The Destruction of Philosophy

[arendt]

Given the inability of a significant minority of Americans to find the Moslem world on a map, and their dismissal of Moslems as "ragheads", it is not surprising in the least for us "masters of the world" to be unaware that our nation is riding the same curve that Islam followed a thousand years ago.

Just as America occupied (700 military bases) or economically colonized the entire non-Communist world after the European Civil War (WW1 and 2), Islam exploded out of Arabia at just the moment when the Roman and Persian (Sasanian) empires had destroyed each other. Islam expanded into the vacuum of that mutual suicide, pragmatically took what talented people and tools were on offer, and conquered and dominated the Mediterranean world without serious opposition for the next six centuries. The Moslems, especially in Spain, were noted for their tolerance. They practiced advanced science, mathematics and medicine, and had a flourishing trade and commerce, while Catholic Europe rotted in ignorance, petty feuds, and religious fatalism.

In fact, Islam grew so rich and so sophisticated that it began to become agnostic.

Amid the advances of science the old orthodoxy fought to keep the loyalty of the educated classes. The conflict between religion and science led many to skepticism, some to open atheism..."You torment yourself for nothing," said Isbahan ibn Qara to a pious faster during Ramadan; "man is like a seed of grain that sprouts and grows up and is then mowed down to perish forever...Eat and drink!"

It was in reaction against such skepticism that Mohammedanism produced its greatest theologian, the Augustine and Kant of Islam. Abu Hamid al-Ghazali...

al-Ghazali wrote...Tahafut al-Filasifa (The Destruction of Philosophy). All the arts of reason were turned against reason. By a "transcendental dialectic" as subtle as Kant's, the Moslem mystic argued that reason leads to universal doubt, intellectual bankruptcy, moral deterioration, and social collapse. Seven centuries before Hume, Al-Ghazali reduced reason to the principle of causality....(from there, he argued that) science cannot prove the existence of God or the immortality of the soul; only direct intuition can assure us of these beliefs, without which no moral order, and therefore no civilization can survive.

In the end al-Ghazali returned through mysticism to all orthodox views...He accepted the Koran and the Hadith...When he died (1111), the tide of unbelief had been effectively turned. All orthodoxy took comfort from him; even Christian theologians were glad to find such a defense of religion, and such an exposition of piety, as no one had written since Augustine. After him,...philosophy hid itself in the remote corners of the Moslem world; the pursuit of science waned; and the mind of Islam more and more buried itself in the Hadith and the Koran...

As orthodoxy triumphed, toleration waned.

- Will Durant, "The Story of Civilization: Part IV The Age of Faith"

So, while its not surprising many red-blooded Americans are ignorant of this history, it certainly is ironic to this pointy-headed intellectual. The ancient Greeks probably had a word for this, something like "hubris" or "karma" or "what goes around comes around". The Iranians (i.e., Persians) must be watching, fascinated, as history is replayed with them on the opposite side - as their great and powerful adversary exhausts itself chasing empire.

What does this largely forgotten history tell us? It tells me that, well within the historical record, a prosperous and scientifically-oriented, advanced and dominant civilization deliberately turned its back on rationality, embraced theocratic mysticism, and began to descend to the pitiful depths that we see today in the Moslem world. It tells me that it certainly can happen right here in America today.

Of course, concerned people have been trying to make this point for over a decade:

the final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it's the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism -- a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

There is no quick cure for this epidemic of arrogant anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism.

- Susan Jacobi, "The Dumbing of America", The Washington Post, Feb. 17, 2008

But in the overtly anti-intellectual environment of today's America, such critics are dismissed as "elitists" (again, Ms. Jacobi):

It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an "elitist," one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just "folks," a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980.

At the same time as the masses have been manipulated to embrace stupidity, the elite members of the "deconstructionist" school of philosophy have taken joy in demolishing every form of reasoning in sight. In the process, they demolished academic philosophy. But never mind. All those philosophers are now employed by advertising agencies and political consultancies, to make sure that corporate-peddled ignorance cannot be challenged by logical consumers or public-spirited citizens, ever again.

----

It would appear, then, that America is embarked upon the same cultural suicide that Islam committed in the name of "faith" a millennium ago. And, like all things American, it is happening at a much faster rate today than a thousand years ago. We are well on our way to going from maximally rational to screamingly fundamentalist within the lifespan of one person. Only this time, instead of swords and triremes, our science will bequeth to our lunatic fundamentalists WMDs, which they will have no qualms about using, because they are certain god is on their side. You have already heard them salivating to nuke Iran.

The scientific leadership of America (dismissed as elitists and atheists) has, for the last few years, been in open revolt against the Bush program of censoring, ignoring, and lying about science. But, since the corporate media and their deconstructionist flaks support Bush, this polite elitist revolt has brought no results.

(Just an aside: even though Bush/Cheney are clearly insane megalomaniacs, very few scientists are willing to speak out about the metastasizing defense budget and the removal of all civilized restraints from the development and use of inhumane weapons, tactics, and torture techniques.)

One is forced to conclude that effective resistance can only come from the mobilization of the broad population, coached and guided by the scientific elites. It is really scary to think like this, in the 21st century in what used to be an advanced civilization, but:

we, the people, need to go stand on soapboxes and defend the Scientific Method against "ignorant and proud of it" thugs, egged on by unscrupulous wannabee kings and high priests.

We need to educate people how, in a globalized economy and a de-industrialized country (with both entities leveraged beyond the breaking point), slight shifts in credit or oil flows could result in a catastrophic shutdown. Its sort of like the worry that polar ice melting will shut down the North Atlantic conveyor. Of course, you can't use that analogy because the people you are talking to can't remember what's in aisle seven at the WalMart, much less what ice has to do with a conveyor.

I think I will stop here. Its sort of like planning how to stop an armored division with a Civil War musket. Depressing and futile. I think I will get back to learning how to grow my own food.

arendt

[madrchsod]

1. excellent post

[Richard Steele]

2. K&R

[opihimoimoi]

3. Honored to be the 5

K&R

[ulysses]

4. yes.

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Kay Anadar agrees

--p!

[arendt]

6. Googled "Kay anadar" and got zilch. I will bite. Who is K.A.?

[Dogmudgeon]

92. Kay Andar -> Kay And R -> K & R

Kicked and Recommended.

--p!

[arendt]

99. My stupid! Sorry. Will add to codebook of net/DU slang. n/t

[scarletwoman]

7. k&r -- wonderful history lesson! (nt)

[arendt]

8. Thanks for all the recs. Anyone want to discuss getting on a soapbox for science?

To my way of thinking, promoting science can be PRESENTED AS nothing more than education. If I want to spend my free time giving INTERESTING (not, please god, boring) lectures that make people think, why should anyone protest?

If I can tear myself away from politics, I really have some ideas about science I want to organize.

arendt

[Fredda Weinberg]

9. Nah. There was nothing in your post about Islamic culture I didn't

already know. What you leave out is the geographic factor that left former trade routes w/o income. This, more than any other natural factor, led to the intellectual decline of the middle east, as prosperity moved west.

So, we're facing an energy shortage that's mild compared to the water scarcity that defined these civilizations. But we have planning and design capabilities the likes of which the ancients never conceived.

Soap box for science? Heck no, it's called engineering. Who would bother with math and the hard sciences if we didn't have practical applications?

[arendt]

10. You just show up angry, all the time. I'm putting you on ignore. Goodbye. n/t

[BeHereNow]

18. ROFLMAO...

That was to the point!
BHN

[Eurobabe]

11. I have my BA in Philosophy, studied many non-western veins

Our present culture would not exist if it were not for the Arabs that translated and saved many works from Greek and Latin in the 5th-8th centuries. Sometimes I wonder if they should have just kept the knowledge to themselves, alot of good it has done the West. :sarcasm:

[arendt]

13. Well, maybe the EU has finally woken up. The knowledge seems to cause societies...

including Islam, to self-destruct in three to five centuries.

The biggest problem with globalization is that it ties the whole world into one giant entity, so that the lights will go out everywhere at once, with no one left like the Arabs or the Irish to save the knowledge.

That would be a fitting Greek tragic ending to two millenia of Western Civ.

arendt

[lxlxlxl]

12. This is great thank you.

Susan Jacobi was on Ian Masters show on KPFK yesterday which is the best radio show I have found in this country. Oddly enough, the show last week was during a fund raiser, where he said something about how his show was the least popular. I highly recommend his show to any DUer sick of following the hourly updates online or wanting to retreat into more patient analysis of the news or politics.

T is for Television.

[arendt]

14. Welcome to DU, triple X. Is "T is for Television" your sig line? n/t

[CANDO]

15. This should be labeled "Brain Food"!

eom

[femrap]

16. If you know of a good book or

link regarding growning one's food, I'd appreciate it.

