Politics is not metaphysics, so looking for an arche, one principle that rules all and explains all, is a wild goose chase at best, or a fatal distraction at worst. Being (with a capital “B”) is as different from beings (with a lower case “b”) as the Creator is from His creation, and although we can learn about creation through our knowledge of God, to think about creation as we would think about God would be a mistake, or blasphemy. Likewise, looking for an arche in beings, looking for what is proper to Being in what is not Being, is folly. Yet, there exists what we might call “pseudo-arches”, things that can act like an arche, principles which help us think about politics as such.

One “pseudo-arche” is the environment or the ecology. By “environment” or “ecology”, we do not mean simply the trees or the oceans, but our whole surroundings, be it language, traditions, or art. In the past, we have detoured into how Heidegger informs an ecological politics, but now we will reorientate to the topic of cybernetics. Cybernetics is the study of communication and, what is most important in political science, automated systems of control. A cybernetic politics, to paint the conclusion before we sketch the premises, is a politics where an environment of automated incentive and disincentive programs shape the culture and policies of a polity.

Energy flows, can be redirected, but cannot be eliminated. Sexual energy, for example, can either be directed at procreation, and solidifying the marital bonds, or it can be spent on pornography and casual hook ups. Humans have sexual energy, and it needs to be spent, but it cannot be spent in multiple ways at once, if for no other reasons that we cannot be multiple places at once. How this energy gets spent will depend on what environmental pressures exist. A society which praises marriage and values children, will encourage sexual energy to be spent with one’s spouse either for the strengthening of love or for procreating. If the society in question is narcissistic, or simply has less an emphasis on marriage or children, there might be more pressure to engage in casual sex or to accept the use of pornography. In addition to sexual energy, there is also violent energy, which can either be burnt off in safe ways, such as sports, or not given expression, and thus coming out in destructive ways.

To oversimplify, and risk doing violence to the human condition, we could describe societies by how they direct the energies natural to humans. Directing energy can either be manual or cybernetic. Manually redirecting energy looks like a top-down enforcement of social norms, and is noticeable by the polity. Cybernetically redirecting energy is done without a conscious and constant effort, and, while can be seen, is not as noticeable s manual redirection. A very basic example of these two redirections can be done with sexual energy. To manually redirect sexual energy away from narcissistic expression and towards loving expression would be to launch a tv ad campaign either combating the use of pornography, or it might look like teaching the joys of marital eros in school. Both of these are obvious, they are clear efforts to change behavior, and to redirect natal human energies towards societally approved ends. To do the same thing in a cybernetic fashion would be to establish communities where the implicitly, and universally, accepted views of sexuality preclude narcissistic expression, and where mutually loving sexuality is tacitly elevated.

Conservatives have historically focused on manual redirection, while the left has focused on cybernetic redirection. Manual redirection, while at times necessary, is clanky for two reasons: 1) the top-down enforcement of a norm can often feel stifling, which provokes resentment and reaction, and 2) it requires constant, conscious, application. While the former is a problem, creating alienating especially the youth, the later is the main problem. Should those in charge of enforcing the manual redirection energy have a change of heart, pass away, or are replaced by people who differ in views, then the ecosystem changes. This makes for an unstable ecosystem, one that changes simply through the regular rotation of those in power. A few hires, elections, or retirements is all that it takes to nullify a manual effort to redirect energy, and even install an opposing effort. Herein lies a practical problem with Caesarism, and why, although a favorite strategy of the far-right, it has never led to long-term success. Salazar, Franco, and Pinochet, the longest ruling of the 20th century right-wing Caesars, were all replaced by left-wingers who quickly undone their predecessor’s policies. Intensifying manual energy redirection, as evidenced by the 20th century, however based, has historically ended in failure, and a pendulum swing to the left. Enoch Powell once said, “I get very alarmed when I hear people talk about conservative principles. I myself prefer to talk about Tories and British history.” Since Burke, Anglo-American conservatism has been rooted in history, and its application, instead of ideology, which defines the left. Should we follow the tradition of the Anglo-American right, we must respect what history has taught us, and look to cybernetics, turning away from a failed strategy.

What would it look like to have a cybernetics that promotes a conservative social order? In The Dark Enlightenment, Nick Land suggested the following:

“Quasi-libertarian responses to the outbreak accept this implicitly. Given a population deeply infected by the zombie virus and shambling into cannibalistic social collapse, the preferred option is quarantine. It is not communicative isolation that is essential, but a functional dis-solidarization of society that tightens feedback loops and exposes people with maximum intensity to the consequences of their own actions. Social solidarity, in precise contrast, is the parasite’s friend. By cropping out all high-frequency feedback mechanisms (such as market signals), and replacing them with sluggish, infra-red loops that pass through a centralized forum of ‘general will’, a radically democratized society insulates parasitism from what it does, transforming local, painfully dysfunctional, intolerable, and thus urgently corrected behavior patterns into global, numbed, and chronic socio-political pathologies.

