I recently read “Science in Age of Unreason” by John Staddon.
A slice . . .
“Examples are the small, long-delayed effects of low-concentration pollutants, the causes of climate change, and the role of genes in intelligence. When decisive science is impossible, other factors dominate. Weak science lets slip the dogs of unreason: many social scientists have difficulty separating facts from faith, reality from the way they would like things to be. Critical research topics have become taboo which, in turn, means that policy makers are making decisions based more on ideologically driven political pressure than scientific fact.’’
Same point as Lorenzo.
Excellent book.
I’ll also add this, from sermon on the Mount,
“Be on the watch for the false prophets who come to you in sheep’s covering, but inside they are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will recognize them. Never do people gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles, do they? Likewise, every good tree produces fine fruit, but every rotten tree produces worthless fruit. A good tree cannot bear worthless fruit, nor can a rotten tree produce fine fruit. 19 Every tree not producing fine fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Really, then, by their fruits you will recognize those men.’’
Notice this is epistemology. Just opposite of simple credulity.
Closer to observational confirmation than intellectual agreement.
A reality test.
From this direction, we have famous religious teacher stressing importance of confirmation from experience, and, now we have ‘scientists’ demanding submission to authority.
"As a society as a whole, we now seem to be able to afford a class of highly-educated parasites."
This is the right way to put it, in my opinion. We can afford it, and if we couldn't afford it, we wouldn't have it. This is why I am pessimistic even though I already know this can't and won't continue- it ends when we can no longer afford it, and won't end until that point is reached. I have long thought that point would be beyond the horizon of my life, but I grow less certain of that by the day. I think it quite likely we won't be able to afford even 5-10 years from right now, and I am pessimistic because that event will be a civilization shattering one as people are forced to fight to survive.
A "class of highly-educated parasites"....I like that.
But if there is any chance now of opposing this religion, it needs to be clearly understood that it has grown - originated - out of the petri-dishes of academe - before spreading, first to the arts and media and then eventually to all the institutions of civil society. It is a process that has been ongoing (and growing exponentially) for many decades. It is a process that has proceeded silently whilst we all naively obsessed about who's winning at the ballot box etc.
I’ve believed for a while now that compliance departments are pretty comparable to party commissars in the Red Army. The only difference is that Red Army units didn’t appoint its own commissars.
"Note that when the contents of beliefs are verifiable, such as the belief in the law of gravity or a belief that there are two genders, anyone can hold them."
That there are "two genders" is something of an article of faith, or, at least, a matter of definition. More than a few credible sources -- the British Medical Journal, the late Justice Scalia, and more than a few more or less rational feminists, for examples -- basically DEFINE gender to be more or less synonymous with personalities AND personality TYPES. Of which there are, of course, billions and billions:
Scalia's rather insightful and illuminating analogy:
Scalia: “The word 'gender' has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics (as opposed to physical characteristics) distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine is to male.”
But while "masculine" and "feminine" may well constitute something in the way of a binary, each one of those subcategories encompasses a myriad of personalities of differing degrees -- each a spectrum. Like the reddish and bluish halves of the colour spectrum.
And then there's the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP]:
SEP: "2.2 Gender as feminine and masculine personality ... Instead, she holds that gender is a matter of having feminine and masculine personalities that develop in early infancy as responses to prevalent parenting practices."
Lorenzo and Helen make a more or less decent if something of an overwrought case -- certainly a lot of dots connected, although it might be somewhat moot how much water it holds. But the problem they seem to have is some reluctance in addressing the fact that virtually every last man, woman, and otherkin has different and quite antithetical definitions for sex, gender, and gender-identity, not all of which are created equal, though some are substantially more tenable than those they apparently subscribe to, if not take as articles of faith:
No wonder at all that the whole "debate" is such a dog's breakfast, a case of virtually everyone riding madly off in all directions. Don't see much hope for any sort of resolution without some willingness to address that fact:
Durant: “ 'If you wish to converse with me,' said Voltaire, 'define your terms.' How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task. — Will Durant"
Not necessarily disagreeing with what Warby said but ... He says this religion is now in a self-reinforcing loop--with more than a hint that it will continue forever. But how did it get here? It didn't always exist. It wasn't always powerful. Is it really impregnable?
