A Far-Left Resurgence In Ol’ Blighty: Counter-Cultural Tides At Home

December 31, 2015January 1, 2016 / chr1 / 3 Comments

Clive Crook at Bloomberg had some reasonable advice for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in Britain:

‘You heard me. A modern party of the left doesn’t need to be anti-capitalist. Concern for social justice, equality of opportunity and even (up to a point) equality of outcome don’t require a belief in the innate wickedness of capitalism.’

Neo-liberalism would be nice, of course; many hardened types on the Left morphing into more compromising, dirigiste, Statist social democrats. It’s easy to imagine (if you try) realpolitik humanists capable of prevention and intervention abroad, rather than the usual post-Enlightenment apologism for dictators, and/or during times of crisis, conspicuous silence, unless returning to the ‘peaceful’ moral high ground against all ideological enemies.

Market forces could be useful in pursuing such desired ends, after all, rather than many anti-capitalist, totalitarian, true-believin’ ideologues one so often finds.

Yet, here we are, and here’s Corbyn’s home page. It’s almost as if failed theories of history and the ideologues committed to them keep rising anew…

The Monarchy’s still around, even as a figurehead. Some real, faded, Red ideologues are still around, too.

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Possibly relevant quote via Chaos Manor:

‘Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free. ‘

Another from Karl Popper:

“…and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society. It took some time before I recognized this as no more than a beautiful dream; that freedom is more important that equality; that the attempt to realize equality endangers freedom; and that, if freedom is lost, there will not even be equality among the unfree.”

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Here at home, Charlie Martin reminds us that there’s no free lunch. When you offer sick people other people’s money to buy insurance, and generally offer healthy people only higher premiums and relatively fewer options, you haven’t really understood the basic concept of insurance:

‘I won’t go into great detail about how insurance works here. I’ve done it before, both laying it out mathematically and in a little parable appropriate to the season. The basic thing is that insurance is a bet: you bet someone that something bad is going to happen, and that someone takes the bet.’

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As previously posted, but relevant:

Why have large numbers of people from the suburbs and small towns been migrating to Brooklyn, for example, seeking to make what they do what they love, engaging in the creative process and almost fetishizing the idea of ‘craft’?

Below are the Mast brothers, taking the hipster ethos into the business and branding of themselves as chocolate-makers, along with an entirely ‘old-timey’ aesthetic. Few chocolate-makers take pains to mention Mark Twain & Ralph Waldo Emerson in their promo videos:

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I’ve been thinking that upon examination, hipsterdom (not necessarily the Mast Brothers) may reveal DNA strands of previous American counter-culture movements: Some hipsters have adopted milder forms of the bohemianism and cultural withdrawal of the Beats, others the collectivism, activism and ‘social conscience’ of the Hippies (along with many tenets of the feminist and environmentalist movements). Some others still the disposable income and professional ambition of Yuppies (see: Park Slope).

Overall, in terms of political philosophy, I’m guessing such strands would most likely unite under a rather standard-issue secular-liberal humanism or post new-Democrat alliance (how tolerant such a voting bloc would be of progressive activism, redistributionism, and true radicalism remains to be seen when the chips are down).

Throw in some postmodernist art-theory and nihilist performance artists seeking human connection in the meaningless void, such as Matthew Silver, and we may be getting somewhere (apologies if I’ve unfairly reduced you to a bit part in a bad theory…such are the wages of cultural criticism in the blogosphere).

Another explanation I’ve heard floated is that hipsterdom is partially the product of the everyone-gets-a-trophy generation. Everyone’s a special snowflake. Every minute of every day can be planned and some parents are still hovering like crazy in the lives of their children. The Self-Esteem movement can then loom large in the rather rarefied atmospheres that some kids have grown-up in.

How to live, what to do?

Where to find meaning, purpose and connection?

