Funny you say that Stui - it's a topic Inglehart wrote on specifically with Pippa Norris in 'Trump and the Populist Authoritarian Parties: The Silent Revolution in Reverse' (2017). Again, the basic argument is that values and attitudes are driven by material security - as economic insecurity rises values shift to reflect this (increased resentment to outgroups; xenophobia; declining trust in government and democratic processes etc). It's not rocket science but Inglehart does a great job of linking micro-level changes in attitudes to macro-level shifts in politics and culture. And it's grounded in really solid empirical research (Inglehart was one of the key drivers behind the World Values Survey).
Just to be clear, this is mainstream political science and has been for nearly 50 years. It's why I get a bit amused when it gets spoken about as though it's a 'new thing' by social and political commentators.
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stui magpie
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David
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A really interesting lecture on the subject here: "Left is not woke" by Susan Neiman.
https://youtu.be/aBtc-_WLuqk?feature=shared
She makes a really good point here about how the identitarian left has rejected the concept of universalism, whereas right-wingers have adopted a curious form of universalism in embracing right nationalist movements around the world.
https://youtu.be/aBtc-_WLuqk?feature=shared
She makes a really good point here about how the identitarian left has rejected the concept of universalism, whereas right-wingers have adopted a curious form of universalism in embracing right nationalist movements around the world.
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange
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pietillidie
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The work NJ summarises and the idea that material politics recedes with wealth ties into what I was saying to M2M on the shift from structuralism/modernity to poststructuralism/postmodernity. Politically, you go for mass highly uniform positions when you need numerical heft, hence the unions and class obsession of the old left. But it's also extraordinarily limiting because it becomes a religion and straitjacket of it's own.
The left has a much longer history of that sort of organisation than the right, which discovered serious political organisation with the advent of cable TV and the internet, which has now nightmarishly converged with its organised religion. Hence, it has the upper hand in campaigning and elections, and being authoritarian by disposition will always fall in line behind the dear leader and party.
But the left has been there and done that, and can no longer suffer that sort of stifling of the self merely to 'win'. Mass movements are full of morons and turn people's brains to mush, while tight organisations such as unions are as batty and constraining as churches. Read old Marxian thinking or M2M's socialist tracts and you might as well be part of an Evangelical sect with its own terminology and approved doctrines and narrow obsessions.
The left experienced that oppressiveness first under the Fordist manufacturing model and old Marxist-style political organisation. Unity and tightness are politically powerful, but they are also stifling and oppressive; that's no way to live once you reach a certain level of material wealth. So, the left broke free of those constraints, first through poststructuralist ideas focusing on individual lives, unique and under-reported sub-cultures, cultural and ethnic differences, and the 'lived lives' of those outside the status quo who don't view themselves through the lens of vague abstractions such as class. Race, gender and sexuality came into the equation in reaction to old the Marxian thought that had bulldozed over individual difference in its quest for mass power. Looking back, so many of the Marxist and socialist movements were authoritarian, racist, misogynist, nationalist, imperialist, homophobic and thuggish.
The concept went from 'classes and unities' to 'cleavages and intersections'. And it makes perfect sense that humans at some point would want to pursue their own identities, from women who had sacrificed their careers to closeted queers, those of non-conventional gender, and creatives trapped in macho cultures and careers. In many ways, it's just good old Maslow's hierarchy. At the same time, businesses moved to a great diversity of services and knowledge businesses, breaking old macho factory floor hierarchies and rewarding creative expression monetarily. So, society became wealthier, and the economy started rewarding difference or at the very least enabling difference and providing opportunities to those previously excluded or forced to conform.
The far right is a few decades behind, held back by religion, rural isolation, nationalism and a yearning for some imaginary utopian past. It has become far more like the socialism of old it hates than it realises. Eventually, it too will want something more and splinter, if it doesn't kill us all first like Khmer Rouge wannabes.
