THE SUPERMARKET OF OPINIONS.

 Once again Aurelien ruins my day by forcing me to think...thank God I still need to shit. Biological necessity trumps endless self-navigation.

'I would argue that the growth of Identity Politics essentially reflects our society’s decreasing capability to solve serious problems, and the consequent attraction to addressing trivial ones that you think you can actually manage......The idea of looking at problems holistically, which survived the rise of modern science at least for a time, has now been entirely lost, and we actually have difficulty remembering how complex and interrelated the world once seemed, if indeed we ever learnt about it. We have lost the intellectual habit of considering the relationship of problems to each other, as previous religious, social and political beliefs encouraged us to do. Everything now arrives retail, like an Amazon parcel, disconnected from the rest of the world and from any wider picture. It is as though every problem were encountered, shorn of all context and history, for the first time.......In the West, Marxism has become a boutique enterprise, with some powerful and important thinkers, and some highly relevant things to say about the world, but these days without an overarching structure or even a shared overarching vision of the world. Its descendants, from Marcusian miserablism to glum Identity Politics, actually split society into smaller and smaller warring factions, and deny even the possibility of positive change and evolution, so complete, they argue, is the domination of capitalism/the consumer society/the patriarchy/racial groups and power structures generally. Just the kind of stuff when you need when you want to be cheered up and motivated. At least Communism had a vision........The progressive emancipation of Liberalism from outside restraints and influences has produced the effect that might have been anticipated. The assault on even the attempt to find some kind of usable accepted truth, the deconstruction of everything until deconstruction ate itself, and most of all the obsessive creation and sustenance of the alienated individual, with no past, no history, no culture and no society, indeed no function but consumption, has produced a society where we are abandoned in the name of freedom. It has also, logically enough, destroyed the intermediate structures to which people could reliably turn in the past for a coherent interpretation of events. The argument is essentially the same as that which encourages us to be “CEO of our own life,” to arrange our own retirement, to “take responsibility” for our mental and physical well-being. It is servitude under the guise of freedom, placing responsibilities upon us that few of us can manage, and taking away the support structures of the past. Its result is to make us less powerful, and more dependent........Well, it so happens that we know a great deal about how humans decide between competing explanations: in a word, they do so emotionally. As Daniel Khaneman, whom I’ve mentioned before, has shown at some length, we make most of our decisions quickly and emotionally, based on instinct. These decisions, which he called Type 1 decisions, are the residue of the time when life was more threatening, and quick, instinctive decisions might save your life. Yet most of the important decisions we have to make in life are actually Type 2 decisions, where we have to consider the evidence carefully. Crudely, we can say that most people make Type 1 decisions about who to believe when they should be making Type 2 decisions. Which is to say: this person appeals to me, their politics resembles mine, they attack targets I also dislike, they must be right about this issue. And in practice, given the fearsome complexity of almost every international crisis, this is all you can really do: the possibility of “deciding for yourself” is in practice just about subjectively deciding who to believe....The violence with which such emotions are expressed comes ultimately from fear. Our society does not value or trust logical argument, and surprisingly few people can actually construct a logical argument unaided: not much chance of “deciding for yourself,” therefore. And yet our society tells people that they should “question everything” and “reach their own conclusions.” This is hypocrisy, of course: there are an increasing number of ideas which are not allowed to be questioned, and where reaching your own conclusions makes you very unpopular. The reality is that the construction of logical arguments is not a skill we are born with, and a willingness to hold and defend genuinely personal opinions is a good way to make yourself loathed by all sides.



Popular posts from this blog

HOW EMPIRES FALL...

Image
  The USA is losing legitimacy precisely because of its oppression and repression. 'The empire faces a fatal dilemma: tolerating dissent weakens its central authority and fragments its cohesion, while repression, though temporarily effective, destroys its remaining legitimacy. It radicalizes populations, alienates allies and partners, and causes human, economic, and moral costs to skyrocket. Duroselle’s central paradox is clear: the more an empire attempts to ward off its demise through force, the more it accelerates its decline. Legitimacy—the invisible cement of domination—once lost, cannot be restored through coercion. Any attempt at rescue risks aggravating the problem and bringing the empire to an end. Trump’s policy follows in the footsteps of his predecessors, but his style and excesses are undoubtedly hastening America's loss of credibility on the world stage.'
Read more

THE IRAN WAR SO FAR - BY BIG SERGE...

Image
  Big Serge is the best military historian there is - and this is his analysis of the war on Iran so far. As a tangential point he fails to mention the global impacts of the attacks on Iran. One of the reasons that the NATO block doesn't want to get involved is that they think the war on Iran by Israel and the USA will not be successful and will draw attention away from Ukraine which is their No 1 priority. If the initial attack on Iran had 'worked' they would be fully behind damning the 'terrorist regime' (sic). But is has so-far failed. Serge is absolutely right in my view in maintaining that they key thing for the USA and Israel neo-fascists is the crippling of Iran so that it has massively reduced influence. How Iran reacts to this is the key thing. Will it seek closer links with Russia and China? One can only hope so. Will it go for a nuclear weapon? This is logical. Will it begin to assassinate political enemies in Isael and the USA? What (after all) is the di...
Read more

THE AGE OF 'ADMINISTRATIVE' POWER.

Image
Warwick Powell explains  how the administrative state has taken over in Europe... 'Regulatory authorities now determine which organisations qualify as legitimate civil society actors, which media outlets are “trusted,” which research bodies are acceptable partners and which narratives are “foreign-influenced.” These classifications carry decisive material consequences - access to funding, platforms and institutional recognition - yet are framed as neutral, technical assessments... Regulatory authorities now determine which organisations qualify as legitimate civil society actors, which media outlets are “trusted,” which research bodies are acceptable partners and which narratives are “foreign-influenced.” These classifications carry decisive material consequences - access to funding, platforms and institutional recognition - yet are framed as neutral, technical assessments.... In countries such as Georgia and Moldova, the EU has increasingly positioned itself not merely as an obser...
Read more