Perhaps many people making American businesses run are more likely to respond to the language of psychology and pop-psychology, neuroscience and pop-neuroscience, literature, ethics gurus and even the kinds of self-help books to be found on Oprah, whatever wisdom and truths they may contain.

Or, at least this stuff is bigger business these days.

As for Emerson, and the transcendentalist, perhaps even somewhat pragmatist, search for the Stern Fact & Sad Self, I suspect it will still figure heavily in American life and culture for quite some time.

Let me know what I’m missing.

***In terms of starting some kind of business or appealing to popular sentiment, I would recommend the safe option of a time-lapse a video of the stars, adding some quotes about living in a globalized world, the importance of (S)cience, (A)rt, people and progress, then some background indie music and you may well have a Kickstarter campaign.

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So, economics is a science?: Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’…I’m much more inclined to believe it is if there’s a defense of Jeffersonian liberty and Adam Smith’s invisible hand: Repost-’Milton Friedman Via Youtube: ‘Responsibility To The Poor’

Can you see life, liberty, and property from here?: Via Youtube: (1 of 3) Kant, Chomsky and the Problem of Knowledge…Kant chopped the head off from German deism and the German State has been reeling every since…is value pluralism a response?: A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”

Using J.S. Mill, moving away from religion? Rationalism and Utilitarianism On The Rise?: From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’…Liberalism should move towards the Austrians, or at least away from rationalist structures?: Repost-From Public Reason: A Discussion Of Gerald Gaus’s Book ‘The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom And Morality In A Diverse And Bounded World’

Repost-Robert Samuelson Via Real Clear Politics: ‘Why School Reform Fails’

December 30, 2015 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Full piece here.

Did he mean top-down, politicized reform…which we’ve been heading towards and had for a very long time?

‘Against these realities, school “reform” rhetoric is blissfully evasive. It is often an exercise in extravagant expectations’

Also On This Site: From The Bellevue Reporter-Walter Backstrom’s: ‘Educational Progress And The Liberal Plantation’…

I don’t believe education fits under Milton Friedman’s intellectual net, but I like seeing how he comes at the problems of scarcity of resources, students failed by the system, and entrenched educators:

Ford Foundation Promises To Smite Inequality From This Earth

December 28, 2015December 29, 2015 / chr1 / Leave a comment

From The New Yorker: ‘What Money Can Buy‘

How is Henry Ford’s automobile money being spent these days?

I’ll just leave these here:

‘Should Women’s Agency and Racial/Ethnic/Indigenous Justice be grouped under the larger heading of Inclusion? What about Human Rights Architecture and Imagining Inclusive Capitalism?’

That sounds important:

‘Did each thematic area lend itself to a race, class, and gender analysis? Did each strategy support the agency and voice of marginalized groups? Besides the thematic areas and strategies, there were also “lines of work,” “sets,” “challenges,” and “lenses,” and there was a certain lack of clarity on the difference between these things.’

How the money was made = Who eventually gets their hands on the money.

(addition: That should read as ‘not equal’, as this is a very professional site).

See also on this site:

-Jack Shakely At The Los Angeles Review Of Books Reviews Ken Stern’s ‘With Charity For All’-Non-profits are big business.

My $50,000,000,000 million cents:

The secular ports offer their lights and their shelters, but there’s little talk of the costs and downside risks of finding meaning in one’s life through the latest moral and political movements.

Human nature being what it is, groupthink, vanity, hubris, and ignorance can easily overpower independent thought, humility, doubt and knowledge. Many drivers of change can be quite unaccustomed to examining their own assumptions with the scrutiny they reserve for their opponents.

Gathered under the liberal ideals, then, just as sure as you might find in any church pew, can be found no shortage of reformers, zealots, sinners and fools, the bemused, the bored, the righteously passionate, the totally-nuts etc.

Repost-From The New Yorker: ‘Writing Powered By Amtrak’

From The Liberal Bastions-James Baldwin, Often

Repost-Paul Krugman At The Guardian: ‘Asimov’s Foundation Novels Grounded My Economics’

December 26, 2015 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Full piece here.

