6 ms·

Hannah Arendt on arresting our ‘flight from reality’

49 points by gHeadphone 4y ago

csours 4y ago
Sometimes a child will ask a series of 'why' questions - they want to know how the world works. But more than that, they want to know their place in the world, and they want to know that someone cares about them. When people adopt conspiracy theories, they are unsatisfied with some aspect of their place in the world and they may feel no one is caring for them properly. Or they feel that the world is behaving improperly and they want it to return to the state they are used to. It is very easy to blame one group. It is very hard to realize that every human is an individual actor with their own emotions and motivations and moral history. --- The world is really crazy - it takes a lot to engage with it on it's own terms. --- I have some sympathy for individuals who adopt conspiracy theories. I have no sympathy for people who use conspiracy theories to enrich or empower themselves.
- ypeterholmes 4y ago
  Is the premise here that a conspiracy has never taken place in history?
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  > I have some sympathy for individuals who adopt conspiracy theories. In some sense is this treating them as children? sheep without any intellectual volition? I do not have much sympathy for individuals who adopt conspiracy theories. If they're adults they're able to think critically and they've decided not to. Sure, despots who use conspiracy theories to manipulate the masses are more culpable, but those of the masses who adopt them uncritically also deserve some blame.
  - csours 4y ago
    I'm sympathetic about the reasons they have decided to not think critically. Also remember that adult does not mean perfect brain. --- To put this another way - Michael Shermer writes and talks about weird things that people believe and shows why they are not true. This is good. But sometimes it seems like he has a sense of superiority about it. It's like atheists telling people there are no gods and that it is silly to believe in god. Do you need a sense of superiority to believe these things yourself? Do you need the other person to feel bad about the wrong thing they believed? At times it may be expressed as intellectual bullying. I don't think it's infantilizing to recognize that we make assumptions when we are young that we hold throughout our lives. We learn how to process sensations and emotions when we are young. Of course the way we do that processing matures with age, but not all at the same rate; and some things may not mature. People can act very childish when they are denied something they feel they are entitled to, for instance.
  - AnonCoward42 4y ago
    They don't believe what you believe so you can have no sympathy for them. I could partly understand if you have no sympathy for conspiracy theories, but no sympathy for a person because of a perceived flaw seems like zebra thinking.
- AnonCoward42 4y ago
  > When people adopt conspiracy theories, they are unsatisfied with some aspect of their place in the world and they may feel no one is caring for them properly. Or they feel that the world is behaving improperly and they want it to return to the state they are used to. It is very easy to blame one group. Either that or something else entirely. I personally know a few people I would firmly place in the conspiracy corner. What I noticed are very different motivations for conspiracy theories (the absurd ones). Some use it for fun, some for boredom, some to get/have an explanation, some to have a sense or a mix of them and there are certainly more aspects to it. > It is very hard to realize that every human is an individual actor with their own emotions and motivations and moral history. But you would not deny that conspiracies do exist, right? The term is so widely misused, that I want to make clear that conspiracy theories in their actual meaning doesn't tell you if they are absurd or not. We saw with Iraq war and NSA mass surveillance how this can actually happen and stay clandestine for quite some time.
  - csours 4y ago
    It's very interesting to me that I've gotten two comments asking if I believe that conspiracies happen. Of course they happen. But it's pretty rare for a conspiracy to be responsible for everything bad happening to a person. Most conspiracy theories are motivation theories - I believe that this group has a reason to collude for these reasons. If that motivation is real, it's entirely likely that something LIKE that conspiracy is happening or has happened. False Flag operations do exist, but not everything is a False Flag. The problem with conspiracy theories is that when you start believing them, you start defending them, and that's when families get angry at each other and split and people get cut off from their usual support groups.
    - AnonCoward42 4y ago
