The (Greek) Tragedy Of The West

I try to avoid reading polemics because I don't see the point of them. I see the need to write them from time to time, but reading them is the cynical equivalent of mental masturbation. Sure, wallow in self-pity if that's your thing, but I'll stick to actual porn like a normal person, thanks.

Ahem.

Anyway, this is not to say I don't occasionally read things that sound more polemical, if only as a "just in case" situation. Today's IAI piece certainly has a "you should feel like utter shit" vibe about the title... I mean, "The End of the West means even more than you think" sounds to me like barely-coded essay-speak for "Things are awful and you're not feeling depressed enough, here, watch me murder some kittens so you feel properly sad."

Wait ! Don't go ! I promise it actually turns out to be nothing like that at all. It's actually about the similarities between the seemingly-chaotic Greek tragedies and the complex modern world in which we find ourselves, and how we can strive to keep our heads when those around us are losing theirs (and not necessarily just metaphorically). It's also good not just as a self-help, but an insight into what makes the Greek tragedies so appealing.

Still, it does begin with a bit of a rant about how things are bad :

Liberal humanism can be defined as a quasi-religious faith in progress, the power of reason, universal human rights, the moral primacy of Western-style democracy, free markets, and the unbounded potential of technology. It also contains a hubristic belief that it is the best single way in which human beings can organize themselves. It is a utopian ideology that looks forward to a time when all societies would be democratic, prosperous and part of a homogenous global system.

The gap between what liberal humanism promised and what it is now delivering is too vast for any illusion to sustain it. While technology has advanced the moral progress of our institutions has not followed. A backlash was inevitable.

Unfortunately, the author doesn't really expound on why things haven't panned out the way they were supposed to, and for my part I would put a pretty big label on "under-regulation". I don't think this has much to do with "liberal humanism" per se. I mean, monarchy is a terrible system, but if you happen to have a decent one, things are probably not too bad for the ordinary folk. Here it's the reverse : the ideas are good, but if you don't do things properly, if you let market forces and inequality spiral out of control, you won't get a good result.

Still, the main point seems sound. Rightly or wrongly, the perceived failings of the prevalent ideology are leading to reactions against it.

This backlash has been exploited by Trump and other right-wing politicians across the West who mask their self-serving politics by positioning themselves as bulwarks against the fragmenting of Western values. The utopias these new preachers evangelize about are now located in some unspecified time in the past, before the fragmentation, rather than the future. 

This is very interesting to me, seen as how medieval rulers were apt to present novelty as regression; elsewhere it has been noted that techbros sometimes try to disguise political regression with a shiny novel aesthetic. Here it seems we're really going for old-school conservatism : not merely avoiding further changes, but the notion that the past was better because it was geared around order and hierarchy, a direct reaction against liberal democratic values. The different ways people appeal for change are interesting in themselves, however the article continues :

Those still looking forward, ignore the fact that our uses of science and knowledge are as fleeting and crooked as we are ourselves, and pin hope of salvation on technology. They put their faith in the God-like abilities of AI or promise redemption in virtual worlds. Science can lift man’s eyes up to the stars, but humans will use what they know to satisfy their most pressing needs and desires — even if the result is ruin. 

While today’s techno-optimists may eventually develop the technology to get us to Mars, the technototalitarian colonies they found are unlikely to give us the belonging and meaning our society on our current planet isn’t providing.

Well that's grim ! But then, I've made my position on techno-optimism clear previously, so I'm not going to go through that again. As far as the Silicon Valley techbro mentality is concerned, I agree with the current article : these sorts of fools don't understand that technological advancement only brings benefits when coupled with social progress, and doesn't happen automatically. I wouldn't agree that this means technological advancement can or should be avoided, although I don't think the author is trying to imply that.

Despite their beliefs in gods and the afterlife, the ancient Greeks were focused on what one does in this world, in the here and now. When Odysseus visits Hades in the Odyssey he is approached by the masses of the dead. Speaking with Achilles he is told those that have crossed over the river Styx are “Numb dead people… the shades of poor exhausted mortals”. The afterlife is no substitute for the vividness of life itself.

And so, perhaps, are the purely-technological solutions of Silicon valley. The techbro solution is only a shade of what must be done to mitigate dystopian angst. An AI is not a true companion and never will be, and a virtual world is no solution to real problems. This doesn't mean they're innately bad, because they're not. But they are definitely used badly by the techbro types.

