• jorndoe
    3.6k
    The (political) populism post-truth anti-intellectualism extremism black-and-white-ism that we've seen may be the proverbial pendulum thing, like being swung by the other invisible hand. There are people/voters that rave and rant; after all, it's usually easy to find fault in public figures, politicians, power wielders, and so they gotta' go, say no more. Political campaigns sometimes end up being about discrediting others (even mudslinging) rather than justifying own political program.

    Pushing such a down-trend isn't really that hard, is it? Promoting distrust is easier than promoting trust, just takes a few good men (orig) — a popular tool among demagogues. Attacking/rejecting can appear to display a kind of strength.

    mqu71x68s69inaj8.jpg

    There's more to the story, though. Freedom to criticize is important. Intellectuals may find (genuine) fault in abstract systems/groupings or whatever. Ironically then, without differentiating, say, on the one hand, riling up the same distrust coming from anti-intellectualism, and proportionate contextual pertinent critique on the other, they carry blame just the same, compounding down-trend, and that's evidently also easy enough to come by.

    Well, history tells stories of injustices authoritarianism fascism superstition descent, and things worth standing up for. But, hey, homo sapiens may be gone tomorrow. Worth standing up? (Otherwise perhaps to the detriment of some, however fleeting?)
  • unenlightened
    9.2k
    What have intellectuals ever done for us?

    They have no idea how to save humanity from itself. None!

    But they sure know how to make themselves seem indispensable.

    OK. I'm gonna imagine for a moment that we all know that Brexit is nonsense, that Trump is inane and insane, and we support stupid just to fuck you off, because you have fucked up the world so completely there is nothing else to be done.

    So get out of that without moving!
  • unenlightened
    9.2k
    Or, here is a talk that starts off with brain talk, and answers your question only in the last minute.

  • jorndoe
    3.6k
    Hyper-critique could be down to finding a single fault + subsequent complete dismissal, not in logic/mathematics, but more social/human matters. Normalization of hyper-critique is a part of what I had in mind. Some trends and thoughts that might be related to what I'm thinking of (with the requisite name-dropping) ...

    science (Popper (1930s)) → methodical falsification attempts
    suspicion (Ricœur (1960s)) → onwards to radical suspicion
    cynicism (Sloterdijk (1980s), Žižek (1980s)) → knowing and not caring
    bullshit (Frankfurt (1980s)) → not caring
    postcritique (Sedgwick (1990s)) → reparation of paranoia
    distrust (Latour (2000s)) → on to radical distrust

    So, post-truth, the Trump, pandemic reactions, Evangelism resenters demagogues onboard for the ride, UFOs, mind-control, ...? Examples can be found here on the forums, too. Say, where does "being reasonable" fit in? (in a colloquial sense, with a nod towards ethics)
  • unenlightened
    9.2k
    This is a nice quiet corner where we can put the world to rights without being interrupted by the world and his brother.

    Say, where does "being reasonable" fit in? (in a colloquial sense, with a nod towards ethics)jorndoe

    Sound judgement? It requires the love of wisdom. There are threads currently on what is love, and what is stupidity; they are both somewhat confused.

    I am start with moral realism as an unconditional condition on our philosophy. Plato puts 'the good' at the heart of philosophy, and the final object therefore of reason, defined as sound judgement, not merely sound reasoning.

    So I lay this out in the form of a conditional, because that is how it can be understood universally:

    IF you do not really value truth,
    THEN you are not worth talking to or listening to.

    I bypass all the hypothetical baby killers and axe murderers by staying right now in the present of this dialogue. This is the necessary condition for talk to be meaningful. It doesn't "have to be meaningful", but if it isn't then I am not interested.

    In this sense, philosophy is religious in just that way that science pretends not to be, from the outset. Sophia is an object of worship, that her lovers seek to realise in their lives, not a convenient advantageous heuristic.

    So we are dying in our own waste because we live in a godless age. You are right to put science in the dock. But Popper was trying to mend something in science, but ended up curing scepticism with more scepticism. Personally, I blame Descartes. The original thinking thing and originator of mechanical man. Also he was French!
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