If Leonard didn’t have the quotes from prominent progressives to back up his claims, this would read like right-wing paranoia: The state’s most innocuous protections reframed as malevolent and ungodly social engineering. But his citations are genuine.
From: The Dark History of Liberal Reform | New Republic {via Jaybird}
CK MacLeod
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Earlier today, there was a comment explaining that racism was a pre-enlightenment attitude.
Would that it were. Would that it were.Report
I wasn’t going to say anything, being the local anti-Enlightenment crank, but…Report
I like the Enlightenment. I like it a lot.
My mistake was in thinking that there wasn’t going to be a post-Enlightenment. Which, really, wouldn’t really have been a problem in and of itself except that the post-post-Enlightenment is turning out to be a sonovabitch.Report
It’s like that old joke about “poor to poor in four”. First generation is poor, second generation strikes, third generation preserves, fourth generation spends. Seems we’re doing something like that with our intellectual tradition.Report
Generations used to last longer.Report
The internet has disrupted this too!Report
I wasn’t implying other. I know y’all love yourselves some good enlightenment.Report
I certainly did, until the Kindle app became available on my Android tablet, then I could read in poor enlightenment.Report
That’s why people like me prefer backlightenment, it’s easier to read by.
[trying so hard not to write: easier by which to read. And failed.]Report
One of the best things about the Enlightenment is that it saved us from writing English as Latin.Report
I think you have won, there is no possible retort…except this:
http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0185/5092/products/persons-0077_large.png?v=1369543673Report
I laughed until it sounded like someone sobbing.Report
I friend of mine got enlightened by 10 lbs. in just his first month on Nutri-System.Report
Curious, I find that food delights me.
[Editor’s note: what the punster did here was drop the -en from delighten (the -ment already having become (obviously) superfluous) in what is called a double-half-tuck-flip… we so rarely see this performed these days after the Schilling incident of ’14.]Report
Could you perhaps enlighten us as to why?
[Note that the punster’s clever return to the original anti-enlightenment theme is an exercise of the linguistic dark-arts…]Report
No.Report
The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things
Thus, constantly without desire, one observes its essence
Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations
These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wondersReport
I sort of glossed over that comment at the time, but if anything, it seems kind of backwards. I’d feel a lot more comfortable arguing that racism was actually a product of the Enlightenment and the early Industrial Era than anything else. I’m not arguing that prior to that, societies were more egalitarian. Instead, I’d say that racism was a solution to a set of political problems that were particularly pressing in that era. It provided justification for slavery and westward expansion in the US, not to mention imperialism for all the countries that were in a position to be imperial powers.
It’s no particular wonder that it got entangled with the scientism that was popular towards the end of the 19th century. However, it’s unclear what message we’re supposed to be drawing from that entanglement. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to set the record straight because being correct is an important goal in and of itself. However, every time I’ve seen the subject come up, people have usually argued that it’s some sort of cautionary tale, without necessarily being very clear on what we need to be on guard against.Report
When 99.9% of people never went more than 25 miles away from the spot in which they were born, racism was less of a problem.
Is this a trivial observation or a terribly insightful one?Report
I don’t know which kind of observation it is, though ease of travel made a lot of the things racism was used to justify viable.Report
@pillsy
I think you answered this question in your reply to me further down.Report
Instead, I’d say that racism was a solution to a set of political problems that were particularly pressing in that era. It provided justification for slavery…
Taking it one step further: the enlightenment gave rise to systematic intellectually defensible justifications for racism. Racism goes way back, seems to me. Modern justifications of it are/were … well … modern.Report
Clearly, to guard against the kind of people (in power) who are not clear on what the cautionary tale tells us we need to be on guard against.Report
The article ends with an anguished “looks like the lesson is that everyone sucks!” No. The lesson is that when someone comes up saying “I’m not making a decision about morals or preferences, I’m simply behaving in accordance with scientific fact“, we should look really carefully at that scientific fact.Report
To see if the fact really is a fact, or just an interpretation that aligns with their ideology?Report
The most fundamental problem is that scientific facts can merely inform your decision, by letting you have a better understanding of what the consequences of your actions might be. Whether those consequences are good, bad or indifferent is not a question that science can answer.Report
Okay, let’s get out the knives and start cutting into the meat.
What, exactly, lets us figure out what is good? What is bad? What is indifferent?
(Have I welcomed you to the board, Pillsy? Please, let me rectify that. Welcome to the board.)Report
@Jaybird:
What, exactly, lets us figure out what is good? What is bad? What is indifferent?
I don’t know if the problem with this question is that it’s too hard to answer, or that it’s too easy to ask. 😀
Less facetiously, I usually rely on a blend of emotional reactions and a very half-assed sort of rule-based utilitarianism. I find that this rarely puts me so far out of step with people that I’m actually talking to that communication becomes impossible.
Can I back up moral statements that strike me as axiomatic in a way that will convince anybody else? Doubt it.
Do I find myself having to convince anybody else of the truth of moral statements that strike me as axiomatic? Less often than I’d expect.
(Have I welcomed you to the board, Pillsy? Please, let me rectify that. Welcome to the board.)
Thanks!Report
Rule-based emotionalism mixed in with utilitarianism?
Dude. We should sit together and drink and argue. I can’t imagine that we’d disagree about enough to the point where the evening would be unpleasant.
If you’re ever in the Denver area, let me know.
You, me, and a couple of people I know can spend a quite pleasant evening yelling “NO! I disagree!” about trivial things.Report
In thinking about this some more, I’m seeing how someone (anyone) raised with this morality would fit in very well with everyone else raised with this morality no matter what year it happened to be. No matter what culture it happened to be. It works in the USA in 2016, it works in China in 3714, it works in Persia in 100.
It gets you to different conclusions each time, of course… but that seems less important than the whole “working” thing though.Report
Yeah. I think I like it because it mostly allows me to talk to people. I have little defense against getting things wrong because they cut against my intuitions, but I’m not sure I’m convinced any approach to morality that I’ve seen has a convincing record of doing otherwise.Report
“this would read like right-wing paranoia: The state’s most innocuous protections reframed as malevolent and ungodly social engineering.” That actually reads a lot like Foucault.Report
That’s a really good point.Report
Thank you!Report
I could go back and forth on that @rufus-fReport
Back and forth across the Channel?Report