I don’t consider the transgender mania, lockdown policy and mask mandates, or the “climate change” hysteria to be all that different in form.

And I believe every earnest supporter of these crazes to be dupes at best, and much, much worse . . . at worst.

It’s all based on a deeply misconstrued understanding (a misunderstanding) of “science,” which in each of these cases is dominated by social pressures to conform to norms and an authoritarian, elitist view of knowledge acquisition.

I understand how “normal” people can get caught up in this nonsense, but when I see smart members of my own political tribe, I just shake my head.

I suspect these are all in part the result of a feature of human beings we gained an inkling of in Fifties’ and Sixties’ rat and mouse studies, about the effects of crowding (high-density populations) and hedonic feedback loops in contrived circumstances. 

This element is not unrelated to risk homeostasis, where our personally acceptable risk levels retain a baseline even as levels of risk change, and we, at the margins of behavioral change, become more risky in our behavior. This accommodation to changing circumstances seems perverse, but as economist Sam Peltzman demonstrated, it goes on without our conscious awareness. And it is rational, in a sense: in that it is explainable in rational terms and to the individual in any given instance likely appears a reasonable reaction.

The process of cultural decadence goes on at a micro-micro level, but exhibits its perversities at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. On the macro level it appears as full-blown cultural decline, sending our civilization, pel-mel, into destruction. 

The only counters to this, as far as I can tell, is better understandings of reason and norms. And criticism of the lazy, evil, witless, and perverse.

twv