I explore demagoguery, Aldeous Huxley, memetics and kippers.

Contents:

  1. Part I: Philosophical Reason

  2. Part II: Cosmic Onions

  3. Part III: A Western Syndrome

  4. Part IV: Our Chosen Philosophies

There is no rite of passage when coming to terms with reality. While many other animals behave ‘rationally’ despite lacking complex language, humans have access to a relatively abstract philosophical faculty. [1]

Psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman says that “we can’t live in a state of perpetual doubt, so we make up the best story possible and live as if this story were true,” and so when it comes to seeking answers for the right way to think, live, and behave, we are united in our inability to yield definitive answers.

Part I. Philosophical Reason

At the core of many personal decisions is the belief that we are doing right and behaving according to our philosophy. The insecurities we each experience are the product of this process; social anxiety comes from the belief that we ought to behave in a particular way when interacting with others but do not feel up to it. Those without expectations are unaffected by insecurities, as they never fall short.

The ‘right way to think, live, and behave’ is the question that our philosophy answers, at least partially, and these solutions can be wide-ranging.

Widely shared philosophies include:

  • Religion, such as Islamic morality, Christian values, Sikh virtues, the core values of Confucianism, and plethora other ancient traditions.

  • The philosophy of science, concerning the methodological process, objectives and degree of verification that should be used and accepted in each scientific field.

  • Political and economic philosophy, such as nationalism (American and British values), or most broadly, the ideologies of liberalism, communism and fascism.

  • Aesthetic philosophy, such as judgements of beauty, taste and, sensation.

  • The philosophy of language, looking at semantics and symbolism, and the co-evolution of culture and biology.

  • The philosophy of mind (consciousness), particularly dualism, monism and mysterianism.

Other, less popular philosophies include zodiac signs and horoscopes, organisational values (such as the culture of Amazon or WeWork), compounds of philosophies compiled by authors like Ray Dalio, and progressively more unshared philosophies such as the manifestos written by cult leaders such as Charles Manson, and anarchists or hackers.

The four major academic fields concerned with exploring philosophy are metaphysics (concerned with the fundamental nature of existence and reality), epistemology (concerned with the nature of knowledge and belief, including empiricism), ethics (concerned with moral value), and logic (concerned with the rules of inference that allow conclusions to be drawn from truths).

Athens
Figure 1. The School of Athens by Raphael (1511 A.D.)

A final variant worth mentioning is the study of Zen Buddhism. While Zen involves an overarching objective compatible with other faiths (the goal of gaining enlightenment or ascension), it sends its practitioners looking inside for enlightenment; for a truth that cannot be learnt by philosophising, thinking rationality, studying scriptures, or taking part in rituals. The first step is to control one’s mind through meditation, to give up logical thinking and to avoid becoming trapped in a spider’s web of words. By separating ourselves from our expectations, we rid ourselves of anxieties and suffering.

It is clear that finding what path to take is a purely subjective, and never definitive. Any shared consensus can only be as strong as the value one assigns to its evidence. A strong human heuristic follows the simplest answer; the one with a clear, visible consensus that answers the crucial question “what is the right way to think, live, and behave?” most effectively; this is why religions are so widely believed. But there has been a steady and significant decline in religious popularity since the 1960s, most prominently in western nations. This decline can certainly be attributed to the age of enlightenment trend and democratisation of information through the internet. [2]

Part II. Cosmic Onions

The marketplace of human philosophy is more saturated than ever. Tribes passed myths about the natural world down between generations, leading to many of the stories in the old testament, written after 1200BC. Civilizations brought many stories together into more recognisable formats, writing doctrine in the form of law. But it wasn’t until the globalisation of knowledge that myriad ideas were aggregated in Europe.

The invention of printing enabled developments that laid the groundworks for the Scientific Revolution, such as the Baconian method (the origins of empiricism), the Copernican revolution, the beginning of modern mathematics, and early enlightenment with Descartes’ natural philosophy. Leading scholars were polymaths, typically with good connections and financial nobility that enabled them to explore their curiosity without the need of a conventional vocation, often spending years in education. Copernicus obtained a doctorate in law, and lived as a mathematician, astronomer, physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat and economist. Compulsory and free primary education has only existed in the UK since the Mundella Act of 1880. Before then, less than half of the population was formally educated, and any education that was provided was by the church on religious grounds.

