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The Case for Tragic Liberalism

It’s a weird thing, Progress.

For many of us, it’s been handed down as an article of faith. An irreversible upward trend from Stone Age poverty to Space Age abundance.

For others, who’ve been on the sharp end of some of its collateral damage and broken promises, Progress feels more like the root of all evil.

As abstract and philosophical as it may seem at first glance, getting really clear on our “theory of change” – i.e. where we’ve come from and where we think we’re going–is having increasingly vital real world consequences.

From MAGA politics (at home and abroad), to Antifa protests in the streets, from AI Doomers and Evangelists, to Geoengineers and eco-Monkey Wrenchers, from the dismantling of the rules based order…to the staggeringly weak response to all of these attacks and lack of a coherent rebuttal–it’s leaving us politically, philosophically and morally adrift.

At a time when we should all be rowing together into the oncoming storm.

As it happens, there are some political philosophers who took a crack at articulating a more accurate and helpful view of our current moment–we can call them the “Tragic Liberals.”

(Today’s exploration of Tragic Liberalism is the political bookend to our discussion of Victor Frankl’s Tragic Optimism a few weeks ago. If you want to check that out before diving in, click here)

If we unpack what they have to say, what they caution against, and what they advise, we can update our maps to more accurately reflect the chop we’re encountering.

Three of the most prominent of these Tragic Liberals are Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin, his protege London School of Economics professor John Gray, and Stanford’s Hoover Institute’s Thomas Sowell.

Following their arguments will take us back to some surprisingly ancient origins. Tracing them forwards to our current political moment, will shed some helpful light on how we got to now (and where we might want to get to next)

Since we’ve got more interesting ground to cover, just gonna front-load their wiki style bios here so we can get on with exploring the implications/applications of their thinking.

Isaiah Berlin

(no relation to Irving “White Christmas” / “God Bless America” Berlin)

• Bio: (1909–1997) Russian-British philosopher and historian of ideas, long associated with All Souls College, Oxford.

• Seminal Texts: Two Concepts of Liberty, The Hedgehog and the Fox, The Crooked Timber of Humanity.

• Key Concept: Value Pluralism—the terrifying realization that ultimate human values (like Liberty and Equality) are inherently incompatible and cannot be maximized simultaneously. #suckitHaidt

• The Tragic Stance: Tragedy is philosophical. Because values collide, we must settle for Negative Liberty (”Freedom From”) as a libertarian style safety buffer from government overreach; any attempt at Positive Liberty (”Freedom To”) implies a “perfect solution” exists, which inevitably justifies totalitarian coercion to achieve it. Glorious Ends justify Horrific Means

John Gray

• Bio: (1948–Present) British political philosopher and writer, formerly Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics (LSE).

• Seminal Texts: Straw Dogs, Black Mass, The Silence of Animals.

• Key Concept: The Myth of Progress—humanism is just a secular heresy of Christianity that falsely believes technology changes human nature; we remain “monkeys with machine guns.” Our technological development “ratchets” while our ethical development backslides. That leads to an ever increasing wisdom gap between our basic nature and the power of our tools.

• The Tragic Stance: Tragedy is biological. Berlin’s liberalism is still too optimistic; since we cannot transcend our violent primate software, the best political goal is not “Rights” but Modus Vivendi—a cynical, temporary truce to keep the “Amoral Novelty Engine” from destroying the species. (He’s a real bundle of sunshine, this one).

Thomas Sowell

• Bio: (1930–Present) American economist and social theorist, currently a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. (and the Far Right’s current Favorite Black Man) #sorryKanye

• Seminal Texts: A Conflict of Visions, Knowledge and Decisions, Basic Economics.

• Key Concept: The Constrained Vision—human nature is fixed and knowledge is dispersed, meaning no central planner can ever solve societal problems, “There are no Solutions, only Trade-Offs.”

• The Tragic Stance: Tragedy is systemic. Suffering is the default state of a complex world with limited resources; the tragedy is that “Unconstrained” visionaries, ignoring these limits to pursue Cosmic Justice, inevitably destroy the decentralized systems (markets/traditions) that were actually keeping us alive.

To sum them up:

• Berlin fears the Ideologue: The tragedy is that we cannot have all good things at once; the danger is the Utopian who tries to force them together.

• Gray fears the Animal: The tragedy is that we are delusional beasts; the danger is the Humanist who thinks we have evolved.

