But that's predicated on the blank slate idea, which is only tenable in sociology and requires one to ignore all other fields of study.

@Pre-Modernist Fair point.

Yes! Equal opportunity vs equal outcome. Every day leftists would like to have both... but if you want equal outcomes (assuming that's even possible), almost by definition you can't have equal opportunity. Because when humans are free to choose, they choose differently because they ARE different. The only way to combat that is to limit opportunity for certain groups. Thus, we arrive at the authoritarian left.

Well said

I would offer a similar response to the one I gave to @jnaatjes. Whereas I do agree that an equality of opportunity is demonstrably beneficial to a society, I favour a more passive equality of opportunity as opposed to an active one. Not barring people based on factors unrelated to their qualification is different from actively seeking to equalise opportunity. The idea that without conceptualising individuals as universally equal we wouldn't have equality of opportunity(at least in its passive form) seems untenable to me. But as I said on the previous comment, it may be just a divide between modern and traditional thought; I prefer to build around what is than to tear down what is and attempt to build what I think should be.

@Pre-Modernist Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying, and please correct if I am mistaken, what I am getting from your stance sounds like is that you believe that society constructs itself in a manner that values merit despite an active ethos of individual meritocracy?
I ask this because I know throughout history, this is not always the case, In the cases in historic societies that have implemented meritocracy, not all of these societies measure merit through virtuous or noble means. An example would be a rigid, totalitarian state, where merit is measured by one's ability to conform, or to act violently, or to arbitrarily use force and power to enact the will of the state. A specific example would be an ISIS fighter gaining more gravitas within the caliphate for executing more non-believers. Because I am all for a system of meritocracy, so long as the methods by which it is measured are aimed at the pursuit of the good, and the virtuous (by classical their definitions).
Or are you saying that ascribing universal value to all individuals is pointless because everyone has a particular niche ability, which creates purpose for them in the world and therefor greater value for society, which make universal value redundant?
In this case I would be inclined to agree, but the issue would be the argument: Is it then not possible to ascribe more value to those of niche skill that is more beneficial, or scalable to those who have a niche skill that is less in demand, or of little use? And if this is the case, would that not ascribe more worth to those who are born with more potential, and justify an excess of moral agency for them? Meaning one could put up quite the argument that being born from nobility, or with genetic advantages grants one more inherent value than someone of inferior social stature or inferior genetics, which would disable social/sexual upward mobility.

Or I'm just fencing against shadows and have misunderstood completely.

@Marcus_Aurelius I think the lack of clarity is on my part, I tend to trip over myself trying to fit in all my reasons for adoring traditional societies. What I'm claiming is that traditional societies do not construct themselves according to anything, they arrange themselves around what is. I'm digging down deep to the biological and evolutionary hierarchies that humans naturally form and claiming that these are the basis of traditional societies, not any theoretical artifice. The values of the society are not implemented onto society, they describe what is already there.
It is entirely possible to claim that a member of the nobility holds more value than a mere serf, but a nobleman tending an earldom on his own would quickly disprove that statement. Each individual is going to value certain things more than other, he is also going to value different individuals at different levels; trying to prevent this seems rather futile to me.

@Pre-Modernist I would gree that it is futile to value everyone equally, especially from a practical sense since in the end every individual has their own potential, with that potential having a different net benefit to society. But like I said, the issue that I see with this is the inevitable categorizing of people based on their intrinsic worth as lesser, which does leave this type of thinking open to Marxist or Hegelian critique, which you seem opposed to. The way out of that seems to be to apply some type of intrinsic worth to everyone, in a religious sense, despite the fact that I'm an agnostic, as in all are equal in the eyes of God (if anyone knows of the secular equivalent to this idea, please let me know). So I would say I agree with everything you have said concerning valuing individuals, we seem to just part ways at the conclusion.

@Marcus_Aurelius that's entirely fair. I think you're right, this one might just be down to interpretive differences. Even though I do tend to give modernism a good deal of shit, I absolutely respect the hell out of classical liberal thought. I wouldn't poke at it so much if I didn't think it was worth critiquing. I'll cling to my traditionalism and continue to defend its merit, but classical liberalism is much a more practical way to navigate the contemporary world.

