Peter Risdon slaps Chris Dillow’s testicles. Metaphorically, I mean:
It’s more appropriate to talk of Marxists being indoctrinated than it is most people, who take less doctrinal, more experience-based and pragmatic approaches to issues. Marxism belongs with traditional religions to a bracket of improbable, dogma-based belief systems that require faith to maintain, in the teeth of what could politely be called conflicting data. As with traditional religions, you get ‘Why I am still a Marxist’ and ‘Why I am no longer a Marxist’ essays and columns – Chris himself wrote one – which are very similar to ‘Why I am still/no longer a Christian’ type pieces.
You don’t get ‘Why I am still a slightly conservative pragmatist’ essays in the same way.
There are a few things that you can be pretty sure that most Marxists (or Marxians) will agree are true, although not that many, but I think that would be true of ‘pragmatic conservatives’ no?
Minnow
“That doesn’t mean they are bad people, that was one of Marx’s central points of course, we shouldn’t think about good and bad people in politics, that is just sentimental, we should look at structure, organisation, power and incentives instead.”
This might have some validity if Marxists had ever shown the slightest inclination to abide by such a maxim. Instead they have consistently vilified and often murdered, whole sections of humanity on the basis of essentialist and brutal class categorisations.
In any case your argument is exactly what is wrong with all progressive thinking it hollows out society reducing it to power structures and removing humans entirely from the abstract equations. Political structures don’t exist in some Neo- Platonic state.
Furthermore this exhortation to bypass moral judgements of people and look to how society is organised is in contradiction to your interpretation of false consciousness.
Like most of Marx when looked at coolly rather than from a partisan position, the idea of false consciousness is revealing and challenging
So is it false consciousness that makes Marxists feel they have a right to control other people and take away their earnings?
Just one little observation in regard to atheists and religion of which I’ve become quite fond. Ace from Ace of Spades recently pointed out that you don’t need a god to have yourself a religion. All you need is a devil and some dogma. Marxism follows this pattern quite well.
Minnow,
It’s a distinction without a difference.
No, there is a difference – and quite a clear one at that.
It is true that some self-deceivers are aware … but very often they are not
I concede that most people exhibit idiosyncratic patterns of behavior of which they are largely or completely unaware – but it’s for this reason that these are the behaviours that they don’t articulate out loud.
In your examples, the alcoholic friend and the woman with an abusive partner were both not only articulating their problems but actively engaged in rationalising them.
Whether trivializing the problem as the alcoholic does or reinterpreting a partner’s negative behavior as ‘secret signs’ of true love, both people in your examples must be aware that what they are doing is detrimental to themselves because otherwise why would they feel the need to justify it in the first place? If they were genuinely unaware of having a problem, they simply wouldn’t even be articulating it to friends and family.
… the same is true for political self deceivers, that is people (usually poor people, but sometimes the middle classes too) who continue to support the economic and political structures that are damaging them because they cannot face the possibility that their ideology is t fault, they would prefer to suffer than be disillusioned.
So if the first point is wrong, so is your second. I don’t mean to be rude, but what you are saying here seems to be more than a little presumptuous. In fact, it is a very clear example of the ‘false consciousness’-as-conspiracy-theory I defined in the earlier message.
By saying that poor people, but sometimes the middle classes too … would prefer to suffer than be disillusioned, you are effectively writing off large numbers of people as docile sheep, a pusillanimous herd that is incapable of making decisions for itself and needs some nobler and more enlightened minds to make decisions for them. It’s hard not to interpret your comment in that way.
It is true that significant numbers of people think more about who the winner of the X Factor is going to be more than they do about economic and political structures but … in a way, so what? A lack of engagement with politics isn’t necessarily a lack, it could just as well be a choice.
This is probably one reason why politicians who constantly bemoan voter apathy are completely blindsided by the strength of feeling from the public that rushes up over particular flash points – they have confused general voter apathy with not caring at all about what happens to the lives of themselves, their family or their community. Such politicians are no doubt shocked because to them ‘voter apathy’ must be the result of not thinking or behaving as they do – which is more than a little presumptuous.
… it isn’t far-fetched and quite often it is a necessary concept, … Like most of Marx when looked at coolly rather than from a partisan position, the idea of false consciousness is revealing and challenging.
