“Fumbling towards bicameralism” also seems to explain one of the Left’s other signature pathologies: Their ability to “lie” to themselves, and I’m going to have to stop putting stuff in quotation marks lest I destroy my keyboard, but here again “lie” is far too weak a word. Leftist self-deception is so total, we unicameral folks can’t grasp it. They know, right? On some deep down fundamental level? If only because it’s impossible — damn it, impossible — that they don’t know. How can they keep fucking up so egregiously, in exactly the same way, every single goddamn time, and learn nothing?
And yet, “self-deception” shouldn’t be possible. How can you lie to your self? It raises all kinds of heavy epistemological issues, explored in a fun little book called Self-Deception by philosopher Herbert Fingarette. As I recall (it has been years since I’ve read it), Fingarette ends up advancing a kind of split-consciousness theory, too, as the only internally consistent one. How could it be otherwise? The “liar’s paradox” is a fun little game to play in the first class meeting of Logic 101, but nobody can really live that way … and yet we do deceive ourselves, all the time, and no one more than SJWs, whose lives indeed seem to be nothing but “self-deception.”
Bicamerality explains that. The “god” that lives in the smartphone says X today, so X it is. That same “god” says not-X tomorrow, so now it’s not-X! It’s not self-contradiction, it’s not self-deception, for the simple reason that there’s no real “self” at all.
Finally, it explains what might be the most frustrating thing about the Left, the thing that’s likely to end in a nuke or two here before too long: Their utter inability to see the glaringly obvious consequences of their actions. Those of us who tend to see “Leftism” as a big conspiracy love to point out that if they, the Left, were just stupid (childish, contrarian, herd animals, whatever), cold impersonal chance alone would guarantee that at least some of their fuckups would benefit us at least some of the time. Much like The Media’s “retractions” and “admissions” and so on, the “mistakes” always always always go in only one direction … ergo, they’re not mistakes.
That’s the reef on which we “emergent behavior” types always crash. To me, “emergent behavior” still seems like the best explanation … but however the behavior emerges, it’s always retarded. They’ve never made a non-stupid decision, not once, and it’s always stupid in exactly the same way. I remember waking up one morning to the sound of something crashing into my bedroom window. I figured it was a bird, which happens all the time, and it was … except that it kept happening, monotonously, every fifteen seconds or so. I got up to look, and here was a robin, smashing itself into the glass over and over and over again. It was early spring — mating season — and this stupid robin had mistaken its own reflection for a rival. I must’ve watched this bird slam himself into the glass for ten minutes, “attacking” his “rival”, before he knocked himself out cold …
That’s how the Left do. Always. They simply can’t learn, and they can’t change their pattern. The only explanation for that, therefore, must be that it’s programmed. Literally. Zero consciousness involved. They do what they do because they literally cannot do otherwise. Their “god” has put “rage” into their thumos. Just as Achilles would’ve literally jumped off a cliff had his “god” told him to, so the Left does … well, pretty much everything their teevee tells them to.
Needless to say, this has some important implications for practical action. How does one “get inside that OODA loop”, as the keyboard commandos like to say? In the land of the utterly unconscious, the one-brained man is king …
Severian, “Striving Towards Bicamerality”, Founding Questions, 2022-03-20.
Update, 4 January: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
[…] TERRIFYING: “Fumbling towards bicameralism”. […]
Pingback by Instapundit » Blog Archive » TERRIFYING: “Fumbling towards bicameralism”. — January 4, 2026 @ 04:00
Actually this is exactly how people choose to put themselves into hell.
they are offered the mercy of Christ over and over during life and as St. Faustina has stated are even offered it at the point of death.
However that mercy comes with one condition, to see themselves in the light of truth as they are & acknowledge their sins, for how can you be forgiven if this is not done. (This is how the sacrament of confession works).
In the end most people choose damnation because to them all the pains of hell can’t compare to seeing themselves as they truly are which is necessary in the presence of God. (rejecting forgiveness is also known as “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” That is the unforgivable sin.)
It’s also the reason why parents who went along with the Transgender fad and mutilated or spayed their kids will never reject it even if their children de-transition later in life because to do so means acknowledging what they did to their kids and facing themselves.
That is the sin of pride which is the primary sin. It’s no coincidence that when the left as a whole rejected Christianity they reached this point.
Comment by DaTechguy — January 4, 2026 @ 05:32
The tyranny (of the proletariat!) requires enforcement. This requires brawn and those willing to do violence. So a tyrant elevates sociopaths/psychopaths to running a country. Not the best model to elevate competence.
Comment by Qwirk — January 4, 2026 @ 09:46
But it is a predictable model, which can simplify post-conflict trials (as long as you’re not labouring under the delusion that you can defeat a pre-modern social system and it will spontaneously turn into a western-style liberal democracy … oh, wait …)
Comment by Nicholas — January 4, 2026 @ 10:46