The Folly of Quixotism (Part 1)
When idealism supersedes all practicality.
Part 1 of 3 (Part 2 here, Part 3 here)
Don Quixote is one of the most influential works of fiction of all time. Written in two parts by the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in the early 17th century, the book tells the story of the comedic adventures of a bumbling knight, Don Quixote of La Mancha. Driven mad by his obsession with romantic stories of knightly chivalry, Don Quixote decides to become a knight-errand, put on an old suit of armour, and set off in pursuit of his ladylove, Dulcinea del Toboso, who is nothing more than an idealized figment of his imagination.
Don Quixote constantly finds himself in absurd, farcical situations as a result of his relentless pursuit of his conception of the ideals of knightly chivalry. His numerous mishaps throughout his travels include mistaking an innkeeper and prostitutes for a lord of a castle and fine ladies, challenging random strangers to battle over trivial misunderstandings which he interprets as affronts to his honour, and even charging at windmills, believing them to be a giant, long-armed beasts, hoping to prove his valour in battle. The character of Don Quixote and his misadventures served as the origin of a word used to describe this particular kind of foolishness.
The word “quixotism”, translations of which can be found in a number of languages, denotes overcommitment to romantic ideals, often resulting in reckless and irrational action in pursuit of such. More simply put, quixotism means idealism without practicality.
“Quixotism (/kwɪkˈsɒtɪzəm/ or /kiːˈhoʊtɪzəm/; adj. quixotic) is impracticality in pursuit of ideals, especially those ideals manifested by rash, lofty and romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action. It also serves to describe an idealism without regard to practicality.”
While the fictional character Don Quixote served as the inspiration for this word, if there were ever a real-life individual to embody the folly of quixotism, it would be the naturalist and documentary filmmaker Timothy Treadwell. As a nature lover, Timothy had a deep infatuation with bears in particular. He spent 13 summers in a row, starting in 1990, camping in Katmai National Park in Alaska where he would observe and record footage of the various species of bears which inhabited the Alaskan wilderness.
Timothy became well-known in both the media and environmentalist circles for his activism and the footage he captured of bears during his stays in Katmai National Park. However, he received criticism from park officials and the broader naturalist community for putting himself in danger in order to obtain his footage and disturbing the wildlife. Timothy said that he hated human civilization and that he felt at peace living in the forest among the bears. He never brought a firearm or even bear spray with him on his expeditions and refused to set up electric fences around his campsites. Timothy stated he would never use a weapon against a bear, even if attacked, but felt confident that this would never happen, as he believed he had a spiritual connection with the bears and that they were misunderstood creatures.
In summer 2003, Timothy spent the season in Katmai National Park as he had the 12 preceding years, although on this occasion he was accompanied by his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard. They stayed into October, which was later in the year than usual. By this time, the bears were hunting more aggressively as they prepared for their winter hibernation. On October 6th, 2003, the pilot who they was supposed to pick them up found their campsite abandoned, save for a bear chewing on what appeared to be human remains.
While it has never been released, an audio recording exists of Timothy screaming in agony as he is mauled to death by a brown bear. Despite his vows that he would never use a weapon against a bear, in the audio, he is reportedly heard pleading for Amie to attack the bear. Since Timothy refused to carry a gun or bear spray on his expeditions, the best weapon Amie had at her disposal was a frying pan. Needless to say, this proved ineffective in preventing the bear from ripping Timothy limb from limb before turning its attention to Amie and doing the same.
What better word to describe Timothy Treadwell’s specific brand of stupidity than quixotism. His starry-eyed dream of living in perfect harmony with wildlife in an everlasting bond of mutual love and understanding blinded him to the facts of nature. A wild animal is just that. He abandoned all practicality in pursuit of naïve idealism. He might have been able to delude himself into thinking he had a deep spiritual connection with the bears of Katmai National Park, but the bears themselves saw Timothy as nothing more than their next meal.
It's not only individuals who are susceptible to the folly of quixotism. This phenomenon can manifest itself on a society-wide scale too and have a profound impact on politics. Many of the blunders of communist regimes of the 20th century can be attributed to quixotic thinking among their ruling parties. For example, during the so-called Great Leap Forward in Mao’s China, all economic reality was ignored in favour of Maoist ideological purity. Production quotas were placed upon commodities such as grain or steal, not in accordance with economic feasibility or necessity, but in a desperate attempt exceed the output of capitalist countries, thus proving the superiority of communism.
