the numinous bureaucracy
our secret rulers
ontologic status: fabled ones
Our lives are governed by a web of norms so deeply embedded that it doesn’t even occur to us that we faithfully observe them.
Some norms are Apollonean, Platonic, lofty, systematic, legible: speak truly, treat others as you would wish to be treated, haste makes waste, vote on November third, stop resisting, and so on. Let’s call these Olympian. They are proclamatory.
Consider in contrast Cthonic norms: the norms of hidden rivulets and and quiet dells, the norms with no names, the norms that make one think of the old saw about the fish and water. At the extreme, Cthonic norms are not the correct way of behaving: they are the only conceivable way of behaving in a given situation; not the spirit of the laws, but the numina of conventions. Typical responses to breach of a Cthonic norm range from “well, that was in bad taste” to “that is simply not done!” to “being accused of cannibalism as if anyone else wouldn’t have eaten him in that situation.”
There is a third, secret class of norms.
The types of norms differ in their means of transmission. Olympian norms replicate by instruction and force, horizontally, while Cthonic norms replicate organically by mimesis. Generally Olympian norms are more fragile. If people must be told or made to behave in a certain way, the silent and reliable default mechanisms for replicating behavioral patterns must have failed.
Olympian norms have reasons; Cthonic norms need no reason. If you violate Olympian norms you may be inhumane, but breaking a Cthonic norm renders you less human in the eyes of men.
Olympian norms have a second weakness in their legibility. If norms must be explicitly conveyed and rationalized, they can be recognized as norms and attacked on any grounds that seem vaguely coherent; they are exposed while they replicate. Cthonic norms are not reliant on rationale and their transmission is unnoticed. The greatest risk to their survival is being forgotten.
Time and saecula may lead to a genteel transition of Olympian norms to Cthonic ones as the rationale for behaviors is forgotten and what was a code is accepted as mores. Weathered Cthonic norms may find themselves suddenly Olympian once more if an invasive Olympian memeplex has a systematic objection to their continuation, and defenders of the old way scramble to develop a new rationale for their traditions after centuries when “because” was enough.
With the advent of mass communication and omnipresent Großgovernment in the 20th Century, centralized institutions attained immense capacity for influencing the norms of their societies. However, the natural formats of their new tools—instruction and force—were initially only suitable for Olympian norm transmission. The development of government psyops was spurred by a desire for similar power over the Cthonic, but these tools never really lived up to their early promise. Social media disrupted this space when it took scaled psyops out of the hands of the state and placed them under the control of a group of shockingly capable but utterly deranged random internet users, who proceeded to hack the Cthonic normspace in those ways with which we are now all quite familiar.
The third class of norms is, of course, those that are wholly unknown to both the individuals following them and the ones breaking them - the ones nobody notices if you don't follow and will never quite understand what they even are if you point them out.
Totally embodied illegibility, in memeplex form.
Enjoyable essay. I share your _Revolt of the Public_-ish concern about how psyops are now mass-distributed by schizo entrepreneurs, rather than broadcast centrally by the likes of Bernays (though let's not overblow this, most likely stuff like Kony was an op, there is more and more fine-tuning of the algorithms, and we've proceeded from the open internet old-timers like us grew up with to a bunch of walled gardens curated at the limit by corporatist deep state friendly "content boards").
As for norms, I think I see what you are getting at, but think your insistence on refusing to address the object level impairs your essay. For example, I don't see the distinction you draw between Olympian and Chthonic norms as being well-drawn. I'm not sure there is a hard distinction to begin with. That aside, Chthonic norms surely precede and undergird Olympian norms, since one needs pragmatics and a "form of life" to use language, and since habit and cultural evolution precede formal reason. And Chthonic norms, contrary to your assertion, must have reason to them or they won't be norms, and they won't propagate -- even if the reason is just "we all drive on an arbitrary side to avoid a game of chicken." Nor are there hard distinctions in social opprobrium or consequence between the two -- for example, Olympian norms can lead to death by violation of legal code though not social opprobrium, though as a practical matter the social code will follow the de facto law (in the pragmatic sense that people are legalists qua behaviorist, since they impound info on likely punishments as punishments are observed).
(Also, while I appreciate the TS Eliot Cats reference, alluding to a third, secret and mysterious class of norms obscures rather than illumines, & I'm ill-inclined to puzzle it out given the first two categories are, imo, ill-drawn.)
If you named a couple of concrete examples of each class of norm, these issues would be avoided; if that would entail engaging at the object level and groping free from the misty haze of meta-cognition, perhaps such is required to write a compelling essay.
All that said, enjoyable essay, great topic, looking forward to further essays as you shake off the peculiar cast of mind induced by Twitter.
PS: To the extent this essay was meant to obliquely comment on the Roko situation, I think it's worth pointing out that the people dog-piling on him are just as vicious as he is, they just think they have an acceptable target now since he crossed some threshold that makes it okay to, e.g., QT and call him a psychopath. That behavior disgusts me.