99% of Western intellectual life, it seems, is focused on the negative? Why?

WISDOMfromPO-MO

Negative criticism. Defeatism. Pessimism. Ridicule. Condescension. Doomsaying. Etc.

One or more of those words characterize intellectual activity in the West, I would say.

And contributors to Western intellectual life, such as Ken Wilber, who do not espouse a worldview dominated by negativity seem to be overwhelmingly ignored, dismissed as quacks, etc.

Maybe it is just my perception, but it seems that the proponents of the most popular ideas cannot present them in a positive, respectful manner. Philosophical materialism? We are nothing but matter. Existentialism? You and your life have no inherent essence, purpose, etc. Grow up, you theist! Determinism? You are not an author of the content of your experiences any more than a rock is an author of the content of its experiences. Get over it!

Basically, science, philosophy, theology, works of history, etc. that is intended to uplift, impart wisdom, help one understand, make life richer, etc. seems to be exceedingly rare.

To be honest, the dominant ideas and debates, such as free will versus determinism, seem to invariably be parts of agendas. The agenda of people thinking about those ideas and carrying out those debates seems to be an agenda of trying to destroy certain thinking/worldviews, not expanding knowledge and wisdom, helping everybody live better lives, etc.

I suspect that what I have observed above has a lot to do with the postmodern attitude that is regularly lamented by defenders of the status quo. People have lost faith in the ability of our intellectual traditions to contribute anything good to our lives other than new technologies, it seems.

Science, philosophy, theology, works of history, etc. that enrich and expand our individual and collective spiritual and intellectual horizons seem to be sorely lacking.

It doesn't matter if the source is theistic or atheistic, liberal or conservative, left or right, secular or religious. It doesn't matter if it is Richard Dawkins, The Philosophy Forum, Thomas Sowell, or somebody or something in between. It is mostly negative and depressing.

We are told that the work of people like Neil deGrasse Tyson will overwhelm us with awe, wonder, understanding, etc. We get more of the same. Climate change deniers are stupid. Religion is nothing more than myth, superstition, delusion, etc. Science is the greatest thing ever to happen to all of time and space since the invention of the wheel. You are so fortunate to be living in a democracy--otherwise life would be "nasty, brutish and short". Etc. Etc. I feel so uplifted!

Seriously, why is our intellectual life in the West so negative and depressing?

I suspect that it could be due to denial about progress. We want so desperately to believe in progress and the universality of our ideals, beliefs, values, institutions, etc. that we have become Enlightenment fundamentalists who must portray anything that does not fit the narrative--mass shootings; the persistence of creationism / Intelligent Design; women's inability to "have it all"; etc.--as heresy, anomalies, bumps in the road, etc. and double down with philosophical materialism, New Atheism, transhumanism, scientism, illiberalism disguised as liberalism, etc.

In my opinion, juxtaposed with the mainstream characterized above, Ken Wilber is an example of an intellectual whose thinking is inspiring, refreshing, original, thought provoking, edifying, useful, realistic, etc. without any of the negativity, arrogance/condescension, doomsaying, etc. that seems to dominate not just our intellectual life, but our entire civilization.

But then we are told that Wilber is a New Age quack with a cult following.

Anyway, who do you think are other examples?

If you disagree with the thesis here and believe that Western intellectual life is not characterized by negativity, please illustrate with examples. Daniel Dennett is really an underappreciated disciple of the gospel of optimism, maybe?

Wayfarer

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/27/culture-death-god-review-terry-eagleton

Forgottenticket

I don't know much about Ken Wilber. But I did watch a youtube video where he claimed to stop his brainwaves. I think people should be careful about making silly claims otherwise they will find themselves with quack status.

WISDOMfromPO-MO

I don't know much about Ken Wilber. But I did watch a youtube video where he claimed to stop his brainwaves. I think people should be careful about making silly claims otherwise they will find themselves with quack status. — JupiterJess

I would wager every dollar that I am worth that something far fetched could be found in the work of many mainstream intellectuals.

