Please Protect Wisdom from Midwits

An immune response against growing spiritual parasites.

Chesterton's Fence¹ is still the best tool we have to fight midwits. A fool (midwit²) tears down a fence without knowing what it is for. Only once the fence is down does its purpose become clear—whatever predator or parasite it protected you from is now loose and probably devouring your wisdom. Chesterton’s fences are not just rules we made long ago and then forgot why we made them. Most of them were never explicit. They emerged as embodied behavior that we only later (and not even that often) were able to look back and put words to.

Even wolves, to show how ancient these behaviors are, have inklings of moral codes. When there’s a dispute between two wolves, there’s a little ritual—a dance that hints at fighting without actually fighting. Eventually, the smaller wolf submits, and the larger wolf playfully bites its neck, signaling that while it could kill, it chooses not to—an early form of honor. A hierarchy is established going forward, and peace is maintained. Without this ritual, the wolves would have to resolve every conflict with a bloody fight, and would eventually die out. The wolves, obviously, could not explain this ritual or why it is important.

Humans do this at a much, much larger scale. This post is not meant to detail how all of that works. For our sake, just imagine wolf-code but with probably a billion times more complexity. Like the wolves, our “normal” behavior protects us from primal chaos and violence in uncountable and mostly non-verbal ways. You can look at human spiritual development as the slow accumulation of customs that maintain the miraculous levels of trust and peace we currently enjoy. Most people instinctively do what is normal: they cut the rug at weddings, pray over meals, and call their mom on the weekend. They don’t necessarily understand the chaos they are keeping at bay. They just unknowingly participate in a spiritual drama that stands against primordial chaos, who is always knocking at the door.

But if moral codes provide too much peace for too long, the rituals start to seem… arbitrary. For humans, there is another character in the play who takes advantage of that. He uses words to mock the rituals he doesn’t (or won’t) understand. He has unintentionally allied himself with primordial chaos. He cheekily questions conventional wisdom, engaging in "actually journalism." You know the type: "Actually, you have no free will." or "Actually, you shouldn’t get married." or "Actually, not everyone smiles when they are happy." Instead of trying to understand why the rituals are important, he starts with the assumption they are dumb and primitive (and he is very smart) and works backward from there.

The incentive structure for the midwit is clear: it pays. In journalism, counterintuitive pieces of information are easy to sell because they stand out—they’re spiky. In Academia, in order to publish a paper, the findings have to be “surprising” in some way, subtly incentivizing midwit takes. Plus, it provides him a little status boost—a smarmy sense of superior insight. Working in his favor, too, is how vast and well-established trust networks are in our modern world. So, professional midwits can profit from kicking over a few sandcastles; the real consequences are so protracted that we don’t connect them to the cause, or maybe we refuse to.

We are all convinced—partially or fully (including me)—of these counterintuitive claims. Pretty much every pop-science celebrity spouts them for a living on a podcast. They stick to us through guilt, a desire for status, or just fear of being seen as dumb. This is the "Midwit Trap." But, the more seriously we try to embody our midwit takes, the more wrong our lives go. Worse, once the majority adopt the parasitic point of view, the whole culture dies. Then, real, bloody, wolf-violence becomes necessary again.

Our culture is vast and complex, and we’ve had enough resources and trust to spare. But we’re testing our luck. Right now, we’re so replete with psychic parasites that our body (which protects us from chaos) is getting anemic and sick. When a body is overcome by parasites, it develops new immune defenses in a sort of arms-race. One new defense I see is a cohort of “re-enchantment bros:” people equipping themselves with not only a new intuitive grasp of rituals, but also a more fully articulated knowledge of them. You see this, for example, with the recent rise of Christianity. Most of them aren’t the old-school American evangelicals. These new types of Christians are trying to express mystical Christianity in a more verbal way. Not because we are big nerds (maybe I am), but in response to our collective illness. New immune responses are needed to protect the previously unstated importance of the rituals and beliefs, which gave rise to so much miraculous peace that we have enough distance from primordial violence to make ungratefulness even possible.

Midwit parasites aim to tear all that down. One popular method is Reddit-style Atheism circa 2008. Just to give you an example, Dawkins’ old school take on religion is: "You know how you don't believe in thousands of gods? Well, I believe in just one less than that." Here’s one response: That is a deep misunderstanding of theology, history, and anthropology. Christians absolutely do believe in “powers and principalities”—AKA other gods. At the same time, every primitive culture in the world knew about the Creator God (there are countless examples), they just didn’t tend worship him unless there was a calamity. Calling God the only God is just to put lessor gods in their proper cosmic order. One reason for that (if you don’t believe it’s “true”) is that it organizes our psyches well enough to make all of modernity possible. But, old gods are still very real cosmic forces. We just don't use that terminology anymore. A “god” is any abstracted system, emergent phenomenon, or memetic structure that guides behavior with an invisible hand—of which there are many—economic, spiritual, natural. Even when you go to a concert, there's a “spirit” of the crowd. Once you can see that, you realize that people have been seriously contending with this for a very long time. You have just been so myopic in the sort of words you will accept as valid that you've accidentally ignored thousands of years of insight.

Like the wolves, we didn’t need words to express any of that. It was self-evident because, for one, it kept us from killing each other. That is, until the midwit materialists came along. Now, the immune system of the spiritual body needs to be made more robust so it’s better able to deal with those memetic parasites. I’m actually very hopeful about the whole thing. In my little bubble anyway, I see a growing number of writers and speakers able to put words to this. Not because our personal spirituality is dependent on being able to verbally express it—it’s not. You can have a completely intuitive experience of spirituality, ignore the midwits, and lead a very good life. People do that all the time.

So, it's not really for me. I’m fine just ignoring midwits. It's more to mount a defense against the hordes of spiritual orcs who, lacking access to their divine spark, are completely ignorant of what force even allowed their being. Outraged by their self-inflicted, meaningless suffering, they craft catchy memes from fragments of midwit nihilism, slowly hypnotizing people into hating existence.

With more robust defenses of traditional wisdom, we can protect each other from parasites. Maybe we can prevent them from taking over and killing the cultural body, which, of course, sometimes happens—parasites do gain the upper hand from time to time. And parasites will always be around. But, the body will survive this infestation. For one, the materialists are losing cultural mindshare, to their great frustration and confusion. We may even find a resurgence of energy, creativity, and life as these counter-arguments become more salient and legible to the broader culture.

As the parasite load decreases, suddenly we stop feeling so tired, and then wonder why we ever tolerated that half-life.

1. “There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’” — G.K. Chesterton

2. They’re called “midwits” because they think themselves wiser than the pre-verbal people they seek to gain status over, but are dumber than the truly wise, who are able to understand and express the wisdom of the pre-verbal.

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“The Nightmare” 1781 by Henry Fuseli