In terms of distribution of funding, they are. The ‘trendy’ causes that get the limelight and funding tend to be the least effective (short term and long term). — I like sushi

This isn't determined by environmentalists, but mostly by the mainstream media and corporations and the super wealthy.

This happens in a few ways.

First, raising 10 million, or even a a few hundred thousand, can in itself propel you into the limelight.

Second, mainstream media focuses mostly on corporate friendly messages and criticism, so these are the "environmentalists" that are allowed to talk. When something "environmental" is proposed as a success, there is not allowed any criticism from environmentalists that disagree. It will be the "environmentalist" against denialist, without exploration that the "environmentalist" has a partial, or simply wrong, understanding of things; this leads to both inadequate policy as well as fueling the denialism by advancing lot's of stupid that have legitimate critiques (biofuels being a great example of this process), and so the media does another round of apologists for stupid and denialists.

What's never addressed is that there is an alternative to both a stupidly insufficient analysis of things as well as absurd levels of denalism and mental gymnastics. Again, biofuels is the best example where experts since the beginning have made the clear cut, irrefutable case, that biofuels cannot possibly displace gasoline on any meaningful scale (it can be a useful technology in the context of extensive and radical changes to our production systems: lot's of trolley, trains, bikeable cities, local gardening, decentralized closed-loop systems, and so on; things that are becoming trendy today were not invented today).

Third, when something not corporate friendly does reach public attention the mainstream media does its best to discredit it, so it's a "negative attention". Al Gore had a simple "these problems are real and severe", "we can't continue business as usual message", "money vs the entire planet is a false dichotomy", "the sooner we act the better", that couldn't be ignored because he was famous (but still only got media attention after some years of touring with his talk). Mainstream media pretends that Al Gore is somehow discredited or then "it's old had". Al Gore presented a good analysis, not perfect but completely adequate to inform policy, but you don't remember this "limelight" because the mainstream wasn't fawning over him.

Mainstream media fawns over projects and proposals that do not represent a threat to business as usual. The people championing these projects and proposals are generally useful idiots if not fantasy utopists. They easily get funding because "they are passionate" and have things that are easy to discuss, because they don't threaten anyone -- such as "fusion is coming! hurray" or "we're going to have trains ... Trains In Tubes!!! OMG! Hurray!" or "look at this render of a futuristic vertical farm in a futuristic city that does not exist that I've done zero calculations about the presumably solar based renewable energy needed to power these artificial lights" -- and they get media attention for the fundamental same reason.

However, talk to any serious environmentalist and you'll likely hear the same simple message again and again: business as usual is not sustainable and will lead to destruction (that's what unsustainable means), the more business as usual continues the more our ecosystems will be damaged and the less and less easy "fixing anything" becomes and the less richness we leave our descendants and the more suffering we create in humans and other species; business as usual won't fix itself (that's what makes it business as usual) and will push back (incumbent industries can finance lobbying for no change; future clean industries that would exist but don't yet exist do not balance this lobbying because they don't exist to be able to lobby; it is left to poorer to stand-up to big corporations and the super wealthy). There's lot's of difference of opinion on what exactly to do, but I think you will be hard pressed to find a credible environmentalist (someone who has really done serious reading and thinking) that disagrees with this message.

What you are addressing is the circle of hype that is a side affect of the mainstream media not doing credible journalism and credible analysis. The problems can no longer simply be ignored, so there is now recognition that "there is a problem", but without proper analysis they simply promote what is essentially magical thinking that talks about the problem: the latest startup making outrageous claims, the fanciest futuristic render, and most of all the economist that says things like "what about these coal jobs, what about the investors?", and "economic growth needs to grow; regulation, no matter how well intentioned, harms that growth", while giving "equal time" to anyone willing to make any plausible denialist claim even if conflicts of interest are up front and obvious and that the claims can't withstand any scrutiny.

If they’re taking from poorer countries then it goes with what I say (plus in terms of emissions China is comparatively low per capita compared to western and middle eastern nations. China isn’t exactly a ‘poor’ nation). — I like sushi

What's even your claim then? You say that it's making these poor people less poor, not just focused on survival, that will make them concerned about the environment, and so lead to ecological prosperity. China was poor, now is less poor (maybe even not poor), but has caused massive ecological damage throughout this entire process.

Likewise, the US is not poor, on per capita basis anyway (most Americans, the median, seems miserably poor to me from a Canadian-European-Nordic-Switzerland perspective), yet the US does massive ecological harm. I agree, we don't want poor and miserable living conditions, in poor countries nor the US, but there is no evidence that wealth magically leads to environmental concern and adequate policies. The hypothesis that "dirty growth is needed to get going and with that wealth clean growth will magically take-over" simply has no basis in reality. You can have clean growth (both wealthy and poor nations have demonstrated clean growth policy successes), but not only does dirty growth not lead to clean growth, but dirty growth creates path dependency on more dirty growth: the US cannot now easily leverage its wealth to create a network of high-speed rail; it is further away from creating efficient rail infrastructure rather than closer, compared to countries that made such long term investments and central planned schemes decades ago.

The most famous example of dirty-path-dependency is a car friendly policy in city centers displaces walking and bicycles leading to more cars and then congestion which then actually decreases speed compared to the previous bicycle / rickshaw / trolley based system; not only does a car system cost way more in terms of money people need to "economically compete" and has large health costs, it gets people places slower than before. Once entrenched it's difficult to reverse. Not only is this dirty development, it doesn't even accomplish anything; cities that pursued bike and walk friendly planning (internalizing the cost of driving in the city to the driver), attract business and have a built in higher standard of living of less pollution and more daily exercise. In terms of policy alleviation, mobility is one of the highest predictors and a system where you need a car to be mobile becomes nearly by definition a system where the poor stay poor since they can't afford a car, or just barely (so cities try to have some minimum public transport anyways, but there's little money for that when massive resource, planning and health externalize subsidies for cars are maintained).

Dirty development leads to dirty outcomes, clean development leads to clean outcomes. Clean policies can be put in place at every step of economic development. Dirty industries put a lot of effort into getting poor countries on a dirty path-dependency development process, but this does not benefit them (it benefits elites that take bribes and then stash that cash offshore, and benefits a small middle class that directly or indirectly manage clear-cut logging, slash and burn, unsafe factories and can feel like "a real civilized westerner") nor does it lead to magical clean outcomes: it is a dynamic of corruption, slumification, political oppression, and environmental destruction (and it is a dynamic that can be implemented in the middle of Africa or the middle of Detroit).

What is based on that? Sorry, you lost me. You mean ‘resources’? We have enough. The data, ALL the data, indicates that raising the standard of living in developing countries help preserve them environment. — I like sushi

This is simply not true. China has had the fastest rise in standard of GDP and living standards (according to our shortsighted metrics), but at large environmental cost.

In the West there was a phase of "getting so rich we can have nice plants around", but this was achieved by simply offshoring all dirty production to mostly China and India and resource extraction to mostly Africa and South America. Furthermore, fracking and tar sands, soil degradation, and insect declines (likely due to poisonous pesticides) are strong clues this phenomenon was short term (lobbies are now strong enough to on-shore environmental destruction), and of course if climate change turns large parts of Europe arid then the recent European net-reforestation doesn't matter in the slightest.

Is your position just denying these environmental costs?

Or are you arguing that sacrificing the environment for short term economic development has some sort of magical green teleological end?

The alternative view is that it's environmental protection requires regulation, to internalize environmental costs. Do you disagree with this statement?

Lots of money pumped into dealing with climate change and environmental issues does little to nothing - usual due to misinformed activist who understand little and don’t bother to look at the bigger picture. — I like sushi

If lots of money wasn't pumped into making conservation reserves, many more species would be extinct.

It lots of money wasn't pumped into environmental research, we wouldn't even understand the problems very well.

If lots of money wasn't pumped into research and development and then subsidizing renewable industries, even the "not there yet" technologies the film describes wouldn't exist.

If the comparatively little money (compared to fossil fuel company propaganda) wasn't pumped into advocacy and public awareness, we could easily be in a situation where there is no general alarm and anxiety about climate change or other problems (that's it's just "natural cycles" or small amounts of damage we can ignore).

Raise GDP so people can be in a position to give shit, have smaller families and have time to focus on more than finding food to eat that day (poverty results in ravaging the immediate environment. — I like sushi

This is simply not the cause of our global environmental problems.

GDP growth does not result, in itself, in people people giving a shit. US and China have high GDP but the prevailing attitude is to not give a shit about the environment.

The poor people of the world do nearly insignificant environmental damage on a global scale. The poor, especially the people so poor they cannot have any environmental considerations, emit insignificant amounts of green house gases and also do insignificant amounts fisheries damage and rain forest clear cutting and river and lake pollution.

The few issues that "poor people" are associated with (such as poaching and disastrous blood mining), it's wealthy economies creating the demand. It's not poor people who say "hmm, I think we need more blood diamonds and ivory around here". It is the high GDP nations creating the demand for these resources, and supplying all the bribes and weapons to make sure poor countries don't develop governing institutions to be able to deal with these problems themselves. Likewise, where you have massive influx of agricultural poisons, its not the poor countries that produce those poisons.

Destruction of the environment is a rich mans game.

As I mentioned in another thread, of the factors Technology, Affluence and Population, it's only Technology (i.e. the environmental cost of a unit of production) and Affluence (how many units of production we choose to consume above what we need) that we can act on at order or magnitude scales.

Yes, definitely we should strive to alleviate poverty, but that alleviating poverty through expanding our present unsustainable production system will somehow magically result in people caring about and then solve environmental problems is a complete chimera.

Money was pumped into biofuels for no good reason. — I like sushi

Here, you and the the film is correct. However, what you and the film ignore is that plenty of environmentalists were against biofuels. When these policies were being discussed, commentators would always add on "some groups say push for biofuels could lead to increased food prices in poor countries"; those groups were environmental groups. The biofuels thing was a fossil fuel company marketing coup; a way to slap "green" on gasoline by adding 5%-10% ethanol derived from the Amazon (only possible with subsidies because it took as much fossil fuels to make the ethanol as it represented).

You can see plenty of presentations on youtube (from that time until today) laying out the calculations that it's simply impossible to produce enough biofuels to replace gasoline, that clear cutting the amazon to make biofuels is absurd, and biofuels production is not even fossil-energy negative.

Biofuels was something politicians could get behind to say "look! we're doing something green", but I know of no environmentalist who lobbied for the biofuel policy we have today.

