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I, for one, welcome the post-idea world -- consider that the rise of Nazism and Communism was primarily driven by the so-called big ideas that helped the masses

I, for one, welcome the post-idea world -- consider that the rise of Nazism and Communism was primarily driven by the so-called big ideas that helped the masses "make sense of the world" not unlike in the way the article seems to espouse. I've known people consumed by ideas (nearly all of my college friends who were into politics). They were antagonistic, insincere, subtly hypocritical, and appeared simply brainwashed. You would not want to have them as partners neither in a business nor in a family. Not a pretty picture.

wpietri 15y ago
I think you're half right here, both on your examples and on your conclusion. Communism was definitely built around an idea. Nazism, though, wasn't; it's just tribalism dressed up a little. By generalizing from a few data points without looking for other examples, you come to a false conclusion. The fight against both communism and fascism was helped greatly by fighting for ideals like democracy, individual freedom, and the right of peoples to avoid oppression. What we should learn from this isn't that ideas are bad. It's that ideas are very powerful, and that we need to be extremely careful with the ideas we support. That in turn argues for the sort of careful thinking that the article recommends.
- bluekeybox 15y ago
  > What we should learn from this isn't that ideas are bad. It's that ideas are very powerful. Actually what we should learn is that ideas are powerful and especially dangerous if they are combined with a general lack of information and alternative viewpoints as was the case in the first half of the 20th century. You are incorrect in stating that Nazism was not primarily idea driven. The whole "nationalism" thing started off as a powerful idea in the early 19th century spearheaded by the Romanticist zeitgeist. Previously, people imagined their "tribes" as consisting of their immediate family, relatives, and perhaps friendly neighbors. Europe consisted of multiethnic empires at the time. With the rise of nationalist ideas, people started to imagine their tribes as all people speaking the same language and being of the same "race". Also, don't forget the "socialist" part in Nazism, which was also idea-driven. I recommend watching "The Goebbels Experiment" (IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458375/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458375/) to get a hint on how significant the idea-driven propaganda/brainwashing was in the rise of Nazism. The nationalist wave started off somewhere in Central Europe and reached other parts of the continent much later -- it is still causing trouble in Russia (the surprising rise of neo-Nazi skinheads there with the fall of the USSR), Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and the Basque Country in Spain, for example.
  - wpietri 15y ago
    I'll definitely check out the video, but I'm not yet persuaded. I think nationalism is dressed-up tribalism. Further, propaganda, especially of the Goebbels sort, is directly opposed to the pursuit of widespread thinking and big ideas that this article is promoting. Also, nationalism isn't a big idea in the same sense that communism or western democracy are. Communists and democrats of many nations work in common cause for their ideals, but nationalists of many nations are by definition opposed. What they share isn't so much an idea as a set of behaviors and a style of thinking. In Gabler's framework, nationalism is more an observation than it is a big idea.
    - bluekeybox 15y ago
      > propaganda, especially of the Goebbels sort, is directly opposed to the pursuit of widespread thinking and big ideas that this article is promoting. The problem I have with the article is that many of the "big" ideas that happened during past history were only big and influential because they were absorbed by vast numbers of ill-informed people. In other words, it wasn't so much that an idea itself was big, but that most people didn't have alternative sources of information and therefore were ripe material for absorbing the given idea. Totalitarianism thrived on persuading people through clever control of the (new at the time) mass-media channels to believe into this or that idea. > nationalism isn't a big idea in the same sense that communism or western democracy are. You are equating "big" with "well-intentioned," which I believe are different things. There can be no doubt that nationalist ideas had a major impact on modernity, from Nazism to Balkans to post-colonialism. Regarding tribalism, it can take many forms, not just nationalism. One of the channels which the early USSR used to spread communist ideas was precisely tribalism. Russians were imagined as good and communitarian "by-nature" while people from Western countries were portrayed as more mean-spirited and selfish.
      - wpietri 15y ago
        > many of the "big" ideas that happened during past history were only big and influential because they were absorbed by vast numbers of ill-informed people Sure, and I think Gabler would agree. He is, after all, arguing in favor of "rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate". He doesn't want people to have a single big idea; he wants lots of them to be discussed. Your basic argument is that if X sometimes causes problems, we should be glad to see X gone. On its own, it's a weak argument, because it ignores the positive side of the ledger, and it supposes that the problems you associate with X won't occur in the absence of X. Neither looks true to me; big ideas also have plenty of benefits, and a vast number of ill-informed people isn't going to get any less dumb or manipulable if Enlightment culture dies out. > You are equating "big" with "well-intentioned," Not at all. American nationalism isn't the same idea as Chinese nationalism or Indian nationalism. Nationalism is an observation about ideas (or perhaps a meta-idea), not an idea in the sense that the author is talking about.
bmac27 15y ago
antagonistic, insincere, subtly hypocritical, and appeared simply brainwashed. You could say the same for plenty of folks in the tech scene. I'd say it's a pretty sweeping generalization, no? The concepts of capitalism & free markets that were incorporated into the framework of the United States as a governing body were pretty big ideas as well; heretical by the standards of human civilization at a period of time which knew nothing but monarchy & tyranny. Some "big ideas" turn out to be cynical, evil and horrible for society. Doesn't mean thinking big (politically, business-wise or otherwise) should be discouraged or driven away from our collective consciousness.
mathgladiator 15y ago
They were antagonistic, insincere, subtly hypocritical, and appeared simply brainwashed. That's true for a lot of people. Most people don't want to think for themselves, they want to fight for an idea that makes sense for them, and they lack the mental tools to actually think or challenge the idea.

