Great essay. This seems to relate also to the free will debate. Did you choose to move your hand, or was the choice made for you, and the experience of feeling like you chose to do so merely an illusion? Of course I come down strongly on the side of free will.
That said, Asheron has a point that at any given time there are many philosophers advocating thought that does not become influential. There's no doubt that this is at least in part because influential men do not find their thought to be useful, and also in part because their ideas are not in harmony with the spirit of their age, or of the age to come.
Ultimately the resolution here seems to me to be a case of both/and. The historical conditions are the soil, the ideas the seeds; seeds must find the right soil, but without the seeds the soil remains barren.
You wrote "How often in recent years have you started a conversation with a friend about a topic of interest, only to discover that what to you is virtually self-evident is, to your friend, patently false?"
The event that made me realize my view of the world was simply incompatible with the view of liberals was a minor incident over politics which I will recount.
In 2016 Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who was doing a great job for Trump at the time, was making his way through a crowd at an event so that Trump could follow. A reporter for Breitbart (of all places, which was pro-Trump), Michelle Fields, was in the crowd, and Lewandowski briefly brushed past her. For some reason she decided to make an incident out of this and she claimed he assaulted her. Ben Shapiro jumped to her defense, and both demanded that Trump fire Lewandowski: https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/03/corey-lewandowski-donald-trump-campaign-manager-thug/ Trump refused and it was a big deal for a week or so in the news.
The video clearly shows Lewandowski just brushing past her in the crowd, not even seeing her. Yet my liberal friend watched this and jumped on the bandwagon that he somehow assaulted this woman.
I knew, in that moment of his pushback, that coming to some sort of understanding with the liberal worldview was just never going to happen.
I mostly agree. However, there is a difference between philosophies that encourage flourishing, and those that most successfully spread themselves. The classic example is a philosophy that preaches that its adherents should forgo reproduction in order to more actively proselytize.
Of course it's possible that ideas shape history AND history in turn shapes ideas (this is correct, I think), but the denial that ideas shape history seems to me to be self-contradictory on its face if taken completely literally.
For starters, if ideas do not in any way shape history, then when you argue for an idea (including the idea that ideas do not shape history) it must then be the case that the idea itself did not shape your history of arguing for it, which thus implies that your argument is not rational (and that neither are any others). Therefore, it is impossible for there to be a rational argument that ideas do not shape history.
Second, even if we say that history shapes ideas, the history of adoption of particular ideas by a society *is itself history*, and unless we want to say that people in *no way* act on ideas (which would make the self-contradiction described in the previous paragraph explicit), then people will act on the ideas adopted.
Third, from a more empirical standpoint, the fact that ideas do shape history is precisely why the Left is so predictable in what sort of insanity they will adopt next. So-called "slippery slope" arguments are so accurate precisely because all they really involve is pointing out that the ideas the Left is currently promoting have certain logical implications they have not yet copped to, and then surmising that because ideas drive history, the Left will most likely act on the implications of the ideas they are currently acting on in the future as they tease those implications out.
Apr 12, 2023·edited Apr 12, 2023Liked by Tree of Woe
Not bleak enough my friend! The White Powder needs to be PURER. Get a few more of them trees! Supply is too low; Demand is on the Up, Up and UP!
(In all seriousness)- Both of you are right; and the situation is thus MORE MISERABLE:
The two (i.e. "History" on the one hand and "Ideas" on the other), assuming they are distinct and separable to begin with (I think not, but that's a separate tangent for a different discussion) are basically Bidirectionally oriented toward each other whereby "A" causes "B" and vice versa.
The Neuroanthropologist Terence M.Deacon spoke at length about how one needs Bidirectional cause-effect chains to account for a lot of the 21st century's intractable issues when it comes to Cognitive Neuroscience. In "The Symbolic Species" he posits this relation holding between Language-Brain and in "Incomplete Nature" he posits it likewise holding between Matter-Mind.
It's in many ways a throwback to (what Jaspers and others would dub) the "Pre-Axial" understanding of the human being- not as something distinct and over and beyond the natural world; but throughly embedded in and emergent from it.
And so... how is it MORE BLEAK overall?
Put simply: If the relationship is Dyadic (i.e. Ideas-History emerge as a pair/dyad and are Bidirectionally oriented and looped to one another) then the Human Being is a purely Emergent, Naturalistic entity whose unravelling falls under the domain of Methodological Naturalism. Thus:
>> "My only earthly wish is... to stretch the deplorably narrow limits of man's dominion over the uiniverse to their promised bounds... [nature will be] bound into service, hounded in her wanderings and put on the rack and tortured for her secrets." <<
>> "I am come in very truth leading you to Nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make her your slave... the mechanical inventions of recent years do not merely exert a gentle guidance over Nature's courses, they have the power to conquer and subdue her, to shake her to her foundations." <<
.... aforementioned quotes are now Applicable in their entirety to the Human Being as well. And this process has already begun on multiple fronts!
