This is the second part of a long essay I had to write after reading through Kill All Normies. The first part posted earlier was a lament which I am so disgusted by I could almost disown it, but I stand by it all, it came from my keyboard. This second part is more optimistic. "Radical Conservatism" is not related to political conservatism, it references the idea in theoretical physics that most revolutionary theories come from taking as much of the past established theory as possible and tweaking it radically in usually elegant but minimalist ways.

Part-2, Beyond Counterculture

The counterculture vulture has come full circle and eaten itself. Hippies have morphed into Yuppies and normie leftists morphed into brain-dead neoliberals, while the newborn breed of geeky ultra-conservatives have become cruel and ugly alt-right 4chan venturing trolls. Yet counterculture and transgression for the sake of being “not establishment” has failed to unseat the establishment elite, who are resolutely capitalist and soulless and refuse to give up the seats of real power. All the outrage from both the subcultural left and the subcultural right has got us nowhere other than leaving many dead bodies behind and stocking the rooms of prisons and mental wards with the losers in the cultural wars. And none of this misery has touched or despoiled the metaphorically blood-stained hands of the Davos elite oligarchs and their wealthy neoliberal and mainstream media enablers, who blithely destroy society and the planet oblivious and immune to all the 4chan satire and cuck-baiting aimed at them, and dismissive of all the libtard call-outing and wild unhinged ultra-PC shaming. Instead, these subcultures have ended up bloodying and bruising each other while the true landed aristocracy with their addenda of nouveau riche diversity stock rising from the swamps of the financial markets and executive boardrooms continue to look on amused as if feudalism never really disappeared at all, it just changed names.

In the first part of this essay I wrote like the normie I would have been if I had not had the very different countercultural upbringing I was given in little old egalitarian-pretending New Zealand. It is a bit of a stretch to call my upbringing countercultural, because it was mostly under the shadow of left-wing neoliberalism (my family supported the Labour government which instituted Rogernomics in the 1980's). But I will explain later why it makes sense to me in retrospect to see a lot of dissimilarities in my upbringing with mainstream culture. What was this little counterculture that was opened to me? Why do I think it will be a likely panacea for the craziness that I have mused about in the first part of this essay?

To fully appreciate what I am going to write about, it helps maybe to understand the concept in theoretical physics of “radical conservatism”, because this is my professional community and I like to borrow from it in metaphors to better understand economics. (This has nothing to do with political right wing conservatism, it is rather about the prosaic dictionary meaning of “conserve”.) It is not a good idea to take analogies from physics and apply them to economics, as you should know, it is what led to the insanity of neoclassical economics, a thoroughly debunked discipline these days. (See Debunking Economics by Steve Keen.) However, radical conservatism is not an idea of theoretical physics proper, it is an analysis of the sociology of science.

In sociology of physics it is the idea that none of the great breakthroughs in theoretical physics (from the minds of Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, Bohr-Schrodinger-Heisenberg-Dirac) have come from throwing out the older physics. All these great revolutions have been minimalist extensions of previous physics. They have all involved adding just one or two elegant and minimal new concepts to what was previously established theory. The new elegant simplicity was the radical part, the keeping of all the previous theoretical constructs was the conservative part. The idea that a needed theory of quantum gravity is likely to result from radical conservatism is a pet theme of the talented physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed. But it is a borrowing of this concept that I wish to now use to illustrate what I think can break the neoliberal stranglehold on political economy and simultaneously release all the dangerous psychological pressure that has build up resulting in the twin bipolar extremes of Internet subcultures, the ultra-PC and vicious unselfconsciously putrid moralizers of the call-out and shaming libtard faux left and SJW subcultures on the one side, and the ultra-hateful and self-consciously violent 4chan and alt-right subcultures on the other extreme.

If we take a sober reflection of the state of our world, I think it is fair to say that the online subcultures have very little real power to exercise in the realpolitik world. So all the flame wars and snowflake burning and shaming that occurs online is not only pathetic, but is a distraction for people and a poor excuse for not engaging in the real world where real power resides and is crushing the environment, pounding the working class, and eroding spiritual optimism and hope.

True, some of the great successes of Internet activism have been in fighting against these real forces of power. So we have had, for example, the DDoS attacks on branches of the US federal government like the FCA in protest against attacks to Internet freedom, and we have had subversive attempts to release publicly funded research by opening up academic journals, or by file sharing and undermining of DRM (digital restrictions management). And there have been a smattering of other cyber-activism success stories. But so far no real change in where the centres of raw political power reside --- with the wealthy and the elite.