I don't know when it happened exactly...maybe during Reagan's term, but I became conscious of people disliking knowledgeable people. Now when I am talking to someone, I see a look in their eyes and they are no longer listening. They're thinking to themselves, "She thinks she is so smart...who does she think she is."

The willfully ignorant get on my last nerve.

[arendt]

32. It depends on locale. First thing to do is check with your local ag agent...

they will know about growing season, crops, soil conditions, pests and predators. They can also test your soil and suggest amendments.

Once you have an idea what to grow, you have to decide if you are growing many things to supplement your own diet or a monocrop to sell at the Farmer's Market.

There is some organization, whose name escapes me, that helps you plan integrated organic farming (where you set the pigs lose in the cornfield stubble, then turn lose some other animal that eats the big droppings (yuch), and so on.) The idea is to maximize your yield from the land by creating an artificial ecosystem. Sounds like a life's work to me.

Of course, I overplan everything. You could probably just plant whatever grows in your area and that would be a start.

arendt

P.S. I don't get that "too smart" stuff because I work and socialize with nothing but arrogant, urban techies. With them, its all about one upping each other and not looking stupid or un-cool. It gets pretty tiresome when every conversation is a verbal knife-fight for pack dominance.

[femrap]

38. Thx for the info...

I planted some squash a few years back and had a huge bounty. Then later I read that the Native American Indians rotated corn, soybeans, and squash. The land had been planted with just corn and soybeans for many years....so when I planted that squash, it just went crazy.

I fear our society is going to turn ugly...I guess if one is hungry, ugly is the going to be the result.

'verbal knife-fight for pack dominance'...yeah, that would start to be tedious. It's just nice to have friends who will let you just be yourself.

edit: can't spell

[bvar22]

43. !

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x5729

[arendt]

45. Cool. Thanks for the link. n/t

[femrap]

74. Your garden is fabulous...

And now I'm hungry! lol.

[truth2power]

103. Oooh! Square foot gardening....I'd planned to try that this spring..

but didn't have much faith in it really working. You certainly seem to have been successful at it.

I live in a part of the country where clay soil is the norm. Just about need a backhoe to do any cultivating at all.

[BeHereNow]

17. "arrogance about that lack of knowledge" THE single most disturbing aspect for me.

Most assuredly, the ingredient that indicates our collective demise
as a culture and society.
K&R
BHN

[kineneb]

19. there is a historical trend in the US towards anti-intellectualism

Response to external events seemed to have generated many of our scientific advances. I think our great scientific era, 1956 to around 1995, coincided with the Cold War. Without that outside "threat", I doubt we would have computers or the internet. The other source of innovation was the Space Race, a subset of the Cold War.

The current "wars" are being fought on the cheap, at least in terms of technology. They seem to think that throwing human cannon fodder at the "enemy" will suffice, even if the soldiers are poorly equipped.

As to finding countries in the ME, Iran is easy. I lived there a year, and have (step)family still there. If we initiate war against them, we will have our asses handed to us.

You are correct about the decline of Islamic intellectualism. Philosophy has hung on in the farther reaches of the Islamic world, and to a surprising extent in Iran. Unlike the Arab peoples, they have a long history of centralized government, and national (as opposed to tribal) identity. Iran/Persia was also the home of the Zoroastrian religion, which employed astronomy and mathematics as part of their tradition. Science and math never quite died there, either. After all, the national game is backgammon.

Persian poetry did not disappear because Islam, nor did some of the ancient traditions- the equinox New Year (Nou Rooz) and the winter solstice observation of Shab-e-Yaldaa. After the Revolution, the mullahs tried to end the observation of all non-Islamic holidays, and have totally failed. In the end they gave up the effort.

[arendt]

27. Agreed. Jacobi mentions the excellent book of Hofstadter (no relation to Douglas H.)...

we really are pretty philistine, with our sports teams tails wagging our university dogs, with our business schools and our cults of efficiency.

Your experience in Iran sounds like it would be worth sharing with DU. It seems the country hasn't had a break in a while - the hideous Shah, followed by the insane mullahs. From one extreme to the other. It would be interesting to know about the influence of Zoroastrianism on science. BTW - I saw a paper by Iranian authors published, in of all places, Academica Sinica (a Chinese journal). Is there any historical basis to Iranian-Chinese cooperation?

Thanks for adding to the thread.

arendt

[lxlxlxl]

61. Doug and Richard

Hey the other Hofstadter is brilliant also!

Are you really surprised that Iranians publish in Chinese? It's just a 1000 year old relationship across central asia...

[arendt]

62. What's sad is that the Iranians publish in English in a Chinese journal that is all English...

English won the fight to be lingua franca, and now, by turning our backs on science, the country is throwing away the advantage that gives us.

Its all so sad.

arendt

[kineneb]

67. Silk road- Persia and China

a long-time connections there. Publishing in English would reach a larger outside audience than in Farsi, or even Mandarin.

[arendt]

69. Nice map. Remind me again how we are going to hold onto mid-east oil, when China and Russia...

share borders with Iran and have direct pipelines. (Not you. Just a rhetorical snark.)

arendt

[kineneb]

71. NeoCons- fine example of anti-intellectualism

They never let "reality"(tm) get in the way of their ideology(religion?). That seems to include geography, for some unknown reason.

like, duh, Iran is far closer to two Big countries, Russia and China, than the US... can we say supply lines?

[intaglio]

20. Philosophy - It's only words but

such important words

[Supersedeas]

25. probably thinking along the same lines

[northernsoul]

21. I'm logging back on to DU for the first time in 3 months just to rec this

Spot on as always, Arendt. I am convinced now, more than ever, that the time is past ripe for an Enlightenment 2.0.

I think that one of hurdles that prevents more people from manning the barricades for reason, is the belief that only vocational scientists can discuss the scientific method. I am an attorney by professional training, and a student of philosophy as a hobby - but I do endeavor to keep myself informed of scientific principles as a means of discerning the difference between reason and unreason.

[BeHereNow]

24. Welcome back Northernsoul-

Sad to see this thread has gotten so few replies, eh?
Kick.
BHN

[arendt]

28. You are right. It is essential for non-scientists to be scientifically literate...

otherwise, science will devolve to a high priesthood; and such priesthoods are way too easy for a moneyed elite to capture.

Remember when every teenager used to work on his own car? Remember when you could buy an electronics kit with discrete resistors and transistors (we are talking 1960s time frame here)?

That all has been sucked inside the corporations, largely due to computers. You can't work on your car without a multi-thousand dollar electronic condition code reader. There aren't many parts you can fix, only replace. The computers are now the most massively complex objects ever to be produced by the billions. Very few engineers have a good grip on entire systems. They know only their piece parts.

Because of such hyper-specialization, the technology is driving us, rather than vice-versa. Then, out of self-interest, the rich decide to fund only technology that increases their stranglehold on society. Since it is a flocking behavior, anyone who tries to point out its globally disastrous trendline can, within a narrow definition of "truth", be ridiculed as either a Cassandra or a conspiracy theorist.

So, we need people like you. People who say "we have a say in what technology will be built and who will own it". Right now, it is obscene that my taxes pay for government grants to researchers - who are then free to sell that technology as their personal property, paying no royalty at all back to their government funders.

Beyond that, is your point (and my point) about the Scientific Method. Our society's reality testing is psychotic. People don't believe in facts or evidence (your territory) or even the laws of nature. They are like children driving a car - its only a matter of time before they crash it.

Maybe I need to go down to the Common and stand next to the fundie nut cases, except I will hand out copies of Newton's Laws or somesuch.

arendt

[bvar22]

46. It is also important for the scientists to be literate.

History, Social Studies, Civics, Art, Philosophy, and Literature (capital "L") can be overlooked in mass producing ignorant but competent Engineers.

I believe that all of the above are necessary in answering the BIG question.

The BIG question is not "Can we?", but "Should we?"

[arendt]

51. Most scientists I've met are literate; but most engineers/techies/computer nerds are not...

the computer guys are the ignoramuses whom Ortega y Gosset railed against in "The Revolt of the Masses". Net-billionaires who never finished high school (I exaggerate).

Today's scientists have to absorb and integrate immense complexity just to do their jobs. Too bad, that the current mis-administration has decided to censor them and ignore them. But, this is America, where football teams drive university investment decisions.

I would make an analogy of your question:

"Can we" is akin to the "syntax of science", whereas

"should we" is akin to the "semantics of science".

If you are a computer person, you know that syntax is trivial to check, while semantics is damn-near AI. In computers, you often have semantic errors leaking through the compiler only to crash the code. Then, you get a human to find the semantic error (i.e., debug the code).