Of course, there are nuances like with everything. Environmentalists aren't against biofuel research to see how efficient it's possible to make and under what conditions is it an actually renewable energy source of energy (not taking more fossil fuels to make, not degrading the land base it's on). And although it's easy to show that whatever improvements are made biofuels cannot possibly replace gasoline on the scale we use it today, there is of course niche things that need a liquid fuel source boats: helicopters, propeller planes, trucks (where trains aren't an option), off-grid construction equipment, are difficult to replace by rail or batteries. Of course, this is only sustainable if these niche applications represent a volume that can be sustainably supplied.

And these prediction about the biofuels policy have come true (there was never any doubt): biofuels has done nothing to significantly reduce gasoline consumption (the volume is totally meaningless), biofuels have raised food prices, biofuels aren't energy positive, and biofuels degrade the land base. I.e. nothing about the current biofuels policy is sustainable.

However, the "deep ecology" or "basic math" side of environmental movement never supported biofuels and accused organizations that did of participating in corporate green washing. Mostly, organizations lobbying for biofuels were corporate groups (wanting to get the subsidies or oil companies realizing it's an excellent situation to shift focus from trains and batteries to biofuels), but the plausibly legitimate environmentalist that did support biofuels didn't make a counter argument to the above points but rather "trusted the policies would address and resolve those problems, not the full solution but a good incremental step, we need other technologies and changes on a massive scale too, etc." In other words, they were completely fooled and served as useful idiots, but they were never so stupid as to claim "biofuels can replace gasoline on the scale we currently use it" to begin with.

The film is correct about the massive amounts of green washing, but is incorrect in believing "environmentalists" wanted the biofuels policy we have today; it was always a corporate thing.

When in comes to developed countries the US needs to step up. Europe has made some steps that are better than nothing. — I like sushi

What's the cause of these better policies? GDP? US has has higher GDP per capita than Europe.

Look at anything Europe has done which has helped the environment and you'll see regulations that industry was against and that represented an economic cost in the short term, and you'll see lots and lots of money poured into subsidies or new industries, again an economic cost in the short term.

In other words, sustainable policies cause sustainable development, not GDP increases as such, and those policies have a short term economic cost both in harming incumbent industries (internalizing cost of production) and massive subsidies required to create new cleaner industries.

It’s a case of whether or not we can prepare and deal with what’s coming. — I like sushi

Way phrase this in a way that implies our environmental problems are an externally imposed force that all we can do is try to prepare. There is no self balancing limit to our environmental problems; the limit is extinction for which there is no preparation.

I agree with your positive attitude that "we can solve these problems" but I disagree with you framing that environmental groups have been somehow counter productive (some have, but the one's that haven't are the reason the entire world isn't smog choked and nearly completely oblivious to impending systemic environmental collapse), that raising wealth standard of the poorest people on the world will in itself accomplish something environmentally significant (making people less poor is of course morally significant and we should do), or that technological breakthroughs like fusion will save the day (where we have cleaner industries, such as in Europe, it's due to regulation, large investments in R&D, large subsidies to incubate cleaner industries; of course, the more research breakthroughs the better, but they are a small element; lot's of technologies are hundreds of years old, such as trains, and we can constantly improve them but there's no need to wait around for breakthroughs).

In either case, the tradeoff in management is due to deadlines, materials and skills. For writing a philosophy book you can take as long as you like and only be finished when you personally are satisfied with the quality.

As for the audience, assuming you are targeting a specific audience then there will be pros and cons to different stylistic considerations. However, you can always just write the contents of one book in two books for different audiences; a scholarly work and a popular work, or then just move all the scholarly stuff to footnotes and appendix.

You seem to be setting up a false dichotomy that something has to be sacrificed. This simply isn't a theme in philosophy, nearly all philosophers wrote how they thought good writing was; some wrote short and concise cause they thought "get to the point" is what's good, other's wrote thousand page tomes that took decades, and a rich mix of theater and fiction as well as oral debate. There's simply no tradition of philosophers lamenting having to choose between quality considerations.

You do have to choose an audience, even if it's just yourself, as @I like sushi and @Amity and others have mentioned, but this is rarely achieved by sacrificing quality, rather it's the creative challenge of writing to get your audience interested and keep them interested in what you want to share, as you want to share it.

Who heard it from...
Oooh, I heard it through the grapevine — Amity

It doesn't seem to me a controversial topic among historians, the whole printing press and internet parallel. It's been something that has been talked about since normal people could post to the internet, indeed even before that just speculating on computer technology.

I bet you have lots more where that came from.
I now want to read Voltaire, badly and bigly.
Wasn't he the one who said:
'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.'
He would have loved Trump...and his Tweets. — Amity

Fortunately, there has been lot's of historical analysis of these pamphleteers; it's really interesting stuff, with the same anonymity based outrage, flamewars and feuds and so on as happens today on the internet.

Is there a theme tune for that ? — Amity

The theme song is "The Joe Rogan Experience".

I don't understand this conclusion. Perhaps I am tired or just stupid... — Amity

It's a historical parallel that is of course not exact. I didn't come up with it, I heard it from a historian.

There is a basic historical hypothesis that the internet is a similar disrupting technology as the printing press and culture is going through a similar transformation.

In the manuscripts era it was extremely difficult to trade in contraband literature. If you were a monk and wanted to write and copy heretical texts, you'd need to somehow organize having the supplies and time to do so. The Catholic church was constantly investigating such terrorist cells and burning books and people to keep the subversive fire well under control. To publish "officially" one needed to pass censorship, to pass censorship meant conforming to support of the institutions of church and government.

The printing press changed this dynamic, turning subversive literature from a cat and mouse game into a unstoppable tsunami. Protestant Reformation was probably impossible without a technology to actually print bibles for people to read in their own language, as well as the contraband pamphlets justifying doing so.

So, there was a first phase where subversive literature could overcome institutional oppression in a way infeasible before. In this first phase subversive literature is not "too far out there" and usually still produced by intellectuals in the system (Luther was a priest who wanted to reform Catholicism, not make a radical break with it, and certainly not an atheist).

However, as aristocratic institutions then lost legitimacy as well as their own motivation to censor effectively, there is a second phase where the dominant cultural conversation moves to this parallel pamphleteer world. There is a still a nominal "official world" of bureaucrats, courtiers, and papal bulls, but normal people don't care too much about it anymore. As more authors write and circulate pamphlets, authority is undermined further. Voltaire is probably the best example here:

He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties, and was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy. His polemics witheringly satirized intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day.

[...]

In a vast variety of nondescript pamphlets and writings, he displays his skills at journalism. In pure literary criticism his principal work is the Commentaire sur Corneille, although he wrote many more similar works—sometimes (as in his Life and Notices of Molière) independently and sometimes as part of his Siècles.[119]

Voltaire's works, especially his private letters, frequently urge the reader: "écrasez l'infâme", or "crush the infamous".[120] The phrase refers to contemporaneous abuses of power by royal and religious authorities, and the superstition and intolerance fomented by the clergy.[121] He had seen and felt these effects in his own exiles, the burnings of his books and those of many others, and in the atrocious persecution of Jean Calas and François-Jean de la Barre.[122] He stated in one of his most famous quotes that "Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them." — wikipedia - Voltaire

After the collapse of the old aristocratic and church institutions, new institutions emerged that were credible within this environment of "free speech" (governing institutions that respected free speech and no longer engaged in counter-productive censorship, as well as media institutions that built up credibility by caring about their reputation and withstanding criticism).

However, broadcast radio and television created a partial technological return to the monastic manuscript days in that access of the technology was controllable, resulting in an era of de facto censorship in that without radio and, especially, television, one was not a relevant part of the cultural conversation. The election of Ronald Reagan epitomizes this new institutional power of television.

However, Reagan only demonstrated the power of television in real power terms, and it would be unfair to say the media "elected him". Journalists standards carried over from print. It can of course be debated how stable this new institutional television based censorship system really was, but the internet rapidly destabilized it after credibility was sacrificed to support the Iraq war. The entire Iraq war and endless war on terrorism didn't pass critical scrutiny at any step, but critical questions could just be ignored; people don't stop being interested in those question, however, and the conversation moved to the internet: be it to keep following Chris Hedges, who was fired from the Times for opposing the war, or hear Chomsky's analysis or then take a few steps towards cannibalism, apparently, with Alex Jones; a completely new parallel world of discourse emerged.

The election of Trump represents the transition between the first era of institutional disruption where the world of "official" talk is at war with the subversives and still seem mostly in control, to the second era where the old official talk institutions aren't even relevant anymore. The transition can happen rapidly, as the Soviet Union best demonstrated. Time and time again the main-stream media tried to bury Trump, in every which way, and then be mystified by him polling the same or even higher. It simply didn't matter what they said anymore, the real conversation was happening in a parallel universe on the internet with various levels of Trump apologetics for every possible Trump criticism from every possible direction, to interpreting everything as some sort of 5-D chess move, to full on meme magick magicians saturating the internet with "gliffs", a hieroglyphic based magical symbol of cultural focus, to counteract the very same satanic gliff practices of the Clinton's and elite -- a frog being the key ingredient. Main stream media needing to address "Pepe" represented their surrender to internet discourse, and since then the merger of the discourse universes has started.

And that's all I have to say about that.

(jk, I'll say way more if asked to do so.)

Support for your claim. — Amity

Which claim? As I mention above: that our time is similar to the post-printing-press pamphlateering Era, or about how it would affect writing choices?

Where is the evidence for this pamphleteering philosophy? — Amity

What do you mean by evidence?

By pamphleteering, I'm simply referring to the end of Monarchy days where everything was censored so authors had to get there stuff out subversively which created a non-official chaotic parallel universe of discourse that disrupted the system; with the printing press playing the roll of the internet today.

As for the practical consideration, there's simply different options and limitations going DIY on the internet, which would result in different advice. "Getting a book published" is a different goal than reaching an audience on the internet, even if the content was the same. Whether due to self-censorship reasons above or simply not wanting to go through the hassle publishing a book, the same content could be developed over 200 blogs and 50 podcasts and 10 000 tweets, which would imply different stylistic choices even if one's arguments are the same.

Though I agree with these points, the list and explanations seem more motivated as an admonition to professors to not do "bad public philosophy" because it's profitable (tell groups what they want to hear and not take known criticism seriously) than they are as practical.

The article would be better title "moral considerations for popular philosophy writing".