The left has a much longer history of that sort of organisation than the right, which discovered serious political organisation with the advent of cable TV and the internet, which has now nightmarishly converged with its organised religion. Hence, it has the upper hand in campaigning and elections, and being authoritarian by disposition will always fall in line behind the dear leader and party.
But the left has been there and done that, and can no longer suffer that sort of stifling of the self merely to 'win'. Mass movements are full of morons and turn people's brains to mush, while tight organisations such as unions are as batty and constraining as churches. Read old Marxian thinking or M2M's socialist tracts and you might as well be part of an Evangelical sect with its own terminology and approved doctrines and narrow obsessions.
The left experienced that oppressiveness first under the Fordist manufacturing model and old Marxist-style political organisation. Unity and tightness are politically powerful, but they are also stifling and oppressive; that's no way to live once you reach a certain level of material wealth. So, the left broke free of those constraints, first through poststructuralist ideas focusing on individual lives, unique and under-reported sub-cultures, cultural and ethnic differences, and the 'lived lives' of those outside the status quo who don't view themselves through the lens of vague abstractions such as class. Race, gender and sexuality came into the equation in reaction to old the Marxian thought that had bulldozed over individual difference in its quest for mass power. Looking back, so many of the Marxist and socialist movements were authoritarian, racist, misogynist, nationalist, imperialist, homophobic and thuggish.
The concept went from 'classes and unities' to 'cleavages and intersections'. And it makes perfect sense that humans at some point would want to pursue their own identities, from women who had sacrificed their careers to closeted queers, those of non-conventional gender, and creatives trapped in macho cultures and careers. In many ways, it's just good old Maslow's hierarchy. At the same time, businesses moved to a great diversity of services and knowledge businesses, breaking old macho factory floor hierarchies and rewarding creative expression monetarily. So, society became wealthier, and the economy started rewarding difference or at the very least enabling difference and providing opportunities to those previously excluded or forced to conform.
The far right is a few decades behind, held back by religion, rural isolation, nationalism and a yearning for some imaginary utopian past. It has become far more like the socialism of old it hates than it realises. Eventually, it too will want something more and splinter, if it doesn't kill us all first like Khmer Rouge wannabes.
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm
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David
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Do you have any thoughts on the video above, PTID? I thought it might be of particular interest given her focus on enlightenment philosophy and her critique of contemporary readings of those thinkers.
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange
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stui magpie
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Hey PTiddy, I used to give you shit for writing overly verbose pieces full of jargon that were basically incomprehensible.
That piece above is really good. I actually understood some of it and even though I'm not familiar with several of the terms you used, it makes sense.
Well done old son, we'll have you writing 1 page business cases in no time.
That piece above is really good. I actually understood some of it and even though I'm not familiar with several of the terms you used, it makes sense.
Well done old son, we'll have you writing 1 page business cases in no time.
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down.
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pietillidie
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^Haha, thanks! It's hard to know if I've improved or it's just the limits of writing on my annoyingly slow tablet! I probably have improved due to commercial work I've done on LinkedIn, which is longer than Twitter but still shortish.
David, Susan Neiman is nothing if not entertaining and interesting, which is a rarity for the postmodern left! But people with diverse real-world experience in business, policy and other cultures/social groups already know life is a back and forth between the local and the general. Go too general and you lose identity, bully difference and lose your own unique edge. Go too particular and you lose organisation, structure and motivation.
Every bad idea goes too far one way or the other. Classical economics is hilariously over-confident given it has conveniently invented a black box between individual economic decisions and economic outcomes, i.e., 'the invisible hand'. But it can't really tell you how one gives rise to the other; if it could, economies would be more predictable. Socialism is similarly over-confident. The tedious classification of social groups is almost satirical, as adherents refer to vague constructs like class with straight-faced confidence. What started as a tactic to motivate political unity quickly became dumb religion.
