“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.” -John Stuart Mills
This essay is actually the very end of a long thread of back-and-forth discussion in a Discord forum. There are plenty of reasons to dislike postmodern philosophy- it practitioners often pretend an intellectual vanity which is ill-deserved, or default to a Motte and Bailey approach to debate which is frustrating, claiming that central tenets of postmodernism simply aren’t what are claimed, even though many who deploy postmodernism in practice couldn’t be more explicit is their stated aims once one looks at the actual literature.
But today, I found myself going for the jugular of postmodernism. I decided to assault the Mottle itself, the claim that postmodernism only critiques grand narratives, whether the critique is motivated by cultural biases or rooted in language. I hope I’ve made a convincing case that postmodern philosophy is a dangerous practice, which makes little effort to fully appreciate the harms its approach can unwittingly release on the world.
Ella-B:
If you are referring to post modernists who happen to be marxists this is a fundamental misunderstanding of post modernism peddled by Hicks & Peterson. Just because some or many post modernists have marxist beliefs of varying interpretations isn’t related to post modernist theory.
No, it’s not that at all. My problem is that in the final analysis postmodernism is systemically prone to solipsism. We’ve all done it. In fact, if we want to look back into the history of philosophy then Descartes made the proposition that only valid thing one could know about the world was ‘I think therefore I am’. Put another way, criticism is easy- it’s the intellectual low hanging fruit. The genius proposes an argument, the mediocre can only dispose of the arguments of others. It’s why frustrated writers become critics.
Ella-B:
The theory is simply a critique of grand narratives which would include marxism.
That’s another problem with postmodernism. Although it’s a fair position to critique grand narratives, demolishing them or critiquing them out of existence can be incredibly harmful. One of these would be the Moral Arc of History. For the past couple of centuries it has been demonstrably true- and we can prove it by looking at the metrics of history, in terms of access to rights, material improvements in living standards, live expectancy, deaths in childbirth and infant mortality.
OK, so maybe it’s not fair to say that postmodernism critiques the Moral Arc of History in areas such as race, and perhaps its more the case that it’s the application of postmodern philosophy which is employed to this end, but the practitioners of postmodernism commit a causal fallacy here. They assume that there must be other factors which account for the Moral Arc. Perhaps its because people are better educated, because we’ve taught kids to be more tolerant and inclusive, because we’ve already dismantled some small part of the machinery of Structural Racism but we need to go faster, and in destroying myths about the Moral Arc of History and the apparatus of Structural Racism, we can achieve greater ‘equity’ faster.
It’s a horrendously flawed argument for one simple reason- especially in areas of culture, the Moral Arc of History only exists and continues to work, because we believed it to be so. Think of it this way- a hundred dollar bill is a social construct. It has no inherent value- other than as a piece of paper which can be written on, or burned as kindling. It only has value because we believe in it collectively.
The same thing is true of racial progress. If you are White you might believe that racial progress is further forward than a Black person might feel looking at the same circumstances from different perspectives, but until quite recently both Black and White were united in the belief that even things weren’t perfect today, weren’t fair, they would be better tomorrow or a decade from now.
The call of Critical Race Theory is to deconstruct the myth of racial progress as a means to highlight current Structural Racism and dismantle the structures of power which perpetuate it, but the emerging evidence shows that once one dismantles the myth of the Moral Arc of History it demolishes the benign effects of believing in this grand narrative- in effect, the hundred dollar bill becomes worthless. And this is made most apparent through the universal ‘lived experience’ of men versus women, which is perhaps the most powerful dividing line of all, when one compares other such arbitrary division like race or sexuality.
Because men give up when they are presented with the perception of a rigged game. They cheat in a misguided and often ill-advised attempt to level the playing field. They become aggressive and act out. And whatever utility to be gained from destroying this myth of racial progress in the cause of raising consciousness or dismantling systems of injustice, it is likely to be far less than the removal of the benign effects of our shared, if discordant, beliefs in this shared narrative.
In many ways it’s similar to the history of teaching and the erstwhile desire to remove competitive sports from the curriculum. Did competitive sports encourage boys to adopt a more competitive rather than cooperative and collaborative approach in the world? Certainly. Did competitive sports aid the cause of capitalism in the world by providing labour which was better conditioned towards the competition inherent to capitalism? Of course. Historically, did sports begin as a means of preparing male youth for war throughout time? Without a doubt.
But the other purpose served through competitive sports was in helping young males particularly prone to biological aggression find a way to channel that aggression into healthy and constructive pursuits which weren’t harmful to society. It was a source of positive male mentoring and a means of teaching thoroughly benign mechanisms like being a good sportsman, learning how to cope with losing in a constructive manner and also learning not to gloat too persistently or loudly when one wins. In this instance, the removal of the perceived negative effects of competitive sports was harmful, because no one considered the far more beneficial positive effects- namely, keeping young men out of jail by improving their behaviour.
And I will readily admit that postmodernists have a point about grand narratives and the lies we tell ourselves, but what they unerringly tend to do is underestimate the potential costs and pitfalls of removing particular grand narratives from the cultural landscape. It’s tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
In many ways its like the argument about socialism pursued to its logical extreme. Yes, there have been some successes with the less extreme and more moderate approach to redistribution, but taken to the extreme, all the numerous experiments to date have shown that a country quickly loses it’s ability to produce sufficient food for its population, as established systems of economic delivery are broken down through the removal of existing property rights. People starve.
And this isn’t a strawman argument. In practical terms I’ve watched and read enough of the likes of 13th, the 1619 project and The New Jim Crow, to know that the argument goes something along the lines that systems of injustice with regard to race constantly reinvent themselves through the prevailing power interests of Whites as a group- rendering the Moral Arc with regard to race a fiction. The problem with the practical application of postmodernism applied to deconstruct the grand narrative of the Moral Arc of History, is that its proponents make the assumption that the Moral Arc is a given which we can always rely upon, like the sunshine in the morning or the rain.
It’s a dangerous assumption to make, and one ignorant of history at every time and every place throughout history, other than for a brief spell in the West and a few other relatively rare and isolated periods in history. All the evidence suggests that the Moral Arc only exists because we collectively believed in the power of its mythos. Remove that mythos and the effect will dissipate as the belief ages out in the population.
You may believe this is untrue, that I’m just plain wrong about this one, but why then are younger people becoming less comfortable with LGBTQ? This article tries to place the blame on other factors like Trump or the rise of hatred on social media, but one actually needs to look at the data which the article actually gives. Why would the effect be strongest in the group most likely to be Left-leaning and anti-Trump- young women? It’s because in the absence of grand narratives which unite people in pursuit of a common perceived public good, people revert to their own power interests.
That’s the real problem with postmodernism- critiquing grand narratives isn’t a problem, it’s the assumption that deconstructing them to the point of robbing them of their power entirely will inevitably lead to a better place. All the evidence would tend to argue to the contrary.
‘It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.’
As for younger people getting less comfortable around member's of LGBTQ+ communities, it's because of the fear of causing offense, no? if we resort to Occam again?
your link there is further evidence for the creeping mediocrity of woke thought. 'journalism' that shows no understanding of polling, or sources, or sociology in general.
“We count on the narrative that young people are more progressive and tolerant,” John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll, told USA TODAY. “These numbers are very alarming and signal a looming social crisis in discrimination.”
'As for younger people getting less comfortable around member's of LGBTQ+ communities, it's because of the fear of causing offense, no? if we resort to Occam again?'- I think that's part of it, but another part is what Jonathan Haidt refers to as procedural fairness. People don't mind conceding higher status to another member in the group when they feel it's merited, because the other person is a good listener, reciprocal and entertaining; or because they have acknowledged expertise in a given subject matter, but they don't like ceding higher status for arbitrary reasons or when a person hogs attention, setting the agenda for discussion.
Ever notice how the most popular people aren't always the most attractive ones? Charm seems to come from engaging people, truly enjoying others peoples contributions. Anything which disrupts this deeply reciprocal system is likely to breed underlying resentment. I broke my leg when I was in high school on the French exchange. To begin with people were falling all over themselves to be sympathetic and trying to help, but within a month, any attempt to milk it on my part was met with raised eyebrows and no sympathy whatsoever.
In order words, people like to feel relatively equal within their group, or at least not at the bottom. Anything which arbitrarily changes status settings, without people feeling as though they have a say in who gets to be the centre of attention, is going to put people's backs up. Again, it's about procedural fairness and reciprocity.
I came across an essay a while back that looked at hierarchy, essentially arguing that there are two kinds of hierarchies, ecstatic and idiotic. Ecstatic ones are an order established for the sake of achieving a higher goal (such as yielding to expertise). They have mobility and are responsive to changing environments and their members changing and growing. Idiotic ones are preoccupied with maintaining its existence and serving that end long after any real purpose has been fulfilled. Anything that is produced is going to be as idiotic as the hierarchy that produced it but often it gives up producing anything useful at all.
Idiotic hierarchies can be reformed and ecstatic ones can become idiotic. I thought it was a compelling framing, especially for a lot political and social dynamics of today.
This would suggest that from an epistemological standpoint, government hierarchies would inherently tend more towards the idiotic. Real world observations would tend to support this conclusion...
The problem is government usually has no incentive to reform idiotic hierarchies. If anything government managers gain status and promotions as the size of their mandarinate grows.
No disagreement here. Since Marx and Foucault we've been dished out alternatives to philosophy and religion that have enhanced humanity and culture over centuries and millennia. Fans of both seem to be rendered intolerant, even totalitarian.
I returned to "On Liberty" again a couple months back, and appreciated the citation. Sadly, I doubt current readers could handle the ideas or the very long sentences. Perhaps you could assemble an executive summary or an illustrated short course on same to be shared by cellphone.
I blame a lot of it on whole word or whole language, too early. Don't get me wrong, whole word has its place- when one finds a word outside one's everyday vocabulary it's a useful method, and especially so for people like my brother, who is dyslexic and could only learn through whole word.
But phonics for a young kid is more likely to engender reading for pleasure at an early age- its like a guessing game where most kids will have the efforts rewarded with satisfaction most of the time.
My younger cousin studied History and received a 1st. He is extremely bright, but learned whole word exclusively and as a consequence (I believe) never reads for pleasure. He did a Masters in Computers and now runs the IT for a company in Cambridge. He does read, but only when researching online- never a book for the pure pleasure of it.
'I returned to "On Liberty" again a couple months back, and appreciated the citation. Sadly, I doubt current readers could handle the ideas or the very long sentences. Perhaps you could assemble an executive summary or an illustrated short course on same to be shared by cellphone.'
I will have to give it some thought. I could probably rustle up a relevant quote from Adam Smith on markets and the problems inherent to the 'Man of Systems' approach. Voltaire is obviously an essential rebuttal to the modern paradigm! Who else should I cover, and which particular aspects of their work?
On the other hand, I think Mills has several things to say about our current predicament, the 'tyranny of others' is particularly salient given the recent past of COVID regimes.