It essentially arose out of the Rousseau->Kant->Hegel->Marx sequence, with the postwar expansion in academe and bureaucracy giving the social and institutional milieus for it to evolve further. The second half of this post gives a potted history. https://lorenzofromoz.substack.com/p/patterns-of-patriarchy
I do not believe it is impregnable. I do believe that defeating it will take far more institutional effort than we have seen so far.
But where could this "institutional effort" possibly come from? All the institutions I can think of in the 21st c. West ARE the problem. In my dreams there would eventually arise a right-of-centre electoral victory with a huge majority (and plenty of Thatcher-like 'balls') which would use its time in office to go in hard, relentless to 1) strip all public-funding from woke-corrupted parts of academia, charitable trusts, quangos etc and 2) engage in a frankly Machiavellian campaign to unseat woke-corrupted vice chancellors, bureaucratic heads etc etc. As I say, that's in my dreams; in reality I don't see any realistic way that could happen.
The only realistic prognosis is that things will eventually turn ugly in Western hyper-liberal societies.
Fair question. Massive purging of universities and advocacy economy is required. A lot of anti-discrimination law has to be repealed. This will require lots of networking and serious strategic planning and operational effort.
Nothing complicated... just click on the Slouching Towards Bethlehem link at the top of this reply and 'Subscribe'. I've just subscribed to LorenzofromOz.
Lorenzo, re your Patterns of Patriarchy: I hated intellectual history in college because it seemed like, in Henry Ford's words, "one damn thing after another". Some smart guy said this, then a different smart guy said that, and then a third smart guy said a different thing. But I always wondered, why did anyone listen to the first or second or third guy? Lots of different smart people said smart things in response to the first but their names are lost to history. Lots of responses that were popular at the time are now forgotten, while some that made little splash are now revered.
Your "potted history" seems to be all about supply, saying little about demand.
I don't mean to sound negative, but doesn't everyone want to feel that they are moral and righteous? Regarding "the demand side" I wonder why people adopt a certain view of what is righteous and what is not. Why is it righteous to be "woke" today when it wasn't twenty years ago? And a similar question, Why didn't the standards of righteousness of 20 or 50 or 100 years ago persist?
That is indeed the question. How ‘righteous’ folk see themselves is variable. Assuming a certain basic decency yes, something stronger is more specific. A lot of this relies on the appeal of Hermeticism (the sense of having transformative knowledge) and Gnosticism (having the gnosis, knowledge, of being imprisoned in an oppressive reality). See the footnone here. https://www.notonyourteam.co.uk/p/a-crusading-clerisy-ii
Perhaps. But I keep wondering why this "secular nonsense" and not some other? To say it's the zeitgeist just rewords the question. Why do we have this zeitgeist and not some other? Ideologues are coming up with ideas all the time.
Perhaps one start of an explanation: the condition of blacks in America is a big, big problem. In aggregate so much worse than white Americans. There are only three sets of reasons why. The traditional is "white people behaving badly", bad laws, explicit anti-black racism, black people are kept from taking advantage of opportunities. The second is "black people behaving badly", fathers not sticking around, not raising kids to defer gratification and value education, not preparing to take advantage of opportunities. The third is genetics. Perhaps, in aggregate, black people are not as inherently smart as white people, or as inherently conscientious, or ...
This third approach is, of course, forbidden. The second is "blaming the victim." Not quite as forbidden, but definitely infra dig. Which leaves the first. Since all the racist laws have been repealed and most white people are explicitly anti-racist, it must be something below the surface but very deep and powerful. Thus, the idea of "the system of white privilege". If you care, you really have to believe in it unless you are willing to be mean and "blame the victim"--or exile yourself by talking about genetics.