Again, I’m no expert but I understood the modern idea of false consciousness is largely based on Gramsci, not Marx but I’m happy to be corrected on that point. But anyway …
If the concept of false consciousness is necessary then presumably you would need to demonstrate that the concept can be proved empirically – something I think would be very hard if not impossible to do. I’ve often heard it claimed that advertising ‘makes’ people do things and want things they don’t really want. And sometimes, yes, this appears to be the case – but it’s only part of the story because it doesn’t explain why it only makes people want certain things but not others (i.e. the argument only looks at successful persuasion through advertising but ignores and therefore fails to explain all the failures)
You also say it is revealing and challenging, but just what does it reveal and what (or who) is challenged by it?
Minnow “Personally I live in a place where UKIP is thick on the ground and, I am sure by coincidence, where we have a large number of Roma families and assorted other poor people. The kind of poor people who are often visible from not-poor-people’s lawns, even when they do keep their dogs off. The UKIP-ers are generally thought to be conservative types but I don’t think anyone would call them non-ideological. And they are very, very interested in how other people live. Especially poor people. They also seem to have a lively secondary interest in what goes on in these other people’s bedrooms, but I have not dug too deep into that.”
I question the accuracy of your portrayal of those UKIP people. None of the people I know–none–who have expressed concern about Roma have done so with regards to what happens in their bedrooms. It has all been about criminal behavior–theft, fraud, vandalism, trespass, threats and violence.
For some reason it occurred to me to remind readers of this.
My window for online debate is closing rapidly so apologies if I disappear, don’t take it as a flounce, it means I sacrifice the last word at any rate.
But here is a quick response to Nik.
By saying that poor people, but sometimes the middle classes too … would prefer to suffer than be disillusioned, you are effectively writing off large numbers of people as docile sheep, a pusillanimous herd that is incapable of making decisions for itself and needs some nobler and more enlightened minds to make decisions for them. It’s hard not to interpret your comment in that way.
I think that is the meat of the disagreement between us. First of all let’s get rid of all the value-connoting words like ‘pusillanimous’. I don’t think that being deceived, by yourself or by anyone else, is a sign of weakness or turpitude and nor is it writing people off to claim that they may not be conscious of their own motives. People who are illusioned in some way may still make decisions for themselves, there is no reason to assume that they need someone more enlightened to relieve them of that burden. When Kahneman or Daniel Ariely write essays claiming that what I think are rational actions in my own self interest are actually something else altogether, I don’t assume that they therefore want to remove all freedom from me, only that they are offering me the chance to exchange false consciousness for a true consciousness, if I agree with them, that is. A lot of Marxists in the last century took this in a different direction with cattle prods, razor wire and rifle, but that is not implied in the theory.
If people want to watch the X Factor rather than read Gramsci, I am with you, they must decide for themselves? But if they can be persuaded that they are being impoverished by it and exchange it for something better, where’s the harm? Or is it horribly elitist to suppose there may be something better than the X Factor?
I question the accuracy of your portrayal of those UKIP people. None of the people I know–none–who have expressed concern about Roma have done so with regards to what happens in their bedrooms. It has all been about criminal behavior–theft, fraud, vandalism, trespass, threats and violence.
What were we saying about addiction and self deception. One last reply:
I don’t mean they are interested in the sex lives of the Roma, but they have a strong interest in the sex lives of the rest of us, mainly but not exlusively, those of us who like to sleep with people of the same sex.
but that is not implied in the theory.
Yeah, those bad people who weren’t *really* Marxists *perverted* the theory into a totalitarian nightmare.
For no reason whatsoever.
Every. Single. Time.
“I don’t mean they are interested in the sex lives of the Roma, but they have a strong interest in the sex lives of the rest of us, mainly but not exlusively, those of us who like to sleep with people of the same sex.”
To the extent that this is real, rather than an apparently widespread trait amongst UKIPers exaggerated by their political opponents, then it may be nothing more than the belief amongst conservatives, of all types, that such things are a legitimate matter of political debate. Indeed it is the assumption of unthinking liberals that debate about Gay marriage or abortion or any other contentious sexually related subject is simply off the agenda that infuriates not just conservatives but those of us who don’t share general conservative opinions.
“And they are very, very interested in how other people live. Especially poor people.”
