A needed corrective, clear-eyed and balanced as always. I have often thought that the young men attracted to the dissident right would very likely have been hippies in the 60s. Counter-cultural politics is as much about personality type as anything else.
I wonder though, could it not be that the tendency of youth towards all-in reactionary radicalism, and the following tendency towards these views getting locked in for life, might be a necessary element in the spiral of development at a societal scale? The former provides the energy to change direction, the latter the staying power to explore the implications, with the most negative outcomes ameliorated by the tendency of the next generation to do just as the previous did?
Of course, at the individual level, for those capable of it, it is surely better to follow many winds of the spiral through one's own life. That will lead to the widest view from the highest perspective one can achieve. But perhaps this is only really possible for a very few.
I think that all of these things have a purpose, the Weltgeist doing its thing if you will. And at the end, all of these different societies and cultures and dynamics create new settings for humanity to explore different aspects of life and morality.
However, looking at history, I'm somewhat pessimistic: what kind of Weltgeist is this, anyway? And how is it that people don't wake up to these dynamics? Why do we keep running in circles? I suspect our only hope is that a critical mass (might not that many) manages to spiral out, together, so to speak, which might create real change. Perhaps such things become possible when mega civilizations reach their end...
I also have this quiet sense of hope that one day people will wake up to what's going on with radical feminism and Woke ideology. Then do something meaningful to counter it. But, I am becoming more pessimistic. It's like a patient with malignant cancer waiting for the best treatment to be discovered. They may wait so long that no treatment can be used.
I am grateful to the author for reminding me to step back periodically, open my mind and at the least evaluate the world around me with humility.
"The young men attracted to the dissident right would very likely have been hippies in the 1960s."
Exactly right. Which is partly why today's cultural climate is so disorienting. Leftists in favor of more government censorship claim ... George Carlin??? ... as one of their heroes merely because he was on the Left back when the Left was the countercultural home of artists and creative types? The modern Left is completely lacking in self awareness, and they completely miss the bigger contextual picture in which Carlin articulated a leftist position that made sense at that time and in that context. But the guy who openly flouted the mainstream norms of his day would hardly be expected, if he was alive today, to embrace the authoritarians and ideological cultists of our own day who dominate the mainstream.
I grew up in the 60's and was a hippie. It's unrealistic to say it was always flower power. People were killed, riots resentment and anger over the war. But it did not have the evil and hateful undertones we see today in plain sight.
What we have today is eerily like the cultural revolution in China. I was there in the early 90's and saw the destruction of statues and anything representing their cultural history. So I studied about it. Pictures come to mind of young people calling out professors in the public square. Shaming them and demanding coerced apologies before beating them to death or exiling them. Ive seen this many times in our country recently. The only difference is that their hasn't been killings but I've read there were death threats. Millions died before the before of hated and destruction of the cultural war ended. We ignore lessons from history at our peril.
The beginning of the Chinese novel "The Three-Body Problem" describes the horror of the cultural revolution, one of the most chilling things I have ever read.
Jan 29, 2023·edited Jan 29, 2023Liked by L.P. Koch
Great piece, Luc. Epistemic humilty, yes. And I'd add that a touch of comic sensibility is helpful in maintaining it over time. To learn to laugh not just at what others claim to know, but at what former versions of ourselves thought we knew. The world is full of pseudo-profundities (a.k.a "bullshit") and their salesmen.
Addtionally:
"In an age of AI, the last thing we need are wetware bot wars."
Oh yeah, to laugh at yourself is absolutely required, especially your past self. Very good point.
Looking back, I had my fair share of ideological possessions and "I figured everything out!" phases. Sometimes it feels like the more you learn, the more you end up back at the beginning, being just a regular dude doing regular things, instead of chasing the stars intellectually. But hey, if this is so, at least we had a great cosmic adventure! And even if we go back to where we started in a sense, the world will never look the same again.
Yes, in theory we all know that things are non-linear: in science, for instance, a tiny little experiment can strike down a theory we were absolutely sure about for centuries.
Yet we don't really take it seriously and always assume things work in a linear way: if I know a lot about a certain topic, even if I'm wrong about some detail, that won't change my overall outlook. Well, not so!
Thanks, I found your article interesting, and I think I would like to write a response. The way I see it, unless God speaks, all our human philosophies are just hanging in midair and we have nothing to do but chase each other in circles forever.
