Per Scott Alexander it's possible that the right optimizes for survival, while the left optimizes for thriving. If so would a society entirely optimized around thriving actually function?
So a slightly different take on this that I would have is:
- Reality has a real left wing bias.
- Fiction has a real right wing bias.
By that, I don't mean that fiction creators have a right wing bias. The professional ones are quite left wing most of the time. Yet the dynamics of fiction pull good stories towards the right wing. Yes you can make a villian a capitalist, a businessman, a powerful religious fanatic. But the dynamics of fiction nonetheless will favor a shift to the right unless you're extremely skilled. (Hint: if you're writing a piece with a hero and a villian, you've already mostly lost).
Even then, right wing fiction has a habit of being easier to keep itself alive. Joyce's Ulysses will have a harder time gaining its next 1000 readers than the Lord of the Rings movies their next 10,000. There are also fiction creators who are not seen as such. Conspiracy mongers, professional wrestling 'script writers', marketing people, and influencers for the most part all are fiction creators but are not often seen as sharing in the craft.
I would say then that the tension between right and left is not so much linked to 'survival' modes being triggered. It's about the reality that reality has a left wing slant, leadership and communication requires the creation of fiction which has a right wing and there will be a tension between the two. Making Mexico pay for a wall has a nice fictional ring to it (in a kind of professional wrestling way), the reality does not. Normally the two should balance each other so fiction coming apart is checked by a return to reality, but things can go bad if one instead doubles down rather than course correct.
I believe it was Thatcher who said the exact opposite. (I'm too lazy to check.) But then she would wouldn't she? Certainly I agree that good fiction has to have a right wing bias in order to be interesting. But as to your larger point. I think there is a way for both of us to be right. ;)
I believe normalcy has a left wing bias. And by normality I mean those long stretches in between black swans. When things are stable then it's easy to thrive, and the "left wing" methodologies work better. When black swans happen, then right wing tools are more effective.
Some (like Steven Pinker and perhaps Alexander) would say that we have gotten better at locking in normalcy, and that to the extent that we have normalcy is now reality. Taleb argues that things are incredibly fragile, and that technology allows us to postpone that fragility, but that when things finally do break they're going to break catastrophically.
Obviously I hope Pinker is right and Taleb is wrong, but my gut (and a lot of what I'm seeing) says it's the opposite.
When stuff 'got real' during the pandemic, it didn't seem like people moved into a right wing mindset. In fact it was quite left wing with coopereration and support favored. Only after a while did you start getting a backlash and it was often accompanied by narratives that were, well fictional :)
Do periods of normality favor the left or the right? I suspect the answer might be more the right but then as we tend to agree the right does fiction a bit better than non-fiction, long periods of normality may result in a society that starts drifting more and more from being reality based which is a good way to set the ground for either an unpleasent Black Swan to appear or to deal with it poorly if it does.
We are, of course, getting ourselves into a somewhat abstract view of right versus left.
So a slightly different take on this that I would have is:
- Reality has a real left wing bias.
- Fiction has a real right wing bias.
By that, I don't mean that fiction creators have a right wing bias. The professional ones are quite left wing most of the time. Yet the dynamics of fiction pull good stories towards the right wing. Yes you can make a villian a capitalist, a businessman, a powerful religious fanatic. But the dynamics of fiction nonetheless will favor a shift to the right unless you're extremely skilled. (Hint: if you're writing a piece with a hero and a villian, you've already mostly lost).
Even then, right wing fiction has a habit of being easier to keep itself alive. Joyce's Ulysses will have a harder time gaining its next 1000 readers than the Lord of the Rings movies their next 10,000. There are also fiction creators who are not seen as such. Conspiracy mongers, professional wrestling 'script writers', marketing people, and influencers for the most part all are fiction creators but are not often seen as sharing in the craft.
I would say then that the tension between right and left is not so much linked to 'survival' modes being triggered. It's about the reality that reality has a left wing slant, leadership and communication requires the creation of fiction which has a right wing and there will be a tension between the two. Making Mexico pay for a wall has a nice fictional ring to it (in a kind of professional wrestling way), the reality does not. Normally the two should balance each other so fiction coming apart is checked by a return to reality, but things can go bad if one instead doubles down rather than course correct.
I believe it was Thatcher who said the exact opposite. (I'm too lazy to check.) But then she would wouldn't she? Certainly I agree that good fiction has to have a right wing bias in order to be interesting. But as to your larger point. I think there is a way for both of us to be right. ;)
I believe normalcy has a left wing bias. And by normality I mean those long stretches in between black swans. When things are stable then it's easy to thrive, and the "left wing" methodologies work better. When black swans happen, then right wing tools are more effective.
Some (like Steven Pinker and perhaps Alexander) would say that we have gotten better at locking in normalcy, and that to the extent that we have normalcy is now reality. Taleb argues that things are incredibly fragile, and that technology allows us to postpone that fragility, but that when things finally do break they're going to break catastrophically.
Obviously I hope Pinker is right and Taleb is wrong, but my gut (and a lot of what I'm seeing) says it's the opposite.
When stuff 'got real' during the pandemic, it didn't seem like people moved into a right wing mindset. In fact it was quite left wing with coopereration and support favored. Only after a while did you start getting a backlash and it was often accompanied by narratives that were, well fictional :)
Do periods of normality favor the left or the right? I suspect the answer might be more the right but then as we tend to agree the right does fiction a bit better than non-fiction, long periods of normality may result in a society that starts drifting more and more from being reality based which is a good way to set the ground for either an unpleasent Black Swan to appear or to deal with it poorly if it does.
We are, of course, getting ourselves into a somewhat abstract view of right versus left.