I would also add a brief note on dystopias more generally. It seems to me that just as utopian thinking commits a fallacy by imagining that an ideal system will lead to true, blissful perfection, so polemics against dystopias do the exact opposite. They paint this picture of a system in which everyone is miserable about everything the whole time, giving the impression that no other state of existence is then possible. All will suffer and all will be suffering. This is simply not how humans work : people will sometimes be happy almost regardless of circumstance, and equally, they can still be depressed in paradise. 

The thing that really gets me about polemics about the actual state of current affairs is the insistence that only one moral-emotional state is permissible : you should either be overjoyed at the ongoing technological progress, say, or utterly distraught and in tears about your constant oppression and the fact that everyone is trying to harvest your organs, or something. Other states are deemed invalid and your contrary opinion doesn't count; moral nuance is heresy. Only suffering or ecstasy are permitted. I hate this.

But I digress. Or do I ? Not quite. It's precisely this flawed, binary, good-versus-evil depiction which, the author suggests, the Greek tragedies are so good at avoiding :

A key set of treasures within this that perhaps best describes the world we now find ourselves in are the first written stories in Western culture – The Iliad and Odyssey – and the Greek tragedies. They describe a world in constant conflict defined by capriciousness, ambiguity, uncertainty and unknowability, where people are often swept along by forces, they interact with but don’t fully comprehend. They also then suggest how best we might approach such a world, pointing us to a form of both political and individual realism.

And that resonates with me very strongly. Yes, parts of the modern world are awful, and parts of the ancient world were orders of magnitude worse. But insisting that we hate everything continuously is just paralysingly nihilistic, not productive. We don't have to go down the full Stoic route to accept that we can still have a largely pleasant life despite circumstances.

One of the reasons the tragedies are still so relevant is that humans, despite advances in technology and material wealth are still driven by the same conflicting needs and illusions. There are many ways open to us to express our needs and organise ourselves, but we are limited by the same Hamartia or basic human vulnerabilities.

We live today in a supposed democratic meritocracy, yet our actions are subject to the invisible gods of market forces and algorithms. We can find ourselves pawns in the petty squabbles of autocratic leaders. But at the same time, within the confines of fate, we are free to make choices – this is how our destiny plays out. In perhaps the finest of the tragedies, Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Oedipus’ fate is not just decided by the choices he makes, but also the interaction of forces outside of his control interacting with his choices. 

Indeed, the developments of the modern world provide material improvement but often moral uncertainty. Whereas the natural forces of the ancient world made for permanent uncertainty, here it's the pace of our own discoveries which result in confusion : the effect is similar despite a very different underlying cause. 

And of course, we're none of us completely bereft of influence and control, but like even the heroes of Greek myth, we can sometimes feel very small and insignificant. The Greek heroes never really go on world-saving missions like modern superheroes do, that's left to the gods. But they do manage to make a difference in their own spheres. Surely that's an important lesson even for the most ardent would-be modern reformers : you may never fully realise your visions, but your contribution may be important even so.

The moral aspects, though, are where things get very interesting indeed :

These ancient stories show us that tragedy is not the triumph of evil over good, but the suffering caused by the triumph of one good over another. Tragedy is about morally defensible but incompatible goals... The chorus divides into two groups. There is no reconciliation.

Which is not to say that the modern world, and ancient tragedy, don't have elements of good and evil about them, things with which there can be no compromise. But an awful lot of conflict does arise in such a way. The similarities to the Dune saga, in which solution after solution is presented and found wanting, seem obvious. And to a lesser degree, perhaps, also that of certain fairy tales with no clear moral lesson (or indeed physical cause for why things happen*). Presumably, uncertainty is a necessary condition for dystopias, but maybe there's a glimmer of hope in that most good dystopian narratives nevertheless have a clear resolution, that form of "political and individual realism" mentioned earlier.

* Possibly, in those cases the chaos is the result of hidden variables : the original versions may have made a lot more sense in a context which is now lost to us. Both Greek mythology and later fairy tales are arguably ways to try and understand a world which simply couldn't be understood by the methods of rational inquiry available at the time.