Entrenched elite power is, surprising to many people, ideologically neutral, making it all the more powerful because elites can equally co-opt leftist players or right wing conservatives as freely as they like to suit their agenda, which is a simple agenda of keeping and growing their wealth and power. Across the globe power elitism can even be financially neutral. The Brahman caste in India, for example, wield supreme social power with no personal monetary wealth. Elite power is thus the only true enemy we need to fight. It is the historical fight of our times. It is the fight of our times because only in this past century have ordinary people had the technological means to fight entrenched elite power non-violently and with a hope of victory. What has given ordinary people this extraordinary new power is global communication, a modicum of democratic governance in some countries, open access to knowledge, and the security of reasonably well functioning justice systems in many countries, and the solidarity these advances in society have enabled. These advances have been the tangible successes for the working class and left wing politics. And let's be honest, most of these social advances would not have been possible without a leftist politics. What has not yet been achieved is freedom from slavery, because we are all mostly still slaves to wage work. What has not been achieved is true democracy. That is because capitalism, and even a mixed capitalist economy, is fundamentally incompatible with democracy and freedom. Whenever influence can be gained with money, and when wealth inequality is baked-in to the political economy system, you cannot have true democracy. So these are the remaining battlefronts for the political left.

Have the online, and increasingly offline, culture wars been on balance a net detriment to society? Sometimes I think so, but maybe it is unfair to say an unqualified yes to that question. What subcultures and countercultures have done is to give people licence to question the status quo, and that has been immeasurably valuable, even if sometimes it turns into a scattergun which pollutes everything, including sources of objective truth and spiritual value. It is nevertheless an aspect of scientific enlightenment values in the underground subcultures. The idea that it is ok to question things that others take for granted. A healthy disrespect for authority.

Disrespect for authority is a double-edged sword which grown-up liberals have found is not restricted to the parent-child relationship! Leftist politics has never been about total disrespect for authority in the vein of fully fledged anarchy (and even anarchists have to respect the amorphous authority of the community decision). What we want is a smart respect for intelligent authorities who are well-read and well-informed and humble, and a cultivated disrespect for authority derived from class status, arrogance, psychological conditioning or force.

It is also a popular misconception that science is all about “questioning everything”. That’s a terrible caricature of science, and in fact completely wrong. The attitude of questioning everything is skepticism, and that is almost antithetical to science. Science is deeply conservative. Science proceeds by narrowly defining and conceptualizing problems to progress inch by metaphorical inch extending theory, with only very rare major breakthroughs and advances. The reason why skepticism is closely associated with science is only because of the myths about the geniuses who changed the way we see the universe. The great geniuses did have big new insights which probably were not possible unless they had been skeptics. The myths have a basis in fact. The trouble is, in order to vainly ape these great heroes of science many scientists try to cultivate a kind of skepticism and rebelliousness, but mostly it is PR bullshit, propagated to make science seem sexy and cool (which it is, don’t get me wrong, but it is awesome because of it’s beauty and power, not because of any inherent rebelliousness). In everyday practice most scientists are very conservative, and build on accepted theory. Most science done in the world today is testing established theory.

I mention these aspects of science because there is a strain of political ideology which thinks technology will solve all our economic problems. This is something we should all be deeply skeptical about. (And yes, I appreciate the irony of that given what I wrote above.) New technology can always be used as a tool of oppression. Which is not even fine if the solution to all our problems is more oppression. Technology can also be used as a means of liberation, so that use would be pretty un-dope if our economic solutions call for less liberation and more oppression. You get the idea.

So apart from the strain of enlightened skepticism in the countercultural revolutions on the left and the right, I think on balance no real material progress has been made out of it all. All our material progress has come from the conservative establishment apparatus of slave-driving workers to invent and produce commodities, exploiting their natural passions to invent and play, but with highly asymmetric returns for the workers, whose real labour productivity profit is largely still pocketed by the capitalists, and amplified by markets that favour rentiers.