You’re right as rain, mate: either Grand Narratives reign, or story-telling apes face an abject ruin—as gazillions of unreined self-serving micro acts beget a macro chaos ☻
I imagine you're familiar with the pre-image concept of the meme. It's my contention that as new memes learn to adapt to their hosts they become less harmful over time (although they can still be harmful to outside cultures and/or religions). In other words, a new idea pathogen can be deadly to the society it forms in, but over time it can even enter into a positive relationship of benign symbiosis or parasitism. Unfortunately, this seems to take hundreds of years at the very least.
It's why almost all of the new ideas systems seem to be prone to being taken over by psychopaths and Dark Triad types. And, if anything, social media seems to have been both the principal super spreader and an amplifier of our susceptibility to bad ideas. It was one of the key characteristics of the early spread of woke across Elite four year colleges. The kids weren't learning about the Grievance Studies from direct courses, but rather via their smartphones from the small number of students actually attending these courses at the time.
Mindless egregores our virtual interconnectedness gives rise to isn’t smth I’d willingly meet in dark back alley 😉 Couple ‘em with advanced pathocracy, and things quickly get rather scary. Political Ponerology has useful insights if not answers, Łobaczewski’s original and its home on substack alike.
This is probably the best article I've read on the Omega Inflection. It's taut and very well argued and there's very little one can add.
If anything were to be added I would suggest more on complexity and ambiguity. Both these factors fall by the wayside in the rather simplistic attempts one sees to replace the Moral Arc. Certainties are no match for reality and for the fact that there is no one single way.
'If anything were to be added I would suggest more on complexity and ambiguity.' Great point- but I would go further and argue that although problems may be complex, often the solutions are less so. There can be an asymmetry in terms of problems versus solutions or trade-offs. Germany is the example Liberal Criminologists cite for a country which manages to achieve relatively low crime without the need for targeted, data-driven proactive policing, targeting the neighbourhoods where crime is at its highest.
But they never stop to ask why this might be the case? It's simple- the 70% of kids who aren't suitable for higher education are enrolled in technical or vocational education. In effect, every boy who doesn't do well at school is exposed to a male mentor who helps teach them a trade. Just think how powerful this idea could be applied across the Anglosphere...
It works in the German context and I can certainly see it working in the US but in the more class ridden and status obsessed societies it might have difficulty in gaining traction. Everyone wants to be top dog now but what is top dog? There are solutions but they're not so simple or clear and what works in one context may not work in others.
As a consultant I had a simple rule of thumb for judging a successful CEO - have they done it more than once? That is turned around a failing business. So many would succeed with one enterprise (which in itself is a seriously good achievement) but then fail with the very next business they took on.
Most solutions offered come ready packed and defined. However, as Clauswitz wrote, 'no plan survives first contact with the enemy'.
'As a consultant I had a simple rule of thumb for judging a successful CEO - have they done it more than once? That is turned around a failing business.'
At one point I used to go to conferences. One of the particular favourites which seemed to be a regular favourite of guest speaker slot was the grizzled entrepreneur who had tried repeatedly to set up a successful business, only to fail repeatedly before finally succeeding.
I think it was because a was a sales executive at the time, selling business to business. They had probably realised that stories of resilience and tenacity kept sales types motivated and on track. In the end, I shifted to a more technical role.
Yes you get quite a few of those on the conference circuit. As long as they stick to that success they're safe and motivational. Sometimes it's a bit too obvious that luck is the major factor though. You did well to move to the technical side
Sales wasn't for me- I didn't mind the 'question, question, question' aspect, but I prefer puzzles and analysing systems so they can be improved. Often, innovation can be something as simple as giving your progress chasers regular printed tracking reports and multipack of different coloured highlighters!
That's the thing which so many overlook- we prize the highly cognitive, but we don't place enough emphasise on the moral duty to use our gifts to structuralise problems for others. My progress chasers went from being considered lazy and requiring a boot up the arse, to having frank and open discussions with directors about the structural problems confronting the business.
Of course, they weren't really my progress chasers- I preferred working hard problems to soft ones :)
Sales isn't for everyone but it's always worth having the experience. The small stuff is frequently ignored and it's that which makes the difference - like your pack of highlighters and regular printed tracking reports.
Man, I geeked out reading this. I grew up studying postmodern theory, loving the Simpsons and Beck and other exemplars of the philosophy. Teach it to kids. You know, as a subject, not an ideology. Got my smoke and my coffee and Godspeed! You black emperor playing in the background. Good to go here in the comments!
This is one of my first (the first?) interactions with you stone cold sober. You, Matt McManus, a few others inspired me with your insistence on logic and reason as everyone in the world all went stupid at the same time. Inspired me to focus on reason as a way out of darkness. I want to give you and your writing the respect of a clear mind.
as clear as this mind gets, ahem ...
Been solosober for 2 months now, and it's going freakin' great. this is a tangent, but bear with me here, i get back to postmodernism. I've been thinking about this all damn year since, or at least since getting cancelled in march. for playing a song by a pulitzer prize winner in class, natch.
No need to get into it here, but suffice to say, I was on a downward spiral. straight-up existential crisis for years, following many personal losses. alchohol was my big 'FU' to the world around me. I hit rock bottom in my quest to complete 'project oblivion'. and I came out of it. why?
because, fuck you relativism. fuck this shit. my anger at this faux-woke BS, which for me became personified in the way progressives - likely, postmodernists, whether or not they know it- treated me during my multiple bereavements, that anger woke up something in side of me that was stronger than my desire for the self-annihilation that is isolation and booze.
Given that both my first and second-tier support networks had been wiped out due to tragedy, I sure as fuck needed a reason to get out of bed. and it was believing something as simple as the emperor has no clothes. like, I was in suspended animation for years of despair, a literal unfrozen caveman teacher, woke up and this is the world around me? wtf guys? this shit is happening on your watch and nobody says anything in progressive circles? SOBs who never got their hands dirty are trashing me, whose waded through the detritus of actual progressive work his entire life?
I got a word for that bro. gaslighting.
it's hard work to claim any kind of moral or intellectual authority. I claim both. I'm sure you do too, and you have earned it man, over and over again, publicly in your writing. to me, we are both 'whole-hearted and half-sure'. the truth is out there, we can never know it, so let's at least try the best we can right? these half-assed relativists do no work and claim moral and intellectual authority?
$#^@ that BS, right?
It was a better reason to get out of bed for me, at least, than no reason at all. and that's why i got sober bro. to better call BS.
occam's razor is a neutral tool. it's the wielder who determines good or evil. people wrote me off as a dumbass due to my drinking, and didn't listen when I insisted that my problem was grief. it was easier for people to attribute my 'fall' to my own actions rather than someone broken from multiple traumas. it fits their comfortable moral universe better.
there is no 'there but by the grace of god' in smug, middle class progressives, because there is literally no god other than self-actualization, the ultimate act of relativity.
and here I go, writing about the self, freakin' middle-class white male. I am simply trying to illustrate my arguments anecdotally, and unfortunately, the best examples I have of this in application are personal.
ultimately, postmodernism to me represents freedom, and it has become the most ironic of cages in application. obviously, relativism will consume itself if the logic is tested in ethical realms, and postmodernists were aware of this! you often write of the decline or even demise of so many of those fundamentals of human existence, family, faith, community, career. your argument here for sport in schools.
(Is that under threat, btw, in the UK? news to me here in Toronto, but again, depressed shut-in....)
anyway, as a shut-in with weird philosophical interests, I had nothing but time on my hands to immerse myself in them. take, say, the muddy waters of the QC. this experience talking to people on both sides of the political divide in real time, on say, Jan 6th - to me, it appeared that I was seeing the failure of this academic philosophy - postmodernism- live, real time in the progressive response. which inflames the culture wars that progressives claim to despise, but inflame anyway.
obviously, I quit QC in disgust with the conservative BS justifying their narratives around Jan 6th. they, too, were ironically relativistic when their cards were on the table. I mean, Trump truly is the postmodern president, no?
but I'm more upset with progressives, because those are my beliefs they are abusing.
my story is anecdotal evidence for sure, but at the end of the day, I think it does illustrate these issues very clearly. when multiple individuals report similar experiences, then we start moving from anecdote to data.
my answer to the postmodernist question? challenge em on postmodern grounds. beat em at their own game. and believe me, it's like shooting fish in a barrel with this lot.
what, you disagree? with me? but my lived experience!!!
FWIW, I wrote this entire reply in, hopefully, a postmodern spirit. please forgive the literary flourishes, but it just fits the subject. I think of Puck, the trickster, as a postmodern icon. he constantly needles and questions, playing pranks that reveal the absurdity of life, but does he ever deny the existence of a truth, something greater? nah. he embraces the spirit of a living in pursuit of an unknowable.
man, I worked on this one all morning. love to hear your thoughts!
(whoops, a last minute request)
I literally hold out hope that you can help me with a question that's plagued me for years. i wrote a phrase in an essay i can no longer find (ah, the days when your writing could just .... vanish), one that I likely shared with you back in the day on Quillette. From my unreliable memory...
On the subject of postmodernism, I wrote that I am "whole-hearted and half-sure". I attributed this paraphrase to Edward Said in my head for years, no idea why, never read the man. you got any familiarity with the idea?
in all likelihood, I am paraphrasing a beloved eccentric prof of mine, Ed O'Sullivan. he was an ecotheorist and educator, not at all a postmodernist, so I assume he was answering a question of mine.
any thoughts on the genesis of this idea, or comparable stuff, greatly appreciated
Great post mate, and sorry to hear of all your troubles. I agree with you on the Trump thing, by the way. I think it was a case of the man becoming intermingled with the cause. For many, he represented the first real challenge to the notion that the highly educated elites should reign supreme over the other 70% to 80% of society, when their ideas are obviously so different from the rest, on issues like Patriotism, Nationality vs. Supranationalism, the right to take comfort from one's own culture over others, or indeed immigration.
The thing many missed was that they loved him for his ability to say anything and not give a shit about the backlash and furore by the PC authoritarians in the corporate media. To them it was like the best form of television in the world, because it finally put the shoe on the other foot- they were able to derive a not-so-secret glee from his ability to shock and dismay his opponents and critics, and walk away relatively untarnished with his teflon coating. It was why they were so loyal towards him at the end... They had become intellectually attached to the belief that only he could challenge the prevailing liberal narrative and the corporate media. They really need to detach the moral vision from the man, because on a good day Trump could hardly be described as moral- but in America, over the past decade, it's become all about the existential threat of the opposition...
It's so ironic and so tragic. To a liberal their frequent successes at the ballot box and their domination of SCOTUS would represent the power to change the world, but to a conservative it means so little other than the ability to hold back the tide of government for a while. I never understood how it might feel to be on the outside of broad cultural movements, out of sync and at odds with many changes. In many ways it feels like being the champion of the debating team, the captain of the school team, only to wake up one morning and suddenly discover that you've become a cultural nonentity with halitosis. I've taken to watching The Critical Drinker on YouTube- he is a great cultural thermometer in his critique of modern movies.
