:24:45,650 this this certainly has to be borne in mind in a modern sense because people have completely have completely lost trust in the state generally, 638 01:24:45,650 --> 01:24:50,210 and that that intellectual energy is a secondary displacement. 639 01:24:50,210 --> 01:24:56,660 You know, God to state and legal system and nation and those myths then decaying. 640 01:24:56,660 --> 01:25:01,340 Where does it all disappear off to? We can see this in the polling. 641 01:25:01,340 --> 01:25:02,150 That was, again, 642 01:25:02,150 --> 01:25:18,440 a Gallup poll conducted in the 1940s when FDR was in office that suggested 85 percent of the American people were satisfied with government. 643 01:25:18,440 --> 01:25:25,460 Can you imagine that being conducted with the same result in practically any country in the world? 644 01:25:25,460 --> 01:25:30,680 Now, maybe Singapore will give or take Singapore. 645 01:25:30,680 --> 01:25:45,920 This suggests that if we're going to suggest that that faith and belief and what Liotard would call economy exists, then it's gone somewhere. 646 01:25:45,920 --> 01:25:50,630 I'd really like to clarify one of the comments I made about Robert Nozick. 647 01:25:50,630 --> 01:25:55,370 He's very he's very pro anarchy in his book Anarchy, State and Utopia, 648 01:25:55,370 --> 01:26:03,140 and says that the state really only has the ability to legislate on private property and that it 649 01:26:03,140 --> 01:26:10,910 is your individuality that gives you the strength in order to live and determine how to live. 650 01:26:10,910 --> 01:26:23,300 But as people like Adam Curtis have pointed out in their films, this is not a way to structure a collective basis for living. 651 01:26:23,300 --> 01:26:32,960 It does not work. So my impression is that when we look at, again, Nagel's book, 652 01:26:32,960 --> 01:26:42,620 where she talks about people like Anapolis Annapolis or Richard Spencer, what is being addressed there? 653 01:26:42,620 --> 01:26:50,870 What she is addressing is the return of the return of the supressed, these horrific, 654 01:26:50,870 --> 01:26:59,180 unprocessed drives that are distinctly conservative, although negative in characteristic and also distinctly anti capitalist. 655 01:26:59,180 --> 01:27:03,200 They cannot be reprocessed by the free market. 656 01:27:03,200 --> 01:27:18,590 It is the further degeneration of what we might call the object of faith from what Nosik had formulated it into or it was formulated into in Nozick. 657 01:27:18,590 --> 01:27:34,220 The question is, is it necessary to to to try and change something when it has become wretched to this extent to the party platform in in America? 658 01:27:34,220 --> 01:27:46,160 For the Republicans, just being a pro Trump pit where you have to accept that the election was rigged and so on to even have a chance, 659 01:27:46,160 --> 01:27:57,140 or can we suggest that there are certain traditional practises that can be re-established in order to bring back 660 01:27:57,140 --> 01:28:04,160 or at least revive a conservative influence that is at the same time very sceptical about the free market? 661 01:28:04,160 --> 01:28:12,710 This is the kind of thing that Scruton talks about. Wonderful. So at this point, I have everything I wanted to ask. 662 01:28:12,710 --> 01:28:17,210 I had a few other questions, but we have somehow gotten to them. 663 01:28:17,210 --> 01:28:25,640 Now, at this point, I realised you guys have a lot of ideas and a lot of knowledge present that you might want to air. 664 01:28:25,640 --> 01:28:34,130 So at this point, I just want to ask you, is this there anything we haven't talked about which needs mentioning? 665 01:28:34,130 --> 01:28:37,760 I really wanted to talk about artificial intelligence, 666 01:28:37,760 --> 01:28:50,180 I've mentioned throughout this programme that technology is very existential to conservatism because it forces it to act to perform in the in the 667 01:28:50,180 --> 01:29:02,660 strangely romantic and often bloodthirsty manner in the early 19th century and midway through the 18th century that we saw from Hoda at Harman. 668 01:29:02,660 --> 01:29:14,240 But in A.I., this is this is more existential than it has ever been. Geocode scholar on communism said that conservatism often. 