When the same thing happens in science, the code crash can look like Chernobyl.

arendt

[arendt]

34. Apologies. i forgot to thank you for logging in, just to rec this. n/t

[nashville_brook]

22. great post -- i'm going to read it again

this time, with coffee.

glad to see you again, arendt!

[arendt]

29. Sorry I haven't responded to your recent posts. They have been good.

I have sworn off the candidate horse race until the GE. Let the two of them kill each other. I don't care.

So, I will be posting more abstract stuff, like this, in GD.

Nice to hear from you, NB.

arendt

[nashville_brook]

31. i can't do the horserace either -- today's "greatest page" is disgraceful/depressing

was so glad to see something "abstract" and enlightening! makes me feel like less of an idiot for checking in everyday.

[arendt]

33. You know the trick about searching for primaries on the greatest page, and then skipping them? right

[nashville_brook]

40. anything "primaries" goes right past me -- i look for my favorite posters, anyway...

like you and SLAD and many others who have seemingly vanished lately.

[leftofthedial]

23. Oh come on! Things are not that bad.

Go have a venti latte and calm down!You'll wake up tomorrow and the sun will still circle through the sky on its way around the earth. You'll still be living in god's own blessed chosen nation that is more than equipped and ready to stop the evil spread of islamofascism and usher his flock into the end times. Our great corporations are a force of good the likes of which has never been seen in the entire 6000-year history of this planet. They will take care of us citizens, seeing to our every need and keeping us happy and safe. After all, we ARE the corporations and they could not survive without us. If we can make tax cuts permanent and not let terrorist demonrats interfere with the spying and torture we need to make us safe. We have a bewitching array of stellar entertainments--game systems, reality TV, American Idol (not European Idol or some shit!), hot blondes reading news and giving the weather report, sports that kick the ASS of the rest of the world, most excellent cop shows! We are number one! We are number one!

You think too much.

[arendt]

30. "All is for the best, in this best of all possible worlds." LOL n/t

[Orwellian_Ghost]

26. K&R n/t

[JCMach1]

35. You are gravely oversimplifying al-Ghazal... and have gone completely off-track

concerning the Sufis. al-Ghazal was a reaction to the Greek obsessed philosophes in Islam who tried to reconcile Aristotle to the Koran (and what absurdities they got up to!).

Sufis were much more tolerant and open. Also, they never turned their back on learning (at least among most of the Sufi schools of thought).

The wrong turning in Islam is of more recent origin and mostly has to with reactionary backlash against Sufism and the ascendancy of Wahabism.


----


As for America, the anti-intellectual roots are much more likely to be found in the puritan origins of the American self...

[arendt]

37. I am merely quoting Durant. Can't do a history treatise in a DU post. Thought Durant was...

a solid enough reference for this purpose. Apparently, you disagree.

If the "wrong turning in Islam is of more recent origin", then how do you explain that Islam managed to completely miss the Enlightenment? That the Ottoman Empire was the "sick man of Europe" for 200 years?

No, Islam was seriously screwed by the time of the 16th century - the Turkish emperors were largely bug-house nuts. Their military technology was increasingly outclassed because their science had long since gone down the tubes.

I have no problem with Sufi mysticism. I will go Google more about al-Ghazali, but I tend to trust Durant.

arendt

[JCMach1]

39. There were any number of historical factors involved in that.

You seem to forget the high-point of Turkish culture and architecture. What of India under the Mughals?

I don't automatically make the connection between al-Ghazal and anti-intellectualism in Islam... His argument was more nuanced than that. If anything, al-Ghazal clearly delineates what is God and what is Science/Philosphy leaving both to go about their business. He does this specifically in his work "The Incoherence of the Philosophers". Which isn't so much an attack on philosophy but of the wrong-headed approach to use philosophy to prove the existence of God.




American anti-intellectualism has its birth in the Plain Speech and more fundamentalist strains of Calvinism. Puritans contended that only inner-light, or grace, was enough to interpret scripture for example. Why learn Greek or Latin when divine revealation would do. This idea became part and parcel of the several 'Great Awakenings' in American History... the current version of which is on-going.


It's very nice to see someone posting something intellectual though!

[arendt]

42. Just a quote to show that, to one not expert in the subject matter, my take on A-G is arguable...

< EXCERPT from website http://www.sullivan-county.com/id2/ >

Three speculative thinkers, Al-Kindi (801-873), Al-Farabi (870-950), Avicenna (980-1037) Ibn Sina in Arabic combined Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam. To quote "Islam’s Lost Heritage" by Jahed Ahmed, (Note that I edited this.)

Science flourished in the Golden Age of Islam because there was within Islam a strong rationalist tradition, carried on by a group of Muslim thinkers known as the Mutazilites. This tradition stressed human free will, strongly opposing the predestinarians who taught that everything was foreordained and that humans have no option but to surrender everything to Allah. While the Mutazilites held political power, knowledge grew…in the twelfth century Muslim orthodoxy reawakened, spearheaded by the cleric Imam al-Ghazali. Al-Ghazali championed revelation over reason, predestination over free will. He refuted the possibility of relating cause to effect, teaching that man cannot know or predict what will happen; God alone can. He damned mathematics as against Islam, an intoxicant of the mind that weakened faith.

Islam choked in the vice like grip of orthodoxy. No longer, as during the reign of the dynamic caliph al-Mamun and the great Haroon al-Rashid, would Muslim, Christian, and Jewish scholars gather and work together in the royal courts. It was the end of tolerance, intellect, and science in the Muslim world. The last great Muslim thinker, Abd-al Rahman ibn Khaldun, belonged to the fourteenth century.”

It's interesting to note the Mutazilites were attacked by left (atheists, agnostics, etc.) and the right. (religious fundamentalists and traditionalists.) I'm often attacked by both sides myself on this issue. There's also some debate exactly what the Mutazilites actually believed. See the article at Wikipedia (I'm wary of some of their stuff.) and be your own judge. See Mutazalites

Destruction of Baghdad ended most Muslim science and reason.

Many historical accounts detailed the cruelties of the Mongol conquerors. The Grand Library of Baghdad, containing countless precious historical documents and books on subjects ranging from medicine to astronomy, was destroyed. Survivors said that the waters of the Tigris ran black with ink from the enormous quantities of books flung into the river. Citizens attempted to flee, but were intercepted by Mongol soldiers who killed with abandon.

< /EXCERPT>

Note that the excerpts do allow for reasons in addition to al-Ghazali - the Mongols are certainly a good reason!

Insofar as a historical case can be made for the beginning of fundamentalist reaction under al-Ghazali, that is enough for the analogy of my OP. America is going down the drain, like Islam before it because "faith" trumps reason. Do you really want to ignore that major fact?

arendt

P.S. It IS nice to have an intellectual discussion. You have brought new and interesting facts to my, admittedly, meager knowledge of tolerant Islam. I won't defend Durant's take on a-G to the death; but I will poke around a little more, because I like to learn things. (And it looks like Islam in Spain is the latest thing that interest s me. You can blame Jon Stewart for having the author of "God's Crucible" on his show for that interest. Damn you, Jon Stewart (shakes fist). )

[JCMach1]

79. Also, the Arab/Islamic politcal empire was falling apart as well at the time

perhaps the two events (the fall of empire and orthodoxy) always go hand-in-hand. That cognitive dissonance thing can be a bitch.

[arendt]

87. Hmm. Interesting "coincidence". Haven't gotten that far in my self-teaching about Islamic...

history.

It certainly makes sense that, in a theocracy, a political crisis is automatically a religious crisis. Bashing anyone who isn't "with the program" is a great way to enforce discipline for a war.

The parallel of McCarthy-ism during the Cold War immediately comes to mind. And, anti-Moslem agitation during this phony GWOT.

arendt

[Uncle Joe]

36. Outstanding post, arendt!

Thanks for the thread.

