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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   28172 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.”

A seductive thought, but still wrong. If the young man had changed himself, it would have been merely to be a cog in the machine, with no impact and not having changed anything at all. Railing against the machine may have no effect, but so does self-modifying to fit into it.

A seductive thought, but still wrong. If the young man had changed himself, it would have been merely to be a cog in the machine, with no impact and not having changed anything at all. Railing against the machine may have no effect, but so does self-modifying to fit into it.

Without defining this injected 'machine,' or what qualifies as 'impact', 'change', and 'effect', this means nothing in a way that demonstrates the claim is wrong.

Railing or raging against the machine is a common idiom. The machine here is hydroacetylene's "machinery of civilization", what's often called "society". The promise of the little story is that if its protagonist had simply changed himself instead of attempting to change the world, he could have thus changed the world. That's a lie and an obvious one; if you change yourself, you won't change the world because you no longer want to.

That's a lie and an obvious one; if you change yourself, you won't change the world because you no longer want to.

Whether it's a lie or not it's certainly not obviously so. I interpret that story as: by changing yourself for the better you inspire others to be better, and when enough people better themselves the world will improve as a result. You could interpret it as encouraging people to become cogs in the machine, but IMO that's an overly-cynical interpretation and incorrect.

Convincing young men to be a cog in the machinery of civilization is the entire point of that story. Liberalism rails against this, conservatism half-asses trying to do it, and progressivism wants to throw out the machinery of civilization and replace it with something entirely else(I, uh, can't steelman what they want to replace the current structures with, so I'm not going to try).

Convincing young men to be a cog in the machinery of civilization is the entire point of that story.

Perhaps, but it's still a lie.

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