A Tragic View of Humanity

Institutionalism is based on fears that power will corrupt our elected officials

"Mosaic depicting theatrical masks of Tragedy and Comedy, 2nd century AD, from Rome Thermae Decianae (?), Palazzo Nuovo, Capitoline Museums" by Following Hadrian is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Sharpen Your Axe began life as an attempt to help conspiracy theorists think critically about the sources of the content they find emotionally appealing. Many of the most recent theories about things not being as they seem either came from or were amplified by the propaganda arms of authoritarian governments, particularly Russia.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Western authorities have got much better at marginalizing the country’s propaganda arm, which had been able to run riot in the early years of social media. It should seem obvious to many in 2023 that Vladimir Putin had long been trying to weaken the West by amplifying extremist voices. One underlying theme of these narratives was distrust of liberal democracy while making populist excuses for dictators.

Sharpen Your Axe has slowly evolved into an approach we call institutionalism. It is designed to act as a a counterweight to populism, democratic backsliding and suspicion about the legitimacy of fair elections - views that are promoted by Putin and other authoritarians. The peaceful transition of power is the heart of institutionalism, along with individual human rights, written constitutions, an independent judiciary and a free press. All these institutions evolved to keep us safe from our rulers.

As we have mentioned before, institutionalism is based on a dark understanding of human nature. In Lord Acton’s famous words, power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is as close to a universal law of human nature that we have. Leaders will always be tempted to cut ethical corners. They will feel cognitive dissonance if anyone pushes back on these decisions. This will inevitably lead to groupthink, with increasingly bad decisions coming in the wake.

Institutionalists think that poor decisions by elected officials should increase their chances of losing the next election. However, new faces at the top will continue to make the same fundamental mistakes until they too lose an election at some point in the future.

Mistrust of human nature can lead us to a position roughly equivalent to liberal centrism combined with a certain wariness about anti-left narratives. Some people will always want to prove themselves to be better than others. By allowing them to make vast fortunes by creating value for others, we can develop a society where innovation compounds on innovation.

Capitalism might be better than the alternatives. However, this isn’t the same as a whole-hearted defence of totally free markets. Power corrupts in the corporate world just as much as it does in politics. Some regulation and oversight is necessary. Not everyone will thrive in a market-based economy, so social democratic arguments about the need for a welfare state can fit perfectly into an institutionalist approach.

On the whole, institutionalists will tend to be wary of sweeping reforms that are based on optimism about our alleged better natures. Socialists, who want to replace markets with a vague faith in cooperation, can be just as dangerous as extreme libertarians, who want to do away with the state entirely and trust society to purely voluntary contracts.

The contrast between pessimism and optimism about human nature has deep roots. Conservative economist and author Thomas Sowell described the long-standing debate between the “unconstrained" (optimistic) and "constrained" (pessimistic) visions of human nature in a classic book first published in 1987. Other thinkers, including Steven Pinker, as well as Sowell himself in later books, came up with a catchier contrast between the Utopian and the tragic visions of humanity.

Utopians will tend to be drawn to slogans like Karl Marx’s “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” However, people with a tragic view of humanity will worry about how we work out everyone’s abilities and needs, particularly given the corruptive nature of power. Won’t there always be a risk that the chair of the Big House Allocation Committee will get together and do a cosy deal with the chair of the Expensive Cars Allocation Committee? Creating a market for houses and cars might seem a little prosaic, but in the real world it will always outperform corruptible committees.

Most of us are drawn to the Utopian view when we are young, and I was no exception. The tragic view is more of an acquired taste. Psychologist and author Pinker has one of the best descriptions about moving to a more mature worldview in his book The Blank Slate, which defends a tragic view of humanity.

Pinker wrote: “As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in [Mikhael] Bakunin’s anarchism. I laughed off my parents’ argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 A.M. on October 17, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 A.M. the first bank was robbed. By noon most downtown stores had closed because of looting. Within a couple of hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that had competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of store-front glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order. This decisive empirical test left my politics in tatters (and offered a foretaste of life as a scientist).”

Pinker’s point about science at the end of the quote is a great one. Real research, including science, is also based on a negative approach, which values uncertainty and respects feedback, even if the feedback overturns your starting position. There is a strong contrast with the utter certainty of gurus, who use conspiracy theories as the bodyguards of bad ideas. The comments are open. See you next week!

Further Reading

A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell

The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker

The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

Sharpen Your Axe is a project to develop a community who want to think critically about the media, conspiracy theories and current affairs without getting conned by gurus selling fringe views. Please subscribe to get this content in your inbox every week. Shares on social media are appreciated!

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Opinions expressed on Substack, Twitter, Mastodon and Post are those of Rupert Cocke as an individual and do not reflect the opinions or views of the organization where he works or its subsidiaries