Leftist Psychology - Neoteny

You can find the other essays in this series here: Equality, Tabula rasa, Oversocialization, Status, Science

In my last essay, I suggested the possibility that mankind is in the process of becoming a domesticated species. This domestication arises as an adaptation among humans to the regimentation of modern life – that is, to oversocialization. This gives to some a natural propensity for herd behavior. This theory was offered as an explanation as to why some are so susceptible to becoming oversocialized, and why it is often impossible to free people from it. Whereas oversocialization is an imposition and a great psychological burden for a healthy and vital human, to others it has become their natural and instinctual way of being. And while there is some internal resistance to oversocialization in the former, which can be used to break free, this is lacking in the latter. Therefore, we can define human domestication as naturalized oversocialization, or as evolutionary adaptation to external control systems.

Since the process of human domestication is ongoing and not yet complete, we find ourselves in a transition period where signs of domestication are beginning to emerge. One such sign is neoteny. Strictly defined, this is the physiological or morphological retention of juvenile traits in adult animals. This is a commonly observed phenomenon in domestic animals. In this essay, we will not be considering the bodily neoteny of humans, although this has been observed in comparison to other primates. Instead, we will consider the emergence of psycho-cultural neoteny as a distinctive feature of liberal modernity.

What is childishness? The answer seems simple: children play, adults are serious. This denigration of play – the most divine act – is not what I mean when I speak of neoteny. An adult who lacks the capacity for play will find himself turning into a lifeless shell, and most of what we are told is “serious” is in fact entirely frivolous. There is not necessarily a distinction between seriousness and play – children take their playing far more seriously than most adults treat their jobs. But there is an element of truth in this understanding of childishness, and to understand how it relates to neoteny we must consider what the existential context of the child is.

A child exists in a context where an outside force, the parents, provides a sheltered bubble that the child can exist in. Within, the child has the social life of the family and the world of play. Outside is the world of adults, and this the child is shielded from. Since the world that the child inhabits is established by an outside force, all its actions within this sphere have already been determined by that force. The agency of the child is nullified, and its actions become without substance. It is this that causes the seeming frivolousness of children’s play. Should the child’s actions take on substance and agency, it would break through the sheltered bubble and cause the child to enter into the adult world. For a small child, this can be dangerous – the equivalent of running out into traffic. But this is also a process that every person has to go through in adolescence. It is the source of teenage rebellion and angst, where the youth chafes against the confines of the sheltered bubble of childhood and seeks to break free.

This dynamic between parent and child is reproduced in the dynamic between system and subject, and between domesticator and domesticated. The system – which includes the full set of industrial, technological, bureaucratic, political and cultural subsystems that make modern life – act as an external force on the subject. It shields the subject from the outside world – ostensibly for the protection of the subject, but in reality for its own purposes of control and self-propagation. The domesticator, likewise, removes an animal from its natural environment and substitutes his own artificial, controlled environment in order to shape the animal to his liking. We see here the connection between oversocialization, domestication and infantilization. They all depend on an external force which determines all actions within the sphere it has created for its subjects, nullifying the subject’s agency and robbing his actions of substance. Likewise, much like the parent will exert authority to prevent the child from leaving the confines of the sheltered bubble, the system will react very harshly to any subject showing signs of self-determination. In essence, we are not introducing a new concept here. Oversocialization, domestication and neoteny are three perspectives on the same phenomenon.

One could perhaps object to the comparison between loving and responsible parenting and totalitarian systems of control. It is important to understand that while the actions of the parent are necessary and appropriate in regards to the child, the subjects of the totalitarian system are adults. The system works more akin to an overbearing parent that dotes on and browbeats their sons well into adulthood. Such a dynamic is inherently perverted and harmful. It should also be noted that we already intuitively recognize the similarity between the state and the parent, which is why we refer to some states as “paternalistic”. Indeed, many modern liberal democracies would be best described as maternalistic, and it is this enforced institutional maternalism which characterizes what we call the longhouse.

The erosion of the substance behind the subject’s actions leads to the development of psychological traits reminiscent of those of children. Much as the child’s conceptual horizon is limited to the world of school, family and play, the subject’s world is limited to the regimentation of office life and the narrative landscape of media propaganda. The subject becomes incapable of understanding the world unless it is translated for him in terms he is familiar with through his media consumption. Since the media consumed is produced through a heavily streamlined process aiming at mass-appeal, it must necessarily be vapid, sterile and shallow. In essence, the subject’s intellectual ability erodes until he inhabits a conceptual world populated by the phantoms of his favorite TV shows; a world where Voldemort invaded Ukraine, Zelensky is an Avenger and we fucking love science because Pickle Rick.

The characteristic mood of a child is the fluctuation between naïve optimism and panicked uncertainty. The former is caused by the parents shielding the child from the evils of the world; the latter happens when that protection fails. In the same way, the neotenous individual displays a naivety that is at odds with their apparent age. Much of the pathological altruism and lack of self-preservation in modern liberal culture arises from this naivety. Of course we can accept all those refugees, the babyman says, for he is shielded by the system from the effects of racial tension, housing shortages and mass unemployment. Much of the misplaced optimism of the cult of progress also has its roots in this naivety. Of course there will be food on the table tomorrow, the child thinks, because daddy will bring it home. Of course there will be product, the babyman thinks, for the ersatz daddy of science will provide it.