I really enjoyed this essay. And I agree with the take away point, it is better to assume ideas matter, even if conclusively proving it is hard to do so.
I especially enjoyed the line- “Sometimes, however, we must put aside our preference for easy pessimism and follow the hard road.”
Your feudal king didn't want to end feudalism. He merely wanted to defeat another king and gunpowder had proved the way to do it vs more expesnive seige. What an Oracle might have seen is the end of castles and with that, the end of feudalism. Spengler saw a cycle of empires coming to an end in WW1 as the Oracle of Delphie predicted to King Croesus, 500's BC.
History is a threadbare tapestry. We really don't have many options: either good times or bad: peace or war: autocracy or democracy. One thing would predicatbly follow the other if it weren't for all the unintended consequnces of what we do and then what we do to fix it. Some philosophers are oracles while others are part of the process of unintended consequences. Someone is always leading us somewhere we've already been becasue it didn't work last time or we'd have never left to begin with.
But genuine oracles never are listened to, like Cassandra. LIsten to Doug McGreggor all last year and finally, the truth comes out about the Ukraine war in a security leak. The same thing never rang ture about WW2 but now, the truth of that comes out, too.
History is a threadbare fabric and you can learn to tell when your on a thread or empty space.
Of course, the right answer is- 'Both. It Depends.'
But here is a GREAT Example of an Idea that truly did shape the History of Gaming (Well, all Entertainment Media, but Gaming is my Last Hope[tm].).
I've been watching some of the new Mods for 'Mass Effect- Legendary Edition' & what is truly creepy is how common it is for modern players to not want to talk about 'whether or not the ending is Good or Bad.'
11 Years ago, when ME3 was released, the ending was SO Universally Derided that posting records were set, Sites went down, Massive Amounts of Red, Green & Blue Cupcakes were sent to Bioware. Nearly $90,000 was given to disabled Gaming Kids, before the company heading that funding shut it down. Because they didn't want to support a bunch of whiny, entitled Gamers.
Tanget, but Not really- It is a High Damn Shame that Gamergate did not erupt because of THIS controversy, as it would not have been possible to call Gamers 'Sexist & Misogynistic', as there were no Trashy females involved. It was much more obvious that all the Game Journalists had the exact same agenda- That of putting uppity Gamers in their place. It was also more clear that Gaming Companies didn't give a rip about 'Customer Satisfaction' either. All they wanted was Gamers to succumb to their Emotional Manipulation, Shut Up & Spend Money.
Anyway, TODAY, we cannot talk about the quality of a product. You may have an OPINION, but everyone has those, and we are told they have no real value, so they are safe to have. What you may not do, is use Critical Thinking to analyze whether a product is good or bad. Discernment is JUDGING and JUDGING is SexistRacistClassistFacistCapitalistHomophobist & Transphobist.
The Main Reason this idea has taken such hold is because of the (still) huge amount of intellectual mushies who (somehow STILL) believe there IS NO Agenda. I'm sure great swaths of people denying the existence of said agenda are paid disinfoagents, but there (still) creepily seems to be a large portion of people (they call themselves, Ironically, 'Skeptics') who deny anything that is not the Official Narrative of events.
Tangent the Second- I am hereby retiring the phrase, 'Official Version' and replacing it with the far more accurate, 'Official Narrative'. So let it be written, so let it be done.
Speaking of 'Narrative', if you want to see one of the most prophetic pieces of Youtubery of the last 15 years, watch the spectacular analysis of ME3's Ending by the Enigmatic 'Mr. Btongue'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MlatxLP-xs It's 39 minutes of pure gold. But the cornerstone of his argument, is that, right at the end, like falling off a story cliff, ME3's 'Narrative Coherence' utterly collapses. Bit by bit, then as an avalanche, it self-destructs on the ground of Realistic Consequences.
But I am writing this right now because, 1.) On Friday, my Pain Meds were Arbitrarily Cut by my Insurance by 75% & I will soon have a not-hyperbolic mental breakdown. If this is what I do under these conditions, that's probably best for everyone. 2.) As I am watching Mr. Btongue discuss N.C. I realized that on a Societal Scale, our CULTURAL COHERENCE, has been crippled, perhaps to death, not in small part due to the entertainment media's constant destruction of *Narrative* Coherence!
