You Can’t Choose to Be Trad | Hacker News Reader

You Can’t Choose to Be Trad

fredrikdeboer.com

13 pointsjashkenas7 comments

Very interesting post. I'm curious for others' thoughts, because personally, I've never encountered an individual like the one described in this article.

>To be honest, I suspect that for a lot of people who really suffer from these kind of meta-theatrical problems of how to think and live, the real problem is just the internet. They’re too online. The human mind was not meant to be constantly rubbing up against other human minds. It’s all a big, creepy science experiment, all of this operant conditioning; we did not evolve for this. And rather than suddenly discovering conservative Anglicism, I suspect some people would be more fulfilled if they just found the courage to delete their Twitter. But for many people, I fear, to not be seen is to feel like nothing at all.

Is the author strawmanning a bit here? Are there really many too-online-Twitter-personalities turning to conservative Anglicism as a solution to their growing existential dread?

I understand where the author is coming from, that abandoning postmodern thought and embracing a premodern value system instead is in and of itself a postmodern decision, I just don't think many people _are actually doing that._

>I'm curious for others' thoughts, because personally, I've never encountered an individual like the one described in this article.

I'm one, or probably the closest you'll find here, and I'm online-acquainted with many who are much "more this" than me.

I generally concur with the author's point that you can't really turn off, but he leaves unanswered the question of "what then is to be done?"

I'm convinced that the only way out is through; to be more online, rather than less. It's true that you can't choose to be trad because "trad" implies a lack of choice/reflection. But maybe you can choose to be something better than trad.

You see some weird things in the right (wrong?) corners of twitter: an alliance between anime weebs and would-be-Greek-gods bodybuilders, SV programmers bashing on tech, young earth creationists leveraging natural selection as a tool of thought.

All of it paradoxical(or is it?), but this doesn't mean it's not useful, or that it can't be fruitful. I see this stuff as "what (the hivemind of) Twitter looks like when it's thinking". We think all sorts of stupid things when trying to solve a problem, but only in hindsight are they stupid---until then, they're avenues that need to be explored.

I mean, there are a lot of "Tradcaths" and edgy take havers posting in nerd circles on Tumblr, etc, and there was a barely notable posting... thing... with a NYC leftist catholic group that somehow related to some popular podcasters. But yeah, Freddie is in some weird mostly online social group himself. I mainly seem him post in the Slatestartcodex comment section, I thought he had given up blogging.

The closest to IRL I've seen any of this is a conversation I overheard at my local natural foods co-op, but I really don't know the context, if it was some "post-modern" religious person, or the standard sort of hip "youth pastor" type who has existed long before twitter. In IRL I know a few devoutly religious folk, and they all seem to have gotten there the completely normal way.

Aslo, when did Freddie start posting again?

Personally, I've seen a number of individuals (mostly Zoomers) upset by the void of purpose left by the deliberate aimlessness of postmodernist thinking turning to religion for answers. They can't articulate it like that, but they have consistent things they mention that led them to this, "I've been told my whole life to do what I want and I don't even know what I should want, let alone what I do want." "I feel like I've lived my life just laying around doing nothing, and now I feel like I suddenly woke up from a long sleep." Outcry against cancel culture has similar subtext to it.

I'm did not become trad by a choice. I unknowingly grew up not caring about what people thought of me. I was a middle aged adult before I realized that this is a very uncommon thing. One of the moments was when I said that I hardly ever look in a mirror and if I do it's usually for a specific purpose like checking a particular spot on my face. I also described someone as very unphotogenic in their company with others present because I didn't realize that how you appear to others had much significance.

Being that and living on the internet I do realize that I respond and react to feedback so am aware of the experience as well as in real life. Where I disagree with the article is that being trad isn't an all or nothing deal. There are certain areas where I really don't care what people think of me and there are other areas where I will take it to heart. It basically boils down to how much of an expert I feel I am in an area. The lesser known areas I will either respond more or less to feedback depending on whether it's an area I choose to grow in at the moment. The only case where there's some conscious effort is when having your expertise in an area questioned. There you have to evaluate everything you know about the conversation and other person and yourself and figure out if there's value in continuing. As long as we're talking objectively it's fine, if there are logical fallacies being thrown around it's time to let it go.

So I am both as are many others if you consider areas separately.

Edit: Here's a concrete examples: If I'm trying to impress you and you don't approve, I've failed. If you are unimpressed but I wasn't trying it doesn't matter. I find that the technical folk here are mostly quite confident in their respective areas but also recognize that there are those more knowledgeable here. I am trying to write intelligently and get confirmation/approval but I won't spend many minutes if I get the opposite. I mostly use the feedback for 'rough guidance' rather than a point by point match.

I think that part is really about himself. He's trying to imagine what the appeal would be if it were him. De Boer is definitely someone for whom the Internet has been bad. He is one of those people who wants to be internet-famous, which causes him to stumble into weird online fights that end with a bunch of total strangers hating him. He quit the internet for several years because one of these fights. I think these days most people have their social circle, even online, and they basically just learn the norms of that circle and stay within it, so they don't have meta-theatrical problems.

I believe that the author fundamentally misunderstands the apotheosis and ongoing nature of the traditionalist mindset. In his description of, and reasoning about traditionalism, he's attempted to understand it as an ill-fitted treatment for the pathologies of the progressive commentariat (this is especially obvious when he emphasizes the performativity of consciously embracing traditionalist values, and conflates, trad with a paleo diet).

I do agree with him that oversocialization is a component of the mindset. But he describes the adoption of traditionalist (Catholic) values as an attempt to achieve some form of moral certitude in order to escape the judgement of one's peers, the the fickle nature of the broader communal concensus.

This doesn't track with the traditionalists know, especially when he himself admits that the religious component of it is almost certainly ironic, or an aesthetic choice. The religious component may be percormatively observed, or authetically observed. In either case, it serves as pre-existing standard base from-which they rally that already broadly aligns with their values, and extracts only minor concessions from them.

Traditionalists aren't especially concerned with how society writ large percieves them, even when they're willing to acknowledge the subjectivity of values. In fact, there is an assumption they bear that they are an anachronism in an increasingly liberalizing world, even if they believe it's their duty to push against it.

The traditionalist instead, fixates upon diminishing social capital, blaming the individuization of morality, and anti-normative-value sentiment of the predominant cultural narrative for society's woes.

They likely already held their principals long before they'd ever heard the word "traditionalist". For them, traditionalism isn't an escape from collective judgement (their beliefs are out of vogue, and will certainly be the subject to judgement and ridicule). It is a label through-which to collectivise, in order to hold one-another to account, and receive feedback from those who share similar first principals to them (something progressives don't do).

I'd like to expand on my points in a child comment, when I'm in a position

Reply on news.ycombinator.com