      > It's very interesting to me that I've gotten two comments asking if I believe that conspiracies happen. Of course they happen. But it's pretty rare for a conspiracy to be responsible for everything bad happening to a person. Yeah, I actually expected you to mean the absurd, but I wanted to make clear that conspiracy theories are not the same as absurd as this gets too often conflated. > Most conspiracy theories are motivation theories - I believe that this group has a reason to collude for these reasons. If that motivation is real, it's entirely likely that something LIKE that conspiracy is happening or has happened. False Flag operations do exist, but not everything is a False Flag. From my intuition I'd say False Flag happens very rarely, yeah (but it erodes trust). And I would go a bit further and say that only because something is plausible doesn't mean it's likely, but the lower bound of my statement would be to not outright deny the possibility. We are mostly in agreement here to be clear. > The problem with conspiracy theories is that when you start believing them, you start defending them, and that's when families get angry at each other and split and people get cut off from their usual support groups. That's not exclusive to conspiracy theories. Everything slightly political can easily make people angry including myself (tho not resentful). One needs to gauge with whom you can talk about political topics even if disagreeing. I personally do this less/not online tho, except for people I know for longer.
- polotics 4y ago
  You forget the main reason conspiracy theories happen and get amplified: they are very convenient blankets. Case in point: all the absurd theories about 9.11.2001 made so much noise that it smothered talk about the amazing incompetence of the state security apparatus that allowed the attacks to happen. Many reasonable discussions about that theme can get derailed, and in the end you just don't want to talk about the whole subject... Same with the whole UFO theme: so many inane things drown out information about stealth tech research programs.
  - csours 4y ago
    Yes. Maybe I didn't say that directly enough, but that was my motivation for writing my comment.
- layer8 4y ago
  An important aspect of conspiracy theories is that they provide seemingly simple explanations. It’s not difficult to understand a world controlled by conspiracies. It’s much harder to get a grasp on and accept the sheer actual complexity of the world.
leobg 4y ago
For those of you who speak German, I can highly recommend her interview with Günter Gaues [1]. It is quite amazing to watch: Interviewer asks a thoughtful question. Then there is silence and thinking. And then there’s an eloquent, thoughtful response. Just imagine how different the world would look if people today conversed like that! If you know of any contemporary interviews in that style, please let me know. [1] https://youtu.be/J9SyTEUi6Kw https://youtu.be/J9SyTEUi6Kw
- thazework 4y ago
  English subs: https://youtu.be/dVSRJC4KAiE https://youtu.be/dVSRJC4KAiE
- inkcapmushroom 4y ago
  I personally blame good video/audio editors working on interviews, as well as "staged" interviews where the interviewee gets time to review questions and form answers before the cameras start rolling. Either way they make it seem like everyone has the answer right at hand by removing pauses for thought and stammers, which means future interviewees are compelled to give an answer straight away since they believe smart people are certainly capable of having wise answers on hand.
karaterobot 4y ago
This describes the problem, and outlines in very vague terms a solution. Essentially: believe what you believe, and reconcile yourself to the fact that other people believe what they believe, because there is not going to be a comprehensive set of facts we can all rely on in the future we're making. I'm on board with that philosophy, but that's been good advice for a long time, and I don't look around and see a lot people taking it. I wish there were a plan for how to get people to practice this.
- throw7 4y ago
  Teach more philosophy?
StanislavPetrov 4y ago
>Because an ideology “looks upon all factuality as fabricated,” it “no longer knows any reliable criterion for distinguishing truth from falsehood.” As reality recedes, ideologies organize society to transform their ideas into living reality. I was struck by how closely this passages describes the ever-growing infection of post-modernism in contemporary US institutions.
- imbnwa 4y ago
  >the ever-growing infection of post-modernism in contemporary US institutions You make it sound like truth wasn't a game until now, all of a sudden, or that people weren't championing the goals they value until now, all of a sudden. Politics didn't start yesterday, you were simply more comfortable with previous regimes. 'Post-modernism' is one of the most over-used keywords to describe the current landscape, particularly if you think only a certain party can be accused of it.
  - StanislavPetrov 4y ago
