Wow. Just wow.
This is quite a study in how neo-progressivism can destroy some facets of rationality, while preserving the ability to rationalize. It's actually very depressing and frightening. DiAngelo and Kendi are being very successful in reprograming significant subsets of the society - unfortunately concentrated among the cultural…
This is quite a study in how neo-progressivism can destroy some facets of rationality, while preserving the ability to rationalize. It's actually very depressing and frightening. DiAngelo and Kendi are being very successful in reprograming significant subsets of the society - unfortunately concentrated among the cultural, educational, and economic elites who have disproportionate power.
I did think you were a bit snippy and sarcastic. And that it would take a saint not to be in that context. I think it's a type of coping mechanism when confronted with "logic" so bad you don't know whether to laugh or cry - or look for another planet.
And yet J appears to be educated and intelligent and caring and to be trying to "do the right thing". Not motivated by simple ignorance, stupidity or malice. And yet...
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Let me say more about the depressing part. For a long time, we've counted on the idea that good ideas can displace bad ideas, that good reasoning and evidence can win in the end. But I don't see any sign that your solid points are denting J's ideological armor. Maybe enlightenment values are meeting their match?
One of my "pet theories" is that in the West, the tools of the Enlightenment and science were sufficient to overturn the hegemony of the Church and traditional restricted thought (eg: kings rule by divine right) and created a more secular society. Not quickly or painlessly, but eventually.
However, neo-progressivism (with roots in postmodernism and critical theory) is like a new species of weed which emerged in a field previously controlled by herbicides. Obviously, such a new weed must have evolved resistance to the existing herbicides, or it would not be spreading.
Neo-progressivism (sometimes called "the successor ideology") aims to displace liberalism (in the broader sense of "liberal western democracy" not in the narrower US sense of Democrats). And as a competing mind virus emerging now, it has great resistance to control measure like logic and evidence, free speech, listening to all sides - better resistance than the now-relatively-tamed Church had. Postmodernism seems to be based on a challenge not to facts, but even to the nature of knowledge - a meta defense against rational rebuttal.
What we are seeing in the above interchange is an individual herbicide resistant weed (in the above metaphor, trying to describe the dynamics, not to disparage with emotive slurs). Spray, spray - weed sits there unhindered. Not just frustrating, but alarming for what it may portend. (Especially given that there are other alarming trends on the other side of the aisle).
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What can we do but slog on? Keep trying. It may work on some, especially as some neo-progressives (at least on the margins) begin to realize that the new strategy is NOT accomplishing it's promised improvements to society and an endless set of excuses ("our strategies haven't worked yet because systemic racism/patriarchy is so deep that we activists need more power over society to root it out, so let us double down - again") doesn't change that failure.
Maybe the problem is not that the reality feedback loop is not working, but that it operates on a longer timespan than I expect.
Actually that last is almost certainly true - if the infection spreads widely enough, the society will collapse and other societies (displaced in time and/or space) will learn from that what to avoid. I'm pretty sure that China is watching and learning what to avoid. I'm just hoping for a shorter timescale than that, for reality feedback to bear fruit before that collapse - and before helping install an authoritarian right wing regime.
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To balance the "pesticide resistant weed" metaphor, let's note that ideas like representative democracies operating under a charter have spread like weeds before. Being hard to suppress is not always a bad thing. But I believe that this time it is, and we may not realize it until too late, especially in the context of the "perfect storm" of other existential threats that are peaking at the same time (climate change, peak oil, fresh water shortage, antibiotic resistance, surveillance technology, maybe even the singularity, etc).
Yeah, guilty as charged.😅 All I'll say in my defence is that I've literally spent months talking to J and working very hard to do so in good faith (I've been wanting to post one of our conversations for a while but they're usually absurdly long and go on all kinds of twists and tangents).
At first, he just seemed a little lost and confused (I still think he is) and he asked me to help him work through some of his internal conflicts about racism, which I tried to do.
But yeah, after a few months of that, and after seeing him cling to the Kendi-ism and the victimhood ideation, despite him seeing how the logic of his arguments would fall apart, it became hard to take him seriously.
He *knows* what he's saying is silly. Or at least logically incoherent. Note how he doesn't even try to counter the sarcasm or back up his arguments with anything except more word salad. Not a single fact or concrete rationale to be found.