"Freeing the world of religious authority seems a bit like whack-a-mole: every time you bop one down, another pops up. Freeing the world of religious authority seems a bit like whack-a-mole: every time you bop one down, another pops up."
If there is always some sort of religion, "freedom of conscience" seems destined to be a transitory thing. The conditions in 20th century America were unusual. The dominant Protestant churches basically said, "It doesn't matter if you're going to Hell." And then decided that Hell didn't exist; only a mean God would do that. Christianity became little more than, "God is nice; He wants you to be nice." Hardly a fighting faith. Catholics--at least the laity--followed with a lag.
But it's hard to think something is morally important if it doesn't matter whether people follow it or not. It is very hard to be "tolerant" of people who are wrong about things that are of major importance. The 20th century churches were unwittingly sending out a message that they weren't very important. And unsurprisingly, followers slipped away and new ones became increasingly hard to corral.
The more evangelical flourished for a while, but their congregants mostly weren't willing to be "intolerant" in any thoroughgoing way. And the advance of science made any pre-scientific religious dogma increasingly unattractive.
So the new religions that attract young people are secular. And they don't pretend to be tolerant: "Hate has no home here." With hate defined very, very broadly as disagreeing with our ideology.
The above comment should have begun with a quote that continued "And once you are through and they have all been put down, what do you have? Some would say that once the explicit religions are suppressed, you are left with a community in which a civic religion from which there can be no dissent destroys freedom of conscience." rather than duplicating the first sentence.
link broken, missing y at the end...
https://helendale.substack.com/p/a-crusading-clerisy
Arnold
I recently read “Science in Age of Unreason” by John Staddon.
A slice . . .
“Examples are the small, long-delayed effects of low-concentration pollutants, the causes of climate change, and the role of genes in intelligence. When decisive science is impossible, other factors dominate. Weak science lets slip the dogs of unreason: many social scientists have difficulty separating facts from faith, reality from the way they would like things to be. Critical research topics have become taboo which, in turn, means that policy makers are making decisions based more on ideologically driven political pressure than scientific fact.’’
Same point as Lorenzo.
Excellent book.
I’ll also add this, from sermon on the Mount,
“Be on the watch for the false prophets who come to you in sheep’s covering, but inside they are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will recognize them. Never do people gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles, do they? Likewise, every good tree produces fine fruit, but every rotten tree produces worthless fruit. A good tree cannot bear worthless fruit, nor can a rotten tree produce fine fruit. 19 Every tree not producing fine fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Really, then, by their fruits you will recognize those men.’’
Notice this is epistemology. Just opposite of simple credulity.
Closer to observational confirmation than intellectual agreement.
A reality test.
From this direction, we have famous religious teacher stressing importance of confirmation from experience, and, now we have ‘scientists’ demanding submission to authority.
How did we get here?
Thanks
Clay
Dr. Kling wrote:
"As a society as a whole, we now seem to be able to afford a class of highly-educated parasites."
This is the right way to put it, in my opinion. We can afford it, and if we couldn't afford it, we wouldn't have it. This is why I am pessimistic even though I already know this can't and won't continue- it ends when we can no longer afford it, and won't end until that point is reached. I have long thought that point would be beyond the horizon of my life, but I grow less certain of that by the day. I think it quite likely we won't be able to afford even 5-10 years from right now, and I am pessimistic because that event will be a civilization shattering one as people are forced to fight to survive.
Thank-you once again, Arnold - I'm sure Lorenzo will be along shortly!
A "class of highly-educated parasites"....I like that.
But if there is any chance now of opposing this religion, it needs to be clearly understood that it has grown - originated - out of the petri-dishes of academe - before spreading, first to the arts and media and then eventually to all the institutions of civil society. It is a process that has been ongoing (and growing exponentially) for many decades. It is a process that has proceeded silently whilst we all naively obsessed about who's winning at the ballot box etc.
https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
Excellent and thoughtful summary, thank you very much.
