Re the solvent of modernity seeping in to Afghanistan, I saw a very bleakly funny quote from a different article, supposedly from an ex-Taliban fighter who'd been given a job in the new administration. He hated it, he couldn't just wake up and decide each morning whether or not he fancied a spot of jihad that day but instead had to show up to work, every day, on time, and just sit behind a desk until he could go home. Poor man!
Zizek is an overrated buffoon, but this really stuck with me:
"The black woke elite is fully aware it won’t achieve its declared goal of diminishing black oppression—and it doesn’t even want that. What they really want is what they are achieving: a position of moral authority from which they may terrorize all others, without effectively changing social relations of domination." (Substack needs italics!)
The purpose of all the rage and tantrums is...the rage and tantrums themselves. The purpose of attacking perceived opponents is... the attack itself. The purpose of fundamentalist dogma is...how great a weapon it makes to injure others w. The purpose of moral claims are...to hold power over those deemed immoral.
Ideology is a great way for people to create socially approved ways to attack and injure, all in the name of good intentions and "a better world".
Occam's human: never attribute anything to ideas and politics that can be attributed to human aggression.
The Rise of the Biosecurity Complex sounds like symptoms of the Kotter 8 step change model that is taught in all MBA programs in the western world. Step one is build a sense of urgency- crisis and fear - to motivate people to actively embrace and engage in change.
I remember when the internet first started gaining traction in the 90s. Mordernists then believed it would usher in a new age where the enlightened would share in the market place of ideas and create a new world of endless possibility. "Bliss it was that dawn to be alive!"
How times have changed. Apparently, human nature isn't interested in new technology. It pretty much stays the same. The internet became the latest Apollonian hero to be mocked by the Dionysian chorus of satyrs. It spawned a more lethal and deadly spread of the age-old vices. It multiplies the capacity for self-delusion by people without fixed points of reference. It is literally a ring in Dante's hell where he sees a vast landscape thronged by lost souls following different flags hither and yon, back and forth, this way and that.
On the other hand you CAN research great health tips and how to fix things.
The trolley problem is often seen as some abstract thing with little practical relevance. It is the complete opposite in fact: it is a description of our present situation.
What? Don't you have to have rejected wokeness entirely to go to a Louis CK show? Unless by identitarian you just mean the entire left, which is not the same as the woke. As I said, if the woke have real cultural power, Louis CK could not have sold out the Madison Square Garden. End of.
You also get very popular shows like The White Lotus that directly throw shade at wokeness. That doesn't happen if culture is truly in the grip of the woke.
They have a lot of power in certain spaces, but the Louis CK thing shows they are largely an emperor with no clothes. All bark no bite.
"if the woke have real cultural power, Louis CK could not have sold out the Madison Square Garden. End of."
This is just a silly facile argument. Just bc their power isn't total and omnipotent doesn't mean that they haven't conquered almost every aspect of society, esp culture and academia. Only the most extreme societies (that didn't have our Constitution or history) allow ZERO dissent.
Louis is a special case, similar to Chappelle and maybe Bill Maher too: he has a massive built-in fan base that existed prior to his transgression, he is talented and beloved, and let's face it: what he did was gross and stupid, and he deserved his years wandering in the wilderness, but he isn't a Cosby or Weinstein. He committed zero felonies.
I know a few people who've gone to his shows in the past few years, and I assure you they hate Trump and the Repubs and believe in all the dogma and shibboleths around Trans and BLM etc. They just don't think Louis is a monster who deserves eternal banishment (also my friends are mostly men over 40/50 so they are not in the True Believer demographic).
On your side I'll give you the fact that people like Louis and Dave Chappelle still have a career, and that certain people can survive a cancellation; on the other side let's put the Social Justice takeover of academia (esp the Humanities), the fact that just about every gallery and museum has been repurposed to pump out Woke dogma and denounce its racist past, the Woke tempests tearing through everywhere from the NYT to the ACLU, the Biden admin infusion of "equity" into every part of the executive branch, the teaching of Gender Theory to children, the DEI takeover of just about every institution in the Anglosphere etc etc...