This resulted in overreporting of production out of fear of not meeting the quotas, exporting too much grain to the cities, leaving the countryside famished, and overproduction of steal, which proved useless due to its low quality and lack of demand. Estimates for the death toll caused by the fallout from the Great Leap Forward range from as low as 15,000,000 to as high as 55,000,000. Some deaths were the result of disease, forced labour, or execution, but the vast majority were the result of famine. Despite people dying of starvation by the 10s of millions, Mao continued to export grain abroad and refused any international aid, all in an attempt to maintain the appearance that China was well on its way to achieving the Marxist fantasy of the workers’ utopia.
In today’s world, the phenomenon of quixotism is having a major impact on the political trajectory of the West. Last year, Harrold Robertson wrote his now famous article titled Complex Systems Won’t Survive the Competence Crisis. Robertson writes of how the ideology of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), laws such as the Civil Rights Act, and affirmative action programs have eroded the human capital of the United States. Over the past six decades, this has decreased the efficiency of the complex systems which the country relies on to function. The quixotism of the American ruling class, whether motivated by naïve egalitarian delusions or malignant anti-white hatred (or a bit of both), is jeopardising the continued status of the United States as the global superpower.
Quixotism is easy to spot when it’s others falling victim of it, but it much harder to recognize in oneself. As a right-winger myself, it’s quite easy for me to see quixotic thinking on the Left for the foolishness that it is. It’s a lot harder to look inward and recognize when the side of the political spectrum which I lean towards is guilty of the same. Upon self-reflection, I find that we on the Right fall prey to quixotism just as often, if not more often, than the Left. I can think of three segments of the Right who have engaged in quixotic wrongheadedness over the past decade or so. I’m not a fan of the Political Compass as an accurate model to describe political views, but if I were to use it here, one of these segments is from the top right quadrant, one is from the bottom right, and one is between the two.
Note: I don’t mean to imply that EVERY adherent to these following movements holds the positions I’m going to criticize here. However, these are positions which either a sizeable portion or prominent individuals associated with these movements have argued for.
The first section of the Right guilty of quixotism is what we normally refer to as either “mainstream conservatism” or “classical liberalism”. These labels are somewhat misleading since mainstream conservatism doesn’t conserve anything and classic liberalism is nothing like the liberalism of the 19th century, but rather progressive liberalism from 30 years ago. The proponents of what we call mainstream conservatism tend to be boomers who want to go back to the 1980s while those who identify as classic liberals tend to be Gen Xers who want to go back to the 1990s. Nonetheless, I’m just going to merge these two groups under the banner of “conservatism” for the purposes of this essay, since I don’t think there is a significant difference between the two.
In the present day, conservatism exists mostly as a reaction to the political trends of the past decade or so with the goal of bringing back the perceived normalcy of a few decades ago. Conservatives stress the importance of individual rights, personal responsibility, and meritocracy in response to the rise of identity politics and cancel culture, or “wokeness” as this has come to be known.
Their response to anti-white policies in law, education, and the business world or just the general anti-white animosity in the culture is to say that we should treat everyone as an individual and not consider race of any importance to the identity of an individual or society as a whole. They apply similar criticism to other identity-based political movements such as feminism or the LGBT agenda. Conservatives are always quick to point out how the Left is guilty of the same prejudice they claim to be against, just in the opposite direction. It’s become a cliché at this point that conservatives will say that the “woke” should follow the advice of Martin Luther King Jr. and judge others by the content of their character not the colour of their skin.
Note: This is an incorrect interpretation of Martin Luther King Jr. It is a single quote from a speech which he didn’t even write himself. In reality, Martin Luther King Jr. supported affirmative action and reparations. He most certainly would be on the side of the “woke” today.
Conservatives often argue equality of opportunity should be the goal rather than equality of outcome. They advocate a purely meritocratic system which, in theory, would give everyone the equal opportunity to rise to the top, but wouldn’t necessarily result in equal outcomes. Their answer to the unequal outcomes between various demographic groups is that reliance on government handouts has prevented certain demographics from attaining an equal degree of success and that they can increase their standing by taking on a greater degree of self-reliance.
Conservatives argue that ideas should form the basis of society rather than heredity. They advocate for civic nationalism while opposing ethnic nationalism. They believe that the unifying force should not be shared ancestry, but a shared set of values such as those found in the Constitution of the United States. They argue that anyone can integrate into a country regardless of their background if they adopt the values and culture of said country. They make an exception for the State of Israel.
