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One of the major arguments of postmodernism is that the "shared model" of modernist progress -- universal "progress" had some bad side effects. Destroying cultu

One of the major arguments of postmodernism is that the "shared model" of modernist progress -- universal "progress" had some bad side effects. Destroying cultures and languages in the name of progress doesn't really empower people. And modernity brought other new large problems, from global warming to weak communities to mass propaganda. There were so many excesses that we had to put on the brakes. That said, postmodernism does support a "whatever works" approach, and we desperately need some sort of positive futurism, lest we end up implementing the coal-powered AI hellscape by default.

thaumasiotes 8y ago
> Destroying cultures and languages in the name of progress doesn't really empower people. Languages don't get destroyed by rearing children in isolation so they're left unable to speak. Languages die when their population shifts over to a language with more to offer. (Generally, the ability to participate in a larger market.) You can go pretty much anywhere rare languages are spoken and hear parents tell you they hope their children will grow up to speak something more useful. Where do you get the idea that this doesn't empower people?
- TomMarius 8y ago
  And it's not just small, dying languages. Typical Czech parent will push their kid to learn English and German everyday.
- qubex 8y ago
  I agree with you wholeheartedly until you stated this: > (Generally, the ability to participate in a larger market.) It all hinges on your use of market: I would have written society. It's extremely telling that nowadays ‘market’ and ‘society’ have become almost synonymous, not because markets have subsumed the role of societies at large, but because monetary exchanges have become the de facto be-all and end-all of social interaction. Implicit in your choice of words is the notion that the only thing that merits making the effort to interact with others is the exchange for the sake of profit. I'm an economist but this kind of stuff saddens me profoundly. If this isn’t a path straight to dystopia then I don't know what is.
  - arethuza 8y ago
    "monetary exchanges have become the de facto be-all and end-all of social interaction" Now that's a dystopian theme- I presume you mean that a lot of social interactions these days are on technological platforms that are themselves seeking to make a profit (or a at least a return on investment if not an actual operating profit)?
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    I think it's more like this: most parents want their children to be better off. The vast majority of people is a couple steps away from poverty, holding themselves afloat only through decades of hard work. Not surprisingly, the core consideration is the child's ability to find a well-paying job. And if you really think about it, "monetary exchanges" have been "the de facto be-all and end-all of social interaction" for a very, very long time now. A part of growing up is the ongoing realization that all the things you believed are done because they're needed are actually incidental, and done primarily to make money. It's a sad state, but not new.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    Parents generally do not value the opportunity for their children to abandon the parents' society in favor of some external one. But they do value the opportunity for their children to earn money. Market access is what they want. If they could do it without culture access, they would. The contrast is live in the US in deaf communities. Deaf community leaders have a strong and unconflicted opinion on surgery to restore the hearing of deaf children: it's bad, it's a denial of the inherent worth of deaf people, and you should be ashamed for even thinking that a deaf child's hearing needs to be "fixed". They think that way because they have a direct personal interest in the size of the deaf community: the larger the community is, the more power community leaders wield. But they have zero interest in the well-being of any specific child, and less in the well-being of a child who isn't even part of their community. In contrast, the deaf parents of deaf children are often very conflicted. They know a child is better off being able to hear. But the child is unlikely to participate much in the deaf community (important to the parents) if its hearing is restored. But still, I think it's hard to argue that it would be an example of disempowerment to exterminate sign language by restoring everyone's hearing so they can learn a spoken language and communicate with the people around them.
- labster 8y ago
  Right, so you're a modernist, and that's ok. You have an implicit assumption that the larger culture is better, and that being more economically productive is desirable. Many hunter-gatherer societies offered more leisure time than modern cultures. If that's your point of reference, Western culture is an abject failure.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    I think there's a view that both admits the merits of hunter-gatherer societies and still prefers the modern one. The way I see it, we've made a huge step back in order to be able to move forwards. Hunter-gatherers may have had more leisure time, but they could never have developed airplanes, vaccines, modern medicine, plumbing, Internet or space travel. To achieve those things, we had to specialize and build large-scale economies. Hunting/gathering was a dead end, whereas our culture still has open possibilities for tremendous improvement.
    - labster 8y ago
      I wasn't actually taking the side against civilization, just saying that reasonable arguments exist. But you get that. One thing I spend a lot of time thinking about is the amount of things that I'm wrong about. Some of them minor, but also likely something that a future man would find abhorrent, equivalent to slavery or cockfighting or something. Extrapolate from how often people are wrong on the Internet (!!11), and I'm probably wrong a lot. Extrapolate from HN, less so. Civilization as a whole must also have these systemic errors which are unnoticed by almost everyone; modernism definitely had such errors. The single most modernist institution remaining today is the Olympics, which attempts to use athletic competition to maintain international peace. We all know that the IOC and related bodies have serious problems, but the mission itself is still valuable. Even if it does implicitly promote nationalism.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    No, I have no assumption that a larger culture is better than a smaller one. I do assume that being more economically productive is better then being less economically productive, but that is not relevant here. Languages die when people judge that those languages are worthless, because those people, who might have spoken the languages, would like to be economically productive instead. I'm saying that when a person or group of people choose to abandon their language, in order to achieve their own personal goals, and the language dies as a result, that is an example of people being empowered. It's not an example of people not being empowered. You seem to have confused "empowered" with "good".

thaumasiotes 8y ago

> Destroying cultures and languages in the name of progress doesn't really empower people. Languages don't get destroyed by rearing children in isolation so they're left unable to speak. Languages die when their population shifts over to a language with more to offer. (Generally, the ability to participate in a larger market.) You can go pretty much anywhere rare languages are spoken and hear parents tell you they hope their children will grow up to speak something more useful. Where do you get the idea that this doesn't empower people?

