It is the same factors that have since then made pamphleteering into a province of irrelevant contrarian weirdos that also make the system immune to the lowered cost of pamphleteering enabled by the internet.
I would be interested in hearing more about these factors.
It is basically an observation about the extraordinarily firm and secure grip on public opinion held by the official intellectual institutions nowadays. I don’t have anything like a complete theory of how exactly this state of affairs came into being, or even of what exact mechanisms make their present influence so decisive and secure. (Though I could speculate at length.)
Whatever the mechanisms behind it might be, however, the influence of these institutions does appear to be so decisive and secure that no matter how cheap and convenient contrarian publishing may become, it poses no threat and can be safely laughed off. Whatever your message, the fact that you’re not accredited by them—or, in the unlikely case that you manage to raise a significant fuss with some unusual trick, that you’re condemned by them—automatically makes you so low-status, and the presumption that you’re a crackpot or some malevolent extremist so strong, that it’s effectively impossible to get a fair hearing outside of a tiny contrarian clique.
Of course, things were different in the past, and only time will tell if someone will eventually figure out a way around this system, in which case all bets are off.
Whatever your message, the fact that you’re not accredited by them—or, in the unlikely case that you manage to raise a significant fuss with some unusual trick, that you’re condemned by them—automatically makes you so low-status, and the presumption that you’re a crackpot or some malevolent extremist so strong, that it’s effectively impossible to get a fair hearing outside of a tiny contrarian clique.
How then do you explain the social change that has occurred? For example, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States started out very low status, and the elites who opposed it often invoked the rhetoric of crackpot and extremist. Yet it eventually won, in part by being so confrontational that it couldn’t be ignore, but not so confrontational that it could be suppressed.
Social change due to activism happens only if this activism has some support from the elites in charge. Otherwise, such activism will be suppressed swiftly and easily. (Or perhaps simply laughed off, if it’s clear that it poses no realistic threat.)
Of course, this contradicts various myths of spontaneous popular rebellion winning against oppressive elites and brave contrarians changing society through sheer moral strength. However, a realistic look at history and the present-day world will show that such things simply don’t happen in human societies. The 20th century U.S. is no exception.
Civil Rights (1940-1960 edition) has clear support from some political elites, and that explains a substantial amount of the progress in that time period.
But the change in elite positions from 1900 to 1940 needs explanation. Once, there was relatively little institutional support of civil rights. For example, Strauder v. West Virginia is basically a roadmap of what to say to “justify” Jim Crow. The change in institutional support needs some explanation, which is hard to come up with if the only thing that causes changes is institutional support.
Clearly, the elite opinion changes gradually over time for all sorts of reasons, sometimes unclear and puzzling. Often there are also conflicts within the elite (sometimes further complicated by foreign influences), which may lead to sudden and unexpected developments. My above comments assume that the state of affairs is stable in the short run, and that the contrarians in question face uniform opposition from the elite.
As for the specific changes in the U.S. elite’s positions in the first half of the 20th century, I don’t have a ready answer, even though I am reasonably familiar with the relevant history. I have seen multiple theories espoused by different people, but none has struck me as clearly correct, and I can only speculate how they might be fit together. However, I don’t think any part of these historical developments involved contrarians winning through public activism while faced with a uniformly hostile elite.
However, I don’t think any part of these historical developments involves contrarians winning through public activism while faced with a uniformly hostile elite.
I think that some activism is necessary, but not close to sufficient, to cause certain kinds of social change. At least in a post-Enlightenment society (i.e. a society that pays any attention to the concept of “consent of the governed”).
I think that “consent of the governed” is a concept too incoherent to be salvageable. After all, the very purpose of government is to do things that are arguably necessary but can’t be done consensually, and that circle simply cannot be squared.
As for activism in general, I didn’t mean to say that activism is necessarily without influence. What happens in reality is some sort of interplay between the activism and the dynamics of the intra-elite conflict, whose exact nature varies greatly between different cases. But some degree of elite support and participation is always involved whenever activism doesn’t get routinely suppressed or laughed off.
I think that “consent of the governed” is a concept too incoherent to be salvageable. After all, the very purpose of government is to do things that are arguably necessary but can’t be done consensually, and that circle simply cannot be squared.