See, I guess this is where modernity and traditionalism clash. The idea of imposing a theoretical concept of equality onto society is inherently modernistic; traditional societies form around the natural inequalities between individuals. When viewed through a modernistic Hegelian lens, inequalities represent a struggle between the powerful and the weak. In a more traditional, almost wholistic view, these same inequalities are strengths and weaknesses in an individual that allow him to fit a niche within society and fulfill a vital role. Every member of a society has intrinsic value, but even the more metaphoric pretense of equality is an attempt to replace the natural with the artificial.

@Pre-Modernist yeah, I don't believe for a second that manifestations of differences among individuals and groups is the result of nothing more than power struggles. I adimately agree with Jordan Peterson when he talks about the undesirability of equal outcomes, because it is only achieved through totalitarianism, or some terrible act of nature that decimates an entire society from the king to the commoner.

I'm a little bit out of my element here because I haven't done a lot of reading on this, so correct me if my understanding of history is wrong... But my major problem with traditionalism is not really a philosophical one, but it's more a problem with its practical application.

When we presuppose from the outset that an individual is limited to a certain function, it presupposes that we are able to make that call as to what their function should be, and I just don't think that's true. It may be true that certain abilities and characteristics may be stagnant for their entire lives. But there is no way to judge that, and people compensate for a lack of knowledge of the particularities by lumping individuals into groups and judging them as a collective. And that seems to be exactly what happens, through government force, in these aristocratic societies.

It seems to me that these older societies were plagued by a lack of mobility between socioeconomic classes. It seems they lacked the equal opportunity aspect because, of course, the aristocracy wanted to maintain its station at the top. The lower class wasn't allowed to be educated, wasn't allowed to dress above their station, etc. There were no "rags to riches" stories because they did not believe all men were created equal and did not believe all men were endowed with rights. Rights, instead, were based upon the nobility of your bloodline. And so if you are a peasant, then you will always be a peasant, and you will die a peasant. And it's easy for the nobleman to sit there smugly talking about the virtues and dignity of the local blacksmith... but while he's sitting on his comfy pillow eating crumpets, that poor blacksmith is sleeping on the floor and barely feeding his family. And all the while, that blacksmith may, in fact, be a genius, but it's of no consequence because he is a blacksmith and will die a blacksmith.

That's why I come back to the modernist idea that, yes, we have to act out the belief that all men are equal, and then allow them the perogitive to decide their own fate.

@jnaatjes but this thinking presupposes that traditionalist societal hierarchies are arbitrary. But that isn't the case, families and individuals at the top don't succeed because they're at the top, they are at the top because they succeed. Some families and individuals were elevated without merit, but they were in the minority and usually didn't last very long in their elevated positions.

Class mobility was certainly not as fluid as it is in modern societies, which I actually consider a benefit. It shouldn't be easy to climb a social hierarchy, it wouldn't be a hierarchy if everyone was at the top. The various levels of hierarchical fluidity were more dependent on culture than traditional values; class mobility in Great Britain was much more common than in India due to different cultural values. And it was a slower, more Darwinian process to climb a traditional hierarchy; one climbed not as an individual, but as a lineage. It provided a much more stable society without the constant flux of fortunes being made and broken.

The modernists also have a very unidimensional hierarchical view, it is almost entirely monetarily based. This is part of what makes comparing traditional hierarchies to modern hierarchies. Fortunes usually accumulated when one was on the top of the hierarchy, but money is not what elevates one. Being incredibly good at something that benefits society raises you(and in turn, your lineage) that much higher up the social ladder. Be it war, music, politics, philosophy, etc. in fact, one of the only things that wasn't commonly used to climb the ladder was business. So there were plenty of rags to riches stories, but the only way to trade those riches in for a place in the social hierarchy was to utilise them to benefit one's society. There were also countless stories of gifted musicians, thinkers, orators, etc. being lifted out of the peasantry and given a place at court due to their abilities.

And of course, there is the noblesse oblige. The more Hegelian view holds that those at the top are there to keep those at the bottom down. The traditional view is that those at the top are there because they are on average more capable and therefore have a responsibility to the less capable members of society. The responsibility that comes from being at the top of society is completely lost in modern thought, replaced by fractured and fluctuating class warfare.

Sorry that was a bit scattered, there's a whole lot to sort through on this subject and I'm not sure I did the best job of it. I'm too long winded to effectively cover such a general overview with any effectiveness, I'm much better at digging into one aspect at a time.

@Pre-Modernist Not too long winded for me. I appreciate long-form discussions... that's one of the things that attracts me to the IDW. Twitter isn't a very good place for me. Haha!