"All bark and no bite" !! LOL tell that to all the professors sacked for wrongthink, all the writers and books attacked for crimes against sensitivity, and all the people who know to keep their mouths shut bc they're not rich and famous enough to survive mob justice.
I'm not sure how important the humanities and the arts (but even in the arts, we have the immense popularity of The White Lotus to deal with. Really, how popular can wokeness be if that show was a major hit?) are. What is firmly in control is capitalism and the managerial state. They feed things like wokeness to redirect political energy away from stuff that could actually take away their power, but it is they and not the woke who run the show.
Really?? "White Lotus" is the hill you want to die on?? A single TV show that may be seen by around 1% of the population? Compared to the ideological capture of almost all the cultural and educational institutions designed to transmit human history, civics, art and literature, all the best that has been thought and created?? Compared to the fact that all these institutions now require ideological litmus tests for employment? Compared to the cold chill of punitive conformity that's overtaken American thought, discourse, literature, arts etc?
"I'm not sure how important the humanities and the arts are"...
I don't know I've never been burned by wokeness. My org recently instituted DEI but it comes across as a boring HR thing that everyone is ignoring.
And White Lotus is prestige TV. It's in theory more influential than museums and the humanities, as most people don't engage with those.
And again I point to Louis CK. If the woke brainworms had actually gotten to the population, that man would not have a thriving career. It's as simple as that. The brainworms have definitely infected a few places, but I consider the technocracy to be the real danger, and those guys can swap which ideology they're pushing very easily.
I understand this is something of a reactionary space, but calling the entire left woke is not such a great idea. You can believe in all of those things without being woke. Woke is pretty specifically about radical intolerance for dissent, and also a desire for a radical transformation of society.
And I can understand wanting to dismiss the entire left worldview (Lord knows I don't approve of all of it, or even identify as leftist), but the left is bigger than the woke.
They wouldn't need absolute totalitarian control to shut down Louis is the thing: they would just need for the public to have swallowed their beliefs. Which they clearly have not, else Louis would be out of a career.
I’m reading a history of “THE WASPS” by Beran. Interesting look at that “elite”. I believe the “crisis management” scheme of Government started with FDR. He inherited a REAL crisis and obtained wide latitude to pass legislation and change our government. Politicians saw that path to exploit for increased power and money and have been following it ever since.
To some degree I think this has been part of politics forever. But in terms of it being commonly abused in the USA, I'd point earlier than FDR, to Wilson during WWI.
Have you heard James Lindsay’s podcast? You’ve put me in mind of it today, especially episode 51: Welcome to the Second Enlightenment.
Lindsay produces so much important content that I don’t have time to listen to... but this one I did hear, and it’s stuck with me. From the summary:
What he sees is the dawn of the Second Enlightenment, which will change the world in unbelievable ways for the better if it can set the world ablaze and spread its light. Drawing on lessons from the previous Enlightenment, which unfolded from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, Lindsay makes a case that for all it did accomplish, it didn't do the one thing that most educated liberals believe it did. The First Enlightenment did not create a Marketplace of Ideas. It created an aristocracy of ideas, which was a huge step in the right direction away from the magisteria of the Darker Age that preceded it. Now, with the advent of the internet and the ability for the average person to hold "information property" by the fruits of his own research, the Marketplace of Ideas is finally emerging. It's also threatening the power of the "information aristocrats" in the Expert Caste, including its worst offenders, the technocrats. These are doing everything in their power to re-establish a technocratic information aristocracy in the form of a new administered information economy: an information socialism totally under oligarchical technocratic control.
***
It’s worth a listen, as is most everything from him I’ve heard. I just wish someone would distill it down into a form more easily digested. My complaint is there’s so much of it that it’s difficult to find the time to catch up, or stay that way.