669 01:29:14,240 --> 01:29:23,990 Sorry. Yeah, Jipé often tolerates tyranny because it's dedicated to nonaction in life. 670 01:29:23,990 --> 01:29:29,330 But when, of course, you're posited in a dynamic where galion guys, 671 01:29:29,330 --> 01:29:39,020 there's this spirit of history is going to literally incarnate itself in another being in a predator or competitor against 672 01:29:39,020 --> 01:29:47,810 humanity or something that changes the definition of what it means to be human next to genetic implementations and upgrades. 673 01:29:47,810 --> 01:29:55,070 The question cannot be avoided and conservatism has to mobilise itself if it's going to do anything, 674 01:29:55,070 --> 01:30:03,410 if it isn't just going to leave designations of what is human and what is not human to Silicon Valley. 675 01:30:03,410 --> 01:30:12,320 Transhumanist, as Newquist says of the more naturally, because this debate is not really taking place in the mainstream, 676 01:30:12,320 --> 01:30:20,030 besides the really crazy stuff that is cited in the most recent government innovation document about, 677 01:30:20,030 --> 01:30:28,370 you know, surfaces that can expand themselves and medical implementations for for for neuro link and so on. 678 01:30:28,370 --> 01:30:35,780 It's a debate that's taking place on the fringes between people like Nick Land and occasionally Sadique father. 679 01:30:35,780 --> 01:30:44,180 She's a lot less aggressive and I think a nice human being who are Marxist and postmaster's at the same time, 680 01:30:44,180 --> 01:30:48,080 who abide by a very, very strong enlightenment tradition and then say, 681 01:30:48,080 --> 01:30:48,650 OK, 682 01:30:48,650 --> 01:30:56,780 this enlightenment tradition that we value and really everything that humanity has led up to needs to be incarnated in AI in order to give it purpose. 683 01:30:56,780 --> 01:31:05,600 This seems to be the new or at least future object of faith, which the MISTERA talks about. 684 01:31:05,600 --> 01:31:15,740 And Bert likes to write constitutions around, turning humanity literally into a dehumanised blood sacrifice for this immense creation. 685 01:31:15,740 --> 01:31:23,180 In this respect, it's absolutely essential to focus on the key conservative essay on technology, 686 01:31:23,180 --> 01:31:33,680 which is Heidegger's the question of technology, which suggests that what is dangerous about tech is exactly the machines themselves. 687 01:31:33,680 --> 01:31:37,250 It's what he calls in framing in German. 688 01:31:37,250 --> 01:31:41,660 It's the same word for skeleton for basis. 689 01:31:41,660 --> 01:31:43,850 And this in framing is in a sense, 690 01:31:43,850 --> 01:31:51,890 the attitude that one holds to technology or that a community holds to technology that is just being imagined, generated and so on and so on. 691 01:31:51,890 --> 01:31:55,100 And that limits how it is produced. 692 01:31:55,100 --> 01:32:03,290 But this is dangerous, he says, because it essentially turns other human beings around you into standing reserves for the inventors, 693 01:32:03,290 --> 01:32:06,830 into beings that are stored up potential to be utilised. 694 01:32:06,830 --> 01:32:12,710 And we see this in the very, very problematic land philosophy that I just brought up. 695 01:32:12,710 --> 01:32:14,240 But there is another way of going with it. 696 01:32:14,240 --> 01:32:22,250 And I think this will have to be the standard position that conservatives adopt if they're going to not only engage the mass, 697 01:32:22,250 --> 01:32:28,850 but prevent against one form of technological semi capitalist tyranny or another. 698 01:32:28,850 --> 01:32:34,010 And this is Yaquis model, which is what he calls Kozmo techniques, 699 01:32:34,010 --> 01:32:40,250 where the different national forms of DASSIN or even community forms of that 700 01:32:40,250 --> 01:32:46,670 sign of the individual existence from which in framing precipitates is borne 701 01:32:46,670 --> 01:32:56,570 in mind so that the technologies that emerge are capable of accommodating things like ancient Chinese medicine and do not just encroach in a deeply, 702 01:32:56,570 --> 01:33:02,120 deeply imperialist way on how people run themselves in different communities. 703 01:33:02,120 --> 01:33:09,980 If we if we're going to talk about any kind of cultural degeneration, the one that we do need to talk about, 704 01:33:09,980 --> 01:33:17,240 I'm sorry if I'm pushing it a bit too long, is the Americanisation of European and international linguistics. 