For some people, seeing themselves as the underdog in some existential struggle against "the system," and convincing themselves they're among the anointed few who are smart enough to see it, is too intoxicating to let mere logic or reason or facts get in the way.
There's one set as you mention that think they have mutant level intelligence and insight in understanding that the Democrats are a big letdown. They spend days, weeks, months, years sneering at an imaginary ideology of Democratic loyalists who still believe that the Ds are looking out for working class people, and that only they have the clarity of vision to see this isn't so.
You have more patience than I, Steve, and I have a lot more comfort in drawing lines. If I determine to my satisfaction that my interlocutor is debating in bad faith I walk away. And, yes, sometimes I block.
I have a few thresholds.
* Democrat as adjective
* science denial (vaccines, AGW or flat earth, I don't care)
* Trump support
* "who gets to decide" as an argument
Any one of these, and there are others, means I withdraw from the conversation, with or without explanation. I take it that most of the time you will keep going, Well, despite appearances I am near the end of my seventh decade and much closer to life's end than its beginning and I don't have time to argue with the unreachable nor do I have any illusions about effecting change one recalcitrant person at a time.
In all my decades online I can think of exactly two who have emerged from whatever stage conservatism was in at the time (neocons, tea party, MAGA) into a more reasonable outlook. That is, for all intensive porpoises, none.
The irony of J telling a thoughtful person such as yourself to "wake up."
Would you mind saying more on the "who get's to decide" argument? That's a new phrase to me. (Although perhaps an old experience that I just haven't recognized as a pattern.)
Suppose the topic is inhibiting concentration of wealth. I say there should be a maximum amount of money that one person or family can control, since past that point it's not more luxury or safety, just more power. But we never get to the reasons because sure as taxes someone will burst in with "who gets to decide" how much wealth is too much.
The actual discussion disintegrates because someone showed a potential for —choke—subjectivity.
As if we couldn't come up with some deterministic criteria for the corrosiveness of the megabillionaire.
I usually block people like that, because it's an asinine objection and I am disgusted with the whole "subjectivity" dodge.
Wow. Just wow.
This is quite a study in how neo-progressivism can destroy some facets of rationality, while preserving the ability to rationalize. It's actually very depressing and frightening. DiAngelo and Kendi are being very successful in reprograming significant subsets of the society - unfortunately concentrated among the cultural, educational, and economic elites who have disproportionate power.
I did think you were a bit snippy and sarcastic. And that it would take a saint not to be in that context. I think it's a type of coping mechanism when confronted with "logic" so bad you don't know whether to laugh or cry - or look for another planet.
And yet J appears to be educated and intelligent and caring and to be trying to "do the right thing". Not motivated by simple ignorance, stupidity or malice. And yet...
---
Let me say more about the depressing part. For a long time, we've counted on the idea that good ideas can displace bad ideas, that good reasoning and evidence can win in the end. But I don't see any sign that your solid points are denting J's ideological armor. Maybe enlightenment values are meeting their match?
One of my "pet theories" is that in the West, the tools of the Enlightenment and science were sufficient to overturn the hegemony of the Church and traditional restricted thought (eg: kings rule by divine right) and created a more secular society. Not quickly or painlessly, but eventually.
However, neo-progressivism (with roots in postmodernism and critical theory) is like a new species of weed which emerged in a field previously controlled by herbicides. Obviously, such a new weed must have evolved resistance to the existing herbicides, or it would not be spreading.
Neo-progressivism (sometimes called "the successor ideology") aims to displace liberalism (in the broader sense of "liberal western democracy" not in the narrower US sense of Democrats). And as a competing mind virus emerging now, it has great resistance to control measure like logic and evidence, free speech, listening to all sides - better resistance than the now-relatively-tamed Church had. Postmodernism seems to be based on a challenge not to facts, but even to the nature of knowledge - a meta defense against rational rebuttal.
What we are seeing in the above interchange is an individual herbicide resistant weed (in the above metaphor, trying to describe the dynamics, not to disparage with emotive slurs). Spray, spray - weed sits there unhindered. Not just frustrating, but alarming for what it may portend. (Especially given that there are other alarming trends on the other side of the aisle).
