Commenter Marcus asks whether we can't dispense with -isms (e.g. Marxism) and try to think freely.
Thinking freely will always mean engaging on some level with organized bodies of thought, especially prevailing ones. Personally, it would be dishonest not to acknowledge what I have taken from where: I certainly did not come up with all of my ideas by myself. And besides, others might be interested in knowing where they came from.
Of course, no body of thought is "necessary" to have an informed opinion about your own circumstances. Our relationship to ideas should in and of itself be "free." In other words, whether we take from established traditions or develop our own will vary, appropriately, depending on the circumstances we are in.
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
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6 comments:
I understand where he is coming from, which is to reject a dogmatic or rigid approach to every problem through the same ideological framework, which will ignore anything that does not fit within its explicative powers. However, not all ideological approaches are rigid, and I cannot agree with his implication that yours is.
I appreciate you responding, and I certainly don't mean to push aside the intellectual ideas which can contribute to our thoughts.
I'm approaching from the angle of reaching new levels of self-understanding, and in particular it appears clear that both in the more intellectual and less intellectual world, free thinking remains a basic problem, exactly as described in the 18th and 19th century by thinkers, and today we see evidenced by academic monocultural groupthink, as well as the tea party.
We criticize these things readily, but this is where we are hypocritical because we, meaning you & me, fall into the same patterns. Now, we may try very hard not to, and as a result perhaps achieve some success, but this is the basic problem of the human condition: bias. Unfortunately this bias is fairly well proven to not operate in actual self-interest in the way that capitalism would hope, I think even the capitalists mostly admit that.
On top of that rationality ain't all it's cracked up to be. This is a very old criticism, and yet, we live in a hyper rational age, I'll go out on a limb and say that it's one of the most pervasive isms on earth, unfortunately it doesn't have ism in it's name. Even if our mythical homo economicus actually existed then where would be be with all that awesome rationality exactly? Pretty difficult to know, I hesitate to guess whether better off or worse. And people who think they know can suck chef's salty chocolate balls as far as I'm concerned, too many unknowns to that question, too many layers of religious (wishful?) thinking.
And then isms just aren't giving us successful examples, at least that I can see. Now we can throw a lot of blame around, but isn't that the point: the perfect world for enacting all these great ideas just doesn't exist and it's not going to exist. It's not.
So how about getting all intellectual with NEW ideas. How about we quit complaining that things aren't perfect and the tea party isn't rational (and I add the goddamn academic world is about as irrational as they come, what a sad sad sad group of homo hypocritus, they aren't getting us anywhere either, except to more efficiently dying (yes, hyperbole, of course I'm exaggerating, people who can't deal with hyperbole can suck it too).
How do we do we learn a little less bias? The reasoning crowd is a circle jerk, are they providing the answer? Is Anarchism gonna create more reasoning? Marxism? You're not just talking intellectual ideas, I think you want action and improvement... you're response implies a theoretical mental game, I'm talking real world, is Ism gonna provide the world with improvement?
Anyway, sorry, long response, I hope it doesn't come across angry. I actually just shake my head when I hear the same old same old. Great stuff to inform and education, sure, but what is gonna help now.
I'll try to wrap this up:
1. New intellectual ideas to deal with the basic problem of the non-self interested actor
2. Incremental improvements, i.e. demolish IP, win the hearts and minds for that one, and lots and lots of bad things struggle to survive.
Sorry if this is lame, I'm not going to re-read probably full of typos, not to mention all over the place. *sigh*
PS. I agree with Justin, I'm just arguing at the Internet, in fact I think you're not all that dogmatic. I've been meaning to write a bunch of not so hot under the collar questions regarding some past posts so I can understand where you're coming from better...they are somewhat critiques, but I'm presuming you have answers to those. I want to get down and do that soon (presuming you won't mind)
I appreciate you responding, and I certainly don't mean to push aside the intellectual ideas which can contribute to our thoughts.
I'm approaching from the angle of reaching new levels of self-understanding, and in particular it appears clear that both in the more intellectual and less intellectual world, free thinking remains a basic problem, exactly as described in the 18th and 19th century by thinkers, and today we see evidenced by academic monocultural groupthink, as well as the tea party.
We criticize these things readily, but this is where we are hypocritical because we, meaning you & me, fall into the same patterns. Now, we may try very hard not to, and as a result perhaps achieve some success, but this is the basic problem of the human condition: bias. Unfortunately this bias is fairly well proven to not operate in actual self-interest in the way that capitalism would hope, I think even the capitalists mostly admit that.