705 01:33:17,240 --> 01:33:26,120 Robert Sapolsky, this excellent psychologist and neuroscience lecturer at Stanford, 706 01:33:26,120 --> 01:33:33,290 talked about the real likelihood that about 90 percent of languages are going to go extinct in the next hundred years. 707 01:33:33,290 --> 01:33:39,470 I have. Verified that statistic from myself, although I do trust the man and we don't even have to go that far, however, 708 01:33:39,470 --> 01:33:49,490 we can certainly look at the fact that the French academia, the organisation in charge of very strictly inserting true French words into the language, 709 01:33:49,490 --> 01:33:59,780 has had a has had an extremely difficult time trying to come up with alternatives to American figures of technological speak, 710 01:33:59,780 --> 01:34:08,540 texting, selfies, licking and so on and so on that have just entered the community structure. 711 01:34:08,540 --> 01:34:18,770 That kind of imposing and unifying social trend does not simply buy into structures that were always there. 712 01:34:18,770 --> 01:34:22,730 And so if there is going to be any sort of lasting pretence of conservatism, 713 01:34:22,730 --> 01:34:34,400 it has to bear those technological problems in mind and sort out a better in framing to do what Heidegger says is forming a realm of art. 714 01:34:34,400 --> 01:34:43,910 I love that it raises issues because, I mean, based on what we discuss and I think based on my understanding, I'd say but I mean, 715 01:34:43,910 --> 01:34:59,780 conservatism is always best in a sense at its strongest when when when when it's focussed on very particular specialised issues, 716 01:34:59,780 --> 01:35:08,560 you know, very clear, a very clear problem that concerns me as a person on a you know, on a on a micro level, 717 01:35:08,560 --> 01:35:12,800 what would be called, you know, in the book, in a sense, a little platoons and so on. 718 01:35:12,800 --> 01:35:19,520 Whereas, you know, these are issues, as you say, forward looking that are on a macro scale. 719 01:35:19,520 --> 01:35:31,940 And it's hard to think along the traditional lines that we try to describe and and others about these big issues. 720 01:35:31,940 --> 01:35:39,410 In general, obviously, you can you can argue about, you know, how to incorporate just as you did, 721 01:35:39,410 --> 01:35:43,940 you know, how to incorporate certain actions into your everyday life regarding climate change. 722 01:35:43,940 --> 01:35:50,990 You know how to how to recycle if we do or if we all do our duty or, you know, on the theoretical level, 723 01:35:50,990 --> 01:35:59,990 you know, the idea of climate change being a important issue because, you know, it's relating, again, 724 01:35:59,990 --> 01:36:07,430 to this idea of trusteeship, you know, leaving leaving a place that is better off still, you know, 725 01:36:07,430 --> 01:36:13,830 not only in an economic sense, but actually in a environmental sense as well for future generations. 726 01:36:13,830 --> 01:36:18,500 So you can make a pretty good case on very specific points about that, 727 01:36:18,500 --> 01:36:24,890 I think from from what you said, whereas like, you know, I'm so detached from that. 728 01:36:24,890 --> 01:36:30,500 You know, it's obviously because it's still it's still a long, long way down the road. 729 01:36:30,500 --> 01:36:31,970 To be fair to that. 730 01:36:31,970 --> 01:36:42,410 We actually, you know, have to think about this transend, about this idea of what these what these transhumanist, as they call them, 731 01:36:42,410 --> 01:36:55,610 try to try to think of this new basic, whatever it might be, hybrid or even standalone life or whatever you might call it. 732 01:36:55,610 --> 01:37:05,810 And it's still so far down the road that it's so hard to to get a grip on it, on a very particular issue, very particular basis. 733 01:37:05,810 --> 01:37:13,310 You know, what does I mean for what would this transition towards the future of of of intelligence, 734 01:37:13,310 --> 01:37:20,390 of technology, of this Uber Uber technology or Uber men in a technological way, 735 01:37:20,390 --> 01:37:32,780 then again mean for me personally or for for my community to adopt to and to to actually, you know, take take action to towards that. 736 01:37:32,780 --> 01:37:39,200 That's just my thought on it. Well, you realise how your language has changed. 