I have not properly read that “Moloch” essay, but I think I get the message. The world ruled by Moloch is one in which negative-sum games prevail, causing essential human values to be neglected or sacrificed. Nonetheless, one does not get to rule without at least espousing the values of one’s civilization or one’s generation. The public abandonment of human values therefore has to be justified in terms of necessary evils—most commonly, because there are amoral enemies, within and without.
The other form of abandonment of value that corrupts the world, mostly boils down to the machiavellian pursuit of self-interest—the self-interest of an individual, a clique, a class. To explain this, you don’t even need to suppose that society is trapped in a malign negative-sum equilibrium. You just need to remember that the pursuit of self-interest is actually a natural thing, because subjective goods are experienced by individuals. Humans do also have a natural attraction to certain intersubjective goods, but “omnisubjective” goods like universal love, or perpetual peace among all nations, are radical utopian ideas, that aren’t even conceivable without prior cultural groundwork. But that groundwork has already existed for thousands of years:
It’s important to remember that the culture we grew up in is deeply nihilistic at its core...
The pursuit of a better world is as old as history. Think of the “Axial Age” in which several world religions—which include universal moralities—came into being. Every civilization has a notion of good. Every modern political philosophy involves some kind of ideal. Every significant movement and institution had people in it thinking of how to do good or minimize harm. Even cynical egoistical cliques that wield power, must generally claim to be doing so, for the sake of something greater than themselves.
I’m pretty sure that the entire 20th century came and went with nearly none of them spending an hour a week thinking about solving the coordination problems facing the human race, so that the world could be better for them and their children.
You appear to be talking about game theorists and economists, saying they were captured by military and financial elites respectively, and led to use their knowledge solely in the interest of those elites? This seems to me profoundly wrong. After World War 2, the whole world was seeking peace, justice, freedom, prosperity. The economists and game theorists, of the West at least, were proposing pathways to those outcomes, within the framework of western ideology, and in the context of decolonization and the cold war. The main rival to the West was Communism, which of course had its own concept of how to make a better world; and then you had all the nonaligned postcolonial nationalisms, for whom having the sovereign freedom to decide their own destinies was something new, that they pursued in a spirit of pragmatic solidarity.
What I’m objecting to is the idea that ideals have counted for nothing in the governance of the world, except to camouflage the self-interest of ruling cliques. Metaphorically, I don’t believe that the world is ruled by a single evil god, Moloch. While there is no shortage of cold or depraved individuals in the circles of power, the fact is that power usually requires a social base of some kind, and sometimes it is achieved by standing for what that base thinks is right. Also, one can lose power by being too evil… Moloch has to share power with other “gods”, some of them actually mean well, and their relative share of power waxes and wanes.
I think a far more profound critique of “Moloch theory” could be written, emphasizing its incompleteness and lopsidedness when it’s treated as a theory of everything.
As for new powers of coordination, I would just say that completely shutting Moloch out of the boardroom and the war room, is not a panacea. It is possible to coordinate on a mistaken goal. And hypercoordination itself could even become Moloch 2.0.
I have not properly read that “Moloch” essay, but I think I get the message. The world ruled by Moloch is one in which negative-sum games prevail, causing essential human values to be neglected or sacrificed. Nonetheless, one does not get to rule without at least espousing the values of one’s civilization or one’s generation. The public abandonment of human values therefore has to be justified in terms of necessary evils—most commonly, because there are amoral enemies, within and without.
The other form of abandonment of value that corrupts the world, mostly boils down to the machiavellian pursuit of self-interest—the self-interest of an individual, a clique, a class. To explain this, you don’t even need to suppose that society is trapped in a malign negative-sum equilibrium. You just need to remember that the pursuit of self-interest is actually a natural thing, because subjective goods are experienced by individuals. Humans do also have a natural attraction to certain intersubjective goods, but “omnisubjective” goods like universal love, or perpetual peace among all nations, are radical utopian ideas, that aren’t even conceivable without prior cultural groundwork. But that groundwork has already existed for thousands of years:
The pursuit of a better world is as old as history. Think of the “Axial Age” in which several world religions—which include universal moralities—came into being. Every civilization has a notion of good. Every modern political philosophy involves some kind of ideal. Every significant movement and institution had people in it thinking of how to do good or minimize harm. Even cynical egoistical cliques that wield power, must generally claim to be doing so, for the sake of something greater than themselves.
You appear to be talking about game theorists and economists, saying they were captured by military and financial elites respectively, and led to use their knowledge solely in the interest of those elites? This seems to me profoundly wrong. After World War 2, the whole world was seeking peace, justice, freedom, prosperity. The economists and game theorists, of the West at least, were proposing pathways to those outcomes, within the framework of western ideology, and in the context of decolonization and the cold war. The main rival to the West was Communism, which of course had its own concept of how to make a better world; and then you had all the nonaligned postcolonial nationalisms, for whom having the sovereign freedom to decide their own destinies was something new, that they pursued in a spirit of pragmatic solidarity.
What I’m objecting to is the idea that ideals have counted for nothing in the governance of the world, except to camouflage the self-interest of ruling cliques. Metaphorically, I don’t believe that the world is ruled by a single evil god, Moloch. While there is no shortage of cold or depraved individuals in the circles of power, the fact is that power usually requires a social base of some kind, and sometimes it is achieved by standing for what that base thinks is right. Also, one can lose power by being too evil… Moloch has to share power with other “gods”, some of them actually mean well, and their relative share of power waxes and wanes.
I think a far more profound critique of “Moloch theory” could be written, emphasizing its incompleteness and lopsidedness when it’s treated as a theory of everything.
As for new powers of coordination, I would just say that completely shutting Moloch out of the boardroom and the war room, is not a panacea. It is possible to coordinate on a mistaken goal. And hypercoordination itself could even become Moloch 2.0.