I want to disagree with him and I want to agree with him in almost equal measure, I think that is ambivalence. My cynicism says that people like him, people who create psychologically dense pieces for the BBC, are actually on the side of conformity. I've felt since I was young that we are being sold our revolutions. They've firmly commoditized the opposition.
I'm tired of the politicization of everything. Even in this piece, there is an implicit call to political action underneath his attempted reframing of individualism. He wants us to see the power in being a member of a group. It is some kind of call to group-think, to pretend you are an individual and yet still act within a political body seeking power.
The real question I have is much deeper. Sapolsky has been on the podcast circuit pushing his new book that insists we have no free will whatsoever. Žižek claims that we are locked inside our ideologies. But I keep going back to ancient Greek philosophical ideas that entreat me to "know thyself".
I heard on a podcast recently that Sartre's lament that "hell is other people" is best interpreted as the observation that our instinct to mimic others invades our own freedom. When our peer group expresses strong virtues we are pressured to conform by threat of ostracization. This leads to anxiety as our own sense of virtue may be misaligned according to the group.
Yet I have a growing belief that finding my own virtue, something that completely originates within myself independent of external influence, is the real key. And Curtis here is suggesting that technology can be used to that purpose, to unite like-minded individuals based on their genuine virtues.
I suppose it is the power-seeking aspect of this piece that sits poorly with me. That I would (or should) seek other like-minded people for the purpose of exerting some political influence. It seems to me that just identifying and remaining true to virtues that I feel originate within myself is hard enough. To also consider the political consequences of grouping up with others and combining our resources to affect societal change is more than I want.
It reminds me of the conversation Jesus is said to have had with Pontius Pilate. He asks Jesus if he is trying to raise an army to overthrow the Roman order and Jesus responds that the Kingdom he is interested isn't of this Earth. There is something to that religious language which I think we've forgotten.
Beautifully said! However, in my experience, finding your own virtue requires interacting with others, and adjusting our view depending on how it went. Ie it takes both the grouping with others, and the inner quest.
And once you're grouped with others, why not interact also group to group, rather than just individual to individual, and profit from both higher order learning and influencing the world -- which I think is similar to what you describe as "power seeking aspects".
That said, the piece about finding "like-minded individuals" remains elusive, if one is serious about pursuing one's own values and way of being in the world.
You may enjoy CS Lewis’ Abolition of Man, and Alisdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue. Nietzsche too but I reckon you are familiar with his work. Not necessarily endorsing these books fully, just sharing some things that bounce around in my head alongside some of the ideas you mention.
I've heard of "After Virtue" but I wasn't familiar with its argument. From a brief skim of the Wikipedia article, it appears aligned in the direction I've been meandering for the last couple of years (in subject and reference at least, perhaps not its conclusions). Specifically, Aristotelian virtue ethics is a subject that is high on my list to more deeply investigate. I got about half way through Nicomachean Ethics a couple of years ago before setting it aside and moving on to other subjects. Even the sketch of his critique of Nietzsche seems to resonate with my own recent thoughts.
I shared a similar impression. I think there's a Tim Keller talk somewhere that mentions "being skeptical but not being skeptical enough". You put to words quite well a frustration I had with Curtis' take, though I enjoyed it as well.
Yes, yes, and it was Marx himself who said the following in his 1852 "Eighteenth Brumaire":
> Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.
I think it's an inarguable fact that our values are majorly, if not entirely, influenced by "regional" culture and ideology. I'm not sure there is any space "inside myself" that hasn't been reached and adulterated by both the lies and earnest claims of others. All my direct empirical observations are shelved on a (somewhat) common ontology.
Zizek gives me the creeps, but I think you've been subject to too much anti-collective propaganda and are locked inside your conservative ideology. The early Christians were not radical individualists, they were a collective of idolotrous dianysian Judean.
> They've firmly commoditized the opposition.
