The litigiousness framing is sharp, but I think it’s downstream of something older: the closing of the frontier. For most of American history, the mark’s default wasn’t to sue – it was to exit. Lose a political fight, find the local sheriff intolerable, get on the wrong side of the church elders. Move west. The geography itself was the cooling infrastructure, vast enough to absorb almost any quantum of social disorganization Goffman warns about.
Turner declared the frontier closed in 1893. The census had run out of unsettled land to count. The cooling-out system had to be rebuilt from scratch, and litigiousness filled the gap – imperfectly, expensively, but functionally. You can’t exit, so you litigate. The veto becomes the surrogate for the open door. Mohsin Hamid’s magical doors in Exit West carry weight precisely because the original version was real for so long, and then wasn’t.
But there’s a second loss alongside the frontier that your framing made me see more clearly: the Republic itself used to be part of the cooling infrastructure. Twenty-seven flag changes between 1818 and 1960. Constitutional amendments every generation – twelve in the first decade, then more as the country lurched through Civil War, Reconstruction, the Progressive Era. The system kept reconstituting itself. Losing a political fight didn’t feel permanent because the underlying architecture was demonstrably plastic. The marks could tell themselves, correctly, that the game wasn’t over.
Then after Hawaii in 1960, the flag froze. The last substantive structural amendment was the Twenty-Sixth, granting eighteen-year-olds the vote, in 1971. The informal norms that kept institutions workable turned out to be load-bearing walls, and nobody noticed until someone started removing them. Now you have a political system designed for four million people across thirteen states governing a continental empire of 340 million – and the bones won’t bend.
So the picture that emerges is a vetocracy layered on top of a constitutionally frozen system layered on top of a continent with no exit valve. That’s an enormous amount of pressure with nowhere to go. Which maybe explains why the “personal disorganization” you’re tracking feels qualitatively more volatile than previous rounds of American identity crisis. The cooling mechanisms worked before partly because people sensed – correctly – that the underlying system was still plastic. Marks can accept losing a hand when they believe the game continues. It’s when the table itself feels locked that disorganization turns into something harder to name.
It makes one wonder what might be the next cooling off mechanism… Artemis is apropos and timely… cyberspace has been a mixed bag but is blending url and irl in unique ways… I also wonder how the current collapse and possible reinvention of the current us constitutional regime might connect with the planetary scale institutions envisioned by nils in children of a modest star
"Turner declared the frontier closed in 1893. The census had run out of unsettled land to count. The cooling-out system had to be rebuilt from scratch, and litigiousness filled the gap – imperfectly, expensively, but functionally. You can’t exit, so you litigate."
This is a plausible hypothesis, but isn't supported by data. 1870-1890 was a time of very high litigation in the US. Litigation reached a peak in the 1890s, but that was due to foreclosures and bankruptcies due to the panic of 1893. Your theory requires an increase after 1893, but lawsuits per person fell after the panic, and were at their all-time low for the US from 1910-1970. This may have been partly /because of/ the closing of the frontier, because before then, people often tried to escape their debts by moving west, and had to be tracked down and sued.
At a meta-level, social institutions like marriage and family have always seemed like long arc cooling out devices for entire populations as collective marks. Nothing challenges the establishment like individuals without familial ties who have nothing to lose. It follows then that the state all over the world, without exception, loves the idea of individuals getting married (and getting married early), and having children. Once people sign up for that script, it activates a whole assembly line of elaborate, localized and slow release cooling out scripts that ensure business as usual carries on without any fuss.
This may explain the success of Social Democracy in Nordic countries. Sweden’s wealth is concentrated among roughly seventeen major dynasties, with wealth inequality actually higher than the United States — yet the system holds. Social Democracy functions as a cooling-off mechanism: I don’t own much, but I am not poor, and that is enough.
Goffman’s framework suggests the goal of cooling is to ensure the mark accepts their new status as a loser without raising a costly fuss. The Nordic version is elegant precisely because the consolation prize — genuine material security, functional public services, low income inequality — is real enough that most marks never feel marked.
The failure mode of other socialist experiments follows directly from this. The initial cooling-off period works because wealth redistribution produces a tangible change in material conditions. But once that redistribution is complete, the system has to cool off the political inequality that replaced the financial inequality used to fuel the revolution. That is a much harder problem. The consolation prize has already been spent, and the new hierarchy has nothing equivalent to offer.
"The true value of an idea is not that it explains what it sets out to explain (finding and developing such ideas is the essence of intellectual grinding) but that it explains vastly more at least at a mildly plausible level."
This sounds like a recipe for generating gods, pseudosciences, and conspiracy theories.
can't wait for the coming wave of thinkpieces that massage into us reassuring new ideas about how the decline of America is good for the world, like how a tree falling in the forest provides nutrients and shelter for other forest life
There is a harmony with the US having a conman making marks of his voters domestically whilst revealing an international system his country underwrote for decades to be a lie.
But I think the individual level recognition that the entire narrative as con is the deepest cut. It is true and the reckoning will be rough.
The litigiousness framing is sharp, but I think it’s downstream of something older: the closing of the frontier. For most of American history, the mark’s default wasn’t to sue – it was to exit. Lose a political fight, find the local sheriff intolerable, get on the wrong side of the church elders. Move west. The geography itself was the cooling infrastructure, vast enough to absorb almost any quantum of social disorganization Goffman warns about.
