I wasn't going to bother listening to this because I thought that you were just going to read your article in typical here's-a-rote-recitation-of-something-that-was-created-to-be-read and really, is much better off staying in that lane, but hey, so many people don't read nowadays so, here's-a-podcast-version fashion. Happily, I decided to check it out anyways and am so glad I did. Brilliant. If I may be so bold to say, you really need to sell yourself a bit better . . . the description above doesn't even come close to justly representing what you recorded here.
I know it sounds hokey, but honestly, listening to that gave me a surge of hopefulness. Maybe we'll pull out of this oppressive ideological box when it comes to the serious and vexing issues of "race" and American culture and move on to something better - something that more fully lives out the positive potential that I still believe "we" (whoever that is) have available, if we can somehow only connect with and move it forward.
Because your piece <is> accomplishing what the sometimes well- and honestly intentioned, and sometimes crassly Machievellian crusade against microaggressions and other woke (or successor ideology) shibboleths is (at least in a sympathetic accounting such as you gave here), at its best, aiming towards. As a white (etc. etc.) American listening, I felt moved and, as they say, "educated," learning about and connecting with experiences that aren't mine. Yet is, in a sense, they are mine, too, because we share the same society, culture, and, we're all human so all have our own personal analogies, and - perhaps it's not to corny to say - we share the same broadly defined (small-d) democratic values.
I'll stop there, but bravo, and thank you, and please keep going with this work - it's good, in multiple senses of the word.
Thank you. That was moving, insightful, and an exemplar of how moral introspection is fundamental to maturity and kindness. Your observation about "automated perception" as a cultural operation is akin to the physical fact of visual "interpolation" of object perception. Much to ponder here and I think the podcast is worth listening to twice.
The parallel to the youthful social discomfort being described is the idea of "gender dysphoria."
The emphasis on subjectivity therapeutically described can hardly avoid making pathology out of ordinary discomfort at growing up - and sociologizing ideology ensures that "toxic" social causes be identified. So, the young woman whose discomfort in the workplace has "imposter syndrome" to which she ascribes causes invisible to the rest of her coworkers. This is a variation upon the theme of individual "liberation" from the remnants of culture.
re: the "crisis of meaning" requires more than cheap slogans and victim narratives
Excellent, again. Thanks.
The idea that the messy, dysfunctional, inherently "tribal" (in its evolutionary origins) process of finding meaning and purpose that members of the human species engage in can be reduced to cheap, superficial political or ideological slogans, or easily attainable faux universalism, by so called "activists", "academics" and others, is brilliantly debunked by this podcast and article.
The old models of contemplative, mythic, transcendent "universalism" were rejected (or at least marginalized from their position of dominance) by modern rationalism and science as the price of entering the age of classically liberal Enlightenment, market economics, widespread literacy/numeracy, industry and democracy.
The elite, curated hierarchies of expertise built on the Enlightenment model have now also been disrupted by technology (information flows around hierarchies via networks) and social change, "absolute" belief in objective, scientific and rational "truth" brought into deep question, for better or worse, good or bad, by critics of western civilization, by relativists, by proponents of epistemological indeterminacy (which should have always been part of the checks and balances within "real science").
So far, the deconstruction of the Enlightenment has led to more alienation, confusion, social fragmentation and atomization (and political-organizational complexity and dysfunction) than a satisfying "solution" to the problems of oppression, racism, sexism, nationalism, etc.
Now that postmodernism has obliterated the "evil" of hierarchy (by replacing rational absolutism with an absolutism of relativist anti-absolutism!), it is increasingly apparent that cheap slogans and revenge-utopianism doesn't stop humans from being shitty and tribalistic.
The hard work of beginning to adapt to new realities with something like the "religion of no religion", or some other sense making system that is anti-fragile to the unwisdom of postmodern disruption and deconstruction, is what is needed.