There is a great Bari Weiss Substack on this issue, interviewing William Barr- it's a great interview and shows what a poor leader Trump was and his personal failures on the management front: https://www.commonsense.news/p/bill-barr-calls-bullsht
Here's the thing, I've been doing some research on the Construction Trade. Did you know that an Aussie builder earns $35 US, whilst his American counterpart earns a little over $18, and in the UK the figure is just over £13. It's a hegemony of the cognitively gifted, people like us- where people who are less fortunate than us aren't even allowed a little dignity or the chance to exceed the earnings of favoured children who go to university. The reason why the Aussie wages are so high, is because they have blue collar labour protections built into their immigration system. They actually have a rate of 30% foreign-born citizens, over twice that of equivalent countries, and they only began to see the very beginnings of baby Trump populism when they began to relax the Blue Collar protections. So its perhaps best to see populism as a symptom of the need for redress- the problem is they need a better spokesman to give voice to their anguish at being relegated to the point of cultural irrelevancy, sneered at and talked down to. I was perhaps better prepared because I had seen it all with Brexit, the vindictiveness which follows from the cultural cognoscenti not getting their way.
I think you mentioned you had troubles in the past, particularly on the subject of grief, but I had no idea you had been through the wringer so much in recent times. I hope you manage your way through. I've been through something similar- I had a car crash at 21, and when my dad died just over a decade later, it all came crashing back. I had become a problem drinker as I was doing quite a stressful, but rewarding job, at the time. I was functional during the week, but a drink-besotted lunatic flake at the weekends. The irony was my work problems arose because I took a couple of weeks compassionate leave and my bosses realised just how vulnerable the business was through me not being there (even though I had trained an admin to cover my job for holidays)!
Anyway, after a few months CBT-style counselling, I decided to cool my drinking down for a while. It was only a year later, when I went on a Jolly Boys outing, that many who had come to dislike me through my excesses came to realise that my drinking had changed- it meant a lot when they told my mum that I had been a pleasure to be around, the very essence of good behaviour. But don't take my experiences as advice! Everyone has to find their own way, what's right for them.
Personally, I've found the dividing line to reside in the distinction between drinking for pleasure and to celebrate and drinking to forget and to numb the pain. So if you do decide at some future point to begin drinking again remember this simple rule- only ever drink to celebrate, never to numb the pain.
I hope you will keep in touch. I want to know that you are doing well. It might be an idea to find some form of support system in your efforts to stay sober, whether through counselling or some form of group support mechanism. One of things which stuck with me, was when a writer referred to crashing out of the just-world hypothesis. We tend to think that the world is just place, that everything will be OK if we are simply a good person and uphold the social contract. Unfortunately, the world doesn't work that way- the worst shit can happen to the nicest people.
I cannot for the life of me place the quote, but it seems familiar. I find it somewhat similar to Betrand Russell's observation- “One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”
as for the topic of your post - your comments on education and fair wages for the working class, and the privilege of the cognitively privileged remain spot on. you were the first person to break down the data on immigration negatively affecting certain working class / rural demographics.
too many progressives talk about grand ideas as monoliths, when obviously there are countless people under the conservative tent. some racists no doubt, but plenty of those with legit fear for providing for their families. add in that most progressives don't actually know any conservatives and it becomes easy - if lazy, morally and intellectually - to judge the group as a whole.
one thing I've been thinking a lot about - and Bill Barr's answers in the interview with Bari Weiss are riddled with this - some conservatives benefit from the work of the trolls, the provocateurs like that 'Diagalon' guy Jonathan Kay was talking about. the trolls embed themselves in more legitimate contexts, gaining plausible deniability, and then they can troll idiot progressives or dogwhistle to the genuine extremists.
I don't think for a second Polivere shaking hands with some nut matters. I don't think he knew the guy. but he does benefit from the progressives getting all worked up. Jagmeet Singh is actually a good guy, I've voted for him, but he drank the privileged progressive kool-aid long ago. him overreacting to this 'incident' benefits Polivere and the far right more than it does any progressive causes.
look at Barr's answers to Weiss' questions. for example
"It was a mystery to me why people kept on saying that he was going to try to remain in office. I thought they were setting the stage for a close election that Trump won and claiming that he had stolen the election. I had never heard of some plan to stay in office and I don’t know anyone else who had heard of that, except, it appears, Steve Bannon".
oh, and me. and Trump himself, because I knew he was going to fight to stay in office because he kept saying it.
so, Barr is embracing the BS narrative that comes from these extreme right trolls, or even the apolitical 'for the lulz' trolls, because it already has traction in conservative communities. so he can say something that is COMPLETELY FALSE because the only community he cares about already believes it. someone else has done the dirty work spreading the narrative, and Barr maintains plausible deniability while lying through his teeth.
conserva-BS 101. Barr knows exactly what he is doing, and his interview has plenty of legit content and argument too - another tenet of conservaBS. hide the lies amid the truth. so did the press get Russia wrong? for sure! and was trump at work diminishing the credibility of the press, the concept of truth, the idea of intellectual labor having merit at all? from day 1. undermining the credibility of voting itself? he's been doing this in plane sight for years.
a bold lie, hiding amongst a bunch of valid statements, directed at an audience who now reject scientific expertise? who have been convinced they are being lied to?
that one bugs me. I know lots of conservatives, and they all think this to various degrees. not q-anon / pizzagate crazy, but some sort of we are being lied-to by the progressive man conspiracy. progressives as a whole aren't smart enough to conspire these days.
progressives are not liars. smug, entitled dumb-asses? for sure. risk-averse idiots? definitely.
back to Barr. the man adheres to ALL the narratives on the right around Jan. 6th. we didn't see it coming? of course you did. but that lie is so mainstream in conservative circles, they have circled the wagons so thoroughly, he gets away with it.
man, you saw this yourself live on Jan. 6th on QC. the reasoning they had to justify or downplay the event was already in place. it predated the 6th by months and years.
the first thing QCers freaked about was the phrase 'armed insurrection'. no evidence! they shouted. they were outraged. this is proof of progressvie propaganda! uhh, no. plenty of evidence, plenty of violence. deaths. we knew who was going to the event. the ex-military, the far-right, hardline conservatives who carry their freakin' guns with them everywhere. obviously some of them were armed. we had comments from people and groups planning to attend, we knew their tactics.
and funny how this, the first major conservative protest event of my lifetime, in the WEIRD world at least - immediately flips the script on the behaviour of protestors, right? a complete about-face on these issues despite public proclamations about BLM protestors?
strangely, dealing with my grief has helped my understanding of the culture wars, and vice-versa. a lot of people fail to support you in grief, or even cause active, if unintended harm, due to ignorance. i mean, they simply didn't know what would help
i didn't know what I needed. they didn't know how to help. we were all ignorant. ignorance is the enemy in the culture wars bro. i find no fault in people who have been lied to, as long as they are happy to know it now. that's the tea, in politics and life, across the divide where the real people live.
(btw, while I do mourn what postmodernism has become, I just rewatched 24 hour party people, the Winterbottom movie about the madchester music scene. its' a blast of awesome postmodernist art.. you ever see 'exit through the gift shop'? I believe that is my defining postmodern work right there).
ultimately, I'm on team reason, team empathy, old school socialist that I am at heart. that team crosses political divides. so i disagree with you when you talk about the "vindictiveness which follows from the cultural cognoscenti not getting their way"
i don't think it's vindictiveness. I think it's ignorance. It's the grossest kind of ignorance - it comes from self-serving moral relativism, and allows for lazy thinking and effort on the issues of the day. but they do think they are right, and are righteous - like the more vitriolic pro-lifers right?
because I now do fully believe that wokeness is, not a religion, but attempting to replicate a faith-based system of values, a secular one, to fill the void left behind by rejecting all master narratives, amirite? not like, some dude is planning this out, but it is organically happening.
i don't know what the equivalent concept on the right would be, perhaps 'righteous paranoia'? this exaltation of ignorance, an outright rejection of the idea of expertise? there's another one of these horrible far right memes that have wiggled into the mainstream - reject everything! spend your time actually learning about the issues? elitist!
strange how similar the left and right are, psychologically, on this growing dogmatism. it's been weird watching it evolve. i've had strange interactions with conservatives, just, same shit we always talked, but they are different - can't talk about certain topics, get emotional over ideas - ive never seen some of these guys get emotional, and they are just as hyper-sensitive as the lefties. just like progressive narratives are eroding resilience on the left - you, child are always going to be a victim! you, lad, will always be the oppressor. conservative 'everything is a lie' narratives are doing the exact same kind of damage on the right.
The Bill Barrs and the Joe Bidens are the problem, and the beyond-the-law extremely wealthy behind them, not joe six pack and johnny uhh .... what's the left wing equivalent of joe six pack? that 70-80% you cite in your first paragraph is true on the left, too man, although they have more privilege and are therefore more blind to it. i see lots of lefty friends grappling with woke overreach now, finally. that's a start.
"perhaps best to see populism as a symptom of the need for redress"
well said, 100% agree.
trying to tie this response together, I do believe I have a chance to 'win' in my dispute with the board on the grounds that they violated my human rights. l pick your ethical system utilitarian, deontological, aristotelean -wrong ethically, and wrong in it's application of intersectional thought.
I wonder what you think of this whole situation, how I should approach it? I'm actually in a position in life in which I can retire here and do something else.
also, thanks for sharing your story man, hearing those stories from friends who have actually suffered themselves means a lot to me. and you made it through.
the just world hypothesis - you got a link for that? sounds apt.
As always man, starting my day with a coffee, a smoke and some thought provoking ideas is great. I'm looking to build more positive routines in my life and that means engaging with the world sober, no matter how shite I might feel, so looking forward to your next post!
hey man, thanks for the support! tbh, quitting drinking was easy - although I still do drink with others - going 'solo sober' was about eliminating that isolating, despairing solo drinking. once or twice a month that I drink with friends, celebration, as opposed to numbing the pain.
finding a reason to try to be a part of the world again was the hard part. I think for a lot of people in my world, it was easier to blame alcohol than it was to think that they too might fall apart if they lived through what I did. progressives are relativists generally, and secular, and I think that was the split - conservatives still supported me, generally, because it was the right thing to do, and they actually are more likely to 'practice' caring for others.
'solo-sober' was my way of proving that grief happens, that some people get dealt the short end of the stick, and there is no 'right or wrong' inherent in my fate. once i had my own game plan that I believed in (solo-sober), it was easy-peasy. well, easy in terms of 'addictions'. the grief is more omnipresent
my hope is that the TDSB, my employer, has dropped the ball so completely that they can't but look bad on their own terms. 'wellness' is one of their three core three priorities, and they surely didn't consider my wellness at all, but according to intersectional theory, 'invisible disabilities' such as my PTSD and complicated grief count.