Absurd. The issue of consent versus trust arises in all group dynamics that involve a leader (see e.g. Eliezer’s take on rationalist militia). You simply need to taboo “consent” here, and it’ll become clear that it’s just different levels of willingness to go along with unpopular measures that happen in society: direct approval due to strategic or value-related concerns → conformity-fuelled acceptance → acceptance under active propaganda/promises/etc → drawing upon any residual tolerance but cranking up the pressure indicators for the elites to see → … if a point is reached when the “consent” finally breaks down, for any situational definition of consent , that’s usually pretty noticeable to an astute observer.
Social change due to activism happens only if this activism has some support from the elites in charge.
A coherent and interesting contrarian movement is almost inevitably going to attract at least a tiny proportion of the “elite in charge”, as the folk psychology of generational shifts tells us. Communists, fascists, libertarians, you name it. There’s a reason why contrarianism is usually distributed in a quite specific and generally recurring way along society’s pyramid. Elite support for unlikely social change not only can be wielded in clever and indirect ways with disproportionately significant leverage—it probably doesn’t even need to be fully conscious.
That’s a bad example, if I remember US history right the civil rights movement was mostly supported by academics and the intellectual elite. It also had at the very least the sympathy of non-Southern newspapers. Or in other words, opinions among say professors and influential newspaper editors in the 1960s was probably closer to majority opinion on the subject in 1970s and even 1980s, than the majority opinion of their time. I think that’s actually the relevant group to watch, since this is an analysis of the role of opinion makers.
This is actually true for a lot of things. The opinions of those in power and quite often those in public have basically for the last 100 years or so always basically lagged for 20 years or so behind the prevailing opinion on a subject on a random Ivy League university. The charitable way to interpret this is that there exists something like moral progress and universities are a reliable truth finding mechanism and thus tend to get it right first. The alternative interpretation is that universities and the media are much more opinion makers than truth seekers and that the Ivy Leagues class are basically the institutions that determine the parameters of a status competition among the elites (which then both trickles down due to imitation, as well as gets spread by media and legislated by government) every generation.
Under that interpretation they hold massive power over society. Reflecting on that I think that would more or less make them the ruling class.
As I noted in my later reply, the Civil Rights movement is older than the 1940-1960 period. Advocating federal anti-lynching laws predates the 20th Century. Yet Strauder v. WV is reasonably representative of elite opinion of the time. See also Shipp v. United States, where the Supreme Court held a sheriff in contempt and sentenced him to a few months for allowing a lynching.
So you basically interested what drives changes in ruling class opinion? And feel comfortable with more or less equating elite opinion change with social change?
I’m interested in what attempts to cause social change actually “work.” A theory that activism never works seems no more consistent with the evidence than a theory that activism without elite support is the primary cause of social change. On the specific example we’re discussing, the evidence seems to be that the NAACP was activist, not a “ruling institution” from its founding (1909) until some point in the post-WWII period. Yet the NAACP created conditions that led to enormous social change.
I would be interested in hearing more about these factors.
It is basically an observation about the extraordinarily firm and secure grip on public opinion held by the official intellectual institutions nowadays. I don’t have anything like a complete theory of how exactly this state of affairs came into being, or even of what exact mechanisms make their present influence so decisive and secure. (Though I could speculate at length.)
Whatever the mechanisms behind it might be, however, the influence of these institutions does appear to be so decisive and secure that no matter how cheap and convenient contrarian publishing may become, it poses no threat and can be safely laughed off. Whatever your message, the fact that you’re not accredited by them—or, in the unlikely case that you manage to raise a significant fuss with some unusual trick, that you’re condemned by them—automatically makes you so low-status, and the presumption that you’re a crackpot or some malevolent extremist so strong, that it’s effectively impossible to get a fair hearing outside of a tiny contrarian clique.
Of course, things were different in the past, and only time will tell if someone will eventually figure out a way around this system, in which case all bets are off.
How then do you explain the social change that has occurred? For example, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States started out very low status, and the elites who opposed it often invoked the rhetoric of crackpot and extremist. Yet it eventually won, in part by being so confrontational that it couldn’t be ignore, but not so confrontational that it could be suppressed.
Social change due to activism happens only if this activism has some support from the elites in charge. Otherwise, such activism will be suppressed swiftly and easily. (Or perhaps simply laughed off, if it’s clear that it poses no realistic threat.)
Of course, this contradicts various myths of spontaneous popular rebellion winning against oppressive elites and brave contrarians changing society through sheer moral strength. However, a realistic look at history and the present-day world will show that such things simply don’t happen in human societies. The 20th century U.S. is no exception.
Civil Rights (1940-1960 edition) has clear support from some political elites, and that explains a substantial amount of the progress in that time period.