TomMarius 8y ago
And it's not just small, dying languages. Typical Czech parent will push their kid to learn English and German everyday.
qubex 8y ago
I agree with you wholeheartedly until you stated this: > (Generally, the ability to participate in a larger market.) It all hinges on your use of market: I would have written society. It's extremely telling that nowadays ‘market’ and ‘society’ have become almost synonymous, not because markets have subsumed the role of societies at large, but because monetary exchanges have become the de facto be-all and end-all of social interaction. Implicit in your choice of words is the notion that the only thing that merits making the effort to interact with others is the exchange for the sake of profit. I'm an economist but this kind of stuff saddens me profoundly. If this isn’t a path straight to dystopia then I don't know what is.
- arethuza 8y ago
  "monetary exchanges have become the de facto be-all and end-all of social interaction" Now that's a dystopian theme- I presume you mean that a lot of social interactions these days are on technological platforms that are themselves seeking to make a profit (or a at least a return on investment if not an actual operating profit)?
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  I think it's more like this: most parents want their children to be better off. The vast majority of people is a couple steps away from poverty, holding themselves afloat only through decades of hard work. Not surprisingly, the core consideration is the child's ability to find a well-paying job. And if you really think about it, "monetary exchanges" have been "the de facto be-all and end-all of social interaction" for a very, very long time now. A part of growing up is the ongoing realization that all the things you believed are done because they're needed are actually incidental, and done primarily to make money. It's a sad state, but not new.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  Parents generally do not value the opportunity for their children to abandon the parents' society in favor of some external one. But they do value the opportunity for their children to earn money. Market access is what they want. If they could do it without culture access, they would. The contrast is live in the US in deaf communities. Deaf community leaders have a strong and unconflicted opinion on surgery to restore the hearing of deaf children: it's bad, it's a denial of the inherent worth of deaf people, and you should be ashamed for even thinking that a deaf child's hearing needs to be "fixed". They think that way because they have a direct personal interest in the size of the deaf community: the larger the community is, the more power community leaders wield. But they have zero interest in the well-being of any specific child, and less in the well-being of a child who isn't even part of their community. In contrast, the deaf parents of deaf children are often very conflicted. They know a child is better off being able to hear. But the child is unlikely to participate much in the deaf community (important to the parents) if its hearing is restored. But still, I think it's hard to argue that it would be an example of disempowerment to exterminate sign language by restoring everyone's hearing so they can learn a spoken language and communicate with the people around them.
labster 8y ago
Right, so you're a modernist, and that's ok. You have an implicit assumption that the larger culture is better, and that being more economically productive is desirable. Many hunter-gatherer societies offered more leisure time than modern cultures. If that's your point of reference, Western culture is an abject failure.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  I think there's a view that both admits the merits of hunter-gatherer societies and still prefers the modern one. The way I see it, we've made a huge step back in order to be able to move forwards. Hunter-gatherers may have had more leisure time, but they could never have developed airplanes, vaccines, modern medicine, plumbing, Internet or space travel. To achieve those things, we had to specialize and build large-scale economies. Hunting/gathering was a dead end, whereas our culture still has open possibilities for tremendous improvement.
  - labster 8y ago
    I wasn't actually taking the side against civilization, just saying that reasonable arguments exist. But you get that. One thing I spend a lot of time thinking about is the amount of things that I'm wrong about. Some of them minor, but also likely something that a future man would find abhorrent, equivalent to slavery or cockfighting or something. Extrapolate from how often people are wrong on the Internet (!!11), and I'm probably wrong a lot. Extrapolate from HN, less so. Civilization as a whole must also have these systemic errors which are unnoticed by almost everyone; modernism definitely had such errors. The single most modernist institution remaining today is the Olympics, which attempts to use athletic competition to maintain international peace. We all know that the IOC and related bodies have serious problems, but the mission itself is still valuable. Even if it does implicitly promote nationalism.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  No, I have no assumption that a larger culture is better than a smaller one. I do assume that being more economically productive is better then being less economically productive, but that is not relevant here. Languages die when people judge that those languages are worthless, because those people, who might have spoken the languages, would like to be economically productive instead. I'm saying that when a person or group of people choose to abandon their language, in order to achieve their own personal goals, and the language dies as a result, that is an example of people being empowered. It's not an example of people not being empowered. You seem to have confused "empowered" with "good".