• Sowell fears the Bureaucrat: The tragedy is that we are ignorant; the danger is the Planner who thinks he knows enough to fix the world.

Bottom line: all three wave the red flag of caution against any centralized and Utopian sense of civilizational Progress or the Perfectibility of Man.

No matter how tempting, they’d all agree, it’s a Fool’s Errand or a Tyrant’s Excuse to insist that we can overcome our basic and flawed natures to ever get to a Promised Land.

Of any sort.

Better, they’d suggest, to defend a level playing field where an “agonistic liberalism”–a hearty debate in the body civic and politic, can play out amongst and between competing, conflicting and fundamentally irreconcilable human values.

from Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex and Death in a World That’s Lost Its Mind

“The dream of the 18th century was that a single, coherent set of values, rooted in rationality, could make a heaven on Earth,” UC Berkeley philosopher Alison Gopnik writes. “But more recent philosophers (like Berlin, Gray and Sowell) . . . sobered by the 20th century’s failed utopias, have argued for a more modest liberal pluralism that makes room for multiple, genuinely conflicting goods.

Family and work, solidarity and autonomy, tradition and innovation are really valuable, and really in tension, in both the lives of individuals and the life of a nation. One challenge for enlightenment now is to build social institutions that can bridge and balance these values.”

While that kind of split-the-difference compromise is often held in contempt by revolutionaries, there is a subtle genius to M.A.D.— mutually assured dissatisfaction. At its worst, this kind of strategic stalemate leads to stagnation and frustration.

At its best, this sort of agonistic liberalism leads to the kinds of hard-won compromises that delight virtually no one, frustrate nearly everyone, and perversely expand the chance to keep playing the Infinite Game with more and more players, better than any other options we’ve found.

What’s better—supply side economics à la John Keynes, or libertarian free markets à la Milton Friedman?

Safety nets or bootstraps to build a just society?

Big sticks or carrots to preserve international order?

Federal or states’ rights to guide the governed?

Investing in education or employment to empower a citizenry?

Separation or integration of church and state?

Multicultural melting pot or national identity?

Revolution or evolution?

The only honest answer is “it depends.” And we’re not entirely sure.

If all of life on Earth was compressed into one twenty-four-hour day, anatomically modern man shows up at four seconds before midnight. Cave paintings at one second before the end.

We’ve only been playing at civilization for the last fraction of a second. To put how little we know in perspective, we’re still not settled on the simple fact of whether eggs, butter, and coffee are the best things ever, or are going to murder us in our sleep.

For Berlin, growing up in Moscow and witnessing the initial optimistic phase of the Russian Revolution, only to see it descend into the bloody fervor of Lenin and Stalin–his wariness was imprinted at an early age.

Sowell, growing up Black in a Harlem tenement and bootstrapping his way to a Harvard professorship of Marxist philosophy–his disillusionment grew with the Black Power liberation theologies of the 60s. As he moved leftward across the continent, from Cambridge to Palo Alto, his politics moved rightward. He came to deeply suspect any efforts beyond Constraining the worst parts of human nature and letting markets sort out the rest.

Gray, in some ways, is an amalgam of them both. He grew up working class English, but his smarts got him into Oxford where he was surrounded by aristos. At first he bought into Thatcherite conservatism but then realized that while Marxist paradises didn’t work, neither did NeoLiberal paradises. His hometown slum remained a slum under Labor and Tories both. By the fall of the Berlin Wall and all the crowing about the End of History, he’d become deeply skeptical of the whole lot.

For Gray, it was no longer which side was wrong. It was that all sides were wrong.

He pointed out that even our secular mythologies of Progress were all basically “Christianity without the Cross.” They followed the Fall-Redemption-Paradise arc note for note, even if they left out the Jesus bit.

For Marxists, the Fall was the flea bitten Proletariat laboring in the dark satanic mills of Industrial Capitalism. Only to be redeemed by casting off their chains and rising up against the owners to instill a workers’ paradise.

There is here a strong messianic streak in the political philosophy of Marxism. The Dialectical process of history, however, ensures that you will be eliminated in due course, for progress must win in the end.

–Bertrand Russel

For the Capitalists, the Fall was the abject poverty and inequality of the Dark Ages (or Soviet Bloc economies), the redemption was deregulated global markets, and the paradise was meritocratic techno-abundance for all.

