The Ideological Spiral

A natural consequence of living in a democracy

Western democracies are specifically built to make it hard for individuals to have too much power.

While this is obvious on an intellectual level, it is hard to internalise.
At a personal level, it means our institutions will hinder any single individual who wants to have too much impact by themselves.

This feels terrible to people who want to do a lot.
This naturally includes people who want to do a lot of good. Naturally, because our institutions can not read people’s minds, nor should they.

Nevertheless, many get frustrated by their inability to enact a lot of goodness, and fall into what I call The Ideological Spiral.

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Peter Thiel wrote "The Education of a Libertarian" in 2009, an essay where he shares some candid reflections.

The essay details how he went from starting a student newspaper to no longer believing that democracy and freedom are compatible, and his solution, which is to bypass governments by getting into avenues that are not covered yet.

I especially like this quote:

The hope of the Internet is that these new worlds will impact and force change on the existing social and political order.

It captures a natural conclusion of an evergreen spiral I have witnessed many times in my life.

I call it The Ideological Spiral, and it has four steps:

1. Focus. Thinking a lot about a principle, which becomes The Principle.

2. Failure. Trying to push The Principle over others, and failing.

3. Intensification. After failure, going back to square 1, but more intensely.

4. Breaking out. At some point, after too many failures, the person breaks out of the spiral, because they don't want to fail anymore.

Breaking out of the spiral can be broken down further depending on how it's done. From least to most constructive:

• Unilateralism. "The current democratic system isn't working. I'll force change onto society through alternative means."

• Withdrawal. "It's impossible to change the systems, so I'll just focus on myself."

• Humility. "I'm just one guy, doing my part. I'll do some politics to push my principle but won't expect much from it."

• Ascension. "There is actually more than The Principle."

In his essay, Peter Thiel embodies the Unilateralist position. As he puts it:

I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.

Thus he looks for ways to enforce what he believes to be positive change by himself, in the name of freedom.

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Let's go over the spiral, step by step. For the purpose of the article, I'll follow the internal life of Bob, a nice imaginary guy.

Step 1: Focus

As humans, we value many things. However, many of these values are contradictory, and thinking contradictory thoughts feels bad. This specific bad feeling is called Cognitive Dissonance.

This dissonance is not universal. Some may not feel it because they do not care much about internal contradictions, do not think much about values, or already have a solution to deal with them (such as Religion).

But Bob experiences it. And this dissonance starts his journey through The Ideological Spiral.

Step 1 of the ideological spiral is to focus on one principle, or one value. It can be freedom, fairness, social justice, security, community, or whatever. I don't know which one Bob focuses on, and it doesn't really matter.

What matters is that to Bob, it becomes The Principle, and he starts thinking a lot about it.

He reads many thinkers who write about it. He learns about how different societies relate to this value. He comes up with many arguments for why The Principle is good for people.

And at some point, he starts noticing all the ways in which people violate The Principle, or at least do not follow it as much as they reasonably could. He believes that they are wrong, and that he has to put in an effort to change their ways.

This leads him to Step 2.

Step 2: Failure

Because Bob lives in a democracy, he believes in politics, the marketplace of ideas, debates, education, and many other things like this.

So, Bob tries to change the minds of people using these tools.
He might follow the example of Peter Thiel and start a student newspaper at Stanford.
Or he might be more argumentative and debate his family at dinners, as well as random people on social media.
He might even join a local activist group, or a proper political party.

Who knows.

Sadly, bright-eyed as he is, his activism doesn't achieve much.

Indeed, it takes a lot to change someone's mind. Bob has strong convictions, yet he forgets others do too.

Even worse: people hold many values, yet Bob only focuses on The Principle. It makes him very bad at coming up with Pareto Improvements and compromises that make most people better off.

Instead, he fights for The Principle. Each of his victories is pyrrhic. A lot of costs for not many benefits.

As Peter Thiel poetically describes it:

But in a broader sense we did not achieve all that much for all the effort expended. Much of it felt like trench warfare on the Western Front in World War I; there was a lot of carnage, but we did not move the center of the debate.

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I have met many people who feel that way. The reason why is that they fail to reflect on what it means to nicely live with millions or billions of people.

To nicely live with many others implies that even marginal wins take a lot of effort.

There is a name for the opposite, a regime in which it is easy to always enact our preferred policy: a dictatorship.

It is a feature of nicely living together that no one unilaterally gets their way.

"A good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied."

This manifests itself through the necessity of educating, convincing, explaining to, negotiating, or building trust with people. Countless people, each with their own opinions and preoccupations.