Thanks, sounds interesting so I'll check it out. I am skeptical though, as I think there is a fundamental problem of there being too much information, so people need some authority to help them parse information out of the flood. Case in point maybe, I also find there are way too many podcasts for me to listen too these days. More broadly, power inevitably corrupts marketplaces of ideas (or any marketplaces).
I would disagree with people needing authority.. I think they need trust. For example, Bari Weiss at The Free Press posted an essay about what’s going on in Israel. Commenters added to it and posted links to different points of view. I think at the end of the day trust will be built more by having knowledgeable commenters than by any individual point of view. Also we now have experts reporting themselves and building trust in themselves as humans. There are always those who will be non-corruptible.. our job is to locate them. IMHO.
Trust is still around, and we can design more trustworthy institutions. There is a substantial academic literature, as well as lived experience, on how this can be done. Transparency and accountability are two of the main features.. but there is also the personal.. that's what makes Substack so interesting. We can each learn to trust sources here.. or not, or only on specific topics.
It sounds like it doesn’t it. I am a romantic idealist by nature and suppose I wish there was someone or some organization that could be trusted to collate and organize info for me. Fat chance.
Re the solvent of modernity seeping in to Afghanistan, I saw a very bleakly funny quote from a different article, supposedly from an ex-Taliban fighter who'd been given a job in the new administration. He hated it, he couldn't just wake up and decide each morning whether or not he fancied a spot of jihad that day but instead had to show up to work, every day, on time, and just sit behind a desk until he could go home. Poor man!
Jeez, maybe do this every half-month. 16 tabs open now, 13 of them are your fault. Which would be not so bad if I wasn't at work.
Thank you. I always love these posts!
This was a great post. Sucked up my entire morning that I had otherwise committed. But I forgive you. Many thanks.
Zizek is an overrated buffoon, but this really stuck with me:
"The black woke elite is fully aware it won’t achieve its declared goal of diminishing black oppression—and it doesn’t even want that. What they really want is what they are achieving: a position of moral authority from which they may terrorize all others, without effectively changing social relations of domination." (Substack needs italics!)
The purpose of all the rage and tantrums is...the rage and tantrums themselves. The purpose of attacking perceived opponents is... the attack itself. The purpose of fundamentalist dogma is...how great a weapon it makes to injure others w. The purpose of moral claims are...to hold power over those deemed immoral.
Ideology is a great way for people to create socially approved ways to attack and injure, all in the name of good intentions and "a better world".
Occam's human: never attribute anything to ideas and politics that can be attributed to human aggression.
The Rise of the Biosecurity Complex sounds like symptoms of the Kotter 8 step change model that is taught in all MBA programs in the western world. Step one is build a sense of urgency- crisis and fear - to motivate people to actively embrace and engage in change.
I remember when the internet first started gaining traction in the 90s. Mordernists then believed it would usher in a new age where the enlightened would share in the market place of ideas and create a new world of endless possibility. "Bliss it was that dawn to be alive!"
How times have changed. Apparently, human nature isn't interested in new technology. It pretty much stays the same. The internet became the latest Apollonian hero to be mocked by the Dionysian chorus of satyrs. It spawned a more lethal and deadly spread of the age-old vices. It multiplies the capacity for self-delusion by people without fixed points of reference. It is literally a ring in Dante's hell where he sees a vast landscape thronged by lost souls following different flags hither and yon, back and forth, this way and that.
On the other hand you CAN research great health tips and how to fix things.
Please see this and tell us how rational and observant you are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY
I wish I had more time for reading, and that my brain was better at understanding.
The world is such an interesting place, but I just can't keep up.
But I try.
The trolley problem is often seen as some abstract thing with little practical relevance. It is the complete opposite in fact: it is a description of our present situation.
The Trolley Problem Is All Too Real
https://squarecircle.substack.com/p/the-trolley-problem-is-all-too-real
You can actually pull the lever today, and without killing anyone! It will just cost you a bit of money.