Seeing something far fetched out of context isn't sufficient reason to dismiss an entire career as the work of a quack.

Even Kant, Nietzsche, Hume, Plato, etc. probably had less-than-admirable moments.

Contributing to intellectual traditions does not make one superhuman.

Ken Wilber seems no less of an intellectual to me than, oh, Sam Harris.

WISDOMfromPO-MO

Also, I often discover books by other thinkers in which Ken Wilber's thinking is in agreement with the author's and is cited for support.

Have those writers been brainwashed?

tom

Anyway, who do you think are other examples? — WISDOMfromPO-MO

How about this guy:

Myttenar

As I am influenced by ideas of moral relativity and the principals therein, I agree with you to a point in that any mindset framed from an emotional place will tend not to be completed or often the logical process has been interrupted by emotional thinking.
I believe an overly optimistic person would be just as self defeating and moreover being positive while you're trapped in a burning house (excuse the metaphor) then the positivity perspective could be even more detrimental and frankly resembles mental illness. Be a realist. Nothing is good or bad and the universe doesn't care about the ideas of right and wrong that our society accepts and propagates. the attacks that ensue to a speaker of such a bold statement, evokes by emotional responses instead of a logical approach. These conversations end with insults instead of refutation and the unrefuted argument is ignored and forgotten amidst the emotions and drama.

dclements

"In my opinion, juxtaposed with the mainstream characterized above, Ken Wilber is an example of an intellectual whose thinking is inspiring, refreshing, original, thought provoking, edifying, useful, realistic, etc. without any of the negativity, arrogance/condescension, doomsaying, etc. that seems to dominate not just our intellectual life, but our entire civilization.

But then we are told that Wilber is a New Age quack with a cult following.

Anyway, who do you think are other examples?

If you disagree with the thesis here and believe that Western intellectual life is not characterized by negativity, please illustrate with examples. Daniel Dennett is really an underappreciated disciple of the gospel of optimism, maybe?"
-- WISDOMfromPO-MO

Perhaps the reason you it seems like "western intellectual life" (whatever that really means) seems so "negative" to you is that you are either too use to getting smoke blown up your backside from other sources which tend to tell you everything is just 'fine', or perhaps you are just having the usually difficult everyone trying to deal with a different narrative than what you are use to. IMHO if one wishes to avoid negative thoughts and ideas they should stick to watching TV and/or read fictional books instead of studying philosophy or any other studying of what people call the 'truth'.

Luckily as a nihilist, I'm fairly inoculated against most minor negative ideas and problems you are talking about since I commonly have to try to wrap my head around things far more unpleasant than that. If at any time things become to much for you, you can always just choose to go back to any sugar-coated narrative you find more pleasant than western intellectualism; which is what everyone else does when they become unhappy with any narrative they get tired off.

WISDOMfromPO-MO

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/27/culture-death-god-review-terry-eagleton — Wayfarer

Are Eastern traditions more constructive?

Wayfarer

↪WISDOMfromPO-MO

It’s not that simple a comparison. But the point I immediately thought of in response to the opening line of your OP was Nietzsche’s prediction of the inexorable march of nihilism, following the Death of God. Then I recalled Eagleton’s book, Culture and the Death of God which does address the concerns in your OP.

First there were the fabled philosophers of the Enlightenment, leading the charge against priestly infamy and angels-on-a-pin theology; but none of them could envisage a world without God, even if they preferred to worship him in the guise of reason or science. Any damage they may have done to religion was repaired by the German idealists with their woolly notion of spirit, and by their followers the romantics, who reinvented God as either nature or culture. You might think that Marx made a better job of deicide, but on close examination the communist hypothesis turns out to have been a surrogate for the heavenly city. And poor old Nietzsche, for all his bluster and derring-do, ended up resurrecting Christ in the form of the Übermensch. The 20th-century modernists fell into the same trap, vainly appealing to art to plug "the gap where God has once been", and if a few freaky postmodernists have managed to break away from religion in recent years, it was at the price of a complete denial of hope and meaning, which no one else is willing to pay. "The Almighty," Eagleton concludes, "has proved remarkably difficult to dispose of." Rumours of his death have been greatly exaggerated: he has now put himself "back on the agenda", and "the irony is hard to overrate".

