The Old Left in Britain was largely rooted in the self-interest of unionized skilled workers, who strove to protect their pay and conditions over the medium to long-term.
It was accepted that, in the short-term, workers would lose-out.
By union activity they would become less popular with employers, need to pay union dues, attend meetings, maybe embark on self-education; and if there were strikes they would lose wages.
My point is that at this time - from the 1800s right up into the middle-1900s; ordinary people were thinking in the medium to long-term; on a timescale that encompassed years ahead.
That is what was going-on with the rioting and resistance of groups that resisted technological changes that would tend to destroy their long-term interests; groups now generically described as "Luddites" - hand-loom weavers, for example.
Workers would be aware of changes in laws and regulations that constituted structural threats to their future power and autonomy; and these would often be the focus of industrial disputes.
Let's call this Two-Step self-interest.
But we now (and increasingly over the past half-century) inhabit an era of One-Step self-interest.
The concern is with me, here, now. Proposed change to our work and life is evaluated on the basis of what may benefit me today, tomorrow, next week, maybe next year?
This is part of the change from an Old Leftism based around class, economics, and power; to a New Leftism based around lifestyle, personal identity, social status, self-esteem etc.
New Leftism is a top-down ruling class project. It does not seriously seek support among working class unionized workers; but instead among the managerial and intellectual workers, among "youth" (and youth-minded) who value being "cool"; and by pandering to an expanding client class of disaffected self-conceptualized victims.
New Leftism has coincided with and also abolished Two-Step reasoning from all public discourse.
The pursuit of basic self-interest is nowadays regarded as despicable - except among the designated victim class; who must accept subservient status and live by grace and favour of The System to retain this contingent privilege.
There is simply no place in mainstream societal and professional public discourse for considering the medium/ long-term consequences of changes.
Consequently (or from some other cause) people have actually become incapable of Two-Step reasoning, of evaluating their own Two-Step self-interest.
They can, and do, look no further ahead of more widely than me/ here/ now; and become very uncomfortable or angry when anyone tries to make them consider the medium-long term consequences of proposed change.
All that people ask, all that they can conceptualize; is that proposed change be approved officially or by their chosen "authority; and have some superficially-plausible chance of yielding One-Step self-interest - better conditions or pay, perceived chance of promotion, higher status among peers etc.
When there are Two-Step strategizers are leading those who are blind to consequences; what happens is that multiple short-term (One-Step) benefits, will accumulate towards long-term (Two-Step) annihilation.
It happens unwittingly, without awareness on the part of those being manipulated towards their own destruction.
That some proposed or actual change may abolish their job, impoverish them, create environmental threats, lead to war (inter-national or civil) is simply outwith the scope of their reasoning.
What was the normal "common sense" reasoning of ordinary working men just 100 years ago - i.e. the ability to evaluate longer term and structural consequences from their own point-of-view - now seems like merely arbitrary, or actively irresponsible, speculation!
Irrelevant at best, but mostly negativistic, subversive, dangerous to organizational cohesion
As a result of this cognitive deficiency, whole functional institutions - such as my personal areas of experience and interest such as academia, scientific research, medicine; and the Christian churches - have been taken-over in an incremental, step-wise fashion; and brought under external bureaucratic control.
And, at least since the 1990s; all this happened essentially any significant awareness, opposition or resistance.
I am not calling here for a restoration of Two-Step self-interest - this is apparently impossible: people are just incapable.
Neither am I suggesting that it always or even usually led to long-term betterment - Luddites failed in their resistance.
I am instead describing what happened, what used-to-be: a way of thinking and reasoning that was possible, almost automatic, for ordinary working people for many generations.
And how it has almost disappeared.
The livelihood of whole sectors of the population in, say, 1800; might be, often was, abolished; and the world was changed.
But this did not happen without people being able to work-out in advance what was on the cards, and without recognizing the cause of what was happening to them.
Nowadays; the mass of UK people are literally too stupid, stupefied even to work-out such simple Two-Step self interested logic that immigration at a rate of 800K-plus per year is the cause of housing shortages. Or to know the inevitable long-term consequence of decades of severe native sub-fertility plus mass immigration.
The nature of this stupidity has nothing to do with relative intelligence; because it is commonest among the intellectual classes.
Neither is it explicable merely on the basis of propaganda; because the olden-days workers were subject to a very complete mind-control system via Establishment-religion, and very harsh punishments for transgression.
But this regime could not eradicate peoples' ability to know their own long-term self-interest - even when they could not effectively defend it.
The cause of this modern incapacity of reasoning seems to me more like a loss of basic protective instincts; perhaps at a biological, genetic, level*.
But loss is loss; and this is a very real fact of life - something that must be taken-into-account, worked-around.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed Man is king.
And in a world of where most are capable of only One-Step self-interest; the Two-Steppers will rule.
The Two-Steppers will easily manipulate the One-Steppers without their awareness, and without resistance.
And that is the world we inhabit.
**
* Loss of the motivational primacy of the religious-spiritual perspective is also crucial. I believe that past people were able to favour the medium/long term because they genuinely expected to live after death. Once self-interest is confined to our own mortal life, then it tends to become shorter term; because the closer and more personal the benefit hoped-for, the surer and more certain it is that we personally will get it.
Note: And this is yet another reason why there is no hope from the Christian Churches. The churches are being strategized into annihilation. Churches consist-of, and are led-by, One-Steppers; who are unwittingly manipulated - by one short-term beneficial increment after another - by a ruling class headed, ultimately, by Two-Steppers.
Note added: The above is an example of why common sense has not just zero traction nowadays, but is actively stigmatized; and why (as I analyzed in my 2011 mini-book Thought Prison - see sidebar) there cannot be a genuine (i.e. *not* spook-generated/ manipulated fake-opposition) and effective political party based on common sense. CS just does not motivate sufficiently in the modern atheistic-materialistic mind - probably it never has. This has been repeatedly confirmed in the 15 years since, when high profile pseudo-common sense politics always turns out to be a sham - as with the current "leader of the free world", and the Brexiteers of the UK...
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