What can we learn from this ? The author suggests :

The Greeks show us that killing and dying for concepts that defy reason, for often nonsensical ideas, is how many human beings have made sense of their lives. This is something those trying to negotiate peace today must not forget, but the unreasonable nature of our species is something we should all be aware of in our day-to-day relations. Tragedy teaches us that if we do not realise this and we try to disavow the past, then at best, we will be destined to repeat what has come before, and at worst, be destroyed by it. 

In essence, while you might be able to fight off irrationality to some degree, you can't eliminate it completely. You have to accept that people have irrational motivations and work within that framework, not treat them as machines who've simply been fed wrong data. 

The ancient stories place these dilemmas in rich historical and social contexts, where the past weighs down on the present, with everyone aware of the social networks in which they interact and the resulting duties and responsibilities this entails. This contrasts with the ahistorical approach taken by the hubristic planners of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan that tried to force an alien political construct on ancient cultures they made little effort to understand or the architects of the homogeneous globalized economy that uproot industries and move them round the world severing social and economic links in place for generations.

And I would add that this may also be a reason why less bloodthirsty culture wars can have such potent effects even on those who aren't directly affected by them. People are very deeply attached to their own beliefs and ways of doing things, especially when they don't ever question them. When someone tells you that something you've taken for granted is actually morally wrong when you didn't even think it was a moral issue at all*... it can feel like a direct attack. 

* Examples : which operating system to use, which food to eat, which bathroom to go to, how to dress, what TV channels to watch... and the left is as absolutely as guilty as the right at indulging in this sort of nonsense. 

Faced with the reality that there are moral and political dilemmas for which there are simply no solutions... recognises that there is a plurality of human values that determines many ways of living, and these values – and those that hold them – will inevitably clash. It is the search for a way of living together despite this, embracing the multiple forms of human life as a good thing in itself.

And for me the answer remains firmly in classical liberalism, a.k.a., you do you. When we interact, we both get a say in how things proceed. When we don't, then my actions are up to me and me alone, and for you as well. I know of no better proposed method of coexistence.

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Provisionally, I remain unconvinced that "liberal humanism" has failed. An insufficiently liberal life, one in which everything we do was under someone else's direct control, would be a true dystopian hell, but I'm unconvinced that anything like that is on the horizon in the western hemisphere. I just don't see it. I often look around me, on a nice sunny day with the green grass and birds chirping and data reduction running happily in the background, see most people being generally pretty cheerful most of the time... and I wonder what the hell is wrong with the people on my social media feed. Important though it is to guard against backsliding, wallowing in self-misery that things don't meet our personal exacting standards, that everything is awful because there are some things we don't like, posting nothing much except what's wrong with the world rather than what's right, is a highly toxic lifestyle choice. 

All that said, perhaps it's all worth remembering the earlier lesson : that Blade Runner style grimdark dystopias are simply unrealistic. The important point is not to market everything as unbearably depressing, because it clearly isn't, nor is it that there's a slippery slope towards a truly hellish nightmare where there's no escape from torment, because that isn't going to happen either. I'm sorry, social media, but it just isn't, and this perverse sales pitch is massively ineffective for social reform because it's so blatantly at odds with reality. Rather the lesson here should be that just because there's much in the world that's joyous, that's no reason to excuse the very real failings, the times when things do get dark and depressing, the atrocities and outrages which do happen. We don't need any hyperbole about how we're all going to die horribly. Far more important is to tell us what we need to do to make improvements, not relentless doomongering.

My final point is that the idea of learning to embrace uncertainty, to "live more comfortably with doubt", is nothing new. Life has always been complicated and there have always been forces beyond our control we have to learn to accept; there are, after all, famous clichés about it I need not repeat. But recent decades do seem to have involved a genuine uptick in uncertainty and unpredictability, not just a perception of one. The author's point that this aspect is what makes the tragedies continuously appealing, and now even more relevant, is I think both novel and correct.

And yet the value of the Greek tragedies is, in a satisfyingly meta way, limited. They resonate precisely because they don't contain proposed solutions. The Greek heroes might succeed for a while, but never achieved anything lasting, just as our political efforts can also feel like hollow victories. So while they might teach us how some self-help lessons about how to face uncertainty, we cannot look to them for any deeper answers. Where we do face problems were a compromise is not possible, and this undeniably does happen, we must look elsewhere.