If you came up with this all by yourself I'm very impressed. Several very interesting frameworks. Also I think you were right on target with the possibility of equating the philosopher to the destroyer. See the last post on my substack. Skepticism is the very core of philosophy, going all the way back to Socrates, and skepticism also destroys a lot of the myths which are required by the other two points of the triangle.
I think the other two points often acted to destroy philosophy, so it's not a one sided (one-pointed?) contest. But I would argue that one of the aspects of late modernity is that while we've long been comfortable with the idea that power and unity are somewhat nebulous, that's not the case with truth. People are far more comfortable with the existence of absolute truth than they are are with the existence of absolute power or absolute unity.
Thanks! My starting point was obviously someone else’s triangle, and these triangles have been going around for at least since Aristotle, but the meanderings are my own thoughts.
Another potential influence is something I recently discovered from a guy named Forest Landry called An Immanent Metaphysics, which has a table of triplets. People often have tables of duals, yin-yang style, but comparing triplets is less common.
Landrys Metaphysics is dense and difficult to understand, though, and didn’t have these particular triangles as far as I can remember. But it definitely contributed to me thinking about triads.
I also wanted to comment more about your ‘skepticism’ point. Many people have noticed that Post-Modern philosophy seems to have destroyed the postwar peace and psychological prosperity of America. It can be viewed as undermining belief in progress.
Atheism can be viewed as philosophy destroying belief in God, which is important for harmony.
People are starting to become more interested in a synthesis, but I’m not sure we have hit rock bottom so to speak.
Your comment on Socrates and skepticism is on point. I'd like to think that I was the one who inspired a lot of Redbeard's insights in that regard (and in other ways, too).
Redbeard and I met in the comment section of a post in which an argument was made that Socrates "deserved" to be put to death because his incessant questioning disrupted the social order (both the Power/King and Harmony/Citizen aspects).
Strauss understood the fatal flaw of the philosopher. To the truth-seeker, Straussian communication – that is, explicitly hiding the truth behind layers of obfuscation based on the audience – is very offensive.
Citizens and Kings possess an intuition that this subordination of truth toward harmony and order is highly necessary. Philosophers don't share this intuition, and so they are very content to play the role of destroyer.
I should mention that Destroyer is not bad or evil. Shiva's (one of his alternate names, Mahesh, is used in this piece) role in the trinity to provide a cleansing fire to clear out what is impure or dead. This is necessary, but can be highly unpleasant to those who are unprepared.
I definitely agree that the destroyer is not necessarily bad, but that it can cause social disruption.
I have always thought of science and philosophy as a creative project, though, so thinking about it is an inherently destructive process has been a shift for me.
But in some sense philosophy is (always?) the based on analysis/deconstruction. To get to the truth you have to see through things that are supposed to be sacred. Those sacred things hold society together.
It represents coordination failure, and at the end he talks about overcoming Moloch by creating a walled garden. This sounds like an act of a King/Creator, but it the walls are limiting. It is these walls that the philosopher destroys.
Yes, I am familiar with Moloch. My friend David Rug made an excellent video discussing 'Moloch consciousness'. If you have and uninterrupted 45m, I suggest you watch it.
This is very esoteric and I probably don’t understand it, but my initial impression is that it is confused.
Specifically, it strikes me as a philosopher who thinks they are a creator instead of a destroyer. It makes heavy use of the term “domesticated mind” which I think is a derogatory description of the “citizen” or harmony framework.
It cites Gamestop as an example of overcoming coordination problems, but gamestop was a mob. The kind of destruction such mobs bring might be necessary but it is still a mob, not a constructive solution.
Oh, that is a very interesting first impression. It's not what I would have expected at all (more critical than affirming), but I can see where you are coming from.
The reason I linked it is because it describes Moloch as destructive (or entropic), but that he still has his place. Moloch can be put to use in service of something more fundamentally creative, so-to-speak.
I think everyone probably means something different by the term Moloch. In my view, Moloch is only destructive in the sense that in a state of nature everything is competing against everything else. But I don't think it is destructive in the same way that philosophy is destructive. When solutions to coordination problems emerge (i.e., morality) and eventually break down, I don't think it is Moloch that causes it. Philosophy causes it.
