Yuri Slezkine wrote,

Sonja Luehrmann questions the validity of an analogy between Bolshevism and “religion.” I do not draw such an analogy. I reject the concept of religion entirely (for reasons I discuss early in the book), define millenarianism as a belief in the imminent and violent end of our imperfect world, and argue that Bolshevism was a full-fledged millenarian movement (irrespective of whether all movements that fit my definition of millenarianism fit someone else’s definition of “religion”).

Wikipedia says that millenarianism

is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming fundamental transformation of society, after which “all things will be changed”.

1. Slezkine describes the Bolsheviks in 1917 as like the proverbial dog that caught the fire engine. For years, Russian intellectuals had looked forward to the end of the tsarist regime. And the First World War looked like the violent end of the imperfect capitalist world. But the Bolsheviks had no blueprint for creating the heaven on earth that was supposed to follow.

2. The “fundamental transformation of society” usually requires the identification and elimination of an evil group. Often, it involves previously marginalized groups destroying previously dominant groups.

3. I suspect that millenarianism is one attempt to come to terms with one’s own mortality. I think this hits people the hardest when they are young. As they get older, most people get past the shock that they will not live forever. For those who can’t get past it, one coping mechanism is to take comfort in the belief that the whole world as we know it is going to die soon.

4. If one has children and grandchildren who seem to be on a path for a decent life, the continuity of society becomes tolerable, even desirable.

5. Hitler seems like a millenarian. He really wanted to remake the world. And in the end he reportedly thought that the German people deserved to be killed because they had let him down.

6. Antifa and the most radical self-described anti-racists strike me as millenarian.

A commenter writes,

I think most people on the right will do what most already do (what we’re already doing here), keep using the the left wing platforms for most stuff, while occasionally seeking political retreat in low-traffic, right-of-center blogs. That may be ok for individuals on the right, as they still get to interact with like-minded people, but in small, self-selected ghettos with .001% the attention Facebook and Twitter get. The flow of communication for the right will have been mostly throttled.

Earlier, David Henderson had described speaking on a panel in which James Todaro described being blocked on social media.

Hillsdale College did not invite a Marxist to be on this panel. Does anyone hear think that Hillsdale is censoring? No. Hillsdale is using its private property as it wishes. Moreover, if James is saying that he wants the government to step in to deal with this censorship, I can almost guarantee that he’ll like the result even less.

I agree with Henderson that I would rather live in a society where government has no role in regulating speech than in a society where government is supposed to “enforce” speech rights. The legitimate objection to the decisions of Twitter and Facebook to block certain content is that they are giving in to a mob of FOOLs (Fear Of Others’ Liberty).

The First Amendment is a formal doctrine that applies to Congress. Some of us would like to see free speech embedded in social norms, so that Facebook and Twitter are not subject to mobs of FOOLs. But in that sense free speech is liberal morality, and you cannot legislate morality.

My sense is that government schools today have many more teachers who are hostile to free speech principles than was the case when I was growing up. Perhaps that is where we have good reason to complain to government.

Maryanne Wolf has a book called Reader, Come Home about the way that Digital City is rewiring out brains to have less patience for reading. We no longer immerse ourselves in books. We no long savor great writing or re-read great passages. Sad to say, I did not have the patience to read the whole book.

I notice that my writing style now emphasizes compression. Fewer anecdotes or “throat clearing.” Get to the point.

Compression is not costless. When I listen to “Carry On” by CSNY on Spotify I don’t get the same physical thrill that I used to get from the bass-organ interlude that seemed to wash over my brain in the analog version. You don’t hear the harmonics and overtones in John Phillips’ meticulous arrangements for the Mamas and the Papas in MP3.

The other night I was downstairs dancing. The session leader, in LA, was Orly, a high-energy, carrot-topped pixie. She was playing Tefillot, a brilliantly choreographed dance that I’ve probably enjoyed doing more than a hundred times over the last few years. My wife came downstairs with her computer, and she was watching a session that was based in Denver, with a guest teacher Marcelo based in Argentina. He was teaching Smachot, a difficult dance that I have not done enough times to know. So I turned down Orly and switched to Marcelo.

Is this good or not? Why should we not just stick to one session, rather than switch back and forth? In Analog City, we go to a session, and there would be no option to jump to another session. The Analog City session would be run by a very dedicated and competent leader, who nonetheless lacks the charisma of Orly or Marcelo. The Digital City options are in some sense better, but there is not the same continuity.

It’s like the difference between skimming through Internet writing and sticking with a book. I fear we are losing the capacity for the latter.

Samuel Hammond writes,

Closed Facebook groups, subreddits, and Twitter niches are typically self-regulating or have formal moderators, and rarely cause problems. That all changes when one’s online interactions are allowed to propagate far beyond the boundaries of real-life or otherwise opt-in social networks.

. . .Facebook, for example, could easily dampen the tendency of high engagement, sensationalist content from going viral by restricting the visibility of posts that don’t originate from within your friend network or geographical area.

I am not sure how this would work. If it did work, it might prevent gossip from spreading as widely and rapidly as it does now. That in turn might attenuate the influence of gossip on our lives.

I think, though, that the key is getting people to recognize that large-scale society cannot operate by small-scale rules. A small group can adopt “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” A large, complex society cannot do so. A small group can choose not to live by liberal values and instead adopt a hard-edged moral code and live by myths and falsehoods. It works less well in large societies.

On line, people engage in small-scale social control in a large-scale setting. I suppose that trying to confine online activity to small groups is one approach for trying to stop that. I am skeptical that it can work.