John McWhorter wrote the book others are expecting yours to be, but instead of a takedown the polemical style came across more like sour grapes and bitching. Looking forward to seeing your ideas.
Sounds good, you've earned yourself a preorder. I'm even more harshly critical of movement organizing than you are, and your book will likely be a valuable resource for communicating with more normie leftists.
“Let’s stop and think for a moment...if we want to do better in the future, we have to have a free, honest, and critical accounting of where things went wrong. Why did so much noise result in so little change? And what can we do better moving forward, to craft the kind of equitable society we say we want?”
To me, the inability of people on the left to absorb and process critique -- rather than deflect it and feel victimized by it -- is at the heart of the problem. The more tribal one's politics, the less that any free, open, and critical discussion is possible, because any critique, any pushback, any argument, feels like a threat to the cohesion of the tribe.
There are some of us who bring our critiques to the table because we really want to see the movement work better and create the kind of change it envisions, only to find that we are very much unwelcome. I have encountered this problem from Berkeley in the 70s to the present moment, and in the era of identity politics, I'm sorry to say, it's only gotten much worse.
I don't know how to get around it except to refuse to back down in the face of the kind of pressures that culture warriors bring. One of the reasons that I love your work, Freddie, is that you do not back down when you see things going awry out there, no matter how much bullshit comes your way. It's such a breath of fresh air and it gives me hope for the future.
A lot of Leftists understand that we need to get past tribalism, that (quoting an old Jacobin headline) "we need a class war, not a culture war", etc. The problem is that if we do need a class war, not a culture war, then we have to recognize that at least within Left and liberal spaces, the kind of "better" Leftists who derail movements are not just drawn from a class (eg: "the professional class"), they *are* a class. Marketing yourself with a bunch of keywords about democracy and grassroots and horizontalism etc etc has never actually abolished the distinction between a constituent, an activist or party member, a cadre member, and a full-blown apparatchik.
"Why did so much noise result in so little change?"
Unfortunately the little change that has happened has been around a lack of enforcement and prosecution of various crimes (and other "decarceration" efforts) that end up disproportionately hurting disadvantaged communities by allowing public safety and quality of life to deteriorate.
The shoe-shining thing, which I had to read maybe three times over to make sure it was LITERAL, jfc, reminds me of this concept of "bending the knee," which I first heard about on Chapo Trap House, who alternately want to make people bend the knee/don't want to be made to bend the knee. I agree with CTH on many many points, but not this bend-the-knee fixation, because I don't believe in grinding your victim's face in the mud, or making some kid apologize to another kid. Forced apologies are worse than worthless. And to offer a bent knee (literally again! lolsob!) as some kind of fix to the problem is so inadequate as to be worse than nothing. Which is also how I view land acknowledgements, until someone talks me out of it.
Yes. “So inadequate so as to be worse than nothing”. I have always thought that. These bullshit gestures are for you to feel virtuous. It literally becomes further exploitation of the victims you say you are making amends to. Really hate it.
Sarah Schulman is one of my favorite chroniclers of the AIDS/ACT UP movement, and the history of gay rights movements in general. She did an excellent interview with Ezra Klein (I know, I know) on his podcast when her last book came out a couple of years ago and talks explicitly about why she feels the ACT UP movement was so successful, and the BLM movement has been so unsuccessful (in terms of enacting concrete change). She goes so far as to say the ACT UP movement was the last successful protest movement this country has seen, and I think she's right. She's a brilliant thinker, and speaks in very plain language that's accessible and empathetic, and I assign this podcast interview and a chapter from her book "The Gentrification of the Mind" to my doctoral psychology students every year. I could seriously listen to her talk all day.
ACT UP had clear, achievable, concrete goals, and once one was met, or the calculus changed, they readjusted. Sure, a lot of it was about visibility and "changing minds," but they cared less about that, and less about respectability, and more about simply figuring out what they wanted and trying to get that thing. And they were successful beyond their wildest dreams (eventually). She states at one point that many of them were actively dying or thought they soon would be, so who cared about respectability? They had nothing to lose.