However, the blame on "bad professors" is I think misplaced. Chomsky follows this list, but he is not welcome on mass media. Ok, he's still widely read and has a large base, but he was already famous from a time when he could speak on mass-media. A new author of philosophy doesn't have that benefit, and the choice is to conform to a roll on a stage (left, right or centrist; we know what lines the mass-media wants to hear) or then be an "internet heretic".

Fortunately, as the elite pursue this strategy through mass media consolidation and control, media institutions that built up prestige and reputation over literally centuries throw it frivolously away to support the war du jour without critical analysis and so rapidly lose legitimacy; we're now in a phase that being an internet heretic is no longer primary career ending and a living can be made in heretical writing in itself. There's large heretical ecosystems both on the right and the left.

Of course, the collapse of trusted information sources (because they have de-earned that trust) means for society at large zero scrutiny of incompetent and corrupt management, loss of faith in all institutions generally, precipitating a chaotic destabilization phase of American Empire, election of Trump to neatly consolidate these trends for us so that they are trivial to see and analyse ... and an easily avoidable global pandemic, certainly in its severity if not the outbreak itself, which represents the transition from an incompetent and corrupt elite entrenching and enriching themselves without any unifying vision and strategy for the future -- but things seeming to continue as normal due to sheer momentum of hundreds of years of managerial traditions -- to this new phase of rapid collapse where those institutions are simply no longer fit for purpose and all managerial accountability measures have been removed from the system meaning nothing will be rectified and problems will start to merge into and amplify each other until a radical change (of one form or another).

So, public discourse shifting to a non-institutional internet based discussion where people believe what they want to believe and no person or institution is viewed as widely legitimate by actual people (it is only the elite who continue to believe the old institutions mean a tenth of what they used to mean) has massive consequences.

However, regardless of view of who's to blame and where things are going, from the point of view of the individual author today, it's simply a fact that this internet DIY "influencer" path is available. Indeed, it's starting to merge anyways with traditional publishing in that authors are more and more expected to do all those influencer things such as blogging, youtubing, tweeting, engage in controversy and being edgy, and so on. It's not one and the same yet, so authors can lean heavily one way or another; in the case of non-political writing it is simply a style, commercial or just personal question, but in the case of political writing it's a self-censorship vs institutional support question, which has serious implications on what and how one writes depending on one's political ideas. When there's accomplished authors that crazily are admitted (even by the mainstream media) to being among great intellectuals of our time (such as Noam Chomsky mentioned above) or then writers that are fired from the Times (Chris Hedges), and simply completely ignored henceforth by those "Journals of Record", a new author has zero chance other than by completely conforming.

All this to say, we are back to a pamphleteer time and pamphleteering is a different thing than conventional book publishing, in terms of form, style, resources to work with, promotional activity, as well as level of engagement available.

I think you have not read much of it then. I’ve seen very little indication that you’ve read anything at all of it. — Pfhorrest

We had a whole conversation about the Greek and pragmatism thing. I'm using this existing conversation as examples of problems.

I have done that. — Pfhorrest

Then why are you asking us about what's novel or not?

Just tell us the authors made arguments to about yay high and explain how you've gone higher.

Where in the text I say “pragmatism”, I say what argument I am calling that. — Pfhorrest

That's what prompted our conversation about pragmatism, your use of the word pragmatism. Go back to that conversation if want to see where it appeared in your text and if you're interested in doing work to improve your understanding.

Also, I do have a reference to Peirce in the current version anyway. — Pfhorrest

So you added a reference to Peirce based on our discussion, but are maintaining that I didn't read any of your book and that you had never used the word pragmatism that prompted me to ask how you were using that term?

It would help if someone would point out where it looks like that, because that would be some kind of oversight or just careless writing. I am intended to spell everything out from scratch. — Pfhorrest

Then, as I've already suggested, spell everything out from scratch and don't use any references at all. Just make a introduction or "further reading" epilogue. If the references are not needed for the arguments to work, then they just add confusion.

You were complaining that I DIDN’T mention someone nonspecific in a nonspecific part of one essay. — Pfhorrest

I am not complaining. Your book does not matter to me and I have no personal motivation that you make it better along my criteria.

You're the one asking for advice, so I am simply providing that advice. You can leave your book the way it is for people to appreciate it or not.

But if you ask advice, presumably to improve it, I am giving the advice that if you reference an ism or an author, and that reference is critical content then you should provide a citation so that we the reader have clearer idea of what you're referencing. If it's not critical content, then it's just adding confusion as the reader now doesn't know what you mean by the reference and if it's important going forward.

But I have studied, and I’m not psychic, so unless you say what writing of whom is relevant to what part of my writing, I don’t know if you’re talking about someone I just didn’t think was relevant to mention or maybe something I actually haven’t studied. — Pfhorrest

You're on the "build everything from scratch" approach now. Which is fine, but then build everything from scratch, verify that no ism or reference is needed to understand. Or are you now saying the pragmatism reference was the only confusion of that kind, it's fixed now and I won't find anything else of that kind?

But I have studied, and I’m not psychic, so unless you say what writing of whom is relevant to what part of my writing, I don’t know if you’re talking about someone I just didn’t think was relevant to mention or maybe something I actually haven’t studied. — Pfhorrest

I gave you the example of the ancient Greeks, or pragmatism.

It's us the reader that aren't psychic and know what you know. So, if references then citations representing those references is what I recommend. But you've already said citations aren't critical, and everything is built from scratch, so then these sorts of confusions shouldn't appear.

If I have a thought that, after a pretty extensive study of philosophy, seems novel to me in light of everything I’m aware of having gone before, how can I know that it is not novel without someone telling me, or somehow being certain that I have read absolutely everything that there is to read? — Pfhorrest

Then post a thread about what you think the novel parts are, if you've studied extensively it should be easy to identify and explain: "that based on these assumptions developed by these authors, I make this argument that goes further".

By refusing to even comment on those particulars, you’re effectively saying “come back when you’ve read absolutely everything there is to read”. — Pfhorrest

Why introduce the strawman of "everything"; no where do I say read everything there is to be read.

I say seek out the authors formulating or critiquing arguments you are using. If you want to improve your book, then (whether you include reference or buildup from scratch) it's a time-saving device to find the best existing formulation of an argument as well as it's best criticism (so that you are certain you are using as good or better formulation that adequately addresses the best criticism).

If you don't want to improve your book, then stop asking advice.

If you want to improve your book, then what I would expect is that it will take you much longer to forego this mention research and to think of all the ways your arguments can be undermined and to then fill all those gaps (you claim don't exist?). By all means though, if you disagree prove me wrong.

The latter is impossible, and impractical to ever try to approximate, especially since this isn’t my paid full-time job, so I can only rely on someone letting me know if the thoughts I think are novel actually aren’t. — Pfhorrest

No where did I say "follow this advice and tomorrow your book will be better". You obviously have time to discuss on the forum, so you could put some of that time putting in research work to improve your book. If it takes ten years, it takes ten years.

Or are you asking "how do I improve my book considering I won't be spending much time doing so".

I have clarified that already. Primarily people like I was 20 years ago. People interested in philosophy, including those not yet very familiar with it, who I expect will not find what they are looking for in the existing corpus of it, because after a decade of study I still hadn’t. — Pfhorrest

Thanks for clarifying, I did not catch the original clarification.

Yes, why not just make a thread and state what the missing part is that you didn't find and have addressed in your book?

If you want your book to clearly add novel ideas to philosophy and be completely accessible to someone unfamiliar with philosophy, this is an even more enormous task, than just the novel objective which I have been addressing. Again, doable, but will take time and effort to achieve. Your criticism of my criticism seems to be "I don't have that kind of time! what do you expect from me!". No problem with not having time, but I don't see why I would reformulate my advice to be doable without the required time.

I always try to build up all of the arguments from scratch. I only mention other philosophers to show that I am aware when an idea is not original. — Pfhorrest

I have not seen arguments written from scratch.

Half the time, the ideas I’m putting forward were original to me, and I later became aware that others had already written on the same topic. — Pfhorrest

The reason to seek out where these "original to me" ideas have been discussed before is to scrutinize their formulation (maybe someone not only thought of the idea but had made it better and more precise) and, more importantly, with a writer or textual reference you can then much better search for who has criticized that argument.

This is the critical process to do serious philosophy.

In the case of Pragmatism, I had my own version of something like the Pragmatic Maxim, and was later told by someone I shared that thought with about Pragmatism, and read up about it, and found Peirce closest to my own thoughts. I’m not trying to defend exactly Peirce or anyone else though, so going into depth about them would just be pointless showing off that doesn’t advance the purpose of my writing. — Pfhorrest

On this point, you did not provide your formulation from scratch of your pragmatic maxim, nor cited Pierce. It's these gaps that need to be filled one way or another, otherwise it's no longer possible to follow your argument as there is critical information missing. If you look carefully at your writing there is lot's of these gaps that need either an argument from scratch, a citation or then simply stating a new assumption.

Sushi was previously accusing me precisely of “showing off”, so just going into unnecessary depth on everything that I know about every philosopher I mention would just be more of that. — Pfhorrest

From what I followed, @I like sushi was simply stating that demonstrating familiarity with some philosophical concepts is not interesting reading. It should be clear where you are going with your arguments. I did not see Sushi "accuse you of showing off", but please cite it if I missed it.

See, here you are assuming that because I have not mentioned something I am not aware of it. — Pfhorrest

I say that: if you don't cite authors you mention, myself and other readers simply cannot get much insight to your relation to those authors. It is simply adding confusion.

If your mentioning of an author or ism is only to "give credit" and it adds nothing but confusion to the reading of the book, then it's best to simply provide that credit outside the book in an introduction.

I have studied a lot of philosophy. Not the most that can possibly be studies, I don’t think I know more about it than absolutely everybody else about every facet of it, but enough to have what seem to be novel thoughts about it that take into account lots of priority work. — Pfhorrest

Key word "what seems like novel thoughts". The reason to put in a lot of work to find and then really get into where those thoughts are not novel, is that you will benefit from those existing arguments and debates about it. You can then either simply reference those formulations if you see no need to improve them or then reformulate them.

If I thought this was something good enough for academic publishing, I wouldn’t be here. I’m trying to do the best I can in the circumstances I find myself in. Saying it’s just not good enough and to go study more is no help at all. Saying where specifically and why so I can focus on improving in. — Pfhorrest

This is where you need to engage with what Sushi has been saying. We still do not know exactly your goal with the book or audience.

