Leftist Psychology - Science

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

In the closing remarks of my last essay, I mentioned that the psychological processes discussed thus far flow into each other and can coexist in the same individual. I also touched briefly on how the dysfunctions of modern life form a breeding ground for these psychological processes. Leftism can, therefore, be seen as an adaptation to the sickness of modern life. The purpose of these comments has been to show that the leftist cannot be reduced to a single psychological fact. The left is the result of a complex interaction between internal psychological processes, on the one hand, and the dysfunctional environment of modern society, on the other. For this final essay, I will attempt to integrate these various perspectives into an analysis of the cult of science. The aim here is twofold. First, to try to explain the role that science plays for the left. Secondly, to show how these tools that we’ve developed throughout the series – each useful in their own right – can be used together to facilitate more complex analyses.

Modern society – what we have variously called the system or the machine in previous essays – functions akin to a devouring mother that puts external controls on human life, creating a bubble within which its dependents live. This bubble is formed partially from the bureaucratic systems which regiment every aspect of social life, but also by technological and industrial systems which provide the material control systems. The subjects living inside of this bubble go through a process of domestication and hyperspecialization. Lacking both the instincts and the skills to survive without the system, they become completely dependent on it. Essentially, modern man lives in a high-tech social protectorate. Should the industrial system fail, hundreds of millions would starve – sending emails does not produce any food.

But while the masses are dependent on this protectorate to survive, they are simultaneously incapable of maintaining it without the bureaucracy to organize them. The common man does not have a sufficient knowledge of how the technological systems work in order to maintain, adapt or reconstruct them. Whereas a medieval peasant had the knowledge of how to run a farm, and could do so independently if need be, the modern office serf only knows how to perform a narrowly defined task that in many cases isn’t even necessary for the daily running of the machine. Instead, the knowledge and control of the system is centralized into the hands of a class of scientists, technicians, experts and technocrats who are expected to have the knowledge and capabilities to keep it running. The masses are vaguely – and sometimes acutely – aware of to what extent their lives depend on the system, but they do not understand how it works. The experts do, and they do so through having been initiated into the mysteries of science.

The role of science in the modern consciousness is analogous to the role of magic in the tribal consciousness. Much like how the shaman makes the rain fall, the scientist makes the Amazog slave chow come to your door. This image of the scientist as a magician is ubiquitous in popular media. A prime example is Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty. Rick has the ability to construct any conceivable gadget, often ad hoc and in a MacGyveresque fashion, to perform all manner of fantastical feats. In one episode, he uses his science magic to remove curses from items sold by Satan, showcasing modern man’s belief in the supremacy of his own magic over that associated with religion. In numerous episodes, Rick’s powers border on the godlike, from creating miniature worlds to fighting Zeus. This usurpation of the gods is an essential element of the modern cult of science, where the modern masses see science as that which makes man master of the world and will let him ascend to godhood. This belief is explicitly stated when the topic of speculative technologies such as mind uploading are discussed, where people are promised immortality through the magic of technology.

But while this may be the common mythology associated with science, the actual reality of it is very different. A carpenter or other tradesman is more capable of manipulating the world around him than your average scientist or engineer. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find an engineer today who could build a functioning trebuchet. Many of the parlor tricks we associate with science requires highly specialized chemicals, tools, materials and components to put together. Less the art of manipulating the natural world, STEM is more the discipline of working with the specialized products of the industrial system. Even then, it is only a minority of STEM graduates who possess that level of technical or practical skill – most have a purely theoretical understanding. The scientist is less the magician and more the administrator; the engineer less the master of nature and more the middle manager of industry.

The results of science are likewise very lackluster compared to what is promised in the public consciousness. Mind uploading isn’t even possible in theory; AI is less the creation of artificial life and more attaching logic gates to statistical analysis. Musk’s MindLink has succeeded in little more than making monkeys cum and die. Talk of asteroid mining, Stanford toruses and hyperspace travel withers before the fact that no manned moon landings have occurred since the 70’s. Most technological development involves slight modification of already popular products, like attaching a bigger screen to an iPhone in order to keep reselling the same product over and over. Information technology itself is showing a decline – virtual reality is a novelty gimmick and not a paradigm shift, and most websites have become impossible to use because of bloated ads, unnecessary scripts, pop-ups and an attempt to fit websites to both desktop and mobile devices. The most significant facet of technological development in the last 30 years has been the complete erosion of privacy. The modern magic consists in mining personal data to sell to marketers and intelligence agencies so the slave populace can be kept under the thumb of the system. So far, the dystopian side of cyberpunk is the only promise that science and technology has kept.