'a hundred dollar bill is a social construct. It has no inherent value- other than as a piece of paper which can be written on, or burned as kindling. It only has value because we believe in it collectively.'
That's a misconception, and it's important to flesh out because it's very relevant to your overall argument.
A hundred dollar bill has value because on the other end, way up the chain, is a bank and a central reserve that prints money and people with guns who can put you in jail if you don't use that bill in acceptable ways. A hundred dollar bill is a statement of credit controlled by people who use violent systems to regulate behaviour.
If the postmodernists end up in charge of these systems (and they are already in many places) the collapse of Grand Narratives won't mean that we stop believing in money. People who live in reality will always care about money in its different forms as they care for their own needs. Rather, 'paper' money will be used more directly as the tool of violent control that it is.
After all, the deconstructionists believe that the oppressor fundamentally owes them - that they are entitled to *credit* in the broadest sense.
The weaponisation of state-issued credit is a logical step in the pursuit of redressing wrongs. We are already seeing this principle being applied digitally in China, in Canada, in the war between Russia in the West, and just this week by Paypal and Venmo.
You mention that extreme socialism destroys a country's ability to produce food. The suffering peoples in these countries still believe in money, it's just that credit is weaponised against them.
The only way to meaningfully respond to the postmodernists, without perpetuating their games, is to ground your life and your speech in tangible, real things that cannot be endlessly manipulated as 'social constructs' and cannot be taken away through credit inflation or digital censorship.
Good point, and I was aware of the government monopoly on force, as well as the growing tendency to ostracise through finance. Justin Trudeau's actions during the Trucker protests is only the tip of the iceberg. Recently, Toby Young's accounts were banned from PayPal. He runs the Daily Sceptic, but even more galling was the suspension of the Free Speech Union- so, in effect, PayPal attempted to cancel the organisation devoted to legally challenging Cancel Culture!
The thing we should fear most, though is Central Bank controlled digital currency. I'm quite thankful this guy didn't win the Tory leadership contest, even if Liz Truss's recent mini-budget did sink the pound. A programmable digital currency goes even further than George Orwell envisaged...
hope you are fine, here in the Mediterranean sea we are having a nice summer, swimming is good though the sea has been very hot this year and there are a lot of jellyfish.
I would enter in discussing the comment from Ella B i have read some her comments in quillete and, she does not have the foot on the ground, yes theories, yes books, yes any kind of philosophical STUFF. But if you would ask her to define a world, a country or a region and it has to do produce and according to her theories how many people can live there, her facade will fall, she will try to turn the question around.
Communism is the best model theoretically, you can see communist working in a film, please watch "the Gods must be crazy", so the family living in the Kalahari are communist, they live very nicely because they are a small group (very first condition), they have plenty enough to be happy (second necessary condition), the managers of the society, the elders of the group have the well-being of each member of the community at their hearts would die to protect the other members (third essential condition). The film is really funny and i recommend it to anybody willing to enjoy a great time with a comedy completely different to the Hollywood ones.
Then when they get the flying object the second condition is removed, so they start quarreling between them.
So in a group of a certain size you will always find competition within the group for limited resources, a limited resource could be the very attractive partners for mating and there you will have a problem, that competition is not catered for in a communist society. Because EllaB is very attractive does noy face that problem but me i will have the develop other skills to win the matting partners from her , and these skills and additional resources i cannot share them because otherwise i loose competitive advantage. Then because the son of the manager is not that pretty and not that skillful ... the manager would leave him/her to its devices because the managers love us all the same. Then because i am skillful but i cannot compete with Ellab and i have to share the outcome of my skills then i get demotivated and i produce like the less skillful in town, either that or a try to get up the leader of the party where i would produce less and work less because my skills are for something else. Final results everybody will try being the leader of the party or working the less possible because the resources being produced will be stolen by the lazy ones. This kind of social theories do not stand 5 minutes thinking in front of a coffee, and can only be developed either by a person with little knowledge of the real world and a lot of free time (Marx, and his friend). or by somebody with a very devious mind to try and misdirect the society and enslave them (which i think i have read this is what happened).
Take in account that the final evolution stage of fascism, communism, capitalism and socialism are the same and elite of privileged and the lump, even if the starting of these 4 systems and their purpose was different.
The lump would like to become part of the elite and the elite would like to remain where they are, "make me the ruler of the communism for the next five years and after that we can keep communism, if i start on the lump then i want revolution"
Take care and enjoy the remaining of summer, i can tell yu i really enjoy late swimming in the sea, and then having a piece of bread with a glass of wine by the sea while the sun sets
Cheers mate.- you too. I'm speeding through my replies- here and elsewhere. The power unit on my ten year old PC is dead, even though I finally took at apart and reassembled it to get out all the dust. Still not working- so I am using my bro's PC!
Great point about the ultimate destination of all political power systems. The good thing about capitalism is the egalitarian nature of technological innovation. 5 years ago it was still possible to buy a massive TV for £100K. The alternative was to wait 5 years for a better TV which is far less expensive :)
I still have 3 weeks of sea swimming the Mediterranean, middle October it get a bit cold, i will try to enjoy them to the full and if possible extend the season until end of october. Take care and nice weekend
Great article, mate- it covers a lot of what I've been thinking about. The problem with the elites who virtue signal on climate, is they really don't realise how important cheap and abundant energy is to most people's livelihoods.
Belatedly, the EU has reclassified gas and nuclear as 'green' technologies recently, and the UN has called for the advanced economies of the world to consider nuclear as a part of the solution to climate change. A while back I was having an argument with an ideologue on the Left about the scaling of nuclear- I had won the argument on safety and she then furnished me with a paper from MIT as to why nuclear projects have a tendency towards cost overruns, and are usually not delivered within the budget promised.
It turns out that regulatory costs are less of a problem than most nuclear advocates expect- the real problem comes with in-process design changes once construction has begun. This is to be expected. When you haven't built out nuclear in over twenty to thirty years, you cannot expect that even the best people will be able to anticipate all the problems and pitfalls which will arise- one of those known unknowns.
The problem is that most governments don't set out with this knowledge in mind. They might for one or two large power station project- not realising that they can achieve incredibly cheap, safe and abundant power once they have a fully experienced design team and a workforce with the institutional memory of previous projects.
India plans to increase their nuclear power portfolio by 50% by 2030, China has budgeted $440 billion to build 150 new power stations by 2035. What's the betting that the first four reactors cost between an eighth and a quarter of the total budget and the rest are built for a comparative song. Our Western leaders need to have substantially more foresight and have a little backbone- otherwise the West will fall into irreversible decline.
Hi Geary, found something that was commented by spanish "alternative media" that "yes they are alternative and so on," but so far they are nailing it. So this article, and the alleged RAND document that has published by the same Swedish internet news, the link is on the article
Well they were reporting on a very fast de-industrialization of Germany with companies migrating mainly to USA and Asia (China), they were giving numbers very frightening, and as i said, so far this "alternative news source" has been nailing it completely.
Nice weekend, i will try to squeeze the last swims of the season this weekend and the first week of october
I don't know whether the document is legitimate, but what I will say is that the great geopolitical strategists look at issues from multiple levels and points of view. Their job is then to see how big geopolitical changes will influence their clients, many of whom are national governments.
Have you heard of Peter Zeihan? I've been following a lot of his commentary about how the era of Globalisation is ending, and how it will have huge negative impacts. Personally I thought that neoliberalism was terrible for the blue collar class in the West, but good for most of the rest of the world- particularly in terms of the stability in global supply chains it brought.
Anyway, about these geopolitical strategists- they will always be looking at every way in which a particular change will benefit their client. Ironically, I think that Russia was a convenient scapegoat for Trump back in 2016, and much of the current paradigm stems from there. After all, the Trump victory was so stunning, they needed a convenient narrative to hang the reversal upon.
After all, they could hardly admit that 70% of America loathed the Washington Elites, with many only just voting for Hillary as the lesser of two evils. After all, this would have said altogether too much about the class and education-based loyalties of the Democrat loyalists and their privilege- it would have been altogether too painful as a narrative to contemplate- they could have run a golden retriever against Hillary Clinton and won!
Plus, the Washington Foreign Policy Establishment really did want revenge against Putin, for embarrassing them over Crimea, even though they hand a huge hand in creating the initial crisis. I would watch the recent Joe Rogan with Dave Smith- it's still free on Spotify I think. They show a clip of a guest on Stephen Colbert when he was still funny, gloating over Ukraine just before Crimea.
As to Germany, I think it's best considered in the light of the understanding that the Americans were shit scared of a new Germany-Russia-China axis of trade. All the signs were there, in terms of whether Europe was going to adopt the Chinese 5G, etc. Nord Stream 2. plus the Belt and Road Initiative with its potential trade realignments, especially in the high tech space has America terrified. After all, as a country, they were never averse to having the heads of the CIA and NSA line up opposite from Coca Cola and Google and ask them what they could do to protect and further their corporate interests.
America is very sinews of war orientated in their thinking. Look at what they did with the water at Flint, or how the FBI treated the medical examiner who first unearthed the serious implications of American Football, in terms of concussions...
Germany was the icing on the cake. It was also a way of punishing them for flirting with the idea of realigning commercially and in terms of trade. They needed the Bogeyman of Putin and Russia for their own domestic politics, and the goal of NATO had long been to push out into Russia's sphere of influence. And look at Europe's choices now- either start to frack, which will help out mainly American mining technology companies, or adopt LNG- which also favours American commercial interests.
no idea whether the document is fake or not, nowadays very easy to forge and very difficult to come clean.
Just imagine if Germany has to buy the gas from Poland (with the new piping) and just couple of weeks ago Poland was asking for WWII reparations. Like to many EU countries Poland main companies were bought/conquered by German or French corporations, surely now they will make them to beg for any gas coming from Norway. Fracking in the EU, difficult with all the political garbage we have. Now in Spain they are breaking lakes and dawns with the excuse of ecology but they are saying that the real reason is to create water scarcity and then the population would have to buy it at high price
A bit late to the party here I am afraid-but I’ve followed your prose in the comments sections of Quillette for many years now, must say that you and Ray Andrews are always a breath of fresh air.
As for Ella-B, I find that her steadfast adherence to her ideology, much to the exclusion of all else, is truly tiresome to wade through in the comments section-though I will say that you seem to be the only one who can consistently best her arguments, though she is loathe to admit as much.
You may have hit the nail ontghe head, but not pounded it quitew far enough.
Jeremy makes what is probably a good comment, that on the Simpsons, and perhaps some other recent cultural artifacts, we can see post-modernism instantiated. But I kinda wished for a capsule definition. Post-Modernism is, on the one hand, the rejection of the Grand Narrative of the past, the belief structure which has brought us to "Modernity." Of those traditions, either Bart or Homer might say something like, "meh!"
