Month: January 2021

What Worries Me Most Is The Irrationalism Of The Postmoderns-Some Links On The Drift Towards Technocracy, And The Drifting Oumuamua

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Let’s say there are many untruths, and conceits, floating through the modern world. One such conceit, I believe, is that (S)cience scales in dealing with all the dark parts and native ignorance of human nature. The latest (S)cientific knowledge need only be understood, interpreted and implemented by an expert technocratic management class into policy. Such ‘technocrats’ will lead all of us, through their expertise, into a better future (they have the knowledge of (H)istory and where (H)istory is going).

Adapting to the Enlightenment is a process, Dear Reader, from Hobbes To Locke To our Founders.

Something like this is happening as we speak, of course. There is a virus, furiously making copies of itself, unlocking the machinery of our cells, mutating and adapting as it goes. Many nurses, doctors and health-employees are seeing this virus kill people up close, exposing themselves to a fair amount of risk. Biologists, virologists, immunologists and medical professionals do have important knowledge and truth to impart. We all ought to be grateful.

If (S)cience is a coattrack, however, there are all manner of bureaucratic second-raters, political idealists, ideologues and demagogues hanging ratty coats, hopes and promises upon it. The particular racial history of the U.S, for example, makes for a lot of awkward silences and social chasms. Have no fear, though, as activists-cum-bureaucratic idealists need only regulate the economy, move some money around, and claim the mantle of (S)cience to succeed in (U)nity. The Climate Apocalypse is Upon Us.

Repent!

During the COVID-19 pandemic, where any politician is being handed a tough task, such debate comes to the fore.

I hope to be proven wrong.

—

So, as to what the Sciences can do, Avi Loeb at Harvard has some interesting ideas.

See a great post here at Centauri Dreams.

There was an interstellar visitor cruising by Earth a few years ago. They called it Oumuamua (Wah-muah-muah). By the time we started training our optics upon it, it was on the way out, catching us by surprise. Our solar system mostly falls into a planar surface, and this thing was…coming in at an odd and somewhat perpendicular angle, doing a fly-by around Earth.

Given the probabilities of tracking its origins, it would be nearly impossible to know from whence it originally came. Due to the sunlight reflecting off the object as it rotated, it was shaped mostly like a pancake or cigar. It didn’t outgas quite like comets do (all the water ice in it sublimating into gas as it nears the sun, pushing it away from the sunny side in a predictable manner).

Realistically, one might assume it’s a piece of cosmic flotsam, of natural origins, yielding some interesting data. Loeb, however, is demonstrating, with a lot of scientific rigor, that it’s impossible to disprove that this object doesn’t have unnatural, or intentional origins. It’s an interesting and creative bit of Science.

Furthermore, Loeb believes there’s arguably too much conservatism in the astronomical community (he’s on a lot of boards). By the time the people who can do the math and have tenure ‘arrive’ as it were, they tend to be depressingly conservative in their approach. Of course, a lot of this conservatism is warranted. On the other hand, we may be leaving a lot of great ideas stillborn.

In addition, a LOT of people are naturally curious about the stars, and the possibility that we’re not alone, and many of these people even believe in something like aliens (usually without much evidence, but perhaps, not always).

-Via an interview with Ken Minogue from 2006:

‘BC: What do you make of political correctness? There are those who would argue it’s a thing of the past. Frankly, I don’t see how that’s possible. It seems to me that cultural Marxism is more regnant than ever, would you agree?

KM: In my time, a great deal of what used to be intuitive and instinctive (such as good manners) has been replaced by the rule-bound and rationalised. Political correctness is a politicised version of good manners offering power to the kind of meddlesome people who want to tell others how to behave. As to Marxism, it was merely one more illusion that purported to be the key to life. It is significant in that it reveals one of the dominant passions still at work in our civilisation – the passion to create happiness by technology in the hands of a supposedly enlightened elite.’