To me, biology explains all this increadibly well. Human brains have evolved to achieve certain ends that don't include capturing 'reality' in coherent, neat theories. Dogs, pigeons and ants can do amazing things we can't by accessing other parts of 'reality' that we can't. The 'reality' they access is out there, we just can't get at it because we don't have the hardware. Hence, Netwonian physics, relativity and quantum mechanics can't be unified. We can detect each system but can't unify them in a single explanation.
Take the everyday phenomenon we call 'business'. Just the actors involved range from leaders, managers and workers, to teams, departments, firms, competitors, industries, clusters, regulators, consumers, interest groups and more - across multiple jurisdictions. Try putting all that into a comms strategy. (As an aside, that's why AGI and super-intelligence are delusional misunderstandings of 'intelligence' and 'reality', which are far too vast, multi-layered and abstract to be captured).
A similar sort of incompleteness can be seen in the free-will/determinism debate. We can sense both, but can't explain how they fit together. The practical answer is moving between them in different contexts (the assumption of free will for everyday thought and conversation, and the assumption of constraints for analysis). But never the twain shall meet.
'Political correctness' and 'woke' are not wrong in their broad concerns. They're wrong in how they respond to those concerns, reducing everything to narrow obsessions othat offside people and are often beyond people's everyday ability, pushing people apart. As I always say, I'm happy with any politican or party that can bring about a 10% improvement. We don't need perfection, and pursuing it only creates worse outcomes, over-burdens everyone, and encourages self-deception.
The trick is to broadly keeping beliefs, doubts and motivations within a healthy range, and to settle for roughly moving the ball forward rather than demanding one way, one speed, right now.
David, Susan Neiman is nothing if not entertaining and interesting, which is a rarity for the postmodern left! But people with diverse real-world experience in business, policy and other cultures/social groups already know life is a back and forth between the local and the general. Go too general and you lose identity, bully difference and lose your own unique edge. Go too particular and you lose organisation, structure and motivation.
Every bad idea goes too far one way or the other. Classical economics is hilariously over-confident given it has conveniently invented a black box between individual economic decisions and economic outcomes, i.e., 'the invisible hand'. But it can't really tell you how one gives rise to the other; if it could, economies would be more predictable. Socialism is similarly over-confident. The tedious classification of social groups is almost satirical, as adherents refer to vague constructs like class with straight-faced confidence. What started as a tactic to motivate political unity quickly became dumb religion.
To me, biology explains all this increadibly well. Human brains have evolved to achieve certain ends that don't include capturing 'reality' in coherent, neat theories. Dogs, pigeons and ants can do amazing things we can't by accessing other parts of 'reality' that we can't. The 'reality' they access is out there, we just can't get at it because we don't have the hardware. Hence, Netwonian physics, relativity and quantum mechanics can't be unified. We can detect each system but can't unify them in a single explanation.
Take the everyday phenomenon we call 'business'. Just the actors involved range from leaders, managers and workers, to teams, departments, firms, competitors, industries, clusters, regulators, consumers, interest groups and more - across multiple jurisdictions. Try putting all that into a comms strategy. (As an aside, that's why AGI and super-intelligence are delusional misunderstandings of 'intelligence' and 'reality', which are far too vast, multi-layered and abstract to be captured).
A similar sort of incompleteness can be seen in the free-will/determinism debate. We can sense both, but can't explain how they fit together. The practical answer is moving between them in different contexts (the assumption of free will for everyday thought and conversation, and the assumption of constraints for analysis). But never the twain shall meet.
'Political correctness' and 'woke' are not wrong in their broad concerns. They're wrong in how they respond to those concerns, reducing everything to narrow obsessions othat offside people and are often beyond people's everyday ability, pushing people apart. As I always say, I'm happy with any politican or party that can bring about a 10% improvement. We don't need perfection, and pursuing it only creates worse outcomes, over-burdens everyone, and encourages self-deception.
The trick is to broadly keeping beliefs, doubts and motivations within a healthy range, and to settle for roughly moving the ball forward rather than demanding one way, one speed, right now.
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm