4 ms·

Removing the Bedrock of Liberalism

7 points by throwkeep 5y ago

api 5y ago
This is largely valid but incomplete since it ignores the other side. The far right has been engaged in its own war on the enlightenment for about the same amount of time. Both the left of the sort this author is describing and the anti-enlightenment right emerged in the 1970s. I’ve come to believe that both were at their core a reaction to the threat of atomic annihilation. Both have really been making the same argument: that there is no objective reality and reason is merely rationalization of power. The difference is where they take it: to a Marx inspired push for equality of outcome or an anti-rationalist push to maintain tradition for its own sake. The most recent manifestation of this war was the emergence, also at the same time, of the modern “woke” left and the “alt-right.” I’ve always seen these as two sides of the same coin in that both are a war on the enlightenment and liberalism. While atomic annihilation is largely out of people’s minds, the threat driving today’s reaction is the decline of the middle class and mass youth unemployment.
- rektide 5y ago
  I like your backdrop but have next to no sympatico for calling woke folk anti-enlightenment or anti-liberal. in my view, they believe strongly in scientists, reason, evidence, & pluralism. assertions that they are otherwise I would like some grounding for: it came as an extreme, late in the game surprise twist conclusion to me, who was reading along & enjoying your post otherwise.
- shrimp_emoji 5y ago
  Wow, this must be generational amnesia, because I never considered atomic annihilation anxiety from the '70s to have anything to do with the germ of the extremes. Also, > there is no objective reality and reason is merely rationalization of power. to me, this seems blatantly true. To believe in objective morality seems farcical. To believe in an objective reality, even, seems farcical after learning that simultaneity isn't preserved in classical physics and then tossing a lay reading of quantum physics (which physicists almost immediately gave up trying to interpret in a rational way) on top of that, and finishing it all off with the authority of mathematics itself being bankrupt given Gödel's incompleteness theorems[0]. The Universe definitely seems to have a postmodern bent to it, when all's said and done, and being dogmatically rationalist seems painfully, early-20th-century naive. But that still leaves me, personally, believing that empirical science is our best bet at "knowing" anything (insofar as anyone can know anything) and coming to the best outcomes and being "enlightenment liberal" in practice, so then again I don't know how much the philosophical bedrock even matters. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_mathematics#Foundational_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_mathematics#Fou...
  - api 5y ago
    If there is no way to have falsifiable ideas, that leaves only one way to settle disputes: war. If there is no objective reality then might makes right. Ultimately I don’t agree with your assertion about physics and objectivity. If QM turns out to show that non-locality is real or that the state of things is probabilistic at the quantum level, then that simply changes our definition of what objective reality is. It doesn’t change the fact that there is a reality or that it has a nature. Hell if ghosts and psi are real there is still an objective reality. It’s just one that includes ghosts and psi… and not one that doesn’t. In this hypothetical reality someone denying the existence of ghosts would be wrong, not just someone with a “different point of view.” The real issue is that is/ought is a hard problem that has not yet been satisfactorily solved. Both the “woke” left and the “alt-right” punt the issue by declaring a desired outcome and then failing to specify a way to get there or falling back on force. “Nothing is true. This is how I want it to be. Now where is my gun?”
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Formal legal equality, they argue, the promise of the American experiment, has never been actual equality, even as, over the centuries, it has been extended to everyone. This is simply, factually true (except for the “it has been extended to everyone”, part; even formally, legally, the US system permits discrimination on every axis, it even has a strict heirarchy of conditions required to discriminate.) To deny it is inconsistent with the overt liberal ideals that the piece here seeks to defend, which perhaps is itself an illustration of how the American national mythology built around it supposed devotion to the ideals of liberalism supercedes actual liberal rationality. > It is, rather, a system to perpetuate inequality forever, which is the single and only reason racial inequality is still here. Is that the intent? I dunno, I’m not really comfortable treating groups of people as ibdividuals with coherent intent. That seems yo be dangerously straining convenient metaphor. Is it the experienced outcome? Certainly. Is it the reason for the outcome? Certainly, mythologizing legal equality and overstating its reality and consequences on material condition is a source of resistance to change to deal with actual substantive systemic inequality (while that may seem cobtroversial under modern “legal equality” that includes integration, the benefit of hindisght abd emotional distance should help even defenders of the justice of the status quo recognize that it was under the segregationist system of separate-but-formally-equal). Come talk to me when your defense of “liberalism” and “Enlightenment rationality” against Critical Race Theory doesn’t start out with dogmatic defense of mythology about the concrete results of those things that isn’t defensible on the terms you claim to be defending.
rektide 5y ago
long article. it's just setting the stage when author says this, but already I feel like there's a lot of projecting, > That’s a few hundred years as opposed to 200,000 or so of Homo sapiens’ history, when tribalism, creedalism, warfare, theocracy or totalitarianism reigned. The focus on abstract power structures (tribes, leaders) & denial that everyday life rests upon a shared, liberally created, semi-consistent semi-objective set of day to day interactions with the others about us (not big powers or exterior forces) is a big turn off in this to me. we do accept irrationalities, but fallibilism, objectivity, accountability, and pluralism are not just some new fangled invention. we have all always had to build our own views of the world & all of these have been part of the toolkit forever. one sometimes blunted & muted by societies& weights about us but still an embodied truth of living, of viewing, of determining.