One perspective is that most of us will hold something in the highest esteem, and that is what we ‘worship’ - not necessarily literally, but metaphorically at least. Hence ‘the other’, those with radically different notions of the highest good, become the target. There’s a of this polarisation occurring, especially now. I don’t think I have a solution but I think Eagleton at least helps make the problem more clear.

WISDOMfromPO-MO

One perspective is that most of us will hold something in the highest esteem, and that is what we ‘worship’ - not necessarily literally, but metaphorically at least. Hence ‘the other’, those with radically different notions of the highest good, become the target. There’s a of this polarisation occurring, especially now. I don’t think I have a solution but I think Eagleton at least helps make the problem more clear. — Wayfarer

Is that why Ken Wilber is said to be a New Age quack? Because he doesn't go along with what the establishment holds in the highest esteem?

Or is there some objective criteria, such as passing the "peer-reviewed" test, that disqualifies Wilber?

Even if Wilber is a New Age quack, he obviously gives enough people something constructive to be well-published and have a loyal following.

People turn to other sources to try to find something constructive. The pop-psychology industry is the most obvious example.

My observation is that, no matter if the subject matter is negative or positive, there is very little about mainstream intellectual life in the West that is constructive. Nihilism or no nihilism, the objective rarely seems to be things like greater understanding, greater wisdom, more productive lives, etc. There rarely seems to be any objective other than publishing rather than perishing.

And the work of those who get published sets the tone for the rest of us, I think it is safe to say.

A thousand years from now, maybe nobody will care about Ken Wilber. Will anybody care about Daniel Dennett? Billy Graham? Steve Jobs?

On the other hand, a thousand years from now people will probably still refer to the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Or I could be completely off base and the work of Richard Dawkins has had a positive impact on people who care about truth, justice, etc. as much as the work of Mahatma Gandhi. I don't know. I can only report my perception from my vantage point.

Wayfarer

Is that why Ken Wilber is said to be a New Age quack? — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Hey I don’t mind Wilber. I’m not an enthusiast, but I think he’s alright. I bought his first book when it first came out and I’ve read some of the rest. I have Quantum Questions which he edited.

He is counter-cultural. That is an expression you don’t hear much any more, ‘counter-cultural’.

Anyway, as I say, I’m not a fan, but I don’t think he’s a crank.

Dennett is the poster boy for scientific materislism.

T Clark

Negative criticism. Defeatism. Pessimism. Ridicule. Condescension. Doomsaying. Etc.

One or more of those words characterize intellectual activity in the West, I would say. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I disagree with this characterization. I'd say 90% of the intellectual life everywhere is focused on advancing technology and making money. I think there is some truth if you apply your formula to political life, but no one ever claimed that politicians are intellectuals.

T Clark

To be honest, the dominant ideas and debates, such as free will versus determinism, seem to invariably be parts of agendas. The agenda of people thinking about those ideas and carrying out those debates seems to be an agenda of trying to destroy certain thinking/worldviews, not expanding knowledge and wisdom, helping everybody live better lives, etc. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

It seems to me your characterization has some truth if you change "intellectual" to "academic." I think that is a symptom of the sad state of those ideas and arguments.

T Clark

I would wager every dollar that I am worth that something far fetched could be found in the work of many mainstream intellectuals. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I agree with Jupiter Jess. If you make goofy claims, you undermine the credibility of everything you say. That's not inappropriate. Of course, most claims presented in philosophical arguments are goofy, but that's ok, since they have no effect on external reality anyway.

Ken Wilber seems no less of an intellectual to me than, oh, Sam Harris. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Quod erat demonstrandum

dclements

People turn to other sources to try to find something constructive. The pop-psychology industry is the most obvious example.