About wokeness not being on the wane and here to stay, then how can Louis C.K. have a sold out show on Madison Square Garden? Doesn't make sense.
What? Don't you have to have rejected wokeness entirely to go to a Louis CK show? Unless by identitarian you just mean the entire left, which is not the same as the woke. As I said, if the woke have real cultural power, Louis CK could not have sold out the Madison Square Garden. End of.
You also get very popular shows like The White Lotus that directly throw shade at wokeness. That doesn't happen if culture is truly in the grip of the woke.
They have a lot of power in certain spaces, but the Louis CK thing shows they are largely an emperor with no clothes. All bark no bite.
"if the woke have real cultural power, Louis CK could not have sold out the Madison Square Garden. End of."
This is just a silly facile argument. Just bc their power isn't total and omnipotent doesn't mean that they haven't conquered almost every aspect of society, esp culture and academia. Only the most extreme societies (that didn't have our Constitution or history) allow ZERO dissent.
Louis is a special case, similar to Chappelle and maybe Bill Maher too: he has a massive built-in fan base that existed prior to his transgression, he is talented and beloved, and let's face it: what he did was gross and stupid, and he deserved his years wandering in the wilderness, but he isn't a Cosby or Weinstein. He committed zero felonies.
I know a few people who've gone to his shows in the past few years, and I assure you they hate Trump and the Repubs and believe in all the dogma and shibboleths around Trans and BLM etc. They just don't think Louis is a monster who deserves eternal banishment (also my friends are mostly men over 40/50 so they are not in the True Believer demographic).
On your side I'll give you the fact that people like Louis and Dave Chappelle still have a career, and that certain people can survive a cancellation; on the other side let's put the Social Justice takeover of academia (esp the Humanities), the fact that just about every gallery and museum has been repurposed to pump out Woke dogma and denounce its racist past, the Woke tempests tearing through everywhere from the NYT to the ACLU, the Biden admin infusion of "equity" into every part of the executive branch, the teaching of Gender Theory to children, the DEI takeover of just about every institution in the Anglosphere etc etc...
"All bark and no bite" !! LOL tell that to all the professors sacked for wrongthink, all the writers and books attacked for crimes against sensitivity, and all the people who know to keep their mouths shut bc they're not rich and famous enough to survive mob justice.
I'm not sure how important the humanities and the arts (but even in the arts, we have the immense popularity of The White Lotus to deal with. Really, how popular can wokeness be if that show was a major hit?) are. What is firmly in control is capitalism and the managerial state. They feed things like wokeness to redirect political energy away from stuff that could actually take away their power, but it is they and not the woke who run the show.
Really?? "White Lotus" is the hill you want to die on?? A single TV show that may be seen by around 1% of the population? Compared to the ideological capture of almost all the cultural and educational institutions designed to transmit human history, civics, art and literature, all the best that has been thought and created?? Compared to the fact that all these institutions now require ideological litmus tests for employment? Compared to the cold chill of punitive conformity that's overtaken American thought, discourse, literature, arts etc?
"I'm not sure how important the humanities and the arts are"...
Well, that much is obvious.
I don't know I've never been burned by wokeness. My org recently instituted DEI but it comes across as a boring HR thing that everyone is ignoring.
And White Lotus is prestige TV. It's in theory more influential than museums and the humanities, as most people don't engage with those.
And again I point to Louis CK. If the woke brainworms had actually gotten to the population, that man would not have a thriving career. It's as simple as that. The brainworms have definitely infected a few places, but I consider the technocracy to be the real danger, and those guys can swap which ideology they're pushing very easily.
I understand this is something of a reactionary space, but calling the entire left woke is not such a great idea. You can believe in all of those things without being woke. Woke is pretty specifically about radical intolerance for dissent, and also a desire for a radical transformation of society.