But the change in elite positions from 1900 to 1940 needs explanation. Once, there was relatively little institutional support of civil rights. For example, Strauder v. West Virginia is basically a roadmap of what to say to “justify” Jim Crow. The change in institutional support needs some explanation, which is hard to come up with if the only thing that causes changes is institutional support.
Clearly, the elite opinion changes gradually over time for all sorts of reasons, sometimes unclear and puzzling. Often there are also conflicts within the elite (sometimes further complicated by foreign influences), which may lead to sudden and unexpected developments. My above comments assume that the state of affairs is stable in the short run, and that the contrarians in question face uniform opposition from the elite.
As for the specific changes in the U.S. elite’s positions in the first half of the 20th century, I don’t have a ready answer, even though I am reasonably familiar with the relevant history. I have seen multiple theories espoused by different people, but none has struck me as clearly correct, and I can only speculate how they might be fit together. However, I don’t think any part of these historical developments involved contrarians winning through public activism while faced with a uniformly hostile elite.
I think that some activism is necessary, but not close to sufficient, to cause certain kinds of social change. At least in a post-Enlightenment society (i.e. a society that pays any attention to the concept of “consent of the governed”).
I think that “consent of the governed” is a concept too incoherent to be salvageable. After all, the very purpose of government is to do things that are arguably necessary but can’t be done consensually, and that circle simply cannot be squared.
As for activism in general, I didn’t mean to say that activism is necessarily without influence. What happens in reality is some sort of interplay between the activism and the dynamics of the intra-elite conflict, whose exact nature varies greatly between different cases. But some degree of elite support and participation is always involved whenever activism doesn’t get routinely suppressed or laughed off.
Absurd. The issue of consent versus trust arises in all group dynamics that involve a leader (see e.g. Eliezer’s take on rationalist militia). You simply need to taboo “consent” here, and it’ll become clear that it’s just different levels of willingness to go along with unpopular measures that happen in society: direct approval due to strategic or value-related concerns → conformity-fuelled acceptance → acceptance under active propaganda/promises/etc → drawing upon any residual tolerance but cranking up the pressure indicators for the elites to see → … if a point is reached when the “consent” finally breaks down, for any situational definition of consent , that’s usually pretty noticeable to an astute observer.
A coherent and interesting contrarian movement is almost inevitably going to attract at least a tiny proportion of the “elite in charge”, as the folk psychology of generational shifts tells us. Communists, fascists, libertarians, you name it. There’s a reason why contrarianism is usually distributed in a quite specific and generally recurring way along society’s pyramid. Elite support for unlikely social change not only can be wielded in clever and indirect ways with disproportionately significant leverage—it probably doesn’t even need to be fully conscious.
That’s a bad example, if I remember US history right the civil rights movement was mostly supported by academics and the intellectual elite. It also had at the very least the sympathy of non-Southern newspapers. Or in other words, opinions among say professors and influential newspaper editors in the 1960s was probably closer to majority opinion on the subject in 1970s and even 1980s, than the majority opinion of their time. I think that’s actually the relevant group to watch, since this is an analysis of the role of opinion makers.
This is actually true for a lot of things. The opinions of those in power and quite often those in public have basically for the last 100 years or so always basically lagged for 20 years or so behind the prevailing opinion on a subject on a random Ivy League university. The charitable way to interpret this is that there exists something like moral progress and universities are a reliable truth finding mechanism and thus tend to get it right first. The alternative interpretation is that universities and the media are much more opinion makers than truth seekers and that the Ivy Leagues class are basically the institutions that determine the parameters of a status competition among the elites (which then both trickles down due to imitation, as well as gets spread by media and legislated by government) every generation.
Under that interpretation they hold massive power over society. Reflecting on that I think that would more or less make them the ruling class.
As I noted in my later reply, the Civil Rights movement is older than the 1940-1960 period. Advocating federal anti-lynching laws predates the 20th Century. Yet Strauder v. WV is reasonably representative of elite opinion of the time. See also Shipp v. United States, where the Supreme Court held a sheriff in contempt and sentenced him to a few months for allowing a lynching.
So you basically interested what drives changes in ruling class opinion? And feel comfortable with more or less equating elite opinion change with social change?
I’m interested in what attempts to cause social change actually “work.”
A theory that activism never works seems no more consistent with the evidence than a theory that activism without elite support is the primary cause of social change.
On the specific example we’re discussing, the evidence seems to be that the NAACP was activist, not a “ruling institution” from its founding (1909) until some point in the post-WWII period. Yet the NAACP created conditions that led to enormous social change.