In more accurate phrasing, they are concerned about chavs. See, for instance, Theodore Dalrymple’s writings about the pathological behaviors that lead to failure.
“I don’t mean they are interested in the sex lives of the Roma, but they have a strong interest in the sex lives of the rest of us”
Well, there is an “interest” in socially harmful behaviors such as promiscuity and out-of-wedlock childbirth (see Dalrymple), and this sideline could become a very long debate of its own, but what you are doing here by bringing up “strong interest in sex lives” in an attempt to discredit a whole set of concerns that have nothing to do with sexual orientation.
As for Gramsci, no thank you. I’ve had enough lies and subversion for one lifetime.
Yeah — it’s a bit off-topic, but I’ve always found the depiction of the Dursleys . . . .
Wellll, no. Just got in, and I’m not near my books here, But . . .
Mr. Dursley, as I recall, is happiest when he’s yelling at someone, where Mrs. Dursley has the long neck for best peering out at the neighbors to best see what those neighbors should be doing, according to her rather than the neighbors, where the Dursleys repeatedly get scammed with some offer or another to show off how much better they think they should be seen as . . .
Rather contrasting, there is Harry, who is is only The Chosen One, because Voldemort picked him out, where it’s Voldemort who has the campaign of proclaiming that only he and his are the ones who Must decide for all others, must kill all dissenters, Etc.
Also contrasting is the Grangers, who are a dentist and his wife, who are delighted to learn that their daughter gets to be a career specialist—do think unquestionably elite as in Mathematician or other scientist . . . and Hermione is regularly described as the hardest worker—and has an entire plot section of one book based on that, who is regularly described as being the best because she’s the hardest worker.
Finally, the overall situation does rather get outlined at the beginning of one of the later books, where the PM is spluttering at his opposite number something to the effect of But, But, why can’t you do something, after all You Can Do Magic!!!!!
Siiiiggggghhhhhhh. That, my dear PM, is exactly what we’ve been trying to get you to understand. While we can do magic, So Can They
Yeah, those bad people who weren’t *really* Marxists *perverted* the theory into a totalitarian nightmare. For no reason whatsoever. Every. Single. Time.
Yes, I thought that was almost sweet. “Not implied in the theory.”
I sometimes forget we’re not supposed to actually read the more sadistic ravings of Marx and Engels – which, shall we say, hint quite strongly at what should fill the conspicuous gaps in the Greatest Theory Ever™. Those bothersome practical details about “the middle-class owner of property” who “must be swept away and made impossible.” You know, the salacious stuff about “revolutionary terror,” the “murderous death agonies of the old society” and the “complete extirpation” of “reactionary peoples” – i.e., thee, me and most of the infidels reading this. Just as we’re not supposed to think about all those Marxist intellectuals – including Lukacs, Gramsci, Althusser and Hobsbawm, and of course Marx, Engels and Lenin – who were pretty sure that their utopia necessarily required a little pushing and shoving… a little unpleasantness.
And we’re not supposed to think about Marx’s own behaviour and psychology, and what that might imply about a world made in his image, tailored to his demons. Say, his trademark anger and contempt for others, his intolerance of dissent, his dishonesty with data, his readiness to abuse the generosity and trust of others, the habitual mooching, and his fixation with violence and apocalyptic scenarios. And we’re not supposed to regard actual Marxist societies, based on Marxist ideas and excused by Marxist thinkers as Marxism in practice, as having anything whatsoever to do with Marxism. Which, as a theory, must forever remain pure, unsullied by mere reality. Those mountains of bodies.
As I’ve said before, to read Marx and Engels – to say nothing of Trotsky and his enthusiasm for guillotines and the prospect of beheading people who didn’t wish to be communists – to read such material and somehow not grasp where that thinking goes isn’t just a failure of critical wherewithal. It’s a choice, a contrivance. Just as some contrive an indifference when faced with Engels’ eagerness to see “the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples.” A global class genocide that would be, in his words, “a step forward.” As the late Norm Geras admitted, “Communism didn’t just go wrong in some minor or insignificant detail, but on a vast scale, and the manner in which it went wrong wasn’t only the manner of what one calls a ‘mistake’.”
Yes, I thought that was almost sweet. “Not implied in the theory.”