Kicked and recommended.:thumbsup:

[nashville_brook]

41. back when i was a philosophy major, i was intrigued by postmodernism/deconstruction

and couldn't understand the backlash amongst my profs against these new-ish veins of discussion. mostly, i wanted my education to be up-to-date, and therefore, more relevant. so, i'm glad i veered off the road, as it were, to learn more about this area. i think that philosophy departments would do well to teach pomo/decon as modern-day sophistry, as there's plenty of parallel there.

you're right though -- that path does lead to advertising (the field i wound up in) -- but i don't think it was lack of dedication to the ideal of reason. it was for lack of gainful employment in "reason." i graduated into an irrational world and the LAST thing a potential employer wants to see on a resume is a dedication to reason. they want unquestioning loyalty right up to the last pink slip.

likewise, a dedication to reason can drive you bat-shit crazy in an irrational world. expecting rational behavior from irrational systems has brought me nothing but pain and longing to grow my own food.

i think that the only rational act in our irrational world is to remove ourselves (psychologically and physically) as much as possible from the stuff of craziness. what this looks like in my life is "a revolution of lowered expectations." no longer do i want to change the world, my workplace or the state of unreason. i don't aspire to more responsibility -- i aspire to less. i want 5 acres, a few goats and time to write and paint. jobs just get in the way of that, pretending to be a "life" worth living.

reading your post i couldn't help but think about reading the comments in the local paper here -- the Orlando Sentinel. There's an ongoing battle to teach "intelligent design" in public schools here, and this weekend there was an article on the state officially referring to evolution as "the scientific THEORY of evolution." if you want evidence of the death of reason, read the comments to this story:
http://www.topix.net/forum/source/orlando-sentinel/TFRP99R4K4MBOEJPT

thankfully, some "reason"able people actually responded to the article -- but note the tone of the those on the other side of the "debate." to them, it's war. holy war.

[arendt]

44. Good question: when does a rational person reach "cognitive dissonance" living in an irrational...

society?

At what point does mass lunacy become irrefutable by words - so that you just have to stand back and let it commit suicide?

I don't know, but I do know that Florida is definitely past that point! How can you stand the corruption, the fundamentalism, the constant flood of retirees and tourists, the suicidal development of the Everglades, the hurricanes, the rabid Batista Cubans? I would sooner live in Montana than Florida.

Interesting to hear that you went from Philosophy to Advertising.

"i think that philosophy departments would do well to teach pomo/decon as modern-day sophistry, as there's plenty of parallel there." SPOT ON.

Good luck. Maybe you can get a house cheap on foreclosure down there. I hear FL has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country.

arendt

[nashville_brook]

52. how i found myself in advertising...

i was in grad school, refusing to do the bidding of my thesis chair on HIS research...his thing was separating Marx's deadwood from the "good stuff." i had a creative thesis almost finished, but he wouldn't accept it - wouldn't even entertain a cursory reading.

MY thesis was about bringing philosophy to "common people" and after laying the foundation, i was in the process of sorting out the modalities to do this (phil in private practice, grade school programs, communitarian initiatives) when an opportunity fell in to my lap to put some of this into action by starting a newspaper -- which i did. dropped out of the graudate program in marxism to sell advertising as it were.

did the newspaper for a few years, made no money and when i found myself ready to take a paying job, the skill set i had cobbled together fit with advertising/marketing firms.

ta-da. i actually did better than my family had braced themselves for. they figured i'd never get a real job with a degree in philosophy (and an EBT in social theory).

i HATE the work now. it's appropriate for a recent grad who is just happy to be employed -- with a few years under your belt, it becomes quite a drag -- especially the politics/asskissing and ripping off clients.

and i HATE florida. i'm a native, returning after my divorce to lick my wounds and begin again among friends not associated with the marriage. i'm in orlando and other than the new b/f, the old friends, the weather and wildlife (take advantage of that by kayaking and it's the only thing keeping me sane right now) -- there's nothing worth speaking of here. the b/f is a native, and close to his parents, but i work on him to consider a move to a better place either in the pacific northwest, western desert or even just south florida for chrissakes. if you must live here, might as well be near Miami.

you're spot on about the foreclosures here. give it 3 years to "catch the falling knife by the handle." too soon and you'll get cut. on our tiny street right now there are 8 properties either in foreclosure or close to it. the properties mostly have negative value too, so they can't even rent them at the asking prices; wanting 1400/mo for a little 3/2 in the 'burbs is insane.

[arendt]

57. Read any of the bios of Bernay's? You know, Freud's cousin, the ur-ad man.

I'm sure you didn't intend to work in the "belly of the beast" when you started your paper.

MY thesis was about bringing philosophy to "common people" and after laying the foundation, i was in the process of sorting out the modalities to do this (phil in private practice, grade school programs, communitarian initiatives) when an opportunity fell in to my lap to put some of this into action by starting a newspaper -- which i did. dropped out of the graudate program in marxism to sell advertising as it were.

That's real praxis. Good for you.

I bought my wife an Einstein doll, made by the "Itinerant Philosophers' Guild", or some such clever name. I hear that philosophers open bars in the Netherlands. Its a sign of civilization going senile that adults want fart jokes more than they want knowledge. Of course, the pomos give philosophy a bad name. I would personally like to rip out Camille Paglia's tongue.

I will try to remember you interesting background if I ever again find myself believing I could make a difference in this blighted country (DU excepted, and its getting hard to believe I can make a difference here, lately.)

Rural New England might be worth considering, but the climate is getting crazy - violent swings, constantly. Still, lots of good folks out near Amherst, MA (the so-called Pioneer Valley). Big on alternative energy.

arendt

[nashville_brook]

107. eupraxia vs dyspraxia

i've always held that "the good life" is available only to those who engage healthy philosophy in praxis. first, figure out what's important to you, THEN do it.

tragically, i held this belief BEFORE the shitstorm that was my adult life; you don't do the bidding of "evil" without suffering the consequences. and yet, the only paying work I ever found was directly in the belly of the beast. it was so bad at one point, i worked for an economic development publication whose sole mission was moving manufacturing out of the US and to non-unionized third world countries with no environmental regulation (a pub like Site Selection). i tried to convince myself that someone with an academic background in marxism gathering information from the belly of the beast had value (and maybe it will if i can ever get published with my story). but, where the rubber meets the road, you're really just another cog in the machine (shamelessly mixing metaphors). sure, i could work with people and issues that gave my life meaning, if i could do without regular pay...BUT, i couldn't AFFORD the luxury (as the ex-husband reminded me constantly). eupraxia vs dyspraxia.

you might be interested in this thread --> http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2883506&mesg_id=2883506

The Death Spiral of the Middle Class in America

[arendt]

112. Yes. I'm halfway through that video. Nice to have numbers to back up my inutition...

I understand the dilemma of making a living that close to the machinery that is doing the damage. Starve, be a slave, or collaborate (house slave) - some choice.

Hang in there. I think the internet will open up an opportunity for real communication. It always takes about a generation for people to stop being hypnotized by a new technology and start to figure out how they have been bamboozled by it. I think that time is coming. People are sick of corporate media, and tune it out as much as they can. If radiohead can kick start self-publishing, we can get the corporate gatekeepers out of the loop.

arendt

[nashville_brook]

108. there's something Clintonian about Bernays

Bernays' vision was of a utopian society in which the dangerous libidinal energies that lurked just below the surface of every individual could be harnessed and channeled by a corporate elite for economic benefit. Through the use of mass production, big business could fulfill constant craving of the inherently irrational and desire driven masses, simultaneously securing the niche of a mass production economy (even in peacetime), as well as sating the dangerous animal urges that threatened to tear society apart if left unquelled.

i was doing the paper during the first clinton campaign and a few years into the administration, and often wrote about "clintonian optimism," which, this passage from Wikipedia seems to sum up quite well -- that utopic vision of a "peace dividend," a "rising tide floating all boats," and the "bridge to the 21st Century." NAFTA was the capping achievement whereby the US would have to only "consume." that our role was to make web pages and buy stuff and all would be well in the world.

i had not heard of Bernays and read the Wiki article with interest. wide-eyed optimism in the belly of the beast is something i'm quite familiar with.

[arendt]

111. I am sick of the cult of optimism. Always look on the bright side...

In America's current situation, optimism is a sign you are NOT paying attention or are flat out delusional.

I never made the connection between Clinton and Bernays. Interesting.

Surprised you never heard of him. I read a book review of a bio of Bernays in Adbusters ten years ago, which put him on my radar scope. I think he had just died.

Have you ever seen the collection of Tom Frank's essays called "Commodify Your Dissent"? It nails the whole racket. Essays about "The Rebel Consumer" and a stock prospectus for "Consolidated Deviance".

arendt

[nashville_brook]

115. i will look for the Frank essays. the clintonian optimism of the early 90s

was prolly well deserved. it was the end of the cold war which promised the end of irrational military spending. i cringe remembering being asked about "globalism" in an interview on our local public radio station where i gushed with trust and optimism for clinton. god, how i was wrong. it was a seductive myth, that the world was becoming one big happy family, and happy days are here again. i, of all people, should have seen thru the bullshit.

to be fair -- the clintonian message has changed since 92. they don't trade on that utopia anymore -- but, boy was it in full effect back in the day. maybe they didn't mean for it to be so childishly simplistic -- maybe that's just how the public received it. but, i definitely remember the weightless feeling that america was becoming a paradise of knowledge workers and web-based consumers. it was supposed to "change the way we work," i.e. that everyone would telecommute, taking cars off the roads. locally-grown produce would be delivered to your door using your web interface. people who lived in far-off places (like east tennessee or central florida) would find "community" via the ones and zeros blinking across cyberspace.

okay, maybe that last one holds -- :)

[arendt]

116. Link to CYD:

http://www.amazon.com/Commodify-Your-Dissent-Salvos-Baffler/dp/0393316734

[bvar22]

47. K&R

Thanks!

