Hierarchy and Efficiency.

The right kind of hierarchy is beneficial, the wrong kinds aren’t. The right kind is meritocratic, a fluid system arousing out of talent, experience and effort, like the hierarchy in a well run corporation. Any departure from this  system is ipso facto less efficient. For instance, the most efficient way of apportioning educational resources is towards those most capable of benefiting from them. People who call for hierarchy are usually calling for return to a more rigid, less meritocratic pattern….the kind that is based on class,  race, gender or other group characteristics. The kind that squanders the talents of the low-status in favour of “upper class twits”. We don’t know how many potential Einsteins spent their lives as goatherds because that’s what they were born into. (It’s no surprise that the West took off so quickly in the last 300 years or so: it was a virtuous circle , with wider education supported economic growth, and economic growth being ploughed back into increased education. It’s also no surprise that the few traditionalistic societies that can compete are bouyed up by resource wealth).

In fact, non meritocratic hierarchies have a double problem. They are not only inefficient because they don’t put the best people into jobs, they are inefficient because the hierarchy has to be maintained with an expenditure of effort in terms of force (“Guards, guards!”) and propaganda (“God bless the King”). Meritocratic hierarchies are the only ones that seem fair, and therefore, the only ones people will support voluntarily: no one complains that the only people with the right to operate in brains are qualified brain surgeons.

Advertisement

Neo and Paleo Reaction.

Neoreactionaries have stated how they differ from other reactionaries, and if someone doesn’t have those distinguishing features they are not neoreactionary. And the distinguishing features of neoreaction are a combination of modern science and transitional wisdom.

The reason that so many NRs are indistinguishable from traditional reactionaries is down to a failure to make the theory work. NRs can’t solve the problem of adapting social mores to rapid technological change by means of planning, because that would be some kind of progressivism. They cant appeal to their favoured mechanism of organic adaptation without slowing down technological change, which adds up to technopphobic conservatism. So they are left just abandoning the adaptation question, and bolting traditional mores onto modern societies and hoping for the best. But favouring unmodified traditional mores is paleo reaction.

Chesterton Fences are for The Other Guy.

“In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it” – GK Chesterton.

Chestertons Fence is a bad argument..even in the opinion of those who occasionally use it. You can tell, because no one uses it when there is any better argument available. After all it doesn’t give a reason why some X was wrong or right;. Instead, it just suggests that there was a reason and a function and purpose for it at some point in time… because no one ever does anything without good reason, right?…and that the function persists…because, circumstances never change, right?

It is very hard to imagine someone conceding to a Chestertons’s Fence that affects them, personally.
“Stop doing that”. “Why?” “For a reason which has long been forgotten”

I encountered the Chesterton Fence, although not under that name, in an article by Melanie Phillips. Her topic was homosexuality. After noting that some of her best friends…yes, really…argued that homosexuality must be bad, because that is the teaching of the ancients. In true CF fashion, nothing specifically wrong about it is mentioned. Would she stop doing something, or change her lifestyle, if someone told her “X is wrong. I can’t say how, but it’s that’s what the traditional teachings hold”, Actually, that is not idle speculation. I don’t usually go in for ad hominem , but this one is relevant. Phillips is a childless career woman. According to some traditional teachings, that’s a no-no. She’s on the wrong side of a fence a few inches from the one that she’s on the right side of.

It perhaps isn’t impossible to be a consistent, non hypocritical user of Chestertons Fence…but you would need be a very serious and consistent reactionary…well to the right of Ms Phillips.

“Christian, n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.” – Ambrose Bierce, the Devils Dictionary.