Secondly, ACT UP was all about direct action. It wasn't about fiery speakers or motivational pep talks, or really even rallies, it was about disrupting daily life to achieve a goal. She says in the interview (and I mostly agree) that passively listening to someone talk at a rally isn't motivating, it's the opposite. ACT UP invaded offices, disrupted conferences, confronted politicians, and did things like got themselves on boards of pharmaceutical companies. They were about very direct action. One of the things they were really good at as an organization was figuring out where people had power and using that. For instance, Peter Staley, an original member, was a Wall Street trader and had powerful connections on Wall Street and in finance. So he used those connections to get himself into elite places and talk to powerful people face to face (he also got arrested a LOT). Other people were nurses, and used those positions to advocate on a more direct level in healthcare (or teachers, or artists, or whatever - they used the fields they had access to).
Her book LET THE RECORD SHOW: A POLITICAL HISTORY OF ACT UP NEW YORK 1987-1993 is excellent, and the documentary HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE is also an incredibly powerful look into ACT UP and how they achieved their ends.
I have to say, Freddie, that I read your articles faithfully and consider myself your polar opposite in politics--but perhaps, maybe, not in philosophy. I am certain that your book will be worth reading.
I think it's worth noting that Cathy comes from the Christian tradition and is pulling these words and ideas from that tradition, so while I have no idea what Cathy really believes it is worth thinking about what these ideas mean in the context of that tradition. The kind of contrition the gospel is talking about isn't just the self care kind of contrition where your feeling bad leads you to pat yourself on the back for how great you are for feeling bad about the way you hurt other people before giving yourself a pass, but the deep kind of contrition where you wrestle honestly with the harm you did and it makes you feel so bad you can't stand to not try and make it right. Similarly, Cathy uses the word apologetic, but the word the gospel usually uses is repentance. Again repentance isn't a get out of jain free card where you say you are sorry and then you're in the clear. Repentance in the gospel means to turn around, to realize you are on the wrong path and that you need to go back and get on the right path. In the gospel contrition and repentance are feelings that produce actions, in fact we can test the sincerity of the feeling by the action it produces. Freddie is certainly correct that there is a lot of cheap contrition/repentance going around that is focused on feeling bad in place of action or even worse is just an accessary to show off one's tribal status. And we can tell it is cheap because it doesn't produce action. That said I wouldn't undersell the role truly feeling bad for one's actions plays in wrestling with the consequences of those actions in a sincere way that produces action.
I think it's also worth noting that many purveyors/performers of the Christian tradition have a rather dim view of feelings in general (other than anger and righteousness?) and people who express them in public. So it's especially telling that the focus here is on contrition and shame rather than action. The amount of time each of these men used up (for whatever this exercise was meant to achieve) was also very interesting. But what really stood out? The repeated use in this Christian context of the word "blessing" rather than, say, "worldly benefit" for what whites gained from slavery (that he conceded whites may miss now). It was...very hard to watch.
The shoe shining is an allusion to Jesus washing his disciple's feet. (If that's not the exercise you were referring to then never mind my apologies.) In biblical times washing someone's feet is a demeaning task servants have to do for their master so Jesus, the boss, washing the feet of his direct reports was a culturally shocking thing to do. In fact one of the disciples tells Jesus not to do it. For christians the story is a call to actively serve others no matter who they are or how inconvenient you find the service. Again I don't know any of these people and have no idea what they believe, but in the context of christian tradition the shoe shining is a reminder for modern christians of this call to active service not to shiny shoes specifically but in the more general sense of the original story especially in the setting of racial injustice where they may find it unpleasant to apply the lesson.
I blame Kant and the Romantics he inspired. He argued that the only thing that could be morally approved or disapproved were good intentions, not outcomes. It's often forgotten that with regard to the physical world, he was a determinist (I think he often forgot it, too) so that one could not rationally control behavior and its consequences, but only the moral maxim under which one acts. Thus if two people, for example, work at a soup kitchen, and one does so because he loves people, sympathizes with their suffering, and works to help them, this is NOT a moral choice for Kant, because he's acting in accord with his nature, not by rational moral choice under a universal rule. So, the other person, who finds the poor disgusting but helps them because it's the moral thing to do, under a rule of altruism, is the moral one, though the two do the same thing--work at the soup kitchen.
The Romantics then take this innerlichkeit (inwardness) idea (including his metaphysics in which the mind creates the knowable world) and fuses it with the power of creative imagination and feeling. This begets interiority and the modern novel, and what I've called the Cult of Feeling. Feeling the right things becomes the mark of a Good (Woke) Person, so, now, curating the Good Person and putting it on Tik-Tok has become the thing to do. These new Morality Influencers encourage others to go and do likewise, becoming Good People, too, and when the mass becomes critical, the world will become perfect. Hence, the emphasis on feeling in the clip you posted. Even corporate CEOs are Romantics.