But on the other hand, for going on the past two centuries, there has been a different Grand Narrative, The Hegelian Dialectic, which says that the Arc of Justice moves forward , though sometimes my way of a waltz, two steps forward and one step back. Fighting the Arc is as futile as chasing the end of the rainbow. On that point, Ella-B is correct, and you and I also agree. And you say,
"The problem with the practical application of postmodernism applied to deconstruct the grand narrative of the Moral Arc of History, is that its proponents make the assumption that the Moral Arc is a given which we can always rely upon, like the sunshine in the morning or the rain."
Yep, post-modernism, which pretends to reject any Grand Narrative, replaces the grand narrative with the Stupidly Miniscule Narrative, that it is all sound and fury signifying nothing. And yet, and here is the paradox, and I believe it is at the core of what you and Ella-B wrestle, that the Critical Justice movement, and all the anti-racist platform, depend on the assumption that there is external definition of Justice, and that that external definition implies the call to destroy all other competing narratives. It is, as you say, Solipsistic. But I would have liked a little more definition of the terms of Post-Modernism, so that we could then explore, a little farther, how critical justice theory is a paradoxical emboodiment.
'But I would have liked a little more definition of the terms of Post-Modernism, so that we could then explore, a little farther, how critical justice theory is a paradoxical emboodiment.'- I would differentiate postmodernism in terms similar to Maths- pure and applied. At a pure level, it has a few intellectually useful concepts like the panopticon, Derrida's observation that we tend to weight the written form at the expense of other formats, and some of the more useful structural observations about how language can produce bias.
But at the applied level we see a degree of pathology. Although most postmodernists would deny it, there is a strong correlation between postmodernists and socialists, and there is a significant causation- if you spend your days critiquing the systems of Western free market capitalism and classical liberal democracy, isn't it then natural to grasp for the alternatives.
We see this even more with the Critical Theories- just substitute class for identity group. Many will claim they only want to overthrow oppression or make systems more just, but why then would they include a phrase like 'equity'- which is, in essence, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
'Recognize that everyone has the same capacity'- Kamala Harris.
Blank slate thinking. One of the reasons why humans have flourished so much since the 1850s is because of the heterodox abilities of individuals and markets. Everybody specialises in what they are best at (if they know what's good for them) and everyone is relatively much wealthier as a result.
Lol. It's tragic, isn't it. Grand narratives are the glue which holds the social contract together. For example, free speech is dying because nobody has read the Voltaire- ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’. Of course, the Quote Investigator would have us believe that it was Evelyn Beatrice Hall, who succinctly summarised Voltaire's attitude upon hearing that Claude-Adrien Helvétius work had faced public incineration, But these grand narratives are important because they represent a 'common core' of shared attitudes and beliefs.
Their dissolution spells the doom of much we have taken for granted for so long.
As for younger people getting less comfortable around member's of LGBTQ+ communities, it's because of the fear of causing offense, no? if we resort to Occam again?
your link there is further evidence for the creeping mediocrity of woke thought. 'journalism' that shows no understanding of polling, or sources, or sociology in general.
“We count on the narrative that young people are more progressive and tolerant,” John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll, told USA TODAY. “These numbers are very alarming and signal a looming social crisis in discrimination.”
can't get more faux woke that this right here
'As for younger people getting less comfortable around member's of LGBTQ+ communities, it's because of the fear of causing offense, no? if we resort to Occam again?'- I think that's part of it, but another part is what Jonathan Haidt refers to as procedural fairness. People don't mind conceding higher status to another member in the group when they feel it's merited, because the other person is a good listener, reciprocal and entertaining; or because they have acknowledged expertise in a given subject matter, but they don't like ceding higher status for arbitrary reasons or when a person hogs attention, setting the agenda for discussion.
Ever notice how the most popular people aren't always the most attractive ones? Charm seems to come from engaging people, truly enjoying others peoples contributions. Anything which disrupts this deeply reciprocal system is likely to breed underlying resentment. I broke my leg when I was in high school on the French exchange. To begin with people were falling all over themselves to be sympathetic and trying to help, but within a month, any attempt to milk it on my part was met with raised eyebrows and no sympathy whatsoever.
In order words, people like to feel relatively equal within their group, or at least not at the bottom. Anything which arbitrarily changes status settings, without people feeling as though they have a say in who gets to be the centre of attention, is going to put people's backs up. Again, it's about procedural fairness and reciprocity.
I came across an essay a while back that looked at hierarchy, essentially arguing that there are two kinds of hierarchies, ecstatic and idiotic. Ecstatic ones are an order established for the sake of achieving a higher goal (such as yielding to expertise). They have mobility and are responsive to changing environments and their members changing and growing. Idiotic ones are preoccupied with maintaining its existence and serving that end long after any real purpose has been fulfilled. Anything that is produced is going to be as idiotic as the hierarchy that produced it but often it gives up producing anything useful at all.
Idiotic hierarchies can be reformed and ecstatic ones can become idiotic. I thought it was a compelling framing, especially for a lot political and social dynamics of today.
Wow, that dovetails nicely with Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
This would suggest that from an epistemological standpoint, government hierarchies would inherently tend more towards the idiotic. Real world observations would tend to support this conclusion...
The problem is government usually has no incentive to reform idiotic hierarchies. If anything government managers gain status and promotions as the size of their mandarinate grows.
No disagreement here. Since Marx and Foucault we've been dished out alternatives to philosophy and religion that have enhanced humanity and culture over centuries and millennia. Fans of both seem to be rendered intolerant, even totalitarian.
I returned to "On Liberty" again a couple months back, and appreciated the citation. Sadly, I doubt current readers could handle the ideas or the very long sentences. Perhaps you could assemble an executive summary or an illustrated short course on same to be shared by cellphone.
or, maybe the modern reader just dislikes the overwrought and needlessly dense prose? that's my excuse for not reading some primary sources, anyway :)
I blame a lot of it on whole word or whole language, too early. Don't get me wrong, whole word has its place- when one finds a word outside one's everyday vocabulary it's a useful method, and especially so for people like my brother, who is dyslexic and could only learn through whole word.
But phonics for a young kid is more likely to engender reading for pleasure at an early age- its like a guessing game where most kids will have the efforts rewarded with satisfaction most of the time.
My younger cousin studied History and received a 1st. He is extremely bright, but learned whole word exclusively and as a consequence (I believe) never reads for pleasure. He did a Masters in Computers and now runs the IT for a company in Cambridge. He does read, but only when researching online- never a book for the pure pleasure of it.
'I returned to "On Liberty" again a couple months back, and appreciated the citation. Sadly, I doubt current readers could handle the ideas or the very long sentences. Perhaps you could assemble an executive summary or an illustrated short course on same to be shared by cellphone.'
I will have to give it some thought. I could probably rustle up a relevant quote from Adam Smith on markets and the problems inherent to the 'Man of Systems' approach. Voltaire is obviously an essential rebuttal to the modern paradigm! Who else should I cover, and which particular aspects of their work?
On the other hand, I think Mills has several things to say about our current predicament, the 'tyranny of others' is particularly salient given the recent past of COVID regimes.
'Who else should I cover, and which particular aspects of their work'?
man, I'd love to see you respond to contrapoints sometime ... she and you, on the right philosophical topic, would be fascinating.
You’re right as rain, mate: either Grand Narratives reign, or story-telling apes face an abject ruin—as gazillions of unreined self-serving micro acts beget a macro chaos ☻
I imagine you're familiar with the pre-image concept of the meme. It's my contention that as new memes learn to adapt to their hosts they become less harmful over time (although they can still be harmful to outside cultures and/or religions). In other words, a new idea pathogen can be deadly to the society it forms in, but over time it can even enter into a positive relationship of benign symbiosis or parasitism. Unfortunately, this seems to take hundreds of years at the very least.
It's why almost all of the new ideas systems seem to be prone to being taken over by psychopaths and Dark Triad types. And, if anything, social media seems to have been both the principal super spreader and an amplifier of our susceptibility to bad ideas. It was one of the key characteristics of the early spread of woke across Elite four year colleges. The kids weren't learning about the Grievance Studies from direct courses, but rather via their smartphones from the small number of students actually attending these courses at the time.
This article from Quillette was quite informative about the prevalence of Dark Triad amongst the Woke Left: https://quillette.com/2020/08/03/the-woke-left-v-the-alt-right-a-new-study-shows-theyre-more-alike-than-either-side-realizes/
Mindless egregores our virtual interconnectedness gives rise to isn’t smth I’d willingly meet in dark back alley 😉 Couple ‘em with advanced pathocracy, and things quickly get rather scary. Political Ponerology has useful insights if not answers, Łobaczewski’s original and its home on substack alike.
This is probably the best article I've read on the Omega Inflection. It's taut and very well argued and there's very little one can add.
If anything were to be added I would suggest more on complexity and ambiguity. Both these factors fall by the wayside in the rather simplistic attempts one sees to replace the Moral Arc. Certainties are no match for reality and for the fact that there is no one single way.
'If anything were to be added I would suggest more on complexity and ambiguity.' Great point- but I would go further and argue that although problems may be complex, often the solutions are less so. There can be an asymmetry in terms of problems versus solutions or trade-offs. Germany is the example Liberal Criminologists cite for a country which manages to achieve relatively low crime without the need for targeted, data-driven proactive policing, targeting the neighbourhoods where crime is at its highest.
But they never stop to ask why this might be the case? It's simple- the 70% of kids who aren't suitable for higher education are enrolled in technical or vocational education. In effect, every boy who doesn't do well at school is exposed to a male mentor who helps teach them a trade. Just think how powerful this idea could be applied across the Anglosphere...
It works in the German context and I can certainly see it working in the US but in the more class ridden and status obsessed societies it might have difficulty in gaining traction. Everyone wants to be top dog now but what is top dog? There are solutions but they're not so simple or clear and what works in one context may not work in others.
As a consultant I had a simple rule of thumb for judging a successful CEO - have they done it more than once? That is turned around a failing business. So many would succeed with one enterprise (which in itself is a seriously good achievement) but then fail with the very next business they took on.
Most solutions offered come ready packed and defined. However, as Clauswitz wrote, 'no plan survives first contact with the enemy'.
'As a consultant I had a simple rule of thumb for judging a successful CEO - have they done it more than once? That is turned around a failing business.'
At one point I used to go to conferences. One of the particular favourites which seemed to be a regular favourite of guest speaker slot was the grizzled entrepreneur who had tried repeatedly to set up a successful business, only to fail repeatedly before finally succeeding.
I think it was because a was a sales executive at the time, selling business to business. They had probably realised that stories of resilience and tenacity kept sales types motivated and on track. In the end, I shifted to a more technical role.
Yes you get quite a few of those on the conference circuit. As long as they stick to that success they're safe and motivational. Sometimes it's a bit too obvious that luck is the major factor though. You did well to move to the technical side
Sales wasn't for me- I didn't mind the 'question, question, question' aspect, but I prefer puzzles and analysing systems so they can be improved. Often, innovation can be something as simple as giving your progress chasers regular printed tracking reports and multipack of different coloured highlighters!
