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This curriculum is about Western civilization, and how it enables citizens of the Western world to live together in a just, orderly way. But it’s also about the 21st century, which has been characterized by the continual decline of many aspects of that civilization.
Despite our superior technology, there are many things that Western countries could do in the past that we can’t today—e.g. rapidly build large-scale infrastructure, maintain low-crime cities, and run competent bureaucracies. More importantly, it feels like there are no adults in the room: modern elites often seem unvirtuous and even unserious by historical standards. This curriculum focuses on explaining what changed, and how to orient to the world we now find ourselves in.
Discussions of large-scale political issues can be unsettling or jarring. So the curriculum intertwines discussion of what's happening on a factual level, with readings on how to develop a healthy emotional and ethical stance towards politics (culminating in the final week's focus on cultivating virtue). It also strongly prioritizes honesty and clarity of writing (even on topics often considered taboo), which is one reason why most readings are informal blog posts or essays rather than academic papers.
Given the sheer scope of the topics covered by the curriculum, it does not aim at comprehensiveness; nor does it try to give detailed strategies for solving civilizational decay. Indeed, given the accelerating development of AI (as discussed in week 10) the coming decades are likely to be extremely unpredictable. Readers should instead think of the curriculum as a starting point for informed, realistic discussions about how we as a civilization can steer ourselves through the coming turmoil.
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How to engage with this curriculum
How to engage with this curriculum
The intended format for the curriculum is weekly small group discussions. Each week, all participants should read the four main readings in detail (and can optionally read any of the supplementary readings). We recommend that group discussions are scheduled for 1.5 hours each week. At the end of each session, four people should volunteer to each lead the discussion of one of the following week’s readings.
An alternative approach is to host longer sessions and have participants read, then discuss, each of the readings within the session itself. If you do so, we recommend scheduling sessions of 2 or 2.5 hours and skipping the fourth reading each week.
However, everyone should feel free to approach the curriculum in the ways they find most useful (and ideally report back on what works and what doesn’t).
Week 1: Western Culture
Week 1: Western Culture
The main goal for this week is for participants to get to know each other and form shared intentions about what they want discussion sessions to look like. We recommend spending the first third of the session talking about where each person is coming from and what they want to get out of the curriculum.
Like many of the topics covered in this curriculum, Western culture is far too wide-ranging to summarize in a single week. These four readings merely touch on a few of its core components: individualism, secular governments, an improvement-oriented mindset, impartial justice systems, and an internal locus of self-control.
Main readings:
Book review: Inventing the Individual (Whitney)
The Spread of Improvement (Howes) (only up to end of page 11)
The Birth of Impersonal Exchange (Greif) (only up to the end of page 228)
Book review: The Germans (Moses)
Supplementary readings:
Book review: The Ancient City (Psmith)
In Favor of Niceness, Community, and Civilization (Alexander)
Book review: The WEIRDest people in the world (Hugh-Jones)
Book review: The Enlightened Economy (Glaeser)
The British War on Slavery (Tabarrok)
The Shortest History of Europe (Hirst) (only chapter 1)
Sociogenesis of the Antithesis Between Kultur and Zivilisation in German Usage (Elias)
Week 2: Civilizational Decay
Week 2: Civilizational Decay
This week’s readings lay out the hypothesis that many key aspects of Western civilization have decayed. Since civilizational decay is such a broad claim, this is the only week to feature five (shorter) main readings.
The first three readings focus on free speech, public order, and scientific integrity, respectively. The types of decay discussed aren't very legible in terms of quantitative metrics (e.g. number of academic papers published), but are concerning indicators of a decline in the kinds of competence and virtue that are load-bearing for running good societies.
The last two readings zoom in on civilizational decay in two specific countries. Cummings reports on the abysmal state of the British bureaucracy, telling four stories from his time as a special advisor ("spad") in the Department for Education under Michael Gove. Lastly, Psmith discusses the fall of South Africa.
Main readings:
There is no Liberal West (Lyons)
Murder as a Measuring Stick (Arctotherium)
The Academic Culture of Fraud (Landau-Taylor)
The Hollow Men II (Cummings) (only Part II: Four Stories)
Supplementary readings:
The Full Story of the FAA’s Hiring Scandal (Woodgrains)
Will World Government Rot? (Hanson)
My IRB Nightmare (Alexander)
South Africa’s Racketeer State (Thomas)
Zimbabwe’s Trauma (Andrews)
Week 3: The Managerial State
Week 3: The Managerial State
Western governments have transformed over the last century, with vast bureaucracies gaining extensive power. The first two readings explore two of the pieces of legislation which most expanded bureaucratic powers in the US since World War 2: the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
The latter two readings describe the ideology of managerialism, and how it gave rise to the modern bureaucratic state.