[salib]

48. I like the fact that you brought up "hubris"

In your post: "The ancient Greeks probably had a word for this, something like 'hubris'...."

The common translation of hubris is pride. It is interesting how everyone (and everything) is expected to be "proud", school pride, organizational pride, etc. We even have the constant reminder that we should have a "positive attitude", which looks for all the world (to me, at least) as pride.

The Greeks definitely saw the folly (or "karma" as you also pointed out) of pride (hubris). We might do well as a society to remember those lessons.

[arendt]

60. Nice sentiment. Too bad the whole point of hubris is that you're too proud to remember. n/t

[Zynx]

49. Despite a few crticisms others have leveled, this is a sound historical analysis.

The only complaint I would make is that it is unclear whether you recognize that Catholic Europe was largely making the turn towards progress starting in the 12th century. That was an undeniable phenomenon that took place in many different facets of Western Christendom from statecraft to architecture. However, to say that a turn for the better took place is far from saying that true progress was achieved. Merely, there was movement in that direction.

As for Islam, there is no better example of what happened to the progress the Islamic states made than what happened to the Caliphate of Cordoba. From the 8th century to the 11th it was one of the shining centers of the world and it produced a very strong, unified state under Moorish rule. However, sweeping fundamentalist movements from North Africa on more than one occasion dismantled the enlightened and moderate rule and led to the fragmentation and retrenchment of this great society. The ebb and flow produces inconsistent results between progression and regression, but as the religion radicalized, inquiry and progress halted.

[arendt]

63. Oh, I recognize the high middle ages. As you say, movement, not progress.

And, the movement was caused by things like banking - created by the Knights Templars. The movement happened because of interaction with the Moslem world. This interaction seemed to waken Europe from the deep slumber of the Dark Ages.

I am just now seriously learning a little about Islam from its founding to 1200 CE. What a bloody brawl of a religion! Unbelievable tribal feuding. Its amazing they found time to create a high civilization. I don't get it yet. The contradictions just blow me away.

arendt

[Zynx]

96. The internal fighting in the Muslim world was at least as bad as it was in Europe.

No question.

[Hissyspit]

64. Yes, great post, arendt. Good to see it here. Although I think you have overgeneralized pomo/decon

to the point of stereotype. There are problems with structuralism that postmodernism has earnestly tried to deal with and there are problems with postmodernism, but postmodernist theories are not anti-intellectual and not necessarily anti-reason or rationality.

Too busy getting ready for class tomorrow to flesh this out, though.

[arendt]

65. I'm just a techie, so forgive me, but what is "structuralism"?

I am vaguely aware of philosophy - the failure of logical positivism, etc.

Is structuralism the same as logical positivism? Why is there all this "literature" overlay to philosophy.

My knowledge stops at the folks mentioned in Godel, Escher, Bach (i.e., Quine, Church, Turing), plus what Patricia Churchland had to say about the death of positivism in her "Neurophilosophy" book.

I am more than happy for you to educate me; but I will not wade into this glop on my own.

arendt

[Hissyspit]

75. Let me take a stab. I'm really tired and have a lot to do, but...

It's about ideas and meanings and truth and reality. A lot of these things and our understandings about these things show up in how we communicate to each other, so new ideas, new rethinkings of ideas, the differences between ideas and practice, show up in literature, often times, before they show up in art and architecture and politics and the general society. As much as we want to compartmentalize and departmentalize things, there are always cross-disciplinary relationships that are important to consider. Structuralists tend to use analysis solely and it shows up in the study of language and thus literature.

"Language, understood in the broad sense of the term to include all signifying systems, including IMAGES, WORDS, and symbols, gives us access to information," any kind of information, how the world is made up, the non-cultural, and what we learn about it, the cultural, and what we think about it. Philosophy, science, math, logic, all have their own specialized languages and methods for transferring information.

Here is how wikipedia explains the relationship between Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. If you go to the page you will see that Structuralism started as an early modern attempt to explain mental structure (thus, structuralism). Philosophy is about ideas. Ideas are mental processes, so you see a connection there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism

History

Structuralism appeared in academia for the first time in the 19th century and then reappeared in the second half of the 20th century, when it grew to become one of the most popular approaches in academic fields concerned with the analysis of language, culture, and society. The work of Ferdinand de Saussure concerning linguistics is generally considered to be a starting point of 20th century structuralism. The term "structuralism" itself appeared in the works of French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, and gave rise, in France, to the "structuralist movement," which spurred the work of such thinkers as Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, as well as the structural Marxism of Nicos Poulantzas. Almost all members of this so-called movement denied that they were part of it. Structuralism is closely related to semiotics. Post-structuralism attempted to distinguish itself from the simple use of the structural method. Deconstruction was an attempt to break with structuralistic thought. Some intellectuals like Julia Kristeva, for example, took structuralism (and Russian formalism) for a starting point to later become prominent post-structuralists. Structuralism has had varying degrees of influence in the social sciences: a great deal in the field of sociology, but hardly any in economics.

It seems to me, although I could be WRONG, that structuralists tend to read everything through the filter of analysis. Post-Structuralists tend to be suspicious of such an absolute approach, using other tools as equally important.

Meanings control us, and so feminists, for instance, were suspicious of how language supported meanings that were not necessarily true, but argued for a truth - 'woman' being a signifier meaning domesticity, dependence, etc., for instance.

A book I have uses the dialogue between Humpty Dumpty and Alice to explore these issues.

"I meant 'there is a nice knock-down argument for you!'"

"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scronful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more or less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be Master - that's all."

Charles Dodgson was a mathmatician, of course, but also a novelist and philosopher. Post-Modernists embrace him because, even as one trained in logic and one who was living in the era of Modernist thought, he was playing with these ideas and our assumptions. It didn't necessarily mean that the ideas were false, but were only partly true or true to some degree or only true in a certain context (although some post-Modernists would argue that they are false). And none of this means that Karl Rove or anyone can make up their own reality and that makes it TRUE.

It's an important point, that all post-modernists, and thus post-structuralists and deconstructionists, are not unified in their doctrines.

[arendt]

88. That's way more than "a stab". Thanks. Should have Wiki'd "structuralism". Duh.

I will digest and get back to you. --- a little later.

arendt

[kineneb]

70. turning point for Europe- late 14th c., after Black Plague

Losing somewhere between 1/3-2/3 (no one really knows) of population to the Plague forced economic change. No longer could the nobles rely on a large population of very cheap labor. The orthodoxy of the Church also took a big hit, because it (obviously) could not do anything about the Plague. Add to that the disenchantment of almost everyone with Papal and Church corruption and the "Babylonian Captivity" (here a Pope, there a Pope, everywhere a Pope, Pope...). The Church (upper levels, anyway) became totally corrupt in the 15th century and lost much of what was left of its credibility.

The changes came slowly, but without the depopulation of the mid-fourteenth century, the Renaissance and Renaissance philosophy might never have happened. The return to the study of ancient learning (what was left of it) opened up the medieval mind to a broader world view.

Suggested reading: Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, the Calamitous Fourteenth Century.

ed: nothin' like having a degree minor in Medieval Studies...

[truedelphi]

73. What a brutal way to get an economic turn around

Also it was bad for those who survived the initial Bubonic Plague, only to be burned or otherwise killed for consorting with the devil in order to be spared.

Even owning or allowing a cat to visit your domicile put you in risk of being deemed a witch.

So the kitty saved you by eating the mice and rats that carried the fleas, but you were killed for having the cat as your "familiar"

[kineneb]

76. it certainly was not "intentional"

After the Plague, hand labor became much more dear. The feudal/manorial system relied heavily on lots of peasant labor. With few left to tend the fields or do hand work, the surviving nobility had to "pay" more for everything. The remaining workers could actually bargin a bit for their labor.

The late 14th century also marks the beginning of a "middle class" of non-noble merchants who made their income from trade. The guilds (the unions of the day) demanded fair prices for their goods; lacking today's "globalization", they mostly got their asking prices. Many guild members were well off, with large workshops and many apprentices.

So where am I going... without the downward distribution of wealth (caused by the Plague and subsequent labor shortage), there would have been no non-noble "leasure" class with time to consider philosophy. There would still have been a highly stratified two-class society, with nobles (not necessarily prone to philosophical thought) and poor peasants (who spent all their time working..."Think? Godsteeth, hand over the damned rake, ya' ass, I don't have time to think").