That's the thing which so many overlook- we prize the highly cognitive, but we don't place enough emphasise on the moral duty to use our gifts to structuralise problems for others. My progress chasers went from being considered lazy and requiring a boot up the arse, to having frank and open discussions with directors about the structural problems confronting the business.
Of course, they weren't really my progress chasers- I preferred working hard problems to soft ones :)
Sales isn't for everyone but it's always worth having the experience. The small stuff is frequently ignored and it's that which makes the difference - like your pack of highlighters and regular printed tracking reports.
'although problems may be complex, often the solutions are less so'
im stealing this line bro. props to you.
judging by my ashtray, I've been thinking about this too long. thanks for a thought provoking few hours!
agreed on all fronts man. the moral arc was the only idea I found myself questioning as I read this
Man, I geeked out reading this. I grew up studying postmodern theory, loving the Simpsons and Beck and other exemplars of the philosophy. Teach it to kids. You know, as a subject, not an ideology. Got my smoke and my coffee and Godspeed! You black emperor playing in the background. Good to go here in the comments!
This is one of my first (the first?) interactions with you stone cold sober. You, Matt McManus, a few others inspired me with your insistence on logic and reason as everyone in the world all went stupid at the same time. Inspired me to focus on reason as a way out of darkness. I want to give you and your writing the respect of a clear mind.
as clear as this mind gets, ahem ...
Been solosober for 2 months now, and it's going freakin' great. this is a tangent, but bear with me here, i get back to postmodernism. I've been thinking about this all damn year since, or at least since getting cancelled in march. for playing a song by a pulitzer prize winner in class, natch.
No need to get into it here, but suffice to say, I was on a downward spiral. straight-up existential crisis for years, following many personal losses. alchohol was my big 'FU' to the world around me. I hit rock bottom in my quest to complete 'project oblivion'. and I came out of it. why?
because, fuck you relativism. fuck this shit. my anger at this faux-woke BS, which for me became personified in the way progressives - likely, postmodernists, whether or not they know it- treated me during my multiple bereavements, that anger woke up something in side of me that was stronger than my desire for the self-annihilation that is isolation and booze.
Given that both my first and second-tier support networks had been wiped out due to tragedy, I sure as fuck needed a reason to get out of bed. and it was believing something as simple as the emperor has no clothes. like, I was in suspended animation for years of despair, a literal unfrozen caveman teacher, woke up and this is the world around me? wtf guys? this shit is happening on your watch and nobody says anything in progressive circles? SOBs who never got their hands dirty are trashing me, whose waded through the detritus of actual progressive work his entire life?
I got a word for that bro. gaslighting.
it's hard work to claim any kind of moral or intellectual authority. I claim both. I'm sure you do too, and you have earned it man, over and over again, publicly in your writing. to me, we are both 'whole-hearted and half-sure'. the truth is out there, we can never know it, so let's at least try the best we can right? these half-assed relativists do no work and claim moral and intellectual authority?
$#^@ that BS, right?
It was a better reason to get out of bed for me, at least, than no reason at all. and that's why i got sober bro. to better call BS.
occam's razor is a neutral tool. it's the wielder who determines good or evil. people wrote me off as a dumbass due to my drinking, and didn't listen when I insisted that my problem was grief. it was easier for people to attribute my 'fall' to my own actions rather than someone broken from multiple traumas. it fits their comfortable moral universe better.
there is no 'there but by the grace of god' in smug, middle class progressives, because there is literally no god other than self-actualization, the ultimate act of relativity.
and here I go, writing about the self, freakin' middle-class white male. I am simply trying to illustrate my arguments anecdotally, and unfortunately, the best examples I have of this in application are personal.
ultimately, postmodernism to me represents freedom, and it has become the most ironic of cages in application. obviously, relativism will consume itself if the logic is tested in ethical realms, and postmodernists were aware of this! you often write of the decline or even demise of so many of those fundamentals of human existence, family, faith, community, career. your argument here for sport in schools.
(Is that under threat, btw, in the UK? news to me here in Toronto, but again, depressed shut-in....)
anyway, as a shut-in with weird philosophical interests, I had nothing but time on my hands to immerse myself in them. take, say, the muddy waters of the QC. this experience talking to people on both sides of the political divide in real time, on say, Jan 6th - to me, it appeared that I was seeing the failure of this academic philosophy - postmodernism- live, real time in the progressive response. which inflames the culture wars that progressives claim to despise, but inflame anyway.
obviously, I quit QC in disgust with the conservative BS justifying their narratives around Jan 6th. they, too, were ironically relativistic when their cards were on the table. I mean, Trump truly is the postmodern president, no?
but I'm more upset with progressives, because those are my beliefs they are abusing.
my story is anecdotal evidence for sure, but at the end of the day, I think it does illustrate these issues very clearly. when multiple individuals report similar experiences, then we start moving from anecdote to data.
my answer to the postmodernist question? challenge em on postmodern grounds. beat em at their own game. and believe me, it's like shooting fish in a barrel with this lot.
what, you disagree? with me? but my lived experience!!!
FWIW, I wrote this entire reply in, hopefully, a postmodern spirit. please forgive the literary flourishes, but it just fits the subject. I think of Puck, the trickster, as a postmodern icon. he constantly needles and questions, playing pranks that reveal the absurdity of life, but does he ever deny the existence of a truth, something greater? nah. he embraces the spirit of a living in pursuit of an unknowable.
man, I worked on this one all morning. love to hear your thoughts!
(whoops, a last minute request)
I literally hold out hope that you can help me with a question that's plagued me for years. i wrote a phrase in an essay i can no longer find (ah, the days when your writing could just .... vanish), one that I likely shared with you back in the day on Quillette. From my unreliable memory...
On the subject of postmodernism, I wrote that I am "whole-hearted and half-sure". I attributed this paraphrase to Edward Said in my head for years, no idea why, never read the man. you got any familiarity with the idea?
in all likelihood, I am paraphrasing a beloved eccentric prof of mine, Ed O'Sullivan. he was an ecotheorist and educator, not at all a postmodernist, so I assume he was answering a question of mine.
any thoughts on the genesis of this idea, or comparable stuff, greatly appreciated
Great post mate, and sorry to hear of all your troubles. I agree with you on the Trump thing, by the way. I think it was a case of the man becoming intermingled with the cause. For many, he represented the first real challenge to the notion that the highly educated elites should reign supreme over the other 70% to 80% of society, when their ideas are obviously so different from the rest, on issues like Patriotism, Nationality vs. Supranationalism, the right to take comfort from one's own culture over others, or indeed immigration.
The thing many missed was that they loved him for his ability to say anything and not give a shit about the backlash and furore by the PC authoritarians in the corporate media. To them it was like the best form of television in the world, because it finally put the shoe on the other foot- they were able to derive a not-so-secret glee from his ability to shock and dismay his opponents and critics, and walk away relatively untarnished with his teflon coating. It was why they were so loyal towards him at the end... They had become intellectually attached to the belief that only he could challenge the prevailing liberal narrative and the corporate media. They really need to detach the moral vision from the man, because on a good day Trump could hardly be described as moral- but in America, over the past decade, it's become all about the existential threat of the opposition...
It's so ironic and so tragic. To a liberal their frequent successes at the ballot box and their domination of SCOTUS would represent the power to change the world, but to a conservative it means so little other than the ability to hold back the tide of government for a while. I never understood how it might feel to be on the outside of broad cultural movements, out of sync and at odds with many changes. In many ways it feels like being the champion of the debating team, the captain of the school team, only to wake up one morning and suddenly discover that you've become a cultural nonentity with halitosis. I've taken to watching The Critical Drinker on YouTube- he is a great cultural thermometer in his critique of modern movies.
There is a great Bari Weiss Substack on this issue, interviewing William Barr- it's a great interview and shows what a poor leader Trump was and his personal failures on the management front: https://www.commonsense.news/p/bill-barr-calls-bullsht
Here's the thing, I've been doing some research on the Construction Trade. Did you know that an Aussie builder earns $35 US, whilst his American counterpart earns a little over $18, and in the UK the figure is just over £13. It's a hegemony of the cognitively gifted, people like us- where people who are less fortunate than us aren't even allowed a little dignity or the chance to exceed the earnings of favoured children who go to university. The reason why the Aussie wages are so high, is because they have blue collar labour protections built into their immigration system. They actually have a rate of 30% foreign-born citizens, over twice that of equivalent countries, and they only began to see the very beginnings of baby Trump populism when they began to relax the Blue Collar protections. So its perhaps best to see populism as a symptom of the need for redress- the problem is they need a better spokesman to give voice to their anguish at being relegated to the point of cultural irrelevancy, sneered at and talked down to. I was perhaps better prepared because I had seen it all with Brexit, the vindictiveness which follows from the cultural cognoscenti not getting their way.
I think you mentioned you had troubles in the past, particularly on the subject of grief, but I had no idea you had been through the wringer so much in recent times. I hope you manage your way through. I've been through something similar- I had a car crash at 21, and when my dad died just over a decade later, it all came crashing back. I had become a problem drinker as I was doing quite a stressful, but rewarding job, at the time. I was functional during the week, but a drink-besotted lunatic flake at the weekends. The irony was my work problems arose because I took a couple of weeks compassionate leave and my bosses realised just how vulnerable the business was through me not being there (even though I had trained an admin to cover my job for holidays)!
Anyway, after a few months CBT-style counselling, I decided to cool my drinking down for a while. It was only a year later, when I went on a Jolly Boys outing, that many who had come to dislike me through my excesses came to realise that my drinking had changed- it meant a lot when they told my mum that I had been a pleasure to be around, the very essence of good behaviour. But don't take my experiences as advice! Everyone has to find their own way, what's right for them.
Personally, I've found the dividing line to reside in the distinction between drinking for pleasure and to celebrate and drinking to forget and to numb the pain. So if you do decide at some future point to begin drinking again remember this simple rule- only ever drink to celebrate, never to numb the pain.
I hope you will keep in touch. I want to know that you are doing well. It might be an idea to find some form of support system in your efforts to stay sober, whether through counselling or some form of group support mechanism. One of things which stuck with me, was when a writer referred to crashing out of the just-world hypothesis. We tend to think that the world is just place, that everything will be OK if we are simply a good person and uphold the social contract. Unfortunately, the world doesn't work that way- the worst shit can happen to the nicest people.
I cannot for the life of me place the quote, but it seems familiar. I find it somewhat similar to Betrand Russell's observation- “One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”
as for the topic of your post - your comments on education and fair wages for the working class, and the privilege of the cognitively privileged remain spot on. you were the first person to break down the data on immigration negatively affecting certain working class / rural demographics.
too many progressives talk about grand ideas as monoliths, when obviously there are countless people under the conservative tent. some racists no doubt, but plenty of those with legit fear for providing for their families. add in that most progressives don't actually know any conservatives and it becomes easy - if lazy, morally and intellectually - to judge the group as a whole.
one thing I've been thinking a lot about - and Bill Barr's answers in the interview with Bari Weiss are riddled with this - some conservatives benefit from the work of the trolls, the provocateurs like that 'Diagalon' guy Jonathan Kay was talking about. the trolls embed themselves in more legitimate contexts, gaining plausible deniability, and then they can troll idiot progressives or dogwhistle to the genuine extremists.