‘My Book – the one that has stayed with me for four-and-a-half decades – is Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, written when Asimov was barely out of his teens himself. I didn’t grow up wanting to be a square-jawed individualist or join a heroic quest; I grew up wanting to be Hari Seldon, using my understanding of the mathematics of human behaviour to save civilisation.’

If you just do the math, the rest will fall into place, including all of those people, and their behavior.

Perhaps Jerry Pournelle’s chart could be useful, as Pournelle was a sci-fi writer who ended up closer to Burkean conservativsm. Statism is on the -x-axis, and rationalism on the -y-. You’ll have to follow the link. The world could always use a few smart people much less sure of their plans for everyone else.

Check out Pournelle’s Iron Law Of Bureaucracy. What could go wrong?

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It’s not like Steven Chu, Secretary Of Energy, doesn’t know a lot about physics, but what will be the consequences of the outcomes he wants for Americans and why?

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Maybe if you’re defending religion, Nietzsche is a problematic reference: Dinesh D’Souza And Daniel Dennett at Tufts University: Nietzsche’s Prophesy…

VICE Via Youtube: ‘Peshmerga Vs. The Islamic State’

December 25, 2015December 25, 2015 / chr1 / Leave a comment

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As of June 2015, some of the tactics of IS, and a ridealong with the Pershmerga.

As previously posted:

Michael Totten: ‘What Just Happened In Syria:’

‘Look. Running guns and ammo under the radar to legitimate proxies in a fight against a terrorist army is entirely reasonable behavior on the part of the United States government. We’ve been doing that sort of thing for decades. Pretty much everyone else in the Middle East does it, too, but they almost always run guns and ammo to terrorist organizations rather than to groups fighting terrorist organizations.

Regardless, it’s high time we come out and say exactly what we’re doing and why. Everyone already knows we’re backing the Kurds against ISIS, and everyone already knows the Turks would rather see an ISIS victory than a Kurdish victory. None of this is even remotely a secret. It’s all right out in the open. Official denials aren’t fooling anybody.’

Independent Kurdistan-A Good Outcome For American Interests?

In his book Where The West Ends, Totten describes visiting Northern Iraq briefly as a tourist with a friend, and the general feeling of pro-Americanism in Kurdish Northern Iraq that generally one can only feel in Poland, parts of the former Yugoslavia etc.

Ah, But Pigeons Can Shit On The Shoulders Of Statues-Gay Talese on Journalism

December 22, 2015January 1, 2016 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Gay Talese:

‘They swim in the same pools, they belong to the same clubs. Their wives and everyone goes to the same fucking cocktail parties.’

‘..And they eat these little handout stories. They’re like little pigeons eating the shit sprayed on the sidewalk from the government. They want to be in good with their sources, but they don’t even name the sources!’

Was there a time when more hard-boiled skeptics roamed the newsroom; narrative purists seeking le mot juste and the story behind the story?

Perhaps there’s never really been much space for a writer’s writer, an old-fashioned craftsman looking for some interplay between light and shadow; thought, and the words on the page.

Perhaps like many writers, even good-writing journalists can become bitter with age.

-The linked-to Talese piece on Frank Sinatra.

-Lawrence Wright on his book-Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & The Prison Of Belief. That took some balls.

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As previously posted:

The satire of the liberal intelligentsia is pretty rich, as well as the Southern Gentleman’s WASP ‘rejuvenation.’ You just know Christopher Hitchens had to get-in on that action:

From the Late Show in 1989 with Howard Jacobson:

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Are Tom Wolfe and New Journalism seeing things clearly, as they really are?