By applying Nonsense, after Trash, after Offensiveness, after Foolishness, again & again & again, people are losing whatever plot they had, *almost in real time.*
Hopefully this all made sense. I keep seeing flashing red lights & erupting steam in my head. :-/
It can be somewhat cyclical. Ideas can serve as mind virus and help people break conditioning and other thought patterns and we have seen that throughout history and see that today with the trans issue and wokeness in general. However, these "ideas" also follow events and history, so that a philosopher is merely codifying ideas and events that are already happening in the world.
The ideas of embodied in the Declaration of Independence, which did not originate there but in the writings of other thinkers in the era and may have been more a recognition of how many people were living their lives, played a role in the American Revolution and these ideas have been playing out now for almost 250 years, having huge impacts. However, even that followed more mundane concerns about rights, taxes, and control of society. Would there even have been a Declaration of Independence without English culture and heritage, attempts to stop local control of the colonies, the Stamp Act, and various other things of the era? Likely not.
Did Machiavelli create the idea of the ends justifying the means and the rest of modern political thought or did he merely notice processes that were already occurring?
Chris Langan proposed self-determination as an alternative to the determinism/indeterminism paradox. In such a paradigm, ideas could be conceived of as one determining parameter in the iterative process of history: the cognitive aspect of historical events.
I think that the idea of a Darwinian competition of ideas is on the right track. Most philosophies die obscure deaths, but the ones that spread tend to be the ones embraced by artists. Purely intellectual argument isn't moving for most people, but the emotional experience of art is. I'm not a fan of Percy Shelley, but he was onto something when he claimed that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world".
Many ideas get picked up because they are handy to those already in power. For example, Keynesian economics provided a delightful excuse for big government types to increase the number of government programs. Supply side economics gave the Republicans an excuse to play Santa Claus on the tax side.
But there are other ideas which motivate people to take fresh actions. Marx's ideas motivated Lenin and company to put in some serious effort to make dystopia happen. And his ideas continue to compel. Likewise, the teaching of Jesus motivated many people to change their behaviors substantially.
----
Ideas can be powerful, but they also need fertile ground in which to flourish. Sometimes the ground determines which ideas win.
Take postmodernism. Why did such ridiculous and useless ideas come to dominate universities?
My answer: credential inflation. You have to have a doctorate in order to teach in a modern university. To be a doctor is to have "advanced" the field. How do you advance the curation of your culture? Generally, you don't! But boy howdy you can advance the destruction (deconstruction) of your culture!
The same dynamic explains the vast quantity of garbage publications, dangerous mad science in the gene labs, modern classical "music", modern "art", etc.
To regain power on campus, we need to raise the status of the original purpose of universities: to pass along knowledge between generations. Curation of knowledge used to be the primary function of universities. Basic research was secondary or even suspect.
The universities were corrupted long before wokeness arrived.
----
So yes, ideas matter. But you also need to be strategic in fostering ideas. Sometimes you need to *create* an environment for your ideas to flourish.
Language is powerful but not all-powerful. Ideas regularly shape how we interpret events and in doing so can determine our reaction, which then is causal to the next event. And ideas are how identity groups form in the elites, suggesting eras of elite overproduction are also eras of ideas - but in a bad way.
In short we could be in such a mess because we are in an age of ideas but, humans being generally unbelievably stupid, especially the smart ones, that’s a disaster.
How’s THAT for despair?
Yes it’s ideas, that’s the whole problem, this is what an era of intelligence looks like: a clusterfuck 😜
Of course, the right answer is- 'Both. It Depends.'
But here is a GREAT Example of an Idea that truly did shape the History of Gaming (Well, all Entertainment Media, but Gaming is my Last Hope[tm].).
I've been watching some of the new Mods for 'Mass Effect: Legendary Edition' & what is truly creepy is how common it is for modern players to not want to talk about 'whether or not the ending is Good or Bad.'
11 Years ago, when ME3 was released, the ending was SO Universally Derided that posting records were set, Sites went down, Massive Amounts of Red, Green & Blue Cupcakes were sent to Bioware. Nearly $90,000 was given to disabled Gaming Kids, before the company heading that funding shut it down. Because they didn't want to support a bunch of whiny, entitled Gamers.
Tanget, but Not really- It is a High Damn Shame that Gamergate did not erupt because of THIS controversy, as it would not have been possible to call Gamers 'Sexist & Misogynistic', as there were no Trashy females involved. It was much more obvious that all the Game Journalists had the exact same agenda- That of putting uppity Gamers in their place. It was also more clear that Gaming Companies didn't give a rip about 'Customer Satisfaction' either. All they wanted was Gamers to succumb to their Emotional Manipulation, Shut Up & Spend Money.