I wasn't going to bother listening to this because I thought that you were just going to read your article in typical here's-a-rote-recitation-of-something-that-was-created-to-be-read and really, is much better off staying in that lane, but hey, so many people don't read nowadays so, here's-a-podcast-version fashion. Happily, I decided to check it out anyways and am so glad I did. Brilliant. If I may be so bold to say, you really need to sell yourself a bit better . . . the description above doesn't even come close to justly representing what you recorded here.
I know it sounds hokey, but honestly, listening to that gave me a surge of hopefulness. Maybe we'll pull out of this oppressive ideological box when it comes to the serious and vexing issues of "race" and American culture and move on to something better - something that more fully lives out the positive potential that I still believe "we" (whoever that is) have available, if we can somehow only connect with and move it forward.
Because your piece <is> accomplishing what the sometimes well- and honestly intentioned, and sometimes crassly Machievellian crusade against microaggressions and other woke (or successor ideology) shibboleths is (at least in a sympathetic accounting such as you gave here), at its best, aiming towards. As a white (etc. etc.) American listening, I felt moved and, as they say, "educated," learning about and connecting with experiences that aren't mine. Yet is, in a sense, they are mine, too, because we share the same society, culture, and, we're all human so all have our own personal analogies, and - perhaps it's not to corny to say - we share the same broadly defined (small-d) democratic values.
I'll stop there, but bravo, and thank you, and please keep going with this work - it's good, in multiple senses of the word.
Nice. I wasn't gonna listen because it's so much faster to read. Glad I did also. TY for Your comment. (As well to all the commenters here.)
Thank you. That was moving, insightful, and an exemplar of how moral introspection is fundamental to maturity and kindness. Your observation about "automated perception" as a cultural operation is akin to the physical fact of visual "interpolation" of object perception. Much to ponder here and I think the podcast is worth listening to twice.
The music was spot on.
Jaysus, that Harper’s piece is stunningly great. I wish to fuck I’d written it.
Wes, when are we forming a band?
The parallel to the youthful social discomfort being described is the idea of "gender dysphoria."
The emphasis on subjectivity therapeutically described can hardly avoid making pathology out of ordinary discomfort at growing up - and sociologizing ideology ensures that "toxic" social causes be identified. So, the young woman whose discomfort in the workplace has "imposter syndrome" to which she ascribes causes invisible to the rest of her coworkers. This is a variation upon the theme of individual "liberation" from the remnants of culture.
re: the "crisis of meaning" requires more than cheap slogans and victim narratives
Excellent, again. Thanks.
The idea that the messy, dysfunctional, inherently "tribal" (in its evolutionary origins) process of finding meaning and purpose that members of the human species engage in can be reduced to cheap, superficial political or ideological slogans, or easily attainable faux universalism, by so called "activists", "academics" and others, is brilliantly debunked by this podcast and article.
The old models of contemplative, mythic, transcendent "universalism" were rejected (or at least marginalized from their position of dominance) by modern rationalism and science as the price of entering the age of classically liberal Enlightenment, market economics, widespread literacy/numeracy, industry and democracy.
The elite, curated hierarchies of expertise built on the Enlightenment model have now also been disrupted by technology (information flows around hierarchies via networks) and social change, "absolute" belief in objective, scientific and rational "truth" brought into deep question, for better or worse, good or bad, by critics of western civilization, by relativists, by proponents of epistemological indeterminacy (which should have always been part of the checks and balances within "real science").
So far, the deconstruction of the Enlightenment has led to more alienation, confusion, social fragmentation and atomization (and political-organizational complexity and dysfunction) than a satisfying "solution" to the problems of oppression, racism, sexism, nationalism, etc.
Now that postmodernism has obliterated the "evil" of hierarchy (by replacing rational absolutism with an absolutism of relativist anti-absolutism!), it is increasingly apparent that cheap slogans and revenge-utopianism doesn't stop humans from being shitty and tribalistic.
The hard work of beginning to adapt to new realities with something like the "religion of no religion", or some other sense making system that is anti-fragile to the unwisdom of postmodern disruption and deconstruction, is what is needed.
Aa M. Horton and the other commenters "said," Sir Wesley. Words fail me to come up with a high enough compliment. TY, SIR!