I think we met at the same place even if we came from somewhat different starting points. I agree with most of your articulate reply. And I like the quality of our back and forth--what a good dialectic ought to be.
Yes, schools of education have been repositories of fuzzy ideologies and even more fuzzy minds for decades. In the 80s, my fi…
I think we met at the same place even if we came from somewhat different starting points. I agree with most of your articulate reply. And I like the quality of our back and forth--what a good dialectic ought to be.
Yes, schools of education have been repositories of fuzzy ideologies and even more fuzzy minds for decades. In the 80s, my first wife got her certificate at Cal State LA and a Masters in Education at UCLA. She was educated in India and then at Pomona College where we met and she was appalled at the claptrap and the dim people who espoused it nearly 40 years ago. Of course, in her decades of teaching in South Central LA she ignored all this junk. My guess is that many others also did. Like the ersatz “racial sensitivity training” of yore. Only dupes took it seriously.
Or maybe it's still only the dupes, but their number has multiplied.
I suspect that the kind of individual strength and clarity needed to stand up to a widespread moral ideology may not be widely cultivated in young folks before they go to colleges of education (or anything else). That is, to "ignore all this junk" and carry on.
While I'm alarmed at the effects of (mostly well meaning) CSJ ideology on our society, I'm more alarmed at what I'm hearing from teachers about the current K12 students who are not learning, not behaving, and causing chaos. There are many intertwined roots of this sea change, of course (and CSJ might be one of them). But I fear our society will crash before the saner fraction could have any chance to right the ship. When we have a generation coming up that is often not able to understand the outlines of the world they live in (eg: don't even know what state they live in, or whether Africa is a state, nation or continent), doesn't have the attention span for a 3 minute movie, cannot take even reasonable direction, and constantly expects immediate gratification - how can we build a more functional democracy on that base? The themes of resentment of "the system" and guilt for any success (underpinnings of CSJ) can still spread easily in an ignorant population with no attention span or self-regulation - but critical thinking to inhibit their passionate emotion drive excesses will not flourish.
I'm coming to question my own assumptions and beliefs about humans and society. A structure like a building can be much more complex and functional than it's components, like bricks. But the quality of the bricks also limits what kind of structures can be built and sustained. How many solid bricks does one need to sustain a tall building comprised of many dysfunctional ones - especially if the dysfunctional ones are constantly picking at the successful ones who keep the society functioning?
And atop that negative news, I recently read Theodore Dalrymple's "Life at the Bottom", a collection of essays mostly from the 1990's by a British doctor working with the underclass in London. Whew, it's a pretty strong argument that the abstract theories of the progressive elites filter down to the underclass in ways that create more misery than liberation. And this was long before the current excesses of CSJ ("wokism").
My spouse and I have had a lively ongoing discussion and exploration of ideas for nearly half a century, each reading and watching many things which we bring to our search for truth. We had some idealistic concepts of how a society should be structured to create a more optimum balance of freedom and social harmony. (One root was the concept of a "partnership society" which first seeks a win/win, versus a "dominator society" which defaults to win/lose even when that's not necessary).
Alas, at some point we had to admit that we were thinking of a society in which people like ourselves would flourish - in cooperation with other people who would be acting from a similar level of reflection and understanding and self-regulation even when they had different ideas. What we had to face is that we are highly atypical. And our vision of a kinder gentler society (creating and fostering kinder and gentler citizens in a productive feedback loop) was not going to work for most of humanity, present or past.
The substance of your post deserves a far longer response than I should give here. My brand of liberalism has always been tempered by a respect for human agency. That implies a deep respect for individual potential and a deep suspicion of group identity. The State's role should be creating the conditions where individuals may thrive, creating accountability for the negative externalities of unbridled capitalism, and attempting to level the playing field by removing impediments to succeed for those who take the initiative to better themselves. While libertarianism is the default for me, life experience has taught me that there is still a robust role for state intervention, but it must be justified—e.g., I spent much of my legal career as a lawyer for environmental nonprofits.
In many ways, my brand of “classical liberalism” is what might now be called “conservative” in contrast to MAGA radicalism. Our society and polity will never be better than the sum of individual effort, so that the role of the state is to create conditions where such individual and group effort is incentivized and rewarded at all levels. The State should also foster "radical tolerance," where Christian cis-het people can live side by side with atheist trans pansexuals because they mutually agree on a regime which enables each to thrive within their respective private spheres.
