Hi Brink, I've recently come across and highly appreciate your writings and find then really resonate with me in a way that no single source of insight on the problems in American society has provided before. I hope to be able to contribute solutions towards exactly the lack of flourishing that's growing evermore prevalent.
When you refer to "subcultures of independent production" is this merely the alternative methods of production of goods and services? Such an example would be baugruppen housing with community gardening for food production? Or are you referring to the production of other intangible goods of self actualization, community, and soul building experiences that are not mediated through capitalistic market dynamics?
I really appreciate having discovered your writings and hope to conceptualize then actualize solutions to help Sisyphus find his happiness.
Thanks so much for your kind words. I'm focusing on independent production of goods and services, with the idea that being in groups that have actual practical functions will help to strengthen personal social bonds and deliver those intangible rewards. Check out my essay "Rebalancing Capitalism" for more details.
Thanks, once again, Brink, for these. I especially enjoyed the review of your journey from Ayn Rand to pluralism in your last post. And this post is a worthy successor. I have two observations about monoculture and pluralism: First, monocultures are weak because they are subject to viral diseases that rage through their unprotected genotype. I would suggest that our social monoculture is weak in the same way. And the virus that seems to be sweeping through our social "memotype" is authoritarianism. We seem to be losing the ability to think for ourselves, perhaps because it is so easy and convenient to adopt the prevailing monoculture. This seems top leave us susceptible to conspiracy theories and power-hungry leaders. Just add it to the list of reasons in support of pluralism.
Second, pluralism is hard because opting out of the prevailing system involves significant risk, both as an individual and as a community. And as we know, fear of downside risk often overwhelms upside potential because we can go down to zero, which is very painful, while upside benefits are unknown and uncertain.
To me, this argues for a form of "social insurance" on the downside that empowers experimentation and risk and enables the benefits of pluralism. This might be some form of universal income or even a literal insurance program for communities or individuals interested in trying alternative forms of social organization. Just a suggestion....
I also greatly appreciated the story of the development of your thinking. Sometimes it seems that writers are reluctant to "expose" their personal journeys because it might make them seem less objective. I think that understanding our own mental and temperamental processes makes us more objective.
Iris Murdoch mentions philosophical "temperament" in one of her philosophical works. It's a good word for the unique perspective each of us brings to our thinking: no one can claim to be 100% "rational".)
Totally. I found Brink's recounting of his history (here: https://open.substack.com/pub/brinklindsey/p/libertarian-roots-revisited?r=59p54&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web, for those that missed it) so useful that i am using it as an inspiration for a post on "late stage capitalism," still in development. One very useful implication that has broad application is the idea that we tend to think of our latest stage of development as the final one. After reading about Brink's evolution, who can think that he is at the end of his evolution? Or that any of us are? Or that society is? Or that the "laws of physics" are?
Rationality is an evolutionary and emergent process that subjects itself to critical thinking and adaptation. So even if it as possible to be "100% rational" we would still have to admit to the certainty of future change.
I support robust social insurance, and am open to experimentation with universal income programs. But I'd like to see government direct support for reducing the risk of pluralism through subsidies for economic independence initiatives. Take a look at my essays "Rebalancing Capitalism" and "Economic Independence vs. the Alternatives."
It seems to me you're talking about two related but distinct problems here: the monoculture of consumption and production as supreme ends rather than means to more fulfilling ends, and the loss of what Yuval Levin calls formative institutions. The latter is IMO largely due to the increasingly visible failures and flaws of those institutions and the resulting "revolt of the public"-- man, you should really get on a panel sometime with Levin and Martin Gurri and hash all this out!
Anyway, it's clear how creating a greater variety of distributed communities of production can help with the consumption/production monoculture. It's not clear that that by itself can help with the formative institutions problem. If you think you can tell a story about how distributed productive communities can be incubators of new and better such institutions, that would be a valuable subject for another post.