Side note. Kant was, surprise to those who've suffered through the Critiques, a popular prof. In his day, getting students into seats was a prof's measure of employability. His popular course was "Lectures on Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint." They were published but never translated, though the book version (Dropping "Lectures") has been. It's the first self-help book! It has many pointers on how to speak effectively, how to mingle in society, give parties for academics, and write. On the last, you should be a bit obscure, making the reader work to grasp your insight so he will at the end feel a sense of accomplishment. I think the Critiques over-did it.
I hated Kant from my first reading decades ago. Soon after I read an article about some young affulent liberal who was working in a soup kitchen every month. She said she was going to stop "because she felt good helping people and was not going there to feel good".
I said to myself, "Kant in action!" It was a moral bad thing for this girl to feel good helping people. What a screwed up morality!
Thanks for the word on good 'ol Immauel. But might it be possible that the determining influence is the barrage of atavistic appeals we've all been subjected to by corporate Amerika over the last 70+ years, since TV began pumping them into us? Advertising, it's lifeblood, has gotten so effective that it's thoroughly penetrated most people's souls by selling them on the satisfaction of their immediate trivial desires, and now the cheap contrition of a CEO can seem like a profound gesture. One has to admit that it can have comical consequences as well, as in the sudden decline of America's favorite crappy beer. Even those of us who bear no ill will against Dylan Mulvaney and don't much like Kid Rock can enjoy the spectacle.
Ok, a bit of a sprawling indictment. As for myself, I’m not pointedly frugal, but not as materialistic as many. Gettin’ by on simple pleasures, so forgive me. Here in LaLaLand, Imperial Capital of LoCali, I’m in the crosshairs of lots of bad drivers in expensive rides every day on my way to/from the salt mine, and it gets to me sometimes.
Almost 40 years ago, I was in a Com Studies class and the teacher was a Democratic political person. She said we were entering a new era of politics based on emotional appeals not reasoned, rational arguments. I think she was accurate. People on both sides of issues are looking for the emotional hook.
That gut feeling, which is often wrong. Many things are counter-intuitive, for instance the reusable grocery bag policy like that which has been instituted in Oregon. If there had been a reasoned discussion, it would have come out that the "reusable plastic bag" is equal to 145 disposable bags. No one is going to reuse those heavy plastic bags that many times. It's a net loss for environmental policy. The same goes for ethanol. Its not good environmentally, or socially, and amounts to a huge tax going to a few giant corporations. These policies came about by emotional appeals and faulty logic.
The current liberal stance of all talk, and policies that won't and can't fly, are examples of emotional appeals. Logic and reason are lost...and actively rejected.
If I say we need public policy that will give people opportunities to lift out of poverty, but I think reparations to Blacks is unworkable...then I'm a racist. It won't be a discussion of why I feel reparations won't work, the response will be howling emotion. Emotional arguments don't make good policy. Nor do they make a political movements with staying power.
I disagree about the grocery bags. I've had many of the same reusable cloth grocery bags for almost 20 years, and use them virtually every time I shop (unless I make a spontaneous trip while I'm out otherwise). I guarantee you I've used those bags more than 145 times. I realize I'm probably in the minority on that, but if you get quality bags they will last for years. There is no reason they can't be used more than 145 times. Seems like a made up number by someone complaining about the "nanny state" anyway.
I think she's talking about the extra thick plastic grocery bags that you can get in Canada. Cloth grocery bags are the absolute worst thing that you can buy because in terms of environment impact one cloth bag equals 7000 plastic bags. Assuming one trip to the supermarket a week you would need to use the same cloth bag for over a decade to break even.
I know a couple of grocery stores (small ones, it should be said) who will put your stuff in a cardboard box if you like. They have tons of cardboard boxes they would prefer not to break down and dump.
I think so. Was there corruption and bad stuff back in the 80s, of course, but I do think people were more likely to engage in, or at least expect to engage in rational discussion. At that time there were more trusted institutions that you could cite as evidence.