As it stands, your goal is to write "novel philosophy"; this is a serious project. If you're goal was less ambitious, the task will be less hard.

You’re saying, essentially, be absolutely perfect or give up. — Pfhorrest

This is not what I am saying. I'm saying if you persevere you can attain your goal; I have only added to that, it's a difficult goal to attain and will require a lot of time, effort and work.

It is not impossible!! I just factored 10**1000 as 10**500 x 10**500 in my head. — A Seagull

I say numbers, and you give me one number. At least put in the effort and provide numbers.

True, but every argument starts with premises the reader is expected to likely agree with, otherwise it can’t get off the ground at all. A good philosophical argument starts with something trivially agreeable and derives something controversially substantial from it. That it is what I mean to do. — Pfhorrest

Yes, I would agree arguments start at premises (though it's possible some will disagree even here).

My point is that isms are not premises. If you don't want to cite people who represent either the ism you have issue with or the ism you are agreeing with, then you need to build the arguments, positive or negative, from scratch. This is a laborious process.

Referencing previous thinkers is a shortcut, but requires the work of citation for it be readable; otherwise, I am not sure you understand or interpret the thinker or the ism in question the same way I do; and, even if I did assume that, I can't tell exactly where you're agreeing or disagreeing with that thinker or school.

For instance, in our previous discussion, you mentioned the word pragmatism; I asked if you were talking about pragmatism the philosophical tradition or just "being pragmatic" in a colloquial sense, to which you replied the philosophical school, to which I inquired which thinker you were closest, to which you said it didn't matter, to which I replied it did, to which you replied you liked Pierce but found Lock redundant. This is interesting to know and I can't possibly tell your position on pragmatism by just seeing the word. It would be even more interesting to see a citation of Locke and a citation of Pierce that you feel is representative of this redundancy. I would be then far more informed of what you're talking about.
More interesting still if you found a citation that represented the error or incompleteness of these thinkers you intend to extend or correct.

If a reader has not read Locke and Pierce, now they've gotten the value of a choice citation and interpretation and at least have something concrete to represent those thinkers and "pragmatism" in their minds.

This is a lot of work, you have to read all the pragmatists to be confident you are doing a good job.

You can forego citation by building the arguments you want to take form pragmatism from scratch. However, likely you will want to read all the pragmatists to be sure you are making the best representation.

Either way, you can then move onto the next step of reading all of the, at least recommended, direct criticism of these arguments you are reformulating or citing.

This attitude of “don’t talk back just do what I say” is tiresome. — Pfhorrest

You are misunderstanding the nature of advice.

Nor I, nor any of your other advisers here, want you to "do what we say". We don't care what you do. You ask advice, we provide our advice, you use it or you don't. There's simply no point in trying to "prove our advice is wrong"; if it's wrong, don't use it. Now, it's constructive to try to understand the advice better (so to better to decide to use it or not), but it's not constructive to argue with advice of this kind; you're just tiring your advisers and making them lose interest, which only harms yourself.

I am here asking people I expect to be my peers to help point me at details like that, that would be useful to include and that I have missed. You neither demonstrated what would be useful about mentioning them nor provided any particular details to include. — Pfhorrest

I'm not writing your book for you.

It also wouldn't help you if I provided you those details, as a few details about some thinkers is not a substitute to understanding those thinkers. My advice is not to quickly search for some citations so that you can cosmetically sprinkle them into your book and give the illusion you have grappled with all the nuance and life force those thinkers bring to bear; my advice is to actually do that grappling.

I am not posting about my book here to “show off my genius” or something like you seem to think. Quite the contrary, I am posting about it hoping that both those less educated than me will tell me what’s difficult to follow so I can try to write better there, and those MORE educated than me will tell me what I’ve missed. You basically told me THAT I missed something, but didn’t say anything actionably specific about what it was. — Pfhorrest

You simply underestimate the task you have set yourself.

Implying you've written novel philosophy without also claiming you are "more educated than us" is exactly the claim that you can show off your genius by your mastery of philosophical concepts without a need for training, education and work: just raw natural talent.

I brought up names of authors that I recommend you cite. Reading books and citing critical passages relevant to your arguments is entirely actionable.

If you are going to write a book with the intention that it's taken serious, you must be more educated about it's subject matter than us, otherwise it's effectively we that is writing the book for you.

Yes, experienced authors ask for feedback on their writing, but it's not to make content and intellectual changes, but simply to cut and clarify, which is very minor compared with the major restructuring you are now engaged in.

The rest of your post reads like a shallow attempt to “take me down a peg” from some hubris you supposed I have, and isn’t worth responding to. — Pfhorrest

You should read my words more carefully.

I simply explain the difficulty of the task in front of you.

Setting the goal of writing novel philosophy on important subjects is the most extreme intellectual task that you can possibly set for yourself, short of something completely impossible such as factoring thousand digit numbers in your head. Your choice is either to accept that difficulty and commit to the time, discomfort and effort it will require to (maybe) attain, or to deny that and be an amateur not taken seriously, or to abandon your goal.

Your method of not doing the required work and believing somehow we on the forum will do the work for you, is not a good method as you have been able to verify.

I'm not happy about it, but Biden is clearly the lesser of two evils. — EricH

Shouldn't you also trust the devil you know at this point?

I seem to remember that's also a solid principle when it comes to evil dealings.

That is, again, exactly what I reorganized to do. Instead of starting off with attacks, I start off with the most boring uncontroversial common sense that almost everybody probably already agrees with, and the promise that after elaborating on the implications of that I expect to arrive at a position that almost everybody probably already disagrees with. — Pfhorrest

There is basically nothing uncontroversial in philosophy. If you're purpose is to do serious philosophy then you need to seek out the opposing point of view. provides stylistic reasons for doing so, but there is also the philosophical reason for actually knowing who you're criticizing.

This is the main problem with your book, in my opinion. You make brief sketches of "isms" and reject one and accept another, without demonstrating you really know the content of those systems, schools and authors.

For instance, my first critique on your question of "what's new here" was to point out core ideas that went back to ancient Greece. You responded to my criticism by first arguing with it (which you have done with everyone offering you advice, which is just tiresome), then eventually you accepted it and integrated it by mentioning "oh, some Greeks thought about these things"; but that's simply not serious: which Greeks? what did they say? what did they get right, wrong, miss entirely?.

If you want to carry out your "this ism vs that ism" program, you need to demonstrate real expertise with all the authors involved and their critics (assuming your goal is to be taken seriously by "philosophers").

You need to seek out the best representation of every opposing view and point to where exactly you differ. This takes citing authors. Citing is the only way to make your approach serious, as it not only demonstrates you've read the key authors who represent these opposing views best, but also shows you've found the critical difference in their own words. In short, that you've done a serious amount of work that I can now benefit from. As it is, you're book simply asks the reader to go find out for themselves that your representation of different isms checks out.

Your entire approach on this forum betrays that you don't have this expertise. It should not be us that tells you what ideas you have that are totally novel, it should be you the author that has more knowledge of your subject than we the reader, and so can just tell us what's new and explain why it's new (why previous thinkers got so far but no further).

Why you're in this position, if I had to guess, is that you've gotten "the gist" of a lot of philosophies and you've elaborated your own series of opinions on these world views and parsing all this is quite impressive to the people you know; so, you have extended this experience to the expectation that we here on the forum will likewise be impressed. However, the small group of people you know that are impressed or then are opponents you feel "like, I have no problem arguing with", is not representative of the entire history of philosophy. To contend with "philosophers" is to address the greatest thinkers that have ever lived of all humanity of all history that we have a record of. It's not comparable to people you feel clever discussing with.

If you think university is a "smart place" and that therefore if you can hold your ground among students then you can hold your ground among philosophers, quickly calculate how many university students have existed and compare that to the list of people humanity has decided are "philosophers", or then at least contenders for such a title. In writing a "philosophy book" it is this small list of people you are replying to and addressing; it is unlikely you have encountered anyone remotely close in thinking and arguing capacity, and building up the understanding to be able to image how these philosophers would criticize you if they were in the room is not a trivial task easily dispensed with lines like " I start off with the most boring uncontroversial common sense that almost everybody probably already agrees with".

Underestimating your opponents isn't how serious philosophical arguments are elaborated, but rather much closer to how dating profiles are written of explaining what you're into, in hopes those that already agree want to get even closer to you and like you, even love you.

To be serious, you need to "get into those opposing world views" and really appreciate their subtle brilliance, agility and cunning, give them the respect they are due, understand why reasonable and learned people adopt these views, then study their history and stock their every move—perhaps even flatter them as Possibility suggests to draw them closer—only to lunge, suddenly, and deal the precise and fatal blow from which there is no recovery. But do not think for a second that there will be no reposte, equally quick, equally sharp, equally daring, and it may be you that is mortally stabbed in the critical moment, left wondering what went wrong as you lay on the floor clenching your heart while your spirit fades from you; or, sadly more often, too frightened to carry out the deed when the danger gets close, and so slink off into a corner to nurse your play things, certain that had you made the engagement you would have certainly prevailed.

But if you persist, then after, usually a long series of defeats, these philosophical bodies may start to pile up around you and you can cry into the desert: "Is there no one else!", and then maybe, maybe you could condescend to write a book about your adventure.

If you aren't interested in such a commitment, then just call your book "diaries of a freshman" and call it a day.

That may be so, but I don't see the relevance of bringing up the fact that some philosophers did not write well as an objection to an admonition for philosophers to write well. — SophistiCat

You're not getting my point. Writing well according to whom?

It seems pretty obvious to me that the general goal in writing and the audience must be specified to start to give advice as what is writing well and what's not.

All you're doing is deciding you know what good philosophy is and good writing.

I am simply pointing out there is a large variation in how people self-evaluate as well as what "philosophy as such" has decided to label important philosophy.

Yeah, no, I have zero respect for this snobbery. — SophistiCat

Again, all you're saying is you don't like obscurantist or mystical leaning philosophy and styles.

I'm simply pointing out those styles exist and presumably the writers of those styles thought it was a good idea, and presumably, for them, "writing better" would have been writing even more obscuristly and mystically.

If the OP said "all I like and respect is dry analysis, how should I write in the analytical tradition" then I think "simple, concise and disambiguated" is good advice. The OP does not say so, just talking about philosophy in general, and so some goals and audience need to be specified. The OP doesn't even specify "proper, philosophical prose" and so philology, biography, poetry, theater, screen play, journalism and genres of fiction are all forms and varying styles to consider if the intent is to reach an audience.