Related On This Site:  Repost-From The Spiked Review Of Books Via The A & L Daily: ‘Rescuing The Enlightenment From Its Exploiters’… Repost-From The Spiked Review Of Books: ‘Delving Into The Mind Of The Technocrat’

Are these the enemies of the future?: Virginia Postrel At Bloomberg: ‘How The Elites Built America’s Economic Wall’…

GameStop-Who’s Going To Be In Charge? And, Of What?

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Via the WSJ via Marginal Revolution: ‘GameStop Mania Reveals Power Shift on Wall Street—and the Pros Are Reeling.’

Please, Dear Reader, think about Twitter: With your own capital investment of an average $200-400 for a mobile device, you can install Twitter’s ‘free’ (you’re the product) software onto your device. The software will access the hardware (camera, video) as well as other software, so that you can upload what you’ve recorded onto their platform. Additionally, the barrier to entry is low enough for the UI (user interface) to allow searching all kinds of topics, engaging similar users (others with the same low costs to entry).

Suddenly, many people who once needed much higher capital investment (labor costs, professional cameras, professional skills, licenses, lobbyists, lawyers etc) at least have the illusion of being in competition with many bigger players, while communicating with similar smaller ones.

Meanwhile, the programmers, developers, management, lobbyists, lawyers and politically connected people at Twitter have become new big players of a sort (while it lasts). More organized (and politically/ideologically favored) individuals and groups seem to influence more, and faster.

Analogously, in my mind, and hopefully in reality, some investor figured out that GameStop was being incorrectly valued by big players. With this knowledge, and with knowledge-sharing on a platform of smaller players, a group of people mobilized (individuals and smaller groups can’t usually compete at scale nor directly with the bigger players).

We’ve been rearranging our society and institutions around increasingly technically mediated channels, so those with more IQ capital, knowledge of hardware/software capital, and social capital are using these channels for all the other things people do: Knowledge, sex, love, friendship, power, influence, fame, pride, vanity etc.

On that note, I don’t buy into many ‘liberatory’ and leveling equality claims. We have hierarchies for lots of reasons, and we have authority for lots of reasons (hopefully legitimate authority aligned with the best among us and the best within us, constrained by the right incentives).

There’s definitely a lot of change going on right now, but how is the actual power being leveraged and authority being used?

Who’s going to be in charge? And, of what?

Personally, I would love to see alternatives to information-sharing than Twitter, possessing similar functionality, but with deeper roots to freedom of thought and expression (yeah, you’ll probably have to pay something):

—

Some quotations on what I’m taking to be the same old human nature:

Do you trust those following their moral lights to allow you to follow yours?

“The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.”

–William Makepeace Thackeray

‘Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue‘

–La Rochefoucauld

Addition:

Wednesday Poem-Philip Larkin

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The Old Fools

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It’s more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can’t remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there’s really been no change,
And they’ve always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching the light move? If they don’t (and they can’t), it’s strange;
                               Why aren’t they screaming?

At death you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see. It’s only oblivion, true:
We had it before, but then it was going to end,
And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower
Of being here. Next time you can’t pretend
There’ll be anything else. And these are the first signs:
Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power
Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they’re for it:
Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines –
                               How can they ignore it?

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside your head, and people in them, acting
People you know, yet can’t quite name; each looms
Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning,
Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting
A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only
The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,
The blown bush at the window, or the sun’s
Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely
Rain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live:
Not here and now, but where all happened once.
                              This is why they give

An air of baffled absence, trying to be there
Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving
Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear
Of taken breath, and them crouching below
Extinction’s alp, the old fools, never perceiving
How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet:
The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground. Can they never tell
What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?
Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout
The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,
                             We shall find out.

–Philip Larkin

Monday Poem-Donald Justice

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‘There is a gold light in certain old paintings’

There is a gold light in certain old paintings
That represents a diffusion of sunlight.
It is like happiness, when we are happy.
It comes from everywhere and from nowhere at once, this light,
            And the poor soldiers sprawled at the foot of the cross
            Share in its charity equally with the cross.