I had a conversation with a friend about election fraud, in the run up to 2020. She told me there was massive election fraud in...I think Orange County. So I said, I didn't remember that, lets look it up. There were a few stories about suspected fraud, but no major headlines. I found a grand jury report that found no evidence of fraud. I found a government election board finding that there was no fraud. I asked, do you trust this or this. The answer was no. All she trusted was FOX, especially people like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson.
I think that is probably the biggest difference.
Both parties engage in emotional appeals at the expense of logic, scientific evidence and data. Those emotional appeals have led to the polarization, where the Democrats think Republicans are stupid and the Republicans think Democrats are evil. Basing positions on emotional appeals polarizes and divides people on issues where there is actually more agreement than not.
Perhaps that's the intent. Most people believe that the wealthy in this country don't pay their fair share of taxes, yet something as straight forward as the carried interest loophole for the rich and powerful can't be plugged. Divide and conquer.
My emotional appeal is that yes. I do think it's different. I can't cite evidence to back it up, but as someone who's been watching politics since the late 60s, it does seem different. I understand the skepticism. But something has changed.
A common view among libertarians is that a key obstacle to police reform is police unions and professional associations. A free society can't prohibit the latter, and the structural incentives that perpetuate the former pose significant political challenges. Curious as to your views on this, although of course they may be in the book: do you think there's any validity to the idea that police unions are a key obstacle? If so, do you think there are any viable political methods to reduce their influence?
I am looking forward to the book. Our politics are very similar in that they are class based though I'm probably less interested in identity politics than you are. As someone who organized marches during Occupy then hired activists to be community organizers soon after I can honestly say the organized progressive movement has been a complete failure.
".... I can honestly say the organized progressive movement has been a complete failure."
I can't agree more with this observation. I think there is still hope for a progressive movement.... if they drop their creepy obsessions with race and gender....and every other pseudo bullshit emanating from Critical Studies depts.
Here's the real issue: funding. Progressive organizations are completely beholden to their donor base which is overwhelmingly large foundations run and funded by the ruling class. Why would the ruling class EVER fund organizing working and poor people to get what they deserve?
I work in management at an NGO. Last year, we did detailed strategic planning on the policy and campaign work needed to win our objective. We pitched it to foundation funders. Most didn’t bite, until one said “no, but we like websites and we could fund you to build a website”. We are building a website now.
I often feel like I'm shouting into the void trying to explain to people that if your democratic, grassroots, "communist"/"socialist" party/organization is taking its housing policy from the local progressive housing nonprofit, its geopolitics from the university Critical Geography department, its position on LGBT and feminism from Tumblr, and its position on race from Black Lives Matter, and it then sends activists to salt "militant" unions in new workplaces, *there's nothing left over for the members to actually determine*. You're not some independent working-class party. You're a pipeline from the NPIC and NGO intellectuals into workplaces. You are an HR department in all but name and there's nothing "socialist" about you.
It is possible to go too far in the other direction. The materialist direction.
Hollywood stars, tech executives, bankers, and other "successful" people have a lot of material wealth and are therefore idolized by many in our culture, even by those on the left. Many poor people have much better lives than the materially wealthy.
Though they have the material trappings of "success," their lives are alienated, meaningless, and shitty. It is vitally important that society relearn the importance of real relationships, of thinking about life without being concerned about money, and of doing things that are meaningful on their own and don't have to be broadcast to others via various apps.
I agree. I think people like the solace of thinking the rich are actually miserable and guilt ridden for their shallow lives. I don't think it's actually true.
There's a hell of a lot of stress with money problems.
The miserable rich people are fictional on television, or celebrities who are struggling with new found fame.
My contention is more that the rich, all else being equal, don't really have shallow lives. But maybe we're talking about the super-rich here, in which case, yeah, that can be true. I'm talking more about the upper middle class.
With that said there's probably generational differences here.
John McWhorter wrote the book others are expecting yours to be, but instead of a takedown the polemical style came across more like sour grapes and bitching. Looking forward to seeing your ideas.
Sounds good, you've earned yourself a preorder. I'm even more harshly critical of movement organizing than you are, and your book will likely be a valuable resource for communicating with more normie leftists.
“Let’s stop and think for a moment...if we want to do better in the future, we have to have a free, honest, and critical accounting of where things went wrong. Why did so much noise result in so little change? And what can we do better moving forward, to craft the kind of equitable society we say we want?”