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Andrew Potter has his own ideas:

‘The important thing to understand about journalists is that they are the lowest ranking intellectuals. That is to say: they are members of the intellectual class, but in the status hierarchy of intellectuals, journalists are at the bottom. That is why they have traditionally adopted the status cues of the working class: the drinking and the swearing, the anti-establishment values and the commitment to the non-professionalization of journalism.’

and on professors:

The important thing to understand about academics is that they are the highest rank of intellectuals. That is why they have traditionally adopted the status symbols of the 19th-century British leisured class—the tweeds and the sherry and the learning of obscure languages—while shunning the sorts of things that are necessary for people for whom status is something to be fought for through interaction with the normal members of society (such as reasonably stylish clothing, minimal standards of hygiene, basic manners).

The ideas of original thinkers and those of thinkers in academia often trickle down into popular thought anyways, but the easy quote is often just a way to reinforce one’s own beliefs or ideology, or get a quick fix.

Also:

‘In a philosophical debate, what everyone involved is trying to get at is the truth. In contrast, what is at stake in the political realm is not truth but power, and power (unlike truth) is a “rival good”—one person or group can wield power only at the expense of another. This is why politics is inevitably adversarial. Political power is ultimately about deciding who shall govern, and part of governing is about choosing between competing interests’

***In journalists there can be the shabbiness of the second-hand, the designs of the social-climber, the self-regard of the idealist and the possibly deeper aspirations of an artist. Some are more devoted to finding truth than others.

From The Nieman Lab:-An Oral History Of The Epic Collision Between Journalism & Digital Technology, From 1980 To The Present.

Charlie Martin At PJ Media: ‘Could Amazon and Jeff Bezos Make the Washington Post Profitable?’…‘Sorry, Jeff Bezos, the News Bundle Isn’t Coming Back‘

Michael Kinsley At The New Republic Via Althouse: ‘A Q & A With Jill Abramson’

From Slate: “Newsweek Has Fallen And Can’t Get Up”

A Few Thoughts On Blogging-Chris Anderson At Wired: ‘The Long Tail’

You could do like Matt Drudge, but the odds are stacked against you.

Boomers On The Go-A Link To PJ O’Rourke

December 21, 2015December 21, 2015 / chr1 / Leave a comment

P.J. O’Rourke at The Daily Beast implores ‘hipsters’ to vote in order to save us from Ted Cruz:

‘I’m ethnically Republican. (I know you young people understand Identity Politics.) My grandmother was born in the 19^th century near Springfield, Illinois, where the only Democrat anybody had ever heard of was John Wilkes Booth.’

I suspect some of the idealism, bloat and dysfunction of our current politics has its roots in the 60’s ‘me’ generation solipsism embraced, then later satirized, by O’Rourke. It’s tough to stay hip these days, as both parties have enormous populist vs. establishment rifts, but he’s giving it a go.

A former radical and democratic socialist fossil from the 60’s doing combat against a rather unprincipled career pol endlessly seeking political power on the Clinton brand name is ripe for satire as well, I should think.

This is our current polito-sphere, as of the winter solstice, December 21st, 2015, America. We’ve earned it:

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Above are the people who want to lead us, America, and they’re probably not the best among us.

Addition: Do you want a Jeb instead of a Cruz? Is this a form of establishment defense old-timey nostalgia against Trump’s populist success upon which Cruz is drafting?

As previously posted:

The baby-boomers are still talking about themselves, and perhaps it’s still important.

A line by O’Rourke which stirs libertarian sympathies:

‘We’re creating a political system upon which everybody is dependent.’

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Did the 60’s counter-culture and the conservative counter-counter culture both win, in a sense?

Christopher Hitchens, William F. Buckley and Peter Robinson discuss below, including the sexual revolution:

A Few Lines By Antonio Machado

December 17, 2015 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Antonio Machado, sent in by a reader, years ago now.

El ojo que ves no es
ojo porque tú lo veas;
es ojo porque te ve.

The eye you see is not
An eye because you see it
It’s an eye because it sees you.