When the system fails to provide security as the trade-off for its control, or when the system begins to predate on the subject populace, the illusion of the shielded bubble is shattered. The result is that panic and hysteria which, alongside infantile optimism, is the ubiquitous mood of the media landscape. Far from being an emotion that damages the system, hysteria is rather fertile ground for the growth of repression and control. Much like the frightened child will cry for its mommy, the panicked babyman howls for more control, more repression, more regimentation. Double and triple masking, five doses of vaccine, 6, 12, 24 months and more to flatten the curve; anything, to soothe the wailing of the 200 pound child. Since the neotenous man has never taken a single decision that was not pre-approved and controlled by another, he sits in complete paralysis until media experts and official recommendations advise him on his next course of action, staking out the “current thing” which for him is like the embrace of mother. And like an overbearing mother, the system takes great pains to ensure its subjects are not exposed to things that are deemed inappropriate for them. Should a sliver of dissident material slip through the cracks and upset the wailing man, his tantrums and cries will rise up high until Mommy Dearest descends to cover the eyes of her children. Only what can be fit into the simplistic Marvelized moral code and faux-niceties of the neotenous culture is allowed, and only the naughty boy seeks what mommy has forbidden.

Faux-niceties themselves are characteristic of a neotenous culture. Since open conflict is unpredictable to the system, and since it upsets the neotenous subject the same way that it frightens a child, every social interaction needs to be covered in a thick layer of clenched niceness. The same way that mothers encourage their children to be polite, the institutional environment of liberal modernity encourages a vapid form of civility. This is primarily enforced through marketing culture within corporations and bureaucracies. Combating “hostile workplaces”; high-definition advertisements of people practically beaming with joy at the prospect of another Happy Meal; over-emoting actors on TV; the grimacing faces of salesmen; the soft understanding nods of doctors; political correctness; secretaries simultaneously scolding you and calling you “Sir”; all of this encourages the same behavior in the subjects. But while people are easily encouraged to engage in pretend politeness, they cannot so easily be made to forego the conflicts which lie under the surface. Instead, they snipe at each from behind mother’s skirt and foment trifles over nothing. Because a child’s actions are made frivolous by their protected existence, their conflicts are rendered petty and trivial by the same token, and this is true likewise for the babyman. Passive-aggressiveness, overindulgent use of sarcasm, workplace bullying, petty grudge-keeping, political maneuvering that more resembles schoolyard politics than court intrigue; these, likewise, are characteristic of neotenous cultures.

Accompanying faux-niceties are pretend rebellion. Just like teens are given a certain leeway in acting rebellious, so are the babymen. But while the teen is allowed this period of rebellion in order to break free of childhood and find himself, the neotenous subject – who is not cared for, but controlled – is given this freedom in order to temper his inner desire for independence. Because his controlled environment forces him into a frivolous existence, his desire for independence can be spent in its entirety on vapid forms of permissible rebellion. Much of this takes the form of edginess or political agitation. Examples include militant atheism, materialism and nihilism; excessive and nonsensical use of profanity (“as fuck” redditspeak); “I am fluent in sarcasm”; political consumer culture such as veganism; social justice and protest culture; exhibitionist sexual deviancy; and various forms of choose-your-own-identity subcultures like trans and queer. Common for all of these forms of permissible rebellion is that they in one form or another feed the efforts of the subject back into the system. The militant atheist believes he is making himself independent of religious superstition, when in truth he is just building a strong psychological identification with the technocratic mindset of the system. The social justice warrior clothes her language in the rhetoric of liberation, but every step on the path of progress seals the sheltered bubble tighter, dissipating the rebellious energy while expanding the control of the system.

As we noted in the last essay, women seem to be especially susceptible to becoming oversocialized. Having realized that oversocialization and infantilization are two perspectives of the same phenomenon, and having noticed how many neotenous behaviors are implicitly feminine, would it be correct of us to propose that women have a greater tendency towards psychological neoteny? To some extent, yes. The domestic sphere is as much the sphere of women as it is of children, and in most times and places it has been men who venture out into the world beyond to secure this sphere. The world of women has always been a world created and maintained by men. But we must also understand that a woman’s capacities are much greater than a child’s, and even within the sheltered sphere of domestic life many women are driven to assert themselves, and they will enforce their authority within their own sphere as much as men will in theirs. Women possess both a tendency towards neoteny and towards matriarchy, and under the matriarchy everyone else takes the role of children. Cultural feminization, therefore, is both a cause and a symptom of infantilization.

How can one reverse this psycho-cultural neoteny? The answer is deceptively simple – retake your agency and add substance to your actions. The first step would be to cultivate skills and abilities that increase your sphere of action. Depending on how badly infantilized you are, you may need to start at a very basic level, but you will quickly find that your confidence grows as you learn. You should especially aim for practical skills, bodily conditioning, combat or survival training. Skills that are challenging and require dedicated effort over periods of time are also good, but beware the trap of over-intellectualizing. Putting oneself in new, challenging or even dangerous situations and overcoming them will also help to build a sense of personal capability, but take heed not to run before you can walk. Following this path will build your capacity to act outside of your sheltered environment, and doing so will lessen the pull that frivolities have on you. As you progress on the path, you will be drawn more and more towards the outside world. Progress far enough, and you will inevitably come into conflict with the system, as it will seek to prevent any form of self-determination in its subjects. How it goes from there I cannot tell you, but if you reach that point in a spirit of prudence and clarity your abilities should be up to the task, and the real adventure begins.