I have some personal stake in this, as a graduate of an old-line East Coast prep school that pushed the WASP noblesse oblige thing really hard and still does so to a large extent, and also as a recent-ish escapee from a lucrative Big Tech management career in favor of consulting and music. I can testify that the concept of "wealth as a means to an end" is key to both of those kinds of pursuit of non-market ends: it is so, so much easier to feel noblesse oblige and to follow creative and connective dreams when you start with a large measure of financial security. I can't really blame anyone who hasn't had my material advantages for not doing what I did.
On that note, here's another pitch for a future post: what can a distributed community-production future learn from the FIRE movement of early "retirees"? My sense as a spectator of that movement is that while to a degree the participants are escaping from the consumer monoculture, they're doing so in pursuit of pretty narrow, short-term and self/nuclear-family-centered ends; there is not an obvious ethos there of building broad sets of fulfilling relationships or cooperative experiments in living. But maybe I'm wrong-- or maybe I could be wrong if the energy of that movement were nudged in just a slightly different direction.
The hope is that smaller, face-to-face communities that have practical functions of providing for each other will be new and powerful formative institutions--when you're directly connected to solving problems together in the physical world, it's easier to stay grounded. I don't know much about the FIRE movement, but my relatively uninformed sense aligns with yours. Definitely worth learning more, though.
There are five comments here and all seem to publish on Substack. Why doesn't the mainstream media speak of the monoculture? You're the guy on the back row of a seminar screaming words that no one hears. I read Robert Reich every day and often call him Cassandra. Every time you publish one of these, I forward it to about thirty people, mostly Democrats but some Republicans, mostly with college degrees, some without. The best I can tell, two retired lawyers and a writer in Canada read them. You, too, seem a Cassandra. Thinkers like you will only be heard once the "monoculture" has destroyed itself. You've read enough history to know there is no messiah. You've read enough philosophy to know there is no absolute. And you've read enough mythology to subscribe to Sisyphus. In fact, you are a Sisyphus! He/she/it found meaning in pushing that boulder back up that mountain, as did Homer, Socrates, Aristotle, Petrarch, Terrance, Voltaire, Camus, Democritus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Paine, FDR, and many more whose ideals we admire long after they are gone and yet we continue to proffer. Reading those names remind me of seeds long buried beneath the sand in the desert and resurrected with a drop of water to live again. Sisyphus and all those names above understood that paradox and maintained the struggle.
For my part, I am glad to celebrate a holiday every week: Shabbat. As a Jew who observes Shabbat, all work ceases for just over 24 hours (granted, the definition of "work" varies based on one's understanding of the word). It's a luxurious gift to enjoy: no work, no cooking, no laundry, etc. I spend time with family, friends, I enjoy long meals and good conversation, reading, etc. In a profound way, Shabbat was and is countercultural. I was just reading a book by the renowned Rabbi Art Green, "Judaism for the World", and one chapter is titled "Judaism as Counterculture", and he writes at length on various countercultural aspects of Judaism.
I am not advocating everyone become a religious Jew, of course, but I am saying that for me, Shabbat is a powerful counterweight to the forces of consumerism (as I cannot spend money on Shabbat unless it's a real emergency). It's a day of reflection, of contemplation, and not of production and consumption (in the consumer sense).
Another aspect of Judaism I enjoy is the peoplehood; the community. So many "modern" people are looking for community with others, and so many complain to me that it's been difficult or impossible for them to find that community. This is especially true for my secular friends as they search for community with others. Largely they find groups with a focus, like political activism or physical fitness, and while those are admirable pursuits, they don't offer the all-encompassing "meaningful" life that some of my friends yearn for.
On that note, I'd love to hear from Brink and others about what kind of community they have found, or have sought to found, that is not religious in nature. I am interested for my own sake, but also because I will send my friends any answers you would choose to share.
Thanks so much for your comments, and I appreciate the value of Shabbat observance. It's good to recognize that there is still a lot of "counterculture" out there in society that is upholding values outside of money culture, whether religiously motivated or otherwise.
