Conservatives invoke a number of mysterious processes to explain how the world is; processes that are faith driven.
They rely on faith because of a disdain for rational processes. They believe that the human mind cannot understand reality and that social and economic planning are, therefore, heretical, trying to create the Transcendental here in our secular realm, before the eschaton.
Tradition, such as "family values" is seen as the result of irrational processes working over thousands of years to distill a species based wisdom that one individual cannot reach through observation and a rational process.
The remainder of our diary explores and deconstructs this conservative fantasy. Ultimately the same critique that conservatives apply to rational processes applies to irrational processes: the human mind cannot fully know irrational processes, hence the goodness or badness of their consequences cannot be known.
MYSTERIOUS PROCESSES: TRADITION
"Providence [has] taught humanity,
through thousands of years of experience
and meditation, a collective wisdom: tradition,
tempered by expedience....The individual is
foolish, but the species is wise." [Kirk on Burke]
Conservatives use "Tradition" as a theory about how the world got to be the way it is, a theory, then, about cause and consequence. The theory has a couple of direct errors and numerous imputed errors.
The Common Sense Explanation Not Taken
Conservatives could say that the world got to be the way it is because of many complex and interacting factors. Some things turned out good, some turned out bad. Conservatives do not do that.
What Tradition Is
Conservatives cite such things as marriage, family and our legal system as traditions which have evolved over thousands of years. There is also an implication that knowledge of where in the lake the best fishing is and how to whittle a stick are products of thousands of years of experience. Conservatives think this latter type of knowledge superior to a university education.
Tradition’s Theoretical Errors
The conservative theory of tradition says that everything has turned out good, or at least for the best. In order to substantiate such a counter-intuitive assertion they have had to invoke the workings of mysterious processes.
There is absolutely no evidence to show that this is the way the world works.
The Mysterious Processes
Burke’s "Divine Providence;" Hayek’s "Adaptive Evolution," Adam Smith’s "Invisible Hand" are examples of conservatives’ mysterious processes.
The idea is that over thousands of years there has been a democratic interaction of trial and error among equals which over time evolves a consensus that eliminates less successful solutions to human problems, leaving the most successful and socially beneficial standing: a survival of the fittest process.
The problem with this idea is that the processes haven’t been democratic, haven’t been among equals, didn’t stem from a consensus and has been selectively beneficial. Other than that it’s a fine theory.
Hayek’s "Socially Beneficial Aims"
Hayek describes his theory of "spontaneous order" as a third alternative - to human design or supernatural design - to explain the workings of society
"...complex and orderly and...purposive institutions might grow up which owed little to design...but arose from the separate actions of many men who did not know what they were doing." [Buckley and Kesler, Page 166]
Notice that Hayek describes a two step process of processes. First institutions arise spontaneously then beneficial consequences spontaneously result from the workings of the institutions. Self-love is the engine that drives the processes.
[The problem is] how "self love, may receive such direction ... as to promote the public interest by...the evolution of "well-constructed institutions,"... that...successfully [channel] individual efforts to socially beneficial aims." [Buckley and Kesler, Page 167]
Hayek is describing a nonsensical utopian process, implying that everyone deals from equally strong positions. In real life what is in the "public interest" and is "socially beneficial" is determined by society’s elites.
Neither institutions nor their consequences are the fruits of consensus but of inequalities of power.
Elites Decide What Is Socially Beneficial
Most people know that every social policy creates winners and losers and "socially beneficial" is usually defined as the aims of those who have the gold. It’s fine to have self love, but better to have money. Conservatives are forced to enunciate a "trickle down" justification that "sure the elites get the lions share of the benefits but eventually everybody gets at least a sliver of benefit."
Adam Smith recognized that under existing conditions in the free market the competition was unequal. "Those with political clout [will] use it to short-circuit the market." [Muller, page 68, The Mind and the Market]
Institutions Can Be Evil
Beyond the uneven consequences of Hayek’s mysterious process we think that thousands of years of human experience are as likely to generate institutions that are negative or ambiguous or inconsequential as they are to be socially beneficial. Libertarian Murray Rothbard agrees with us.
"Time can hallow evil as well as good....But if we are stuck within tradition, whatever it may happen to be, how do we know whether it is good, indifferent, or evil? Only principle can judge, can decide, between traditions; and reason is our key to the discovery of principle."
The mistake Burke, Hayek and other conservatives make is to venerate whatever has occurred, i.e., Tradition, not for its goodness or consequences, but because it has a long history. Their theory is "anything with a long history must be good."