Rabid feminism and ultra-PC victimhood on the one hand and toxic masculinity and violent racism on the other, have done nothing to advance civilization or defeat the real enemies who are the plutocracy and ideology-free elitist power brokers who have a stranglehold on political economy praxis. To change this iniquitous state of affairs requires a kind of radical conservative reorientation of popular knowledge and cultural awareness. Half of the conservative part of this reorientation is an awareness that old style countercultural hippiedom and drop-out liberalism got us nowhere in the fight against oligarchy, and arguably left us worse off, and the good moral roots of the 60’s counter-culture was never to be found in subversive transgression, but was rather found in the gentle and caring aspects of non-violence and peace activism. The other half of the conservative part of the fight for a decent society is to be found in an awareness that religious fundamentalism is, and always was, born from fear of invasion from outside forces and fear of disruption of one’s beliefs from alien ideologies, while the goodness in religion and moral goodness in right wing politics is legitimate and not at odds or threatened by the good of liberal leftist politics, which is belief in the potential love and comfort of family life and polite and civil conduct.

We need to preserve these goods, this is the “conserving” part of the equation in my radical conservatism approach to post-capitalist political economy. The radical part of the equation is how to isolate the good rebelliousness from the merely nihilistic rebelliousness, and synthesize the good aspects of subversive culture so that political division can be avoided. I think ultimately this radicalism will mean the end of political parties. We simply do not need partisan politics. It does no good, it does not crystallize anything useful, and if we can do without adversarial partisanship then we can do without the constructs of political parties. People need to start realizing how political parties are to politics like the clergy are to religion. People can think for themselves nowadays in an age of near universal literacy, we do not need a political clergy to tell us what to think. But to highlight the errors of thinking in party political terms, let’s consider again some of the everyday hypocrisy we see all over the political landscape.

The hypocrisy of the political far left is revealed when concern for world peace becomes ironically violent hatred and intolerance of the opposition of dissenting voices even within their own ranks (q.v. Mark Fisher’s article). The hypocrisy of the political far right is revealed when (insincere) love for one’s family becomes fear and hatred of other cultures, and thus becomes ironical denial of the good of other families, and when insincere profession for the sanctity of life is strategically renounced when it becomes politically expedient to exterminate believers in alternative ideologies (q.v., Islamophobia) even if only as thought experiment.

So if we isolate the good in the two countercultures: the anti-corruption and pro-peace movement aspect of the left counterculture, and the sincere love of family and sanctity of life on the right, we see that in the goodness of the human spirit there really is no political divide. There is no contradiction or essential polarity in the goodness of apparently different worldviews that inform political practice. There are just different emphases on what is valued as good. Noone on the sane political left would deny the value of a good family life and the sanctity of life, and noone on the sane political right would deny that peace is desirable and corruption is wrong. In this sense there really is no left versus right in politics, and definitely no centre. There is only human diversity and an array of wonderful sensibilities all of which need and deserve to be equally cherished and valued in practical political and economic terms.

(Left and right categories in politics are such artificial constructs that I am constantly frustrated that our discourse still seems to need to make use of them. But avoiding them still seems harder than using gender neutral pronouns!)

One need not be overly naive either. Family life can be miserable, oppressive, intolerable and even violent, with such pathologies as incest, battery, censorship and cultism. But the political lefties have to know this sort of family life is abnormal in the eyes of sane conservatives and is an antithesis of classical conservatism. Likewise, peace activism and environmental activism are not absolute virtues. A decent society cannot stand by passively while horror and atrocity are committed, and it can become a moral imperative to use force to prevent greater violence. But that is not a pathology or hypocrisy of the peace-seeking leftists, it is an exception with justification. And any reasonable environmentalist has to admit that the most developed countries have not paid the true costs that have allowed their economies to prosper, and so imposing environmental purity on other nations is getting too far ahead of critical historical realities in that particular moral sphere. The wealthier nations should be paying the costs of those imposed purity demands, and not via the vampire loans from the IMF or World Bank!

So with due regard for all these imperfections and structural inadequacies, one can still consider the good which can be found in the spiritual foundations of sincerely held political ideologies. And if we dig deep enough, we find not division but unity. The trick is, such unity is very abstract, it is seen only after brushing off and chipping away at a lot of dust and dross in people’s opinion and beliefs and actions. So to harness the good, to forge something beautiful out of the underlying rust covered unity, we need to get to the heart of why and how political divisions form, and how to avoid them, and how to eliminate the ones that have already formed which are causing so much societal friction and dissipation of political energy preventing us all from fighting the greater battle against oligarchy and entrenched corruption.