And I can understand wanting to dismiss the entire left worldview (Lord knows I don't approve of all of it, or even identify as leftist), but the left is bigger than the woke.
They wouldn't need absolute totalitarian control to shut down Louis is the thing: they would just need for the public to have swallowed their beliefs. Which they clearly have not, else Louis would be out of a career.
I’m reading a history of “THE WASPS” by Beran. Interesting look at that “elite”. I believe the “crisis management” scheme of Government started with FDR. He inherited a REAL crisis and obtained wide latitude to pass legislation and change our government. Politicians saw that path to exploit for increased power and money and have been following it ever since.
To some degree I think this has been part of politics forever. But in terms of it being commonly abused in the USA, I'd point earlier than FDR, to Wilson during WWI.
Try Lincoln. He effectively destroyed the Republic of the Founders.
Stumbled on The Hungarian Conservative while doing a web search, and find it quite interesting.
Have you heard James Lindsay’s podcast? You’ve put me in mind of it today, especially episode 51: Welcome to the Second Enlightenment.
Lindsay produces so much important content that I don’t have time to listen to... but this one I did hear, and it’s stuck with me. From the summary:
What he sees is the dawn of the Second Enlightenment, which will change the world in unbelievable ways for the better if it can set the world ablaze and spread its light. Drawing on lessons from the previous Enlightenment, which unfolded from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, Lindsay makes a case that for all it did accomplish, it didn't do the one thing that most educated liberals believe it did. The First Enlightenment did not create a Marketplace of Ideas. It created an aristocracy of ideas, which was a huge step in the right direction away from the magisteria of the Darker Age that preceded it. Now, with the advent of the internet and the ability for the average person to hold "information property" by the fruits of his own research, the Marketplace of Ideas is finally emerging. It's also threatening the power of the "information aristocrats" in the Expert Caste, including its worst offenders, the technocrats. These are doing everything in their power to re-establish a technocratic information aristocracy in the form of a new administered information economy: an information socialism totally under oligarchical technocratic control.
***
It’s worth a listen, as is most everything from him I’ve heard. I just wish someone would distill it down into a form more easily digested. My complaint is there’s so much of it that it’s difficult to find the time to catch up, or stay that way.
Thanks, sounds interesting so I'll check it out. I am skeptical though, as I think there is a fundamental problem of there being too much information, so people need some authority to help them parse information out of the flood. Case in point maybe, I also find there are way too many podcasts for me to listen too these days. More broadly, power inevitably corrupts marketplaces of ideas (or any marketplaces).
I would disagree with people needing authority.. I think they need trust. For example, Bari Weiss at The Free Press posted an essay about what’s going on in Israel. Commenters added to it and posted links to different points of view. I think at the end of the day trust will be built more by having knowledgeable commenters than by any individual point of view. Also we now have experts reporting themselves and building trust in themselves as humans. There are always those who will be non-corruptible.. our job is to locate them. IMHO.
Well authority used to be produced by trust (credibility). Now that there's no trust, there's no credible authority.
Trust is still around, and we can design more trustworthy institutions. There is a substantial academic literature, as well as lived experience, on how this can be done. Transparency and accountability are two of the main features.. but there is also the personal.. that's what makes Substack so interesting. We can each learn to trust sources here.. or not, or only on specific topics.
Agreed. We need a legitimate and trustworthy “information overseer” that can help weed out the chaff from the grain.
Is this ironic?
It sounds like it doesn’t it. I am a romantic idealist by nature and suppose I wish there was someone or some organization that could be trusted to collate and organize info for me. Fat chance.
You'd best find out who's side you're on.
Yep.
I neglected to include the link:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-discourses/id1499880546?i=1000539210515
Related, is there no way to edit a comment once it’s been made?
If you click on the "..." next to the like and reply buttons, you should be able to edit the comment.
I’ve found I don’t have that on my Iphone and I pad, only on computer. I can only choose like and reply.