My pleasure. I have to express my gratitude to you because your essays provoke me to reconsider what I think I know and believe. Even as a registered Democrat and a believer in an active role for the federal government, I do believe that we as private citizens have a right to privacy, and that we need to carefully consider what powers we give our federal and state governments. I also have come to think more deeply about the role of money culture in our lives, and the concomitant need to consider its powers, as well. I would not want to live in a world in which everything was dominated by a Janus-style government-cum-money culture, leaving no oxygen for anything else. In your essays I often detect what I believe to be libertarian sentiments, and it's an excellent reminder to me that government can't solve all problems (and neither can the "unadulterated" market); that some things can and should only be left to citizens to do on their own and/or in association with others in just about whatever community they choose. Thanks again for all the thought and energy you put into your writings; it's not lost on us!
This is a great question. I'm lucky enough to have two very fulfilling secular communities. One is the group of parents of my son's school classmates. The other is the community of local choral singers, especially those in a choir I've sung in for more than a decade and where I serve on the board.
The common thread is, I think, that these are groups of people with a passionate shared interest in building and sustaining something that feels really important to us. I used to have a similar community feeling about my coworkers back when I worked at Google, and while I don't on net regret leaving, that's the thing I miss most. The common mission, and the devotion to continuing work to sustain the mission, helps everyone get along better and makes all in-group interactions feel more meaningful, and this is true even of social events that aren't directly related to the mission. There's also a set of shared vocabulary and mutually understood life experiences that goes with having been devoted to that mission over a period of years, and I think this is also part of what can make for a cohesive religious community: you feel that you are with people who "get" you because they share these things with you.
That’s just the kind of answer I was looking for, and unsurprisingly, it fits with what Brink says brings us meaning in life. The two groups you belong to fit the bill and are also secular in nature, which means anyone can seek out similar groups. I told my friends to read Victor Franks’s books because they are precisely about searching for and building meaning into our lives. Rarely do these things come knocking on our doors; rather, we have to recognize what interests us and gives us a purpose, and then go out and find or make our communities.
Thanks for sharing the piece, John. It's really quite striking how much overlap there is between us now given our very different starting points. These times are really shuffling the deck.
I enjoyed your post. I notice the same downsides in our culture from the dominance of capitalism. By the way we share the same birth year of 1962.
Perhaps because my professional background was in finance, I notice in particular the "financialization" of the culture. I'm not sure how we can get back to more balance.
In any case, I wrote a post a few days ago titled "Is Noblesse Oblige Still Relevant?" Link below. The post was a riff on one of my favorite novels, Appointment in Samarra by John Ohara.
The "financialization" of culture is an intriguing way of putting it. It brings to mind perhaps a global expectation of return on investment and the difficulty of banks to provide local financing when it's necessary and appropriate. It took the Feds to prop up small businesses during the pandemic; I wonder what kinds of unexamined mechanisms exist for supporting them locally?
Thanks for sharing your post, I enjoyed it. I've heard of O'Hara but never read him; I see he also wrote BUtterfield 8 -- I did see and enjoy the Elizabeth Taylor movie version.
This is the first time I've seen monoculture in the agricultural sense applied to the wider context of "capitalism". Very thought-provoking. It's a good way to remind people that capitalism and market economies have had forms in the past and across cultures.
"The American electorate has - since 1969 - given the Republican Party thirty two years of presidential power - as against the Democrats’ twenty one years. Which begs a Big Question: how did the GOP come to preside over a half-century-long erosion of so much that conservatives hold dear? The answer - the elephant (or more accurately the Leviathan) in the room - is that power gained at the ballot box is no match against the permanently entrenched power of a ‘progressive’ elite that has been drawn - for three or more highly impressionable college years - through a kind of intellectual sheep dip. Hence Robert Conquest’s apocryphal third law of politics: “Any organisation not explicitly right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
Hi Brink, I've recently come across and highly appreciate your writings and find then really resonate with me in a way that no single source of insight on the problems in American society has provided before. I hope to be able to contribute solutions towards exactly the lack of flourishing that's growing evermore prevalent.