Gnaw off other people’s body parts and it might be hard to get a job — that’s the kind of lesson a tight-feedback, cybernetically intense, laissez faire order would allow to be learned. It’s also exactly the kind of insensitive zombiphobic discrimination that any compassionate democracy would denounce as thought crime, whilst boosting the public budget for the vitally-challenged, undertaking consciousness raising campaigns on behalf of those suffering from involuntary cannibalistic impulse syndrome, affirming the dignity of the zombie lifestyle in higher-education curriculums, and rigorously regulating workspaces to ensure that the shuffling undead are not victimized by profit-obsessed, performance-centric, or even unreconstructed animationist employers.”

Land, formally a Marxist and reader of George Bataille, advocates strict lassiez faire economics for cybernetic reasons. If you are trying to rid yourself of the zombie virus, which is Land’s description of leftism, then you would want to isolate the virus, and exclude anyone who is infected. Since it is commonly believed on the right that leftism preaches values which lead to weakness and decay, subjecting the populace to a Darwinian struggle for existence will, in theory, force the populace to adopt conservative lifestyles, and, through simple market pressure, eliminate the leftist contaminants.

For those not convinced of libertarian economics, be it practical reasons (given how intertwined economic and policy interests are), or moral reasons (maybe there are things we should subsidize, and others we penalize), there is a question of a non-laissez faire cybernetics. Readers of mine, my gremlins, know the imagery of spigots. Like a water spigot helping a garden grow, we can direct money, either through subsidies, or tax credits, towards plants we want to flourish, and cut off the spigot to things we want to wither. If there is the desire, we could subsidize local businesses, Christian schools, American energy, and public museums that place beauty before ideology. We could also cut off the spigot to companies like Amazon and Black Rock, which not only kill local businesses (which is a good enough reason), but bankroll anti-social groups like Black Lives Matter. Our economy, imagined as our garden, could reflect the moral order, instead of the dictates of ideology or financial interests.

Yet, this looks a lot like manual energy redirection…and that is because it is. Lest this strategy fail, and it will fail if it is manual redirection, it needs to be automated. How can it be though? Spigot pointing, by its very nature, is the application of the moral order to the economic order, and this requires the conscious, and noticeable, realignment of the economy by a group of activists. Unlike Land’s solution, my spigots require human will and desire…and humans are hard to automate. To solve this problem we need to look back to America’s original cyberneticists, the Federalists. In Federalist No. 10, Madison say,

“Hence, it clearly appears, that the same advantage which a republic has over a democracy, in controlling the effects of faction, is enjoyed by a large over a small republic,–is enjoyed by the Union over the States composing it. Does the advantage consist in the substitution of representatives whose enlightened views and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices and schemes of injustice? It will not be denied that the representation of the Union will be most likely to possess these requisite endowments. Does it consist in the greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties, against the event of any one party being able to outnumber and oppress the rest? In an equal degree does the increased variety of parties comprised within the Union, increase this security. Does it, in fine, consist in the greater obstacles opposed to the concert and accomplishment of the secret wishes of an unjust and interested majority? Here, again, the extent of the Union gives it the most palpable advantage.

The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.

In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government. And according to the degree of pleasure and pride we feel in being republicans, ought to be our zeal in cherishing the spirit and supporting the character of Federalists.”

Madison’s argument is that a republic can avoid the perils inherent in factions by their multiplication, and by a large republic which homes these many factions. If there are many factions competing against each other, who are all opposed to each other, then gridlock will be the typical state of affairs. Contextualizing this for readers of the American Sun, think of how much tangible progress the dissident-right has made. Now think of how many differing factions exist, factions which will not work with each other, dox each other, and kick up drama. The multiplication of factions, and the unlimited space for factions (there could always be MORE chats, channels, or blogs), has gridlocked the dissident-right in a thoroughly Federalist manner.

If spigots could be pointed in such a way that promotes a conservative social order, which cuts off funds to institutions that promote leftism, but if the power of these spigots could be aligned to a multiplicity of opposing factions, then there could exist a non-libertarian cybernetic order. How this would be done *exactly* is still be be worked out, but it is possible. One stab at the problem, recognizing that this is only a stab, and will not be how it will actually play out, would be to centrally establish a spigot system, and then divide control over spigots after the fact. This would look natural, as once one segment of the economy benefits from subsidies and tax-credits, all other segments will want the spigot too, and thus the division of who controls the spigot will look identical to standard lobbying. By the very environment, citizens will conform to a conservative social order, and those that deviate will lack the resources required for success. Yet, once Spigot Chad Federalism is established, it will look like nothing other than simple lobbying, will require no conscious or sustained effort to be maintained, as it is fully automated, and with fixing spigots to competing factions, it will be hard to change the state of affairs, especially since and shift in the spigot environment will mean the loss of money for one, or more, factions.

Only by effecting a radical change in environment, a cybernetic change in environment, can the right hope to have lasting success. Details need to be worked out, but the goal is clear.