Orpheus hesitated beside the black river.
With so much to look forward to he looked back.
We think he sang then, but the song is lost.
At  least he had seen once more the  beloved back.
              I say the song went this way: O prolong
             Now the sorrow if that is all there is to prolong.

The world is very dusty, uncle. Let us work.
One day the sickness shall pass from the earth for good.
The orchard will bloom; someone will play the guitar.
Our work will be seen as strong and clean and good.
              And all that we suffered through having existed
              Shall be forgotten as though it had never existed.

–Donald Justice

As found on Twitter.

“In prosperity a man often destroys the good he has done; amidst difficulties he often repairs what he long since did in the way of wickedness.” pic.twitter.com/OkhQTpe0D8

— Vødalus (@BFomebranch) December 5, 2019

Trickling Flop Sweat, Speech And Slate Star Codex?-Some Links

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Do you think most journalists won’t bend to the mob, throwing you to the wolves as they appeal to authority to advance career and reputation?

A few might, and you should support them on this issue.

What about politicians, standing up for principle, sometimes, but always with their fingers in the wind, navigating party and popular sentiment?

A few might, and you should find common cause on this issue.

What about the leadership at Twitter (holding tremendous control of information habit at the moment)?Clearly such adherence to various flavors of activism, idealism and a dominant ethos of empathy…is trustworthy?

What about the dominant Western liberal idealism and secular humanism found in the air and water these days? Surely you trust the stuff of most every faculty lounge, American and Silicon Valley boardroom?

Surely such folks won’t trample over any inconveniences?

What about the Catholic Church, with such lowered prestige and high-demands, attracting many who don’t know where else to go; many unable to meet a particular demand (celibacy) and subsequently molesting, deceiving and structurally covering-up the truth?

Would you trust this particular institution to back-up free thought if God is indicating, through the hierarchy, otherwise?

A few might, and you should support them on this issue.

—

Anyways, some links:

Politically and ideologically, I believe Left-activism generally leads to utopia/dystopia in practice, but Glenn Greenwald is standing up for speech.

Journalists are authoritarians?

—

Slate Star Codex is gone, but there’s an Astral Codex Ten?

—

***To those who’ve written: I don’t have enough readers for Substack. I don’t write well enough. WordPress has been good to me as an amateur (I’m working full-time elsewhere).

Alas, Dear Reader, I can’t make you famous. Even if I could, I’d probably rather just walk along together a ways.

As posted:

‘I’ll write what I damned well please:’

Such a brave stance to take: Six writers apparently know what is acceptable speech and what isn’t, and thus didn’t think the folks at Charlie Hebdo engaged in acceptable speech.

From Darwinian Conservatism: ‘Nietzsche Under Lou Salomé’s Whip’

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Full post here.

Arnhart is taking a closer look at Friedrich Nietzsche over a series of posts.  Worth a read.

‘But despite the obvious brilliance of Nietzsche’s early and late writing, Lou shows that his middle writing has a scientific basis that makes it far more intellectually defensible than is the case for the other writing, which shows a delusional religious fantasy that has no grounding in reality and thus leads to the madness into which Nietzsche fell.’

Perhaps.  Also:

‘The third insight is that the deepest motivation for Nietzsche was his religious longing, so that once he lost his childhood faith in the Christian God, he had to find a replacement for God that would give the world some eternal meaning; and he did this by divinizing himself as Dionysus and eternalizing human experience through eternal return’

Nietzsche’s project against Christianity was deeply personal.

Here’s Nietzsche scholar J.P. Stern on Nietzsche’s anti-Christian, anti-secular morality (Kant, utilitarians), anti-democratic, and anti-Greek (except the “heroic” Greek) tendencies:

——————-

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

Update And Repost: ‘A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche / Strauss Connection’…From The New Humanist Via The A & L Daily: Review of Two New Books On Nietzsche-’AntiChrist’

Leo Strauss had a heavy Nietzschean influence (via Heidegger especially), and among other things tried to chart a course out, or around him, and that strain of post-Enlightenment thought…Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’…From Darwinian Conservatism By Larry Arnhart: “Surfing Strauss’s Third Wave of Modernity”

Peter Levine discusses the Nietzsche connection here.