When you refer to "subcultures of independent production" is this merely the alternative methods of production of goods and services? Such an example would be baugruppen housing with community gardening for food production? Or are you referring to the production of other intangible goods of self actualization, community, and soul building experiences that are not mediated through capitalistic market dynamics?
I really appreciate having discovered your writings and hope to conceptualize then actualize solutions to help Sisyphus find his happiness.
Thanks so much for your kind words. I'm focusing on independent production of goods and services, with the idea that being in groups that have actual practical functions will help to strengthen personal social bonds and deliver those intangible rewards. Check out my essay "Rebalancing Capitalism" for more details.
Thanks, once again, Brink, for these. I especially enjoyed the review of your journey from Ayn Rand to pluralism in your last post. And this post is a worthy successor. I have two observations about monoculture and pluralism: First, monocultures are weak because they are subject to viral diseases that rage through their unprotected genotype. I would suggest that our social monoculture is weak in the same way. And the virus that seems to be sweeping through our social "memotype" is authoritarianism. We seem to be losing the ability to think for ourselves, perhaps because it is so easy and convenient to adopt the prevailing monoculture. This seems top leave us susceptible to conspiracy theories and power-hungry leaders. Just add it to the list of reasons in support of pluralism.
Second, pluralism is hard because opting out of the prevailing system involves significant risk, both as an individual and as a community. And as we know, fear of downside risk often overwhelms upside potential because we can go down to zero, which is very painful, while upside benefits are unknown and uncertain.
To me, this argues for a form of "social insurance" on the downside that empowers experimentation and risk and enables the benefits of pluralism. This might be some form of universal income or even a literal insurance program for communities or individuals interested in trying alternative forms of social organization. Just a suggestion....
I also greatly appreciated the story of the development of your thinking. Sometimes it seems that writers are reluctant to "expose" their personal journeys because it might make them seem less objective. I think that understanding our own mental and temperamental processes makes us more objective.
Iris Murdoch mentions philosophical "temperament" in one of her philosophical works. It's a good word for the unique perspective each of us brings to our thinking: no one can claim to be 100% "rational".)
Totally. I found Brink's recounting of his history (here: https://open.substack.com/pub/brinklindsey/p/libertarian-roots-revisited?r=59p54&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web, for those that missed it) so useful that i am using it as an inspiration for a post on "late stage capitalism," still in development. One very useful implication that has broad application is the idea that we tend to think of our latest stage of development as the final one. After reading about Brink's evolution, who can think that he is at the end of his evolution? Or that any of us are? Or that society is? Or that the "laws of physics" are?
Rationality is an evolutionary and emergent process that subjects itself to critical thinking and adaptation. So even if it as possible to be "100% rational" we would still have to admit to the certainty of future change.
I support robust social insurance, and am open to experimentation with universal income programs. But I'd like to see government direct support for reducing the risk of pluralism through subsidies for economic independence initiatives. Take a look at my essays "Rebalancing Capitalism" and "Economic Independence vs. the Alternatives."
It seems to me you're talking about two related but distinct problems here: the monoculture of consumption and production as supreme ends rather than means to more fulfilling ends, and the loss of what Yuval Levin calls formative institutions. The latter is IMO largely due to the increasingly visible failures and flaws of those institutions and the resulting "revolt of the public"-- man, you should really get on a panel sometime with Levin and Martin Gurri and hash all this out!
Anyway, it's clear how creating a greater variety of distributed communities of production can help with the consumption/production monoculture. It's not clear that that by itself can help with the formative institutions problem. If you think you can tell a story about how distributed productive communities can be incubators of new and better such institutions, that would be a valuable subject for another post.
I have some personal stake in this, as a graduate of an old-line East Coast prep school that pushed the WASP noblesse oblige thing really hard and still does so to a large extent, and also as a recent-ish escapee from a lucrative Big Tech management career in favor of consulting and music. I can testify that the concept of "wealth as a means to an end" is key to both of those kinds of pursuit of non-market ends: it is so, so much easier to feel noblesse oblige and to follow creative and connective dreams when you start with a large measure of financial security. I can't really blame anyone who hasn't had my material advantages for not doing what I did.