Not implied; explicit. So, technically speaking, Minnow wasn’t purveying an untruth.
if your deepest held beliefs also just happen to be the ones that maximise your own wealth and income, you should be most sceptical, I think.
You just expressed one of the fundamental assumptions of Marxism, that one’s worldview is primary a function of one’s economic status.
As a religious person whose deepest-held views are shared by co-religionists in all walks of life — from the favelas of Rio to billionaires in the U.S. — that’s the most nonsensical thing I’ve ever heard.
Those deep-held beliefs rest on “God is our Father and we’re his offspring and we all have the potential to cultivate godly virtues within.”
Being wealthy requires that you learn generosity; being poor that you learn patience; being in the middle that you learn whatever virtue presents itself, and so on.
Positing Homo economicus strikes me as the worst kind of philosophical poverty.
I agree with that, and I think the theist argument hat atheism is in some sense a ‘religion’ is decidedly odd.
Let me reiterate myself from upthread.
Religion is an explanatory model, just as ideology is. In fact, you can argue that religion is a subset of ideology, being that they’re both narratives that put things in order.
Those of use with positive religious beliefs don’t see absence of any kind in the atheists, who pop off answers to the same questions life poses, only your answers are different.
The only way you can truly be atheist — for the absence to be genuine — is to be incapable of formulating the questions in the first place.
My cat is a true atheist because he can’t even comprehend religious issues such as deity or life after death or ethics or the purpose of life.
Or supply and demand and assets and debits and fiat currency and the like.
To be human is to have the internal narrative going on. Homo credens is who we are, because we do nothing all the live-long day but explain events to ourselves.
It’s what those big-ass frontal lobes are for.
Well I didn’t hit “post” so this would have fit better upthread. But anyway:
It seems to me that Marxists require the world to be ideological, or else their political ambitions might appear unseemly, even to themselves.
If one claims they have no ideology, the Marxist counters that they do have a (flawed, unjust) ideology which they have just expressed; the Marxist is only asserting their own (just, superior) ideology.
I admit, that at some base-line level “the personal is political”, seems so ordinary and unremarkable it hardly bears much debate.
Upon this commonplace Marxists justify the implementation (from the top down) of a vast scheme to use state power to entirely and comprehensively reorder the affairs – even consciousnesses!! – of others.
Give them an inch, they’ll take a lifetime.
If there’s a nihilism a Marxist can viscerally appreciate, maybe it’s that others might not be ideological. Then Marxist ambitions appear to be transparently obscene, instead of pretty clearly malignant.
dicentra,
…one of the fundamental assumptions of Marxism, that one’s worldview is primarily a function of one’s economic status.
It’s often assumed, as implied upthread, that members of a given social class must be rationalising their position, their “privilege,” after the fact – thinking up excuses. It’s less often assumed, at least by Marxists, that people from very humble backgrounds may cultivate certain values – say, an expectation of self-reliance and a kind of stoicism – because such values have helped their family escape those humble beginnings.
I suppose I should point out that the relatives I was talking about earlier are all state-educated and of very working class parents – barely one generation removed from the bottom of the ladder. Marxoid theorising doesn’t seem to have played much part in their happiness and escape from humbledom. But their so-called “conservative” values – which are, or were, common among working class people – have helped a great deal. Again, driven by pragmatism and experience, not grandiose theory.
“But their so-called ‘conservative’ values – which are, or were, common among working class people – have helped a great deal.”
Remember that scene in Pygmalion in which G. B. Shaw sneers at “working class morality”?
Remember that scene in Pygmalion in which G. B. Shaw sneers at “working class morality”?
Remember when Shaw proposed a ‘humane gas’ to kill the useless members of society?
Good times.
It’s a distinction without a difference.
No, there is a difference – and quite a clear one at that.
My ‘self delusion’ may be perplexing to you but ultimately it’s none of your concern. Sooner or later reality will catch up with me and I’ll have to revise my copying mechanisms. Or not. Either way, I and I alone reap the consequences of my actions.
My ‘false consciousness’ gives you permission to run roughshod over my policy preferences because I’m not ‘voting my economic interests’ as you see it and therefore you can implement your Grand Scheme over my protests because they’re not valid.
That’s a damned important difference, don’t you think?