Anyway, TODAY, we cannot talk about the quality of a product. You may have an OPINION, but everyone has those, and we are told they have no real value, so they are safe to have. What you may not do, is use Critical Thinking to analyze whether a product is good or bad. Discernment is JUDGING and JUDGING is SexistRacistClassistFacistCapitalistHomophobist & Transphobist.
The Main Reason this idea has taken such hold is because of the (still) huge amount of intellectual mushies who (somehow STILL) believe there IS NO Agenda. I'm sure great swaths of people denying the existence of said agenda are paid disinfoagents, but there (still) creepily seems to be a large portion of people (they call themselves, Ironically, 'Skeptics') who deny anything that is not the Official Narrative of events.
Tangent the Second- I am hereby retiring the phrase, 'Official Version' and replacing it with the far more accurate, 'Official Narrative'. So let it be written, so let it be done.
Speaking of 'Narrative', if you want to see one of the most prophetic pieces of Youtubery of the last 15 years, watch the spectacular analysis of ME3's Ending by the Enigmatic 'Mr. Btongue'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MlatxLP-xs It's 39 minutes of pure gold. But the cornerstone of his argument, is that, right at the end, like falling off a story cliff, ME3's 'Narrative Coherence' utterly collapses. Bit by bit, then as an avalanche, it self-destructs on the ground of Realistic Consequences.
But I am writing this right now because, 1.) On Friday, my Pain Meds were Arbitrarily Cut by my Insurance by 75% & I will soon have a not-hyperbolic mental breakdown. If this is what I do under these conditions, that's probably best for everyone. 2.) As I am watching Mr. Btongue discuss N.C. I realized that on a Societal Scale, our CULTURAL COHERENCE, has been crippled, perhaps to death, not in small part due to the entertainment media's constant destruction of *Narrative* Coherence!
By applying Nonsense, after Trash, after Offensiveness, after Foolishness, again & again & again, people are losing whatever plot they had, *almost in real time.*
Hopefully this all made sense. I keep seeing flashing red lights & erupting steam in my head. :-/
I enjoyed reading this essay because it really made me think. I find some things problematic and I would like to draw out one thread particularly: It's true that there are competing ethical systems in society, and we choose the philosophy that would make us the most successful, but we also get to choose how we define success. We don't have to define success as baby making and wealth..although these goals are the most common in our society. Our ideas about success correspond to our ethical system. The dominant ethical system in the western world is Philistinism, where every member of the society sees everyone else as something to be manipulated and exploited. When a practitioner of Philistine ethics is able to exploit someone, he feels that as success. A little game theory goes a long way: in a poker tournament, it is the social expectation that every player will maximally exploit every other player. The most successful player will exploit his opponents better than the others. If a player deviates from this game theory optimal strategy, then he will reduce his chances of winning a prize, and reduce his general profitability. He is a baaaaaad poker player, and he is looked down upon by those who practice playing the maximally exploitative strategy. This is an illustration of the Philistine system of status. The most successful practitioners of Philistinism enjoy a sort of prestige cast on them by those who aren't quite so adept at it. When you go to buy a used car, the social expectation is that the salesman is going to maximally exploit you, and his expectation is that you are going to maximally exploit him. This is the attitude with which every professional in society approaches every social and financial transaction throughout the entire society. When someone deviates from this maximally exploitative attitude or strategy, his aims become obscure to that society. His character is cast into doubt. He’s not a practitioner of this Philistine system of ethics, but he’s an outsider and his behavior is frowned upon. He is a baaaaad Philistine. These people who don’t maximally exploit all the other people are practicing another system of ethics. The two systems cannot work together, but one disrupts the other. In the Philistine system, there is a clockwork to the satisfaction of appetite. Every Philistine understands what the others want. There is no freedom within this framework. You must conform to the maximally exploitative strategy, or eventually, your bad decision making will prohibit you from continuing in life. The person who is contra-Philistine must have different goals because he's certainly failing in the eyes of the Philistines. And if you look up the dictionary definition of Philistine, it describes a person with common (low or vulgar) goals. So, someone who wants to get drunk and screw is a Philistine, but if after he is successful, he also robs his conquest of his/her cash, then he is a very successful Philistine, indeed, and he deserves the respect and admiration of Philistine society at large.
Imaging one has a "Humanity Machine" with a great many levers labelled with parameters ranging from "solar flux", "oxygen", and "atmospheric pressure" all the way down to "money printer" and "ideas".
Great essay. This seems to relate also to the free will debate. Did you choose to move your hand, or was the choice made for you, and the experience of feeling like you chose to do so merely an illusion? Of course I come down strongly on the side of free will.