So please bear with my own long-winded response...

I think there's a lot of truth in what you're saying. Stable hierarchies are certainly valuable and necessary for a well-functioning society, because having highly capable people at the top, so long as they aren't corrupt, is beneficial to everyone else. I hadn't really considered this idea in this precise way before, until reading your comment, but there's a fundamental question there... should hierarchies be climbed as individuals or as lineages?

I can theoretically see how placing certain lineages at the top of the hierarchy, based upon the merit of the people who have come through those lineages, would maximize hierarchical stability. Those born into those families might have more of a sense of responsibility for society as a whole, because they don't just represent themselves, they represent their entire family going back generations (it's what is often played out in movies when a prince is expected to marry a princess but he just wants to be a renegade).

But as Jordan Peterson points out, the problem with hierarchies is they tilt toward tyranny, and people tend to stack up at the bottom. My libertarian bias makes me question how capable those noble lineages really are. Maybe they ascended the hierarchy thanks to the merit of "so and so's" great great grandfather... but now "so and so" is a fat, stupid nobleman standing on the shoulders of greater men.

It seems to me that the meritocracy suffers, and human prosperity and freedom fail to be maximized, when the judge of one's merit is based upon one's group identity... in this case, the nobility of your blood. And sure, maybe the nobility will recognize the talent of someone in a lower class and raise them up, but who the eff do they think they are arbitrarily deciding who's allowed to join them at the top???

I think my hang-up comes because my intuitive response is to value liberty above stability. Stability is certainly on my priority list, but I'd rather be dead than groveling under the boot of a tyrannical government. I don't at all think you're advocating for tyranny, but I personally am willing to accept the downsides of liberty in order to maintain mine and my children's ability to work toward their own future, and not have it dictated by someone else.

And in establishing a hierarchy, I just feel that the collective wisdom of the people, though far from perfect, is a better mechanism for establishing a hierarchy than the opinions of a few self-satisfied elites. Capitalism allows that to happen. The free market is the voice of the people, and money is merely a way of allocating resources based upon what we value. Again, there's cultural risk to that because then what is valued is not necessarily based upon what is beautiful or good, but upon how high-minded the people are.

But in my opinion, if you set people free, they are more likely than otherwise to elevate their minds and broaden their horizons (still unlikely, but more likely than otherwise). In the 1950's for instance, when America's consumer culture was at its height, more Americans were buying tickets to the theater and the ballet than they were buying tickets to baseball games.

And even if the people do lack virtue, I'd rather each individual dig their own grave than have it dug for them by an oppressive society.

@jnaatjes I think our communication breakdown comes from the fact that you're speaking in the prescriptive and I'm coming from the descriptive point of view. It's fairly representative of the modern vs traditional perspective. I'm not arguing that these hierarchies should exist, I'm saying that they do exist. The hierarchies are not put in place to maintain stability, the stability comes from not attempting to turn what is into what someone thinks should be. The nobility doesn't raise someone up from the lower classes, someone elevates themselves and the nobility recognises the fact. It's the same for lineages vs the individual; I can't speak as to which should rise through hierarchies, but I believe that in a Darwinian sense, one cannot rise without the other. If you do well, your offspring benefit; they can either build upon the advantages you provided and rise further, or they can squander the benefits and fall. If your great great grandfather earned a place in the nobility and you have inherited his title, it's assured that your great grandfather and your father both maintained the family's position through their own merit. Even if a family has been landed for centuries, incompetence will result in a fall within a few generations. The idea that this system prejudges people based on class is a misunderstanding; the class system is merely one cultural way of describing a hierarchy that already exists. Corruption exists in all things and I'm very much opposed to corruption within traditional forms of government, but corruption is certainly not inherent in them.

@jnaatjes in the way I view it, a hierarchy exists. Traditionalists accept the hierarchy, modernists attempt to continuously flatten the hierarchy, and postmodernists attempt to invert the hierarchy. Historically, option A usually proves most viable in the long run.

@Pre-Modernist yeah I think my overarching philosophy is kind of a mesh up of modernist and traditionalist thinking.