...Hmmm, sounds like the direction the NeoCons want to take us.

[arendt]

83. I have reasoned that way in the past...

that the middle class is the bulwark of society, because:

the rich don't need an education - they have success handed to them.

the poor can't afford an education, and besides, it doesn't gain anything in a society where the good jobs are hereditary.

So, if you destroy the middle, you destroy the society. The middle is, in chaos theory terms, "the edge of chaos" - the most flexible and evolving part of the society, where all the innovation happens. The rich are "frozen" in their reactionary greed. The poor are in incessant anarchy, competing desperately to stay alive.

Yeah, I agree with all you said about where the NeoCons want to take us.

arendt

[nealmhughes]

94. Every modern revolution, while nominally led by "aristocrats" were dependent upon the middle for

financial support and the lower rungs of society for foot soldiers. Witness Rhys Isaacs' "Transformation of Virginia" for an American example, the upper planters could be safely engaged in the Revolution without too much fear of loss of life, as they had middle men as the nominal leaders, and they coopted the ways of the "common man" to achieve their aims.
Lenin was a hereditary nobleman, but we would not consider him an aristocrat, per se, not like Phillipe Egalite in France, for example, and most of the leaders of the French and Russian Revolutions were led by "middling sort" as the quaint term was used.
The earlier mention of Kant was marked with great interest by this reader: it seems that Kant seems to come up more and more in dialog in political discussion these days. Backash against the anti-Kantian anarcho-capitalist and Strauss schools, I think!
Some dip into the Bible daily to refresh their souls, I prefer to leave that for my Easter Duty and funerals and refresh mine by daily reading "What Is Enlightenment?".

[Hissyspit]

77. What's interesting though is that there was not much immediate effect on visual conventions in art.

Visual art seemed to pick up where it left off (or didn't leave off), at least in the SHORT term. Oil paint and printmaking and the use of paper will show up in the 1400s, of course.

[kineneb]

80. recovery time was needed

Say your town, in 1325, had 200 people. Post 1349: subtracting 1/3 of that is about 66 people (no fractions allowed), and 2/3 is 132. Whole towns and villages simply disappeared; there were simply not enough people left alive to keep them going. It would take almost the entire 15th century for the countryside to repopulate to anywhere close to pre-Plague numbers.

The changes in the arts came slowly because of the depopulation (fewer artists and patrons). Artists in the Italies (yes, plural) influenced the direction of the visual arts in the 14th century and the Franco-Flemish composers influenced the direction of music composition until around 1500. I would say around 1425 is when what we would recognize as "early Renaissance" arts started to be recognizeable.


The Black Plague has been with us ever since, and during the 15-16th century would periodically sweep thorough local areas, claiming more victims. This is why the populations did not recover quickly. The Plague did become slightly less viralant over time.

It is still endemic in the rodent population of the Sierra Nevada range in California (don't pet the cute chipmonks).

[Zynx]

95. I've taken a couple Medieval courses and there was a serious argument

about when Europe started turning around. However, I think it is incredibly simplistic to look at the whole period from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance as one period. By the 12th century there is little doubt many aspects were starting to turn in meaningful ways. Trial by ordeal was on its way out. Intellectual exploits were beginning to expand. States became increasingly centralized. As I said, the fact there was movement should not be confused with a satisfactory end state, but there was movement.

[tom_paine]

50. "sort of like planning how to stop an armored division with a Civil War musket."

Yep. That and worse. Terrific post, arendt.

Consider this, though. I will make a disclaimer and say this is not my idea, but Freidrich Reck-Malleczewen's in his book "Diary of a Man in Despair" who lived during a recent time of great anti-intellectualism devised and maintained by the same basic types of people as the Bushies who are devising and maintaining our current nightmare descent into Unreason. Which is to say 1930s Germany.

Malleczewen hypothesized that Nazidom and by extension brutal human authoritarian evil, was some sort of psychic pustule that had to burst every so often in every society, though not necessarily all at the same time.

And yes, in my lifetime, still far from over, we have gone from realtively rational to deconstructed postmodern virtual slaves, living in a society in which there is no such thing as truth, no such thing as lies, only they who have the loudest megaphone.

But I won't reiterate and rephrase what you have already said so well.

But what do you think about Reck-Malleczewen's hypothesis? Could this jus be a feature of primate nature? This psychic pustule, now swollen by decades of rationality and reality enforced peace by nuclear arms, could it be ready for it's periodic explosion again?

Are we are simply ready, collectively, so ready to strip naked paint our faces blue and go on a mostrously huge killing rampage, metaphorically and perhaps literally speaking of our society, that we can't shed our rationality fast enough? Add to that the phenomena which says that those sorts of people are the kind that Bushies and Nazis prefer to rule, being easier to lead, mold, deceive and steal from. Not to mention aim their unquestioningly obedient and unreasoning selves at whatever enemy they prefer, foreign or domestic.

I am coming around, fatalistic as is is, to Malleczewen's conclusion, having lived through a kinder and gentler version of what he lived through (thank God for some favors...call it rationality's last gift to the last enlightenment-based generation, that our Bushie Hitlers have to take this slow and tortuous kinder and gentler course, relatively-speaking, because rationality and our Constitution, Declaration, and Bill of Rights made a more aggressive, violent course impossible for the moment).

It just may be our nature that these psychic pustules, ironically brought on by the advancement of peace and reason, will eventually cause the primate line to undergo what the reptilian line did 65 million years ago.

Just something to ponder, and a voice from history long past and long dead. A man who would very much understand and feel at home in Bush-Occupied Amerika, especially because it is so much kinder and gentler than the place he came from (for the moment...just wait until the pustule bursts)

[Laelth]

54. Roger Waters in The Wall

Seems to hypothesize that the dramatic and rapid increase in the power of women in the early 20th century had a great deal to do with the growth of fascism. Conservatives, in my experience, fear powerful women more than they do any minority. Men, it seems, assert male power (bombs and blood) when threatened by female power.

Not sure from where Waters mined this idea, but it rings true to me.

:toast:

-Laelth

[arendt]

59. Aw, now you got me started on the topic that gets me in trouble...

Malleczewen hypothesized that Nazidom and by extension brutal human authoritarian evil, was some sort of psychic pustule that had to burst every so often in every society, though not necessarily all at the same time.

Go get a copy of Morris Berman's "Coming to Our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West".

He argues that all Western heresy is an eruption of bodily energy - energy that has been heavily suppressed in the schizoid West by the Mind-Body Duality. He argues that body practices like chanting and meditation are common to all new and genuine religious movements. But, as soon as the movement succeeds, it orders such practices shut down. Hence, an unending cycle of orthodoxy and heresy, with violent eruptions at the boundaries between them.

Does that sound like your unpronouncable M-guy's idea?

Berman categorized Naziism as "mystic ritual slaughter" of a psychically projected enemy. Berman, like Mark Twain, says that history rhymes, not repeats. Each eruption of heretical energy is shaped by its context. So, as you say, we are experiencing another outburst of Nazi-like fundamentalism in the context of American history and wealth. How it plays out is anyone's guess. But it will be different than Germany. We are richer, more secure, stupider. We have more private guns, more crazed religious sects, more prisons, more immigrants. It will be completely different.

So, in general, I agree with you.

arendt

[jobendorfer]

66. The (ancient) Greeks had an interesting take on this

See Euripedes' _The Bacchae_.

The Anthesteria as a safety valve for the necessary, periodic eruptions of irrationality.

Poor old Pentheus became exactly what he most hated: the God himself.

I've always wanted to see this done with Tiresias in the guise of Ken Kesey (or any of the other Pranksters),
Dionysos as Jim Morrison, and Pentheus as Jerry Falwell, or closer to my own home state's collection of
batshit loonies, Lon Mabon.

C.G. Jung analyzed the Nazi period of Germany in a series of papers in _Civilization In Transition_,
treating it as an eruption of mass archetypal possession. Unfortunately, while descriptive, his
papers were not prescriptive.

Rule number one: when you're in the grip of an archetype, you won't listen to anyone who tries to
lead you out of it.

In five years of practicing psychotherapy, the only cure I found for it was time.

J.

[arendt]

68. Athenian Mardi Gras - LOL. This has been a most educational thread.

Yes. Berman quotes Jung about the blond beast breaking out of the dungeon.

I don't think America is quite in the grip of this madness yet. The cynical neocons who set this up made sure that there were absolutely no truly possessed people near their power. The fundies on the scene are all flawed quacks: Dobson, the late and unlamented Falwell, the gold-plated Robertson. Bush is a stooge. So, how can the archetype take power in these flawed vessels? Huckabee? Not a chance.

