Neo this, Neo that
The prefix
neo is added to many political schools lately, what does it mean?
Neo is usually a new, similar, yet surprisingly over the top version of an older school, and it often is using the legitimacy of the older school to achieve contrary or dissimilar purposes.
I posted a diagram of American political world called
Political Anatomy
I've simplified it here and changed some names, and then shown how each node/school will also form a neo version of the school opposite it on the chart
So, you could say forming a neo school is a way to coopt an opposing school which is felt to be unconvinceable, controllable or unignorable
The neo version of a school thus often ends up weak (no real base), inauthentic and when ultimately unmasked, trivialized. But because it is bold, aggressive and new, in the beginning of its lifecycle tends to dominate the situation.
On the flip I'll list the schools and the neo school they create in pairs
Theocrats - Want a strict religious/moral hierarchy for a government, along with a matching stable, staid, social hierarchy and a predictable patronage-based economic structure, all controlled by the church.
Neo-Collectivists - Think of certain Catholic church ventures into Labor. These are Theocrats who create a Labor-esque worker's movement with strong religious/moral/hierarchical underpinnings, ie, they make a religion out of Labor. The goals of the movement are made impossibly lofty, so in effect the workers are coopted into a permanent pseudo-religion, a Theocracy-like structure. Real belief and trust in the workers and their collective intelligence is absent.
Realists - Want to achieve a controllable, manipulable balance of power in the real world as it is. Can be harsh, but are adverse to risks that tend to upend the whole system.
Neo-Creatives - Think corporate financing and control of the arts, marketing and the collective imagination. The Realists enter the creative world and control it by dividing it up into counter-posing schools and trends, setting up a balance of power. They control the potentially destabilizing world of the Artists by financing it, dividing it, spinning it against itself and rendering it politically meaningless. Real, powerful art is lost.
Collectivists - Seeks to build a worker/communitarian centric society. Tends to be a flat, anti-hierarchical, ie, the workers control the bosses, and the workers get a cut of everything.
Neo-Theocrats - Collectivists infiltrate religion in order to control the definition of God, the appointment of priests and the divvying up of the money. Think of the weakened religions you find in a some authoritarian socialist, or communist states. Real belief in the transcendant is essentially eviscerated. The church is forced to support the objectives of the state, and is then lifted up to a state-sanctioned place of honor.
Creatives - Want to open the imagination of the people, to re-envision life at every level. Want to establish creativity, creative intelligence as the measure and have entrenched reality and cynical realism take a back seat. Think artists, hollywood directors, musicians, etc.
Neo-Realists - Artists who use gut-triggering real world imagery to convey their message. Artists who enter the world of politics, sociology, etc through their art. By flooding the minds/emotions of the audience with 'realistic' imagery, the artist undoes the entrenched power of the cynical realistic mindset. The audience is overwhelmed and emotionally/creatively opened by the experience. The stable, predictable, manageable, and perhaps somewhat sane world of political realism is turned inside out.
Jeffersonians - Believe in government based on high, pure principles: Liberty, equality, fraternity. Tend to be purists and conduct political discourse by evoking this pure ideals. Considers the ideals as higher truly existing virtues that are sacred and more valid than any real world manifestation, ie, than the popular will, the practical reality, the passions and trends of the time, the economic prosperity, etc.
Neo-Jacksonians - Those who trigger and control the populist emotional reality in order to get the power and punch to enforce political points of view, to discipline those who stray from purity. Think of the political leader in the lead-up to war talking about an assault on the homeland, a threat to security, a threat to the tribe, thus triggering the masses to enlist and get into war-making mode. The Jacksonian may find himself involved in fighting battles that in fact entirely disconnected from his core allegiances.
Jacksonians - Populist, clan-based people, intensely loyal, uncomplicated, fierce and fun-loving. Believe in government as a means to good experience for the people, and as an enforcer of a tribalistic law.
Neo-Jeffersonians - Imagine war leaders in action, pre battle, speaking to the troops about the enemy's assault on liberty, on virtue, on peace, on justice. This allows the soldier to feel that the act of doing battle, killing and destroying, is purely about enforcing morality. Often the most effective spin is to say the people being killed are working against the highest good of their own fellow countrymen, ie, we are saviors of the people we are invading.
Wilsonians - Would like to set up a global order, centrally administered, which ensures fair, equal, blind justice equally everywhere. It will accomplish this with an administrative structure, which tends to every detail. Strives for total neutrality and expertise. Think EU administration or UN.
Neo-Hamiltonians - Think Wilsonians who have come to the conclusion that nobody will buy into their project unless there's a buck to be made, so they spin their venture as the rolling out of capitalism everywhere, and find themselves as partners in the Carlysle Group, paying bribes to get a pipeline built in the steppes somewhere. They become hyper-capitalists, but really are trying to interconnect nations into a universal web, so the equal-justice-everywhere project becomes viable.
Hamiltonians - Capitalists who view government as being equivalent to the structures that enable a free market, and who seek to maximize financial flows, the size of markets and opportunities.
