(Roughly) Daily

The estimable Ted Gioia has pulled a 2022 essay from his newsletter up from behind the paywall. It was very relevant then; if anything, more relevant now…

Back in 2014, I sketched out a widely-read outline of an alternative interpretation of cultural conflict. Curiously enough, the conceptual tools I used came from a 1929 book from philosopher José Ortega y Gasset entitled The Revolt of the Masses—a work that offers surprisingly timely insights into our current situation.

That article stirred up a lot of debate at the time, but the whole situation has intensified further since 2014. Everything I’ve seen in those eight years has made painfully clear how insightful Ortega had been. The time has come to revisit that framework, summarizing its key insights and offering predictions for what might happen in the future.

Here’s part of what I wrote back in 2014:

First, let me tell you what you won’t find in this book. Despite a title that promises political analysis, The Revolt of the Masses has almost nothing to say about conventional party ideologies and alignments. Ortega shows little interest in fascism or capitalism or Marxism, and this troubled me when I first read the book. (Although, in retrospect, the philosopher’s passing comments on these matters proved remarkably prescient—for example his smug dismissal of Russian communism as destined to failure in the West, and his prediction of the rise of a European union.) Above all, he hardly acknowledges the existence of ‘left’ and ‘right’ in political debates.

Ortega’s brilliant insight came in understanding that the battle between ‘up’ and ‘down’ could be as important in spurring social and cultural change as the conflict between ‘left’ and ‘right’. This is not an economic distinction in Ortega’s mind. The new conflict, he insists, is not between “hierarchically superior and inferior classes…. upper classes or lower classes.” A millionaire could be a member of the masses, according to Ortega’s surprising schema. And a pauper might represent the elite.

The key driver of change, as Ortega sees it, comes from a shocking attitude characteristic of the modern age—or, at least, Ortega was shocked. Put simply, the masses hate experts. If forced to choose between the advice of the learned and the vague impressions of other people just like themselves, the masses invariably turn to the latter. The upper elites still try to pronounce judgments and lead, but fewer and fewer of those down below pay attention.

This dynamic is now far more significant than it was eight years ago. So I want to share 15 observations on the emerging vertical dimension of cultural conflict—these both define the rupture and try to predict how it will play out…

Read on for: “15 Observations on the New Phase in Cultural Conflict” from @tedgioia.bsky.social.

(Image above: source)

* José Ortega y Gasset in The Revolt of the Masses… where he also observed: “Liberalism – it is well to recall this today – is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. It announces the determination to share existence with the enemy; more than that, with an enemy that is weak. It was incredible that the human species should have arrived at so noble an attitude, so paradoxical, so refined, so acrobatic, so antinatural. Hence, it is not to be wondered at that this same humanity should soon appear anxious to get rid of it. It is a discipline too difficult and complex to take firm root on earth.”

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As we contend with contention, we might send rational birthday greetings to an avatar of the Enlightenment (which did so much to spawn liberalism), Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire; he was born on this date in 1694.  The Father of the Age of Reason, he produced works in almost every literary form: plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works– more than 2,000 books and pamphlets (and more than 20,000 letters).  He popularized Isaac Newton’s work in France by arranging a translation of Principia Mathematica to which he added his own commentary.

A social reformer, Voltaire used satire to criticize the intolerance, religious dogma, and oligopolistic privilege of his day, perhaps nowhere more sardonically than in Candide.

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