wpietri 15y ago

I think you're half right here, both on your examples and on your conclusion. Communism was definitely built around an idea. Nazism, though, wasn't; it's just tribalism dressed up a little. By generalizing from a few data points without looking for other examples, you come to a false conclusion. The fight against both communism and fascism was helped greatly by fighting for ideals like democracy, individual freedom, and the right of peoples to avoid oppression. What we should learn from this isn't that ideas are bad. It's that ideas are very powerful, and that we need to be extremely careful with the ideas we support. That in turn argues for the sort of careful thinking that the article recommends.

bluekeybox 15y ago
> What we should learn from this isn't that ideas are bad. It's that ideas are very powerful. Actually what we should learn is that ideas are powerful and especially dangerous if they are combined with a general lack of information and alternative viewpoints as was the case in the first half of the 20th century. You are incorrect in stating that Nazism was not primarily idea driven. The whole "nationalism" thing started off as a powerful idea in the early 19th century spearheaded by the Romanticist zeitgeist. Previously, people imagined their "tribes" as consisting of their immediate family, relatives, and perhaps friendly neighbors. Europe consisted of multiethnic empires at the time. With the rise of nationalist ideas, people started to imagine their tribes as all people speaking the same language and being of the same "race". Also, don't forget the "socialist" part in Nazism, which was also idea-driven. I recommend watching "The Goebbels Experiment" (IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458375/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458375/) to get a hint on how significant the idea-driven propaganda/brainwashing was in the rise of Nazism. The nationalist wave started off somewhere in Central Europe and reached other parts of the continent much later -- it is still causing trouble in Russia (the surprising rise of neo-Nazi skinheads there with the fall of the USSR), Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and the Basque Country in Spain, for example.
- wpietri 15y ago
  I'll definitely check out the video, but I'm not yet persuaded. I think nationalism is dressed-up tribalism. Further, propaganda, especially of the Goebbels sort, is directly opposed to the pursuit of widespread thinking and big ideas that this article is promoting. Also, nationalism isn't a big idea in the same sense that communism or western democracy are. Communists and democrats of many nations work in common cause for their ideals, but nationalists of many nations are by definition opposed. What they share isn't so much an idea as a set of behaviors and a style of thinking. In Gabler's framework, nationalism is more an observation than it is a big idea.
  - bluekeybox 15y ago
    > propaganda, especially of the Goebbels sort, is directly opposed to the pursuit of widespread thinking and big ideas that this article is promoting. The problem I have with the article is that many of the "big" ideas that happened during past history were only big and influential because they were absorbed by vast numbers of ill-informed people. In other words, it wasn't so much that an idea itself was big, but that most people didn't have alternative sources of information and therefore were ripe material for absorbing the given idea. Totalitarianism thrived on persuading people through clever control of the (new at the time) mass-media channels to believe into this or that idea. > nationalism isn't a big idea in the same sense that communism or western democracy are. You are equating "big" with "well-intentioned," which I believe are different things. There can be no doubt that nationalist ideas had a major impact on modernity, from Nazism to Balkans to post-colonialism. Regarding tribalism, it can take many forms, not just nationalism. One of the channels which the early USSR used to spread communist ideas was precisely tribalism. Russians were imagined as good and communitarian "by-nature" while people from Western countries were portrayed as more mean-spirited and selfish.
    - wpietri 15y ago
      > many of the "big" ideas that happened during past history were only big and influential because they were absorbed by vast numbers of ill-informed people Sure, and I think Gabler would agree. He is, after all, arguing in favor of "rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate". He doesn't want people to have a single big idea; he wants lots of them to be discussed. Your basic argument is that if X sometimes causes problems, we should be glad to see X gone. On its own, it's a weak argument, because it ignores the positive side of the ledger, and it supposes that the problems you associate with X won't occur in the absence of X. Neither looks true to me; big ideas also have plenty of benefits, and a vast number of ill-informed people isn't going to get any less dumb or manipulable if Enlightment culture dies out. > You are equating "big" with "well-intentioned," Not at all. American nationalism isn't the same idea as Chinese nationalism or Indian nationalism. Nationalism is an observation about ideas (or perhaps a meta-idea), not an idea in the sense that the author is talking about.

bmac27 15y ago

antagonistic, insincere, subtly hypocritical, and appeared simply brainwashed. You could say the same for plenty of folks in the tech scene. I'd say it's a pretty sweeping generalization, no? The concepts of capitalism & free markets that were incorporated into the framework of the United States as a governing body were pretty big ideas as well; heretical by the standards of human civilization at a period of time which knew nothing but monarchy & tyranny. Some "big ideas" turn out to be cynical, evil and horrible for society. Doesn't mean thinking big (politically, business-wise or otherwise) should be discouraged or driven away from our collective consciousness.

mathgladiator 15y ago

They were antagonistic, insincere, subtly hypocritical, and appeared simply brainwashed. That's true for a lot of people. Most people don't want to think for themselves, they want to fight for an idea that makes sense for them, and they lack the mental tools to actually think or challenge the idea.