That said, Asheron has a point that at any given time there are many philosophers advocating thought that does not become influential. There's no doubt that this is at least in part because influential men do not find their thought to be useful, and also in part because their ideas are not in harmony with the spirit of their age, or of the age to come.
Ultimately the resolution here seems to me to be a case of both/and. The historical conditions are the soil, the ideas the seeds; seeds must find the right soil, but without the seeds the soil remains barren.
Really great post, thank you.
You wrote "How often in recent years have you started a conversation with a friend about a topic of interest, only to discover that what to you is virtually self-evident is, to your friend, patently false?"
The event that made me realize my view of the world was simply incompatible with the view of liberals was a minor incident over politics which I will recount.
In 2016 Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who was doing a great job for Trump at the time, was making his way through a crowd at an event so that Trump could follow. A reporter for Breitbart (of all places, which was pro-Trump), Michelle Fields, was in the crowd, and Lewandowski briefly brushed past her. For some reason she decided to make an incident out of this and she claimed he assaulted her. Ben Shapiro jumped to her defense, and both demanded that Trump fire Lewandowski: https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/03/corey-lewandowski-donald-trump-campaign-manager-thug/ Trump refused and it was a big deal for a week or so in the news.
Anyway, what made this little vignette interesting was that the incident was fully caught on video; it's only a couple of seconds long. Here it is: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/mar/29/corey-lewandowski-video-allegedly-grabs-michelle-fields-trump-campaign-cctv-footage
The video clearly shows Lewandowski just brushing past her in the crowd, not even seeing her. Yet my liberal friend watched this and jumped on the bandwagon that he somehow assaulted this woman.
I knew, in that moment of his pushback, that coming to some sort of understanding with the liberal worldview was just never going to happen.
I mostly agree. However, there is a difference between philosophies that encourage flourishing, and those that most successfully spread themselves. The classic example is a philosophy that preaches that its adherents should forgo reproduction in order to more actively proselytize.
Of course it's possible that ideas shape history AND history in turn shapes ideas (this is correct, I think), but the denial that ideas shape history seems to me to be self-contradictory on its face if taken completely literally.
For starters, if ideas do not in any way shape history, then when you argue for an idea (including the idea that ideas do not shape history) it must then be the case that the idea itself did not shape your history of arguing for it, which thus implies that your argument is not rational (and that neither are any others). Therefore, it is impossible for there to be a rational argument that ideas do not shape history.
Second, even if we say that history shapes ideas, the history of adoption of particular ideas by a society *is itself history*, and unless we want to say that people in *no way* act on ideas (which would make the self-contradiction described in the previous paragraph explicit), then people will act on the ideas adopted.
Third, from a more empirical standpoint, the fact that ideas do shape history is precisely why the Left is so predictable in what sort of insanity they will adopt next. So-called "slippery slope" arguments are so accurate precisely because all they really involve is pointing out that the ideas the Left is currently promoting have certain logical implications they have not yet copped to, and then surmising that because ideas drive history, the Left will most likely act on the implications of the ideas they are currently acting on in the future as they tease those implications out.
Not bleak enough my friend! The White Powder needs to be PURER. Get a few more of them trees! Supply is too low; Demand is on the Up, Up and UP!
(In all seriousness)- Both of you are right; and the situation is thus MORE MISERABLE:
The two (i.e. "History" on the one hand and "Ideas" on the other), assuming they are distinct and separable to begin with (I think not, but that's a separate tangent for a different discussion) are basically Bidirectionally oriented toward each other whereby "A" causes "B" and vice versa.
The Neuroanthropologist Terence M.Deacon spoke at length about how one needs Bidirectional cause-effect chains to account for a lot of the 21st century's intractable issues when it comes to Cognitive Neuroscience. In "The Symbolic Species" he posits this relation holding between Language-Brain and in "Incomplete Nature" he posits it likewise holding between Matter-Mind.
Here's a piece by Venkat some years back that incorporates and builds upon a lot of Deacon and other related thinkers' ideas on the matter: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.langmuir.7b02166
It's in many ways a throwback to (what Jaspers and others would dub) the "Pre-Axial" understanding of the human being- not as something distinct and over and beyond the natural world; but throughly embedded in and emergent from it.
And so... how is it MORE BLEAK overall?