The problems, the polarities, arise when the political economic system produces scarcity in spiritual values, which to think about it is absurd, but that’s where we have arrived at in our bizzaro world of contemporary culture. Neoliberal politics has engineered a false sense of scarcity in non-material values, so that people have been forced (by pure propaganda and rhetoric) to feel they need to choose sides either for peace or for family, for the right to choose or for the right to life for the unborn, for egalitarianism or for individualism, either for social cohesion or for libertarian freedom, either for law and order or for justice and civil rights, for privatization or for socialization, and so on. Cynics can frame almost every piece of legislation in such oppositional terms, but in doing so they are not being genuine.

When contemplated fairly, none of the above dichotomies are real, they are all false dichotomies, and all the good principles implied by each of these supposed political choices are fully compatible and work in absolute harmony together. This is true even for the starkest of the above manufactured choices, which is the abortion right versus right to life issue. And because it is the most thorny issue I can think of (gun rights issues are far less problematic, as one can tell because it is only a major division in the USA). Abortion rights versus unborn child rights is a huge dividing issue only because in our society women are put in the position of having to choose. Ideally there should never be any need for abortions, but we do not live in an ideal world. But it is not a political decision that society should impose on an individual, it is a private decision made by a woman hopefully in consultation with her partner and medical professionals. Society does not need to provide public abortion clinics if society democratically decides they are not sanctioned morally, thus protecting the right to life for the unborn, but it becomes excessive moralizing on behalf of society if private abortion clinics are also illegal. My own view is that of an idealist, which is that I would defend a woman’s right to choose, but hope that we live in such a caring society that no free person would ever choose to have an abortion, because the option of a transfer surrogacy (given future medical advances) or adoption will always be preferred. Yet even having such options open is a type of violence against women. What we really want is a society where no violent options whatsoever are needed. If we cannot achieve such an idyllic society, can we still aim for something close?

So speaking only for myself, there is a harsh dichotomy here, but it is temporal, not permanent. We need to work to make the world a safer place for everyone, the mother and the unborn child. Until we create such a society it seems to me to be unjust to women to force them to carry a child that they did not lovingly plan, however tragic and depressing the alternative. At the end of the day, no government owns rights over a woman’s body in most cultures, and so we just have to trust that every woman is making the best decision they can over their reproductive rights. I like to trust people. Legislation and censure is needed only when we have reason by default to not trust entire groups of people.

Although I am no studied ethics expert on this issue, I mention it as perhaps one of the most glaring examples of a political choice dichotomy which, for me, is the hardest to ethically resolve. But I have no qualms about what the underlying moral basis is, which is that to impose one’s own opinion so as to impinge upon the life of another human being is an absolute moral wrong, unless it is situational or contextual to save a life or do some greater good --- but even then it is never easy. And I also have no qualms about the non-absolutist nature of such moral dilemmas, because no fallible human can say with absolute certainty what would count as a “greater good”. Often this is a subjective calculation with incomplete objective factual or theoretical input that is thus incredibly difficult and morally fraught to make, and so we just do our best. So I understand the feminist perspective that reproductive rights should be absolute. The person who is alive is protected. Their bodily integrity is sacrosanct. This is paradoxically the same moral basis that conservatives use to defend the right to life.

Allowing a particular woman to abort her fetus might be the only way to allow her in future to have more children, perhaps more than one, so is that sacrificing one life to allow many? Who can ever tell? Are such things too hypothetical to even allow into the frame of discussion and consultation? There is no moral relativism here. It is a matter of uncertainty. Similar moral quandaries arise in other dire situations like military combat: the ethos “never leave a comrade behind” is clearly sometimes going to involve a dilemma of saving one comrade now versus the possibility that such a decision will make it impossible to save countless more lives in an operation or action which might be anticipated a few moments or hours or days later which would be compromised if the time and effort is made to save that one comrade now. Again, it might seem a cop-out, but I have to be an idealist and assume that we can live in a world with no war, where such horrid choices never have to be made. That’s my solution! It is the long view. But I make no apologies for it. If I was placed in such a situation tomorrow I cannot tell you what I would choose, because my principles are always for life and against death. The situationist action for me would be thus to judge, in as timely a manner as possible and as sensitive as can be to the needs of others, which lives are more likely to be saved, or which course of action would result in maximised life preservation and minimal death. Without adequate training in making accurate probability estimates in such situations I would have to feel that if I later think I made the wrong decision then no amount of apology to those who suffered as a result of my decision would suffice, but I would have to do my best in any case to make some amends. I realize the weird and perhaps offensive juxtaposition here in comparing abortion rights to military calculations, but the point is that clear moral thinking crosses all boundaries of distinction and is often our only recourse when faced with cruel choices.