737 01:37:39,200 --> 01:37:44,690 It's taken on this activist bent because you have to do something because conservatism 738 01:37:44,690 --> 01:37:53,780 as sitting on the couch and and quietly embracing life doesn't ring true. 739 01:37:53,780 --> 01:38:04,880 True that you that are so, so, so therefore it mobilises individuals and hopefully collectives this particular issue. 740 01:38:04,880 --> 01:38:10,370 And unless the conservatives will have to become relevant, if it if it wants to live at all, 741 01:38:10,370 --> 01:38:22,490 it can't just continue to to leech on rage while the real issues are determined by, for lack of a better word, experts. 742 01:38:22,490 --> 01:38:26,960 I'm not doing this in the govey in the sense I'm bringing it up in the sense that something 743 01:38:26,960 --> 01:38:33,440 that could very well change the definition of humanity should be concerned with humanity. 744 01:38:33,440 --> 01:38:38,540 Not simply tech heads that want to turn the human being into a kind of Gundam suit, 745 01:38:38,540 --> 01:38:44,060 that they can fly around climate changes, I think I've suggested already. 746 01:38:44,060 --> 01:38:52,610 Well, at least an illusion is such a pertinent issue to conservatism, because as I think you rightly brought up, 747 01:38:52,610 --> 01:39:01,790 it really emphasises the individual in relation to the society you're built up from yourself to your family, 748 01:39:01,790 --> 01:39:08,360 your community through little recycling activities and so on to maybe no small protest outside 749 01:39:08,360 --> 01:39:16,790 of BP or big ones with the whole town or the whole city to the country going carbon neutral. 750 01:39:16,790 --> 01:39:22,700 This is what Scruton talked about before he died and a significant amount of detail how conservatism didn't 751 01:39:22,700 --> 01:39:30,230 really have to parrot the policies of the fossil fuel industry and could become its own distinct entity. 752 01:39:30,230 --> 01:39:39,110 Do you guys see any chance of there being a sort of Biedermeier 2.0 period in the sense that 753 01:39:39,110 --> 01:39:51,050 the Internet fosters a sort of different type of intense mingling and internationalisation, 754 01:39:51,050 --> 01:39:58,100 that at some point people become upset with the artificial nature of these new little platoons, if you want, 755 01:39:58,100 --> 01:40:05,930 so that people would be drawn back into their actual local physical places in the sense as because 756 01:40:05,930 --> 01:40:13,670 they don't feel represented or they don't feel the the genuineness of the artificial secondary world, 757 01:40:13,670 --> 01:40:21,800 as you will, or do you think that is something that is past and the future is digital, just on an anecdotal basis to date? 758 01:40:21,800 --> 01:40:32,580 I mean, we all have to through one and a half years of a horrible time with the coronavirus, you know, a search. 759 01:40:32,580 --> 01:40:41,900 And in what you would call you know, on the one hand, there's the connexion and, you know, connectedness through video platforms, 760 01:40:41,900 --> 01:40:49,910 all the things that we're doing at the moment, podcasting or just, you know, having phone calls to try to connect with people. 761 01:40:49,910 --> 01:41:01,800 And I remember when I was working during that time, at the beginning, it was almost a it was almost a bonanza of people. 762 01:41:01,800 --> 01:41:11,840 And people were excited of, you know, going doing video calls, doing like an online online meetup and stuff like that. 763 01:41:11,840 --> 01:41:18,320 And now one and a half years later, everyone is completely fed up with it, at least in my experience. 764 01:41:18,320 --> 01:41:27,590 Like, everyone just wants to wants to meet in person again, wants to connect with people actually, you know, going going out together, 765 01:41:27,590 --> 01:41:35,730 actually, you know, playing sports together in your in your in your in your local football team or in your local whatever sports team. 766 01:41:35,730 --> 01:41:40,940 And it's it's it's just I would say, again, you know, 767 01:41:40,940 --> 01:41:57,920 innate thing that if you it's digital connexions can't yet I say yet substitute for what we as a community are looking for in terms of, 768 01:41:57,920 --> 01:42:03,680 you know, the social ties and the social interaction that we that we're craving as human beings. 