The fatal flaw of conservatism (at least its present-day iteration) is that it fundamentally is an egalitarian universalist ideology which seeks to hold back the inevitable consequences of said egalitarian universalism. The state which Western countries find themselves in in the 2020s is just a natural result of the belief system which they adopted in the years following WWII. The fundamental principles underlying “wokeism” had already been firmly established by the 80s and 90s, the decades which conservatives wish so desperately they could recreate. We were already on the trajectory to where we are today back then. Now, we’re just further along.
The problem is that conservatives refuse to accept this reality. They continue to desperately hold onto these values even as they are the very values which are the driving force behind their own disenfranchisement. For example, conservatives say that we shouldn’t place value in any kind of collective racial identity and that we should see everyone as an individual. However, a supermajority of those who identify as either conservatives or classic liberals are white while a supermajority of non-whites or other alleged victim groups ally with the Left. Even if conservatives don’t want to identify as white themselves, these other groups will most certainly identify them as such.
Race and sex are biological realities which have will inevitably impact the average outcomes of members of various demographic backgrounds in society. Both the Left and the mainstream Right deny this reality. The Left explains it away as a function of systemic discrimination, thus giving us woke politics. Conservatives don’t really have any answers and are just left pleading for this reality to not be taken into any consideration at all. However, these client groups which form the Left’s coalition have zero incentive to do that because their ability to collectivize under such identities is the main source of their elevated political power and social status.
The quixotism of conservatives, the vast majority of whom are white, is that they disempower themselves politically by refusing to acknowledge and pursue their own group interests in order to stay true to a set of principles which in no way benefit them. Their principles only serve to give them a feeling of comfort and self-righteousness. They yearn for the calm and stability of previous eras in which they felt comfortable, but they don’t want to rock the boat by confronting the harsh realities which brought us to where we are today. So, they are reduced to hoping that it all just goes away.
To get an idea of just how impotent conservatism really is, consider this. They constantly advocate for a purely meritocratic system which doesn’t account for race, gender, or sexuality at all. The problem is that legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as similar legislation found in other countries, essentially makes that illegal. These laws require companies to engage in discrimination in favour of “protected groups” lest they be struck with massive lawsuits. In order to get the meritocratic system which conservatives say they want, these laws would need to be abolished. Yet, they would never have the courage to suggest such a thing. On the contrary, they are constantly lauding the virtue of Martin Luther King Jr., the icon of the Civil Rights Movement, as some kind of role model.
Sam Francis fittingly described conservatives as beautiful losers. They don’t want to actually succeed politically as much as they want to show how principled they are as they lose. Conservatism is like a country which dismantled its entire military to show how peaceful they are then complains how mean a rival country is when they invade. They continue on their decades-long losing streak on account of their quixotism. Their principles have been proven to destroy that which they seek conserve, yet they continue to hold onto them, not wanting to leave their political comfort zone.
I’m sure most reading this will have long since learned this truth about conservatism. We all can see that the mainstream Right has held onto these naïve ideals far past the point of all practicality. Unfortunately, however, the quixotism of the Right is not limited to the stale and dreary mainstream.
Continued in part 2.
As always, an excellent article.
First, the Treadwell audio is indeed available, and can be found with a simple youtube search (note, not for the faint-hearted).
While I agree with your assessment on the quixotic nature of today's conservatives, I wonder whether considering the dichotomy of vitalism vis a vis transhumanism is helpful.
In a sense, all political parties are transhumanists, which believe basic nature is something that is bad and has to be overcome. Every common sense rationalism is beat out of you methodically from the moment you are born into this world, and fought against in various ways until the moment you die.
Vitalism might be the embracing of our human nature, which rather than being a prison, is something to be cherished and embraced. Things like ethno-centricism, gender, lifespan, etc.. are all today's political issues because they in some sense reject human nature, and all that conservatives offer is a part of that, rather than all of it.
This should really be a much simpler debate than it is, for reasons that confuse me. In theory, liberalism should be the quixotic project because if transcending human nature is its goal, surely it would be hard to agree on what exactly that entails and therefore what can be agreed upon? This is why spite is often the explanation offered.
On the other hand, paleoconservatives have a pretty robust definition of what it means to be human, and consequently how a society should be organized, but of course we see so much more infighting on the right than the left (ceteris paribus).
Looking forward to part 2!
"a supermajority of those who identify as either conservatives or classic liberals are white while a supermajority of non-whites or other alleged victim groups ally with the left" this is true of america. The rest of the world is not america, and pretending otherwise risks the promotion of the very racism that the american left themselves spouse.