Put simply: If the relationship is Dyadic (i.e. Ideas-History emerge as a pair/dyad and are Bidirectionally oriented and looped to one another) then the Human Being is a purely Emergent, Naturalistic entity whose unravelling falls under the domain of Methodological Naturalism. Thus:
>> "My only earthly wish is... to stretch the deplorably narrow limits of man's dominion over the uiniverse to their promised bounds... [nature will be] bound into service, hounded in her wanderings and put on the rack and tortured for her secrets." <<
>> "I am come in very truth leading you to Nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make her your slave... the mechanical inventions of recent years do not merely exert a gentle guidance over Nature's courses, they have the power to conquer and subdue her, to shake her to her foundations." <<
.... aforementioned quotes are now Applicable in their entirety to the Human Being as well. And this process has already begun on multiple fronts!
I really enjoyed this essay. And I agree with the take away point, it is better to assume ideas matter, even if conclusively proving it is hard to do so.
I especially enjoyed the line- “Sometimes, however, we must put aside our preference for easy pessimism and follow the hard road.”
Your feudal king didn't want to end feudalism. He merely wanted to defeat another king and gunpowder had proved the way to do it vs more expesnive seige. What an Oracle might have seen is the end of castles and with that, the end of feudalism. Spengler saw a cycle of empires coming to an end in WW1 as the Oracle of Delphie predicted to King Croesus, 500's BC.
History is a threadbare tapestry. We really don't have many options: either good times or bad: peace or war: autocracy or democracy. One thing would predicatbly follow the other if it weren't for all the unintended consequnces of what we do and then what we do to fix it. Some philosophers are oracles while others are part of the process of unintended consequences. Someone is always leading us somewhere we've already been becasue it didn't work last time or we'd have never left to begin with.
But genuine oracles never are listened to, like Cassandra. LIsten to Doug McGreggor all last year and finally, the truth comes out about the Ukraine war in a security leak. The same thing never rang ture about WW2 but now, the truth of that comes out, too.
History is a threadbare fabric and you can learn to tell when your on a thread or empty space.
Of course, the right answer is- 'Both. It Depends.'
But here is a GREAT Example of an Idea that truly did shape the History of Gaming (Well, all Entertainment Media, but Gaming is my Last Hope[tm].).
I've been watching some of the new Mods for 'Mass Effect- Legendary Edition' & what is truly creepy is how common it is for modern players to not want to talk about 'whether or not the ending is Good or Bad.'
11 Years ago, when ME3 was released, the ending was SO Universally Derided that posting records were set, Sites went down, Massive Amounts of Red, Green & Blue Cupcakes were sent to Bioware. Nearly $90,000 was given to disabled Gaming Kids, before the company heading that funding shut it down. Because they didn't want to support a bunch of whiny, entitled Gamers.
Tanget, but Not really- It is a High Damn Shame that Gamergate did not erupt because of THIS controversy, as it would not have been possible to call Gamers 'Sexist & Misogynistic', as there were no Trashy females involved. It was much more obvious that all the Game Journalists had the exact same agenda- That of putting uppity Gamers in their place. It was also more clear that Gaming Companies didn't give a rip about 'Customer Satisfaction' either. All they wanted was Gamers to succumb to their Emotional Manipulation, Shut Up & Spend Money.
Anyway, TODAY, we cannot talk about the quality of a product. You may have an OPINION, but everyone has those, and we are told they have no real value, so they are safe to have. What you may not do, is use Critical Thinking to analyze whether a product is good or bad. Discernment is JUDGING and JUDGING is SexistRacistClassistFacistCapitalistHomophobist & Transphobist.
The Main Reason this idea has taken such hold is because of the (still) huge amount of intellectual mushies who (somehow STILL) believe there IS NO Agenda. I'm sure great swaths of people denying the existence of said agenda are paid disinfoagents, but there (still) creepily seems to be a large portion of people (they call themselves, Ironically, 'Skeptics') who deny anything that is not the Official Narrative of events.
Tangent the Second- I am hereby retiring the phrase, 'Official Version' and replacing it with the far more accurate, 'Official Narrative'. So let it be written, so let it be done.
Speaking of 'Narrative', if you want to see one of the most prophetic pieces of Youtubery of the last 15 years, watch the spectacular analysis of ME3's Ending by the Enigmatic 'Mr. Btongue'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MlatxLP-xs It's 39 minutes of pure gold. But the cornerstone of his argument, is that, right at the end, like falling off a story cliff, ME3's 'Narrative Coherence' utterly collapses. Bit by bit, then as an avalanche, it self-destructs on the ground of Realistic Consequences.
But I am writing this right now because, 1.) On Friday, my Pain Meds were Arbitrarily Cut by my Insurance by 75% & I will soon have a not-hyperbolic mental breakdown. If this is what I do under these conditions, that's probably best for everyone. 2.) As I am watching Mr. Btongue discuss N.C. I realized that on a Societal Scale, our CULTURAL COHERENCE, has been crippled, perhaps to death, not in small part due to the entertainment media's constant destruction of *Narrative* Coherence!