If no goal and audience is specified, then I'll simply sit here and point out the rich diversity of styles in philosophy: from the way of the old master to not even writing anything but having inspired dialogues to long complicated tomes to novels.

Many famous philosophers were miserable communicators" is not an argument against good writing tips (unless you want to argue that they were great because they were miserable communicators). — SophistiCat

This definitely warrants discussion too, but my main point is that many philosophers have been pretty clear that their goal isn't to be "concise and simple", some wrote for themselves, some a select few, others embraced different degrees of obscurantism, mysticism and "make you think" provocation.

Then there is all the fictional forms as well, that can certainly be argued is a more effective means to "reach the people" even if there is no "novel philosophy" in it; a la Voltaire, Hesse, et al.

Transposing philosophical ideas into a fictional work is a pretty standard writing method, precisely to free oneself from the burden of "disambiguating" everything so as to make something more readable.

Regardless of the genre ("philosophy", philology or fiction), several counter considerations can be made to "simple and concise".

If we interpret "simple and concise" as a sort of analytic "aloof and emotionless" then the argument can easily be made that it's not only a counter productive style to reach a wide audience, as the work is boring, but the philosophical argument can also be made that the human experience as well as human capacity to reason is simply not analytic in an abstract sense but very emotional and intuitive; therefore, trying to remove emotion and intuition is simply off the mark.

If we interpret "simple and concise" to mean "not challenging", then we may not only fail to rouse the curiosity of the reader but also fail to convey the argument. If an argument is not completely clear (due to complicated sentences, qualifications and diction), it requires serious thinking to "get it", and that experience is richer and more memorable than a "pre-chewed" version of the same thing.

But it is at least good to write like that sometimes in philosophy, say in academia; or here on the forum, as you obviously attempt to do yourself; or when writing for non-specialists. — jamalrob

Yes, definitely the advice makes sense for many purposes.

However, without the purpose the advice is putting the cart before the horse, especially if we're talking about a book, and even more if we don't even have the goal to write something that will become "philosophy".

For instance, a work of fiction is a popular place writers use to hash out their own ideas or introduce new ideas to a broad audience, precisely to avoid the context of heavy intellectual debate of exhaustive disambiguated pedantry.

Could it be that you have misunderstood this topic? It looks like it. The advice to assume your readers are stupid, lazy, and mean, is merely an arresting, memorable way of saying you should write clearly, concisely, and should argue carefully. — jamalrob

I address this:

Even interpreted generously as "simple and concise", many of "the great philosophers" are not in such a category. — boethius

I am aware of this interpretation of the words.

The OP uses these terms, so I don't see why I won't use the terms of the OP to refer to the same thing as the OP.

As you say, the saying is supposed to be provocative, so if people then use the saying to debate it's merits it seems natural that it will stay provocative.

I am arguing against "simple, clear and concise" as well. Many philosophers simply don't do this. We can debate if it served their purpose, we can also debate their purpose, but I don't think it's a controversial point that many philosophers were and are very much unclear and not simple and purposefully left many things up to the reader to contemplate.

"

In philosophy we are taught a mnemonic to help ensure our writing will be as clear, concise, and unambiguous as possible — Pfhorrest

I have issue with. It's certainly good advice for writing papers in the classes of the professors making this statement, but it can't simply be generalized to "philosophy" in general. Many philosophers are famously the opposite of "clear, concise, and unambiguous".

OP has not stated what the goal is (get published? political revolution? enlighten the intrepid few?), and so defined his audience.

In the context of the other threads and comments, it seems to be that there is reticence to perform such a task and this thread is at the "negotiation" phase of the process. It is a positive step, but the "goal and the audience" is still required for the advice of the OP to be constructively debated.

As it is, the OP is just generally applied to all of philosophy, so I am arguing against such a position.

I make a second argument that for mainstream media propaganda purposes, this nominal advice really is taken literally to setup straw-men that must be relentlessly rooted out and flogged as well as really is the spirit of such writing. For instance, take the recent kerfuffle around Joe Biden allegations; the mainstream media first choice was to be stupid (just ignore the hypocrisy), lazy (not bother to interview anyone or ask any uncomfortable questions to Joe Biden or anyone else), and mean (viciously attack anyone bringing the subject up as supporting Trump).

However, I am not implying that @Pfhorrest wants to do this, only pointing out that academia puts people on such a path with the certainly harmless "mnemonics" of thinking of people as "stupid, lazy and mean" as a hapless luck-charm to remember to be "simple, concise and disambiguate" for the purposes of institutional writing. But this is only a thematic connection to the OP.

From what you say, the OP seems to be following on from another conversation ?
I've been out of the loop for a while... — Amity

Yes, from I can tell, this post is in response to criticism from @I like sushi of @Pfhorrest's book; in particular deciding an audience (which I like sushi points out could be just oneself, but an adviser clearly needs to know, is all).

@jkg20 and @Baden also had good followup explanations of why this this basic point is critical.

This thread seems to be motivated out of frustration with this audience identification process; a sort of "fine! I'll dumb myself down to the stupid, lazy and mean level of the internet troll!".

Now, what the OP states is correct, for a certain kind of commercial writing where the job is essentially to bully around the populace into being a tad bit less deplorable from the kleptocratic point of view, but this isn't the only option. Many "heretics" of political analysis still manage to subsist somehow and get their stuff out. Granted, with a woefully inadequate supply of cocktails, if any at all, and so "real writers" can just spit on them from the top Manhattan boulevard, a small gift of blessed cocktail residue falling from the sky -- but, still, no matter how dry they may become in the vast desert of not having a Pulitzer and Times column, these heretical writers aren't dead; they may even sell books and some are pretty famous on the internet affecting the culture in big ways that are best to ignore.

Anyways, the advice I found pretty good, and topical to the subject here, so I'll re-post it.

When I said ‘high-school’ I meant that in such essays you are writing to show comprehension. If you’re writing a book/essay you’re writing for your audience and given the subject matter you have to address the audience differently because the audience is different.

I’m still unsure what your aim is. You seem to be writing something that is an introduction to philosophy, an educational resource, your own personal philosophical view, and a critique of philosophy in general. If it’s educational (textbook) then terms like ‘I’/‘we’/‘us’ should be avoided as much as possible. I don’t need to know about your personal story or journey; I don’t care (in terms of a educational piece of writing.

If you’re going for something more like ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ though, I’d certainly go into more personal detail.

The thrust of what I’m saying is that I don’t know who this is for and I not convinced you do yet either. I’m getting mixed messages due to how it is lain out. The ‘set up’ matters a lot because people like to know what they are getting themselves into.

My own critique of my critique here would be to say I should really give positive feedback too. I like a lot of the content because I’ve looked at your essays before. I judged you to be someone less concerned with compliments and more likely to take criticism seriously if it was straight up - if you were a student it would be a different matter and I’d likely use a more ‘encouraging’ tone. — I like sushi

I like sushi has a point Pfhorrest. From experience of my own, here is some advice about seeking feedback on your writing;
1. Do not expect useful literary criticism from anybody close to you emotionally. There are reasons why they have that connection to you, all of them sincere, and that are likely to bias their approach to your writing whether they are aware of that bias or not. That bias may, of course, be negative or positive.
2. Find someone close enough to your target audience as you can and who has no, or very little, vested interest in your emotional wellbeing, and ask them to devote some time to reading your work. You will no doubt have a clear picture of that kind of individual, so you can perhaps identify a suitable person or some suitable people within your circle of loose acquaintances. You might find such a person on this board, but I have my doubts. When you do find that person, ask that they be brutally honest and convince them that you have a thick skin, even if you don't. Do not expect that person to advise you what to do to improve the book, you are writing it, not them. When they do come back to you with a list of problems, and from personal experience with following this advice myself, they are likely to have quite a number of them, address those issues yourself and try to convince them to reread your work to see if they believe it has improved.

On a different note, if you goal is to see this book in print and to be published by someone other than yourself, you need to be able to convince a literay agent that you have a target audience that is crystal clear from a marketing point of view, and sufficiently large to give a chance that there will be some profit to be made. Agents and publishers are in it for the money, although perhaps not exclusively. What you have said about your target audience seems to me to be too nebulous to meet those commercial requirements. — jkg20

Sushi made it obvious from the start he didn't give a shit about your feelings and was just going to say what he was going to say. Which is exactly what you should ideally expect (and hope for) in criticism.

As an aside, I've just finished re-editing and relaunching a book of short stories, which I put a lot a lot of work into and which I've been highly emotionally invested in. But it took me over a year to go back and see some of the fuckups in there because it can take that long away from a creative project to divest yourself of bias and look on it in a way similar to a detached critic. Of course, you'll never be fully objective, but you'll get nowhere without giving yourself time to be so. Your reaction to Sushi suggests you're not there yet. But if you want your work to be better, you need to get there. That's just the way it is.

Also, you're not even supposed to be promoting your own work here or getting feedback on it. Normally, I delete that kind of stuff as self-promotion/advertising. And now I've got another good reason, which is people getting pissed off that everyone doesn't love their stuff as much as they do. — Baden

Absolutely! But that is not necessarily a point in their favour. Just because something is great, doesn't mean it couldn't have been better. — Pantagruel

Certainly few authors view their work as perfect, but it's up for debate what they would view as potential improvement.

For instance, Aristotle was elitist and viewed slaves as necessary to provide the leisure time for some to philosophize. So, if "simple and concise" is meant as "understandable by the commoner and slave" we can surmise Aristotle would not care. However, even considering that, the Organon seems to be lecture notes and so not meant to be self-explanatory without additional explanations. Indeed, even among non-elitists, some philosophical texts are written not to be assisted by their own commentary but assumes summary and commentary will be written by someone else and ideas will eventually get to the common person through the arts. Some philosophers write both theoretical texts for advanced students and theater and novels for common people. Some had only disdain for theory and so wrote only popular literature. Wittgenstein introduces his book with a "maybe", maybe one single person may understand him, which even that he doesn't really care about. Some philosophers were clear they write in a purposefully complicated and challenging, borderline incorrect, way to rouse the spirit of their reader. We can also easily view mysticism as a general school of philosophy, typified as being as far from simple and clear as one can possibly go while still being intelligible at all.

There is not a general convergence of writing style among the great philosophers.