    >You make it sound like truth wasn't a game until now, all of a sudden, or that people weren't championing the goals they value until now, all of a sudden. My intention was to make it sound like objective reality was always at least part of the game until now. There has never been a period of time where the explicit rejection of objective reality in lieu of ideology has been a significant part of the United States "establishment". >'Post-modernism' is one of the most over-used keywords to describe the current landscape, particularly if you think only a certain party can be accused of it. Unfortunately rampant partisanship combined with a lack of education and critical thinking skills has left people unable to have any understanding of society outside of the false, contrived Republican vs Democratic binary narrative. As an example of the delusional brain-rot that has infected our institutions, I point you to a recent article from The Atlantic, which has been widely regarded as the voice of the DC Establishment for decades. > And though sex differences in sports show advantages for men, researchers today still don’t know how much of this to attribute to biological difference versus the lack of support provided to women athletes to reach their highest potential. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/09/sports-gender-sex-segregation-coed/671460/ https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/09/sports-g...
selfhoster11 4y ago
If reality didn’t suck so much, I’m sure more people would become more keen to embrace it.
kelseyfrog 4y ago
I lost all faith in the article at the mention of the embodiment of class-struggle in Bolshevism. Perhaps the author meant to synecdoche one by the other, but the lack of clarity ultimately left me disinterested in believing the author had any more lucidity in anything else. Taking the author at face value, then what of the Mensheviks, S.R.s? To go on further and to find justification in Nietzsche is absurd. I could just as easily drag Jonas Čeika into the conversation and point to evidence that Marx and Nietzsche complement each other. Given that the author doesn't even attempt to rebut such a connection, I can't help but think they are vastly under-read in this area and as such simply wrote whatever drivel they wanted without actually engaging in the topic. At the end of the day he's engaging in a classic trope of reality construction by invoking common sense and truth. His brand of reality has its own unsaid boundaries - simply identify ideas that he would claim as heresy and the worldview he holds will be outlined as the very ideological reality he claims to dispute.
ever1337 4y ago
> We humans are mortal; we are fallible; and we are prone to exhaustion and irrational outbursts. Technology offers a path beyond our weaknesses and the potential of an alternate reality, one in which we merge with machines and artificial enhancements to cure us of human deficiencies. > The promise of modern science addresses an ever-present-but-only-now-realizable drive to make life and man artificial; to cut, as Arendt put it, “the last tie through which even man belongs among the children of nature.” We will soon “produce superior human beings.” I take issue with the ideas this article is trying to present. Humans are not children of nature; they are nature. Humanity evolved of this earth and everything humanity has achieved is a consequence of that. I don't think that "technological advancement" severs any ties with the nature that birthed us, it is just the further progression of the same processes that created us and continue to shape us. For as long as humans have existed, we have been creating technology to deal with the environments we find ourselves in. Fire for warmth and cooking, clothing, tools, agriculture, etc. Is not the human ability to take an active and concerted role in shaping ourselves and our environments a part of what defines "humanity"? Modification of the human body itself is not even anything new; for thousands of years humans have been piercing themselves and binding themselves and even deforming skulls, before that fell out of fashion in the last century. To me, the lines being drawn here, that we must not modify ourselves or evolve beyond where we are at now, are arbitrary. I think there are good arguments over specifics when it comes to things like gene editing or AI, but to issue such a blanket statement that we must simply "man up" and "accept reality" seems overly broad, and itself ignores the actual reality that humans have been shaping ourselves and our world for as long as we have existed.
lawrenceyan 4y ago
I don’t think there’s any real correspondence between the necessity of being mortal in order to be human. I do think mortality is often used as an allegory in order to humble and show how arrogance leads to fallibility, and to that end I 100% agree. But it’s important to separate the story telling device and the meaning behind it in my opinion.

49 points by gHeadphone 4y ago

Sometimes a child will ask a series of 'why' questions - they want to know how the world works. But more than that, they want to know their place in the world, and they want to know that someone cares about them. When people adopt conspiracy theories, they are unsatisfied with some aspect of their place in the world and they may feel no one is caring for them properly. Or they feel that the world is behaving improperly and they want it to return to the state they are used to. It is very easy to blame one group. It is very hard to realize that every human is an individual actor with their own emotions and motivations and moral history. --- The world is really crazy - it takes a lot to engage with it on it's own terms. --- I have some sympathy for individuals who adopt conspiracy theories. I have no sympathy for people who use conspiracy theories to enrich or empower themselves.

ypeterholmes 4y ago
Is the premise here that a conspiracy has never taken place in history?
UncleOxidant 4y ago
> I have some sympathy for individuals who adopt conspiracy theories. In some sense is this treating them as children? sheep without any intellectual volition? I do not have much sympathy for individuals who adopt conspiracy theories. If they're adults they're able to think critically and they've decided not to. Sure, despots who use conspiracy theories to manipulate the masses are more culpable, but those of the masses who adopt them uncritically also deserve some blame.
- csours 4y ago
  I'm sympathetic about the reasons they have decided to not think critically. Also remember that adult does not mean perfect brain. --- To put this another way - Michael Shermer writes and talks about weird things that people believe and shows why they are not true. This is good. But sometimes it seems like he has a sense of superiority about it. It's like atheists telling people there are no gods and that it is silly to believe in god. Do you need a sense of superiority to believe these things yourself? Do you need the other person to feel bad about the wrong thing they believed? At times it may be expressed as intellectual bullying. I don't think it's infantilizing to recognize that we make assumptions when we are young that we hold throughout our lives. We learn how to process sensations and emotions when we are young. Of course the way we do that processing matures with age, but not all at the same rate; and some things may not mature. People can act very childish when they are denied something they feel they are entitled to, for instance.
- AnonCoward42 4y ago
  They don't believe what you believe so you can have no sympathy for them. I could partly understand if you have no sympathy for conspiracy theories, but no sympathy for a person because of a perceived flaw seems like zebra thinking.
AnonCoward42 4y ago
> When people adopt conspiracy theories, they are unsatisfied with some aspect of their place in the world and they may feel no one is caring for them properly. Or they feel that the world is behaving improperly and they want it to return to the state they are used to. It is very easy to blame one group. Either that or something else entirely. I personally know a few people I would firmly place in the conspiracy corner. What I noticed are very different motivations for conspiracy theories (the absurd ones). Some use it for fun, some for boredom, some to get/have an explanation, some to have a sense or a mix of them and there are certainly more aspects to it. > It is very hard to realize that every human is an individual actor with their own emotions and motivations and moral history. But you would not deny that conspiracies do exist, right? The term is so widely misused, that I want to make clear that conspiracy theories in their actual meaning doesn't tell you if they are absurd or not. We saw with Iraq war and NSA mass surveillance how this can actually happen and stay clandestine for quite some time.
- csours 4y ago
  It's very interesting to me that I've gotten two comments asking if I believe that conspiracies happen. Of course they happen. But it's pretty rare for a conspiracy to be responsible for everything bad happening to a person. Most conspiracy theories are motivation theories - I believe that this group has a reason to collude for these reasons. If that motivation is real, it's entirely likely that something LIKE that conspiracy is happening or has happened. False Flag operations do exist, but not everything is a False Flag. The problem with conspiracy theories is that when you start believing them, you start defending them, and that's when families get angry at each other and split and people get cut off from their usual support groups.
  - AnonCoward42 4y ago
    > It's very interesting to me that I've gotten two comments asking if I believe that conspiracies happen. Of course they happen. But it's pretty rare for a conspiracy to be responsible for everything bad happening to a person. Yeah, I actually expected you to mean the absurd, but I wanted to make clear that conspiracy theories are not the same as absurd as this gets too often conflated. > Most conspiracy theories are motivation theories - I believe that this group has a reason to collude for these reasons. If that motivation is real, it's entirely likely that something LIKE that conspiracy is happening or has happened. False Flag operations do exist, but not everything is a False Flag. From my intuition I'd say False Flag happens very rarely, yeah (but it erodes trust). And I would go a bit further and say that only because something is plausible doesn't mean it's likely, but the lower bound of my statement would be to not outright deny the possibility. We are mostly in agreement here to be clear. > The problem with conspiracy theories is that when you start believing them, you start defending them, and that's when families get angry at each other and split and people get cut off from their usual support groups. That's not exclusive to conspiracy theories. Everything slightly political can easily make people angry including myself (tho not resentful). One needs to gauge with whom you can talk about political topics even if disagreeing. I personally do this less/not online tho, except for people I know for longer.
polotics 4y ago
You forget the main reason conspiracy theories happen and get amplified: they are very convenient blankets. Case in point: all the absurd theories about 9.11.2001 made so much noise that it smothered talk about the amazing incompetence of the state security apparatus that allowed the attacks to happen. Many reasonable discussions about that theme can get derailed, and in the end you just don't want to talk about the whole subject... Same with the whole UFO theme: so many inane things drown out information about stealth tech research programs.
- csours 4y ago
  Yes. Maybe I didn't say that directly enough, but that was my motivation for writing my comment.
layer8 4y ago
An important aspect of conspiracy theories is that they provide seemingly simple explanations. It’s not difficult to understand a world controlled by conspiracies. It’s much harder to get a grasp on and accept the sheer actual complexity of the world.

leobg 4y ago

For those of you who speak German, I can highly recommend her interview with Günter Gaues [1]. It is quite amazing to watch: Interviewer asks a thoughtful question. Then there is silence and thinking. And then there’s an eloquent, thoughtful response. Just imagine how different the world would look if people today conversed like that! If you know of any contemporary interviews in that style, please let me know. [1] https://youtu.be/J9SyTEUi6Kw https://youtu.be/J9SyTEUi6Kw

thazework 4y ago
English subs: https://youtu.be/dVSRJC4KAiE https://youtu.be/dVSRJC4KAiE
inkcapmushroom 4y ago
I personally blame good video/audio editors working on interviews, as well as "staged" interviews where the interviewee gets time to review questions and form answers before the cameras start rolling. Either way they make it seem like everyone has the answer right at hand by removing pauses for thought and stammers, which means future interviewees are compelled to give an answer straight away since they believe smart people are certainly capable of having wise answers on hand.

karaterobot 4y ago

This describes the problem, and outlines in very vague terms a solution. Essentially: believe what you believe, and reconcile yourself to the fact that other people believe what they believe, because there is not going to be a comprehensive set of facts we can all rely on in the future we're making. I'm on board with that philosophy, but that's been good advice for a long time, and I don't look around and see a lot people taking it. I wish there were a plan for how to get people to practice this.

throw7 4y ago
Teach more philosophy?