Remember that scene in Pygmalion in which G. B. Shaw sneers at “working class morality”?
Shaw on “working class morality”?
Noooo . . . Shaw just wrote the play . . .
Perhaps you’re thinking of:
PICKERING. I think you ought to know, Doolittle, that Mr. Higgins’s intentions are entirely honorable.
DOOLITTLE. Course they are, Governor. If I thought they wasn’t, I’d ask fifty.
HIGGINS [revolted] Do you mean to say, you callous rascal, that you would sell your daughter for 50 pounds?
DOOLITTLE. Not in a general way I wouldn’t; but to oblige a gentleman like you I’d do a good deal, I do assure you.
PICKERING. Have you no morals, man?
DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Can’t afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me. Not that I mean any harm, you know. But if Liza is going to have a bit out of this, why not me too?
. . . but that’s the father.
Eliza is not her father . . .
HIGGINS [a genial afterthought occurring to him] I daresay my mother could find some chap or other who would do very well—
LIZA. We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road.
HIGGINS [waking up] What do you mean?
LIZA. I sold flowers. I didn’t sell myself. . . . .
Hal: I was thinking of another scene:
HIGGINS [storming on] Take all her clothes off and burn them. Ring up
Whiteley or somebody for new ones. Wrap her up in brown paper till they
come.
LIZA. You’re no gentleman, you’re not, to talk of such things. I’m a
good girl, I am; and I know what the like of you are, I do.
HIGGINS. We want none of your Lisson Grove prudery here, young woman.
You’ve got to learn to behave like a duchess. Take her away, Mrs.
Pearce. If she gives you any trouble wallop her.
LIZA [springing up and running between Pickering and Mrs. Pearce for
protection] No! I’ll call the police, I will.
Shaw is quite amused this “prudery” that protects Liza from all sorts of traps that lead to failure and even destruction.
Dicentra, the statement that “‘no’ is a belief of type:religious” reminds me of the now probably old joke that saying that atheism is just another kind of religion is like saying that not smoking is just another kind of smoking. I can see putting all the various political views on the same ontological plane (to the chagrin of the aforementioned leftists), and all the various religious views on the same plane. But not believing and believing? My non-belief is in fact less subjective than your belief. That’s not a criticism – objectivity isn’t everything, and on some matters it isn’t anything – but where you have a belief system that reinforces a particular narrative, an atheist has a doubt system that tests narratives for accordance with observable phenomena and discards them when they fail. Religiosity is more a matter of temperament and less a matter of choice and as such you ought not be vilified for yours. But objectivity and belief aren’t compatible and it won’t do to imply that they are.
the Hayekian descent into serfdom hasn’t transpired
(a) He never gave it X amount of time, after which you can conclude that it never happened.
(b) Pretty easy to argue that European Social Democracy is on the serfdom continuum, being closer to serfdom than to liberty. (A comfy cage is still a cage.)
(c) After the Ruskies and Chicoms remove the dollar from its exalted status as reserve currency, you’ll experience more serfdom than you ever counted on. Maybe more than Hayek counted on.
Shaw is quite amused this “prudery” that protects Liza from all sorts of traps that lead to failure and even destruction.
. . . Is he? The problem there is you’re quoting Higgins, not any of the sane or civilized cast members.
MRS. HIGGINS. I’m sorry to say that my celebrated son has no manners. You mustn’t mind him.
. . . .
HIGGINS. Oh, have I been rude? I didn’t mean to be. [He goes to the central window, through which, with his back to the company, he contemplates the river and the flowers in Battersea Park on the opposite bank as if they were a frozen dessert.]
. . . .
PICKERING. You mustn’t mind that. Higgins takes off his boots all over the place.
LIZA. I know. I am not blaming him. It is his way, isn’t it? But it made such a difference to me that you didn’t do it. You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.
MRS. HIGGINS. Please don’t grind your teeth, Henry.
but where you have a belief system that reinforces a particular narrative, an atheist has a doubt system that tests narratives for accordance with observable phenomena and discards them when they fail
You are assuming that you know how my mind works and that it’s different from how yours does.
It is not.
We all explain the universe to ourselves. My explanation includes a God and yours doesn’t, but we’re both engaging in the same activity.
This is really frustrating.