To me, the inability of people on the left to absorb and process critique -- rather than deflect it and feel victimized by it -- is at the heart of the problem. The more tribal one's politics, the less that any free, open, and critical discussion is possible, because any critique, any pushback, any argument, feels like a threat to the cohesion of the tribe.
There are some of us who bring our critiques to the table because we really want to see the movement work better and create the kind of change it envisions, only to find that we are very much unwelcome. I have encountered this problem from Berkeley in the 70s to the present moment, and in the era of identity politics, I'm sorry to say, it's only gotten much worse.
I don't know how to get around it except to refuse to back down in the face of the kind of pressures that culture warriors bring. One of the reasons that I love your work, Freddie, is that you do not back down when you see things going awry out there, no matter how much bullshit comes your way. It's such a breath of fresh air and it gives me hope for the future.
A lot of Leftists understand that we need to get past tribalism, that (quoting an old Jacobin headline) "we need a class war, not a culture war", etc. The problem is that if we do need a class war, not a culture war, then we have to recognize that at least within Left and liberal spaces, the kind of "better" Leftists who derail movements are not just drawn from a class (eg: "the professional class"), they *are* a class. Marketing yourself with a bunch of keywords about democracy and grassroots and horizontalism etc etc has never actually abolished the distinction between a constituent, an activist or party member, a cadre member, and a full-blown apparatchik.
"Why did so much noise result in so little change?"
Unfortunately the little change that has happened has been around a lack of enforcement and prosecution of various crimes (and other "decarceration" efforts) that end up disproportionately hurting disadvantaged communities by allowing public safety and quality of life to deteriorate.
Looking forward to getting the audible edition. Thank you for your thoughtful writing.
The shoe-shining thing, which I had to read maybe three times over to make sure it was LITERAL, jfc, reminds me of this concept of "bending the knee," which I first heard about on Chapo Trap House, who alternately want to make people bend the knee/don't want to be made to bend the knee. I agree with CTH on many many points, but not this bend-the-knee fixation, because I don't believe in grinding your victim's face in the mud, or making some kid apologize to another kid. Forced apologies are worse than worthless. And to offer a bent knee (literally again! lolsob!) as some kind of fix to the problem is so inadequate as to be worse than nothing. Which is also how I view land acknowledgements, until someone talks me out of it.
Yes. “So inadequate so as to be worse than nothing”. I have always thought that. These bullshit gestures are for you to feel virtuous. It literally becomes further exploitation of the victims you say you are making amends to. Really hate it.
Sarah Schulman is one of my favorite chroniclers of the AIDS/ACT UP movement, and the history of gay rights movements in general. She did an excellent interview with Ezra Klein (I know, I know) on his podcast when her last book came out a couple of years ago and talks explicitly about why she feels the ACT UP movement was so successful, and the BLM movement has been so unsuccessful (in terms of enacting concrete change). She goes so far as to say the ACT UP movement was the last successful protest movement this country has seen, and I think she's right. She's a brilliant thinker, and speaks in very plain language that's accessible and empathetic, and I assign this podcast interview and a chapter from her book "The Gentrification of the Mind" to my doctoral psychology students every year. I could seriously listen to her talk all day.
Could you possibly summarize her argument, or at least hand-wave at it?
ACT UP had clear, achievable, concrete goals, and once one was met, or the calculus changed, they readjusted. Sure, a lot of it was about visibility and "changing minds," but they cared less about that, and less about respectability, and more about simply figuring out what they wanted and trying to get that thing. And they were successful beyond their wildest dreams (eventually). She states at one point that many of them were actively dying or thought they soon would be, so who cared about respectability? They had nothing to lose.
Secondly, ACT UP was all about direct action. It wasn't about fiery speakers or motivational pep talks, or really even rallies, it was about disrupting daily life to achieve a goal. She says in the interview (and I mostly agree) that passively listening to someone talk at a rally isn't motivating, it's the opposite. ACT UP invaded offices, disrupted conferences, confronted politicians, and did things like got themselves on boards of pharmaceutical companies. They were about very direct action. One of the things they were really good at as an organization was figuring out where people had power and using that. For instance, Peter Staley, an original member, was a Wall Street trader and had powerful connections on Wall Street and in finance. So he used those connections to get himself into elite places and talk to powerful people face to face (he also got arrested a LOT). Other people were nurses, and used those positions to advocate on a more direct level in healthcare (or teachers, or artists, or whatever - they used the fields they had access to).