For example, the video uses the term "pierce the veil" as a constructive thing. I associate the "veil" with the moral fog that prevents clear sight but also allows for social coordination. Irrational beliefs are necessary for people to cooperate. Philosophy looks through these irrational beliefs to see the Truth, but this is inherently destructive. So in my view piercing the veil is not a constructive act but a destructive act.
So perhaps I would say that there are different layers of destruction. A creator, by virtue of his excellence, establishes power over people. This creates a kind of peace (e.g., Pax Regis). The citizens benefit from the peace but eventually replace the power of the king with moral authority, which corrodes/destroys excellence. The philosopher destroys the moral authority by seeing the hypocrisy of the morality and the lack of excellence, which makes way for a fight of all against all, which leads to a victory of a new King based on a new kind of excellence.
Maybe Moloch is just the state of nature? The empty space between truth and excellence? The arena where the excellent can destroy the weak? We have certainly started hearing people call for more of that.
I did not see the connection between Philosopher and destruction until this comment.
David Deutsch's epistemology of science (following Popper) is somewhat pure destruction. All theories are conjectures that stem from "creativity" (he says that the scientific community still does not have a good theory of consciousness so it is still a mystery) and the scientific process is all about "destroying" those conjectures with data from the real world. The best theories are those that survive.
René Girard's critique of (atheistic) science (following Nietzsche) is that it is a sick desire for pure truth, which is the pathological opposite extreme of the virtues that Redbeard point out in his intersections of corners. https://twitter.com/kcorazo/status/1726810053330808858
So many insights here from one single perennial theme, I love how you've made the connections. Its power of lies in its simplicity - once you see the connections it seems obvious but I've played around with the rhetorical devices triangle for a few years now and have never thought of connecting it with social dynamics or the holy trinity. Thanks for the insight.
If you came up with this all by yourself I'm very impressed. Several very interesting frameworks. Also I think you were right on target with the possibility of equating the philosopher to the destroyer. See the last post on my substack. Skepticism is the very core of philosophy, going all the way back to Socrates, and skepticism also destroys a lot of the myths which are required by the other two points of the triangle.
I think the other two points often acted to destroy philosophy, so it's not a one sided (one-pointed?) contest. But I would argue that one of the aspects of late modernity is that while we've long been comfortable with the idea that power and unity are somewhat nebulous, that's not the case with truth. People are far more comfortable with the existence of absolute truth than they are are with the existence of absolute power or absolute unity.
Thanks! My starting point was obviously someone else’s triangle, and these triangles have been going around for at least since Aristotle, but the meanderings are my own thoughts.
Another potential influence is something I recently discovered from a guy named Forest Landry called An Immanent Metaphysics, which has a table of triplets. People often have tables of duals, yin-yang style, but comparing triplets is less common.
Landrys Metaphysics is dense and difficult to understand, though, and didn’t have these particular triangles as far as I can remember. But it definitely contributed to me thinking about triads.
I also wanted to comment more about your ‘skepticism’ point. Many people have noticed that Post-Modern philosophy seems to have destroyed the postwar peace and psychological prosperity of America. It can be viewed as undermining belief in progress.
Atheism can be viewed as philosophy destroying belief in God, which is important for harmony.
People are starting to become more interested in a synthesis, but I’m not sure we have hit rock bottom so to speak.
Your comment on Socrates and skepticism is on point. I'd like to think that I was the one who inspired a lot of Redbeard's insights in that regard (and in other ways, too).
Redbeard and I met in the comment section of a post in which an argument was made that Socrates "deserved" to be put to death because his incessant questioning disrupted the social order (both the Power/King and Harmony/Citizen aspects).
You can read my comment here: https://blog.exitgroup.us/p/53-selective-breeding-and-the-birth/comments#comment-42322480
Strauss understood the fatal flaw of the philosopher. To the truth-seeker, Straussian communication – that is, explicitly hiding the truth behind layers of obfuscation based on the audience – is very offensive.
