America's Meiji Moment and Various Other Updates
My Presentation at the Academy of Philosophy and Letters
Howdy friends and readers. Sorry for the long hiatus. Life has been busy and crazy in different ways. I have a very very long review/reflection on The Northman and some other films in the works that I hope to get out to you all soon to make up for the long delay, and I hope to get some more episodes of The Republic of Ezo out as well.
Today I wanted to share the presentation I gave at this year’s meeting of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters, which, I am relieved to say was well received by the assorted very smart people in attendance. Some of you might recall the Academy from when I interviewed Luke Sheahan, the current president, earlier this year. I had a wonderful time and felt so refreshed to see old and new faces and experienced what Aristotle would call homonoia, a spiritual oneness. Topics ranged from literature and architecture to political theory.
I was delighted and honored that my nomination for membership was accepted. Check out the website for more to learn more about the Academy and what it’s all about.
Here are some pictures from the meeting:
America’s Meiji Moment
The unstoppable march of time, and the numerous changes that come with it, has frequently proven to be a stumbling block to human civilizations throughout history, but at least for most of humanity these changes progressed at what we would consider to be a gradual pace.
Major innovations that have significantly altered the course of human history, such as the agricultural revolution or the domestication of the horse and ensuing Indo-European migrations and invasions, took place slowly over the course of centuries.
In contrast, since the advent of the industrial revolution, radical change has been occurring at break-neck speed and is in fact accelerating. In the grand scheme of human history, the industrial revolution started this morning, yet it has already spawned multiple generations of follow-up revolutionary changes that are even more recent.
Think of the computer, the internet, the smartphone. All of these technological innovations have radically altered human life in a short time, and are themselves leading to even more disruptive changes.
In the coming decades the possibility of achieving sustainable fusion, the creation of some form of artificial intelligence, and the potential for space colonization and resource extraction loom as even more disruptive innovations whose consequences we can barely begin to comprehend.
But it seems clear that American society, despite its technological dynamism and materially innovative spirit, has not dealt well with this dizzying pace of change. In some respects, our institutions, especially our governing ones, have responded to these changes by becoming reactionary in the most negative sense.
Simply look at the federal register, or the fact that Yale has more administrators than undergrads, or that no new nuclear power plants have been built in the US since the formation of the nuclear regulatory agency.
But, at the same time, elites are also the driving force behind the accelerating Jacobin orgy of social destruction we have witnessed for the past few decades.
When institutional and spiritual tradition, rightly understood as accumulated wisdom and knowledge over many generations that can aid us in navigating the radically uncertain future, is most needed, our elites have rejected it.
Time devours all things, especially civilizations who are incapable of balancing the need for tradition and material innovation. In Burke’s words: “a state without the means of some change, is without the means of its own conservation.”
But, quite fortunately, America is not the first country to deal with the need for rapid change.
Like us today, Japan in the middle of the 19th century was faced with the prospect of terrifying and rapid change that had the potential to rip society apart. Their record of both success and failure is an invaluable tool that has the potential to yield some contemporary insights as we prepare to continue to experience the all-devouring march of time.
The Japanese story is of course vast and complex and can only be briefly explored in our time together, but I hope to convey some broad themes that might be useful when reflecting on the future and serve as a useful framework for further study.
Around the 100 year anniversary of the Meiji restoration, it became clear that, even despite the humiliation and destruction that came with the second world war, Japan had succeeded in the goals of the restoration. Despite being hundreds of years late to the starting block, Japan had not only caught up to the technologically advanced nations of the world, it had in many ways exceeded them and had also avoided a century of humiliation like that of China.
However this transformation was not without terrible suffering, and mistakes that may in the end prove that this Meiji victory was ultimately Pyrrhic.
When Admiral Perry showed up in 1852 and forced the country open at gunpoint, Japan was in many ways ill-prepared. Its rigid social system was sclerotic, its technology was hundreds of years out of date. All levels of society were chafing under the centuries old shogunate system.
Yet, within a few short years the Shogunate was overthrown and Japan was on the path towards modernization.
Why was Japan able to adapt to the changing circumstances of modernity while other civilizations failed?
It seems that one of the largest factors was simply that not only did the Japanese elites understand that there was clearly a need for drastic change, but that they also enthusiastically embraced and drove this change. Scholars have noted that Japanese elites were free from the stultify constraints that plagued reform attempts in Confucian China.
But it must also be noted that due to Tokugawa reforms, the elites were also long ago broken from their traditional ties to the land, and thus were not economically threatened by major reform. As Thomas Smith notes, “few ruling classes have been so free of economic bias against change.”
Even the most ardent Japanese nationalists embraced all things Western, not out of a rejection of their own culture, but from a burning desire to learn all the lessons the West had to teach for the sake of Japanese preservation in what was very clearly a dangerous world.
Another notable feature of the Japanese drive towards modernity was its decentralized nature.
Japanese economic growth, so argues the “bottom up school” was driven by the entrepreneurial spirit of the newly emerged Japanese middle class who were finally free to scale their formerly artificially limited productive capabilities. But in addition to this, it must be noted that the Japanese government did play a role when it came to creating the institutional environment that was necessary for economic development to take place and that while coordination did take place with the giant Zaibatsu conglomerates, but that as a whole the economy was comprised of numerous small firms.
But the decentralization was not limited to only economics. Under the Meiji Constitution, numerous power centers were created within the state that over time came to be coordinated via oligarchic factions spread throughout the various levels of government, which in turn facilitated the preservation of order and continuity, even following defeat in the Second World War.