I don't think for a second Polivere shaking hands with some nut matters. I don't think he knew the guy. but he does benefit from the progressives getting all worked up. Jagmeet Singh is actually a good guy, I've voted for him, but he drank the privileged progressive kool-aid long ago. him overreacting to this 'incident' benefits Polivere and the far right more than it does any progressive causes.
look at Barr's answers to Weiss' questions. for example
"It was a mystery to me why people kept on saying that he was going to try to remain in office. I thought they were setting the stage for a close election that Trump won and claiming that he had stolen the election. I had never heard of some plan to stay in office and I don’t know anyone else who had heard of that, except, it appears, Steve Bannon".
oh, and me. and Trump himself, because I knew he was going to fight to stay in office because he kept saying it.
so, Barr is embracing the BS narrative that comes from these extreme right trolls, or even the apolitical 'for the lulz' trolls, because it already has traction in conservative communities. so he can say something that is COMPLETELY FALSE because the only community he cares about already believes it. someone else has done the dirty work spreading the narrative, and Barr maintains plausible deniability while lying through his teeth.
conserva-BS 101. Barr knows exactly what he is doing, and his interview has plenty of legit content and argument too - another tenet of conservaBS. hide the lies amid the truth. so did the press get Russia wrong? for sure! and was trump at work diminishing the credibility of the press, the concept of truth, the idea of intellectual labor having merit at all? from day 1. undermining the credibility of voting itself? he's been doing this in plane sight for years.
a bold lie, hiding amongst a bunch of valid statements, directed at an audience who now reject scientific expertise? who have been convinced they are being lied to?
that one bugs me. I know lots of conservatives, and they all think this to various degrees. not q-anon / pizzagate crazy, but some sort of we are being lied-to by the progressive man conspiracy. progressives as a whole aren't smart enough to conspire these days.
progressives are not liars. smug, entitled dumb-asses? for sure. risk-averse idiots? definitely.
back to Barr. the man adheres to ALL the narratives on the right around Jan. 6th. we didn't see it coming? of course you did. but that lie is so mainstream in conservative circles, they have circled the wagons so thoroughly, he gets away with it.
man, you saw this yourself live on Jan. 6th on QC. the reasoning they had to justify or downplay the event was already in place. it predated the 6th by months and years.
the first thing QCers freaked about was the phrase 'armed insurrection'. no evidence! they shouted. they were outraged. this is proof of progressvie propaganda! uhh, no. plenty of evidence, plenty of violence. deaths. we knew who was going to the event. the ex-military, the far-right, hardline conservatives who carry their freakin' guns with them everywhere. obviously some of them were armed. we had comments from people and groups planning to attend, we knew their tactics.
and funny how this, the first major conservative protest event of my lifetime, in the WEIRD world at least - immediately flips the script on the behaviour of protestors, right? a complete about-face on these issues despite public proclamations about BLM protestors?
strangely, dealing with my grief has helped my understanding of the culture wars, and vice-versa. a lot of people fail to support you in grief, or even cause active, if unintended harm, due to ignorance. i mean, they simply didn't know what would help
i didn't know what I needed. they didn't know how to help. we were all ignorant. ignorance is the enemy in the culture wars bro. i find no fault in people who have been lied to, as long as they are happy to know it now. that's the tea, in politics and life, across the divide where the real people live.
(btw, while I do mourn what postmodernism has become, I just rewatched 24 hour party people, the Winterbottom movie about the madchester music scene. its' a blast of awesome postmodernist art.. you ever see 'exit through the gift shop'? I believe that is my defining postmodern work right there).
ultimately, I'm on team reason, team empathy, old school socialist that I am at heart. that team crosses political divides. so i disagree with you when you talk about the "vindictiveness which follows from the cultural cognoscenti not getting their way"
i don't think it's vindictiveness. I think it's ignorance. It's the grossest kind of ignorance - it comes from self-serving moral relativism, and allows for lazy thinking and effort on the issues of the day. but they do think they are right, and are righteous - like the more vitriolic pro-lifers right?
because I now do fully believe that wokeness is, not a religion, but attempting to replicate a faith-based system of values, a secular one, to fill the void left behind by rejecting all master narratives, amirite? not like, some dude is planning this out, but it is organically happening.
i don't know what the equivalent concept on the right would be, perhaps 'righteous paranoia'? this exaltation of ignorance, an outright rejection of the idea of expertise? there's another one of these horrible far right memes that have wiggled into the mainstream - reject everything! spend your time actually learning about the issues? elitist!
strange how similar the left and right are, psychologically, on this growing dogmatism. it's been weird watching it evolve. i've had strange interactions with conservatives, just, same shit we always talked, but they are different - can't talk about certain topics, get emotional over ideas - ive never seen some of these guys get emotional, and they are just as hyper-sensitive as the lefties. just like progressive narratives are eroding resilience on the left - you, child are always going to be a victim! you, lad, will always be the oppressor. conservative 'everything is a lie' narratives are doing the exact same kind of damage on the right.
The Bill Barrs and the Joe Bidens are the problem, and the beyond-the-law extremely wealthy behind them, not joe six pack and johnny uhh .... what's the left wing equivalent of joe six pack? that 70-80% you cite in your first paragraph is true on the left, too man, although they have more privilege and are therefore more blind to it. i see lots of lefty friends grappling with woke overreach now, finally. that's a start.
"perhaps best to see populism as a symptom of the need for redress"
well said, 100% agree.
trying to tie this response together, I do believe I have a chance to 'win' in my dispute with the board on the grounds that they violated my human rights. l pick your ethical system utilitarian, deontological, aristotelean -wrong ethically, and wrong in it's application of intersectional thought.
I wonder what you think of this whole situation, how I should approach it? I'm actually in a position in life in which I can retire here and do something else.
also, thanks for sharing your story man, hearing those stories from friends who have actually suffered themselves means a lot to me. and you made it through.
the just world hypothesis - you got a link for that? sounds apt.
As always man, starting my day with a coffee, a smoke and some thought provoking ideas is great. I'm looking to build more positive routines in my life and that means engaging with the world sober, no matter how shite I might feel, so looking forward to your next post!
Cheers!
hey man, thanks for the support! tbh, quitting drinking was easy - although I still do drink with others - going 'solo sober' was about eliminating that isolating, despairing solo drinking. once or twice a month that I drink with friends, celebration, as opposed to numbing the pain.
finding a reason to try to be a part of the world again was the hard part. I think for a lot of people in my world, it was easier to blame alcohol than it was to think that they too might fall apart if they lived through what I did. progressives are relativists generally, and secular, and I think that was the split - conservatives still supported me, generally, because it was the right thing to do, and they actually are more likely to 'practice' caring for others.
'solo-sober' was my way of proving that grief happens, that some people get dealt the short end of the stick, and there is no 'right or wrong' inherent in my fate. once i had my own game plan that I believed in (solo-sober), it was easy-peasy. well, easy in terms of 'addictions'. the grief is more omnipresent
my hope is that the TDSB, my employer, has dropped the ball so completely that they can't but look bad on their own terms. 'wellness' is one of their three core three priorities, and they surely didn't consider my wellness at all, but according to intersectional theory, 'invisible disabilities' such as my PTSD and complicated grief count.
Hey, another home run!
Cheers mate!
'a hundred dollar bill is a social construct. It has no inherent value- other than as a piece of paper which can be written on, or burned as kindling. It only has value because we believe in it collectively.'
That's a misconception, and it's important to flesh out because it's very relevant to your overall argument.
A hundred dollar bill has value because on the other end, way up the chain, is a bank and a central reserve that prints money and people with guns who can put you in jail if you don't use that bill in acceptable ways. A hundred dollar bill is a statement of credit controlled by people who use violent systems to regulate behaviour.
If the postmodernists end up in charge of these systems (and they are already in many places) the collapse of Grand Narratives won't mean that we stop believing in money. People who live in reality will always care about money in its different forms as they care for their own needs. Rather, 'paper' money will be used more directly as the tool of violent control that it is.
After all, the deconstructionists believe that the oppressor fundamentally owes them - that they are entitled to *credit* in the broadest sense.
The weaponisation of state-issued credit is a logical step in the pursuit of redressing wrongs. We are already seeing this principle being applied digitally in China, in Canada, in the war between Russia in the West, and just this week by Paypal and Venmo.
You mention that extreme socialism destroys a country's ability to produce food. The suffering peoples in these countries still believe in money, it's just that credit is weaponised against them.
The only way to meaningfully respond to the postmodernists, without perpetuating their games, is to ground your life and your speech in tangible, real things that cannot be endlessly manipulated as 'social constructs' and cannot be taken away through credit inflation or digital censorship.
Good point, and I was aware of the government monopoly on force, as well as the growing tendency to ostracise through finance. Justin Trudeau's actions during the Trucker protests is only the tip of the iceberg. Recently, Toby Young's accounts were banned from PayPal. He runs the Daily Sceptic, but even more galling was the suspension of the Free Speech Union- so, in effect, PayPal attempted to cancel the organisation devoted to legally challenging Cancel Culture!
The thing we should fear most, though is Central Bank controlled digital currency. I'm quite thankful this guy didn't win the Tory leadership contest, even if Liz Truss's recent mini-budget did sink the pound. A programmable digital currency goes even further than George Orwell envisaged...
https://thinkscotland.org/2021/12/how-a-state-britcoin-could-threaten-your-personal-freedom/
Hello Geary,
hope you are fine, here in the Mediterranean sea we are having a nice summer, swimming is good though the sea has been very hot this year and there are a lot of jellyfish.
I would enter in discussing the comment from Ella B i have read some her comments in quillete and, she does not have the foot on the ground, yes theories, yes books, yes any kind of philosophical STUFF. But if you would ask her to define a world, a country or a region and it has to do produce and according to her theories how many people can live there, her facade will fall, she will try to turn the question around.
Communism is the best model theoretically, you can see communist working in a film, please watch "the Gods must be crazy", so the family living in the Kalahari are communist, they live very nicely because they are a small group (very first condition), they have plenty enough to be happy (second necessary condition), the managers of the society, the elders of the group have the well-being of each member of the community at their hearts would die to protect the other members (third essential condition). The film is really funny and i recommend it to anybody willing to enjoy a great time with a comedy completely different to the Hollywood ones.
Then when they get the flying object the second condition is removed, so they start quarreling between them.