On that note, here's another pitch for a future post: what can a distributed community-production future learn from the FIRE movement of early "retirees"? My sense as a spectator of that movement is that while to a degree the participants are escaping from the consumer monoculture, they're doing so in pursuit of pretty narrow, short-term and self/nuclear-family-centered ends; there is not an obvious ethos there of building broad sets of fulfilling relationships or cooperative experiments in living. But maybe I'm wrong-- or maybe I could be wrong if the energy of that movement were nudged in just a slightly different direction.
The hope is that smaller, face-to-face communities that have practical functions of providing for each other will be new and powerful formative institutions--when you're directly connected to solving problems together in the physical world, it's easier to stay grounded. I don't know much about the FIRE movement, but my relatively uninformed sense aligns with yours. Definitely worth learning more, though.
There are five comments here and all seem to publish on Substack. Why doesn't the mainstream media speak of the monoculture? You're the guy on the back row of a seminar screaming words that no one hears. I read Robert Reich every day and often call him Cassandra. Every time you publish one of these, I forward it to about thirty people, mostly Democrats but some Republicans, mostly with college degrees, some without. The best I can tell, two retired lawyers and a writer in Canada read them. You, too, seem a Cassandra. Thinkers like you will only be heard once the "monoculture" has destroyed itself. You've read enough history to know there is no messiah. You've read enough philosophy to know there is no absolute. And you've read enough mythology to subscribe to Sisyphus. In fact, you are a Sisyphus! He/she/it found meaning in pushing that boulder back up that mountain, as did Homer, Socrates, Aristotle, Petrarch, Terrance, Voltaire, Camus, Democritus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Paine, FDR, and many more whose ideals we admire long after they are gone and yet we continue to proffer. Reading those names remind me of seeds long buried beneath the sand in the desert and resurrected with a drop of water to live again. Sisyphus and all those names above understood that paradox and maintained the struggle.
Another excellent essay.
For my part, I am glad to celebrate a holiday every week: Shabbat. As a Jew who observes Shabbat, all work ceases for just over 24 hours (granted, the definition of "work" varies based on one's understanding of the word). It's a luxurious gift to enjoy: no work, no cooking, no laundry, etc. I spend time with family, friends, I enjoy long meals and good conversation, reading, etc. In a profound way, Shabbat was and is countercultural. I was just reading a book by the renowned Rabbi Art Green, "Judaism for the World", and one chapter is titled "Judaism as Counterculture", and he writes at length on various countercultural aspects of Judaism.
I am not advocating everyone become a religious Jew, of course, but I am saying that for me, Shabbat is a powerful counterweight to the forces of consumerism (as I cannot spend money on Shabbat unless it's a real emergency). It's a day of reflection, of contemplation, and not of production and consumption (in the consumer sense).
Another aspect of Judaism I enjoy is the peoplehood; the community. So many "modern" people are looking for community with others, and so many complain to me that it's been difficult or impossible for them to find that community. This is especially true for my secular friends as they search for community with others. Largely they find groups with a focus, like political activism or physical fitness, and while those are admirable pursuits, they don't offer the all-encompassing "meaningful" life that some of my friends yearn for.
On that note, I'd love to hear from Brink and others about what kind of community they have found, or have sought to found, that is not religious in nature. I am interested for my own sake, but also because I will send my friends any answers you would choose to share.
Thanks so much for your comments, and I appreciate the value of Shabbat observance. It's good to recognize that there is still a lot of "counterculture" out there in society that is upholding values outside of money culture, whether religiously motivated or otherwise.