REVERENCE FOR "UNANTICIPATED CONSEQUENCES"
Another problem with the mysterious processes is that consequences cannot be anticipated, they can only be observed after the fact. Everything is an unanticipated consequence. Some are positive; some are negative. Burke fails to make that distinction and ends up having a reverence for whatever has occurred.
Burke has elaborated on what he imagines to have been the thousands of years process which produced Traditions. He puts great store in "habit" and "custom." Burke uses the term "prejudice" to "refer to rules of action which are the product of historical experience and are inculcated by habit." [Mueller]
"Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts....[Reflection]...serves only to aggravate and embitter that real inequality, which it never can remove; and which the order of civil life establishes as much for the benefit of those whom it must leave in a humble state, as those whom it is able to exalt to a condition more splendid, but not more happy...."
History, Burke says, has made some people "humble" in circumstances. He urges the humble people to abide by the morality of their society and not question their humble status.
The Development Of "Habit And Custom"
David Hume has a less reverential and, we think, a more realistic perspective on the development of habit and custom. He begins with his observations about the establishment of governments.
"Almost all governments, which exist at present [1748], or of which there remains any record in story, have been founded originally, either on usurpation or conquest, or both, without any pretence of a fair consent, or voluntary subjection of the people." [Muller, Conservatism, Page 55]
After government has become established men become accustomed to obedience to a leader.
"Obedience or subjection becomes so familiar, that most men never make any inquiry about its origin or cause...." [Ibid., Page 54]
And men:
"...never think of departing from that path, in which they and their ancestors have constantly trod, and to which they are confined by so many urgent and visible motives." [Ibid., Page 49]
According to Hume, and we concur, Tradition is the consequence of power exercised and not consensus. Moral justification then follows and Burke advises men to accept the moral justification they are given without thinking, for that will make them happier.
We think it likely that it was thousands of years of the will of elites rather than consensus which is reflected in the institutions, habits and customs of a culture.
The Unseen Thousands Of Years
Who can dispute what happened thousands of years ago or has happened for thousands of years? Hayek and Burke hide behind this appeal to what we cannot experience here and now.
Suppose men have drawn the same incorrect conclusions year after year for thousands of years, made the same mistakes in judgment year after year for thousands of years. Hayek and Burke will call those mistakes and errors wisdom.
Irrationality Is Not inerrant
Hayek calls this trial and error process of social development "irrational," and calls it superior to rationality. Conservatives celebrate irrationality, especially in morals, believing that the trial and error of thousands of years of experience distills the best morality.
"Next to language, [morals] are perhaps the most important instance of an undesigned growth, of a set of rules which govern our lives but of which we can say neither why they are what they are nor what they do to us. We do not know what the consequences of observing them are for us as individuals and as a group." [Hayek in Buckley and Kesler, page 171]
Our advice to readers of Hayek is to "follow the money," see who benefits from these "undesigned morals."
Individual Institutions Are Created By Only A Few People
Conservative descriptions of this thousands of years process of trial and error leave the impression that everyone in a society is involved in the evolution of the institutions which are the primary embodiment of our habit and custom. We are given the impression that this has been a sort of democratic process through which a consensus has been reached.
Consider this: Throughout the thousands of years invoked by Burke and Hayek most people who have come into contact with our legal system, our educational system, and our religious systems have been involved as clients, not as democratic participants.
The evolution of these institutions has been influenced primarily by the elites: judges and attorneys; teachers and administrators; Luther, Calvin and the Church Fathers, Freud.
The most obvious example is the military institution. Do conservatives believe that the modern military is the result of trial and error over thousands of years in which enlisted men played a significant part in its evolution?
TRADITION IS A THEORY ABOUT HOW
THE WORLD GOT TO BE THE WAY IT IS
We think most people’s experience with the world we live in is that almost nothing ever turns out the way we hope or plan it to be. We can’t see the future nor influence it very much. Blind groping is the best description of how we live our lives. The world did not get to be the way it is because blind groping for thousands of years eventually leads to wisdom.
Learning And Revelation
Tradition is in conflict with revelation that reveals the Transcendental Moral Code. According to conservatives Tradition is passed on from generation to generation. For the individual this means that we do not come equipped with knowledge of the world, including morality, but are taught the things of Tradition by our elders. The second thing is that Tradition is based on experience rather than revelation, trial and error rather than revelation. From this standpoint Tradition is secular based, rather than based on the Transcendental Moral Code.
Hayek’s "undesigned morality" is a contradiction of the Transcendental Code.