By applying Nonsense, after Trash, after Offensiveness, after Foolishness, again & again & again, people are losing whatever plot they had, *almost in real time.*
Hopefully this all made sense. I keep seeing flashing red lights & erupting steam in my head. :-/
It can be somewhat cyclical. Ideas can serve as mind virus and help people break conditioning and other thought patterns and we have seen that throughout history and see that today with the trans issue and wokeness in general. However, these "ideas" also follow events and history, so that a philosopher is merely codifying ideas and events that are already happening in the world.
The ideas of embodied in the Declaration of Independence, which did not originate there but in the writings of other thinkers in the era and may have been more a recognition of how many people were living their lives, played a role in the American Revolution and these ideas have been playing out now for almost 250 years, having huge impacts. However, even that followed more mundane concerns about rights, taxes, and control of society. Would there even have been a Declaration of Independence without English culture and heritage, attempts to stop local control of the colonies, the Stamp Act, and various other things of the era? Likely not.
Did Machiavelli create the idea of the ends justifying the means and the rest of modern political thought or did he merely notice processes that were already occurring?
Chris Langan proposed self-determination as an alternative to the determinism/indeterminism paradox. In such a paradigm, ideas could be conceived of as one determining parameter in the iterative process of history: the cognitive aspect of historical events.
I think that the idea of a Darwinian competition of ideas is on the right track. Most philosophies die obscure deaths, but the ones that spread tend to be the ones embraced by artists. Purely intellectual argument isn't moving for most people, but the emotional experience of art is. I'm not a fan of Percy Shelley, but he was onto something when he claimed that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world".
Man is a rationalizing animal.
Many ideas get picked up because they are handy to those already in power. For example, Keynesian economics provided a delightful excuse for big government types to increase the number of government programs. Supply side economics gave the Republicans an excuse to play Santa Claus on the tax side.
But there are other ideas which motivate people to take fresh actions. Marx's ideas motivated Lenin and company to put in some serious effort to make dystopia happen. And his ideas continue to compel. Likewise, the teaching of Jesus motivated many people to change their behaviors substantially.
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Ideas can be powerful, but they also need fertile ground in which to flourish. Sometimes the ground determines which ideas win.
Take postmodernism. Why did such ridiculous and useless ideas come to dominate universities?
My answer: credential inflation. You have to have a doctorate in order to teach in a modern university. To be a doctor is to have "advanced" the field. How do you advance the curation of your culture? Generally, you don't! But boy howdy you can advance the destruction (deconstruction) of your culture!
The same dynamic explains the vast quantity of garbage publications, dangerous mad science in the gene labs, modern classical "music", modern "art", etc.
To regain power on campus, we need to raise the status of the original purpose of universities: to pass along knowledge between generations. Curation of knowledge used to be the primary function of universities. Basic research was secondary or even suspect.
The universities were corrupted long before wokeness arrived.
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So yes, ideas matter. But you also need to be strategic in fostering ideas. Sometimes you need to *create* an environment for your ideas to flourish.
Language is powerful but not all-powerful. Ideas regularly shape how we interpret events and in doing so can determine our reaction, which then is causal to the next event. And ideas are how identity groups form in the elites, suggesting eras of elite overproduction are also eras of ideas - but in a bad way.
In short we could be in such a mess because we are in an age of ideas but, humans being generally unbelievably stupid, especially the smart ones, that’s a disaster.
How’s THAT for despair?
Yes it’s ideas, that’s the whole problem, this is what an era of intelligence looks like: a clusterfuck 😜
Of course, the right answer is- 'Both. It Depends.'
But here is a GREAT Example of an Idea that truly did shape the History of Gaming (Well, all Entertainment Media, but Gaming is my Last Hope[tm].).
I've been watching some of the new Mods for 'Mass Effect: Legendary Edition' & what is truly creepy is how common it is for modern players to not want to talk about 'whether or not the ending is Good or Bad.'
11 Years ago, when ME3 was released, the ending was SO Universally Derided that posting records were set, Sites went down, Massive Amounts of Red, Green & Blue Cupcakes were sent to Bioware. Nearly $90,000 was given to disabled Gaming Kids, before the company heading that funding shut it down. Because they didn't want to support a bunch of whiny, entitled Gamers.
Tanget, but Not really- It is a High Damn Shame that Gamergate did not erupt because of THIS controversy, as it would not have been possible to call Gamers 'Sexist & Misogynistic', as there were no Trashy females involved. It was much more obvious that all the Game Journalists had the exact same agenda- That of putting uppity Gamers in their place. It was also more clear that Gaming Companies didn't give a rip about 'Customer Satisfaction' either. All they wanted was Gamers to succumb to their Emotional Manipulation, Shut Up & Spend Money.