While religion provides ‘grounds’ for morality and has a potentially powerful unifying effect, strict doctrine such as scripture lose their relevance in a society with disruptive technologies. While the conflict thesis (Draper & White) of Church vs. Science has been largely discredited, it is true that devout Christians who interpret the Bible at face-value follow restrictive, dogmatic teachings. The Catholic Church has welcomed celibate gay people into its sermons, but under their catechism, still name ‘homosexual acts’ as “intrinsically immoral and contrary to the natural law” and continues to believe that homosexual orientation “must be seen as an objective disorder”. For societies transitioning to equal rights on the grounds that homosexuality is natural by scientific philosophy, the Catholic church can be seen as an ancient opponent. [3]

‘Science’, said playwright George Bernard Shaw, ‘can never solve any one problem without raising ten more’. Bernard Shaw painted science as a losing battle, or at least one that was always incomplete (he jokingly contrasted it to religion, which is always certain, stable and absolute). He described science as the Lernaean Hydra, with Hercules and his nephew desperately slicing off acid-spitting heads, only to cause more to sprout. But while there is truth to this analogy, it doesn’t go far enough.

Science is well depicted as a patchwork of knowledge, with scientists acting to sew together gaps in our knowledge with new, more convincing hypotheses and experiments, with no patch ever safe from coming undone at the seams. In order to thread it tighter, some stitches may need undoing, and many steps of deconstruction are needed in order to grow the mass of the work. Loose threads become obvious when we can afford scrutinise the smaller details.

Onion
Figure 2. The Scientific Process.

In astrophysics, Frank Close characterises this patchwork of knowledge as the ‘cosmic onion’. He proposes that our role as scientists is to peel away layers to better understand the foundations of the physical world, always deepening our understanding with time. This image is satisfyingly finite; it gives goalposts to science; a finale, reachable given that we have uncovered enough layers. In one version of the Greek myth, Hercules defeats the Lernaean Hydra not by searing every last neck with fire, but by decapitating its one immortal head; by finding a singular fix.

While this metaphor is ripe to inspire and motivate, it trivialises the uncertainty of reality. It was the pursuit of a scientific ‘Theory of Everything’ that plagued much of Albert Einstein’s later life. He declared himself a ‘fanatic believer’ that a unified theory would resolve the uncertainty of quantum physics. But this theory evaded him, and by some accounts, wounded his sense of wonder and the type of open-minded thought experiments that characterised much of his earlier work. Coming to terms with this uncertainty, it appears, is no easy feat. [4]

In fact, an aversion to uncertainty often serves as a catalyst in the reassessment of prevailing theories. This aspect of scientific inquiry was notably present in Albert Einstein’s earlier work, using ‘it seems to me’ when proposing light was made up of photons, and similarly when devising his theory of relativity. Charles Darwin, in formulating his theory of evolution, used ‘I think’ throughout his masterwork. In the words of Carlo Rovelli, ‘Genius hesitates’.

Thoroughly conscious ignorance has, time and again, preluded major advances in knowledge. Why? Because possessing an accurate perspective of what is known to us and what is not makes new discoveries more obvious. ‘Discovery comes not when something goes right, but when something runs counter to what was expected’ says physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn, and to quote Isaac Asimov, the most exciting moment in science is not ‘Eureka!’, but with the observation of an anomaly, followed by ‘that’s funny…’

Such an approach does not render science aimless; instead, it imbues the exploration of the unknown with a sense of wonder and beauty. The quest for understanding is less about removing layers from a “cosmic onion” and more akin to an excavation from within. The scientific field in 2100, given the nature of exponential progress and the application of new technology, is predicted to be an order of magnitude larger than it is today. With an ‘intelligence explosion’ of the magnitude anticipated by I. J. Good, it is reasonable to assume that the scientific landscape will be unrecognisable soon after the AI singularity event, which is overwhelmingly expected to occur well within this century. [5]

Part III. A Western Syndrome

Appealing to the human desire for certainty is the most powerful force in nature. Ancient civilisations used their shared beliefs in religion to unite the population for vast projects with global impact. Aristotle himself wrote about the scale of Egyptian canals 800BC, commissioned by Pharaohs believed by the people to be touting the will of the Gods. Egyptians finished the original Suez canal in around 500BC at over 100km long, and its construction lead to the establishment of 270 harbours in the Red Sea. The ancient Suez canal was used for over 1200 years.

