Thoughts of the Day: Monday 7 December 2020

 

Commanding Hope

Thomas Homer-Dixon

It’s worth recalling that technological change generally happens more slowly than we expect, while social change can happen astonishingly fast. As noted earlier, the most visible aspect of such fast change is usually a major institutional shift— the collapse of the apartheid regime or the sudden demise of Soviet communism, for instance, or more recently the legalization of gay marriage in many Western countries. But those shifts occurred only because substantial worldview change had already taken place under the surface, often— as in the cases of apartheid and gay marriage— due to the efforts and courage of many, many people at all levels of society.

The Inevitability of Tragedy

Barry Gewen

Every revolution, in Kissinger’s view, tossed up its Kerenskys—sane, reasonable, well-meaning idealists with no grasp of the realities of power. For them, good intentions were a substitute for weapons (whereas hard-headed Marxists from Regis Debray to Mao Zedong believed power came out of the barrel of a gun). Inevitably, they ended up being devoured.

Commanding Hope

Thomas Homer-Dixon

Barely fifteen years ago, it was widely believed that societies wired together by the internet and the web would become progressively smarter over time— that a higher collective intelligence could emerge from rapid flows of immense amounts of information and a flattening of knowledge hierarchies as everyone gained direct access to previously inaccessible expertise. Since then, we’ve learned some harsh lessons. Instead of creating a digital environment that draws us together and makes us smarter, the companies at the core of the social media revolution— Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and the like— have used the vast amounts of data they harvest about our preferences and behaviors to create an emotional environment that tends to pull us apart and make us dumber.

The Principles of Art

R. G. Collingwood

These two elements, sensuous and emotional, are not merely combined in the experience: they are combined according to a definite structural pattern. This pattern can be described by saying that the sensation takes precedence of the emotion.

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

HUME ONCE REMARKED that the whole of human civilization depends upon the fact that “one generation does not go off the stage at once and another succeed, as is the case with silkworms and butterflies.” At some turning-points of history, however, at some heights of crisis, a fate similar to that of silkworms and butterflies may befall a generation of men. For the decline of the old, and the birth of the new, is not necessarily an affair of continuity; between the generations, between those who for some reason or other still belong to the old and those who either feel the catastrophe in their very bones or have already grown up with it, the chain is broken and an “empty space,” a kind of historical no man’s land, comes to the surface which can be described only in terms of “no longer and not yet.”

Are we there--in the "no longer & not yet"--now?

The Life of the Mind

Hannah Arendt

Compared to an object of contemplation, meaning, which can be said and spoken about, is slippery; if the philosopher wants to see and grasp it, it “slips away.”

Don't Play the Fool, My Friends. 'No' to Violence

Don't play the fool, my friends, don't play the fool.

I was going to write a freestanding essay on the issues similar to those raised by Peter Beinart's Atlantic post, I realized that Beinart's essay provides an excellent (and brief) text upon which I can riff.

How might people opposed to violent white supremacists and their ilk become fools? By taking the bait of violence.

Of course, persons who value freedom and equality--fundamental American values--are shocked and appalled at the events in Charlottesville and the dismaying response of 45. And of course, those who cherish the American heritage of human rights don't want to cede the public space to violent thugs and bullies. But neither should we play their game, the game of violence. In the game of violence, the most violent, the most radical, win, whether they be on the right or the left.

Yes, while as Beinart points out, violent actors on the left have not come anywhere near to matching the violence and intimidation of the violent right, they still exist and pose a threat. Students of history will note that street fights marked much of the turmoil in post-WWI Germany, with communists and Nazis battling in the streets. When such battles erupt, who wins? In the parade of 20th-century horrors, whom can we say perpetrated the worst evils? The right of Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler, or the left of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others? Political divisions aren't accurately captured on a line running from left to right (or vice versa if you prefer), but seemingly opposed movements intersect in a circular configuration--in some cases, they meet in the sector marked by violence. (Others meet in the sector of order, law, and reason, which can include American liberals and conservatives, Democrats and traditional Republicans.) The comparative body count of the totalitarian left and the totalitarian right leaves little basis to prefer one to the other. The same can be said lesser, contemporary movements that adhere to one set of extremes or the other. Many have given the benefit of the doubt to the left based on the messianic and utopian elements of Marxist thought that draw upon those elements of Judaism and Christianity. But Marx had no political theory (despite some keen political insights), and the vacuum was filled by Lenin, Stalin, and others in ways that created states no less odious than those of Nazi Germany. The left is not pristine, and it must guard against those who would happily push progressives toward violence.

So what is to be done? This is a question of the highest moral, practical, and political significance (one problem viewed through three overlapping perspectives). The American Civil Rights movement led by Dr. King and the SCLC was able to pursue its successful campaign based on an extraordinary commitment to principles of non-violent resistance. But that was against the unconstitutional actions of state and local governments and was undertaken by a tight-knit community. I doubt such a community can be replicated today. But serious consideration must be given about how to combat the violent right without resorting to counter violence, which is pure oxygen to fuel the hatred of those who marched as 21st-century successors to Nazis and secessionists defending slavery. Anarchy is not the answer. Left-wing thuggery is not the answer. Right now there is no clear picture about how to respond with something more than words. We need to appear in the public space in support of American values. While I don't have a definitive answer about how to do this, I do know that we should eliminate one option: violence.

There's No Equivalence Between Antifa and White Supremacists

If Trump is concerned about violence on the left, he can start by fighting the racist movements whose growth has fueled its rise. 

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