Turner declared the frontier closed in 1893. The census had run out of unsettled land to count. The cooling-out system had to be rebuilt from scratch, and litigiousness filled the gap – imperfectly, expensively, but functionally. You can’t exit, so you litigate. The veto becomes the surrogate for the open door. Mohsin Hamid’s magical doors in Exit West carry weight precisely because the original version was real for so long, and then wasn’t.
But there’s a second loss alongside the frontier that your framing made me see more clearly: the Republic itself used to be part of the cooling infrastructure. Twenty-seven flag changes between 1818 and 1960. Constitutional amendments every generation – twelve in the first decade, then more as the country lurched through Civil War, Reconstruction, the Progressive Era. The system kept reconstituting itself. Losing a political fight didn’t feel permanent because the underlying architecture was demonstrably plastic. The marks could tell themselves, correctly, that the game wasn’t over.
Then after Hawaii in 1960, the flag froze. The last substantive structural amendment was the Twenty-Sixth, granting eighteen-year-olds the vote, in 1971. The informal norms that kept institutions workable turned out to be load-bearing walls, and nobody noticed until someone started removing them. Now you have a political system designed for four million people across thirteen states governing a continental empire of 340 million – and the bones won’t bend.
So the picture that emerges is a vetocracy layered on top of a constitutionally frozen system layered on top of a continent with no exit valve. That’s an enormous amount of pressure with nowhere to go. Which maybe explains why the “personal disorganization” you’re tracking feels qualitatively more volatile than previous rounds of American identity crisis. The cooling mechanisms worked before partly because people sensed – correctly – that the underlying system was still plastic. Marks can accept losing a hand when they believe the game continues. It’s when the table itself feels locked that disorganization turns into something harder to name.
That’s a great point and in hindsight doh obvious. Endless frontier is almost a literal cooling mechanism. Gases cool when they expand/
It makes one wonder what might be the next cooling off mechanism… Artemis is apropos and timely… cyberspace has been a mixed bag but is blending url and irl in unique ways… I also wonder how the current collapse and possible reinvention of the current us constitutional regime might connect with the planetary scale institutions envisioned by nils in children of a modest star
"Turner declared the frontier closed in 1893. The census had run out of unsettled land to count. The cooling-out system had to be rebuilt from scratch, and litigiousness filled the gap – imperfectly, expensively, but functionally. You can’t exit, so you litigate."
This is a plausible hypothesis, but isn't supported by data. 1870-1890 was a time of very high litigation in the US. Litigation reached a peak in the 1890s, but that was due to foreclosures and bankruptcies due to the panic of 1893. Your theory requires an increase after 1893, but lawsuits per person fell after the panic, and were at their all-time low for the US from 1910-1970. This may have been partly /because of/ the closing of the frontier, because before then, people often tried to escape their debts by moving west, and had to be tracked down and sued.
At a meta-level, social institutions like marriage and family have always seemed like long arc cooling out devices for entire populations as collective marks. Nothing challenges the establishment like individuals without familial ties who have nothing to lose. It follows then that the state all over the world, without exception, loves the idea of individuals getting married (and getting married early), and having children. Once people sign up for that script, it activates a whole assembly line of elaborate, localized and slow release cooling out scripts that ensure business as usual carries on without any fuss.
This may explain the success of Social Democracy in Nordic countries. Sweden’s wealth is concentrated among roughly seventeen major dynasties, with wealth inequality actually higher than the United States — yet the system holds. Social Democracy functions as a cooling-off mechanism: I don’t own much, but I am not poor, and that is enough.
Goffman’s framework suggests the goal of cooling is to ensure the mark accepts their new status as a loser without raising a costly fuss. The Nordic version is elegant precisely because the consolation prize — genuine material security, functional public services, low income inequality — is real enough that most marks never feel marked.
The failure mode of other socialist experiments follows directly from this. The initial cooling-off period works because wealth redistribution produces a tangible change in material conditions. But once that redistribution is complete, the system has to cool off the political inequality that replaced the financial inequality used to fuel the revolution. That is a much harder problem. The consolation prize has already been spent, and the new hierarchy has nothing equivalent to offer.
"The true value of an idea is not that it explains what it sets out to explain (finding and developing such ideas is the essence of intellectual grinding) but that it explains vastly more at least at a mildly plausible level."
This sounds like a recipe for generating gods, pseudosciences, and conspiracy theories.
can't wait for the coming wave of thinkpieces that massage into us reassuring new ideas about how the decline of America is good for the world, like how a tree falling in the forest provides nutrients and shelter for other forest life
Wonderfully articulated! This definitely reaches the explanatory heights of Gervais principle and the great wierding essays.
BTW "Underground empire" is a much better alternative to "deep state", going to use this term from now on.
The term is from Henry Farrell book
Had never read the Goffman paper. Cuts deep.
There is a harmony with the US having a conman making marks of his voters domestically whilst revealing an international system his country underwrote for decades to be a lie.
But I think the individual level recognition that the entire narrative as con is the deepest cut. It is true and the reckoning will be rough.
Good one Venkatesh. Cheers