Technology makes humility a lot harder. On the one hand, some people expect everything to be a Tik Tok video. Anything that can't be described in a couple of seconds is worthless.
On the other hand, a lot of people have bucked hard against that trend and now feel the need to make everything unnecessarily long and complicated. Both sides could learn a lot from the other, but each is convinced that he has the moral high ground.
I think everything has a place: short, punchy videos, long and complicated essays, and everything in between.
One problem with humility is that when communicating, you need to make a point. But this point will always be only part of the story: if you exagerate with humility, you end up being long-winded and making too many caveats.
Hence the need to understand that most points are only partially true. This mindset is liberating both for the writer and reader.
Great article Luc, a lot more humility is necessary for all of us. I don’t understand how someone can think that only the way they see things is right and you are wrong if you don’t see things the same way. That just shows tunnel vision and narrow mindedness because one can’t just see the world and everything in it in black and white as everything is much more complex when looked at with a variety of viewpoints. Keeping an open mind is healthy.
Just wondering if you’d heard that Dr. Jordan Peterson was a guest on Josh Rogan’s podcast and it’s on YouTube. Dr. Jordan Peterson is going to create a platform with a new direction for humanity to move forward in that completely defies and is in direct opposition to the WEF’s authoritarian dystopian agenda for all of us! Exciting for us and you just know the globalists are going to hate it!
For a short [tonic/comic] warm-up—to set the mind’s muscle tone just right for epistemic humility exercise(s)—the textbook Monkey Business Illusion is fun --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY 🏀🤸
> Along came Herbert Marcuse with his idea that people are manipulated into embracing “false needs,” and his writing resonated deeply with the contrarians at the time.
Despite Marcuse's Maxist analysis of this. It's actually possible to do a Capitalist analysis of this phenomenon, which manages to be even scarier in its implications.
A needed corrective, clear-eyed and balanced as always. I have often thought that the young men attracted to the dissident right would very likely have been hippies in the 60s. Counter-cultural politics is as much about personality type as anything else.
I wonder though, could it not be that the tendency of youth towards all-in reactionary radicalism, and the following tendency towards these views getting locked in for life, might be a necessary element in the spiral of development at a societal scale? The former provides the energy to change direction, the latter the staying power to explore the implications, with the most negative outcomes ameliorated by the tendency of the next generation to do just as the previous did?
Of course, at the individual level, for those capable of it, it is surely better to follow many winds of the spiral through one's own life. That will lead to the widest view from the highest perspective one can achieve. But perhaps this is only really possible for a very few.
I think that all of these things have a purpose, the Weltgeist doing its thing if you will. And at the end, all of these different societies and cultures and dynamics create new settings for humanity to explore different aspects of life and morality.
However, looking at history, I'm somewhat pessimistic: what kind of Weltgeist is this, anyway? And how is it that people don't wake up to these dynamics? Why do we keep running in circles? I suspect our only hope is that a critical mass (might not that many) manages to spiral out, together, so to speak, which might create real change. Perhaps such things become possible when mega civilizations reach their end...
I also have this quiet sense of hope that one day people will wake up to what's going on with radical feminism and Woke ideology. Then do something meaningful to counter it. But, I am becoming more pessimistic. It's like a patient with malignant cancer waiting for the best treatment to be discovered. They may wait so long that no treatment can be used.
I am grateful to the author for reminding me to step back periodically, open my mind and at the least evaluate the world around me with humility.
"The young men attracted to the dissident right would very likely have been hippies in the 1960s."
Exactly right. Which is partly why today's cultural climate is so disorienting. Leftists in favor of more government censorship claim ... George Carlin??? ... as one of their heroes merely because he was on the Left back when the Left was the countercultural home of artists and creative types? The modern Left is completely lacking in self awareness, and they completely miss the bigger contextual picture in which Carlin articulated a leftist position that made sense at that time and in that context. But the guy who openly flouted the mainstream norms of his day would hardly be expected, if he was alive today, to embrace the authoritarians and ideological cultists of our own day who dominate the mainstream.
I grew up in the 60's and was a hippie. It's unrealistic to say it was always flower power. People were killed, riots resentment and anger over the war. But it did not have the evil and hateful undertones we see today in plain sight.