Insights Into Equality Of Opportunity

December 16, 2015 / chr1 / Leave a comment

As I see it, one major purpose of institutions is to to not interfere too much with genius, to get the best people working on specific problems and challenges, and to try and give talented others on down (the rest of us, per IQ tests and abilities) opportunities to succeed.

Once you start demanding equality of outcome, you’ve gone too far, in my estimation.

There seems a lot of going too far in many parts of our institutions lately, demanding utopian ideals be their guides and that nature/human nature/reality submit to these utopian, post-Enlightenment ideals guiding these institutions.

Henry Kissinger here.

“The purpose of bureaucracy is to devise a standard operating procedure which can cope effectively with most problems. A bureaucracy is efficient if the matters which it handles routinely are, in fact, the most frequent and if its procedures are relevant to their solution. If those criteria are met, the energies of the top leadership are freed to deal creatively with the unexpected occurrence or with the need for innovation. Bureaucracy becomes an obstacle when what it defines as routine does not address the most significant range of issues or when its prescribed mode of action proves irrelevant to the problem.”

and:

“Moreover, the reputation, indeed the political survival, of most leaders depends on their ability to realize their goals, however these may have been arrived at. Whether these goals are desireable is relatively less crucial.”

In the world of politics and the political economy, there is endless competition over limited resources and their allocation, hence the bloodsport and all the fighting.

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Here’s another take, the entirety of which can be found here.

“[Thomas] Sowell’s argument is a relatively simple one: “innate” mental abilities do not develop spontaneously but must undergo development, which is differentially fostered by different cultures, even when the abilities are general and abstract and do not consist of items of cultural knowledge. “

“…Sowell’s approach splits the difference between “nature” and “nurture“…“

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With Larry Summers being pushed out by members of the Democratic party for his nomination as chairman of the Federal Reserve, it reminds of when he was pushed out of the role of President at Harvard. For the many reasons that may be involved, I suspect the notion of a faint, scarlet ‘S’ for ‘sexist’ marked on his chest is one. You don’t need much logic or reason to make that charge.

I keep putting this post up, because, one hopes we’ll arrive at a little sanity in pursuit of truth.

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He may have been fired for many reasons, but Summers off-the-cuff Remarks at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce had a lot to do with it:

1. The first is what I call the high-powered job hypothesis-Summers notes that high positions demand high commitment. Science could be analogous to other professions like law. He appeals to a longitudinal study that suggests that fewer women may agree to, or be willing to, devote such time and energy to their jobs over their careers as do men. Changing the nature of these professions to higher female ratios may change some of the fundamental ways we arrange our society:

“…is our society right to expect that level of effort from people who hold the most prominent jobs?”

Perhaps…though the subtext might be: are some members of our society right to expect that the guiding ideas of diversity and equality won’t come with a host of other problems…?

What about biology?

***Charles Murray takes it a few steps further, asserting that our social sciences are leading us to become more like Europe (less dynamic and less idealistic in our pursuit of Aristotelian happiness) He also argues that there is a sea-change going on in the social science that will come to support his thinking. This last part could be a few steps too far…but it’d be nice.

2. The second is what I would call different availability of aptitude at the high end-The bell curve argument that there are more genius and idiot men. When you get to MIT, 3 and more standard deviations above the mean…means a lot.

3. The third is what I would call different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search-If discrimination is such an important factor in there being a lack of women scientists, then economic theory holds that there are going to be:

“…very substantial opportunities for a limited number of people who were not prepared to discriminate to assemble remarkable departments of high quality people at relatively limited cost simply by the act of their not discriminating.”

So if the theory holds…where are the science departments scooping up all women scientists at low cost…who’ve been rejected elsewhere due to discrimination?

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I believe there is quite arguably discrimination against women in the sciences, and they have a harder road to reach success. But there is also substance here…and clearly politics was a factor in Summers’ firing as well; the women’s groups who viewed his ideas as an attack on their belief appealed to public sentiment in the worst kind of way.