I definitely see the utility of hierarchies and don't desire to flatten them. But I also am suspicious of them, to a degree, because I don't want an entrenched aristocracy. I think that's why I prefer the hierarchy that naturally occurs in a free society, with a free market and social freedom. Because then, to me, it seems that maximizes the utility of the hierarchy because its structure is not based upon the opinions of a single person or small group. In a truly free market, there is no such thing as "too big to fail." If a huge corporation isn't meeting the needs of their customers, it's only a matter of time before some small start up, some entrepreneur in his garage with a good idea, comes to take that company, and sometimes an entire industry, out of business. There's always a sort of "traditionalist" objection to that because it upends the established institutions and established way of doing things. But it seems to me the net impact of innovation has always been positive, and that's what I want to maximize.

I see what you're saying with the descriptive vs prescriptive argument... I think it's a good argument. But I might look at it a different way. A hierarchy based purely in free market capitalism might actually be more descriptive and less prescriptive than what you're talking about. Because laissez-faire government says, "I'm not in control of this, and just because I think something should be does not mean I can or should make it so." It's Darwinian in an ultimate sense because it refuses to alter the hierarchy to fit any particular world view (left or right) and instead trusts that the best ideas and best people will rise, by themselves, to the top.

Which I think you're in favor of, judging from your comment. But I think the practical application of a Tory-style society inevitably means that the powers at the top want to maintain their status, and through governmental force keep themselves above other men. That, by definition, is prescriptive. (I'm just thinking about this theoretically, and my understanding of the actual history is about as deep as what you see in movies, so correct me if I'm wrong).

I don't believe in the Marxian oppressor vs oppressed narrative in a free society, but I think it definitely holds weight in a society with legal obstacles barring people from opportunity. Even in that case, Karl Marx's solution is atrociously evil, but he identifies a real problem in the case of societies where you are legally stuck in your caste.

Again, that may not be the philosophy from the outset, but I think modernity provided a necessary balance (when not taken to far) to help people realize hierarchies become corrupted if they are controlled top down.

The suppositions you're proposing require a fairly loose distinction between correlation and causation. And even if they were defendable, listing benefits without acknowledging consequences is fairly disingenuous.

Tories were all about the individual, it was the democratic whigs pushing collectivist ideas such as all men are created equally.

I just find the concept of equality entirely untenable and rather silly. I'm all for providing equality of opportunity as it is objectively beneficial, but extending that to a pretense that we are all equal seems dangerous(ie: our current identitarian crisis).

@Pre-Modernist I've got to have a dictionary open while in your feeds.

@Rus-T-Balls haha, sorry about that; I promise it's not on purpose. Blame my over-literate parents.

@Pre-Modernist please keep it up, my double-wide vocab needs challenging. Plus a big Dumb Redneck, able to properly use these words in context has a certain effect/affect, not sure which one on people I talk to.

@Rus-T-Balls you're able to communicate well enough to get some incredibly clever points of view across; that's all you really need, beyond that it's just frills and flowers.

@Rus-T-Balls the only reason I smoke as much reefer as I do is in hopes that it dulls my vocabulary so people won't think I'm such an elitist prick.

@Pre-Modernist that is a nice thing to say, to be honest I follow the work of a lot of people who have the Malcolm Gladwell expertise. Then it is just compare and contrast and run it through a pretty good b.s. meter. bc I am hardly litterate

@Rus-T-Balls well your bs sounds good to me, my friend! Keep it up!

@Pre-Modernist sidenote: Where does one find good absinthe stateside?

@Rus-T-Balls The Van Gogh brand is available at most liquor stores, it's good but not great. My personal favourite is Absinthe Ordinaire which is based on Pierre Ordinaire's original absinthe recipe. Most high end liquor stores should have a few brands to choose from.

@Pre-Modernist I heard that Manson came out with a line, that sounded fishy

I actually agree, but relying on subjective interpretation for such a monumental document seems rather shortsighted of them.

This is a good point....

As an illustration, say we rank one person's worth at 100, and another's at 5. Now, what's the difference between 100 & infinity, and 5 & infinity? Both are infinitely smaller than infinity.

God isn't very impressed with you just because you're smart or virtuous for a human. The difference between someone who is mentally retarded, and someone who is a genius, compared to the perfection of God, is so insignificant it might as well not exist.

It's my belief that God estimates our worth in a different way... he estimates it based upon the infinite potential each person has, if they were just stripped of the frailties of this life.

Cementing my thoughts down in writing and hearing the thoughts of folks more intelligent than myself. Pretty much my purpose in everything I write or argue. I'm incredibly selfish in that manner, I'm all about acquiring the ol' knowledge.