The thing is, and the reason I made such a harrowing and morally hazardous diversion on politics which do not immediately concern me personally, is to illustrate that a lot of political polarization is just theatre of the absurd and totally unnecessary. So many moral choices we have tried to enshrine in politics are simply wrong-headed, and should be made part of moral education and not legislation. A good politics leaves as much as possible to the discretion of the well informed individual in society.

This also traces back to one reason political polarization occurs, which is the once justified, but now indefensible raison d'etre for the institutions called “political parties”. They were once useful and even necessary when individual candidates for representative office could not directly communicate their character and principles to voters. In the Internet era there is now no need at all for any political party to exist.

Political parties are creations of the past which have evolved now into pathologies which artificially accentuate the false need to choose one set of ideals against the other. We need make no such choice. We can have all of these goods, these ideals, because they are in fact not scarce. They are non-material. What is scarce are physical resources for the means to achieve all of these moral and social goods. We need to educate each other to realize that physical resources need not compete between the means to achieve all these non-material goods.

Perhaps the biggest room for re-education, is the appreciation that by far the majority of the worlds peoples want peace, and so for one thing, military expenditures can be drastically reduced and channelled instead towards relieving and countering the exact same fear that military forces are perceived to allay, which is by being put into peace-making forces, policing, law and order, and security forces, and in fact even wiser would be to institute proper social justice so that the root causes of war are eliminated. Those root causes are things like material deprivation, political oppression, scarce basic resources and territorial injustice. The right wing militaristic sentiments can be addressed by making sure law and order and justice systems are well-funded, and the leftist fears that such institutions can be used to serve fascism can be alleviated by making sure these institutions are publicly owned and corruption free and have good people working in them who have sound ethical and moral training. But to obviate the need for all such law & order and security apparati, we need to do much better on completely eliminating the root causes of war and oppression. The only clear macroscopic way to do this is through widespread humane democratic socialism. Period.

Because military expenditures suck out so much physical wealth from the economy, this is the prime area that needs economic restructuring, and simply a wiser more rational use of government expenditures will almost certainly ensure that there is no longer any tension or competition between funding the illusory binary choices of what good we wish for our society. We want all the non-material ideal good, not just some. So we choose to fund all of them to some degree without prejudice. And to maximise benefits we then seek interactions where competition for resources can be resolved by finding cooperative ways to benefit both sides of a perceived dichotomy.

Here is the crucial thing to note: we can always do this without drastic compromise. We can always find ways to serve the material needs that we know we must deliver to bring about the desired non-material good in society which we value in the abstract.

This is the countercultural learning that my parents gave me. It is the idea that a radical left wing historical material politics is naturally aligned with universal spiritual principles. Why "countercultural"? Simply because the dominant emerging culture of the New Left was becoming too postmodern to accept the ideas of universal spiritual virtues. And the dominant cultural conservative right was too fossilized and corrupt to even realize that it had long ago abandoned any moral authority it may have once deserved. So in that sense, a synthesis of universal spiritual principles tied to radical left wing politics has in fact been surprisingly countercultural and terribly untrendy for most of my life.

There are two entirely uncontroversial aspects to this approach to bringing about political good from all subjective vantage points.

1. Consultation.
2. Spiritual virtue.

Consultation is the process which ensures compromises can be made which are non-drastic. It is a vital part of any true democracy.

Spiritual principles are the bedrock which inform high quality consultation and which guarantee everyone concerned can agree to abide by the outcome of the consultation. They are the foundational pillars of humane socialism. It is no use just talking about spiritual capacities though, they have to be put into material practice to be of any great power. And I think this is the source of power the traditional working class political left have squandered, and of which the rabid online liberal left have no clue whatsoever.

Now if this all sounds too simple, then I invite you to play out any and all political issues in your mind using the minimalist approach I have just described. You will find that it can always work and can always avoid bitter partisanship. And why is that? It is because spiritual virtues have no political party allegiance. Everyone agrees on universal moral ideals and spiritual virtues (kindness, love, compassion, honesty, trust, justice, mercy, forgiveness, knowledge, wisdom, loyalty, respect, and so on). None of these virtues are controversial. None are in conflict. And in consultation they form a network which can fluidly adapt in importances and weightings so that consensus can be reached.

Aside: the only reason I do not lump consultation in as also a spiritual virtue is because it is a very material process. But I would say that true consultation is mostly a spiritual ideal. It is never really realized materially, but what we aim to do is try to get every consultative process working along spiritual lines as far as is materially possible. Some people are trying this unconsciously, these are the unifiers in your midst, the friendly conflict avoiding people in your organization. Others have a clear idea what true consultation means and more actively seek to mediate consultation more self-consciously, and they could be prickly and capricious characters who lecture and remonstrate a bit, or who pedantically insist on everyone having a fair turn in consultation, and who insist on accurate minutes and protocol. Listen up folks, and appreciate them, don’t shun them!

It is important to note that individual people will attach different importances to one or another spiritual value. And that is where conflict arises. Social psychology research finds, for example, that “conservatives” tend to value loyalty and respect most highly, while “liberals” value freedom and justice more highly. This is why consultation is a key. If debate is instead used to make decisions the whole process breaks down, because debate pits virtue against virtue, which inevitably leads to rhetoric and ultimately conflict and the irony of non-virtuous winner take all type politics.

To avoid such artificial polarizations true consultation is needed. And so this is what I want to end this essay on: what is true consultation? In short, by definition, true consultation allows all people concerned to express their opinion, share their thoughts, consider facts, and to take the time necessary to arrive at a majority consensus, with due regard to dissent, with careful consideration of minority views, and allowance for overturning the majority if future evidence of a wrongdoing or miscalculation comes to light. A Twitter flame war or 4chan bulletin board will not facilitate such wisdom, and that’s why I simply do not have such online accounts. I think they are a complete waste of time. I also care very little if no one ever reads this essay. I offer it freely and without apology. I am confident other voices and writers have similar views and can proclamate them better than I can.

True consultation also means employing the spiritual virtue of humility, which allows us dissenters to suppress our anger and rage at the majority. We do not need to agree with the majority decision, we have an obligation in true consultation to continue championing what we believe is right on a spiritual basis, especially if material evidence backs up the abstract spiritual principles. It is often said the light of truth is sparked by the clash of differing opinions. But the best consultation is held in an atmosphere of respect and honesty. The angry dissenter should never be left feeling their voice was not fairly heard and respected.

True consultation often takes too much time for the impatient dogmatists, and cannot be rushed like a debate running on the clock. But this is usually a good thing. It protects against rash impulses. Yet even when emergency decisions need to be made (maybe without the wisest people present or without all the facts available), a process of consultation is still possible with slightly altered parameters, but then with the understanding that time pressure can produce terrible consultation and disastrous decisions. This is part of life. It is to be acknowledged. The point is that since true consultation avoids partisanship and bickering debate, the disastrous decisions can be lamented but need not cause enduring hatred and festering resentment. Everyone will appreciate an effort was made and that time was acting against making the right decision.

Consultation, even when full and frank, does not eliminate misgivings and disagreement, but it does minimize disunity. It should be obvious, even to loyalty indexing conservatives, that too much unity, or unity for the sake of unity is a bad thing, but minimizing unity for the sake of expedient and fair action is what an ethical politics should aspire. And arguably true consultation is the best way to minimize disunity, which is why it is the only ethical option for a humane and spiritually principled politics.

I write this knowing pretty much full well that I will never enter into domestic or international political office, but I don’t think the professional politician is the only benefactor of this sort of common wisdom. I think in our workplaces we can institute the same political culture of well-grounded spiritual consultation. In doing so I think just as we should not want excess unity and artificial conformity, we should try to organize an ethical politics in our workplaces that is natural and becomes part of the workplace culture, rather than rigidly formalized in doctrine and overbearing rules. We want to develop workplace cultures of friendly and yet robust conflicting consultation not because this is to be enshrined in rules and protocols, but rather because we just acknowledge it is the wise thing to do. As in science, we want communities to develop which foster dissent and rebellion, but not for their own sake nor by algorithmically designed anarchism in the form of market mechanisms, rather we should want such communities to develop for the constructive health of us all. We do not need political parties to artificially create dissent and opposition based around rigid ideologies and manifestos which no single person completely adheres to, we know we can rely upon each other acting as individuals with conscience to provide more than enough grit for the growth of the political pearls we seek.

I am open to ideas about other ways to organize our politics. Without false modesty this is just what I have learned so far.