Citizens and Kings possess an intuition that this subordination of truth toward harmony and order is highly necessary. Philosophers don't share this intuition, and so they are very content to play the role of destroyer.
I should mention that Destroyer is not bad or evil. Shiva's (one of his alternate names, Mahesh, is used in this piece) role in the trinity to provide a cleansing fire to clear out what is impure or dead. This is necessary, but can be highly unpleasant to those who are unprepared.
I definitely agree that the destroyer is not necessarily bad, but that it can cause social disruption.
I have always thought of science and philosophy as a creative project, though, so thinking about it is an inherently destructive process has been a shift for me.
But in some sense philosophy is (always?) the based on analysis/deconstruction. To get to the truth you have to see through things that are supposed to be sacred. Those sacred things hold society together.
Are you familiar with Scott Alexander’s Moloch? https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
It represents coordination failure, and at the end he talks about overcoming Moloch by creating a walled garden. This sounds like an act of a King/Creator, but it the walls are limiting. It is these walls that the philosopher destroys.
Yes, I am familiar with Moloch. My friend David Rug made an excellent video discussing 'Moloch consciousness'. If you have and uninterrupted 45m, I suggest you watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrgSwgqclJU
This is very esoteric and I probably don’t understand it, but my initial impression is that it is confused.
Specifically, it strikes me as a philosopher who thinks they are a creator instead of a destroyer. It makes heavy use of the term “domesticated mind” which I think is a derogatory description of the “citizen” or harmony framework.
It cites Gamestop as an example of overcoming coordination problems, but gamestop was a mob. The kind of destruction such mobs bring might be necessary but it is still a mob, not a constructive solution.
Oh, that is a very interesting first impression. It's not what I would have expected at all (more critical than affirming), but I can see where you are coming from.
The reason I linked it is because it describes Moloch as destructive (or entropic), but that he still has his place. Moloch can be put to use in service of something more fundamentally creative, so-to-speak.
I think everyone probably means something different by the term Moloch. In my view, Moloch is only destructive in the sense that in a state of nature everything is competing against everything else. But I don't think it is destructive in the same way that philosophy is destructive. When solutions to coordination problems emerge (i.e., morality) and eventually break down, I don't think it is Moloch that causes it. Philosophy causes it.
For example, the video uses the term "pierce the veil" as a constructive thing. I associate the "veil" with the moral fog that prevents clear sight but also allows for social coordination. Irrational beliefs are necessary for people to cooperate. Philosophy looks through these irrational beliefs to see the Truth, but this is inherently destructive. So in my view piercing the veil is not a constructive act but a destructive act.
So perhaps I would say that there are different layers of destruction. A creator, by virtue of his excellence, establishes power over people. This creates a kind of peace (e.g., Pax Regis). The citizens benefit from the peace but eventually replace the power of the king with moral authority, which corrodes/destroys excellence. The philosopher destroys the moral authority by seeing the hypocrisy of the morality and the lack of excellence, which makes way for a fight of all against all, which leads to a victory of a new King based on a new kind of excellence.
Maybe Moloch is just the state of nature? The empty space between truth and excellence? The arena where the excellent can destroy the weak? We have certainly started hearing people call for more of that.
I did not see the connection between Philosopher and destruction until this comment.
David Deutsch's epistemology of science (following Popper) is somewhat pure destruction. All theories are conjectures that stem from "creativity" (he says that the scientific community still does not have a good theory of consciousness so it is still a mystery) and the scientific process is all about "destroying" those conjectures with data from the real world. The best theories are those that survive.
René Girard's critique of (atheistic) science (following Nietzsche) is that it is a sick desire for pure truth, which is the pathological opposite extreme of the virtues that Redbeard point out in his intersections of corners. https://twitter.com/kcorazo/status/1726810053330808858
So many insights here from one single perennial theme, I love how you've made the connections. Its power of lies in its simplicity - once you see the connections it seems obvious but I've played around with the rhetorical devices triangle for a few years now and have never thought of connecting it with social dynamics or the holy trinity. Thanks for the insight.