7 points by throwkeep 5y ago

api 5y ago

This is largely valid but incomplete since it ignores the other side. The far right has been engaged in its own war on the enlightenment for about the same amount of time. Both the left of the sort this author is describing and the anti-enlightenment right emerged in the 1970s. I’ve come to believe that both were at their core a reaction to the threat of atomic annihilation. Both have really been making the same argument: that there is no objective reality and reason is merely rationalization of power. The difference is where they take it: to a Marx inspired push for equality of outcome or an anti-rationalist push to maintain tradition for its own sake. The most recent manifestation of this war was the emergence, also at the same time, of the modern “woke” left and the “alt-right.” I’ve always seen these as two sides of the same coin in that both are a war on the enlightenment and liberalism. While atomic annihilation is largely out of people’s minds, the threat driving today’s reaction is the decline of the middle class and mass youth unemployment.

rektide 5y ago
I like your backdrop but have next to no sympatico for calling woke folk anti-enlightenment or anti-liberal. in my view, they believe strongly in scientists, reason, evidence, & pluralism. assertions that they are otherwise I would like some grounding for: it came as an extreme, late in the game surprise twist conclusion to me, who was reading along & enjoying your post otherwise.
shrimp_emoji 5y ago
Wow, this must be generational amnesia, because I never considered atomic annihilation anxiety from the '70s to have anything to do with the germ of the extremes. Also, > there is no objective reality and reason is merely rationalization of power. to me, this seems blatantly true. To believe in objective morality seems farcical. To believe in an objective reality, even, seems farcical after learning that simultaneity isn't preserved in classical physics and then tossing a lay reading of quantum physics (which physicists almost immediately gave up trying to interpret in a rational way) on top of that, and finishing it all off with the authority of mathematics itself being bankrupt given Gödel's incompleteness theorems[0]. The Universe definitely seems to have a postmodern bent to it, when all's said and done, and being dogmatically rationalist seems painfully, early-20th-century naive. But that still leaves me, personally, believing that empirical science is our best bet at "knowing" anything (insofar as anyone can know anything) and coming to the best outcomes and being "enlightenment liberal" in practice, so then again I don't know how much the philosophical bedrock even matters. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_mathematics#Foundational_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_mathematics#Fou...
- api 5y ago
  If there is no way to have falsifiable ideas, that leaves only one way to settle disputes: war. If there is no objective reality then might makes right. Ultimately I don’t agree with your assertion about physics and objectivity. If QM turns out to show that non-locality is real or that the state of things is probabilistic at the quantum level, then that simply changes our definition of what objective reality is. It doesn’t change the fact that there is a reality or that it has a nature. Hell if ghosts and psi are real there is still an objective reality. It’s just one that includes ghosts and psi… and not one that doesn’t. In this hypothetical reality someone denying the existence of ghosts would be wrong, not just someone with a “different point of view.” The real issue is that is/ought is a hard problem that has not yet been satisfactorily solved. Both the “woke” left and the “alt-right” punt the issue by declaring a desired outcome and then failing to specify a way to get there or falling back on force. “Nothing is true. This is how I want it to be. Now where is my gun?”

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Formal legal equality, they argue, the promise of the American experiment, has never been actual equality, even as, over the centuries, it has been extended to everyone. This is simply, factually true (except for the “it has been extended to everyone”, part; even formally, legally, the US system permits discrimination on every axis, it even has a strict heirarchy of conditions required to discriminate.) To deny it is inconsistent with the overt liberal ideals that the piece here seeks to defend, which perhaps is itself an illustration of how the American national mythology built around it supposed devotion to the ideals of liberalism supercedes actual liberal rationality. > It is, rather, a system to perpetuate inequality forever, which is the single and only reason racial inequality is still here. Is that the intent? I dunno, I’m not really comfortable treating groups of people as ibdividuals with coherent intent. That seems yo be dangerously straining convenient metaphor. Is it the experienced outcome? Certainly. Is it the reason for the outcome? Certainly, mythologizing legal equality and overstating its reality and consequences on material condition is a source of resistance to change to deal with actual substantive systemic inequality (while that may seem cobtroversial under modern “legal equality” that includes integration, the benefit of hindisght abd emotional distance should help even defenders of the justice of the status quo recognize that it was under the segregationist system of separate-but-formally-equal). Come talk to me when your defense of “liberalism” and “Enlightenment rationality” against Critical Race Theory doesn’t start out with dogmatic defense of mythology about the concrete results of those things that isn’t defensible on the terms you claim to be defending.

rektide 5y ago

long article. it's just setting the stage when author says this, but already I feel like there's a lot of projecting, > That’s a few hundred years as opposed to 200,000 or so of Homo sapiens’ history, when tribalism, creedalism, warfare, theocracy or totalitarianism reigned. The focus on abstract power structures (tribes, leaders) & denial that everyday life rests upon a shared, liberally created, semi-consistent semi-objective set of day to day interactions with the others about us (not big powers or exterior forces) is a big turn off in this to me. we do accept irrationalities, but fallibilism, objectivity, accountability, and pluralism are not just some new fangled invention. we have all always had to build our own views of the world & all of these have been part of the toolkit forever. one sometimes blunted & muted by societies& weights about us but still an embodied truth of living, of viewing, of determining.