My pleasure. I have to express my gratitude to you because your essays provoke me to reconsider what I think I know and believe. Even as a registered Democrat and a believer in an active role for the federal government, I do believe that we as private citizens have a right to privacy, and that we need to carefully consider what powers we give our federal and state governments. I also have come to think more deeply about the role of money culture in our lives, and the concomitant need to consider its powers, as well. I would not want to live in a world in which everything was dominated by a Janus-style government-cum-money culture, leaving no oxygen for anything else. In your essays I often detect what I believe to be libertarian sentiments, and it's an excellent reminder to me that government can't solve all problems (and neither can the "unadulterated" market); that some things can and should only be left to citizens to do on their own and/or in association with others in just about whatever community they choose. Thanks again for all the thought and energy you put into your writings; it's not lost on us!
This is a great question. I'm lucky enough to have two very fulfilling secular communities. One is the group of parents of my son's school classmates. The other is the community of local choral singers, especially those in a choir I've sung in for more than a decade and where I serve on the board.
The common thread is, I think, that these are groups of people with a passionate shared interest in building and sustaining something that feels really important to us. I used to have a similar community feeling about my coworkers back when I worked at Google, and while I don't on net regret leaving, that's the thing I miss most. The common mission, and the devotion to continuing work to sustain the mission, helps everyone get along better and makes all in-group interactions feel more meaningful, and this is true even of social events that aren't directly related to the mission. There's also a set of shared vocabulary and mutually understood life experiences that goes with having been devoted to that mission over a period of years, and I think this is also part of what can make for a cohesive religious community: you feel that you are with people who "get" you because they share these things with you.
That’s just the kind of answer I was looking for, and unsurprisingly, it fits with what Brink says brings us meaning in life. The two groups you belong to fit the bill and are also secular in nature, which means anyone can seek out similar groups. I told my friends to read Victor Franks’s books because they are precisely about searching for and building meaning into our lives. Rarely do these things come knocking on our doors; rather, we have to recognize what interests us and gives us a purpose, and then go out and find or make our communities.
This is really valuable. I've approached these questions from a socialist/social democratic perspective, but with many of the same conclusions https://jacobin.com/2013/01/john-quiggin-on-the-red-and-the-black/
Thanks for sharing the piece, John. It's really quite striking how much overlap there is between us now given our very different starting points. These times are really shuffling the deck.
I enjoyed your post. I notice the same downsides in our culture from the dominance of capitalism. By the way we share the same birth year of 1962.
Perhaps because my professional background was in finance, I notice in particular the "financialization" of the culture. I'm not sure how we can get back to more balance.
In any case, I wrote a post a few days ago titled "Is Noblesse Oblige Still Relevant?" Link below. The post was a riff on one of my favorite novels, Appointment in Samarra by John Ohara.
I think you'd enjoy reading it.
https://robertsdavidn.substack.com/p/is-noblesse-oblige-still-relevant
robertsdavidn.substack.com/about
The "financialization" of culture is an intriguing way of putting it. It brings to mind perhaps a global expectation of return on investment and the difficulty of banks to provide local financing when it's necessary and appropriate. It took the Feds to prop up small businesses during the pandemic; I wonder what kinds of unexamined mechanisms exist for supporting them locally?
Thanks for sharing your post, I enjoyed it. I've heard of O'Hara but never read him; I see he also wrote BUtterfield 8 -- I did see and enjoy the Elizabeth Taylor movie version.
This is the first time I've seen monoculture in the agricultural sense applied to the wider context of "capitalism". Very thought-provoking. It's a good way to remind people that capitalism and market economies have had forms in the past and across cultures.
"The American electorate has - since 1969 - given the Republican Party thirty two years of presidential power - as against the Democrats’ twenty one years. Which begs a Big Question: how did the GOP come to preside over a half-century-long erosion of so much that conservatives hold dear? The answer - the elephant (or more accurately the Leviathan) in the room - is that power gained at the ballot box is no match against the permanently entrenched power of a ‘progressive’ elite that has been drawn - for three or more highly impressionable college years - through a kind of intellectual sheep dip. Hence Robert Conquest’s apocryphal third law of politics: “Any organisation not explicitly right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers