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All culture is a lie which only persists in the re-telling. For example - there is no such thing as "Europe", unless enough people get together and agree that

All culture is a lie which only persists in the re-telling. For example - there is no such thing as "Europe", unless enough people get together and agree that this thing that doesn't really exist, does exist and shall be named "Europe". "Europe" isn't a physical element, it isn't a naturally occurring substance - it is instead a human cultural construct which only persists for as long as the word continues to be used as intended. Chomsky, who I think understands this very basic principle very well, nevertheless seems to dance around this fact because its not very savory - it implies that all human life is fiction - and nobody gets paid large sums to make that observation by those cultures inclined to make their own lies persist longer than others - even if its true. "Perhaps we do have the freedom to speak, think, and act however we wish — but that very freedom, if Chomsky is correct, emerges only within strict, absolute, wholly un-relative natural boundaries." Essentially, our freedom is expressed as the ability to choose which cultures to perpetuate and which to deny persistence, by simply ceasing to perpetuate the lie that is that thing, in the first place. Yes, all human experience is a fiction. It may not be obvious now, but I would wager it'll be obvious to every single one of us, one of these days, right in the last seconds of our own lives, when our own individual fallacies cease to persist... if only there were a way for Chomsky to confirm this, when his time comes.

robertlagrant 3y ago
> All culture is a lie which only persists in the re-telling. This seems wrong. It's not a lie to give something a name. Why not say "All culture is a truth which only persists in the re-telling", given it is true we call Europe Europe?
- robotresearcher 3y ago
  This is a much better take, and elegantly expressed by that flip. Going further: Europe is a dynamical system that is stable enough relative to human experience to have a name. The feedback loop that maintains the system that is Europe includes human behavior, which includes thoughts and speech. Chemical elements are also dynamical systems, held together without humans in the loop. Everything we have a name for is like this. The truth and reality of helium and Europe is the same at this level of description. A problem with this level of description is that it is kind of overpowered: if everything can be considered a dynamical system, then we aren't saying much about the differences between things. Analogously, it's true that evolution explains biology. But there's still a useful science of biology - we don't just point to living things and say 'evolution made that' and call it a day. Hence while I'm pretty confident about the dynamical systems stance being fundamental, there's plenty of room to slice things up further with other concepts. They just need to bottom out successfully into dynamics. Evolution does this, for example. Can morality bottom out this way? Perhaps the theory of iterated games is a connection?
- deleted 3y ago
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- boffinAudio 3y ago
  Europe doesn't exist anywhere in the world except in the fallacious minds of human beings. Gold exists. The sun exists. Gravity exists. Elephants exist. Europe does not. We cannot conjure up gold just by saying "gold shall exist!" - we can, however, lie to ourselves and say "Europe exists!", and - as long as the human mind is around to perpetuate it, this lie will persist. Gravity doesn't need the human mind to making it work. Neither does fission. These things exist in the universe whether humans like it or not. The moment humans are unable to perpetuate the fallacy of "Europe", it ceases to exist entirely. >Its not a lie to give something a name. Yes actually, it is. You are not your name. Your name persists only as long as others help you make it persist. This is not true of the ground under your feet or the air you breathe or water you need to survive. America is a fiction that only persists for as long as there are human beings around to say "that fiction exists and we shall refer to it as America and in so doing, make this thing that doesn't exist, a reality which persists - but only for as long as we state it does". And therein lies Chomskys' dilemma: he cannot tell his audience that one culture is less of a lie than another, because: they are all lies. They don't really exist, except as human constructs - and these are arbitrary, requiring a decision - an ability which we humans, by all reading of the natural laws of the universe, shouldn't really have...
  - fzeroracer 3y ago
    Well no, gold does not exist. Gold as we know it is a concept created by humans according to your argument, we call it 'gold' and define what is 'gold' purely by our own cultural experiences. There's nothing stopping us from calling lead gold and gold lead other than our own cultural experience. If you want to take the idea that human culture is a lie and nothing exists, then empirical reality as we know it does not exist. The concept of 1 + 1 = 2 isn't based in reality but rather something humans made up.
SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
I think you're mistaking an arbitrary or relative concept with a lie. Culture is relative and amorphous, but it's not a lie. It shapes our worldview and it's a framework we can apply to our understanding. Just because it is not the unified worldview as everyone has doesn't make it false.
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- boffinAudio 3y ago
  From the perspective of the natural world, all culture is a lie that humans tell themselves in order to create something that doesn't exist. We conjure these things into existence by telling ourselves - and hurting those who don't agree - that the thing is real, even if it isn't. >Just because it is not the unified worldview as everyone has doesn't make it false. This is demonstrably incorrect: Just ask a Russian to explain American foreign policy. More Americans than Russians believing such lies do not make them true - they just add the force of human attention to the fallacy, which helps it persist in light of other forces of human attention .. >arbitrary Lies are arbitrarily persisted as a result of the _decisions_ of human beings, which don't have any force, weight or energy other than what we say they have, and that force, weight and energy only persists for as long as we, humans, say it shall - and not a moment longer! "Gold is real. Europe is not." Shelley was onto something ... the fiction of Ozymandias is one lie from which we all will learn, whether we like it or not.
  - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    My favourite ice cream is vanilla. My wife thinks I like chocolate. Is my preference a lie?
    - boffinAudio 3y ago
      Depends which one of you persists longer: you or your wife.
vladms 3y ago
What do you mean by "doesn't really exist" or "fiction" though? We use words to describe things and there is always some abstraction involved (when you say "this is a rock", by rock you mean a complex combination of other substances that I do not describe, but have these general characteristics). When talking about cultures, cultures are represented by the people and their actions and both the people and the actions do very much "exist". Describing it "exactly" seems something impossible (same way you don't include in the definition of the word rock how many molecules it must have). So if your point is "language is fuzzy", sure. But saying "culture is a lie" seems just beyond reasonable fuzziness. The definition of culture implies a lot of summarization which in my opinion excludes an exact definition.
dsego 3y ago
The word you're looking for is ideology. https://bigthink.com/the-present/slavoj-zizek-ideology/ https://bigthink.com/the-present/slavoj-zizek-ideology/
yakubin 3y ago
There’s a class of truths whose source is our belief in them, i.e. they are true, because we believe they are true. E.g. in most countries there is right-hand traffic, which is true based on people’s belief that it’s true. Of course it’s written down in law, but the only reason this law has this much power is because people believe in it. Similarly Europe exists, because people believe it exists. But none of those things are lies. They’re no less true than the fact that water boils at 100°C. In case of traffic you may even check the full power of human belief by driving in the other lane. ;) (There was some clever Latin/Greek epistemological name for it, but I’ve forgotten it.)

robertlagrant 3y ago

> All culture is a lie which only persists in the re-telling. This seems wrong. It's not a lie to give something a name. Why not say "All culture is a truth which only persists in the re-telling", given it is true we call Europe Europe?

robotresearcher 3y ago
This is a much better take, and elegantly expressed by that flip. Going further: Europe is a dynamical system that is stable enough relative to human experience to have a name. The feedback loop that maintains the system that is Europe includes human behavior, which includes thoughts and speech. Chemical elements are also dynamical systems, held together without humans in the loop. Everything we have a name for is like this. The truth and reality of helium and Europe is the same at this level of description. A problem with this level of description is that it is kind of overpowered: if everything can be considered a dynamical system, then we aren't saying much about the differences between things. Analogously, it's true that evolution explains biology. But there's still a useful science of biology - we don't just point to living things and say 'evolution made that' and call it a day. Hence while I'm pretty confident about the dynamical systems stance being fundamental, there's plenty of room to slice things up further with other concepts. They just need to bottom out successfully into dynamics. Evolution does this, for example. Can morality bottom out this way? Perhaps the theory of iterated games is a connection?
deleted 3y ago
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boffinAudio 3y ago
Europe doesn't exist anywhere in the world except in the fallacious minds of human beings. Gold exists. The sun exists. Gravity exists. Elephants exist. Europe does not. We cannot conjure up gold just by saying "gold shall exist!" - we can, however, lie to ourselves and say "Europe exists!", and - as long as the human mind is around to perpetuate it, this lie will persist. Gravity doesn't need the human mind to making it work. Neither does fission. These things exist in the universe whether humans like it or not. The moment humans are unable to perpetuate the fallacy of "Europe", it ceases to exist entirely. >Its not a lie to give something a name. Yes actually, it is. You are not your name. Your name persists only as long as others help you make it persist. This is not true of the ground under your feet or the air you breathe or water you need to survive. America is a fiction that only persists for as long as there are human beings around to say "that fiction exists and we shall refer to it as America and in so doing, make this thing that doesn't exist, a reality which persists - but only for as long as we state it does". And therein lies Chomskys' dilemma: he cannot tell his audience that one culture is less of a lie than another, because: they are all lies. They don't really exist, except as human constructs - and these are arbitrary, requiring a decision - an ability which we humans, by all reading of the natural laws of the universe, shouldn't really have...
- fzeroracer 3y ago
  Well no, gold does not exist. Gold as we know it is a concept created by humans according to your argument, we call it 'gold' and define what is 'gold' purely by our own cultural experiences. There's nothing stopping us from calling lead gold and gold lead other than our own cultural experience. If you want to take the idea that human culture is a lie and nothing exists, then empirical reality as we know it does not exist. The concept of 1 + 1 = 2 isn't based in reality but rather something humans made up.

SketchySeaBeast 3y ago

I think you're mistaking an arbitrary or relative concept with a lie. Culture is relative and amorphous, but it's not a lie. It shapes our worldview and it's a framework we can apply to our understanding. Just because it is not the unified worldview as everyone has doesn't make it false.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
boffinAudio 3y ago
From the perspective of the natural world, all culture is a lie that humans tell themselves in order to create something that doesn't exist. We conjure these things into existence by telling ourselves - and hurting those who don't agree - that the thing is real, even if it isn't. >Just because it is not the unified worldview as everyone has doesn't make it false. This is demonstrably incorrect: Just ask a Russian to explain American foreign policy. More Americans than Russians believing such lies do not make them true - they just add the force of human attention to the fallacy, which helps it persist in light of other forces of human attention .. >arbitrary Lies are arbitrarily persisted as a result of the _decisions_ of human beings, which don't have any force, weight or energy other than what we say they have, and that force, weight and energy only persists for as long as we, humans, say it shall - and not a moment longer! "Gold is real. Europe is not." Shelley was onto something ... the fiction of Ozymandias is one lie from which we all will learn, whether we like it or not.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  My favourite ice cream is vanilla. My wife thinks I like chocolate. Is my preference a lie?
  - boffinAudio 3y ago
    Depends which one of you persists longer: you or your wife.

vladms 3y ago

What do you mean by "doesn't really exist" or "fiction" though? We use words to describe things and there is always some abstraction involved (when you say "this is a rock", by rock you mean a complex combination of other substances that I do not describe, but have these general characteristics). When talking about cultures, cultures are represented by the people and their actions and both the people and the actions do very much "exist". Describing it "exactly" seems something impossible (same way you don't include in the definition of the word rock how many molecules it must have). So if your point is "language is fuzzy", sure. But saying "culture is a lie" seems just beyond reasonable fuzziness. The definition of culture implies a lot of summarization which in my opinion excludes an exact definition.

dsego 3y ago

The word you're looking for is ideology. https://bigthink.com/the-present/slavoj-zizek-ideology/ https://bigthink.com/the-present/slavoj-zizek-ideology/

yakubin 3y ago

There’s a class of truths whose source is our belief in them, i.e. they are true, because we believe they are true. E.g. in most countries there is right-hand traffic, which is true based on people’s belief that it’s true. Of course it’s written down in law, but the only reason this law has this much power is because people believe in it. Similarly Europe exists, because people believe it exists. But none of those things are lies. They’re no less true than the fact that water boils at 100°C. In case of traffic you may even check the full power of human belief by driving in the other lane. ;) (There was some clever Latin/Greek epistemological name for it, but I’ve forgotten it.)