⤴ Up Wing politics: A chat with sociologist Steve Fuller (Throwback Thursday)
'This is where the polarities are: Some want to go into the skies and some want to really implant themselves on the Earth'
I often write about the need for Up Wing thinking. (Folks on the left these days might call it “abundance thinking.”) Despite the political drama that unfolds on cable news and social media, the key divide in America is not Left versus Right but Up versus Down. Up Wingers are all about acceleration for solving big problems, effectively tackling new ones, and creating maximum opportunity for all Americans. Down Wingers, on the other hand, are soaked in nostalgia, scarcity, and risk minimization.
Back in December 2022, I podcast chatted with Steve Fuller to discuss the political implications of Up Wing and Down Wing thinking. Fuller holds the Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology at the University of Warwick's Department of Sociology. He's the author of several books, including 2014's The Proactionary Imperative.
The following is an edited excerpt of our 2022 conversation.
⤴ In 1973, futurist F.M. Esfandiary wrote Up-Wingers, proposing a new political axis beyond Left-Right. This has been framed as Black (limitless potential) versus Green (traditional environmentalism). Could you briefly explain the core principles of this dichotomy in today's politics?
Steve Fuller: I think the first thing to say, given that you started with Esfandiary, who's known as FM-2030 to his fans in transhumanism, is that the book Up-Wingers actually only talked about Up Wingers but didn't talk about Down Wingers. What we instead have is Black versus Green. The idea of Black for the Up Wingers is that the sky is the limit, whereas the Down Wingers are Green in the sense that they basically want human beings to be planted on Earth. It's a very Earth orientation. That's why these people like to talk about the precautionary principle. This is where the polarities are: Some want to go into the skies and some want to really implant themselves on the Earth.
⤴ Do you see a typical median voter in Great Britain or the United States as fundamentally more of an Up Wing person or more of a Down Wing person?
I think, generally speaking, they're Up Wing, actually. If you ask them their attitudes towards stuff, but when you put it all together as part of a political agenda, it often seems very threatening. That's kind of the public relations problem that Up Wingers have.
Do you want to be able to live longer? Do you want innovative medicines... technological solutions? People are actually for all this stuff. The problem is you think about what the implications would be for the kind of world we would live in — this wouldn't be a better version of the current world, but a different kind of world.
Once you present the Up Winger program, as a program, it then becomes easy to enumerate the various implicit costs, and that's when you start to raise the fear factor in the electorate. It's very hard to win elections when you're operating in that space.
⤴ It’s hard to capture with polling, but nuclear energy feels like a good litmus test: support suggests an Up Wing mindset, opposition a Down Wing one. Lately, though— partly due to the war in Ukraine and energy shortages — people seem to be rethinking nuclear. Might that lead to a broader rethinking of environmentalism and why we don’t already have abundant clean power?
This is where it gets kind of interesting, because, of course, nuclear is not risk-free. One thing you need to realize is that the European Union actually has the precautionary principle baked into a lot of its legislation.
Environmental protection in Europe is incredibly high. For example, consider the enormous opposition to genetically modified organisms. All of this is very much related to the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle says, above all, “do no harm,” even if it means you do less good. That's going to be a killer for nuclear.
The point is, yes, we could have had clean energy via nuclear many decades ago, but it would've also been risky. It was probably a risk worth taking, I would think.
Part of what's going on between the Up Wingers and the Down Wingers is essentially their differing attitudes toward risk. Because we can do a lot of amazing things right now if we're willing to absorb just a little bit more risk.
This is a tough one for politicians. If we put a nuclear reactor here, then your water will be poisoned, you'll have three-legged cats, or whatever—how's a politician going to deal with that?
I think we could have had a much cleaner world by now if we were willing to accept a little bit more risk. Risk is one of the factors that often makes the difference in political debates. It ultimately defines the limits of plausibility for what you can propose as policy.
⤴ To me, the environmental movement has long been Down Wing and limits-based. But given the challenge of hitting climate goals without tech—and what we’ve seen during the pandemic and Europe’s energy shortages — people clearly prefer abundance over scarcity. Do you think that realization could push the environmental movement in a more Up Wing direction?
First of all, there are some Up-Wing environmental movements. But to be honest, their degree of success in getting the message across has been limited.