Neo-Wilsonians - Hamiltonians who realize that outright unspun profiteering off of weak nations will not be accepted, so who promote globalist structures, NGO's, etc, in order to get buy-in to their capitalist project. This gives them unassailable moral cover.
Abolitionists - Moralistic creative purists, who are kind of aggressive about their better world, reform, anti-corruption themes. Can be dictatorial and even at times support dictatorships. Want to enforce purity, and turn things inside out to expose the absence of it.
Neo-visionaries - Abolitionists who become futurists, visionaries and seem passionate about the world of new possibilities, but secretly introduce moral hooks and twists to control and or surpress the free development of the future.
Visionaries - People who want to control the process of envisioning the future, to become the future-gurus. Think the guy known as 'Yoda' in the Pentagon. Want to understand and map well ahead of time all possible political, technological, social equations and be the gate keepers of possibility. Insane addiction to the uber-cutting edge.
Neo-Abolitionists (Neo-Conservatives) - Visionaries who seek to enact their radical futuristic dreams and control schemes by wrapping their pitch in strong moral language, thus exciting the Abolitionists and other passionate and creative people. You can tell the difference because a Neo-Abolitionist (Neo-Con) will dispense with or rewrite moral equations once either victory is assured, things can be covered up effectively or according to changing political dynamics.
Aristocrats/Old-Money - People who want to perpetuate a finance-based hierarchy, money talks and old money dictates. Prefer stability, but are more likely to simply buy people off than a Realist who might engage in political positioning. Tend to back up their position with military/security structures that they bless financially.
Neo-Development/Empowerment (Neo-Liberals) - Pitch a theory of economic development to impoverished, disempowered nations, offering them a means to become viable, prosperous and therefore in effect more free. This sells to people's desire for a way out of dehumanized, imprisoned conditions, opening the door to possibility. This may be true, but in effect what happens is the nations and individuals get implanted into a global hierarchy where they lose autonomy, including cultural, political, economic and personal freedom. There's an undisclosed trade-off in the bargain, which nations often only discover after they are locked in.
Freedom Villagers/Alt-Rebels - Personal freedom-lovers, who want a creative governance, which may or may not have a continuous format. Believe in the theory of a self-organizing village or community. Trust chaos. Tend to therefore be rebels and alternative-minded folks within more structured systems.
Neo-Globalists - Freedom Villagers who seek to coopt the structures of globalization to effect mass liberation of consciousness beyond adherence to controlling structures. Tend to make themselves tech and political savvy, and can be opportunistic and somewhat reckless in their tactics as they seek to out-game and master the global system.
Progressives - Seek to evolve the world in nurturing ways, honoring structure, but progressively and continuously changing it, questioning it, moving it forward towards a sense of the ideal. Their relation to ideals is more nebulous than Jeffersonians, and their schemes and flexibility more vast.
Neo-Traditionalists - Seek to infuse existing social realities with progressive virtues, using a posture of traditionalism. Think charitable institutions that support communities and individuals, but also introduce members to more abstract social ideals. This has been a way for urban, well-off progressives to relate to less advantaged and more traditional classes and communities.
Earth Traditionalists - People who trust the social reality they live in, for whom work, family, military service, church-going, school affiliations are the real governing reality. Tend to sit inside of a hierarchy, but view themselves as peers of all other hard-working folk. Are not excessively moralistic or holy, but sufficiently to preserve the social order.
Neo-Progressives - Earthy Traditionalists who agree to a moderate/limited amount of Progressive virtue, in order to keep themselves and their social world morally viable in changing times. Tend to have more of a brake on change than real Progressives, be more formal and place much more value on tradition, form and established economic structures. At worst can end up mixing token portions of progressivism into a regressive, anti-change agenda.
Technologists - Social creatives who are technology addicted and believe that intellectual/technological advances will result in the wiring of a whole new social reality. Fascinated with new inventions and restructurings of reality, but less so with abstract moral, philosophical or artistic trends. Happy to live in a tech-centric space where inconvenient political realities tend to have less power.
Neo-capitalists - Technologists who seek to harness the tools of capitalist incentivism to fund the creation of the new technological reality, with the purpose of transforming society, as opposed to making money. Think the dot-commers who spun tales of pending financial glory to investors, but really just wanted to tinker with political/social/consciousness reality.
New Capitalists - Get rich quick, capitalist opportunists. Can even be anarcho-capitalists, market obsessed. Are usually personally in the midst of a big financial upswing or dreams of that, and so are socially mobile and in the process of empowering themselves. So this also includes hyper-empowerment coaches of the me-first variety. Yet are also into a strict social/moral hierarchy of wealth and all that is needed to support the acquisition of it.
Neo-Technologists - Those who want to use new technology developments to permit a leap frogging into an insanely wealthy/powerful capitalist position for themselves. Think those who want to patent everything, or fund creative/passionate scientists, but use their inventions to control rather than to empower.
Although I'm describing the neo schools in a twisted light here, that's just one spin. You can also see how they can be very creative and effective in getting a stuck situation to move and unfold, in what ultimately becomes a positive way.
So, PLEASE FORGIVE ME ALL YOU NEOS OUT THERE!!!!!!!!!