On top of that rationality ain't all it's cracked up to be. This is a very old criticism, and yet, we live in a hyper rational age, I'll go out on a limb and say that it's one of the most pervasive isms on earth, unfortunately it doesn't have ism in it's name. Even if our mythical homo economicus actually existed then where would be be with all that awesome rationality exactly? Pretty difficult to know, I hesitate to guess whether better off or worse. And people who think they know can suck chef's salty chocolate balls as far as I'm concerned, too many unknowns to that question, too many layers of religious (wishful?) thinking.
And then isms just aren't giving us successful examples, at least that I can see. Now we can throw a lot of blame around, but isn't that the point: the perfect world for enacting all these great ideas just doesn't exist and it's not going to exist. It's not.
So how about getting all intellectual with NEW ideas. How about we quit complaining that things aren't perfect and the tea party isn't rational (and I add the goddamn academic world is about as irrational as they come, what a sad sad sad group of homo hypocritus, they aren't getting us anywhere either, except to more efficiently dying (yes, hyperbole, of course I'm exaggerating, people who can't deal with hyperbole can suck it too).
How do we do we learn a little less bias? The reasoning crowd is a circle jerk, are they providing the answer? Is Anarchism gonna create more reasoning? Marxism? You're not just talking intellectual ideas, I think you want action and improvement... you're response implies a theoretical mental game, I'm talking real world, is Ism gonna provide the world with improvement?
Anyway, sorry, long response, I hope it doesn't come across angry. I actually just shake my head when I hear the same old same old. Great stuff to inform and education, sure, but what is gonna help now.
I'll try to wrap this up:
1. New intellectual ideas to deal with the basic problem of the non-self interested actor
2. Incremental improvements, i.e. demolish IP, win the hearts and minds for that one, and lots and lots of bad things struggle to survive.
Sorry if this is lame, I'm not going to re-read probably full of typos
Here's one simple change that changes everything I think:
I appreciate you responding, and I certainly don't mean to push aside the intellectual ideas which can contribute to our thoughts.
I'm approaching from the angle of reaching new levels of self-understanding, and in particular it appears clear that both in the more intellectual and less intellectual world, free thinking remains a basic problem, exactly as described in the 18th and 19th century, and today we see evidenced by academic monocultural groupthink, as well as the tea party.
We criticize these things readily, but this is where we are hypocritical because we, meaning you & me, fall into the same patterns. Now, we may try very hard not to, and as a result perhaps achieve some success, but this is the basic problem of the human condition: bias. Unfortunately this bias is fairly well proven to not operate in actual self-interest in the way that capitalism would hope, I think even the capitalists mostly admit that.
On top of that rationality ain't all it's cracked up to be. This is a very old criticism, and yet, we live in a hyper rational age, I'll go out on a limb and say that it's one of the most pervasive isms on earth, unfortunately it doesn't have ism in it's name. Even if our mythical homo economicus actually existed then where would be be with all that awesome rationality exactly? Pretty difficult to know, I hesitate to guess whether better off or worse. And people who think they know can suck chef's salty chocolate balls as far as I'm concerned, too many unknowns to that question, too many layers of religious (wishful?) thinking.
(more below)
(cont'd)
And then isms just aren't giving us successful examples, at least that I can see. Now we can throw a lot of blame around, but isn't that the point: the perfect world for enacting all these great ideas just doesn't exist and it's not going to exist. It's not.
So how about getting all intellectual with NEW ideas. How about we quit complaining that things aren't perfect and the tea party isn't rational (and I add the goddamn academic world is about as irrational as they come, what a sad sad sad group of homo hypocritus, they aren't getting us anywhere either, except to more efficiently dying (yes, hyperbole, of course I'm exaggerating, people who can't deal with hyperbole can suck it too).
How do we do we learn a little less bias? The reasoning crowd is a circle jerk, are they providing the answer? Is Anarchism gonna create more reasoning? Marxism? You're not just talking intellectual ideas, I think you want action and improvement... you're response implies a theoretical mental game, I'm talking real world, is Ism gonna provide the world with improvement?
Anyway, sorry, long response, I hope it doesn't come across angry. I actually just shake my head when I hear the same old same old. Great stuff to inform and education, sure, but what is gonna help now.
I'll try to wrap this up:
1. New intellectual ideas to deal with the basic problem of the non-self interested actor, not necessarily to "fix" the problem, but to approach it with new ideas
2. Incremental improvements, i.e. demolish IP, win the hearts and minds for that one, and lots and lots of bad things struggle to survive.
Sorry if this is lame, I'm not going to re-read probably full of typos
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