StanislavPetrov 4y ago

>Because an ideology “looks upon all factuality as fabricated,” it “no longer knows any reliable criterion for distinguishing truth from falsehood.” As reality recedes, ideologies organize society to transform their ideas into living reality. I was struck by how closely this passages describes the ever-growing infection of post-modernism in contemporary US institutions.

imbnwa 4y ago
>the ever-growing infection of post-modernism in contemporary US institutions You make it sound like truth wasn't a game until now, all of a sudden, or that people weren't championing the goals they value until now, all of a sudden. Politics didn't start yesterday, you were simply more comfortable with previous regimes. 'Post-modernism' is one of the most over-used keywords to describe the current landscape, particularly if you think only a certain party can be accused of it.
- StanislavPetrov 4y ago
  >You make it sound like truth wasn't a game until now, all of a sudden, or that people weren't championing the goals they value until now, all of a sudden. My intention was to make it sound like objective reality was always at least part of the game until now. There has never been a period of time where the explicit rejection of objective reality in lieu of ideology has been a significant part of the United States "establishment". >'Post-modernism' is one of the most over-used keywords to describe the current landscape, particularly if you think only a certain party can be accused of it. Unfortunately rampant partisanship combined with a lack of education and critical thinking skills has left people unable to have any understanding of society outside of the false, contrived Republican vs Democratic binary narrative. As an example of the delusional brain-rot that has infected our institutions, I point you to a recent article from The Atlantic, which has been widely regarded as the voice of the DC Establishment for decades. > And though sex differences in sports show advantages for men, researchers today still don’t know how much of this to attribute to biological difference versus the lack of support provided to women athletes to reach their highest potential. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/09/sports-gender-sex-segregation-coed/671460/ https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/09/sports-g...

selfhoster11 4y ago

If reality didn’t suck so much, I’m sure more people would become more keen to embrace it.

kelseyfrog 4y ago

I lost all faith in the article at the mention of the embodiment of class-struggle in Bolshevism. Perhaps the author meant to synecdoche one by the other, but the lack of clarity ultimately left me disinterested in believing the author had any more lucidity in anything else. Taking the author at face value, then what of the Mensheviks, S.R.s? To go on further and to find justification in Nietzsche is absurd. I could just as easily drag Jonas Čeika into the conversation and point to evidence that Marx and Nietzsche complement each other. Given that the author doesn't even attempt to rebut such a connection, I can't help but think they are vastly under-read in this area and as such simply wrote whatever drivel they wanted without actually engaging in the topic. At the end of the day he's engaging in a classic trope of reality construction by invoking common sense and truth. His brand of reality has its own unsaid boundaries - simply identify ideas that he would claim as heresy and the worldview he holds will be outlined as the very ideological reality he claims to dispute.

ever1337 4y ago

> We humans are mortal; we are fallible; and we are prone to exhaustion and irrational outbursts. Technology offers a path beyond our weaknesses and the potential of an alternate reality, one in which we merge with machines and artificial enhancements to cure us of human deficiencies. > The promise of modern science addresses an ever-present-but-only-now-realizable drive to make life and man artificial; to cut, as Arendt put it, “the last tie through which even man belongs among the children of nature.” We will soon “produce superior human beings.” I take issue with the ideas this article is trying to present. Humans are not children of nature; they are nature. Humanity evolved of this earth and everything humanity has achieved is a consequence of that. I don't think that "technological advancement" severs any ties with the nature that birthed us, it is just the further progression of the same processes that created us and continue to shape us. For as long as humans have existed, we have been creating technology to deal with the environments we find ourselves in. Fire for warmth and cooking, clothing, tools, agriculture, etc. Is not the human ability to take an active and concerted role in shaping ourselves and our environments a part of what defines "humanity"? Modification of the human body itself is not even anything new; for thousands of years humans have been piercing themselves and binding themselves and even deforming skulls, before that fell out of fashion in the last century. To me, the lines being drawn here, that we must not modify ourselves or evolve beyond where we are at now, are arbitrary. I think there are good arguments over specifics when it comes to things like gene editing or AI, but to issue such a blanket statement that we must simply "man up" and "accept reality" seems overly broad, and itself ignores the actual reality that humans have been shaping ourselves and our world for as long as we have existed.

lawrenceyan 4y ago

I don’t think there’s any real correspondence between the necessity of being mortal in order to be human. I do think mortality is often used as an allegory in order to humble and show how arrogance leads to fallibility, and to that end I 100% agree. But it’s important to separate the story telling device and the meaning behind it in my opinion.