Do you imagine that I go through life with the same understanding of How Life Works as when I was five? That my concept of the universe and reality froze somewhere and I blissfully go through life cherry-picking data that fits and discarding crap that doesn’t?
As if I’d never had to adjust my beliefs when life delivered a 2×4 to the back of my head, the way life does? As if I’d never had to incorporate difficult or painful experiences into my internal narrative?
As if I had no lacunae to fill in with empiricism? My religion doesn’t even ATTEMPT to answer all the questions about life and the universe. And even where answers are provided, my understanding of those answers changes over time, usually in response to a painful blow that life has delivered.
My religion isn’t a crutch to avoid critical thinking or to prevent me from Facing Cold Hard Reality. Crutches don’t make demands of you or force you out of your comfort zone. Crutches don’t insist that you re-evaluate your actions according to an ethical standard and that your entire life is basically a 12-step program where you face your own weaknesses and faults — no matter how awful — and then make a change.
I have to employ empiricism and testing and learning just like you do. I have to discard concepts ABOUT MY OWN BELIEFS when they don’t comport with experience.
You fundamentally misunderstand the role of religion in the internal life of the believer if you bracket it off as different from any other way of explaining the universe.
Your internal narrative about What’s Going On occupies the same functional space as mine. That’s what I and every other believer mean when we say that atheism is a religion: that it fulfills the same role as religion does — as an explanatory model.
Those mountains of bodies.
Lots of “down twinkles” at YT for that video: as if on cue, the “educated” YouTube commentariat marches in to prove every bit of your thesis precisely correct.
Good lord…
I was also tickled by the notion that Marxoid ‘theorists’ only wish to persuade, to “offer the chance to exchange false consciousness for a true consciousness.” I’m sure there are theorists who stop short of the logical conclusion of their own desires, frustrating as it is. Norm Geras, for instance, always managed to put the brake on that looming indecency, deferring at the last minute to what the public might vote for. But such people are a minority in the history of Marxoid fantasy, as noted by Norm himself, and are entirely at odds with Marxoid experiments in the real world.
The promise of non-coercion is absurd and transparently dishonest, despite – or because of – the elaborate contortions of its proponents. For instance, the ludicrous New Economics Foundation wants to control how much we work and how much we earn, and claims that “we” will be “satisfied” without the “dispensable accoutrements of middle-class life,” including “cars, holidays, electronic equipment and multiple items of clothing.” Note the blatant disregard for the electorate and its preferences, and the comical evasions regarding how the NEF’s utopia would be brought about. It’s laughable, adolescent, and pretty much standard practice.
“Do you imagine that I go through life with the same understanding of How Life Works as when I was five? That my concept of the universe and reality froze somewhere and I blissfully go through life cherry-picking data that fits and discarding crap that doesn’t?”
I’m sorry that you had a bad experience debating this with people on Twitter but you’re putting words in my mouth. I imagine that someone as intelligent and principled as yourself is continually discovering nuances in the narratives of your religion and that they are a continual font of richness and opportunity for reflection. I don’t deny that you can exercise empiricism just as I don’t think you would deny that I can experience wonder.
But atheism is not in itself an explanatory model. Secular philosophy, science, and poetry are some explanatory models used by atheists to fulfill the role that religion has long played in the life of the mind, but atheism itself explains nothing and offers no narrative. With that established, would it be fair to say – along the lines of “atheism is a religion” – that science is a poetry? No, there may be reason to prefer one or the other depending on what existential problem we’re contemplating but they’re differing modalities and it’s good that they are. Science is more objective than poetry and it’s more objective than religion as well.
To me, the real mystery is why you’re debating this with people on Twitter.
The New Economics thing had me in stitches. Thanks for the laughs, David.
The New Economics thing had me in stitches.
Well, it demonstrates the kind of evasions and conceits that we’ve been talking about. These lofty Marxoid thinkers are eager to tell us how “we” feel about things – all kinds of things – because they just know, being such clever people. The tone throughout is hilariously arrogant and heaving with obnoxious implications that the authors can’t quite bring themselves to mention. And so there’s endless waffle about our “well-being” and how much they care about us, and care about trees too. They say, rather implausibly, that they want what’s best for us – and even less plausibly, that they “care about freedom.” And yet their egalitarian “alternative” – in which we’ll be “freed” from our materialism and spare pairs of shoes – is apparently “inevitable” and the public will be “encouraged” with the introduction of “measures” to “lessen resistance.” It’s so wonderfully coy.
