This was sharp, lucid, and timely. I found myself nodding along just in agreement and in relief.
The way you framed centrism as dynamic equilibrium rather than compromise-for-its-own-sake is spot-on. It reminds me of how ecosystems find balance not through stasis but through tension between opposing forces.
I’m building something parallel in spirit and this hit like a tuning fork for my own ideas which are compatible with yours. Applied sociology is majorly at play with it.
It’s a project with a similar aim: mapping the architecture of ideological software and developing unprecedented tools to help people update their internal operating systems.
Really admire the clarity of your thought here. Would love to jam sometime if you’re open.
I watch your vids on youtube from time to time, nice to get a succinct description of what "Enlightened Centrism" is. I've always found the written word is better at both communicating and understanding these sorts of things than flashy videos.
Allow me to be a shilling clout goblin for a moment. I recently wrote a "manifesto" for my own meme ideology with enough overlap with your Enlightened Centrism I felt the need to distinguish the two. I absolutely ROAST you, completely DESTROYING Enlightened Centrism with FACT and LOGIC. Actually I'm quite charitable. If you need some nice toilet reading and want some insight into the mind of a literal schizo autist, give it a read.
And just so we're all clear, this is all in opposition to my belief system of moderate retarded centrism, which is the idea the thw correct conclusions to any issue are found by discarding all the dumb, self serving or impossible ideas from all sides. Which is a process that takes forever and never reaches a conclusion.
I'm struggling to understand what's unique about this position. Reading this, it sounds like you (1) choose whatever you think the best policy is and (2) tell some story about how it sits between two theoretical extremes, while synthesizing the important insights of each extreme. But everyone tries to do (1) and (2) seems totally epiphenomenal with respect to (1) - it seems like (2) is just post hoc marketing rather than an actual part of the process of arriving at (1). So is there anything special about Radical Enlightened Centrism beyond this post hoc framing exercise?
To demonstrate this point, imagine a Marxist-Leninist decides to be a "radical enlightened centrist." They say, "look, our culture is just tipped way too far to the capitalist extreme, that's why it seems like I'm at the far edge of the left. But actually, I would be in the center of a more functional culture where the freak right (social democrats) competed with the freak left (the Handicapper General of Harrison Bergeron). Communism takes from the left the focus on equality and justice while it takes from the right the celebration of excellence rather than its destruction. Everyone should be as excellent as possible, but all the proceeds simply get distributed according to needs: this is my balanced, enlightened position." Can you explain what this imagined M-L is doing wrong? Or are they doing radical enlightened centrism correctly? If the M-L is doing it right, can you give an example of any position that is excluded from radical enlightened centrism?
It offers a specific methodology (2) for arriving at the desired/proposed policy (1) distinct from the methodologies current political factions propose.
Leftists disregard the value of existing structures and the historical problems they have solved. They identify new problems which should be solved, but the solutions they offer dispose of current structures and in doing so reintroduce the problems that they didn’t even realize the existing structures had solved. (E.g. housing is too expensive, let’s mandate cheap rent)
Conservatives instead cling too tightly to the current structures. They spend all their time glorifying the existing structure because of all the historical problems it has solved, but ignore the new problems society is facing. (E.g. the Industrial Revolution was awesome, climate change must be a hoax)
This offers a framework for actually incrementing towards improvements. Enlightened Centrism sits at the center of these two archetypes of left and right, the eternal positions of the progressive and the conservative, rather than any one specific location of any Overton Window. It basically says “look, let’s try and solve these new problems we’re facing, but don’t be stupid about it and cause more problems than you fix”.
If that Marxist-Leninist you described wanted to become a true enlightened centrist, then when they found themselves surrounded by communists they should advocate for the virtues of a free market. Not because they’re just a contrarian troll, but because true progress requires you make something actually better than what you currently have. If the communists don’t appreciate the values offered by, for example, the free market, their changes will be at best a side-grade.
It’s about balancing the discussions being held in your current society so as to ensure actual progress is made.