Main readings:
Book Review: The Origins of Woke (Alexander)
Escape from Quicksand: A New Framework for Modernizing America (Howard)
The Birth of the Administrative State (Pestritto) (only first half, up to the start of the section on Frank Goodnow)
James Burnham's Managerial Elite (Klein) (starting from the section on Defining Managerialism)
Supplementary readings:
Authoritarian High Modernism (Scott)
The New Ruling Class (Andrews)
The China Convergence (Lyons)
The Law that Ate the Constitution (Andrews)
Week 4: The Open Society and its Discontents
Week 4: The Open Society and its Discontents
This week’s readings explore the ideological taboos underpinning modern leftism. In the first reading, Lyons discusses the move towards an "open society" in the wake of World War 2 that gradually made nationalism (and particularly ethnonationalism) taboo.
In the next reading, Cofnas argues that egalitarianism has given rise to a taboo on discussing group disparities (especially racial IQ gaps). The contrast between Cofnas' account of the origins of wokeism and other accounts is summarized in the diagram below.
The pair of third readings cover ways in which discussions on this topic are often derailed. Falkovich discusses the distinction between decoupling and contextualizing mindsets, and applies it to explain disagreements over racial IQ gaps. Alexander describes the "motte and bailey" fallacy, aka strategic equivocation, and how it's used to enforce broad taboos.
Finally, Brooks describes the "bourgeois bohemian” class (aka bobos) which came to power in the wake of the World Wars.
Main readings:
American Strong Gods (N. S. Lyons)
Why We Need to Talk about the Right’s Stupidity Problem (Cofnas) (only second half, starting from Why Everything Goes Woke)
If you're already familiar with the motte-and-bailey fallacy, read In-groups, Out-groups, and the IDW (Falkovich). Otherwise read Social Justice and Words, Words, Words (Alexander).
How the Bobos Broke America (Brooks)
Supplementary readings:
Mainstream Science on Intelligence (Gottfredson)
I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup (Alexander)
National IQs Are Valid (Recueil)
The Ultracalvinist Hypothesis (Yarvin)
America's White Saviors (Goldberg)
How the luxury beliefs of an educated elite erode society (Henderson)
Week 5: The Psychology of Modern Elites
Week 5: The Psychology of Modern Elites
The first reading this week provides an alternative (but complementary) perspective of wokeness as downstream of the feminization of white-collar jobs. The central importance of gender in relation to ideological polarization is also summarized in the graphic below (taken from here).
The remaining three readings discuss the role of emotions in motivating one's political stances. Solata argues that many beliefs should be understood as strategies for defending one's ego. While he focuses on philosophical beliefs, many of the same dynamics apply to political beliefs and political identities. For more on the neuroscientific theory behind these ideas, see his supplementary reading.
The next reading, from Alexander, describes more specifically how many beliefs arise from a sense of envy. The best way to dissolve these is to directly confront the fears that give rise to them; in the final reading, Ngo outlines some techniques for doing that.
Main readings:
Overcoming the Feminization of Culture: video or transcript (Andrews)
Beliefs as emotional strategies (Sotala)
Book review: Sadly, Porn (only sections III, IV, V and VI) (Alexander)
Replacing Fear: posts #1, #2 and #3 (Ngo)
Supplementary readings:
Ra (Constantin)
Harrison Bergeron (Vonnegut)
The Baby Boom (Arctotherium)
Towardsness & Awayness Motivation are fundamentally asymmetric (Ocean)
How anticipatory cover-ups go wrong (Sotala)
Week 6: The Unprotected Class
Week 6: The Unprotected Class
This week focuses on the white populations of Western countries, and the ways that Western governments have failed to uphold the interests of this "unprotected class" over the last century (often motivated by the outgroup bias summarized in the diagram below, taken from here).
The first reading catalogues the extent of anti-white racism in America. The second readings describe the extreme costs of Muslim and African immigration to Europe, both in quantitative and qualitative terms.
The third and fourth readings return to America. Helton explores how crime hollowed out American cities in the mid-to-late 20th century. Steele argues that, for the good of both blacks and whites, we should shift from assigning guilt based on group identity, to holding individuals accountable for their own actions.
Main readings:
The Unprotected Class (Carl)
If you're already familiar with the Pakistani rape gangs operating in the UK, read The Effects of Immigration in Denmark (Bird). Otherwise read How the grooming gangs scandal was covered up (Ashworth-Hayes and Peters).
What caused the dramatic rise of crime and blight in American cities from 1950 to 2000? (Helton) (only up to paragraph starting “Norman Podhoretz grew up”)
Supplementary readings:
The Curley Effect: The Economics of Shaping the Electorate (Glaeser and Shleifer)
Increasing skilled immigration is a mistake (Arctotherium)
Book review: Albion’s Seed (Alexander)
Book review: The Culture Transplant (Gochenour)
Ghettoized by Black Unity (Steele)
The Historical Context of Pakistani Migration and ‘Early Stage’ Evidence of Grooming Gangs (Mithras)
Week 7: World on Fire
Week 7: World on Fire
This week branches out in two different ways. The first two readings focus on international politics. First, Anton outlines and defends Trump’s nationalist foreign policy. Then Chua explores how conflicts between ethnic majorities and elite minorities play out in countries across the world.
The latter two readings focus on social media and the ways it has affected politics. Alexander describes how cycles of political polarization play out on social media (which may have driven the effects in the graph below, taken from here). Siegel describes how the US government worked with NGOs and social media companies to censor public discussions.