769 01:42:03,680 --> 01:42:10,850 And so I think that's a very good example of, you know, just what you refer to on that, 770 01:42:10,850 --> 01:42:16,760 actually, as still there is there's need for for for actual bonds, 771 01:42:16,760 --> 01:42:21,380 for actual physical interaction in the actual physical, you know, 772 01:42:21,380 --> 01:42:30,740 actual physical expression of these shared of the shared trust of this of these shared connexions. 773 01:42:30,740 --> 01:42:37,640 I don't know if it's like, you know, if this is going to change with, you know, technology evolving, maybe it's going to change. 774 01:42:37,640 --> 01:42:42,860 Maybe we're going to have we're going to have such an advanced virtual reality 775 01:42:42,860 --> 01:42:49,100 based on based on a software in 50 years that we don't need that anymore. 776 01:42:49,100 --> 01:42:54,890 And we actually are all content with our new digital world and the new digital paradise. 777 01:42:54,890 --> 01:43:00,710 But I don't know. I can't see it yet. Let's say that. 778 01:43:00,710 --> 01:43:10,190 Well, this is where a favourite criticism of the anti tech writer Samuel Butler comes 779 01:43:10,190 --> 01:43:18,980 in because the man is obsessed with a kind of intellectual intellectual, 780 01:43:18,980 --> 01:43:24,650 although not specifically class related Luddite ism, which says we have to break down the machine. 781 01:43:24,650 --> 01:43:33,410 We have to we have to go back to this idealised past. But precisely because that past is idealised, it seems like the kind of thing one can have. 782 01:43:33,410 --> 01:43:37,370 Imagine after being processed into the way that a machine works, 783 01:43:37,370 --> 01:43:44,930 after having worked with a specific bit of technology for your whole life, you're still in that in framing, in that dynamic. 784 01:43:44,930 --> 01:43:48,740 You're not doing your own thing. And chances are, 785 01:43:48,740 --> 01:44:00,440 if we ever do come to the stage where we're either mostly living in a virtual world or we're all being upgraded in some form or another, 786 01:44:00,440 --> 01:44:07,190 the pressure is going to be on you to go along with it simply because you won't be able to compete with others. 787 01:44:07,190 --> 01:44:12,410 Of course, of value based critique of that can occur and very likely will occur. 788 01:44:12,410 --> 01:44:23,630 Seeing as the Zoomer generation are much more in touch with the necessity of human interaction by being deprived of it, 789 01:44:23,630 --> 01:44:33,170 but nevertheless, technolog technological development still predicates these philosophical changes. 790 01:44:33,170 --> 01:44:43,970 And so I think we're going to have to accept technology. If anything, it's more it'll be the generations to come that are concerned with this, 791 01:44:43,970 --> 01:44:51,320 the kids who have been prevented from having Keano in their key developing years. 792 01:44:51,320 --> 01:44:55,760 Great, did I hear you say zoomer as opposed to Boomer, that's genius. 793 01:44:55,760 --> 01:45:02,040 Is that did you come up with that? I didn't come up with the Zumiez no, that's been an Internet meme for very long time. 794 01:45:02,040 --> 01:45:06,540 Yeah. Oh, I love that. Yeah. All right. 795 01:45:06,540 --> 01:45:14,750 Well, uh, so that is a great, uh, finishing on that topic. 796 01:45:14,750 --> 01:45:21,140 So thank you guys for listening to this episode of In Our Spare Time, I hope you enjoyed it. 797 01:45:21,140 --> 01:45:30,440 If you found it enjoyable, like to listen to another one. Please just take your time and choose any one of the other episodes we've already uploaded 798 01:45:30,440 --> 01:45:36,290 or subscribe to the podcast and you will get the very next one when it comes out. 799 01:45:36,290 --> 01:45:40,460 Other than that, we are always happy to give you a get your feedback. 800 01:45:40,460 --> 01:45:47,000 So, you know, there's no direct way to give feedback on the website. 801 01:45:47,000 --> 01:46:00,140 Apparently, however, you can find me on the official Oxford website and just write me an email there if you'd like, or write it to our for podcasts. 802 01:46:00,140 --> 01:46:07,400 And we're very happy to receive your feedback, positive and constructive. 803 01:46:07,400 --> 01:46:11,000 Other than that, thank you for taking the time and talk to you soon. 804 01:46:11,000 --> 01:46:20,683 Bye bye.