I can't tell which of the following positions you hold:
1. EC advocates for the optimal balance of emphasis between reform and stability.
2. It is not possible for any society to actually choose the optimal balance of emphasis between reform and stability, and EC is about pushing us toward whatever is currently less popular.
(1) is trivial without further telling us what kind of considerations to make when determining the optimal balance - almost every position in history advocates for what it sees as the optimal balance between reform and stability. The "archetypal" positions of no stability vs no reform are held by almost no one ever, as my M-L example was meant to show. Even extremists on either side think they are choosing the optimal balance, so you need more than that.
(2) makes sense of why EC is a unique position and your reply to the M-L hypothetical, but it comes at the cost of saying that it is a framework for endless critique with nothing that could even theoretically be satisfying. No matter what balance is struck, EC advocates for moving society toward the less popular side. (Or maybe you don't see that as a cost, instead that is exactly the view you find appealing?)
You are correct in pointing out that this article did not describe a specific axiology. EC purports to take the good ideas from both the left and right and discard the bad, but how do we determine what ideas are good and what are bad?
The axiology is largely what Paul calls “Based Pragmatism”. I would say EC’s major influences are Maps of Meaning by Jordan Peterson and The Righteous Mind my Jonathan Haidt. From these works you can roughly synthesize an idea of “good” and “bad” and form a framework of judging political suggestions. I’m not sure if Paul has any articles or videos which distill the axiology further. My trying to distill it here would take more work than is appropriate for a comments section.
One note on your new 1 vs 2 framework: 1 is the ideal, but practical reality is more like 2. Society is a nonlinear multivariate system which evolves over time. This means it is impossible to analytically calculate a given optimum, and that optimum changes over time. Instead, practical solutions involve utilizing iterative methods to progress towards a good-enough solution, much like using Euler’s method to numerically solve a differential equation.
It’s not just being on the less popular side. If the more popular side is moving society forward, EC supports the more popular side. (Ideally, EC itself would become the most popular side xD). Instead we use our Based Pragmatism to determine which direction society should be moving in and what a safe but effective speed of progress should be.
Finally, on your “very few people actually believe x” point I’d highly recommend Paul’s video on the Meme Adoption Curve. While it is true that most people are not radical in their beliefs, most niche political academic works are quite radical. It is from this niche “autistic” debate space that political ideologies spread and come to dominate cultures. Radical Enlightened Centrism could be seen as a means of controlling this memetic spread of ideas to the broader public, purportedly to keep society heading in a good direction.
Fair enough, appreciate the reply. I think the axiology is going to be where almost all of the controversial, distinctive claims are, and I'm going to have roughly the same critique of the Based Pragmatism approach as I do here - it leaves out most of what's actually in dispute while gesturing at an unobjectionable framework.
Re: pushing for the less popular side, I was taking that from this part of your first reply: "If that Marxist-Leninist you described wanted to become a true enlightened centrist, then when they found themselves surrounded by communists they should advocate for the virtues of a free market... If the communists don’t appreciate the values offered by, for example, the free market, their changes will be at best a side-grade."
It seems to me this relies on either what I suggest (the principle of always supporting the less popular side) or some controversial view on the virtues of the free market (which is perhaps part of the axiology or perhaps an empirical claim, but it's not of the structure laid out here).
Re: my claim that very few people actually believe the archetypal extremes, I think you are underselling just how extreme these are. I know a few people who literally thinking all systems should be eliminated (some versions of anarcho-primitivists perhaps) but these are not a significant fraction even of the far left side of the Meme Adoption Curve (I've seen the video, it's a good one!). I'm not sure I know of any view that defends resistance to absolutely all change, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is some corner of the intellectual world that says complete stasis of the existing institutions (whatever they happen to be) is correct. I agree that there are many views that are clearly more in one camp than another, but the EC position as presented (that is, save for whatever axiological additions might be made) can be anywhere on the spectrum except the absolute extremes.
How would you say this difers from the approach of Heterodox Academy and their idea of "viewpoint diversity" (in the Lockean sense) or is your approach attempting to that but from an individual perspective?
This was sharp, lucid, and timely. I found myself nodding along just in agreement and in relief.