Her book LET THE RECORD SHOW: A POLITICAL HISTORY OF ACT UP NEW YORK 1987-1993 is excellent, and the documentary HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE is also an incredibly powerful look into ACT UP and how they achieved their ends.
Thanks! That's helpful.
Thanks for this excellent summary.
I have to say, Freddie, that I read your articles faithfully and consider myself your polar opposite in politics--but perhaps, maybe, not in philosophy. I am certain that your book will be worth reading.
Gotta admit - those chapter titles really draw you in. I may just read this.
I think it's worth noting that Cathy comes from the Christian tradition and is pulling these words and ideas from that tradition, so while I have no idea what Cathy really believes it is worth thinking about what these ideas mean in the context of that tradition. The kind of contrition the gospel is talking about isn't just the self care kind of contrition where your feeling bad leads you to pat yourself on the back for how great you are for feeling bad about the way you hurt other people before giving yourself a pass, but the deep kind of contrition where you wrestle honestly with the harm you did and it makes you feel so bad you can't stand to not try and make it right. Similarly, Cathy uses the word apologetic, but the word the gospel usually uses is repentance. Again repentance isn't a get out of jain free card where you say you are sorry and then you're in the clear. Repentance in the gospel means to turn around, to realize you are on the wrong path and that you need to go back and get on the right path. In the gospel contrition and repentance are feelings that produce actions, in fact we can test the sincerity of the feeling by the action it produces. Freddie is certainly correct that there is a lot of cheap contrition/repentance going around that is focused on feeling bad in place of action or even worse is just an accessary to show off one's tribal status. And we can tell it is cheap because it doesn't produce action. That said I wouldn't undersell the role truly feeling bad for one's actions plays in wrestling with the consequences of those actions in a sincere way that produces action.
I think it's also worth noting that many purveyors/performers of the Christian tradition have a rather dim view of feelings in general (other than anger and righteousness?) and people who express them in public. So it's especially telling that the focus here is on contrition and shame rather than action. The amount of time each of these men used up (for whatever this exercise was meant to achieve) was also very interesting. But what really stood out? The repeated use in this Christian context of the word "blessing" rather than, say, "worldly benefit" for what whites gained from slavery (that he conceded whites may miss now). It was...very hard to watch.
The shoe shining is an allusion to Jesus washing his disciple's feet. (If that's not the exercise you were referring to then never mind my apologies.) In biblical times washing someone's feet is a demeaning task servants have to do for their master so Jesus, the boss, washing the feet of his direct reports was a culturally shocking thing to do. In fact one of the disciples tells Jesus not to do it. For christians the story is a call to actively serve others no matter who they are or how inconvenient you find the service. Again I don't know any of these people and have no idea what they believe, but in the context of christian tradition the shoe shining is a reminder for modern christians of this call to active service not to shiny shoes specifically but in the more general sense of the original story especially in the setting of racial injustice where they may find it unpleasant to apply the lesson.
I blame Kant and the Romantics he inspired. He argued that the only thing that could be morally approved or disapproved were good intentions, not outcomes. It's often forgotten that with regard to the physical world, he was a determinist (I think he often forgot it, too) so that one could not rationally control behavior and its consequences, but only the moral maxim under which one acts. Thus if two people, for example, work at a soup kitchen, and one does so because he loves people, sympathizes with their suffering, and works to help them, this is NOT a moral choice for Kant, because he's acting in accord with his nature, not by rational moral choice under a universal rule. So, the other person, who finds the poor disgusting but helps them because it's the moral thing to do, under a rule of altruism, is the moral one, though the two do the same thing--work at the soup kitchen.
The Romantics then take this innerlichkeit (inwardness) idea (including his metaphysics in which the mind creates the knowable world) and fuses it with the power of creative imagination and feeling. This begets interiority and the modern novel, and what I've called the Cult of Feeling. Feeling the right things becomes the mark of a Good (Woke) Person, so, now, curating the Good Person and putting it on Tik-Tok has become the thing to do. These new Morality Influencers encourage others to go and do likewise, becoming Good People, too, and when the mass becomes critical, the world will become perfect. Hence, the emphasis on feeling in the clip you posted. Even corporate CEOs are Romantics.