Yes, this is called "recuperation", per Wikipedia:
> In the sociological sense, recuperation is the process by which politically radical ideas and images are twisted, co-opted, absorbed, defused, incorporated, annexed or commodified within media culture and bourgeois society, and thus become interpreted through a neutralized, innocuous or more socially conventional perspective.
> you've been subject to too much anti-collective propaganda and are locked inside your conservative ideology
I'm not so sure about that. In fact, most recently I've been consuming a lot of Walter Benjamín and Hannah Arendt - and if they aren't considered progressive then I'm not sure what could be. I've also been trying to catch up on American Pragmatism from the likes of Peirce, James and Dewey (and a bit of Rorty too I suppose) - again, about as progressive a bunch as I think you could reasonably ask for. I would also argue that both Žižek and Sartre fit into the progressive.
But it is fair to say that I'm balancing that out nowadays with the likes of Kierkegaard and even Spinoza. My actual opinion is that an atheistic existentialism (in the form of guys like Sartre and Foucault) went too far. Exactly as Curtis laments in this post, I feel that we've lost some of the enchantment that we used to have. If a yearning for the re-introduction of that enchantment, and perhaps letting go a little of the seeking of political power, is being "locked inside [...]conservative ideology", then I will accept that charge.
I believe we can desire a kind of collectivism that is separate from the desire to wield political power. It just so happens that almost all modern collectivist philosophical theory (that I am familiar with) is centered around the desire to affect social change through political power.
Firstly, thanks for engaging in earnest with my response.
> Walter Benjamín and Hannah Arendt - and if they aren't considered progressive then I'm not sure what could be.
This reads almost like a joke to me, because neither of these thinkers are radical any longer. "American Pragmatism" is "about as progressive a bunch as I think you could reasonably ask for?"
It was my mistake to use a meaningless word like "conservative," whose antithesis in my mind would be Galeano, Fanon, Federici, or Freire.
> neither of these thinkers are radical any longer
I believe the question was whether or not those thinkers were indicative of "anti-collective propaganda" or being "locked inside [...] conservative ideology".
I have no interest in the degree of radicalness. I especially have no interest in thinkers who are even more politically minded than those I have already mentioned.
There's no such thing as "more" or "less" political writing. May as well say you're interested in "less chemical food." Food is made of chemicals, and the pen is mightier than the sword.
I'm tired of the politicization of everything. Even in this piece, there is an implicit call to political action underneath his attempted reframing of individualism. He wants us to see the power in being a member of a group. It is some kind of call to group-think, to pretend you are an individual and yet still act within a political body seeking power.
The real question I have is much deeper. Sapolsky has been on the podcast circuit pushing his new book that insists we have no free will whatsoever. Žižek claims that we are locked inside our ideologies. But I keep going back to ancient Greek philosophical ideas that entreat me to "know thyself".
I heard on a podcast recently that Sartre's lament that "hell is other people" is best interpreted as the observation that our instinct to mimic others invades our own freedom. When our peer group expresses strong virtues we are pressured to conform by threat of ostracization. This leads to anxiety as our own sense of virtue may be misaligned according to the group.
Yet I have a growing belief that finding my own virtue, something that completely originates within myself independent of external influence, is the real key. And Curtis here is suggesting that technology can be used to that purpose, to unite like-minded individuals based on their genuine virtues.
I suppose it is the power-seeking aspect of this piece that sits poorly with me. That I would (or should) seek other like-minded people for the purpose of exerting some political influence. It seems to me that just identifying and remaining true to virtues that I feel originate within myself is hard enough. To also consider the political consequences of grouping up with others and combining our resources to affect societal change is more than I want.
It reminds me of the conversation Jesus is said to have had with Pontius Pilate. He asks Jesus if he is trying to raise an army to overthrow the Roman order and Jesus responds that the Kingdom he is interested isn't of this Earth. There is something to that religious language which I think we've forgotten.