---
What can we do but slog on? Keep trying. It may work on some, especially as some neo-progressives (at least on the margins) begin to realize that the new strategy is NOT accomplishing it's promised improvements to society and an endless set of excuses ("our strategies haven't worked yet because systemic racism/patriarchy is so deep that we activists need more power over society to root it out, so let us double down - again") doesn't change that failure.
Maybe the problem is not that the reality feedback loop is not working, but that it operates on a longer timespan than I expect.
Actually that last is almost certainly true - if the infection spreads widely enough, the society will collapse and other societies (displaced in time and/or space) will learn from that what to avoid. I'm pretty sure that China is watching and learning what to avoid. I'm just hoping for a shorter timescale than that, for reality feedback to bear fruit before that collapse - and before helping install an authoritarian right wing regime.
---
To balance the "pesticide resistant weed" metaphor, let's note that ideas like representative democracies operating under a charter have spread like weeds before. Being hard to suppress is not always a bad thing. But I believe that this time it is, and we may not realize it until too late, especially in the context of the "perfect storm" of other existential threats that are peaking at the same time (climate change, peak oil, fresh water shortage, antibiotic resistance, surveillance technology, maybe even the singularity, etc).
---
"Great pep talk, Pash, I feel much better now".
"I did think you were a bit snippy and sarcastic"
Yeah, guilty as charged.😅 All I'll say in my defence is that I've literally spent months talking to J and working very hard to do so in good faith (I've been wanting to post one of our conversations for a while but they're usually absurdly long and go on all kinds of twists and tangents).
At first, he just seemed a little lost and confused (I still think he is) and he asked me to help him work through some of his internal conflicts about racism, which I tried to do.
But yeah, after a few months of that, and after seeing him cling to the Kendi-ism and the victimhood ideation, despite him seeing how the logic of his arguments would fall apart, it became hard to take him seriously.
He *knows* what he's saying is silly. Or at least logically incoherent. Note how he doesn't even try to counter the sarcasm or back up his arguments with anything except more word salad. Not a single fact or concrete rationale to be found.
For some people, seeing themselves as the underdog in some existential struggle against "the system," and convincing themselves they're among the anointed few who are smart enough to see it, is too intoxicating to let mere logic or reason or facts get in the way.
There's one set as you mention that think they have mutant level intelligence and insight in understanding that the Democrats are a big letdown. They spend days, weeks, months, years sneering at an imaginary ideology of Democratic loyalists who still believe that the Ds are looking out for working class people, and that only they have the clarity of vision to see this isn't so.
You have more patience than I, Steve, and I have a lot more comfort in drawing lines. If I determine to my satisfaction that my interlocutor is debating in bad faith I walk away. And, yes, sometimes I block.
I have a few thresholds.
* Democrat as adjective
* science denial (vaccines, AGW or flat earth, I don't care)
* Trump support
* "who gets to decide" as an argument
Any one of these, and there are others, means I withdraw from the conversation, with or without explanation. I take it that most of the time you will keep going, Well, despite appearances I am near the end of my seventh decade and much closer to life's end than its beginning and I don't have time to argue with the unreachable nor do I have any illusions about effecting change one recalcitrant person at a time.
In all my decades online I can think of exactly two who have emerged from whatever stage conservatism was in at the time (neocons, tea party, MAGA) into a more reasonable outlook. That is, for all intensive porpoises, none.
The irony of J telling a thoughtful person such as yourself to "wake up."
Would you mind saying more on the "who get's to decide" argument? That's a new phrase to me. (Although perhaps an old experience that I just haven't recognized as a pattern.)
Sure. Easiest illustrated by example.
Suppose the topic is inhibiting concentration of wealth. I say there should be a maximum amount of money that one person or family can control, since past that point it's not more luxury or safety, just more power. But we never get to the reasons because sure as taxes someone will burst in with "who gets to decide" how much wealth is too much.
The actual discussion disintegrates because someone showed a potential for —choke—subjectivity.
As if we couldn't come up with some deterministic criteria for the corrosiveness of the megabillionaire.
I usually block people like that, because it's an asinine objection and I am disgusted with the whole "subjectivity" dodge.