Side note. Kant was, surprise to those who've suffered through the Critiques, a popular prof. In his day, getting students into seats was a prof's measure of employability. His popular course was "Lectures on Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint." They were published but never translated, though the book version (Dropping "Lectures") has been. It's the first self-help book! It has many pointers on how to speak effectively, how to mingle in society, give parties for academics, and write. On the last, you should be a bit obscure, making the reader work to grasp your insight so he will at the end feel a sense of accomplishment. I think the Critiques over-did it.
I hated Kant from my first reading decades ago. Soon after I read an article about some young affulent liberal who was working in a soup kitchen every month. She said she was going to stop "because she felt good helping people and was not going there to feel good".
I said to myself, "Kant in action!" It was a moral bad thing for this girl to feel good helping people. What a screwed up morality!
Thanks for the word on good 'ol Immauel. But might it be possible that the determining influence is the barrage of atavistic appeals we've all been subjected to by corporate Amerika over the last 70+ years, since TV began pumping them into us? Advertising, it's lifeblood, has gotten so effective that it's thoroughly penetrated most people's souls by selling them on the satisfaction of their immediate trivial desires, and now the cheap contrition of a CEO can seem like a profound gesture. One has to admit that it can have comical consequences as well, as in the sudden decline of America's favorite crappy beer. Even those of us who bear no ill will against Dylan Mulvaney and don't much like Kid Rock can enjoy the spectacle.
Most people, but not smart people like you and I, right?
Ok, a bit of a sprawling indictment. As for myself, I’m not pointedly frugal, but not as materialistic as many. Gettin’ by on simple pleasures, so forgive me. Here in LaLaLand, Imperial Capital of LoCali, I’m in the crosshairs of lots of bad drivers in expensive rides every day on my way to/from the salt mine, and it gets to me sometimes.
My man, you have me with those chapter titles! Looking forward to it.
Almost 40 years ago, I was in a Com Studies class and the teacher was a Democratic political person. She said we were entering a new era of politics based on emotional appeals not reasoned, rational arguments. I think she was accurate. People on both sides of issues are looking for the emotional hook.
That gut feeling, which is often wrong. Many things are counter-intuitive, for instance the reusable grocery bag policy like that which has been instituted in Oregon. If there had been a reasoned discussion, it would have come out that the "reusable plastic bag" is equal to 145 disposable bags. No one is going to reuse those heavy plastic bags that many times. It's a net loss for environmental policy. The same goes for ethanol. Its not good environmentally, or socially, and amounts to a huge tax going to a few giant corporations. These policies came about by emotional appeals and faulty logic.
The current liberal stance of all talk, and policies that won't and can't fly, are examples of emotional appeals. Logic and reason are lost...and actively rejected.
If I say we need public policy that will give people opportunities to lift out of poverty, but I think reparations to Blacks is unworkable...then I'm a racist. It won't be a discussion of why I feel reparations won't work, the response will be howling emotion. Emotional arguments don't make good policy. Nor do they make a political movements with staying power.
I disagree about the grocery bags. I've had many of the same reusable cloth grocery bags for almost 20 years, and use them virtually every time I shop (unless I make a spontaneous trip while I'm out otherwise). I guarantee you I've used those bags more than 145 times. I realize I'm probably in the minority on that, but if you get quality bags they will last for years. There is no reason they can't be used more than 145 times. Seems like a made up number by someone complaining about the "nanny state" anyway.
I think she's talking about the extra thick plastic grocery bags that you can get in Canada. Cloth grocery bags are the absolute worst thing that you can buy because in terms of environment impact one cloth bag equals 7000 plastic bags. Assuming one trip to the supermarket a week you would need to use the same cloth bag for over a decade to break even.
7000? Gimme a break. That's so dumb.
What's truly sad is that it's something like 20,000 for organic cotton.
Anyway, Google should be able to find the source pretty easily.
I know a couple of grocery stores (small ones, it should be said) who will put your stuff in a cardboard box if you like. They have tons of cardboard boxes they would prefer not to break down and dump.
"She said we were entering a new era of politics based on emotional appeals not reasoned, rational arguments."
People always say shit like this but c'mon - was the prior era that much different?
I think so. Was there corruption and bad stuff back in the 80s, of course, but I do think people were more likely to engage in, or at least expect to engage in rational discussion. At that time there were more trusted institutions that you could cite as evidence.