Will social science ever be enough to address such an issue…or is it possibly changing to adapt to the demands people require of it?

On This Site: Charles Murray Lecture At AEI: The Happiness Of People

Addition: I always get an email or two that suggests I’ve joined the ranks of those who don’t fully understand the problem and seek to oppress women. I don’t think I’ve done such a thing, and if women are going broaden and deepen feminism, they may well have to answer to arguments like these.

It’s not like there aren’t women in the sciences either, Vera Rubin, Lisa Randall and Lise Meitner come to mind, but this debate is clearly not just about science. It’s also about feminism, the social sciences, money, politics, public opinion etc…

From The City Journal: ‘Pittsburgh’s Gothic Legacy Of Learning’

December 15, 2015December 16, 2015 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Full piece here.

‘Across a green from the chapel stands Klauder’s Cathedral of Learning (1937), a 535-foot-tall skyscraper, its receding, asymmetrical, and generously detailed masses also limestone-clad. In astutely fusing Gothic and art deco elements, it seemingly answers Cram’s call in his memoirs for “tradition plus modernism.”’

Cliff from ‘Cheers‘ gives a 10:00 tour of the Cathedral of Learning. It’s like a gothic skyscraper:

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As previously posted:

For what it’s worth, I recall a deeply Catholic lament and longing in the Spanish character, which can be combined with a kind of clear-eyed realism and stoicism, but not always. The faith runs deep in St Teresa and her passions, and despite Miguel de Unamuno’s rationalist influences, I remember a general preference for wisdom in the Tragic Sense Of Life.

Something clicked regarding Spain when I finally visited the Escorial outside of Madrid after many months of being in that city. It’s a grand castle of course, but it also struck me as rather plain, barracks-like at times. Very austere. It was explained that the Escorial was both a royal palace and a monastery:

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Quote found here:

‘Philip’s instructions to Herrera stipulated “simplicity of form, severity in the whole, nobility without arrogance, majesty without ostentation,” qualities clearly illustrated by the long sweep of these facades.’

That Catholic influence can also get a little intense:

‘El Escorial was built to honor St. Lawrence, who was burned on a grill. In order to remind the citizens of his martyrdom and sacrifice, the entire building is a grill. Yes, it is shaped like a grill. There are paintings of St. Lawrence on a grill, grills are carved into the doorways, the weather vain is in the shape of a grill, the backs of chairs are supposed to be grills, the list literally could go on forever.’

Maybe they got a little carried away during the Reconquest.

Any thoughts and comments are welcome.

Bonus: The Masonic Temple Of Detroit. (via David Thompson)

70 photos of the abandoned, foreboding Temple. Mysterious symbols and a certain sad grandeur that’s come to represent Detroit these days.

-Photographer Ben Marcin has a series called ‘Last House Standing.’ Solitary row-homes…the only ones left on the block.

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Related On This Site: They designed a city in the heart of Brazil that really doesn’t work for people: Brasilia: A Planned City

No thanks to living in planned communities upon someone else’s overall vision.: Roger Scruton In The City Journal: Cities For Living–Is Modernism Dead?…Repost-Via Reason: ‘Salvador Allende’s Cybersocialist Command Center’…From Grist.Org Via The New Republic Via The A & L Daily: ‘Getting Past “Ruin Porn” In Detroit’…

A structure in the desert…not even a city Update On LACMA, Michael Heizer And The ‘Levitated Mass’-Modern Art And The Public;..where is modernism headed? Via Youtube: Justin, The Horse That Could Paint…

Denis Dutton suggested art could head towards Darwin (and may offer new direction from the troubles of the modern art aimlessness and shallow depth…the money and the fame) Review of Denis Dutton’s ‘The Art Instinct’

Roger Scruton In The American Spectator: The New Humanism…From Nigel Warburton’s Site: A Definition of Humanism?…From The City Journal Via Arts And Letters Daily: Andre Glucksman On “The Postmodern Financial Crisis”