The one upside of advertising is that all this theocratic hokum is simply not selling to anyone not locked in some claustrophobic WalMart-ville out on the prairie. The youth hate the fundamentalist culture.

However, the cure of time is something we don't have much of - five more years of this, and we are all serfs.

Still, interesting discussion.

arendt

[jobendorfer]

72. might I suggest a slight shift of emphasis?

I don't think it has much to do with Bush or Dobson or Robertson, or insert-your-favorite-bad-hair-dude here, being *individually* possessed.

Rather, it's that <some> archetype has seized whole swaths of the population, which is why Bush/Dobson/Robertson/et al
are in charge. In the land of the mad, the batshit-crazy are the adapted. The rationally-oriented find themselves at
a severe disadvantage where irrationality and its accompanying chaos reign, those who are fundamentally irrational
(pardon the pun) are much more skillful at operating in such environments.

That's why I think this question is so important to undertand and answer, even though I have no effective answers
myself: how do you defuse archetypal possession on the large scale? It's hard enough to do, 1:1, in your office.

J.

[arendt]

85. "how do you defuse archetypal possession on the large scale?" - great question...

I certainly don't have an answer.

Archetypal insanity seems like a dangerous, hard-wired, ancient mechanism that can kill us.

I am forever asking why, as Yeats said: "the best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with a passionate intensity". It is certainly a question worth discussing here at DU.

You make another point:

"In the land of the mad, the batshit-crazy are the adapted. The rationally-oriented find themselves at a severe disadvantage where irrationality and its accompanying chaos reign"

This is the opposite sentiment of "in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

I acknowledge the truth in what you say, but I can't tolerate it happening. If everyone goes bat-shit at the same time, they will all die. Only those who flee will survive. It seems to me that the rich assholes foisting the insanity upon us, for their gain, do not comprehend that they will not survive a systems crash. The whole world will go down at once. Then six billion people will scour the planet, like a giant infestation of wolves. No "gated community" is going to survive that. Some of those wolves will be organized military bodies.

Someone needs to get the rich to turn off the crazy-making machinery.

arendt

[jobendorfer]

90. sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound that bad

First, I don't think everyone will get swept over the cliff.
Geez, even here on DU there are outbreaks of rationality, GD-Primaries notwithstanding. (just staying the hell out of there for a while)
This thread might even count as an instance, it seems like there is fruitful discussion here, and I for one am learning.

The wave from the last big impulse to dubious cognition -- the 9/11 attacks -- has subsided to a considerable degree.
At least driving around northern Oregon, I don't see the bumperstickers, flags, and other tribal symbols on display any more.
I think Bush/Cheney tried pretty hard this fall to get some trouble stirred up with Iran, but few seemed to take the bait.

I did bring it up to make a couple of observations:

1. We -- by which I mean the subset of DU (or the population) that thinks logically, empirically, and works at keeping its thinking testable -- are at a disadvantage in a political and social climate that is characterized by unconsciousness, anti-intellectualism, fear, its cousin anger, and perceived threats to its comfortable numbness. Logic and reason are NOT likely to carry the day, we have to devise other ways to communicate our message and effect change. (I will draw the line at white belts and shoes, though :-))

2. However you model the irrationality: a fear of the void, a sense of unrootedness, possession by archetype -- it is an unavoidable part of the human
condition, the name of the game is: how can we turn this to socially productive and beneficial ends (instead of corporate ends)?

3. If nothing else works, present a business case to the rich: you'll make more money with a sane, happy, and stable middle class?
If that doesn't work: you'll live to enjoy it with a stable, happy, sane middle class?

And on that note, bed beckons, for soon Dawn will spread her fingers of rose, and gently pull the pin on the hand grenade :-)

See y'all tomorrow,

J.

[arendt]

100. Well, it is still a challenge...

I recommend Morris Berman's "Coming to our Senses". The entire book is about outbreaks of archetypal energy. At the end, he talks about "the gesture of balance" that is needed. Without it, he says we are on the way to planetary suicide as the final solution to the Self/Other split.

Just FYI, he recently wrote "Dark Ages America", in which he joins other authors (such as the late, great Jane Jacobs (Dark Ages Ahead) ) in saying that it is over and we should grab as much culture as we can and go hide in the hills while there is still time.

I can't see us getting out of the mess we are in until the pain of reality wakes these sleepers up. And that pain is going to mean serious hurt to us as a society. Just imagine suburban America with gasoline at $10 a gallon. Utter economic collapse.

So, I am going to "hope for the best, expect the worst".

arendt

[tom_paine]

102. But the rich are captives of their primate natures as much as we all are.

I am reminded of the experiment in the 80s with the monkeys and the cocaine. If I recall correctly, monkeys in cages had two buttons, one for cocaine and one for food (water was supplied them).

Most of the monkeys eventually died because they could not stop pushing the cocaine button and it's attendant "pleasures" long enough to get some food. It didn't happen overnight, but eventually the monkeys grew weaker, starved and died.

Pleasure. Be it sexual or any other kind, drives us in our quest. For monsters like Bush and Cheney, their pleasure is power, control, domination, and bloodlust. For their authoritarian followers, pleasure comes from unquestioning obedience to Fuhrer and the superiority over target groups conferred by Fuhrer and Party. Plus, the pleasure of not having to think, just follow.

For the rich, the reinstitution of aristiocratic privilege and a renunciation of the ideas that "all (people) are created equal" must be immensely pleasurable. Almost everyone gets pleasure from feeling superior to others in some way (another sad truth about the human condition...witness daytime talk shows and COPS), so just imagine the pleasure of our Elites at not only feeling superior to the ignorant peasantry, but the reinforcement of that belief by SOCIETY as aristocratic privilege returns in all aspects of life.

That doesn't even address the "cocaine rush" that must come with the fattening wallets as the rest of society is drained into their pockets as we return to a pre-1776 state of affairs.

So, we might present a "business case" to the rich, but they are crazed with the cocaine rush of being Gods among Peasants (who wouldn't be? ...we think we would, but I wonder...absolute power corrupts absolutely) and the orgy of dollars pouring into their bank accounts as the Middle Class, worth trillions, is liquidated?

Could one present a rational case to a cocaine addict in the midst and throes of such a peaking high? Could one expect people who are just now beginning to feel that immense and powerful rush that the accepted inequality charaterstic of all Totalitarian States, not just our nascent BushPutinist variety, is bad for business and ultimately themselves?

[arendt]

104. That post deserves its own thread, so I could K&R it. So clear. Nothing to add. n/t

[nashville_brook]

110. i agree with everything you say, but would add that the physical effect of cocaine

is to damage the pleasure center of the brain, making it UNABLE to perceive pleasure. i almost hate to bring this up, b/c it points to a kind of puritanism whereby the wrong sorts of "pleasure" really do rob the body of that which they seek. but it's a fact nonetheless. meth is even more destructive to that area of the brain.

wondering if there's a similar logic with wealth. like how ben franklin said "wealth finds vice." that, maybe wealth shuts down an individual's ability to perceive to pleasure.

isn't this the subtext in all the Paris Hilton/Britney Spears mania -- that people can't look away b/c they expect looks/money/fame to destroy the person and we want photos of the moment that happens so that we can feel better in our economically depressed, flabby, anonymous lives?

[arendt]

113. What you say sounds like "Dallas" done with REAL rich assholes...

people loved to watch the rich be miserable. The fact that Paris and Britney are REAL adds that much more.

Interesting add on about pleasure centure destruction. Got to think about that.

arendt

[nashville_brook]

109. we are in the grip of Thanatos on a social psychological level...

it's so pervasive we don't even notice it anymore. for example, nearly all pop culture narratives (movies, tv, novels) involve a crisis or tension that is told thru the lens of murder. you can't have a work of fiction without conflict, and murder the easiest, most available means to tell this story.

in this way, a novel that is really talking about growing up, or rites of passage, uses murder as metaphor for transformation (the child murders the parents literally and figuratively).

politically, we can't imagine any sort of social program that isn't some sort of "war." the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on terror.

Thanatos is reigning unchallenged. "abstinence education" is a war on teenage pregnancy. see, we can't even invoke Eros in her own territory. remember this?




to me, this is the image to remember when wondering how to overthrow Thanatos. it's just an index -- not prescriptive -- but it illustrates the basic idea. we've been here before.

in this vein, Wilhelm Reich's Mass Psychology of Fascism can be useful -- also speaking to mind/body dualism.

[arendt]

114. Eros/Thanatos - have you read any Ken Wilbur?

You are just walking down my reading list. I have Reich's MPF. It is right on. Working class repression and hatred.

It seems like the neocons have used every CAUTIONARY tale about the Fascist era as a bloody PRIMER. Big brother as a how to guide. MPF as a program of social engineering.