Writing advice presupposes knowing what the goal is, as @I like sushi suggested @Pfhorrest try to decide, which, from what I understand, led to this post.

I don't necessarily endorse the implied ad hominen here, — Pantagruel

Good thing you don't necessarily disagree, as it's not an ad hominen.

Ad hominen must be in the structure "This person is an idiot, therefore what this person says is wrong or can be dismissed". However, saying "this person is wrong and therefore an idiot", is perfectly valid if the idiocy is commensurate with the wrongness.

Eventually I realized that readability was, in itself, a philosophical virtue. — Pantagruel

Well, this is up for debate. What's one's purpose in writing? is that purpose justified? what method attains that purpose? are valid questions. Readability, be it one definition or another, may or may not be useful to one's project.

Why I am so confident that whoever is teaching this "stupid, lazy, mean" maxim in philosophy is an idiot, is because so much of the very normal philosophical cannon is clearly not written in this way, in any sense.

Even interpreted generously as "simple and concise", many of "the great philosophers" are not in such a category. Organon, Plutarch's Moralia, Proslogium, Spinoza's Ethics, The Meditations, Critique of Pure Reason, Being and Time, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, are all pretty standard and famous philosophical texts but few would say any are "simple and concise" and fewer still written based on the assumption the reader is "stupid, lazy and mean", and these difficult readings are fairly typical in philosophy, not the glaring exceptions.

"Writing advice", or a heuristic as you say, presupposes a lot of things; the history of philosophy does not show any consensus on such advice, other than at least someone able to understand and talk about you (which itself we could debate philosophically as a worthy goal; for instance, we could imagine ourselves debating with someone who holds the view that only concrete political actions are meaningful and inspiring communication and writing about philosophical theory serves no purpose at all and is counter productive).

Thank you for these explanations, appreciated. — TheArchitectOfTheGods

Thanks for asking and curiosity about anarchism.

As a general point, anarchist view that coercive authority structures corrupt moral and political language, so that "common sense" becomes the same as "obedience to the state and / or church".

Obviously "submission to the will of god", for the kind of theist that likes such a saying, is not supposed to be in practice "submission to the whims of a corrupt preacher". Likewise, "collective defense" is not supposed to be simply protecting the interests of the elite in practice. That things turn out this way is, for anarchists, reflects a very deep corruption (much deeper than other leftists are willing to consider).

Lot's of anarchists arguments are pointing out what abstract reasoning actually means in practice. Another example, most arguments justifying "law and order" you encounter are meant to be understood to justify the state. Anarchists usually want to deconstruct that sort of argument insofar as it justifies the state; however, usually anarchists then drop that terminology for something that is neutral; such as "cooperation", "organization" or "harmony" as a substitute for "law and order", which in the most abstract interpretation can mean the same thing.

However, the anarchist tradition is often to write for normal people that are currently oppressed and so don't have so much time to go into every theoretical nuance. Kropotkin, for instance, often doesn't make theoretical sense if not interpreted in a colloquial way. However, if interpreted in a colloquial way (such as what average person thinks of as "the government") then it not only makes theoretical sense but is actually readable by the people Kropotkin wants to help. Not that he's unaware of these issues, and he sometimes writes whole pamphlets disambiguating things.

When you take a starting point at Weber's definition of relative Power as the probability (chance) to achieve ones own will even against the resistance of others, regardless of the underlying causes of this probability, then it is hard to see how Power could exist without a means of being enforced / coerced. Logically, a power that cannot be enforced is not a power at all, but I am happy to hear further arguments to the contrary. — TheArchitectOfTheGods

Yes, anarchists have no issue with self defense nor with people voting against "rape and murder" and then voting for a system that would deal with when it happens.

People unwilling to use violence even in self defense, are best called radical pacifists. Of course, radical pacifists are also generally in agreement with anarchists on how things "should be", but anarchists as a tradition are not very close to radical pacifism.

Indeed, that anarchists are "not pacifist enough", too violent and too ready to take justice into their own hands, not just letting this task to the state, is often the first criticism of anarchism. So, it's a sort of propaganda tour de force that the second rebuke is that anarchists are not violent enough to be willing to deal with murderers and imagine a world where murderers and rapists run rampant.

Anarchists are not principled pacifist unwilling to use violence.

Anarchists critique the state in creating far more violence than free people would create and, above all, requiring coercive violence to maintain the state, but they do not argue that violence would simply never happen in an anarchist society.

There is a key difference with coercion and violence in self defense.

Coercion is manipulative whereas violence can be honest and direct "if you try to rape me, I'll try to kill you". The latter self-defense statement is not intrinsically manipulative, just saying what one is going to do.

When anarchists talk of free association of individuals they don't mean somehow to exclude free association for self-defense purposes. Indeed, when anarchists associate, how best to defend against agents of the state is a primary concern; but this does not somehow exclude the need to deal with violence between members of their free association.

Of course, if we go "abstract enough" we can view "I will try to kill you if you try to kill me or anyone else here" as a form of coercion and manipulation to dissuade the murderer. Moreso if the would-be-murderer is captured; "Put down the gun!" can be interpreted in such a manipulative way.

The major difference is that without genuine political participation the state is simply no longer a collective self defense pact, but the main threat to (the people who run) the state becomes the general population. The state claims the same collective self defense justification, but is not; and using state power to make people believe that is clearly a far more extreme form of coercion than "put down the gun!".

Just as an example, in such a society, how exactly would a murderer be punished if not by coercion of the collective power? — TheArchitectOfTheGods

There is no need to mentally manipulate the murderer. This would be the critical difference.

The large majority of anarchists do not have a problem killing a murderer to prevent murder, and if possible capturing the murderer if killing them isn't necessary.

This is just stating what will be done about murder, it is not mental manipulation. It is giving the murderer a choice and making clear what actions will be met with what choice. True, capturing the murderer requires coercive force, but is preferable to killing them outright if that's unnecessary.

Anarchists argue that "punishment" as a deterrent is however mentally manipulative; such as executions and physical and emotionally painful imprisonment.

Making this difference between physical and mental coercion, then anarchism can be best described as wanting to minimize physical coercion (the force needed to deal with violence sufficiently) and not use mental coercion at all.

Anarchists make the argument these deterrence can be taken away and the result would be less criminals rather than more; rehabilitation based justice systems is an implementation of this anarchists theory, and simply work. Constrained freedom of the murderer in such systems is not argued to be punishment in the sense of an unpleasant experience to deter more murders from the same person as well as others but a precautionary measure justified by self defense of the community in which the goal is reintegration of the criminal as soon as responsibly feasible.

For instance, in Scandinavia you can murder someone and then go to what US criminals would consider a vacation resort, yet there is not a rampant murdering problem due to a lack of painful deterrents; "prisons" often do not have walls, are co-ed (as single sex environments are not mentally healthy), and prisoners can generally go into town during the day to work. Rehabilitation programs are also not forced, but based on the moral agency of the prisoner to want to free-associate with society and learn to manage whatever went wrong in that regard and other new skills to re-integrate in the community. Scandinavian prisons and schools follow plans, principles and theories developed by anarchists; they don't say so, but it's easy to verify the anarchist school were central to these developments.

So, there is a large difference between forced labour (i.e. slavery) as practiced in the US and the Scandinavian justice system. There is clearly a difference of degree of coercion as well as type of coercion. Indeed, it is now common wisdom in the US that US prisons "make more and hardened criminals at war with society"; this is exactly the argument of the anarchist school (which was certainly not common wisdom when first proposed).

It was literally taught by many of my philosophy professors — Pfhorrest

I have zero qualms calling your philosophy professors idiots.

Let them come here to defend this adage themselves if you are certain of their authority on this subject.

If they do not, let them know it's a stupid, lazy and mean thing to leave you hanging like this, and indeed everyone else here that could benefit from their wisdom.

But if you think carefully, you may find that they are following the same commercial imperative I describe, both dreaming of success in the mainstream media as well as navigating similar commercial imperatives within the academic system (i.e. what commercial value is philosophy? to get a writing job! how do you do that? Being stupid, lazy and mean enough to shoo away people from the small cracks in the echo chamber you've been posted to guard).

You seemed to miss the part where I was sucking it up and trying to heed his advice anyway despite being advised by ithers not to, until he commented not on the work, but on me personally. — Pfhorrest

I did not miss it, that is why I say you are in an uncomfortable position. You know what you must do, to advance in philosophy, but you do not know if you have the strength to do it.

I don’t expect to be coddled, but I expect not to be personally attacked. — Pfhorrest

This is why I point out that there is no clear separation between yourself and your arguments; therefore, you should expect to be personally attacked in this sense. There is no way to differentiate between an attack on yourself and your argument, unless you already know that your argument is really true apart from your own satisfaction with it, in which case you feel nothing about the agitation of fools.

In philosophy we are taught a mnemonic to help ensure our writing will be as clear, concise, and unambiguous as possible: to write for an audience assumed to be “stupid, lazy, and mean”. — Pfhorrest

Whoever taught you this is an idiot.

Essentially all of the philosophical cannon, however you want to define it, does not assume the audience is stupid, lazy and mean, nor any combination. Which of the philosophers implemented such maxims?

You are referring to advice intended for commercial writing, not philosophical writing.

Furthermore, it is only good advice for commercial writing because mainstream news works for advertisers and not readers, and advertisers do not want any critical analysis of their practices nor the corrupt status quo and so it's safest to simply not have anyone capable of critical analysis on the payroll. When writers and journalists are fired for saying something "controversial" (such as noting the propaganda model of how the mainstream media operates stands up to scrutiny) it is not the case that their readers lost interest in them.

It is more accurate to say "if you want to be hired by a mainstream and historically prestigious media institution -- with that prestige built up before the advertiser imperative and almost gone now -- then you should yourself be stupid, lazy and mean, as that's the basis of a 'proper' career in writing".

I've been following your exchange with on your book and here as well.

I like sushi is providing you useful advice.

To make any advance in philosophical understanding requires subjecting one's thoughts to the harshest possible criticism. I like sushi is providing this sort of value to you for free; there exists no onus to bundle that value with other kinds such as encouragement or accolades.

Crafting good arguments is a destructive testing process. Since they are within us and not at a distance behind a barrier, it is a intrinsically painful task and it is impossible to know ahead of time which arguments can withstand the conditions asked of it and which cannot. Therefore, to engage in authentic philosophical reflection and debate is to gamble with one's very self. I like sushi can only show you the door, it is you that must walk through it. Your recent comments seem to reflect a discomfort with such a position, but it is what it is.