But myth is a powerful thing, and reality and myth mixes in interesting ways in the minds of the masses. While science may not perform the fantastical feats that the popular imagination associates with it, it still retains a certain magical power, and it is here that the modern obsession with science lies in practice. The cult of science satisfies a broad range of psychological needs in ways that relate to what we have investigated in previous essays. But to understand this, we must understand the type of the nerd. The nerd is one who is endowed with a certain intellectual, verbal, theoretical or abstract ability which sets him above his peers, while also lacking in the more physical, practical or social abilities which make his peers more efficacious then him within the world. The nerd inhabits a reality where he perceives himself to be in possession of great vistas of knowledge and understanding that are nonetheless neutered and rendered naught by the world around him. He is a giant in the skies, but a dwarf on the earth. The nerd is plagued by a sense of inferiority. For some nerds, this discrepancy is rather small and is naturally overcome by developing his underdeveloped side. But in others, whether it be due to illness, dysfunction, ugliness or something else, the discrepancy becomes insurmountable. Rather than develop his underdeveloped side, this type of nerd flees ever deeper into that side of him which is dominant, further exacerbating the problem. For this type, the promise of some kind of secret power which can translate his inner vistas into outer gain is indescribably seductive.

It is this drive that makes the nerd hold so tightly to the cult of science. In science, the nerd finds confirmation that he is in fact smarter than those around him due to its connection with genius, complex technology and esoteric language. By delving into science, the nerd sees himself as being initiated into a form of secret knowledge which promises some level of power over others. With science, the nerd can make himself the arbiter of truth, nonchalantly casting aside the beliefs of others and affecting the air of a high-minded skeptic. With his scientific skepticism, the nerd can make himself invincible to the viewpoints of others, and science provides an arsenal of weaponry for the nerd to battle for petty supremacy, including his beloved source-begging. His skepticism is illusory, however, as it is only ever invoked when the nerd wishes to engage in petty social aggression. Before the institution of science, the nerd prostrates himself, lapping up any claim no matter how ridiculous. The same man who will demand sources for the existence of human races will turn around and speak with absolute authority about the coming of AI and the technological singularity. The Cogrids era saw this tendency reach its apex with the demand to “believe science” and “trust the experts”, the almost robotic repetition of complete fictions being told about a disease that wasn’t dangerous and a vaccine that didn’t work. The skepticism of the nerd was nowhere to be found when it turned out that dogmatic adherence was more useful for clobbering his peers – the nerd’s only genuine concern. Nor does the nerd waver in his sense of intellectual superiority on account of how wrong he was. For him it was never about the truth.

The resentment of the nerd over his perceived inferiority leads to the hatred of life, and this hatred drives the nerd to assault the heavens. Here, also, science provides him with the weapons he needs. The disenchantment of the world which has come with the rise of science appeals to the resentful cynicism of the nerd. With characteristic smugness, he tells you of how incomprehensibly vast the universe is and how small you are in it; he tells you that you are nothing more than a meat robot programmed by evolution. In his world of empty matter, the only purpose to anything is what the human mind concocts, and so nothing has value outside of its utility to man. With his false ideals of efficiency and optimization, the nerd smugly casts aside the greater ideals of Beauty and Wonder for the promise that Line Go Up. Nature is merely a resource, he says, to be used for the proliferation of mere life. Denigrating life in these terms, the nerd feels the same surge of power that a desecrator feels. Ultimately, the nerd takes this nihilism to its conclusion with the rejection of the divine. God, the nerd says with a smug expression, is a Bronze Age superstition for those too cowardly to accept the truth of life. With this act, the nerd has finished his assault on heaven, and has slain god in his cynical materialism and ugly nihilism. Now the nerd is god, and ruler of the cosmos.

But the nerd is not a god, and no matter how much ugly philosophy he surrounds himself with he is still left being his own inferior self at the end of the day. Haunted by this nagging feeling of never getting over himself, he desperately seeks some solace in his ersatz god of science. He gorges himself on products and media, the manna that his god offers him. He fills his life with gizmos and gadgets and doodads, all in the vain hope that this will improve him, make him more efficient, make the Line of his life Go Up. He embraces the promises of transhumanism with gusto, hoping for a gnostic release from his bodily prison to come in the form of gadgets drilled into his skull or neovaginas grafted onto his crotch. One day, he thinks, the experts will find a way to solve his detestable self, rearranging his flesh vessel so that it better conforms to his consumer identity or the expectations of his job. When he looks at the stars, he thinks to himself that all of this is just a simulation, a program running on a computer, the same way video games run on his Ubuntu. In the deepest ecstasies of this computer religion, the nerd dreams that AI will come – a god of his own making – and provide the ultimate optimized solution for life. Then, he thinks, his mind will be uploaded to a hard drive, and he will live forever.

The Holy Grail for the nerd is the vaunted halls of academia. Here, the nerd expects to be initiated even further into the mysteries of science. Furthermore, he expects academia to the give that final confirmation of what he has thought for so long, that stamped, approved and credentialed proof of his relative genius. If science so far has given the nerd his weapons and his god, it is in academia where he expects to be given his throne in the form of admission into the caste of experts, where he will be respected at last. The force of credentialism in our society today has its source in this desire of the nerd for respect, to get one over on his family and peers for doubting his hidden genius. And the institution of academia – itself part of the societal control system – is happy enough to oblige these desires. Teaching just enough of the subject to fulfill the nerd’s desire for feeling privy to secret knowledge and filling the rest of the time with ideological indoctrination, the credentials gained are more a proof of doctrinal conformity than of real knowledge. But this does not faze the nerd, for with his ideological programming and his oversocialized desire for conformity and respect, he is the perfect candidate for staffing the institutions of the system. If his degree is in the humanities, he becomes an activist-bureaucrat in academia, media or politics; if it is in STEM, he takes his place among the utilitarians and email elite of the corporate hierarchy. Either way, he is now enmeshed in the petty status games of modern life; a unit of the system, and fiercely proud of it; and he will defend his status with all the smug malice of a striver slighted.

