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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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I do not foresee or dream of a collapse, but I'm also not looking forward to this kind of dysfunctional culture being empowered by technology indefinitely.

I've been reading which I think put this distinction we should be making between cultural and material progress quite well. From Eisel Mazard's No More Manifestos:

We are much more willing to look at the progress of technology as the model that social progress "should" resemble, no matter how improbable the resemblance might be. The cycle of invention and obsolescence is more appealing than the tragic history of "the rise and fall" of Rome: technology promises us a rise without a fall, and a history without heroes or villains – only inventors. Unlike a struggle between factions, with each side pretending to be certain that they alone can lead the public to a better future but living forever with uncertainty and regret (as when the Tories slaughtered the Whigs, and vice versa, in the American Revolution) about all the good men who died on the other side, half wondering as to whether or not the unexpected outcomes of all the violence really were "the best of all possible worlds", as Candide would say, when we imagine social progress in technological terms we need not question the extent to which we will be heroes, villains, or simply passive cowards, in the next chapter of history to be written. Brutus must have wondered, before his death, if he had been more a villain than a hero, and must have questioned whether or not he would have been better off a coward and a conformist –whether or not all of Rome would have been better off, by the same token. Instead of all this endlessly ambivalent tragedy, we can all fix our eyes on a new cellular phone, laid bare upon the dining room table, and express our astonishment at how much "the state of the art" has improved in the last twenty years: now this is progress!

We ignore that the table the phone is sitting upon hasn't changed at all; nor has the concrete floor, nor the pipes that bring us water below the floorboards, and so on. It does not occur to us that the stasis of our senates, parliaments, prisons, police services and universities should be judged more harshly, relative to the rapid progress made in other fields (or at least in this one). Instead, we behave as if the innovations made in consumer electronics were infectious. Perhaps if you leave that cellphone sitting on the table long enough, the ingenuity embodied within it will seep through the polished surface, drip down the wooden legs, through the concrete floor, and then percolate into the pipes --revolutionizing the sewage system along with everything else it touches, without any of us having to be bothered about leading a revolution.

silly tangent

I googled No More Manifestos, and found my way to the author's youtube channel.

It looks like he was a vegan debater in the past. His most popular video is about a /r/drama tier internet dispute where someone sent him death threats (or something, I haven't watched it).

His popular videos are all 7ish years ago - he still posts, but gets many fewer views.

From a recent video - he wanted to move to the US, but was unable to, due to the intricacies of immigration law! He's also never driven a car.

Yeah his YouTube can be very off-putting. I first got interested in it as a curiousity and then he surprised me with how well read he seems to be in history and political philosophy. His other writings are mostly academic style articles where he claims that millions of Buddhists have been mislead by scholars on the embarrassing role of flatulence in breathing meditation present in the ancient Pali texts:

In plain English, what he calls “abdominal breath” is flatulence –and the mistranslation of the corresponding passages of the canon is very nearly the apotheosis of farting. So-called “breathing meditation” is not at all what millions of Buddhists have been lead to believe: many passages of the PTS translations (old and new) are grossly misleading, and, in one important aspect least, they are flatly wrong.

My pipes have changed, though? They're plastic now, instead of metal - cheaper and less likely to put metal ions in the water. And there's a water filter in my house between the pipe and my mouth. The city, itself, is using improved water treatment tech. And these changes have entirely been enabled by science, technology, and society.

My table also has changed. It's a bit cheaper, and the antifungals are less toxic now. I can have a new one delivered if I don't like it. Maybe I have a standing / treadmill desk. Maybe I don't have to use the table as much, as I go on a walk in nature while chatting with friends or listening to podcasts.

The concrete formula itself has improved quite a bit too, and is 10x cheaper. (edit: 1.1x cheaper, I rewrote this a bit and missed that)

"Technology isn't changing the social aspects of society", he says on the anonymous political internet forum.

I think he extended that table metaphor a bit too much, but the point is that technological progress can go hand in hand with stagnation in universities, police departments, parliaments etc, though it gives the illusion that these things must also be obviously better than they were in the past.

The idea of stagnation in universities is also subtle. Ethnic and gender studies are a festering wound. But ... if we're looking to the past, we have to compare them with psychoanalyis, theology, continental philosophy / idealism, marxism ... is it really obvious things are much worse? A lot of ruin in a nation etc.

And back to the original topic, I think the factual accuracy of (most of) the internet far-right including bap is now comparable to that of the ethnic studies people. The far-right carries forward a bunch of accurate claims, but is accreting an ever-growing ball of nonsense onto it. Part of hanania's popularity comes from not being like that!

is it really obvious things are much worse

Aside from the cost, things aren't obviously much worse than they were in the past 50 years but they're not very different either. Asking what subjects are taught is one way of evaluating a university, but I'll just throw some ideas out to illustrate that there are other avenues where innovation could have been made but wasn't.

How about asking if some of the subjects are being taught to an objective standard at all? There are language courses where you get your degree and can't speak the language, Buddhist studies taught by true believers who won't bring your attention to the ugly aspects of its history etc, and a lot of dishonesty about whether this degree will help you in life at all (employment being the obvious one). It's taken for granted in some industries that your degree has not prepared you for the job at hand and the necessity for further training is a given, but there doesn't seem to be any incentive for the university to care about this.

Then there's the format. Why is a lecture hall with hundreds of students the unquestioned standard? There is a surplus of PhDs in many fields, it wouldn't be that expensive to drastically increase the student to teacher ratio (or the professor to admin ratio to get more directly at the cause). As much one on one tutoring as possible seems to be the ideal but apart from PhD students no one is even aiming for that.

And lastly, how can you encourage critical thinking amongst students when, in the liberal arts especially, the person with the power to fail them is also the someone who they are supposed to be confidently and credibly accuse of bullshiting?

And back to the original topic, I think the factual accuracy of (most of) the internet far-right including bap is now comparable to that of the ethnic studies people. The far-right carries forward a bunch of accurate claims, but is accreting an ever-growing ball of nonsense onto it. Part of hanania's popularity comes from not being like that!

I don't disagree, though the guy I'm quoting from is definitely not of the far-right. The original topic is a few comments back so I'll have to reread and maybe edit lest I misunderstand you.