Was Nietzsche most interested in  freeing art from a few thousand years of Christianity, monarchy and aristocracy…something deeper?, at least with regard to Camille Paglia.  See the comments:  Repost-Camille Paglia At Arion: Why Break, Blow, Burn Was Successful

A Few Thoughts On The Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy Entry: Nietzsche’s Moral And Political Philosophy

Thursday Poem-Seamus Heaney

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Scaffolding

Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.

–Seamus Heaney

Repost-Marxist Jamborees In Paris, Getting A Humanities Education & Getting To Space-Some Recycled Links

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Claire Berlinksi visited a Marxist Jamboree in Paris a while back (The City Journal):

‘“Oh.” She rearranged her face to look less judgmental.’

Roger Scruton on his experiences in 1968 Paris (behind a paywall at The New Criterion):

‘In the narrow street below my window the students were shouting and smashing. The plate-glass windows of the shops appeared to step back…’

Speaking of The New Criterion, they have a piece on Jeffrey Hart:

‘Lit by an inner illumination, which regularly showed through the glimmer of his blue eyes, he checked his politics at the door and let the lyricism of “books, arts, and manners” lead the way for students.’

Rand Simberg at The New Atlantis on ‘The Return Of The Space Visionaries:’

‘Saganites view the universe as a precious jewel. How beautiful! “Look at it — but don’t touch it!” Tumlinson quips. Space is for scientific inquiry only, and that is best done by investigating it with robots. Later in life Sagan recognized the value of sending humans to other worlds, but as an astrophysicist and planetary scientist, his goals were focused on science, not economic development or settlement.’

Barring revolution, an attractive option for many committed ideologues lies in gathering under the ideals of education, health-care, peace and the environment, becoming institutionalized at taxpayer expense.

Common threads?: ‘Social’ justice is a kind of unclear concept.  Ideology ain’t necessarily science.  Many adrift in the postmodern humanities are quite hostile to the sciences, living within their own dramas and [even] doing dirt on the arts.

As previously and consistently posted-Thanks to a reader. Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

‘Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:

 First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.’

Universal wokeness need not be confined to Earth.  Zoe Satchel, cast adrift from her graduate English work at Yale, discusses Space Oppression!

Have you read Zoe Satchel’s piece about pre-blaming the West for any potential damage done to any potential extra-terrestrial life? Now that’s groundbreaking.

— Chris Navin (@chris_navin) March 11, 2019

A Link To Thomas Sowell And A Few Brief Words On Capitol Events

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Thomas Sowell at Creators.com: ‘Is Truth Irrelevant?’

Sowell is pretty old-school, and he’s got a big problem with the new schools (not the nieuw school, mind you):

‘Many schools are closed because of the corona virus and the teachers unions. And many schools in minority neighborhoods failed to teach children enough math and English, back when they were still open. So it is incredible that school authorities have time to spend on ideological crusades like removing names and statues from schools.‘

—

Moving along, what can I say about recent Capitol events, and the clear failures of so many institutions and leaders? What can I say that you might not be thinking yourself?

If you’ve been reading this blog regularly, you’ll know I’m something of a depressive realist, and that I tend to use many models: The one found in Plato’s Republic (timarchy–>oligarchy–>democracy–>tyranny–>see step 1), the Straussian reaction to Nietzschean nihilism, and the Idealist philosophy of Michael Oakeshott as picked up by Kenneth Minogue, to name a few. This generally puts me center-right, or small ‘c’ conservative here in America.

I’m also a bit of a loner, a would-be artist using the blog as a means to seek solitude and connection. I’m grateful to have readers. So, thank you.

The ride for all of us may be pretty bumpy up ahead. But, we’re all in this together, and we still, I presume, love our country.

Benjamin Jowett’s translation of Plato’s Republic can be found here.

Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’

The classical liberal tradition…looking for classical liberals in the postmodern wilderness: Isaiah Berlin’s negative liberty: A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”… From George Monbiot: ‘How Freedom Became Tyranny’…Looking to supplant religion as moral source for the laws: From The Reason Archives: ‘Discussing Disgust’ Julian Sanchez Interviews Martha Nussbaum.… Repost: Another Take On J.S. Mill From “Liberal England”

Repost-Thinking, Speaking & Believing In the Postmodern Landscape-Some Gathered Links

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One path through the postmodern landscape lies in cultivating some appreciation for math and the sciences, direct observation and statistical analysis within the social sciences, and plumbing the depths of a good humanities education (you know, the stuff universities pretty much ought to be teaching).

Receiving or pursuing such an education doesn’t necessarily require religious belief, nor does it necessarily dislodge religious belief.

Aside from the craziness of love, dedication to family, the pressures of work and career, the inevitably of sickness and death, such cultivation can prevent against the sublimity of nihilist and existentialist despair, the Romance of collective primitivism, and the dangers of ideological possession (quick to judge, quick to be judged, forever resentful).

Many readers of this blog don’t necessarily share my views on the importance of limited government and economic growth, tolerance for religious belief and skepticism regarding political idealism (joining an ‘-Ism’ is only the beginning, as hopes soon follow into politics and visions of the good, the true and the beautiful).

You have your reasons.

In the meantime, here are some links gathered over the years from the New Atheists and many independent-minded thinkers of the Left pushing against many excesses of the American and Global Left.

It’s pretty clear to me that many mainstream publications and political debates occur downstream of many intellectual debates.

-An Oldie But A Goodie, Hitchens on Speech:

The Brothers Weinstein are pretty smart, disaffected Leftist uniting on speech and economic liberty (Old vs New Left)-Repost-Moving Towards Truth And Liberty, But What To Conserve?-Some Thoughts On The Bret & Eric Weinstein Interview

–A Few Recycled Thoughts On That Sam Harris & Ezra Klein Debate-IQ Is Taboo

-James Lindsay offers a cogent account of his experiences in the Atheism movement, and the emergence of Atheism Plus.  He attempts to use moral psychology (he mentions Jonathan Haidt) to explain many religious-seeming elements of the woke, social justice crowd.

-Larry Arnhart, of Darwinian Conservatism, continued his careful reading of Jonathan Haidt’s work, to which Haidt responded.

-Daniel Dennett from 1998: Postmodernism and Truth

-You’ve got to watch out for human nature, and yourselves-From Slate Star Codex: ‘I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup’

-Martha Nussbaum on Judith Butler: ‘The Professor Of Parody‘

-Heck, even the computational, rational elements of Noam Chomsky’s thought provided him skeptical distance from postmodern jargon, despite the ‘anarcho-syndicalism’ and relentless post-socialist anti-Americanism: The radical and rationalist project, anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism: Repost-From Michael Totten At World Affairs: “Noam Chomsky: The Last Totalitarian”Martha Nussbaum criticizing Chomsky’s hubris in Martha Nussbaum In Dissent–Violence On The Left: Nandigram And The Communists Of West Bengal

-Philosophical Idealism vs Empiricism: Via Youtube: (1 of 3) Kant, Chomsky and the Problem of Knowledge…

Roger Scruton (not of The Left, and not an Atheist):

‘So, what is all this Nothing-ness about? ‘My view’, says Scruton, ‘is that what’s underlying all of this is a kind of nihilistic vision that masks itself as a moving toward the enlightened future, but never pauses to describe what that society will be like. It simply loses itself in negatives about the existing things – institutional relations like marriage, for instance – but never asks itself if those existing things are actually part of what human beings are. Always in Zizek there’s an assumption of the right to dismiss them as standing in the way of something else, but that something else turns out to be Nothing.’

–Some Thoughts On That Camille Paglia Write-Up At The City Journal-Cosmic Reality? Also, Her Interview With Jordan Peterson