In an ideal society of equals, a reasonable person would not strive to feel like they have unilaterally changed the course of history for everyone else. They should instead aim to feel like they have helped everyone else collectively achieve their values.

This is a very different mindset.

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However, Bob does not share this mindset. He wants to be special, make history and get a total win for The Principle.

And in doing so, he notices his failure. He understands that on the current course of action, he's not going to make it. So he moves on to Step 3.

Step 3: Intensification

Bob has realised that he failed The Principle, but he doesn't want to give up.

So instead, he thinks more about what he has done wrong: he combs through his arguments that failed to persuade people, the counters he has not planned for, the ways he could have been smoother, and so on.

And thus, he gets better.

A key part of Step 3 is that at no point does Bob question his approach nor The Principle. Bob never questions that The Principle may not be the best thing possible or the Canonical Truth.

He never considers that others have their own principles that are as valid as his.

His failure never indicates that he may be wrong, only that he has failed to make others see the light of The Principle.
It's that others do not want to see the light of The Principle. In his mind, people who disagree with him are too stupid or mean to recognise it. He thinks they are sheeple, stupid, low-IQ, selfish, uneducated, etc.

Peter Thiel shares his point of view:

The higher one's IQ, the more pessimistic one became about free-market politics — capitalism simply is not that popular with the crowd.

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And then Bob goes back to Step 1. He reads more about The Principle. He learns deeper counter-arguments. He asks fellows and comrades about how they dealt with his situation. And he tries again.

Which leads him back to Step 2. He fails again. He may broaden his coalition with his better persuasion techniques. He may even eke out slightly larger wins. But it is still far from a Total Victory for The Principle.

Thus he finally ends up at Step 3. Still trying to get better at persuading people, still thinking worse of people.

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At some point, after months or years, Bob notices the spiral. And he finally decides to end it. Which gets us to step 4.

Step 4: Breaking Out

This is where the Bobs of the world differ. While I have found a lot of commonalities in the first parts of the spiral, how people exit it is where I have found the most diversity.

I'll list the different approaches I have noticed from least to most constructive.

Unilateralism

This section is about Communists, Accelerationists (leftwing or rightwing), Anarchists (ancaps or ancoms), Fascists, Religious Extremists, and everyone across the political spectrum who have concluded that democracy is not sufficient for them.

I understand their frustration. Many of them Care about something Important. What they think is The Principle may not be the only principle worth caring about, but it usually represents a genuine Shard of Human Flourishing.

But let me be clear. Some on this path have truly bad intents. The Ideological Spiral has either been a pretext or the trigger for their worst impulses. They may have started nice, but they now revel in violence, in hurting others, in dominating others, in trampling on the social order, in punishing people who violate The Principle. In an ideal world, we may reform them, but in the meantime, we should quash them.

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If we're unlucky, Bob ends up taking a Unilateralist approach, which clashes with democracy.

Democracy here does not refer to a specific type of government. It refers to the belief that underpins the many types of democratic governments. Namely, the belief that:

• To live together, we ought to coordinate, talk things through and compromise.

• If a thing affects millions or billions of people, they should have a say in it.

• The few should not be able to force things onto the many.

Bob, even if against democracy in spirit, may even present himself as a candidate for elections! Not to serve people and their interests, but primarily to fight for The Principle.

Bob might even find democracy convenient for now, but as he gains more and more power, he will endeavour to circumvent it.

This is my understanding of Peter Thiel's essay: by pushing for Internet technologies and other unregulated systems, one may circumvent democratic processes that may be too slow or inefficient, and eventually force change on the existing social and political order.

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I view Unilateralists as walking a dangerous path. They have lost faith in debates and collaboration. If you do not agree with The Principle being the most important thing, you are an obstacle, not a peer.

Even without directly enacting violence, they will bypass the right ways and force their vision in the name of The Principle.

Massive economic power concentration, removing checks and balances, supporting anti-democratic systems, unchecked technological change, lobbying for policies that predictably and unnecessarily hurt people, strategic deception.

The specific methods do not matter. They have abandoned the idea of making their case to the rest of us, coming up with trade-offs, and working to improve our institutions. Institutions may be too inefficient to their liking, or people may not be capable enough to deserve education. Similarly, the specific reasons do not matter.

What matters is that they are OK with forcing their vision onto society.

As Peter Thiel concludes:

For those of us who are libertarian in 2009, our education culminates with the knowledge that the broader education of the body politic has become a fool's errand.

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This is tragic. I have many Bobs that I like in my entourage who are Unilateralists. Many of them are brilliant, likeable on a personal level, and even have noble intentions.