It is sick. And as you say, quite death-loving.

Morris Berman says that we are headed for racial suicide; and, given the violence-marinated content of all our fiction, I believe him.

arendt

[nashville_brook]

119. no ken wilber -- but it's an idea that's been floating out there in various incarnations...

chris hedges discusses thanatos some in his book about war, "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning."

it was a theme in my philosophy study, though -- identifying binary oppositions and seeing where we fall.

[Laelth]

53. Beautifully written.

And worthy of discussion. Sadly, I have nothing to add. k&r

:dem:

-Laelth

[arendt]

58. You just did. The Roger Waters comment. thanks. n/t

[tomp]

55. arendt, thanks for another great thread.

i was just taking today to my wife about the raging stupidity, not just in america, but frankly, here on du as well, as evidenced by the clinton/obama retardathon. it's so hard when people don't know they don't know.

i always get something good to think about from your pieces.

and i agree with you 100% on florida. you nailed it.

[The Wizard]

56. Writing and thinking

like this keeps me coming back to DU. Brilliant.
We have become comfortably numb docile fools, lulled into a stupor by government controlled media.

[SoCalDem]

78. Can't "forget" history you don't know..

Teaching to the test, pretty much precludes any real education these days.

Some of the best teachers I ever had, told us they did not care if we remembered dates & historical trivia..they preferred that we grasp the bigger concept, and develop a hunger to learn more..on our own.

Philosophy requires active thought, and inquisitive attitudes.

People who only see in "black & white", are unlikely to care what other people in other times have thought or tried to teach us.

We have reached a point in time, where the past is no longer important. We are busy installing satellite dishes on the eaves of roofs supported by no walls, no foundations..

[nikto]

81. For probably 60% of Americans, truly understanding Philosophy...

...is as likely as a meal-worm using a drill-press.

Nah. Gonna'. Happen.


America may be doomed by it's own shallowness.

[arendt]

82. But, what % have ever done that. What's important is the "delta", the change...

that we have seen in the last twenty years.

I mean, even in the 60s, most people who talked about philosophy did so either to get laid or to score some dope.

The issue is not that the majority is not enlighten-able, but that the majority is actively persecuting the minority that is enlighten-able - and thereby killing the society.

Can you buy this line of thinking?

arendt

[nikto]

89. Yeah, I can buy that, up to a point.

It sounds like something I was reading online a couple weeks ago, about
something called, Ponerology--The analysis of evil in terms of human
political activity (or something like that).

It referred to America as a "Pathocracy".

It's getting harder & harder to argue against that idea.

This was the site:

http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/political_ponerology_lobaczewski.htm

It presents some fascinating and compelling ideas, although I am not yet ready
to buy into the whole world-view it espouses.

But still, as this point, I am listening.

[Echo In Light]

84. Tag line mass marketing is the new philosophy. "Just do it." In other words, don't think

[arendt]

86. Couldn't agree more. Subliminal and direct commands to "stop thinking". n/t

[McCamy Taylor]

91. Great post. However, you describe only one Christian tendency within the US.

Consider Max Weber's assertion that the various puritan strains of protestantism actually discourage meditation, spirituality and excessive displays of piety in the pursuit of salvation while encouraging scientific and rational endeavor as true acts of devotion. I think that this puritan strain is still alive and well and will keep our schools full and our businesses competitive for a long time to come.

We are also seeing a large influx of immigrants from India and other Asian countries. Nondualism is an important feature of the spiritual tradition of people from these countries. Rational thought and success in academic pursuit is commonly highly prized. These values will be absorbed into the general US community since they are good for business.

The African-American community, though generally religious, is beginning to learn that education means improved income and social standing. A college degree goes a long way towards correcting the income disparity that exists between Whites and Blacks. An advanced degree gives Blacks a higher income on average. With the economic disadvantages under which the group suffers, I find it unlikely that Black Churches will begin preaching ignorance as salvation.

Finally, Latinos are the fastest growing demographic group, and they also know the value of an education. Soon, their clout will be felt in greater union enrollment, in the voting booth.

I see the Fundamentalist Churches as a fad being used by some employers and monied interests--the same people who used to use racism to bust unions--to split the working class to keep it divided. Get working class voters to vote on noneconomic issues like abortion and gay marriage and they will not vote on issues like health care and union rights and job safety.

Sooner of later, the working class always sees through these scams.

Meanwhile, the tech industries are going to need educated, skilled employees--witness the increase in illegal techs from India.

The bottom line, I think, is that 21st century economy is too different from the economy of the Middle Ages to make a complete analogy, though certainly the human motivators are at least partly the same. Persia is certainly laughing at us, since they are the home of dualism, from which we suffer so terribly.

[arendt]

101. I accept your points about Weber and the Asians...

not sure about Blacks and Hispanics. Those demographics strike me as quite macho (and therefore anti-intellectual). I haven't seen a lot of Calvinism (i.e., Protestant Ethic) lately. The rich seem to be totally corrupt, third-generation, financial manipulators and outsourcers, while the hard-driving small businessman (the footsoldier of Calvinism) is screwed out of any opportunity by WalMart and all the other big box stores selling cheap Chinese crap.

I am also not sanguine about the survival of tech industry in this country. The Indians have taken a good bite out of the software biz. They and the Chinese have huge pools of really talented folks (I mean the Darwinianly-selected top 1% that win places in their universities) compared to our declining tech enrollments. The Chinese have just taken over the synthetic chemistry biz, thereby throwing large numbers of chemical scientists out of jobs in the U.S. When you look at the cost differentials (10:1 for chemists) in the two places, why should any hi-tech that can be done there stay here? High-tech usually produces tiny, very high value stuff (chips, biochemicals, specialty materials) that is easy to air-freight.

I do agree that historical analogies are guaranteed to fail in the long run. The world is different today. Technology has made it one small town. Perhaps the analogy we need to study is the Italian city-states and their guilds during the Renaissance. Noble families, patronage, Machiavellian scheming, condotieri, Church-State brawling, etc.

Thanks for the comments.

arendt

[Skittles]

93. awesome analysis

very scary stuff and I agree with your recommendations but it will be tough - just that fact there are a "significant minority" of people still supporting bush inc. gives me shivers :o

[Alexander]

97. K&R. Excellent reading and it needs to be seen.

[kywildcat]

98. Excellent post. Thank you.

[derby378]

105. If pressed to identify yourself as adhering to a particular philosophy, what would it be?

Me, I'm a Skeptic. You have the modern skeptical movement with people such as James Randi, Paul Kurtz, Penn and Teller, and the like who spend a lot of time researching claims of the paranormal and supernatural (and thus debunking a lot of scam artists in the process), and I'm part of that. But then there's the philosophy of Skepticism itself, which comes out of Greece as a logical progression from the Atomism of Leucippus and Democritus and the Sophism of Protagoras (with, perhaps, some input from the Lokayatas and Ajnanavadas of the ancient Indian states). Skepticism, as a philosophy, more or less focuses on how to achieve a sense of tranquility (ataraxia) in the absence of an ultimate criterion of truth.

As such, I'm not saying that there is no such thing as absolute truth, but trying to prove the existence of absolute truth is another thing entirely. Like Heisenberg once said, "What we observe is not Nature itself, but Nature exposed to our line of questioning." Just ask anyone who studies quantum physics and/or Einstein's theory of relativity, let alone theoretical GUTs such as superstring theory or loop quantum gravity.

[arendt]

106. I'm a post-Newtonian scientist (i.e., Heisenberg, Godel, Turing). We can't know all...

Heisenberg uncertainty limits physical prediction
Godelian incompleteness limits mathematical proof
Turing uncertainty limits computing

So, I would say that I am a rationalist who recognizes the limitations of rationalism. Many people (especially laissez faire economists) missed the 20th century revolution and are still living in Newton's "control freak" world.

I haven't got time to go deeper in this post. Maybe later, if discussion warrants it.

arendt

[PatSeg]

117. Fascinating and informative thread

Thanks for posting it. Reading the entire thread, I realized how rare such discussions are these days, though I remember a time in my youth when they were quite common. It appears that today's youth has been taught "skills", but very little critical thinking. The college students I know are extremely bright and competent, but not terribly inquisitive or knowledgeable. They've been reared to be competitive and successful, but rarely question the world around them.

Thanks for stimulating my mind. Does happen too often these days.

[qwertyMike]

118. Dark Age Ahead

By Jane Jacobs

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Age-Ahead-Jane-Jacobs/dp/140...

She says it has already arrived and we don't know it. The worst thing is that we have forgotten what we once had.

PS: The OP mentioned the Mathematics that that Arab culture gave us.
But I'll never forgive them for al-Jabr (Algebra) :)

Mike