"My observation is that, no matter if the subject matter is negative or positive, there is very little about mainstream intellectual life in the West that is constructive. Nihilism or no nihilism, the objective rarely seems to be things like greater understanding, greater wisdom, more productive lives, etc. There rarely seems to be any objective other than publishing rather than perishing."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

As far as I know, science (or secularism for that matter) does not claim that there is a clear cut objective/constructive way to do things so if one believes it can really provide such thing instead of a best guess of such things, they are a bit mistaken. However this isn't really that much different than the occasional doubt that some theists have about whether they are following the true word of 'God' or even if there is a 'God'.

To me, it is healthier to occasionally doubt one's beliefs than for them not to ever doubt them, but that is merely my own humble opinon.

Also it might help you to think of this kind of doubt and/or no objective 'good'/'evil' standpoint as a 'negative'/anti-construct thing and more or less merely just other kind of viewpoint much like any other.

If you understand subjective morality you realize that those that think along such lines are not arguing against objective morality or against 'good' but are merely more critical about what they call 'good' as opposed to those who assume that they are 100% sure they know what good is and/or are too afraid to admit that are not that sure.
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"A thousand years from now, maybe nobody will care about Ken Wilber. Will anybody care about Daniel Dennett? Billy Graham? Steve Jobs?

On the other hand, a thousand years from now people will probably still refer to the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Or I could be completely off base and the work of Richard Dawkins has had a positive impact on people who care about truth, justice, etc. as much as the work of Mahatma Gandhi. I don't know. I can only report my perception from my vantage point."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

I highly doubt any of us can really predict what will or will not be important in a thousand years from now, but if the past events are any indication of the future than I believe that theist and non-theist beliefs will at some time merge enough that there isn't such a great difference between them, Also it is likely that both Eastern and Western cultures/systems of belief will also intermingle as well, or will intermingle more than they already have.

I know a few books which may have some of the answers you seek, but I'll wait to hear a response from you in case you really don't care about my opinion in which case it would be a waste of my effort to put down the information that would allow you to find them.

gurugeorge

↪WISDOMfromPO-MO

There are two aspects to this, the first is the two world wars and their respective aftermaths, the second is the more purely academic cults of Critical Theory and Postmodernism.

The first factor is the reason why the intelligentsia in general have had a somewhat crestfallen demeanour throughout much of the 20th century, and that atmosphere still lingers. Prior to that, in the 18th and 19th centuries, people were more optimistic because they could see the results of classical liberalism in terms of actual progress - real progress along many dimensions, for the first time in humanity's existence. But confidence in that older liberal order fell with the debacle of two world wars, which some felt "weren't supposed to happen" in terms of the older classical liberal predictions.

And this general lack of confidence is what's given a wedge for the more particular, more bizarre and crabbed forms of the PC cult to hold sway in universities.

Wosret

We simply process negative emotions, and the rain clouds before the positive emotions, the silver linings. So that one must move through them first always. Trudge through hell before you make it to the gates of heaven. The holy scientists decree that this is probably because it's just more costly, and life threatening to not be all over the dangerous, and negative, which could harm, disrupt or kill you. Whereas missing something positive isn't going to kill you, or destroy you, unless of course, you begin to chronically miss the positive. Even suggest that attempting to find a silver lining to the most dire of circumstances, or an upside to some downsides is downright immoral!

Thorongil

Interesting post. There's a book I've been eyeing for some time called The Idea of Decline in Western History by Arthur Herman, which treats of this general fixation of which you speak. You may find it relevant.

Alas, I do happen to find Ken Wilber to be a bit of a quack, though.... :(

Wosret

↪Thorongil

I don't know who either of them are. Having looked them up some, wikipedia says that Herman is a proponent of the great men theory of history. Wilber both looks pretty greater, and is massively more influential and well known than he is. That means, by his theory that he is objectively greater.

Now, this isn't like populism, or that they are just thought to be great, or that greatness is generated by their influence or popularity, but that they were in fact great and that is why they're so influential and popular. One cannot cherry pick them either, as saying that some men of history were great is a flaccid assertion, far far distinct from "world history is the history of great men.". The only out I see is to attempt to distinguish between period history, and general history -- attempting to claim that well someone may be popular and influential in their own life, they aren't genuinely great without general history staying power. As in, they weren't just popular in their time, but are commonly known and influential across time periods, and into modernity -- but that's a short-ass list, and neither them are on it.