However, they have found a way to rationalise bypassing democratic compromise, and will predictably act against the interests of the many. If they don't, it's only because of a coincidental alignment or a lack of power to change things.

This is what concerns me the most. Bypassing explicit coordination, even for a cause as noble as The Principle, predictably leads to violating people's values.

I believe Unilateralists, like everyone, can change their mind. But until they do, my prediction stays unchanged: respecting and compromising with others takes active effort, the type that Unilateralists actively disregard. And if someone commits to not putting in the effort, they're bound to violate people's values.

Withdrawal

Unilateralism causes the greatest harm. So when thinking in terms of impact, it is the most destructive way to break out of the Ideological Spiral.

But I have found the most common way out is just Withdrawal.

Bobs who withdraw stop caring about The Principle. They might still talk about it in heated family dinners, but that's as far as they will go. Overall, they are just focused on Themselves, and that's it.

They have concluded that Democracy is Doomed and that there is nothing that can be done about it. They agree with Unilateralists that Democracy is bad or failing, and might even cheer them on from time to time.

Yet, looking at the rest of the world and history, they still believe that "Democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

I don't think there's much more to say about them. By closing themselves off from the game, they have made themselves irrelevant.

Peter Thiel writes:

Rather than fight the relentless indifference of the universe, many of my saner peers retreated to tending their small gardens.

Among the smartest conservatives, this pessimism often manifested in heroic drinking; the smartest libertarians, by contrast, had fewer hang-ups about positive law and escaped not only to alcohol but beyond it.

Humility

Enough said about the non-constructive ways to deal with the Ideological Spiral. Let's start getting into more positive endings!

I have met quite a few Humble Bobs. They are less common than the Withdrawn Bobs, but they are a delight and leave a longer-lasting impression.

I believe that to a great extent, Democracy has worked and works because of the Humble Bobs. People who register with a political party, might participate in the meetings of their local branches and even get elected to their town council. People who volunteer at NGOs and help awareness campaigns. Teachers, hospital and social workers who go the extra mile.

They believe in The Principle. Whether it is Socialism, Liberalism, Care, Freedom, or Education, they believe in it, and they embody it.

The key difference is that they do not do this at the cost of others. They play their part, are content doing so, and we are all usually better for it.

Without Humble Bobs working for their principles, it's not clear to me how good our societies would be.

Ascension

Ascension is what I believe is the proper way to exit The Ideological Spiral. It is to realise that there is more than The Principle.

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There is a common pattern I have seen in people who study morals and have a big heart.

The first time in their life that they truly See a Principle, they get a massive high. It's the moral equivalent of what we feel the first time we fall in love, where we believe that our teenage love partner is Perfect and that we'll end up with them our entire life. Similar to this, the first principle they discover becomes The Principle. It's like a divine revelation.

And then, they go through the Ideological Spiral.

But they become increasingly dissatisfied: it feels like they're missing something. Not only in the sense that they spiral down their failure, which is typical to everyone in the spiral.

It's instead a bit more subtle. They feel like The Principle might not be all there is, or so important. Through their study, through the compassion they have with people who disagree with them, or just because they can't prevent themselves from caring about other things than The Principle, it bursts.

They See that there is more than The Principle, and they stop being bound by it. They Ascend.

They start to grasp at morality, ethics and human values in a more complete way than by reducing it to one principle.

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Ascenders are the ones who have truly overcome The Principle.

Unilateralists are fully governed by it, so much so that they have alienated themselves from democratic processes.

Withdrawn people have abandoned. They rot in frustration because The Principle has not won.

I like thinking of Humble Bobs as halfway through Ascension. Even though they live according to their Principle, they acknowledge that others have theirs and are happy to contribute in their own special way. It is still Their One Principle, so they have not fully ascended, but it is not The Principle anymore.

Conclusion

All the usual disclaimers apply.

Peter Thiel is more than a single essay. I dissect the persona that is presented there, not his entire biography (which I do not know) nor his actual person (which I am not acquainted with).

Even if I present separate positions, people can hold more than one at once! For instance, people may withdraw from some political spheres, but be humble or unilateralist in others.

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Nevertheless, I think this dynamic plays a crucial role in politics, and leads many down more extremism. I want to have a link that I can share when I need to refer to it.

To a great extent, I believe that Humanism is about fighting extremism and being aware of this dynamic. Human values are rich, there is more than one principle, many people hold different Shards of the Truth and we ought to build strong institutions to act while taking all of this into account.

On that note, cheers!