To your point, a corollary of this view is that when a critical mass of individuals within a polity is unwilling or unable to make productive effort, or to tolerate difference, the whole edifice will eventually fail. Unwilling due to a culture that glorifies victimhood independent of effort. Unable because declining expectations and misallocated resources deny individuals the tools they need to make their effort worthwhile.
You are a fan of Theodore Dalrymple? I am a HUGE fan. I just love his writing, even if I agree with only most of his views.
The other thing aside from his deep literary and auto didactic education is his deep experience, much of which I identify with. He traveled and lived for years working and slumming in the poorest places in the world before his years as a prison psychiatrist in Manchester I believe. I did much the same, living for years in India and Mexico, as well as shorter times in Brazil and more recently in China—2002 to 2004. He has a deep understanding of humanity that is truly rare.
I will respond to the bulk of your excellent message in the next hours after giving it some thought, but I’m glad we share the liking for Anthony Daniels— Dalrymple’s real name. You might be amused to know that Dalrymple's father was a Communist. Figures.
Actually, I have just now discovered Daniels/Dalrymple via this book.
I actually forget where it was recommended, but I'm glad I ordered a copy and put it at the top of my endless reading list.
In honestly, I'm still finding my balance in regard to these essays. It makes a pretty powerful case. I am still digesting the implications from it, lots of reflection will be needed. It challenges some of my "traditional liberal" perspectives, not just the absurdities of more recent CSJ infused progressivism.
This is one of those experiences where you can't unsee what has been shown, like when I first encountered "women's lib" (as it was called back then).
By this time in my life, I've encountered a number of "new and compelling lenses" through which to view society, and so I regard each as revealing just a facet of the truth, rather than latching onto one of the as The Truth around which to make everything else fit.
I'm not easily stampeded by emotional arguments, but Dalrymple is invoking a much more nuanced persuasion which deserves serious reflection. But I need time to figure out where I agree and disagree and why.
In my own journey, I used to embrace the "liberatory" facets of progresssive liberalism - liberating people from obsolete and repressive customs, structures and thought patterns. Like, say, homophobia, or the condemnation of non-procreative sex. As progressivism started moving towards a new puritanism of sorts, as it started invoking the guilt borrowed from echos of Christianity, as it began to make Procrustean prescriptions, etc - I began to back away from the extremes (when then proceeded to infiltrate the mainstream left). I have been questioning "how did all this go wrong, what wrong turn did liberalism take, and was it optional or inherent from the start?".
Now Dalrymple makes a case that even among many things I found liberatory, many have percolated down to the underclass as destabilizing the civilizing forces restraining the less savory aspects of the human condition. Yikes! Lots of food for thought.
That's a good thing, even if not always comfortable. It's also kind of exciting.
(This is the kind of excitement my wife and I love sharing and thinking about together; I feel very lucky to be in such a partnership. While I was reading this, she was reading "Woke Fragility" and from her comments I think I'll need to read that too. It's great to have a free thinker to explore ideas with!)
----
I'd be glad to hear of rational critics of Dalrymple's views, as I (gently) search for balance. I don't mean those who are driven to screeching by his blasphemy and think calling him names is a good counter-argument, I mean somebody who can present evidence and reasoning to provide balance. Pointers to any such are welcome.
And meanwhile, I'd appreciate any suggestions for where to go next in sampling Dalrymple's writing. Apparently I've been missing out on a lot of good stuff.
I like your third sentence, by the way. Yes, the man can write! I started marking some good passages early on, but then I felt like I'd use up a hiliter filling the book with yellow lines over "the good parts". It feels like kind of peak British low key humor, mixed with a message that resonates authenticity.
You mention "He has a deep understanding of humanity that is truly rare". I think that's one of the things which bothers me about CSJ ideology - it seems to have a shallow one-dimensional view of humanity, seeing everything in terms of privilege/oppression and trying to make every thing fit into that narrative (or suppress it otherwise). There IS a kernel of real insight beneath a lot of CSJ, but then it gets buried in excesses and oversimplifications and weaponization and a perverse moralization. There's not enough wise acknowledgement of the complexity of humanity.
Your history sounds fascinating, by the way. I'm enjoying this.
So much to talk about and share! Here is a favorite essay among Dalrymple’s more recent work, titled “The Age of Cant.” It sums up so much of what irritates me about the self righteousness of the “progressive” left.
I also love his very early writing about Sub Saharan Africa. He discovered many truths about what poverty really is that I independently discovered living deep in India in the mid 1980s and in rural Southern Mexico in the 1970s. I will locate for you. He really, really knows his shit.
I think we met at the same place even if we came from somewhat different starting points. I agree with most of your articulate reply. And I like the quality of our back and forth--what a good dialectic ought to be.
Yes, schools of education have been repositories of fuzzy ideologies and even more fuzzy minds for decades. In the 80s, my first wife got her certificate at Cal State LA and a Masters in Education at UCLA. She was educated in India and then at Pomona College where we met and she was appalled at the claptrap and the dim people who espoused it nearly 40 years ago. Of course, in her decades of teaching in South Central LA she ignored all this junk. My guess is that many others also did. Like the ersatz “racial sensitivity training” of yore. Only dupes took it seriously.
Until more recently as it spread more widely.
Or maybe it's still only the dupes, but their number has multiplied.
I suspect that the kind of individual strength and clarity needed to stand up to a widespread moral ideology may not be widely cultivated in young folks before they go to colleges of education (or anything else). That is, to "ignore all this junk" and carry on.
While I'm alarmed at the effects of (mostly well meaning) CSJ ideology on our society, I'm more alarmed at what I'm hearing from teachers about the current K12 students who are not learning, not behaving, and causing chaos. There are many intertwined roots of this sea change, of course (and CSJ might be one of them). But I fear our society will crash before the saner fraction could have any chance to right the ship. When we have a generation coming up that is often not able to understand the outlines of the world they live in (eg: don't even know what state they live in, or whether Africa is a state, nation or continent), doesn't have the attention span for a 3 minute movie, cannot take even reasonable direction, and constantly expects immediate gratification - how can we build a more functional democracy on that base? The themes of resentment of "the system" and guilt for any success (underpinnings of CSJ) can still spread easily in an ignorant population with no attention span or self-regulation - but critical thinking to inhibit their passionate emotion drive excesses will not flourish.
I'm coming to question my own assumptions and beliefs about humans and society. A structure like a building can be much more complex and functional than it's components, like bricks. But the quality of the bricks also limits what kind of structures can be built and sustained. How many solid bricks does one need to sustain a tall building comprised of many dysfunctional ones - especially if the dysfunctional ones are constantly picking at the successful ones who keep the society functioning?
And atop that negative news, I recently read Theodore Dalrymple's "Life at the Bottom", a collection of essays mostly from the 1990's by a British doctor working with the underclass in London. Whew, it's a pretty strong argument that the abstract theories of the progressive elites filter down to the underclass in ways that create more misery than liberation. And this was long before the current excesses of CSJ ("wokism").
My spouse and I have had a lively ongoing discussion and exploration of ideas for nearly half a century, each reading and watching many things which we bring to our search for truth. We had some idealistic concepts of how a society should be structured to create a more optimum balance of freedom and social harmony. (One root was the concept of a "partnership society" which first seeks a win/win, versus a "dominator society" which defaults to win/lose even when that's not necessary).
Alas, at some point we had to admit that we were thinking of a society in which people like ourselves would flourish - in cooperation with other people who would be acting from a similar level of reflection and understanding and self-regulation even when they had different ideas. What we had to face is that we are highly atypical. And our vision of a kinder gentler society (creating and fostering kinder and gentler citizens in a productive feedback loop) was not going to work for most of humanity, present or past.
The substance of your post deserves a far longer response than I should give here. My brand of liberalism has always been tempered by a respect for human agency. That implies a deep respect for individual potential and a deep suspicion of group identity. The State's role should be creating the conditions where individuals may thrive, creating accountability for the negative externalities of unbridled capitalism, and attempting to level the playing field by removing impediments to succeed for those who take the initiative to better themselves. While libertarianism is the default for me, life experience has taught me that there is still a robust role for state intervention, but it must be justified—e.g., I spent much of my legal career as a lawyer for environmental nonprofits.
In many ways, my brand of “classical liberalism” is what might now be called “conservative” in contrast to MAGA radicalism. Our society and polity will never be better than the sum of individual effort, so that the role of the state is to create conditions where such individual and group effort is incentivized and rewarded at all levels. The State should also foster "radical tolerance," where Christian cis-het people can live side by side with atheist trans pansexuals because they mutually agree on a regime which enables each to thrive within their respective private spheres.
To your point, a corollary of this view is that when a critical mass of individuals within a polity is unwilling or unable to make productive effort, or to tolerate difference, the whole edifice will eventually fail. Unwilling due to a culture that glorifies victimhood independent of effort. Unable because declining expectations and misallocated resources deny individuals the tools they need to make their effort worthwhile.
Really well said.