Large scale unification has only grown stronger as civilisation has matured. In 2022, there are 195 countries with unique laws and culture, thousands of religions with approximately 93% of the world affiliated, many ideologies and economic practices and a dynamic landscape of ethics. In terms of power, democratically elected politicians achieve leadership by cultivating trust among the people, or by promoting distrust in incumbent politicians. In terms of profit, organisations appeal to controversy in order to gain attention, earning their revenue from advertisements. These two forces can cripple and polarise cultures.

Your child is showing signs of autism? Blame it on the vaccine they took a few weeks ago. Can’t feel the spin or see the curvature of the Earth? Claim it’s flat. People are getting sick and dying in groups? That’ll be witches, vampires, or maybe God’s wrath, until viruses were known about. When political leaders stir this mixing pot of controversy they stand to make significant gain. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump suggested that thousands of people in New Jersey (“where you have large Arab populations”) were cheering during 9/11, and that the father of his competitor was involved in the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald. In running for his second term, he said Biden was controlled by “people in the dark shadows that you haven’t ever heard of”. By appearing to verify conspiracy, and by supporting the desires and prejudices of the masses, Trump pursued an unprecedented effort to overturn the election, culminating in a mob of rioters attacking the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. While it is hard to verify real from fake, orchestrating an environment of distrust is a slippery slope. [6]

Trump’s method for stirring controversy was highly effective in gaining support. When he entered the candidacy race in 2016, he became a media phenomenon, with Trump-related headlines leading 36% of daily news coverage on the internet for the first ten months. 54% of newspaper stories about Republican candidates were about Trump. Ultimately, he spent only $10 million on paid advertising, yet received the equivalent of $2 billion in coverage in the media. [7]

Trump
Figure 3. Donald Trump’s charisma…

Upon his election, for each year he was in office, Trump was factchecked more often. He went from averaging 6 false or misleading claims a day in his first year as president to 16 in his second year, then 22, and then 39. Forbes estimate that while Obama told 92% ‘mostly true’ statements during his first 100 days, Trump only managed 41% accuracy. According to the Washington Post, Trump recorded 492 false or misleading claims in the first 100 days of his presidency. By the end of his term, he had accumulated 30,573 untruths. His opposition of the ‘fake news’ agencies further polarised the degree of distrust in US politics during his term. The aftermath has been described as the ‘post-truth era of politics’, and is reportedly ascendant in many other nations, most notably Australia, Brazil, China, India, Russia, and the United Kingdom. [8]

Aldous Huxley, in 1958, expressed his concerns about the weaponization of propaganda. He prophesised “All technology is morally neutral, it can either be used well or ill… I think what is going to happen in the future is that [politicians] will find that to preserve their power indefinitely; they are going to have to get the consent of the ruled, and this they will do. Partly by new techniques of propaganda; they will do it by appealing to [the people’s] subconscious and deeper emotions.”

These techniques were actively pursued by Cambridge Analytica in 2016, which acquired and used personal data of up to 87 million Facebook users for application in Trump’s electoral campaign and the Conservative’s Brexit campaign. They contributed to two back-to-back election victories against significant odds before being forced to disband.

Huxley wrote in Brave New World Revisted (1959), on the subject of American political candidates, that “[Now] the person­ality of the candidate and the way he is projected by the advertising experts are the things that really mat­ter. […] The candidate must be glamorous. He must also be an entertainer who never bores his audience. Inured to television and radio, that audience is accustomed to being distracted and does not like to be asked to con­centrate or make a prolonged intellectual effort. All speeches by the entertainer-candidate must therefore be short and snappy. The great issues of the day must be dealt with in five minutes at the most – and prefera­bly in sixty seconds flat.” No truer words describe the 2016 western political era. [9]

The sad reality is that in the finite public eye, and an era of shortening attention spans, it is far easier to cause disarray than stability. Another powerful form of political propaganda comes from ‘viral sloganeering’ (Donovan & Friedberg, 2019), or the virality and ‘memeification’ of information. Memetics were first theorised by Richard Dawkins in 1976, and further explored by Susan Blackmore in ‘The Meme Machine’ (1999). Memes are messages that have three key characteristics:

  • high fidelity replication (message security),

  • high levels of fecundity (proliferation, virality),

  • and longevity (or retention).