I am talking about the kind of socialism that Marx and Engels propounded that sees the state as, in effect, an executive committee for the management of the affairs of the bourgeoisie, and the disappearance of which is a necessary step to reach the final goal of human freedom. — jkg20

Anarchists generally differentiate themselves with any self-described "Marxist communist", most vehemently on the statist compatibility. All historical anarchists I'm aware of reject capturing the state to build the new society (Soviet Union confirms this criticism for Anarchists), and a key them in anarchism is the "evolutionary" principle of needing to work with people as they are and change institutions as they are towards an anarchist direction (the Welfare states of Switzerland, Scandinavia, Canada, etc. being an anarchist achievement, just not solely due to anarchists who view it as only one step and want to go further).

I'm not aware of any anarchists school that agreed with the idea a "strong state is needed to protect the revolution". Though of course what Marx himself would think of this theory is highly debatable.

What's a more clear difference with Marx himself, is that anarchists were more skeptical of revolutionary theory, historical materialism, historical dialectic.

Revolutionary anarchists seem in complete agreement with revolutionary Marxists (take down the state and large private property holdings), but precisely because the revolution is not some historical guarantee it will only happen if revolutionary acts are undertaken to make it happen.

Anarchists also tend to criticize the Marxist wing of socialism as too abstract for normal people. Anarchists want to get to a society where everyone is politically equal and no one coerced and exploited, but also want to help people as best they can along the way due to this same concern. For instance, Russel's main critique of Marx was not on any particular logical point, but rather that Marx's motivation was too much hatred for the bourgeoisie and not enough "positive emotion", which is why Russel identifies with anarchism, which brings this positivity (about human nature, about a moral foundation for society).

So, although these key differences aren't on economic questions, it does I think point to the "difference in style" usually found between historical anarchism and Marxist-communism.

People can have property under socialism and anarchism, that I understand, after all, who would want to share my toothbrush with me? So perhaps we need to distinguish also between what we might call personal property, on the one hand, and private property on the other. — jkg20

Yes, this is where there would be agreement what Marx got very right. The key focus being "means of production". If I have a thing that gets produced, it's not a problem that it remains mine if society owns the means of producing that thing and can ensure other get one too.

The most critical means of production is of course land and resources.

The distinction is a little difficult to define, particularly in boundary cases, but for a socialist the key idea would be that with the idea of private property comes the idea of private ownership of the means of production in a society, which includes arable land as much as it does nuclear power plants, and it is private ownership of those means of production that is anathematic to socialism. — jkg20

Yes, anarchists are much more open to markets than Marxist-communists. Marxists-communists, certainly in the Lennon-Stalin direction, believed the the bourgeoisie would basically pop out of any market relations whatsoever.

Anarchists have usually a more positive view of human nature and tend to believe that free political equals could manage a market responsibly; though usually as a step towards a local sharing economy type situation as we learn to do more and more things without markets (and as society simply gets wealthier, and good things accumulate). Marxist-communists would tend to argue that such a step would not go anywhere and just get rolled backwards (the accumulation tendency of private capital would overwhelm regulation).

From what you say, private ownerhip of means of production is compatible with anarchism. — jkg20

It's compatible in the sense that politically equal people may choose such an arrangement for a wide range of things.

Anarchists would argue equal people wouldn't choose to do so for anything important (health-care, education, etc.) and would eventually lose more and more market relations in favour of community relations.

However, since the so called left wing of any movement covers a much broader church than the right wing, I wonder if there is room within anarchism for the rejection of the principle of private property as well? Or is it on that specific point that you think we really boil down to the essential difference between socialism and all forms of anarchism? — jkg20

Do you mean rejection of "personal property"?

But definitely many anarchists, especially early anarchists, had a vision of taking down the state, abolishing all property and then everyone suddenly just accessing what they need when they need it.

Anarchists can also be essentially in line with the socialists in this regard, just have differences such as the why, how and skeptical of historical-materialism as determined without human individual agency.

Marx saw this naivety of the socialists before him and solved it by simply stating capitalism will solve all the problems of production first, and only then workers can unite to take over.

However, anarchists also started to try to solve this economic problem without needing capitalists (anarchists usually view the entire capitalist enterprise as a fundamental mistake that hurled humanity towards the abyss), and so some anarchists view communal living as immediately practical whereas others are open to markets regulated in the right way (after taking over all privately owned land and monopolies) -- it's usually this question that produces the large variations in anarchist theory; where anarchists stay united is the belief that humanity can figure out what works best given equal uncoerced participation, and so a lot of differences are therefore simply speculative about what such people would do.

The question “Which anarchist proposes this formula?“. — NOS4A2

Yes, so my question in the context of how was using "government", so answering my question would have required addressing the meaning of the word as relevant to my question and used by Bukanin, and not just the meaning in English in the 19th century but also in Russian.

Well, but then why not call it by its name and call it direct democracy instead of anarchy? — TheArchitectOfTheGods

Anarchy advocates direct-democracy, of one form or another, but is not reducible to direct democracy. There is more moral and political content to anarchy than simply how it is proposed decisions be made.

After all, there is power / might and decisions to be managed, as you are admitting. — TheArchitectOfTheGods

Yes, if anarchists get together and vote on some objective or some rule then they would presumably vote on how to implement that at the same time or then some later time. So, they would need the power to accomplish their goal, and we would hope their plan takes that into account.

However, this is not the same as a moral claim "might is right".

The difference between "state power" and an "anarchist collective power of political equals" is that state power (as it was seen in the 19th century, 20th century, and today) is coercive, whereas anarchist power is not coercive. It is the coercive nature of the state that anarchists have issue with, not any of it's legitimate functions. Statist argue that the legitimate functions of the state cannot be carried out without the coercive nature of the state, whereas anarchists argue there is another way to get things done.

And what would then be a correct label for the current political organization of the world, if not 'Anarchy' (no-rule)? No-rule and collective decision making (I assume this includes collective enforcement of the rules) are not the same. — TheArchitectOfTheGods

As points out, it is the propaganda of various states that has made the association of "anarchy" with either "chaos" or "no organization".

Political theorists usually refer to the international order between states today as "multi-polar", not anarchy.

There are political lessons to take from the international order, such as freely entered agreements that parties can freely exit (Brexit being a good example).

However, the issue of using the failure of states to competently organize to solve problems (as we see with Coronavirus, over fishing, global warming, soil depletion, famines, poverty, on-top of the preventable wars) anarchists would argue is a failure precisely due to the corrupt nature of the state. That states tend to be bad-faith actors when dealing with other states (acting precisely in the greedy and bad faith way statists argue individuals act without the state to coerce them into being productive!) and so problems don't get solved, anarchists would argue as further evidence states are fundamentally corrupt and incompetent. Anarchists would argue, when the same kind of structures (UN discussions, free-agreements, etc.) are built from the bottom up then you would see good-faith actors and problems actually solved.

My question to you?

Well, thanks for going and reading an anarchist text.

Kropotkin also says literally "we want no government", so it is a point worth discussing, just not worth it with someone who hasn't read or even bothered to web searched any anarchists.

However, it's a fairly trivial detail, the word "government" is clearly used interchangeably with "the state" in such passages from anarchists from this period; and it seems to me, in particular Russian anarchists.

The meaning of "government" as is used today in philosophical discussion has become more abstract to refer to basically any collective decision making process whatsoever.

Bakunin clearly states anarchy is about "social organization from the bottom up" not "no organization whatsoever: might is right" as is using the word.

If you cite passages written 150 years ago, you need to check that they are using the word in the same way.

Moreover, Bakunin is writing in Russian, so there must be pause for thought of the impact of translation.

However, in this case, clearly government is not being used as an abstract term for collective decision making, but as an equivalent of "the state".

The fact the book your citing is literally has "statism" in the title, may also be a clue that he is referring to "government" in the form of a "state".

Kropotkin also uses the phrase in English writing (I believe), but whether this is an error on his part, again, clearly interchangeable with "the state", and goes to some length to explain that anarchism is not about people just doing what they want without rules, but collective decision making between equals (decision on things like rules). Kropotkin talks a lot about people holding congresses all the time to decide on this or that; so, with how the word "government" is used in philosophy today, we would say Kropotkin is describing "a form of government" and we might inquire further about it.

Anarchy = no government. — TheArchitectOfTheGods

Which anarchist proposes this formula?

The reason to have government is to create a monopoly on power, in order to be able to enforce the laws. — TheArchitectOfTheGods

Anarchist organization would also have just as much tendency towards a de facto monopoly of force as any other. What anarchists want to avoid is a central monopoly of power that can simply ignore the wishes of it's constituent members and communities.

Anarchist communities also enforce their laws. The anarchist contention is that the more people do not effectively participate in making those laws, the worse those laws are and the less reason people have for following them, increasing crime; in other words, the incompetence and inefficiency of the state breeds the problem of rampant crime that the state then claims it's necessary to solve.

You can also observe the effects of an anarchical system in the current world order. — TheArchitectOfTheGods

Anarchy doesn't want states, so to claim that interactions of states in absence of even more extreme concentration of power is somehow analogous to interactions between individuals is disingenuous at best and simply foolish at worst.

Fair enough. Does it create any other authority/ imperatives then? — Echarmion

Voting creates no imperatives.

As for authority, voting for anarchists does not create authority in the statist sense of people with essentially all the power.

Being a political equal means there is no authority in the sense we usually understand it.

Genuine democracy for anarchists means that a deliberative body never hands over all the power to some small executive team that then run everything.

Certainly anarchist's also need to elect people for specialized tasks, but they retain the ability to recall them at any moment so the authority did not move away from the members in a practical sense. If such a manager "went rogue" anarchists would be organized in such a way as to immediately take their power away in a practical sense of whatever resources this person was using.

The authority remains in the voting itself, and no new authority is created through voting; the people concerned could at any moment do something else.

Things get implemented because the people who vote for it see to it that it gets implemented, which, yes, may require violence. Anarchists maintain that deliberation and decisions between political equals does not give rise to such divisive differences as to lead to many occasions of violence; however, anarchists propose no system that would "force people to not be violent", things can, in principle, get out of hand at any moment (just as with any social system; other social systems merely claim it is otherwise; such as representing an order created and maintained by god, or simply claiming that a institutions with the most force, for now, collaborating are therefore unassailable, and so cannot be undermined and changed or even turned against each other -- that monopoly is absolute and forever and there is no epistemological alternative to submission).