BC

wikipedia says that Herman is a proponent of the great men theory of history — Wosret

Odd how many books he wrote like "How the Scots Invented the Modern World" or "How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World" and "Freedom's Forge: How American Business produced Victory in WWII" where it was collective efforts, not single individuals that made the difference. But... he also wrote several great-man books too. Like one on Churchill and Ghandi, or Wilson and Lenin, and MacArthur.

The Great Man shaping history theory is, I think, the result of many biographers' efforts rather than the efforts of great men. Of course, we can't re-run history with different characters to see how somebody else would have managed the same situation. Suppose Stephen Douglas had won the election of 1860, instead of Abraham Lincoln. What would have happened next? Don't know, won't know, can't know.

A lot of people were involved in putting the Civil War on--not just Lincoln and a few generals. The North won the war because of the efforts of millions. The South lost the war despite the efforts of millions (or they seemed to lose it; sometimes one wonders...)

I think you are right about historical staying power. Lincoln is a great man, proved by his historical sales receipts. He's still selling well. One doesn't maintain brisk sales in bookstores for 157 years for no reason at all.

BC

Interesting post. There's a book I've been eyeing for some time called The Idea of Decline in Western History by Arthur Herman, which treats of this general fixation of which you speak. You may find it relevant. — Thorongil

Haven't read it, sounds like a good book.

Civilizations rise and fall, for sure, but "Western Civilization" appears to be going strong, and many of its paradigms are dominant. Naturally there are people who wish western civilization would crumble, or think it has crumbled, or is on the verge of crumbling -- and those are mostly people who are born, suckled, and raised in Western Civ. Some of these people seem to be suffering from cultural self-loathing, or have concluded that Western Civ is all about the white man screwing over brown people, or white men screwing over women, or white people screwing over everything.

It's much easier to imagine Western Civ getting its comeuppance than it is to imagine African Civilization getting a comeuppance. After all, a Civ has to have accomplished a lot before it is really ripe for scathing criticism. Western Civ has accomplished a lot, whether some of its beneficiaries like it or not. Fuck'em, I say. To paraphrase Chairman Mao, building a great civilization is not a tea party. Had the Europeans immediately recognized the rights of Aboriginal people in the Western Hemisphere and had turned around and gone back to Spain, Portugal, and England, then the Indians would still be hunting buffalo, cutting hearts out of sacrificial victims in what isn't Mexico City, and Italy would not have developed pizza or the Marlboro Man have never galloped into the sunset. Tragic.

We aren't the only Civ, of course, and Eastern Civilization -- in one form or another -- appears to be doing well too. And no one should think that Eastern Civ was much much nicer than West Civ as it collected together the resources to build with. Civilizations on the make usually operate on the principle of "take it easy, but take it."

Achieving the pinnacle of power just isn't a nice process. One might wish that iron, coal, lumber, and amber waves of grain could be had by consensus building negotiation, but that isn't the way the world works.

Wosret

↪Bitter Crank

I completely agree, and am not a proponent of the theory myself. I'm not even sure if that guy is strongly, or what kind of issues with it he has addressed or anything, just on the surface it struck me that the one guy's theory implies that the other guy would be objectively greater than he is.

BC

Here's a picture of Arthur Herman. He appears to be excessively happy. Call him up before the Senate Subcommittee on Suspicious Activities and find out what he's up to, or on.

31l+1Anv6CL._UX250_.jpg

Wosret

↪Bitter Crank

Looks can be deceiving. I said that the other guy looked greater. He dangerously reveals his barefoot to me though, both would be nice, but based on that you can see a nearly collapsed arch good connection to the knuckles, but small thin heel. Where's your back and legs bro? Better arm alignment than mine though.

99% of Western intellectual life, it seems, is focused on the negative? Why?

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