The way you framed centrism as dynamic equilibrium rather than compromise-for-its-own-sake is spot-on. It reminds me of how ecosystems find balance not through stasis but through tension between opposing forces.
I’m building something parallel in spirit and this hit like a tuning fork for my own ideas which are compatible with yours. Applied sociology is majorly at play with it.
It’s a project with a similar aim: mapping the architecture of ideological software and developing unprecedented tools to help people update their internal operating systems.
Really admire the clarity of your thought here. Would love to jam sometime if you’re open.
This kind of synthesis deserves amplification.
I watch your vids on youtube from time to time, nice to get a succinct description of what "Enlightened Centrism" is. I've always found the written word is better at both communicating and understanding these sorts of things than flashy videos.
Allow me to be a shilling clout goblin for a moment. I recently wrote a "manifesto" for my own meme ideology with enough overlap with your Enlightened Centrism I felt the need to distinguish the two. I absolutely ROAST you, completely DESTROYING Enlightened Centrism with FACT and LOGIC. Actually I'm quite charitable. If you need some nice toilet reading and want some insight into the mind of a literal schizo autist, give it a read.
https://thepsudestack.substack.com/p/ideological-juche-a-manifesto
And just so we're all clear, this is all in opposition to my belief system of moderate retarded centrism, which is the idea the thw correct conclusions to any issue are found by discarding all the dumb, self serving or impossible ideas from all sides. Which is a process that takes forever and never reaches a conclusion.
I'm struggling to understand what's unique about this position. Reading this, it sounds like you (1) choose whatever you think the best policy is and (2) tell some story about how it sits between two theoretical extremes, while synthesizing the important insights of each extreme. But everyone tries to do (1) and (2) seems totally epiphenomenal with respect to (1) - it seems like (2) is just post hoc marketing rather than an actual part of the process of arriving at (1). So is there anything special about Radical Enlightened Centrism beyond this post hoc framing exercise?
To demonstrate this point, imagine a Marxist-Leninist decides to be a "radical enlightened centrist." They say, "look, our culture is just tipped way too far to the capitalist extreme, that's why it seems like I'm at the far edge of the left. But actually, I would be in the center of a more functional culture where the freak right (social democrats) competed with the freak left (the Handicapper General of Harrison Bergeron). Communism takes from the left the focus on equality and justice while it takes from the right the celebration of excellence rather than its destruction. Everyone should be as excellent as possible, but all the proceeds simply get distributed according to needs: this is my balanced, enlightened position." Can you explain what this imagined M-L is doing wrong? Or are they doing radical enlightened centrism correctly? If the M-L is doing it right, can you give an example of any position that is excluded from radical enlightened centrism?
It offers a specific methodology (2) for arriving at the desired/proposed policy (1) distinct from the methodologies current political factions propose.
Leftists disregard the value of existing structures and the historical problems they have solved. They identify new problems which should be solved, but the solutions they offer dispose of current structures and in doing so reintroduce the problems that they didn’t even realize the existing structures had solved. (E.g. housing is too expensive, let’s mandate cheap rent)
Conservatives instead cling too tightly to the current structures. They spend all their time glorifying the existing structure because of all the historical problems it has solved, but ignore the new problems society is facing. (E.g. the Industrial Revolution was awesome, climate change must be a hoax)
This offers a framework for actually incrementing towards improvements. Enlightened Centrism sits at the center of these two archetypes of left and right, the eternal positions of the progressive and the conservative, rather than any one specific location of any Overton Window. It basically says “look, let’s try and solve these new problems we’re facing, but don’t be stupid about it and cause more problems than you fix”.
If that Marxist-Leninist you described wanted to become a true enlightened centrist, then when they found themselves surrounded by communists they should advocate for the virtues of a free market. Not because they’re just a contrarian troll, but because true progress requires you make something actually better than what you currently have. If the communists don’t appreciate the values offered by, for example, the free market, their changes will be at best a side-grade.
It’s about balancing the discussions being held in your current society so as to ensure actual progress is made.