If you’ve the stomach for such blathering, it is quite funny. The longer they talk, the more absurd they sound and the more obvious the lie becomes. But, to give them credit, they make huge efforts to hide it. Yes, it’s vile and stupid, the ramblings of narcissists unmoored from reality, but it’s by no means unusual among their peers.
To me, the real mystery is why you’re debating this with people on Twitter.
My frustration comes only partly from Twitter, and only recently.
I’ve run into the mischaracterization of my inner life for as long as I can remember, from the shallow stereotypes on TV to “so did they ever figure out what was wrong with Teresa of Avila” in a Cornell University classroom. (The teacher was wise enough to explain that there is no evidence that she was insane.)
I hear over and over how I’m misinterpreting my own internal experiences, how religion is a crutch, how I’m deluded and dangerous, how I need to wake up. “What’s an intelligent person like you still doing in a religion?”
If not posed to me directly then to someone else. The self-congratulatory assumptions that underlie that question are profoundly insulting, especially since I grew up among TONS of well-educated Mormons whose intellectual prowess is as formidable as the questioner’s if not moreso.
You need to get out more, is all I can say to such a questioner.
I cannot say why some people are religious and others are not, but I DO know that it’s not tied to anything else such as IQ or income or personality type. Closest I can come is that it’s a matter of TASTE. I know that my religion inspires and interests me; ergo, I pursue it. Other people don’t find my (or any other) religion inspiring in the least — for a multitude of reasons — and so they don’t. Given that I can’t see into anyone’s soul, it would be the height of presumption for me to assume that I know WHY someone doesn’t like religion.
I could, as some do, assume that dislike for religion is motivated exclusively by a desire to do evil, but that’s exactly as self-congratulatory as assuming that religion is an ignorant, superstitious delusion.
(n.b. — Superstition is any attempt to weight the dice in the crap shoot of life, up to and including sacrificing your children to who/whatever the hell controls the rainfall. Religion is a quest for holiness. If you wear a crucifix to ward off the evil eye, you’re superstitious; if you wear it to remind you to rely on the grace of Christ or to follow his example, you’re religious.)
you have a belief system that reinforces a particular narrative, an atheist has a doubt system that tests narratives for accordance with observable phenomena and discards them when they fail
Except that atheists are every bit as likely to discard phenomena that doesn’t concord with their worldview as I am. This movie is coming out soon. It alleged to be based on a true story.
Atheists who are invested in “there is no God” will dismiss the story as a fable or an outright lie. It won’t count at all as evidence or even as suggestive of evidence. Me, I don’t automatically accept these kinds of stories (anyone can lie) but I don’t automatically reject them, either.
Atheism the naked theory might be different from belief on paper, but in practice?
Occupies the same space as my faith does.
Like I said, it’s temperament. Taste is probably pretty close to that in that there’s no accounting for it, but it may be something more basic to one’s person than taste. Tastes change, temperament lingers. No one ought to be saying that religiosity has something to do with intelligence or lack thereof. There are learned believers, and we owe to a long history of them the maintenance of civilization in two hemispheres.
Nevertheless. At times I turn to poetry for insights into the Big Questions. Hearing that called religion is grating on my ear; that’s making too much of it and making it into the wrong kind of thing all at once. There’s not something called “apoetry” for people who don’t do this, and even if there were it would be absurd to say that apoetry is a form of poetry. There is simply some other activity other than taking down the Larkin from the bookshelf. Atheism can’t occupy a space where religion lies for many people, yourself included, because atheism is the very absence of religion. Something else has to go there. Fortunately there is much else that can, for those so inclined. Not just on paper, if you don’t mind, but in my experience and others’.
It sounds like you’ve been fighting with some rather poor atheists. I suggest that it’s probable that they were fighting with some rather poor religious people before they got to you. That’s the world for you.
As for the movie trailer, considerations about how well the film correlates with reality are overwhelmed by my distaste for melodrama.
** disengages lurking mode **
Just wanted to say this blog has some of the best comment threads I’ve seen.
** engages lurking mode again **