Our Unacknowledged Operating System
How white male bourgeoisie norms have been institutionalized and operationalized
I’ve been thinking more about what we mean when we talk about "white male bourgeoisie norms" as the societal waters in which we all swim. This is, in part, due to my regular habit of listening to Supreme Court oral arguments and dealing with my own frustration for how intricately arcane these debates become and how attenuated they are from the material impact on the lives of people.
SCOTUS functions as a high temple for white male bourgeoisie norms - its foundational precept is that nine philosopher kings must carefully and objectively follow a highly complex train of logic to its natural end and maintain fidelity to the original meaning of a sacred text authored 230 years ago by slavers. Questions like “will this make peoples’ lives materially better?” or “does this improve the structural conditions for our republic?” are irreverent and immaterial in the face of this deeper precept.
So what are these fuzzy white male bourgeoisie norms? How does one go about describing the water in which one swims? Personally, I think these norms are indivisible from (and potentially constituted entirely from) something I would describe as a recursive gnostic originalism that is highly flexible and an “objective” lens that can be applied directly to texts and fields of study in the same way one utilizes a mathematical equation to obtain a solution.
Briefly, let me define my terms here.
Originalism is an interpretive concept and legal philosophy that prioritizes the original meaning of something at the time it was written/created. In the context of the US Constitution, this means that we must resolve modern-day disputes based on our understanding of the ORIGINAL meaning of the constitution and other relevant statutes.
Gnosticism has various meanings but I use the term here to refer to a system in which bodies of secret knowledge can only be credibly accessed and utilized by chosen elites who have deep expertise. In the context of the US Constitution, we might say that a gnostic approach says that only those elite insiders with true, deep expertise can have anything to say about the constitution and its implications for society and our material well-being. And how do we decide who these elites are? Well think about ivy-educated lawyers versus public defenders - both have law degrees but which one is understood to have true, deep expertise?
Recursion is a self-referencing, self-perpetuating logic that when applied can be circular or infinitely regressive. The author Douglas Adams has a great quote that sums up recursion: “Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.” In the context of Christian theology, we might think about how (1) the Bible claims to be the Word of God and (2) that we can trust this claim because it’s in the Bible and (3) we can trust claims that the Bible makes because it’s the Word of God and (4) we know it’s the Word of God because it claims to be so. This is a perfectly recursive and entirely impenetrable chain of logic.
The normative white male bourgeoisie approach to basically every topic or field of study can be summed up in recursive gnostic originalism: the US Constitution, an employer’s HR rules, a local zoning code, the Lord of the Rings or Star Wars canons, any and all legal disputes, theology and doctrine, any academic discipline (especially “hard” sciences, psychology, medicine, economics, business, etc). This even happens in leftist politics - think about the difference between how white Europeans have conceptualized Marxism as a “science” that must simply be applied correctly in a given context, in the same way one follows a recipe on the side of a box of pancake mix.
And recursive gnostic originalism is used not only as a set of prescriptive directives but also as a means of judging the winning argument in a particular area. The winners are those with the strongest claim to elite, insider knowledge who can best articulate a recursive argument that coheres with the originalist principles of a sacred text. In the field of constitutional law the sacred text is the US Constitution. In the field of Christian theology the sacred text is the Bible. In the field of economics the sacred text is neoliberal free market capitalism. In the Star Wars universe the sacred texts are the original screenplays and a fenced off set of novels.
The unspoken principle behind recursive gnostic originalism is that if we can somehow get back to the ORIGINAL definition of a thing then we can understand and apply Truth. These are deep ontological and epistemological assumptions that take (1) the nature of reality to be directly accessible and understandable and (2) the nature of knowledge to be objective, quantitative, and scientifically precise - or at least a close approximation of these.
The result of recursive gnostic originalism is a perfect train of defensible logic that is internally coherent for those elites who understand the secret knowledge - however, so often this logic is highly technical and fully attenuated from anything that actually makes sense to a normal person on the street. And this approach boils down extremely complex, fluid, socially-constructed, and interrelated systems that no one person can fully understand (e.g. the economy, the Bible, the US Constitution) into simple, binary, linear relationships that can be directly exploited using an almost equational logic.
Let’s consider a couple of specific examples for how this logic plays out:
Constitutionally we can follow a perfect train of defensible logic from “free speech” to “money is a form of speech” to “billionaires can spend any amount of money they want to get their candidate of choice elected.” This is internally coherent to elite insiders who understand the secret knowledge and it coheres with the original principles of the US Constitution as understood by those elite insiders. A normal person might ask “Is it healthy for a democracy to be legally manipulated by competing billionaires?” but this question is never on the table because it violates the sacred text.
Biblically we can follow a perfect train of defensible logic from “we are created by God” to “we are knit together in our mother’s womb” to “many forms of contraception and all forms of abortion are evil.” Again, this is perfectly coherent to elite insiders who understand the secret knowledge and it coheres with the original principles of the Bible as understood by those elite insiders. A normal person might ask “Shouldn’t we consider the bodily autonomy and interests of those who are pregnant?” but this question is never on the table because it violates the sacred text.
Economically we can follow a perfect train of defensible logic from “free market capitalism is natural and creates freedom for people to choose their own path” to “wealth inequality is a natural and acceptable byproduct of free market capitalism” to “those lacking sufficient wealth and income have made bad decisions and helping them would create bad incentives and moral hazard.” This is once again perfectly coherent to elite insiders who understand the secret knowledge and it coheres with original principles of free market capitalism as understood by those elite insiders. A normal person might ask “What duties of socioeconomic solidarity do we owe to each other in a society and how should that structure our political economy?” but this question is never on the table because it violates the sacred text.
What can be done about this? The short answer is that I don’t know - it’s a hegemonic system of thought that dominates nearly every area of our lives. On a personal level, we can work on our own deprogramming and engage in activities that resist this logic - like unstructured and non-productive resting/playing, for instance. On a communal level we can build fluid, dynamic, responsive structures of solidarity that are NOT rooted in adherence to some sacred text that only a few understand.
We can also center, listen to, and follow perspectives operating outside of white male bourgeoisie norms. It has always been women, people of color, queer/trans folks, people living with disabilities, and others like this who disrupt, challenge, resist, and work toward dismantling recursive gnostic originalism. In the academic world that manifests through ideas like standpoint theory, queer theory, critical theory, Black Marxism, critiques of racialized capitalism, semiotics, post-structuralism, a focus on understanding and deconstructing narratives, etc. These types of ideological approaches problematize and deconstruct the ontological and epistemological assumptions at the root of recursive gnostic originalism. But also they must be materially operationalized in the real world by real communities.
But this problematizing and deconstruction also provokes reaction and revanchism from those who adhere to our unacknowledged operating system. As we work against white male bourgeoisie norms and the operation of recursive gnostic originalism we must expect counter-resistance from reactionary forces that seek to conserve, strengthen, and perpetuate the status quo.