Something I’ve become increasingly intrigued by is the Right’s insistence on trying to impose what I’ll call “logic” (the Order tendency) on Neoliberal Capital’s free-associative “narrative” (the Chaos tendency).

This is a rote binaric opposition. But it’ll (to invoke Derrida) do for our purposes.

Sure. But it’s much worse than this. https://twitter.com/1BusinessGoose/status/1384155356218073093?s=20

To us, “I do X and I get Y” has a sense to it. Indeed, the entire idea of commerce and capital is ordered (there’s that word again) around this. You lift weights to get big and be/feel healthy (and this is good (to use the word as we conceive it)!)

For us, the “ordered,” it’s hard to conceive of a manner of being like Neoliberal Capital. It seems discursively constructed from - or at least transposed upon - the general rules we think constitute our daily life.

And yet it seems almost like an anathema to those very rules.

Not only is the Order Tendency fixated on outcomes, it needs them to exist in order to have a level of coherence.

But what it outcomes don’t really matter? Or - more anathemic- what if your internal is seemingly predicated on outcomes being wrong/undeserved?

Notice how even describing the Neoliberal Capital thing - this reified extimate Being - is difficult?

See, it’s hard to describe directly because it is a multiplicity (ugh)... it’s the c*rpet m*ncher indoctrinating your 6 year old, it’s Bezos making 2000 a second, it’s CLEs on “health and wellness” and yet it’s none of these things.

So in the classic 3rd person shooter Shadows of the Empire, you face off in a flooded cavern with a Giant Dianoga. You have to swim down to near the bottom to find its core/mouth and kill it. Else, you’re just fighting tentacles.

This is how Order conceives Chaos.

Order is imposed. Chaos... feeds.

When your mother forced you to vacuum and you invented all those reasons why you shouldn’t have to, or why the punishment meted out wasn’t fair, you were doing narrative. The fact didn’t matter. Facts *DON’T* matter.

Rorty discusses what he sees as the American Left’s need to have a triumphal narrative to compete with the Right (in 1998 this was cutting edge; it now seems quaint).

He argues the Left needs to be able to get around the Right’s alleged ability to point to policy outcomes.

The Order Tendency on one level hopes for validation through policy outcomes (this is not necessarily a “right or left” thing).

The Chaos Tendency subverts this by operating almost entirely on checking the right boxes and having the right “inputs.”

We all laugh at the team of idiot w*men who built that bridge in Florida that collapsed and killed people and point to it as a sign of Neoliberal incompetence.

But to the Chaos Tendency... it’s *working.* An all female engineering team inherently good... outcomes don’t matter

Sometimes there is alignment between these polar opposites. If an all male team had built that bridge, a certain set would screech this is why we need more w*men engineers.

The Order Tendency would hammer them for building a bad bridge. Similar outcome, anathemic motivations

We often want to accuse the neoliberal/left (whatever “Left” even means anymore) of hypocrisy or double standards or coddling certain groups. But that’s just as impotent as “DR3.”

They’re operating in a completely different psycho-linguistic framework.

To us, this seems utterly insane. But the Chaos Tendency sees itself as internally consistent even where we see “cognitive dissonance” b/c inputs over outcomes *doesn’t compute* for us.

Rorty says he wants America to have only one rule “be kind to each other.” (Seriously)

Rorty is of course, just one manifestation of this, but the most systematic I can think of easily. He basically calls for the complete destruction of the right/Order Tendency and the exile (or death)of anyone who disagrees with kindness-as-permissiveness.

Sound familiar?

So what do we mean when we say that Chaos feeds? Order requires outcomes that people accept. These have to be decently predictable (e.g., if you drive drunk you’ll get a DUI).

Order has to be conferred some level of legitimacy (like your parents telling you what to do as a kid)

You can’t tell the Chaos Tendency that it is illegitimate. A Legitimation Crisis is specifically an affliction for institutions that were originally implemented to maintain order (even if they’ve since been perverted against the Order Tendency that built them).

But Chaos (this is inexact, but whatever it is seems to multiply entropy & disorder in society)... it’s paradoxically seen in effects. IRS weaponized against taxpayers, FBI gag orders to intimidate, etc.

And these acts are seen as entirely justified b/c “the right people” do it

Few of us would assert that 3letter agencies are legitimate institutions anymore. But to the other side... they’re finally legitimate & are making us freer.

B/c narrative doesn’t care about facts, all you do by opposing the Chaos Tendency w/ facts is give it more to eat

Narrative/the Chaos Tendency takes in whatever “facts” you throw at it (statistics, outcomes, whatever) and finds a way to delegitimize them.

It’s not just pointless... it’s *counterproductive* because the narrative just morphs to absorb it & finds a way to call you the bad guy

You can’t oppose Rorty’s narrative thread of “Americans should be ruled by kindness to each other” with facts. *Anything* you throw at that juggernaut makes you an even worse meanie who needs to be stamped out.

You can only oppose this with a narrative (and force) of your own.

The problem for the Order Tendency is that this requires a *complete* realignment of our psycho-linguistic manner of thinking about why we’re right and now to articulate that both with the symbols we exchange with each other and with the way we engage the Great Enemy.