This is why I mention in a previous comment anarchism is easiest in a rural context.

I am more and more puzzled about what anarchism is supposed to be. — Phil Devine

Which anarchists have you read? Maybe we can help with better understanding them.

I would argue that feminism is intrinsically implied in Anarchist principles-seeing as they seek to dissolve all power structures and return power to the autonomous individuals, this necessarily must include women and the sex class system. Emma Goldman, one of the founding writers and thinkers of modern Anarchism-was also one of the most radical feminist thinkers; highlighting that there can be no equality until women are freed from marriage, family, and the obligation to be reproductive chattel. Also it was Goldman (among others) that highlighted systems theory; she recognized that the sex industry, and subsequently the hated prostitute, were resultant of larger systems of oppression and exploitation. — Grre

Yes, I definitely agree with these statements.

Feminism appears complicated but it operates among the same lines as political ideologies, — Grre

Yes, I did not mean to imply the basic political argument is complicated. If people are equally free and exercising their moral autonomy as equal participants in the political process, so too women, clearly.

Rather, what I was referring to as complicated is the history of feminism understood as identity politics, the episodes of being co-opted and subverted wherever possible by the power structure, as you immediately get to, so I think we're on the same page.

Feminism appears complicated but it operates among the same lines as political ideologies, there is conservative (reactive) feminism that seems womens issues as "secretarian" and lesser to larger male/universal issues like war, the draft, ect. ect. First wave feminism got largely co opted by this line of thought. — Grre

I'm not certain I agree, but it's useful to clarify meanings of "feminism", and for my purposes, what it means for a movement to be "co-opted".

For instance, it is not necessarily the case that anyone who actually starts a social movement that gains momentum is themselves co-opted; indeed, this is rarely the case. Rather, what is being co-opted is the representation of the movement in the press and popular culture; these milieu being controlled by elite power structures anyway, it is not surprising that they can be made to say anything at all. It is the popular conception of the movement, usually a dissident view that effectively overcomes suppression and is suddenly a "issue", that slowly or quickly is transformed into something that is no longer disruptive but in fact supportive of the power structure. This process is with or without whoever started things off; indeed, people who "start" things are often unwavering radicals.

So, what makes analyzing identity based political movement complicated,firstly (precisely because it is so easily co-opted) is that the power structure gets pick and choose who to promote as authentically representing that identity; unsurprisingly, they choose to promote people that are not threatening in anyway to the power structure (are useful idiots or are aware of their part in the con).

Were "first wave feminists" co-opted? or were entirely new people branded "feminist" essentially fabricated by the media to represent first wave feminists and replace them in the general consciousness. We cannot assume anything simply because the word "feminism" pops up at different time and is assigned to different things.

A second important consideration is that people "in the movement" at any given time may not really know what it's about in any argumentative sense. Obviously, these are the marks of those doing the co-opting, but they also can create confusions entirely spontaneously all on their own.

Liberal feminism is what is largely exposed mainstream, it acts the same as other Liberal ideologies, attempting to address one-ticket issues that ultimately end up changing very little and obscure the larger systemic causes...examples of this are the whole Trans+ pronoun debate that the regressive right gets so up and arms about (haha theres 80 genders wow omg these libtards!) but Liberal campaigns frame as individual "Free choice" and not the result of some larger deconstuction of gender ideals more radically (which is where the Trans+ movement began, as a fierce critique of the genre binary). — Grre

So yes, in the context of what I wrote above, what I would maybe change is that "Liberal feminism" is what's allowed to broadcast on mainstream television.

Also lets not forget the ultimate co opting of previous (second and third wave) feminists attempts to critique beauty ideals and how those are used culturally to enslave women...Liberal campaigns have co opted this to be "look good for you" and equated (usually harmful) beauty practices with self care, self love, and independence, when really-as radical writers have shown, there can be no independence from the male gaze, you are not wearing makeup for "You" no matter how much you want to believe it. Hence once again Liberal ideology obscures larger systems-perhaps in more damaging ways than in economic or social policy... — Grre

I like to call this "commercial feminism" and it represents the vast majority of intellectual content about feminism most women actually encounter. Indeed, co-opting a social movement to sell something (cigarettes) started with feminism.

However, not only is the exact mechanism of co-opting complicated, both in abstract description and as they play out historically, but simply the presence of co-opting is not enough to conclude things are "counter-productive". The co-opting can be viewed also from the angle of "comes with the territory and is simply part of the battle", that power structures have so much influence on representation of movements (which then affect those movements, producing even more acceptable representations) and that this is a formidable weapon simply means it must be dealt with as best as possible, just as moving production oversees is a formidable weapon against the union movement. So to get into all the details to try to first define what we mean by "feminism" for the purposes of then arguing "feminism has this or that" is a very long task.

What I think is interesting for this thread is the general anarchist view that identity politics has the uncanny tendency of being always a fight for a place within the state; indeed, often identity groups try to emphasize how obedient they are for supporting their case that the state should grant them more comparable conditions of wage slavery as it grants other groups.

Definitely lot's of things worth discussing.

And that’s exactly what distinguishes it from being identical with democracy. Anarchy may sometimes use democratic methods, and when it does it uses direct democratic methods, but you said “direct democracy” was just a modern euphemism for anarchy, when it’s clear even you understand that that is not true. — Pfhorrest

Anarchism is not distinguishable from democracy in the abstract sense of "people power". In this sense, anarchism is simply standard democratic argument with some additional "decision efficiency arguments" as well as some economic argument representing what people may find works best in using their power.

Anarchism criticizes "representational democracy" as too easily a form of not-democracy: controlled by the rich resulting in what amounts to an aristocracy that merely calls itself a democracy.

However, anarchists do not view the basic principles of democracy, for instance that would be typically advanced to justify the US constitution, as erroneous, but rather the criticism is that those principles are not realized in practice and are not elaborated to a reasonable conclusion.

But if voting does not result in authority, then it's not collective decision making, either. — Echarmion

I used the term "moral authority", because I was talking about moral authority.

The outcome of a voting process does not create new moral imperatives.

If any actual compliance to the outcome of the vote is incidental rather than based on the actual voting process, one might as well dispense with the voting and just have a discussion. — Echarmion

Therefore, this does not follow from what I have wrote.

Again, such an issue of importance (in this case, recognizing the legitimacy, state or otherwise of homosexual relationships and ensuing social acceptance and normalization), is hailed as a "single-ticket" issue-which seems good and progressive, but really collaborates with larger systems of power-hence going unseen and ensuring the status quo (meaning nothing too radical) goes on. That is, bluntly speaking, the MO of most neo-liberal/centerists politics, bureaucratic acquiescence to soft issues. — Grre

Yes, I agree. I mentioned the "what does it look like when this doesn't happen" example of MLK to contrast with examples where these issues are clearly worked to maintain the status quo: create outrage about homosexual issues, abandon worker issues, fleece the workers and trade way protection of the black community franchise to "be tough on crime" to attract republican voters, declare victory. However, it gets messy when trying to disentangle the good-faith actors concerned about a legitimate single issue and the power structure that co-opts them; generally, they do not have the analytical capacity to understand what is going on, so can hardly be blamed for being used, though there are notable exceptions.

I'll try to collect my thoughts on what these identity politics things mean from an anarchist perspective. Feminism is definitely the most complicated.

Ok, we agree this is an ahistorical thought experiment.

If 51% of those people, all of them white, could decide that nonwhites should all be slaves again, then that is not anarchy. — Pfhorrest

I've already dealt with this issue if you read my comments.

But to put it another way, how would you stop 51% of people voting on something, in this case who's going to be slaves, in an anarchist way? What would be an "anarchist structure of power" that prevents this happening, that is not the elite state power anarchists are all about not wanting?

While you think about that, the anarchist view of 51% of people voting for something terrible is that anarchists (presumably on the side of "let's not have slaves") failed to convince enough people, the people failed to be moral, and that terrible thing must be resisted (such as Nazi Germany, even assuming 51% really did vote for Hitler).

Now, if we had a democratic system that is "anarchist approved", if 51% of people voted for something terrible, then the anarchists communities who didn't want that would not participate in it's implementation, they may even feel compelled to go and liberate slaves in the communities implementing such a policy.

People voting for stupid, even evil, things is not a theoretical problem for anarchists, as anarchists do not view voting in itself as the political ideal and feel the need to defend what a majority decides on any given occasion. Doesn't mean there's a better way to avoid violence that doesn't include voting, doesn't mean voting needs to be re-thought in a non-majoritarian way, nor does it mean voting is guaranteed to prevent violence on every occasion.

In other words, "voting" in anarchism is a tool of collective decision making, but not the only tool (one must have some moral system to decide what to vote on in the first place) and neither do votes create moral authority; people who vote maintain as much moral agency before and after voting, and they may or may not feel like continuing to participate in the organization they've been voting in if they disagree with a given decision (a majority being mistaken, in the anarchists view, maybe morally tolerable or intolerable, depends). Anarchists do not view it as a moral duty to carry out the wishes of the majority, depends what those wishes are, but they don't have a better way of collective decision making (such as a politburo or unaccountable supreme court "making sure people don't go out of bounds").

Anarchists believe they have better ways to organize society on many other dimensions, economic and political, but these do not substitute for voting as such; rather, they make voting better and more effective.

Anarchists who decide collaboration with the majority is no longer morally tolerable, would still try to organize to decide what to do about it, and need to vote on, for instance, if assassinating someone is going to help and who to assassinate and how (and depending on when and where we're talking about, people will react to this "keeping things open" with "ahh, dangerous idiots!" or then "yes, yes, would be great if someone killed Hitler"); and, again, if an anarchist finds the majority of anarchists in this meeting's decision to not assassinate someone morally intolerable, they may reject this majority decision as well and go and make their own meeting with people who do agree.

This is why statists equate anarchism with chaos -- at no point do anarchists give up their moral autonomy and accept to serve the will of another person group, no matter how large, without being convinced its a good idea at every step; there is no theoretical clockwork mechanism of social stability and keeping still that statists crave. Statists will say "look, a majority of people have, at the least, acquiesced to state power, and so those anarchists are against democracy!" to which the anarchist's response (which is never allowed to be heard) is "well, first of all, just voting on something doesn't entail I should abandon my world view -- why would I? -- and second, acquiescence is not equal participation so the results are highly suspect.