I had a conversation with a friend about election fraud, in the run up to 2020. She told me there was massive election fraud in...I think Orange County. So I said, I didn't remember that, lets look it up. There were a few stories about suspected fraud, but no major headlines. I found a grand jury report that found no evidence of fraud. I found a government election board finding that there was no fraud. I asked, do you trust this or this. The answer was no. All she trusted was FOX, especially people like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson.
I think that is probably the biggest difference.
Both parties engage in emotional appeals at the expense of logic, scientific evidence and data. Those emotional appeals have led to the polarization, where the Democrats think Republicans are stupid and the Republicans think Democrats are evil. Basing positions on emotional appeals polarizes and divides people on issues where there is actually more agreement than not.
Perhaps that's the intent. Most people believe that the wealthy in this country don't pay their fair share of taxes, yet something as straight forward as the carried interest loophole for the rich and powerful can't be plugged. Divide and conquer.
My emotional appeal is that yes. I do think it's different. I can't cite evidence to back it up, but as someone who's been watching politics since the late 60s, it does seem different. I understand the skepticism. But something has changed.
A common view among libertarians is that a key obstacle to police reform is police unions and professional associations. A free society can't prohibit the latter, and the structural incentives that perpetuate the former pose significant political challenges. Curious as to your views on this, although of course they may be in the book: do you think there's any validity to the idea that police unions are a key obstacle? If so, do you think there are any viable political methods to reduce their influence?
A free society can certainly place heavy chains on the agents of the state without it being a threat to liberty.
I am looking forward to the book. Our politics are very similar in that they are class based though I'm probably less interested in identity politics than you are. As someone who organized marches during Occupy then hired activists to be community organizers soon after I can honestly say the organized progressive movement has been a complete failure.
".... I can honestly say the organized progressive movement has been a complete failure."
I can't agree more with this observation. I think there is still hope for a progressive movement.... if they drop their creepy obsessions with race and gender....and every other pseudo bullshit emanating from Critical Studies depts.
Here's the real issue: funding. Progressive organizations are completely beholden to their donor base which is overwhelmingly large foundations run and funded by the ruling class. Why would the ruling class EVER fund organizing working and poor people to get what they deserve?
I work in management at an NGO. Last year, we did detailed strategic planning on the policy and campaign work needed to win our objective. We pitched it to foundation funders. Most didn’t bite, until one said “no, but we like websites and we could fund you to build a website”. We are building a website now.
I often feel like I'm shouting into the void trying to explain to people that if your democratic, grassroots, "communist"/"socialist" party/organization is taking its housing policy from the local progressive housing nonprofit, its geopolitics from the university Critical Geography department, its position on LGBT and feminism from Tumblr, and its position on race from Black Lives Matter, and it then sends activists to salt "militant" unions in new workplaces, *there's nothing left over for the members to actually determine*. You're not some independent working-class party. You're a pipeline from the NPIC and NGO intellectuals into workplaces. You are an HR department in all but name and there's nothing "socialist" about you.
Yup.
It is possible to go too far in the other direction. The materialist direction.
Hollywood stars, tech executives, bankers, and other "successful" people have a lot of material wealth and are therefore idolized by many in our culture, even by those on the left. Many poor people have much better lives than the materially wealthy.
Though they have the material trappings of "success," their lives are alienated, meaningless, and shitty. It is vitally important that society relearn the importance of real relationships, of thinking about life without being concerned about money, and of doing things that are meaningful on their own and don't have to be broadcast to others via various apps.
In the US it is the wealthy elites who enjoy far greater rootedness and social connections than the proles. See "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray.
I agree. I think people like the solace of thinking the rich are actually miserable and guilt ridden for their shallow lives. I don't think it's actually true.
There's a hell of a lot of stress with money problems.
The miserable rich people are fictional on television, or celebrities who are struggling with new found fame.
My contention is more that the rich, all else being equal, don't really have shallow lives. But maybe we're talking about the super-rich here, in which case, yeah, that can be true. I'm talking more about the upper middle class.
With that said there's probably generational differences here.
They may appear to, but the inherent damage caused by owning millions or billions of alienation tokens completely undoes these advantages.
I heard that the wealthy elite live miserable, empty lives because of ghosts!
The point is that redistributing money from the rich to the poor is good for both rich and poor.