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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   27845 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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So you think that modern liberalism/progressivism isn't demanding and judgemental? It seems the opposite to me.

It "coerces to freedom" as Ryzard Legutko put it. You can live how you like, as long as it's not "discriminatory" and doesn't imply that some ways of living are better than others. You can choose any color of Model T you want, as long as it's black. You will not be judged for your choice of indulgence, but you will be judged harshly for questioning whether it is right to indulge.

So even selfish people can follow moral constraints out of fear, a desire for social approval, and social incentives?

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Why would not be possible to simultaneously be selfish and do something out of fear? Can you speak more plainly?

It "coerces to freedom" as Ryzard Legutko put it. You can live how you like, as long as it's not "discriminatory" and doesn't imply that some ways of living are better than others. You can choose any color of Model T you want, as long as it's black. You will not be judged for your choice of indulgence, but you will be judged harshly for questioning whether it is right to indulge.

That's one of the norms in modern liberalism/progressivism, but there are others, e.g. equity and compassion. The more someone tends towards "progressivism" in my sense, the more that these other norms dominate over liberty.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Why would not be possible to simultaneously be selfish and do something out of fear? Can you speak more plainly?

Sure, I just wanted to go step by step in constructing my argument.

If selfish people can act out of fear, including secular fear (i.e. not just the threat of divine punishment or the promise of rewards in heaven) then the secular conservative can think that a secular conservative society is possible in principle, despite people being selfish.

In practice, many of them have had a tragic vision and thought that it wasn't possible. In the case of David Stove, for instance, I think it was he thought that a society made up of people who think like him is impossible because people tend too strongly towards irrationality:

Unlike Muggeridge, however, I do not believe that rational thought is a danger to humanity, in the long or even in the medium run. Whether a society of atheists could endure, was a question often discussed during the Enlightenment, though never decided. If the question is generalized a little, however, from 'atheists' to 'Positivists,' then it seems obvious enough that the answer to it is 'no.' Genetic engineering aside, given a large aggregation of human beings, and a long time, you cannot reasonably expect rational thought to win. You could as reasonably expect a thousand unbiased dice, all tossed at once, all to come down 'five,' say. There are simply far too many ways, and easy ways, in which human thought can go wrong. Or, put it the other way round: anthropocentrism cannot lose. The jungle will reclaim the clearing (even without heavy infestations of conservationists), darkness will beat the light, not quite always on the local scale, but absolutely always on the large scale.

(From "What's Wrong with Our Thoughts?")

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