Even after crushing defeat and occupation, the Japanese elites who had not been executed continued to drive the country towards the ultimate goals of the restoration, and under the Yoshida doctrine adroitly used the Cold War to swiftly end the occupation, avoid any foreign military entanglements, and simultaneously free ride off of US security guarantees for decades, all the while directing the nation’s existential drive towards economic growth.
But as I mentioned before, the argument can be made that this has ultimately proven to be a Pyrrhic victory.
While the Japanese are relatively conservative, and Japanese elites often worked to strike the proper balance between change and tradition, we can see two related areas where, I would argue, owing to the bad influence of extreme German-inspired rationalism, Japanese elites sowed the seeds of their own destruction.
One being the purposeful cultivation of ultra nationalism on all levels of society that later spiraled out of control and pushed the nation towards a war it was not ready for. In Kenneth Pyle’s words “after decades of sowing the winds of nationalism among the Japanese people, the elites were now reaping the whirlwind."
The other being the purposeful obliteration of traditional Japanese religion for the sake of state control and nationalism. Buddhism was forcefully separated from Shinto, and the new State Shinto was centralized, consolidated, and nationalized for the purpose of extending government control and increasing national unity by emphasizing the divine status of the Emperor.
In a speech in Tokyo in 1964, Hayek warned that:
"Reason is like a dangerous explosive which, handled cautiously, will be most beneficial, but if handled incautiously may blow up a civilization."
I would posit that perhaps one of the major root causes of the slow motion collapse of Japanese civilization we are now witnessing may stem from this constructivist rationalist attempt to run roughshod over religious tradition.
In his essay Christ and Nothing, David Bentley Hart argues that because Christianity subsumed all the best aspects of paganism, there is now nothing within Western civilization that post-Christians can turn to that has not been hollowed out.
It is possible something similar may have happened in Japan, when the Emperor renounced his divine status and State Shinto was abolished. Having subsumed so much existential meaning into the state, there is now only a void following its collapse.
Japan seemed to have been able to stave off existential collapse for a few decades after the war by a fanatical devotion to economic development, characterized by restrained consumption, high rates of saving, and extreme hard work and sacrifice.
But having crossed the finish line and fulfilled the aims of the Meiji restoration, Japanese society lost all pretext of civilizational existential purpose and has been beset by slow moving collapse ever since.
Japanese society is afflicted with high rates of suicide, low marriage rates, widespread overwork that leads to health problems and even death while also being the least productive workers in the top global economies.
Several million Japanese adults are hikikomoris. Social recluses who are usually supported by their parents and infrequently leave their rooms or work.
But perhaps most importantly, the Japanese people have largely lost the civilizational will to exist. Birth rates are terrible and population collapse all but inevitable. Japan is already the oldest society on earth in terms of demographics and the population is predicted to continue to shrink, potentially by over 50 percent by the end of the century.
Japan may have risen to the top of the modern world, but in doing so has strained it's society to the breaking point.
Japan and America are obviously very very different places and I have barely touched the surface of the fascinating history of Japan’s rapid rise in modernity. But a few immediate points stick out regarding elites and change.
In contrast to the young and eager Meiji reformers, American elites are much older on average, and in extreme contrast are faced with enormous incentives to keep the sclerotic system in stasis for as long as possible, especially when it comes to the lucrative bureaucracy and corrupt universities and non-profit sectors.
At the same time, our elites share in the Jacobin impulse of constructivist rationalism that seeks to “begin the world over again” for the sake of political convenience that has ultimately blown up the Japanese spirit.
This is a terrible combination that does not bode well for the future. Perhaps we will be able to glean more insights into successful reform from the Meiji restoration, or perhaps given that our own birthrate is below replacement level and that we suffer from many of the same social maladies at merely a different stage of progression we might be able to learn from this slow moving Japanese collapse and attempt to avoid it here.
Published Writings
Pumping the Brakes on Lifestyle Creep Requires Changing One’s Values
I have become a contributor to the Retirement Prof blog run by my friend Derek Tharp. In my first piece for the site I start a series discussing how America’s wealth and prosperity has warped our understanding of what is “normal” and how our values are leading us to feel poor, even when we are very very wealthy. I also set the stage for future essays in the series to contrast the values underlying American material culture with the values underlying pre-modern Japanese culture and how these values aided their economic success in modernity. Maybe we can learn something from them?
Toleration Does Not Require Calling Evil Good
At the Mises Wire I have a critique of Alex Tabarrock’s reaction to the bombing of the Georgia Guidestones and further reflect on what liberal toleration does and doesn’t mean.
Podcast News
The War, Economy, and State Podcast
I am very pleased to announce that along with Ryan McMaken, I am a co-host of the Mises Institute’s new War, Economy, and State podcast. About once a month we delve into a foreign policy topic and it has been great fun so far. Check out the episode archive.
The Republic of Ezo: Jeff Deist Interview
A little while ago I interview Jeff Deist, the president of the Mises Institute. We have a very fun and interesting conversation covering many things including the nature of liberalism, higher education, and whether the NAP applies to socking someone in the face if they insult your wife. Watch on YouTube or listen on your preferred podcasting service.
Upcoming Travel Plans
I will be doing some traveling this fall so feel free to reach out if you are in the area and would like to hang out. My exact travel plans have not been finalized yet, so I have some flexibility.
I will be in Nashville on September 10th for the Libertarian Scholars Conference where I will be on the foreign policy panel talking about the Monroe Doctrine and a new pan-American strategy.
I will be in DC/Fairfax for the Mercatus Markets and Society Conference that runs from October 21-October 24th. I will be on a panel I put together that includes a bunch of smart people on the subject of Post-Liberalism, Mediating Institutions, and the State. My presentation is specifically called Liberalism, Power, and Society.