Previous Deep Socks readers will be familiar with the difference between shallow and deep politics.
Shallow politics are (1) issue based, (2) news cycle based, (3) provoke addictive rage cycles. Deep politics are (1) ontological, (2) transgenerational (3) provoke self-development.
We’ve written before about the deep center twice, first, raising the possibility of a “christian vitalism” embodied in a post “Dark-MAGA” Madison Cawthorn, and second, repudiating the core analogy of the deep right.
There’s also two pieces about the deep left. “Marxism is a Dry Lake” points out the obvious and terminal desiccation of the Marxist project, and suggests how ‘optional communism’ serves as a better lodestar for a Deep Left. The specifics of this ‘optional communism’ are further worked out in a piece called galtzerdiak’bolo.
There’s only one piece on the deep center: “The Deep Center’s Love Letter” That’s a romantic piece. This is a practical piece. This is about what the deep center is, and how it can help you.
Left, right and center can be distinguished through their attitude towards the metasystem: the total ensemble of human relations. Both left and right want a different metasystem. left wants a more progressive, a more evolved metasystem; the right wants to return to a previously superior metasystem.
By contrast: the center wants to stay with our metasystem. The center believes there are many invisible advantages to the status quo. We don’t usually notice health, only sickness.
By analogy: it is hard to notice what is so good about the current “metasystem.” So many humans enjoy so much more freedom and security than they ever have before, and in a tangible, decade by decade sense, this freedom and security exists.
The shallow center cannot imagine that other metasystems actually exist.
It uses scary words like FASCIST or AUTHORITARIAN or COMMUNIST to describe these realities.
These words do not describe part of alternate metasystems. These words are part of our current metasystem.
The Shallow Center feels innocent and feels good about feeling innocent. The Shallow Center likes to pretend there is a tradition called “liberalism” that is somehow “the good guys.” Liberals protect freedom. We protect freedom. The Shallow Center knows that climate change, inequality, critical race theory, police brutality, white supremacy are problems but there’s a solution to every problem.
Depth politics, left right or center, begin with the same kind of recognition: the shallows aren’t working. We have a problem that comes from the deep so we must go to the deep. With the shallow center, the problem is the aforementioned combination of ignorance and innocence. The Deep Shallows are innocent not just of the existence of other metasystems, but of the transience and impermanence of this metasystem. It’s easy to see how this kind of arrogant stupidity could be a problem. What’s wrong with feeling innocent?
In part, it’s an image problem. Continuing to worship genocider Winston Churchill after you villainzed genociders Hitler and Stilin doesn’t look good: it’s an obvious fake. Anyone who knows anything about history knows that liberalism’s death toll is just as high as the other ideologies. Hitler warnt influenced by America for nothin’!
So the deep center is (a) aware that the current metasystem is not eternal, and aware that there are many people with extremely reasonable objections to the metasystem and (b) it is also aware of the extremely violent origins of the current metasystem, and also, of the grotesque violence that sustains it today.
The Deep Center is strong enough to see this fragility, this guilt and then to still defend the basic order of the world: a polycentric world organized, mostly, along state capitalist lines with nearly unlimited capital mobility and limited labor mobility and a persistent and alarming level of (a) insecurity (crime and war) (b) ecological damage (c) psychological demotivation.
So what do you do about the wars, the pollution, and the madness? How does the system stay together? How does it improve? The Deep Center could be said to offer three core strategies: (a) integrate, (b) balance (c) feedback.
The problem with war, with crime, with pollution, and with madness are all problems of disintegration. With war, certain states are excluded from international recognition, deemed “rogue” and attacked by the global hegemonic order. With crime, certain activities are deemed “criminal” and attacked by domestic hegemonic orders. With pollution, common resources are not integrated into economic policy. With madness, humans are themselves not integrated emotionally into the social order.
How can the Deep Center help you? Well, if politics stress you out, or bore you, or seem distasteful, the Deep Center can justify your depoliticization. You are right to see politics, right now, as divisive and unthinking. They are this way, and probably will be forever.
Fortunately, not all of life is politics, and one of the marvelous aspects of our current metasystem is that you don’t have to have a political life. You can continue your creative, interpersonal, spiritual (or whatever) life without polluting your brain with messianic dreams of global metasystem change.
And if you love politics? Then the Deep Center is also ideal. After all, the center always wins. Both Stalin and Bill Clinton used the same strategy, and it can still be used today. Take what works from the left and the right. Stigmatize the radicals on both side. Group people together who want what we all want: shared prosperity, improvement year after year. That’s what always has won and what always will win.
Therefore, if you want either release from politics, or victory in politics, the deep center will help.