What we have today is eerily like the cultural revolution in China. I was there in the early 90's and saw the destruction of statues and anything representing their cultural history. So I studied about it. Pictures come to mind of young people calling out professors in the public square. Shaming them and demanding coerced apologies before beating them to death or exiling them. Ive seen this many times in our country recently. The only difference is that their hasn't been killings but I've read there were death threats. Millions died before the before of hated and destruction of the cultural war ended. We ignore lessons from history at our peril.
The beginning of the Chinese novel "The Three-Body Problem" describes the horror of the cultural revolution, one of the most chilling things I have ever read.
Great piece, Luc. Epistemic humilty, yes. And I'd add that a touch of comic sensibility is helpful in maintaining it over time. To learn to laugh not just at what others claim to know, but at what former versions of ourselves thought we knew. The world is full of pseudo-profundities (a.k.a "bullshit") and their salesmen.
Addtionally:
"In an age of AI, the last thing we need are wetware bot wars."
This.
Oh yeah, to laugh at yourself is absolutely required, especially your past self. Very good point.
Looking back, I had my fair share of ideological possessions and "I figured everything out!" phases. Sometimes it feels like the more you learn, the more you end up back at the beginning, being just a regular dude doing regular things, instead of chasing the stars intellectually. But hey, if this is so, at least we had a great cosmic adventure! And even if we go back to where we started in a sense, the world will never look the same again.
Such an elegant conception of epistemic humility. I especially like the observation about how easy it is to be wrong about just one little thing.
Yes, in theory we all know that things are non-linear: in science, for instance, a tiny little experiment can strike down a theory we were absolutely sure about for centuries.
Yet we don't really take it seriously and always assume things work in a linear way: if I know a lot about a certain topic, even if I'm wrong about some detail, that won't change my overall outlook. Well, not so!
I would like to suggest that the anchor that you’re looking for to keep human reasoning from falling off the deep end is a revealed word from God.
Or more like a personal relationship with God grounded in knowledge and wisdom?
I generally agree with the religious outlook on the need for a grounding of reason in something higher, but I don't think we need to believe in dogma. If you are interested, I shared a few thoughts here: https://luctalks.substack.com/p/religion-without-belief-is-it-possible
Thanks, I found your article interesting, and I think I would like to write a response. The way I see it, unless God speaks, all our human philosophies are just hanging in midair and we have nothing to do but chase each other in circles forever.
Technology makes humility a lot harder. On the one hand, some people expect everything to be a Tik Tok video. Anything that can't be described in a couple of seconds is worthless.
On the other hand, a lot of people have bucked hard against that trend and now feel the need to make everything unnecessarily long and complicated. Both sides could learn a lot from the other, but each is convinced that he has the moral high ground.
I think everything has a place: short, punchy videos, long and complicated essays, and everything in between.
One problem with humility is that when communicating, you need to make a point. But this point will always be only part of the story: if you exagerate with humility, you end up being long-winded and making too many caveats.
Hence the need to understand that most points are only partially true. This mindset is liberating both for the writer and reader.
Great article Luc, a lot more humility is necessary for all of us. I don’t understand how someone can think that only the way they see things is right and you are wrong if you don’t see things the same way. That just shows tunnel vision and narrow mindedness because one can’t just see the world and everything in it in black and white as everything is much more complex when looked at with a variety of viewpoints. Keeping an open mind is healthy.
Just wondering if you’d heard that Dr. Jordan Peterson was a guest on Josh Rogan’s podcast and it’s on YouTube. Dr. Jordan Peterson is going to create a platform with a new direction for humanity to move forward in that completely defies and is in direct opposition to the WEF’s authoritarian dystopian agenda for all of us! Exciting for us and you just know the globalists are going to hate it!
Today's young often go hard right or hard non-binary. Hopefully they will all be less full of fury in ten years.
I am fond of humility. It (mostly) prevents me from making an ass of myself.
For a short [tonic/comic] warm-up—to set the mind’s muscle tone just right for epistemic humility exercise(s)—the textbook Monkey Business Illusion is fun --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY 🏀🤸
> Along came Herbert Marcuse with his idea that people are manipulated into embracing “false needs,” and his writing resonated deeply with the contrarians at the time.
Despite Marcuse's Maxist analysis of this. It's actually possible to do a Capitalist analysis of this phenomenon, which manages to be even scarier in its implications.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Jq73GozjsuhdwMLEG/superstimuli-and-the-collapse-of-western-civilization
Clear-eyed compassion, lovely. Exactly.