I am currently reading Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now. I admit I am looking for trouble because I believe the Enlightenment conceit, that we are all rationalists now, is sick and wrong. No we aren't, and we never will be. Rationalists.
But the basic message of Enlightenment Now is that we should stop complaining (except about Trump) and learn to love the prosperity, the health, the freedom, the peace, the safety, the knowledge, the cultural enrichment (except Trump).
For instance, p.214,
But, wonder of wonders, we have broken down these cultural horrors, according to Pinker, and racist, sexist, and homophobic opinions are on the decline. Also racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes. Imagine.
What Pinker does not show us is the frequency of left-wing political action against the terrors of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Is it going down in response to improving conditions? Or it is going up, in defiance of reason and rationality? It makes sense that we would be moving on from accusing every second person of racism, sexism, or homophobia. Let's take a look with Google Ngram.
Oh no! It turns out that the concern about racism, etc. has been going up, up, up. Until President Obama was inaugurated as First Black President.
But Google Ngram only goes up to 2006. Here is my nickel to say that concern about all these issues has skyrocketed since the racist, sexist, homophobic Donald Trump was elected First Deplorable President.
But, I thought to myself. Why?
I mean, according to the left-wing "rights" narrative we have abolished slavery, and given blacks civil rights. So why aren't blacks praising God every day for the blessings of the United States and the Republicans that fought a civil war to break the chains of slavery and then provided the most votes in the 1960s to pass the Civil Rights Acts?
Why aren't women out in the streets every day praising God for their emancipation and liberation from the hearth into the wonderful world of cubicles?
And why aren't gays praising Gaia every day for the end of gay criminalization and the glorious dawn of gay marriage?
Yes, why not?
Well, we know the answer. It is that the whole rights revolution, for its proponents, is not really about the rights but about the struggle. In the "activism culture" it is the activism that matters, and the big problem for every graduate of Activism 101 in college is to find a cause on which to advocate and peacefully protest.
In any movement, from religious to cultural to political, the movement is the thing. Or to put it in proper terms, for humans meaning comes first, and meaning is about doing something, such as advocating for equal rights.
But if your movement actually succeeds, then what? Because the danger is that your meaning in life, e.g., to advocate for equal rights, goes away.
No problem. You keep going as though nothing had changed; you realize that, unless you advocate and peacefully protest as devotedly as ever, those racist, sexist homophobes will take it all away. Give-backs is what they call it in the labor movement.
In fact, in any religious or cultural or political movement, you always maintain your observances to remind the faithful about the Glorious Struggle of the Heroes of the Movement.
Thus Christians celebrate the Eucharist, Christ's Last Supper, as though it was yesterday. We Americans celebrate the Fourth of July, when we declared Independence from those dreadful Limeys. The French celebrate the Storming of the Bastille as if it was 1789. The Bolsheviks celebrated their October Revolution of 1917. The Irish to this day in the US have their St. Patrick's Day parades. And gays have their Gay Pride marches.
The lesson is unmistakable. So long as a posterity lives to remember its past glories, so long will it celebrate the memory of the past. And so long will it insist that evil forces are poised to make a come-back.
As Nietzsche says: Human, All Too Human.
But the basic message of Enlightenment Now is that we should stop complaining (except about Trump) and learn to love the prosperity, the health, the freedom, the peace, the safety, the knowledge, the cultural enrichment (except Trump).
For instance, p.214,
Humans are liable to treat entire categories of other humans as means to an end or as nuisances to be cast aside. Coalitions bound by race and creed seek to dominate rival coalitions. Men try to control the labor, freedom, and sexuality of women. People translate their discomfort with sexual nonconformity into moralistic condemnation. We call these phenomena racism, sexism, and homophobia[.]Earth to Pinker. The "we" you are talking about are left-wing activists. Those words "racism," "sexism," and "homophobia" are left-wing pejoratives and have no place in polite conversation, because their purpose is to stop conversation. But I guess, Steve, that you have been in the university culture too long to get that.
But, wonder of wonders, we have broken down these cultural horrors, according to Pinker, and racist, sexist, and homophobic opinions are on the decline. Also racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes. Imagine.
What Pinker does not show us is the frequency of left-wing political action against the terrors of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Is it going down in response to improving conditions? Or it is going up, in defiance of reason and rationality? It makes sense that we would be moving on from accusing every second person of racism, sexism, or homophobia. Let's take a look with Google Ngram.
Oh no! It turns out that the concern about racism, etc. has been going up, up, up. Until President Obama was inaugurated as First Black President.
But Google Ngram only goes up to 2006. Here is my nickel to say that concern about all these issues has skyrocketed since the racist, sexist, homophobic Donald Trump was elected First Deplorable President.
But, I thought to myself. Why?
I mean, according to the left-wing "rights" narrative we have abolished slavery, and given blacks civil rights. So why aren't blacks praising God every day for the blessings of the United States and the Republicans that fought a civil war to break the chains of slavery and then provided the most votes in the 1960s to pass the Civil Rights Acts?
Why aren't women out in the streets every day praising God for their emancipation and liberation from the hearth into the wonderful world of cubicles?
And why aren't gays praising Gaia every day for the end of gay criminalization and the glorious dawn of gay marriage?
Yes, why not?
Well, we know the answer. It is that the whole rights revolution, for its proponents, is not really about the rights but about the struggle. In the "activism culture" it is the activism that matters, and the big problem for every graduate of Activism 101 in college is to find a cause on which to advocate and peacefully protest.
In any movement, from religious to cultural to political, the movement is the thing. Or to put it in proper terms, for humans meaning comes first, and meaning is about doing something, such as advocating for equal rights.
But if your movement actually succeeds, then what? Because the danger is that your meaning in life, e.g., to advocate for equal rights, goes away.
No problem. You keep going as though nothing had changed; you realize that, unless you advocate and peacefully protest as devotedly as ever, those racist, sexist homophobes will take it all away. Give-backs is what they call it in the labor movement.
In fact, in any religious or cultural or political movement, you always maintain your observances to remind the faithful about the Glorious Struggle of the Heroes of the Movement.
Thus Christians celebrate the Eucharist, Christ's Last Supper, as though it was yesterday. We Americans celebrate the Fourth of July, when we declared Independence from those dreadful Limeys. The French celebrate the Storming of the Bastille as if it was 1789. The Bolsheviks celebrated their October Revolution of 1917. The Irish to this day in the US have their St. Patrick's Day parades. And gays have their Gay Pride marches.
The lesson is unmistakable. So long as a posterity lives to remember its past glories, so long will it celebrate the memory of the past. And so long will it insist that evil forces are poised to make a come-back.
As Nietzsche says: Human, All Too Human.
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