You are a fan of Theodore Dalrymple? I am a HUGE fan. I just love his writing, even if I agree with only most of his views.
The other thing aside from his deep literary and auto didactic education is his deep experience, much of which I identify with. He traveled and lived for years working and slumming in the poorest places in the world before his years as a prison psychiatrist in Manchester I believe. I did much the same, living for years in India and Mexico, as well as shorter times in Brazil and more recently in China—2002 to 2004. He has a deep understanding of humanity that is truly rare.
I will respond to the bulk of your excellent message in the next hours after giving it some thought, but I’m glad we share the liking for Anthony Daniels— Dalrymple’s real name. You might be amused to know that Dalrymple's father was a Communist. Figures.
Actually, I have just now discovered Daniels/Dalrymple via this book.
I actually forget where it was recommended, but I'm glad I ordered a copy and put it at the top of my endless reading list.
In honestly, I'm still finding my balance in regard to these essays. It makes a pretty powerful case. I am still digesting the implications from it, lots of reflection will be needed. It challenges some of my "traditional liberal" perspectives, not just the absurdities of more recent CSJ infused progressivism.
This is one of those experiences where you can't unsee what has been shown, like when I first encountered "women's lib" (as it was called back then).
By this time in my life, I've encountered a number of "new and compelling lenses" through which to view society, and so I regard each as revealing just a facet of the truth, rather than latching onto one of the as The Truth around which to make everything else fit.
I'm not easily stampeded by emotional arguments, but Dalrymple is invoking a much more nuanced persuasion which deserves serious reflection. But I need time to figure out where I agree and disagree and why.
In my own journey, I used to embrace the "liberatory" facets of progresssive liberalism - liberating people from obsolete and repressive customs, structures and thought patterns. Like, say, homophobia, or the condemnation of non-procreative sex. As progressivism started moving towards a new puritanism of sorts, as it started invoking the guilt borrowed from echos of Christianity, as it began to make Procrustean prescriptions, etc - I began to back away from the extremes (when then proceeded to infiltrate the mainstream left). I have been questioning "how did all this go wrong, what wrong turn did liberalism take, and was it optional or inherent from the start?".
Now Dalrymple makes a case that even among many things I found liberatory, many have percolated down to the underclass as destabilizing the civilizing forces restraining the less savory aspects of the human condition. Yikes! Lots of food for thought.
That's a good thing, even if not always comfortable. It's also kind of exciting.
(This is the kind of excitement my wife and I love sharing and thinking about together; I feel very lucky to be in such a partnership. While I was reading this, she was reading "Woke Fragility" and from her comments I think I'll need to read that too. It's great to have a free thinker to explore ideas with!)
----
I'd be glad to hear of rational critics of Dalrymple's views, as I (gently) search for balance. I don't mean those who are driven to screeching by his blasphemy and think calling him names is a good counter-argument, I mean somebody who can present evidence and reasoning to provide balance. Pointers to any such are welcome.
And meanwhile, I'd appreciate any suggestions for where to go next in sampling Dalrymple's writing. Apparently I've been missing out on a lot of good stuff.
I like your third sentence, by the way. Yes, the man can write! I started marking some good passages early on, but then I felt like I'd use up a hiliter filling the book with yellow lines over "the good parts". It feels like kind of peak British low key humor, mixed with a message that resonates authenticity.
You mention "He has a deep understanding of humanity that is truly rare". I think that's one of the things which bothers me about CSJ ideology - it seems to have a shallow one-dimensional view of humanity, seeing everything in terms of privilege/oppression and trying to make every thing fit into that narrative (or suppress it otherwise). There IS a kernel of real insight beneath a lot of CSJ, but then it gets buried in excesses and oversimplifications and weaponization and a perverse moralization. There's not enough wise acknowledgement of the complexity of humanity.
Your history sounds fascinating, by the way. I'm enjoying this.
So much to talk about and share! Here is a favorite essay among Dalrymple’s more recent work, titled “The Age of Cant.” It sums up so much of what irritates me about the self righteousness of the “progressive” left.
See https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-age-of-cant
I also love his very early writing about Sub Saharan Africa. He discovered many truths about what poverty really is that I independently discovered living deep in India in the mid 1980s and in rural Southern Mexico in the 1970s. I will locate for you. He really, really knows his shit.
And I say this as a lifelong liberal.
Thanks. Great essay, albeit depressing (like the essays in "Life at the Bottom".
What a gem to have discovered.
I can really resonate with the liberalism you have described (in another comment). I so wish it were ascendant today!
And I look forward to more recommendations!