Main readings:
The Trump Doctrine (Anton)
The Toxoplasma of Rage (Alexander)
A guide to understanding the hoax of the century: thirteen ways of looking at disinformation (Siegel) (only Introduction and sections V to X)
Supplementary readings:
Swiss Political System: More than You ever Wanted to Know (Sustrik)
Amicus Curiae Brief of the "Twitter Files" Journalists (Taibbi et al.) (only pages 5-29)
Our Revolution's Logic (Codevilla)
The Censorship Industrial Complex (Shellenberger) (only pages 4-10 and 17-28)
Week 8: Industry and Money
Week 8: Industry and Money
This week focuses on economic issues and their political implications. The first two readings discuss what successful industrial policy looks like in China and the West. The final two readings tie together politics and macroeconomics, in particular exploring the relationship between state power and control of currency.
Main readings:
The Real China Model (Wang and Kroeber)
Industrial Greatness Requires Economic Depressions (Landau-Taylor)
The Debtor’s Revolt (Hoffman) (only last 3 sections, starting from Early Centralization of American Monetary Policy)
Book review: Cities And The Wealth Of Nations/The Question Of Separatism (Fortier-Dubois) (only sections II and III)
Supplementary readings:
China is the world's sole manufacturing superpower (Baldwin)
America’s $175 Trillion Problem (Srinivasan)
A Techno-Industrialist Manifesto (Slodov)
The crisis of authority (Seir)
How GDP Hides Industrial Decline (Fitzsimmons)
The use of knowledge in society (Hayek)
Week 9: Sociopolitics
Week 9: Sociopolitics
This week’s readings describe in sociological terms the political dysfunctions discussed in previous weeks. The first reading introduces the concept of the “consensus of power”, under which everyone is trying to predict what everyone else predicts that everyone else predicts … that everyone else supports.
The second and third readings describe the experience of attempting to follow a consensus, and the psychological harms of doing so, within corporations and Nazi Germany respectively.
The final reading characterizes the opposite of following a consensus of power: making locally valid decisions.
Main readings:
Quotes from Moral Mazes (Mowshowitz) (only up to section H: The I in Team)
On Drama (Constantin)
Local Validity as a Key to Sanity and Civilization (Yudkowsky)
Supplementary readings:
On commitments to anti-normativity (Taylor)
Violence and the Sacred: College as an incubator of Girardian terror (Wang)
On Pessimization (Ngo)
Guilt, Shame and Depravity (Hoffman)
The Comprachicos (Rand)
Weak Men Are Superweapons (Alexander)
Week 10: Technology and Civilization
Week 10: Technology and Civilization
The 21st century will be shaped by the development of technologies far more powerful than those which exist today. The first reading gives a technologically-oriented explanation for the rise of bureaucracies (as discussed in Week 4). The next three readings focus on the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how it might affect human civilization.
For more technical readings related to the future of AGI, see the AI Alignment curriculum originally authored by Ngo (which follows a similar format as this curriculum).
Main readings:
Why the bureaucrats won’t be toppled: Revolts no longer work (Landau-Taylor)
Meditations on Machinic Desire (Vendrov)
Supplementary readings:
AI 2027 (Kokotajlo et al.)
What Failure Looks Like (Christiano)
Sufficiently Decentralized Intelligence is Indistinguishable from Synchronicity (Sahil)
Cortés, Pizarro, and Afonso as Precedents for Takeover (Kokotajlo)
Patterns of Conflict (Boyd)
Meltdown (Nick Land)
Week 11: Reviving Virtue
Week 11: Reviving Virtue
In the face of the many challenges discussed in the previous weeks, there’s no fixed set of interventions that we can trust. Instead, we will need to make decisions flexibly and wisely, while avoiding deceiving ourselves or giving in to base motivations. In other words, we need to build communities in which people can be trusted to embody key virtues, both in their personal and political lives. These high-integrity communities can avoid falling prey to the groupthink dynamics discussed in week 9, while still coordinating in response to the technological changes discussed in week 10.
The first two readings this week frame the pursuit of virtue. Tivy warns against absorbing the dominant values of modern Western society. Ngo gives a game-theoretic explanation for how high-integrity people who take principled stands can achieve much more than we intuitively expect.
The latter two readings home in on specific vices to avoid and virtues to cultivate. Lewis discusses the emptiness of chasing the inner ring, and the satisfaction of friendships based on mutual respect. The final reading of the curriculum, by the great Solzhenitsyn, is about no longer lying: a key step towards living virtuously in an unvirtuous society.
Main readings:
Power Lies Trembling (Ngo)
The Inner Ring (Lewis)
Live Not By Lies (Solzhenitsyn)
Supplementary readings:
Love of a Nation (Lyons)
The Triumph of the Good Samaritan (Milton)
Secrets (Ellsberg) (especially pages 262-295)
What Makes a Man (McPherson)
Final Statement in Court (Navalny)
This curriculum was compiled by Richard Ngo and Samo Burja. You can leave feedback or suggestions here.
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