The premise is that humans have a natural tendency to process information in highly memorable, simple kernels. “Build The Wall”, “Make America Great Again”, and “Lock Her Up” were the memes of Trump’s inaugural political campaign, each as memorable as bumper stickers, despite their obtuse simplifications of reality.

A similar example of political demagoguery was “the £350 Million Lie”; the message of the Tory battle bus for the Brexit campaign that was, posthumously, proven false. Echoing much the same rhetoric of distrust in the status quo, Michael Gove, then the Conservative Lord Chancellor, declared: “I think the people of this country have had enough of experts,” symbolising in a simple slogan precisely the transition we have witnessed in the UK, for both sides of the aisle. [10]

Kipper
Figure 4. “Each kipper must be accompanied by a plastic ice pillow! Pointless, expensive, environmentally damaging health and safety.” — Boris Johnson’s kipper claim in favour of the ‘Vote Leave’ campaign was later proven false. BoJo proves that charisma trumps truth.

Part IV. Our Chosen Philosophies

Understanding our cognitive biases can prevent us from falling victim to them. Recognising that some power actors over-simplify messages to make them more viral can prevent us from mass hallucination. Accepting that there is inherent uncertainty in life can prevent us from losing our wonder and awe of the world.

On an interpersonal level, there is a sense in which a philosophy need only resonate with an individual for it to be ‘right’ for them. Actor Tom Cruise cites his belief in Scientology, a religion created in 1954 by sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard, as something that has “helped me incredibly in my life… without it, I wouldn’t be where I am.” In one interview he stated his wholehearted belief that “As a scientologist, you see things the way they are, [you see life] in all its glory, in all its complexity.” Without Hubbard’s Church of Scientology, we may not have Top Gun or the Mission Impossible franchise. The selfless objectives described by Cruise in one interview are amicable by measure of any Christian faith and my many accepted codes of ethics. [11]

Another interesting case is Theosophy, founded in New York in 1875 by sixteen individuals, most notably Helena Blavatsky, as a mixture of religious, philosophical, and occultist ideas with elements of Hinduism, Buddhism, Ancient Greek philosophy and modern science. Theosophy struck a chord with European artists in validating the idea that traditional naturalistic styles were inadequate, limited imitations of life, and is seen as the direct inspiration for much of early abstract expressionism.

Theosophy
Figure 5. Left: Thought Forms by Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater. Right: The Swan by Hilma af Klint.

While these images look straight out of the mid-twentieth century, they were produced in 1905 (left) and 1915 (right). All three artists cited Theosophy as a direct source for their ideas and works. Later, abstractionists including Vassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian seconded Theosophy as direct inspiration for their work.

Another philosophy embraced by abstract expressionists in the 1940s was ‘spontaneity’. Pollock first practiced ‘automatic writing’ at Stanley Hayter’s printmaking workshop, Atelier 17. He took from the experience an appreciation for spontaneous, non-descriptive line, leading to his drip paintings just a few years later.


Notes

"An unexamined life is not worth living" --- Socrates

As an individual awed by technological progress, I find myself assigning a greater worth to fields of science than those expressed in religious scripture, but do enjoy interesting ancient texts. I also find Zen Buddhism to be fascinating.

[1] - If our perception of rationality evolved through the same process of natural selection, why should we be surprised that other animals behave rationally? Here’s a link.

[2] - Some articles on the decline of religion are available here and here.

[3] - The Catholic Church on LGBTQ+.

[4] - Read some of Einstein’s thought experiments here.

[5] - Bostrom’s superintelligence survey is available here.

Also, while you’re here, check out this great article on the singularity. Oldie but a goldie.

[6] - Trump controversies are so prolific that these cases only scratch the surface. Longer lists are available here and here.

[7] - Trump coverage statistics from 5-38 are here. An article by the Rolling Stone on his mental candidacy is here.

[8] - The Washington Post article is available here and a Forbes article here.

First 100-days statistics: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmarkowitz/2021/04/30/who-lied-more-during-their-first-100-days-biden-trump-or-obama/?sh=331530f81a89

Post-Truth politics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth_politics

[9] - Incredible Aldous Huxley interview here.

[10] - The Brexit Lie debunked by Channel 4 and The Guardian.

https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-send-350m-week-brussels

[11] - Find this ultra bizarre interview here. The human mind is fragile.