Upwingers Fighting Downwingers (Rebroadcast)

Andrew Heaton (0:00)

We are going to be doing an episode on the AI Civil War later this week. But until then, enjoy this re-broadcast of how people react to technology and risk, the difference between Upwingers and Downwingers.

Hello, and welcome to The Political Orphanage, a home for people who think freely, think differently, and think hard. I'm your host, Andrew Heaton, and I had a blast on today's interview. Dr. Fuller is a fun guest. He's very smart, but he's one of those guests that will joke around with me. I liked him, my favorite kind of interview. On top of that, what we're discussing is one of my absolute favorite subjects, which is a new way, a different way to look at politics outside of the left-right spectrum. I think the left-right spectrum is reductive and usually wrong, and we've got whole episodes on it in the past. I'm not going to elaborate on that point, but I'm always looking for different ways to try to look at politics, and Dr. Fuller is going to walk us through his paradigm, Upwingers and Downwingers.

To whet your appetite a bit on today's program, George W. Bush, the Green Party and the Pope are on one side of that spectrum about to be described, whereas Elon Musk, Ray Kurzweil, and government technocrats are on the other. It's a whole different way of thinking, of organizing the political landscape, and it's what we're talking about on today's program. Now, before we jump in, I do want to give you a listening recommendation that will help you get the most out of the interview. We have been so conditioned to think of everything as left versus right, blue versus red, that almost everybody reflexively tries to translate any new system into that. So you listen for a minute and you go, okay, I figured out who the conservatives are. So I want you to fight that urge. You're gonna have a moment today, I had a moment today and I had to suppress it, where you go, aha, okay, all right, I know who the conservatives are, I know who the progressives are. It's a different system, it's a different way of thinking. Don't do that. You won't be doing yourself any favors. This is a good opportunity, a fun opportunity to look at society with a fresh lens and we'll be doing a disservice if we try to turn it into a synonym for the left or the right, because it's not. It's Upwing or Downwing. Right here on The Political Orphanage.

My guest today is Dr. Steve Fuller. He is a professor of sociology at the University of Warwick and founder of its research program in social epistemology. He's written an inappropriate amount of books on a variety of subjects, but the one that is pertinent to us today is the Proactionary Imperative. You can find that book and all of the books discussed on the show by going to mightyheaton.com/featured.

Hello, Dr. Fuller.

Steve Fuller (3:14)

Hello. Hello. How are you?

Andrew Heaton (3:16)

I'm great. I'm very excited to talk to you.

As I mentioned before we started recording, I am always very eager to find new ways to look at the political landscape that is not just this left-right spectrum, which I find to be very blunt and reductive and frequently false. And you have opened my mind to an entirely new paradigm. So tell us, what is an Upwinger and a Downwinger?

Steve Fuller (3:40)

Okay. First of all, I think it's... If I could say a little bit about the history of how we got to left and right, that we're trying to escape from. I think this is the issue.

So the left-right distinction basically dates from the late 18th century, and it was basically after the French Revolution, the way the National Assembly was arranged. Okay. The people who were supporting the king sat on the right, and the ones who opposed to the king sat on the left. In a sense, it was about seating arrangements, okay, originally. And back in those days, the liberals and the socialists were both on the left, and the right contained a range of people, some of whom wanted the monarchy to come back more strongly, and others who in a way just wanted to keep with the status quo as it was. And that is kind of how we got this left-right distinction.

And this served us pretty well, I would say, for a couple of hundred years, especially in the context of the nation-state and in terms of democratic politics, and that's the context in which we normally talk about left and right.

And there, what was, you might say, the bone of contention between the left and the right, was about the relationship between the state and the people. Okay, and so you start to get this very clear sense that the state, in a way, isn't just about keeping the peace or a minimal sort of thing, but in a sense has a kind of responsibility for people, and then the question is, how does it exercise that responsibility? And the people on the right generally thought that the less that the state does, the better, right? And there are several reasons why people thought this. So it's not that everybody thought this for the same reason, but of course, there were summaries, some people who we would normally call conservatives, cultural conservatives, who believed because there were already social institutions that in a way can take care of things without the state interfering. So we talk about the family, the church, that kind of stuff. But of course, there were other kinds of right-wingers, and those were the ones we call libertarians, right? Who in a sense thought that the state in its somewhat well-meaning, but clumsy way got in the way of people really exercising their freedom, right? So the right has this kind of combination of conservatives and libertarians. Now the left, it's a similar kind of combination of different types. So the people on the left generally believe that the state was in some way a kind of engine for people to realize themselves, right? And that the state had to be harnessed and used, and this justifies raising taxes and stuff like that.