Couldn't of said it better myself, Henry
Thanks Paul! Love the videos
I can't tell which of the following positions you hold:
1. EC advocates for the optimal balance of emphasis between reform and stability.
2. It is not possible for any society to actually choose the optimal balance of emphasis between reform and stability, and EC is about pushing us toward whatever is currently less popular.
(1) is trivial without further telling us what kind of considerations to make when determining the optimal balance - almost every position in history advocates for what it sees as the optimal balance between reform and stability. The "archetypal" positions of no stability vs no reform are held by almost no one ever, as my M-L example was meant to show. Even extremists on either side think they are choosing the optimal balance, so you need more than that.
(2) makes sense of why EC is a unique position and your reply to the M-L hypothetical, but it comes at the cost of saying that it is a framework for endless critique with nothing that could even theoretically be satisfying. No matter what balance is struck, EC advocates for moving society toward the less popular side. (Or maybe you don't see that as a cost, instead that is exactly the view you find appealing?)
You are correct in pointing out that this article did not describe a specific axiology. EC purports to take the good ideas from both the left and right and discard the bad, but how do we determine what ideas are good and what are bad?
The axiology is largely what Paul calls “Based Pragmatism”. I would say EC’s major influences are Maps of Meaning by Jordan Peterson and The Righteous Mind my Jonathan Haidt. From these works you can roughly synthesize an idea of “good” and “bad” and form a framework of judging political suggestions. I’m not sure if Paul has any articles or videos which distill the axiology further. My trying to distill it here would take more work than is appropriate for a comments section.
One note on your new 1 vs 2 framework: 1 is the ideal, but practical reality is more like 2. Society is a nonlinear multivariate system which evolves over time. This means it is impossible to analytically calculate a given optimum, and that optimum changes over time. Instead, practical solutions involve utilizing iterative methods to progress towards a good-enough solution, much like using Euler’s method to numerically solve a differential equation.
It’s not just being on the less popular side. If the more popular side is moving society forward, EC supports the more popular side. (Ideally, EC itself would become the most popular side xD). Instead we use our Based Pragmatism to determine which direction society should be moving in and what a safe but effective speed of progress should be.
Finally, on your “very few people actually believe x” point I’d highly recommend Paul’s video on the Meme Adoption Curve. While it is true that most people are not radical in their beliefs, most niche political academic works are quite radical. It is from this niche “autistic” debate space that political ideologies spread and come to dominate cultures. Radical Enlightened Centrism could be seen as a means of controlling this memetic spread of ideas to the broader public, purportedly to keep society heading in a good direction.
Fair enough, appreciate the reply. I think the axiology is going to be where almost all of the controversial, distinctive claims are, and I'm going to have roughly the same critique of the Based Pragmatism approach as I do here - it leaves out most of what's actually in dispute while gesturing at an unobjectionable framework.
Re: pushing for the less popular side, I was taking that from this part of your first reply: "If that Marxist-Leninist you described wanted to become a true enlightened centrist, then when they found themselves surrounded by communists they should advocate for the virtues of a free market... If the communists don’t appreciate the values offered by, for example, the free market, their changes will be at best a side-grade."
It seems to me this relies on either what I suggest (the principle of always supporting the less popular side) or some controversial view on the virtues of the free market (which is perhaps part of the axiology or perhaps an empirical claim, but it's not of the structure laid out here).
Re: my claim that very few people actually believe the archetypal extremes, I think you are underselling just how extreme these are. I know a few people who literally thinking all systems should be eliminated (some versions of anarcho-primitivists perhaps) but these are not a significant fraction even of the far left side of the Meme Adoption Curve (I've seen the video, it's a good one!). I'm not sure I know of any view that defends resistance to absolutely all change, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is some corner of the intellectual world that says complete stasis of the existing institutions (whatever they happen to be) is correct. I agree that there are many views that are clearly more in one camp than another, but the EC position as presented (that is, save for whatever axiological additions might be made) can be anywhere on the spectrum except the absolute extremes.
How would you say this difers from the approach of Heterodox Academy and their idea of "viewpoint diversity" (in the Lockean sense) or is your approach attempting to that but from an individual perspective?
I guess I don't know much about the Heterodox Academy's framing of viewpoint diversity to say.