There is the issue of fear mongering. Once it gets unleashed, it's very hard to combat. In the case of nuclear, we would be talking about state and corporate interests—heavy players. Some of this technology is already available, but it's been prevented from actually coming on stream.
The optics of that are not good, particularly for people who are already distrustful of all kinds of establishments. If nuclear energy were something that could be promoted from a mom-and-pop store, it would probably be much more palatable.
As you know, one of the things that has emerged from the pandemic is an efflorescence of conspiracy theories targeting big business and the state—the very same heavy players who would likely be among nuclear’s primary supporters.
The appearance of such sponsors does not create an aura of trust. I think that's a fundamental public relations problem, and it may actually be a much bigger issue than simply making people aware of the benefits of nuclear energy.
⤴ During the pandemic we've learned something about the issue of trust in society. What do you think we've learned about the issue of risk tolerance in society? More people than I would've guessed are very risk averse.
Yes, I think that's exactly right. It's an interesting picture, and there needs to be a thorough cross-national comparison of the responses to the pandemic. Nations around the world varied significantly in terms of the amount of social control they exerted over their citizenry. In that respect, it was a very interesting living experiment, particularly because it highlighted the differences in how political systems responded.
In a sense, the state shot itself in the foot by making people too risk-averse. We have been living in a world where we've been promised that risks will gradually disappear. Anything that threatens this sense of security then becomes a major source of fear.
If instead we lived in a world where we acknowledged from the outset that progress would involve a somewhat bumpy ride upward, people would likely be more tolerant of challenging situations such as pandemics, during which more people inevitably die than usual.
Because the pandemic was so publicized on a 24/7 basis, people began comparing death rates of different countries simultaneously, almost as if it were a sporting league. That is a nonsensical approach to managing a pandemic.
This kind of thinking suggests that if you successfully avoid contamination, then you're somehow "winning." That undermines precisely the mindset required for meaningful technological progress, which demands a far greater willingness to accept risk.
⤴ If we cure or greatly reduce major diseases, could that send a powerful message that technology can radically improve our lives — and maybe tip the scale in its favor?
I think so, actually. The public relations side of all this should never be underestimated. You need a big win — like the polio vaccine. With the polio vaccine, the coverage and relevance to large numbers of people was immediate and obvious. People could clearly see its benefits.
They didn't need to understand how the polio vaccine worked; if they knew someone affected by polio, the vaccine's value became instantly clear. You need something with that level of public salience.
If you're aiming for the kind of gestalt switch that moves people from being risk-averse to risk-seeking, you need a dramatic, visible success — something that a few years ago would have seemed impossible.
⤴ If over the next 25 to 50 years we saw the precautionary principle replaced with a more risk-taking principle, what does that world look like?
We could have a whole half-hour discussion on this topic. One of the things I think would be necessary is allowing people to volunteer for quite risky experiments through private contracts, based on mutual understanding of the risks involved.
There would probably need to be some kind of insurance agency to provide compensation when things go wrong. That system would replace the current arrangement, which ends up preventing risky research altogether because of potential harm to subjects—even when the subjects would voluntarily participate.
At a minimum, you'd need to change the legal structure that currently blocks risky research from being conducted.
The problem is that risky research still happens anyway, but often in places like China or other ethics-free zones, or even underground. All sorts of uncontrolled, risky experimentation occur, and we might even learn something from it.
We really need to shift toward a contractual system rather than maintaining blanket bans on certain types of research.
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"The point is, yes, we could have had clean energy via nuclear many decades ago, but it would've also been risky." Less risky than other energy sources if you have a reasonable view of the risk and compare it to the life cycle of other sources. One problem has been that many nuclear advocates have argued that it is safe rather that that it is *comparatively* safe and that major meltdowns are not the disaster people think they are.
"This is a tough one for politicians. If we put a nuclear reactor here, then your water will be poisoned, you'll have three-legged cats, or whatever—how's a politician going to deal with that?" By telling the truth clearly and unapologetically. A tall order, no doubt.
"If nuclear energy were something that could be promoted from a mom-and-pop store, it would probably be much more palatable." Other energy sources also require massive investments so this cannot be the differentiating factor.
Steve Fuller has built on my Proactionary Principle as a superior and Upwing alternative to the precautionary principle. I published one version of it here:
https://maxmore.substack.com/p/the-proactionary-principle