We now understand the nature of the nerd, but we do not yet understand the full extent of the problem. For while the nerd is born out of his inherent lopsidedness, the crushing pressure of domestication in our oversocialized society induces a kind of nerdishness in people otherwise not predisposed to it. Since the sphere of action is purposely limited by the regimentation of our society, many with even a slight edge in intellectual or verbal ability will veer towards it as their other faculties atrophy. And while the natural nerd, in his strong lopsidedness, may possess some real potential in the intellectual realm – provided he can get over himself – these induced nerds do not. Rather, they possess all the dark drives of the nerd with none of the real ability. These are the midwits, and the vast numbers of these individuals that are currently produced exacerbate the worst parts of the cult of science. They have all the affected skepticism with none of the rigor; all the belief and trust with none of the understanding; all the tech-optimism with none of the vision; and all the credentialism with none of the potential. It is this group which most loudly demands fealty to the experts, which are most concerned with appearing smart and educated and which most blindly swallow whatever brainslop is marketed to them as science. These are the I Fucking Love Science types who hate the talk of race but love the talk of gender, because they hate the science and love the doctrine.

We can see now how the perspectives developed in previous essays flow together into a single analysis of the cult of science. To reiterate, we have investigated three driving motives behind leftist beliefs, them being resentment, oversocialization and status-seeking. We have also touched on the myriad of ways in which our modern society creates the growing bed for these beliefs to prosper Finally, we have touched briefly on how the inborn character of individuals gives them a propensity to develop these beliefs. These perspectives intersect in the cult of science in the following ways.

* The inborn character of certain people make them susceptible to developing a nerdish disposition, characterized by over-intellectualism causing a lack of capacity for action, which festers into resentment and a burning need for respect and deference.

* The repressive nature of society causes a widespread infantilization which sees technology as an ersatz parent. Science becomes the power fantasy of the babyman, and reaches religious proportions in some.

* The pressures of society oversocializes certain individuals into the nerdish behaviors described above, in addition to the standard set of obedient and neotenous behaviors. These are the midwits, and they provide the bulk of the acolytes of science and the primary body of the bureaucrats and administrators of the system.

* Faux-skepticism is a kind of epistemological equality, with which the nerd attacks others and pulls them down into the muck. This is not true skepticism, since it blindly presupposes every standard dogma of the system. Rather, it is a weapon to establish dominance and live out resentment fantasies of being the arbiter of truth.

* Materialism and utilitarianism is used to deny the inherent qualities of man and affirms a view of people as fungible meat pieces to be manipulated by the technological system. The nerd celebrates transhumanism and its promise of eradicating the inherent differences between people.

* Academia and the expert class are the natural endpoints of the ambitions of the nerds and the midwits. They are driven here by an intense desire for status, and will adopt the complete set of doctrinal beliefs of this environment to fit in. Since entry into the expert class is the aim of these people’s lives, they will defend the status of their position with extreme prejudice.

The analysis of the cult of science which we have now completed shines a light on much of the hysteria surrounding the China flu. While it is important to understand that there is a power dynamic at play here – that there is someone who benefits from and seeks to further the current state of affairs – this analysis allows us to understand why those who aren’t in power serve power. The narrative of “trusting science” serves not only to give an air of smartitude to the bleating masses, some of which derive their whole sense of self from this. It also serves to justify the existence of an entire class of experts who are mostly superfluous. Furthermore, it allows for the playing out of revenge fantasies and petty cruelties, which has been discussed both in this series and elsewhere. Masking becomes a way to signal loyalty, single out victims for institutionally sanctioned attacks, erase personal identity and degrade yourself in the service of the system. This last part is of special importance, since the inner core of the cult of science is the almost instinctual understanding that you are living a neutered life as a dependent under an incomprehensibly vast and tyrannical machine operated by a few deranged perverts. In this psychological state, there is no difference between affirmation and humiliation; the loudest yes is also the most complete self-abasement. In the meeting point between power and control; between humiliation and adaptation; between bitterness and lowliness; between conformity and neoteny; and between status and striving, we find the cult of science. Here, also, we find the left.

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This is the final essay of the series on leftist psychology. Though this is the end of the series, this does not mean that the final word on the topic has been spoken. There are more phenomena and more perspectives still to be investigated. There are also many more elaborations to be made on the points already discussed. Perhaps we will investigate some of these in future additions to the series. But for now, the main series is finished. Thank you for reading it.