You might have some interest in my Note in response:
https://substack.com/@humanuseofhumanbeings/note/c-21541755
I’ve believed for a while now that compliance departments are pretty comparable to party commissars in the Red Army. The only difference is that Red Army units didn’t appoint its own commissars.
"Note that when the contents of beliefs are verifiable, such as the belief in the law of gravity or a belief that there are two genders, anyone can hold them."
That there are "two genders" is something of an article of faith, or, at least, a matter of definition. More than a few credible sources -- the British Medical Journal, the late Justice Scalia, and more than a few more or less rational feminists, for examples -- basically DEFINE gender to be more or less synonymous with personalities AND personality TYPES. Of which there are, of course, billions and billions:
BMJ Editorial: https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n735
Scalia's rather insightful and illuminating analogy:
Scalia: “The word 'gender' has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics (as opposed to physical characteristics) distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine is to male.”
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep511/usrep511127/usrep511127.pdf
But while "masculine" and "feminine" may well constitute something in the way of a binary, each one of those subcategories encompasses a myriad of personalities of differing degrees -- each a spectrum. Like the reddish and bluish halves of the colour spectrum.
And then there's the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP]:
SEP: "2.2 Gender as feminine and masculine personality ... Instead, she holds that gender is a matter of having feminine and masculine personalities that develop in early infancy as responses to prevalent parenting practices."
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/feminism-gender/#GenFemMasPer
Lorenzo and Helen make a more or less decent if something of an overwrought case -- certainly a lot of dots connected, although it might be somewhat moot how much water it holds. But the problem they seem to have is some reluctance in addressing the fact that virtually every last man, woman, and otherkin has different and quite antithetical definitions for sex, gender, and gender-identity, not all of which are created equal, though some are substantially more tenable than those they apparently subscribe to, if not take as articles of faith:
https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1234040036091236352
No wonder at all that the whole "debate" is such a dog's breakfast, a case of virtually everyone riding madly off in all directions. Don't see much hope for any sort of resolution without some willingness to address that fact:
Durant: “ 'If you wish to converse with me,' said Voltaire, 'define your terms.' How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task. — Will Durant"
https://quotefancy.com/quote/3001527/Will-Durant-If-you-wish-to-converse-with-me-said-Voltaire-define-your-terms-How-many-a
Not necessarily disagreeing with what Warby said but ... He says this religion is now in a self-reinforcing loop--with more than a hint that it will continue forever. But how did it get here? It didn't always exist. It wasn't always powerful. Is it really impregnable?
It essentially arose out of the Rousseau->Kant->Hegel->Marx sequence, with the postwar expansion in academe and bureaucracy giving the social and institutional milieus for it to evolve further. The second half of this post gives a potted history. https://lorenzofromoz.substack.com/p/patterns-of-patriarchy
I do not believe it is impregnable. I do believe that defeating it will take far more institutional effort than we have seen so far.
But where could this "institutional effort" possibly come from? All the institutions I can think of in the 21st c. West ARE the problem. In my dreams there would eventually arise a right-of-centre electoral victory with a huge majority (and plenty of Thatcher-like 'balls') which would use its time in office to go in hard, relentless to 1) strip all public-funding from woke-corrupted parts of academia, charitable trusts, quangos etc and 2) engage in a frankly Machiavellian campaign to unseat woke-corrupted vice chancellors, bureaucratic heads etc etc. As I say, that's in my dreams; in reality I don't see any realistic way that could happen.
The only realistic prognosis is that things will eventually turn ugly in Western hyper-liberal societies.
Fair question. Massive purging of universities and advocacy economy is required. A lot of anti-discrimination law has to be repealed. This will require lots of networking and serious strategic planning and operational effort.
We both seem to have a readership in the same ballpark so would you be interested in doing a (free) cross - subscribe with me?
Probably, what does that entail?
Nothing complicated... just click on the Slouching Towards Bethlehem link at the top of this reply and 'Subscribe'. I've just subscribed to LorenzofromOz.