It’s that “Christianity without the Cross” structure that makes them both feel so goddamn truthy. They scratch a deep narrative itch that’s been three thousand odd years in the grooving.

Just take a quick look at our current Tug of (culture) War to see how much we’re torn between these competing visions. Still today.

From 2008 to 2020 or so, we veered hard towards an Unconstrained social vision where everyone had to become mocha colored post-racial , post-colonial non-binary (they/them) New Atheists. Or else.

If you weren’t onboard with that particular flavor of Utopia you were tarred with the backwards-ass racist/sexist/colonizer brush and possibly canceled.

But that stuck in more than a few craws!

Now we’re scraping sparks down the other guardrail where everyone (better) become White Christian Nationalists and Effective Accelerationists.

If you’re not onboard with this opposing flavor you’re tarred with the antifa marxist/narco/groomer brush and doxxed or deported.

From techno-optimists like Marc Andreessen who insist that anyone who stands between us and unchecked AI exploration literally has the blood of untold future born billions on their hands…

To MAPS’ sweet but doomed “Net Zero Trauma by 2070” aspirations for MDMA therapy that will solve world hunger and deliver us to a One World Hope Punk Paradise…

Once you see the fundamental pitfall of the whole redemptive Utopian arc, you keep spotting it everywhere.

When it comes to mapping our future, we can’t help ourselves from hoping for the Best, rather than settling for the Good Enough.

And all sides of the political spectrum are doing it!

So that’s Step One in our argument for Tragic Liberalism:

Beware Utopias, no matter how tempting or inspiring. And defend the “Freedom From” coercion of the individual to always choose their own destiny.

Resist at all costs the “Freedom To” temptation to choose amongst irreconcilable values and force your favorites upon others.

***

Which if you think of it, sounds vaguely familiar, doesn’t it?

That the highest Good, even beyond Good itself, is the freedom of the individual to choose it?

Even (and especially) if they might end up choosing badly? It’s still somehow better to grant them that liberty, although it leaves open the possibility of “missing the mark” and sinning?

Hmm…now where on Earth did we hear something like that?

Oh yeah, wayyyy back In The Beginning.

In the Garden of Eden itself.

If an all-knowing all-powerful God had simply wanted his children not to fuckitup, he would’ve put an electric fence around that Tree of Knowledge.

But if he’d done that, the best Humanity would’ve ever amounted to were obedient slaves. In order to become Imago Dei, in the image of God, they had to be able to succumb to temptation in order to truly choose good.

In East of Eden, John Steinbeck picks up the story after the Fall. In his modern retelling of Adam and Eve’s two boys, Cain and Abel, he explores this theme of choice even further. Set in the golden hills of California, we see a family reenacting that ancient tale of Favored and Fallen sons.

#sexycain

#bluesteelOG

But Steinbeck’s father character is troubled by the Cain and Abel story. So he tasks some Hebrew scholars in San Francisco to analyze that famous passage on fratricide, redemption and Free Will.

They zero in on the distinction God makes when talking with murderous Cain about whether he can, must or should overcome Sin.

The rabbis explain why, of three possible translations, it’s the last one that unlocks the meaning of the story, and elevates humanity above the animals:

“The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance.

The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin.

But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—’Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open.”*

“Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, ‘Do thou,’ and throw their weight into obedience.

And there are millions more who feel predestination in ‘Thou shalt.’ Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be.

But ‘Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice.

It is a ladder to climb to the stars.”

Which matches up with our Tragic Liberals notions pretty neatly!

Constrained (sinful) but Free From (godly or governmental coercion) = the best chance at Paradise we’re ever gonna get.

Freedom From coercion (even of the Divine kind) is even more important than Freedom To (be forced into doing Good without actually choosing it).

Even in our murderous weakness and filth!

It also provides a totally different reading of the genius of Genesis.

Steinbeck reintroduces real wisdom into the mainline Bible story. The whole temptation in the Garden wasn’t just a power play on Yahweh’s part. It wasn’t some excuse to bow up on humanity.

Rather it was a bittersweet tragic invitation to radical responsibility. Yahweh didn’t just put the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden. He left the gate open for the Serpent. On purpose.

And that has made all the difference.

(next week, we’ll trace this whole Free Will thing through the New Testament to the founding of America, and highlight how today’s Christian Nationalists are actually doing the least Christian and most Un-American thing possible with their agenda)