So in a group of a certain size you will always find competition within the group for limited resources, a limited resource could be the very attractive partners for mating and there you will have a problem, that competition is not catered for in a communist society. Because EllaB is very attractive does noy face that problem but me i will have the develop other skills to win the matting partners from her , and these skills and additional resources i cannot share them because otherwise i loose competitive advantage. Then because the son of the manager is not that pretty and not that skillful ... the manager would leave him/her to its devices because the managers love us all the same. Then because i am skillful but i cannot compete with Ellab and i have to share the outcome of my skills then i get demotivated and i produce like the less skillful in town, either that or a try to get up the leader of the party where i would produce less and work less because my skills are for something else. Final results everybody will try being the leader of the party or working the less possible because the resources being produced will be stolen by the lazy ones. This kind of social theories do not stand 5 minutes thinking in front of a coffee, and can only be developed either by a person with little knowledge of the real world and a lot of free time (Marx, and his friend). or by somebody with a very devious mind to try and misdirect the society and enslave them (which i think i have read this is what happened).
Take in account that the final evolution stage of fascism, communism, capitalism and socialism are the same and elite of privileged and the lump, even if the starting of these 4 systems and their purpose was different.
The lump would like to become part of the elite and the elite would like to remain where they are, "make me the ruler of the communism for the next five years and after that we can keep communism, if i start on the lump then i want revolution"
Take care and enjoy the remaining of summer, i can tell yu i really enjoy late swimming in the sea, and then having a piece of bread with a glass of wine by the sea while the sun sets
best regards from the Mediterranean
Cheers mate.- you too. I'm speeding through my replies- here and elsewhere. The power unit on my ten year old PC is dead, even though I finally took at apart and reassembled it to get out all the dust. Still not working- so I am using my bro's PC!
Great point about the ultimate destination of all political power systems. The good thing about capitalism is the egalitarian nature of technological innovation. 5 years ago it was still possible to buy a massive TV for £100K. The alternative was to wait 5 years for a better TV which is far less expensive :)
Hi Geary, i found an interesting article , sharing it with you for the weekend,
https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/europe-cannibalized-f39af5244023
I still have 3 weeks of sea swimming the Mediterranean, middle October it get a bit cold, i will try to enjoy them to the full and if possible extend the season until end of october. Take care and nice weekend
Great article, mate- it covers a lot of what I've been thinking about. The problem with the elites who virtue signal on climate, is they really don't realise how important cheap and abundant energy is to most people's livelihoods.
Belatedly, the EU has reclassified gas and nuclear as 'green' technologies recently, and the UN has called for the advanced economies of the world to consider nuclear as a part of the solution to climate change. A while back I was having an argument with an ideologue on the Left about the scaling of nuclear- I had won the argument on safety and she then furnished me with a paper from MIT as to why nuclear projects have a tendency towards cost overruns, and are usually not delivered within the budget promised.
It turns out that regulatory costs are less of a problem than most nuclear advocates expect- the real problem comes with in-process design changes once construction has begun. This is to be expected. When you haven't built out nuclear in over twenty to thirty years, you cannot expect that even the best people will be able to anticipate all the problems and pitfalls which will arise- one of those known unknowns.
The problem is that most governments don't set out with this knowledge in mind. They might for one or two large power station project- not realising that they can achieve incredibly cheap, safe and abundant power once they have a fully experienced design team and a workforce with the institutional memory of previous projects.
India plans to increase their nuclear power portfolio by 50% by 2030, China has budgeted $440 billion to build 150 new power stations by 2035. What's the betting that the first four reactors cost between an eighth and a quarter of the total budget and the rest are built for a comparative song. Our Western leaders need to have substantially more foresight and have a little backbone- otherwise the West will fall into irreversible decline.
Hi Geary, found something that was commented by spanish "alternative media" that "yes they are alternative and so on," but so far they are nailing it. So this article, and the alleged RAND document that has published by the same Swedish internet news, the link is on the article
https://nyadagbladet.se/utrikes/here-are-the-us-officials-to-whom-the-rand-document-was-addressed/
Well they were reporting on a very fast de-industrialization of Germany with companies migrating mainly to USA and Asia (China), they were giving numbers very frightening, and as i said, so far this "alternative news source" has been nailing it completely.
Nice weekend, i will try to squeeze the last swims of the season this weekend and the first week of october
Take care
I don't know whether the document is legitimate, but what I will say is that the great geopolitical strategists look at issues from multiple levels and points of view. Their job is then to see how big geopolitical changes will influence their clients, many of whom are national governments.
Have you heard of Peter Zeihan? I've been following a lot of his commentary about how the era of Globalisation is ending, and how it will have huge negative impacts. Personally I thought that neoliberalism was terrible for the blue collar class in the West, but good for most of the rest of the world- particularly in terms of the stability in global supply chains it brought.
Anyway, about these geopolitical strategists- they will always be looking at every way in which a particular change will benefit their client. Ironically, I think that Russia was a convenient scapegoat for Trump back in 2016, and much of the current paradigm stems from there. After all, the Trump victory was so stunning, they needed a convenient narrative to hang the reversal upon.
After all, they could hardly admit that 70% of America loathed the Washington Elites, with many only just voting for Hillary as the lesser of two evils. After all, this would have said altogether too much about the class and education-based loyalties of the Democrat loyalists and their privilege- it would have been altogether too painful as a narrative to contemplate- they could have run a golden retriever against Hillary Clinton and won!
Plus, the Washington Foreign Policy Establishment really did want revenge against Putin, for embarrassing them over Crimea, even though they hand a huge hand in creating the initial crisis. I would watch the recent Joe Rogan with Dave Smith- it's still free on Spotify I think. They show a clip of a guest on Stephen Colbert when he was still funny, gloating over Ukraine just before Crimea.
As to Germany, I think it's best considered in the light of the understanding that the Americans were shit scared of a new Germany-Russia-China axis of trade. All the signs were there, in terms of whether Europe was going to adopt the Chinese 5G, etc. Nord Stream 2. plus the Belt and Road Initiative with its potential trade realignments, especially in the high tech space has America terrified. After all, as a country, they were never averse to having the heads of the CIA and NSA line up opposite from Coca Cola and Google and ask them what they could do to protect and further their corporate interests.
America is very sinews of war orientated in their thinking. Look at what they did with the water at Flint, or how the FBI treated the medical examiner who first unearthed the serious implications of American Football, in terms of concussions...
Germany was the icing on the cake. It was also a way of punishing them for flirting with the idea of realigning commercially and in terms of trade. They needed the Bogeyman of Putin and Russia for their own domestic politics, and the goal of NATO had long been to push out into Russia's sphere of influence. And look at Europe's choices now- either start to frack, which will help out mainly American mining technology companies, or adopt LNG- which also favours American commercial interests.
no idea whether the document is fake or not, nowadays very easy to forge and very difficult to come clean.
Just imagine if Germany has to buy the gas from Poland (with the new piping) and just couple of weeks ago Poland was asking for WWII reparations. Like to many EU countries Poland main companies were bought/conquered by German or French corporations, surely now they will make them to beg for any gas coming from Norway. Fracking in the EU, difficult with all the political garbage we have. Now in Spain they are breaking lakes and dawns with the excuse of ecology but they are saying that the real reason is to create water scarcity and then the population would have to buy it at high price
A bit late to the party here I am afraid-but I’ve followed your prose in the comments sections of Quillette for many years now, must say that you and Ray Andrews are always a breath of fresh air.
As for Ella-B, I find that her steadfast adherence to her ideology, much to the exclusion of all else, is truly tiresome to wade through in the comments section-though I will say that you seem to be the only one who can consistently best her arguments, though she is loathe to admit as much.
Keep up the good work!
Cheers mate. I do try!
Geary you’re a wonderful writer!
Most kind!
You may have hit the nail ontghe head, but not pounded it quitew far enough.
Jeremy makes what is probably a good comment, that on the Simpsons, and perhaps some other recent cultural artifacts, we can see post-modernism instantiated. But I kinda wished for a capsule definition. Post-Modernism is, on the one hand, the rejection of the Grand Narrative of the past, the belief structure which has brought us to "Modernity." Of those traditions, either Bart or Homer might say something like, "meh!"
But on the other hand, for going on the past two centuries, there has been a different Grand Narrative, The Hegelian Dialectic, which says that the Arc of Justice moves forward , though sometimes my way of a waltz, two steps forward and one step back. Fighting the Arc is as futile as chasing the end of the rainbow. On that point, Ella-B is correct, and you and I also agree. And you say,
"The problem with the practical application of postmodernism applied to deconstruct the grand narrative of the Moral Arc of History, is that its proponents make the assumption that the Moral Arc is a given which we can always rely upon, like the sunshine in the morning or the rain."
Yep, post-modernism, which pretends to reject any Grand Narrative, replaces the grand narrative with the Stupidly Miniscule Narrative, that it is all sound and fury signifying nothing. And yet, and here is the paradox, and I believe it is at the core of what you and Ella-B wrestle, that the Critical Justice movement, and all the anti-racist platform, depend on the assumption that there is external definition of Justice, and that that external definition implies the call to destroy all other competing narratives. It is, as you say, Solipsistic. But I would have liked a little more definition of the terms of Post-Modernism, so that we could then explore, a little farther, how critical justice theory is a paradoxical emboodiment.
'But I would have liked a little more definition of the terms of Post-Modernism, so that we could then explore, a little farther, how critical justice theory is a paradoxical emboodiment.'- I would differentiate postmodernism in terms similar to Maths- pure and applied. At a pure level, it has a few intellectually useful concepts like the panopticon, Derrida's observation that we tend to weight the written form at the expense of other formats, and some of the more useful structural observations about how language can produce bias.
But at the applied level we see a degree of pathology. Although most postmodernists would deny it, there is a strong correlation between postmodernists and socialists, and there is a significant causation- if you spend your days critiquing the systems of Western free market capitalism and classical liberal democracy, isn't it then natural to grasp for the alternatives.
We see this even more with the Critical Theories- just substitute class for identity group. Many will claim they only want to overthrow oppression or make systems more just, but why then would they include a phrase like 'equity'- which is, in essence, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
'Recognize that everyone has the same capacity'- Kamala Harris.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/08/12/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-at-oakland-generation-fund-event/
Blank slate thinking. One of the reasons why humans have flourished so much since the 1850s is because of the heterodox abilities of individuals and markets. Everybody specialises in what they are best at (if they know what's good for them) and everyone is relatively much wealthier as a result.
Grand narratives? Nobody reads anymore or can even listen attentively for very long.
Can you turn that into an elevator pitch, meme or tweet instead?
Lol. It's tragic, isn't it. Grand narratives are the glue which holds the social contract together. For example, free speech is dying because nobody has read the Voltaire- ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’. Of course, the Quote Investigator would have us believe that it was Evelyn Beatrice Hall, who succinctly summarised Voltaire's attitude upon hearing that Claude-Adrien Helvétius work had faced public incineration, But these grand narratives are important because they represent a 'common core' of shared attitudes and beliefs.
Their dissolution spells the doom of much we have taken for granted for so long.