Lorenzo, re your Patterns of Patriarchy: I hated intellectual history in college because it seemed like, in Henry Ford's words, "one damn thing after another". Some smart guy said this, then a different smart guy said that, and then a third smart guy said a different thing. But I always wondered, why did anyone listen to the first or second or third guy? Lots of different smart people said smart things in response to the first but their names are lost to history. Lots of responses that were popular at the time are now forgotten, while some that made little splash are now revered.
Your "potted history" seems to be all about supply, saying little about demand.
Much of it seems to be about constructing and preserving a righteous identity.
I don't mean to sound negative, but doesn't everyone want to feel that they are moral and righteous? Regarding "the demand side" I wonder why people adopt a certain view of what is righteous and what is not. Why is it righteous to be "woke" today when it wasn't twenty years ago? And a similar question, Why didn't the standards of righteousness of 20 or 50 or 100 years ago persist?
That is indeed the question. How ‘righteous’ folk see themselves is variable. Assuming a certain basic decency yes, something stronger is more specific. A lot of this relies on the appeal of Hermeticism (the sense of having transformative knowledge) and Gnosticism (having the gnosis, knowledge, of being imprisoned in an oppressive reality). See the footnone here. https://www.notonyourteam.co.uk/p/a-crusading-clerisy-ii
Perhaps. But I keep wondering why this "secular nonsense" and not some other? To say it's the zeitgeist just rewords the question. Why do we have this zeitgeist and not some other? Ideologues are coming up with ideas all the time.
Perhaps one start of an explanation: the condition of blacks in America is a big, big problem. In aggregate so much worse than white Americans. There are only three sets of reasons why. The traditional is "white people behaving badly", bad laws, explicit anti-black racism, black people are kept from taking advantage of opportunities. The second is "black people behaving badly", fathers not sticking around, not raising kids to defer gratification and value education, not preparing to take advantage of opportunities. The third is genetics. Perhaps, in aggregate, black people are not as inherently smart as white people, or as inherently conscientious, or ...
This third approach is, of course, forbidden. The second is "blaming the victim." Not quite as forbidden, but definitely infra dig. Which leaves the first. Since all the racist laws have been repealed and most white people are explicitly anti-racist, it must be something below the surface but very deep and powerful. Thus, the idea of "the system of white privilege". If you care, you really have to believe in it unless you are willing to be mean and "blame the victim"--or exile yourself by talking about genetics.
Good question. I have a developing analysis of demand. Starting here:
https://www.notonyourteam.co.uk/p/social-justice-as-social-leverage
Thanks for the pointer.
"Freeing the world of religious authority seems a bit like whack-a-mole: every time you bop one down, another pops up. Freeing the world of religious authority seems a bit like whack-a-mole: every time you bop one down, another pops up."
If there is always some sort of religion, "freedom of conscience" seems destined to be a transitory thing. The conditions in 20th century America were unusual. The dominant Protestant churches basically said, "It doesn't matter if you're going to Hell." And then decided that Hell didn't exist; only a mean God would do that. Christianity became little more than, "God is nice; He wants you to be nice." Hardly a fighting faith. Catholics--at least the laity--followed with a lag.
But it's hard to think something is morally important if it doesn't matter whether people follow it or not. It is very hard to be "tolerant" of people who are wrong about things that are of major importance. The 20th century churches were unwittingly sending out a message that they weren't very important. And unsurprisingly, followers slipped away and new ones became increasingly hard to corral.
The more evangelical flourished for a while, but their congregants mostly weren't willing to be "intolerant" in any thoroughgoing way. And the advance of science made any pre-scientific religious dogma increasingly unattractive.
So the new religions that attract young people are secular. And they don't pretend to be tolerant: "Hate has no home here." With hate defined very, very broadly as disagreeing with our ideology.
The above comment should have begun with a quote that continued "And once you are through and they have all been put down, what do you have? Some would say that once the explicit religions are suppressed, you are left with a community in which a civic religion from which there can be no dissent destroys freedom of conscience." rather than duplicating the first sentence.