Anyway, TODAY, we cannot talk about the quality of a product. You may have an OPINION, but everyone has those, and we are told they have no real value, so they are safe to have. What you may not do, is use Critical Thinking to analyze whether a product is good or bad. Discernment is JUDGING and JUDGING is SexistRacistClassistFacistCapitalistHomophobist & Transphobist.
The Main Reason this idea has taken such hold is because of the (still) huge amount of intellectual mushies who (somehow STILL) believe there IS NO Agenda. I'm sure great swaths of people denying the existence of said agenda are paid disinfoagents, but there (still) creepily seems to be a large portion of people (they call themselves, Ironically, 'Skeptics') who deny anything that is not the Official Narrative of events.
Tangent the Second- I am hereby retiring the phrase, 'Official Version' and replacing it with the far more accurate, 'Official Narrative'. So let it be written, so let it be done.
Speaking of 'Narrative', if you want to see one of the most prophetic pieces of Youtubery of the last 15 years, watch the spectacular analysis of ME3's Ending by the Enigmatic 'Mr. Btongue'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MlatxLP-xs It's 39 minutes of pure gold. But the cornerstone of his argument, is that, right at the end, like falling off a story cliff, ME3's 'Narrative Coherence' utterly collapses. Bit by bit, then as an avalanche, it self-destructs on the ground of Realistic Consequences.
But I am writing this right now because, 1.) On Friday, my Pain Meds were Arbitrarily Cut by my Insurance by 75% & I will soon have a not-hyperbolic mental breakdown. If this is what I do under these conditions, that's probably best for everyone. 2.) As I am watching Mr. Btongue discuss N.C. I realized that on a Societal Scale, our CULTURAL COHERENCE, has been crippled, perhaps to death, not in small part due to the entertainment media's constant destruction of *Narrative* Coherence!
By applying Nonsense, after Trash, after Offensiveness, after Foolishness, again & again & again, people are losing whatever plot they had, *almost in real time.*
Hopefully this all made sense. I keep seeing flashing red lights & erupting steam in my head. :-/
I enjoyed reading this essay because it really made me think. I find some things problematic and I would like to draw out one thread particularly: It's true that there are competing ethical systems in society, and we choose the philosophy that would make us the most successful, but we also get to choose how we define success. We don't have to define success as baby making and wealth..although these goals are the most common in our society. Our ideas about success correspond to our ethical system. The dominant ethical system in the western world is Philistinism, where every member of the society sees everyone else as something to be manipulated and exploited. When a practitioner of Philistine ethics is able to exploit someone, he feels that as success. A little game theory goes a long way: in a poker tournament, it is the social expectation that every player will maximally exploit every other player. The most successful player will exploit his opponents better than the others. If a player deviates from this game theory optimal strategy, then he will reduce his chances of winning a prize, and reduce his general profitability. He is a baaaaaad poker player, and he is looked down upon by those who practice playing the maximally exploitative strategy. This is an illustration of the Philistine system of status. The most successful practitioners of Philistinism enjoy a sort of prestige cast on them by those who aren't quite so adept at it. When you go to buy a used car, the social expectation is that the salesman is going to maximally exploit you, and his expectation is that you are going to maximally exploit him. This is the attitude with which every professional in society approaches every social and financial transaction throughout the entire society. When someone deviates from this maximally exploitative attitude or strategy, his aims become obscure to that society. His character is cast into doubt. He’s not a practitioner of this Philistine system of ethics, but he’s an outsider and his behavior is frowned upon. He is a baaaaad Philistine. These people who don’t maximally exploit all the other people are practicing another system of ethics. The two systems cannot work together, but one disrupts the other. In the Philistine system, there is a clockwork to the satisfaction of appetite. Every Philistine understands what the others want. There is no freedom within this framework. You must conform to the maximally exploitative strategy, or eventually, your bad decision making will prohibit you from continuing in life. The person who is contra-Philistine must have different goals because he's certainly failing in the eyes of the Philistines. And if you look up the dictionary definition of Philistine, it describes a person with common (low or vulgar) goals. So, someone who wants to get drunk and screw is a Philistine, but if after he is successful, he also robs his conquest of his/her cash, then he is a very successful Philistine, indeed, and he deserves the respect and admiration of Philistine society at large.
Imaging one has a "Humanity Machine" with a great many levers labelled with parameters ranging from "solar flux", "oxygen", and "atmospheric pressure" all the way down to "money printer" and "ideas".