In my experience this sub has usually been open minded and thoughtful. We should make a collective effort to keep it that way. Nietzsche cautions that “whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.” We should keep that in mind and strive to be intellectually virtuous in how we engage with each other and with essentialism.
In “Cultivating Good Minds” by Jason Baehr an intellectual virtue is described as a trait that enables one to learn better, think better and understand. Intellectual virtues are like moral virtues but have different goals. For intellectual virtues, the goal is learning and understanding; for moral virtues the goal is living well.
There are several intellectual virtues but three virtues in particular that I appreciate and I have worked on are:
Intellectual carefulness
Intellectual carefulness helps one pursue truth and understanding while avoiding mistakes along the way. In practice this could mean being skeptical of assumptions and questioning whether a source is reliable instead of spreading misinformation or making assumptions about what someone means.
Intellectual thoroughness
An intellectually thorough person will ask questions to fully understand exactly how something works, or what something means or says; they will search out arguments against their own beliefs to see how they stand. They will not settle for a shallow understanding.
Open-mindedness
Willingness to change your mind and truly see things from another perspective versus Unable or unwilling to see things from another perspective; failing to consider that your perspective could be wrong.
These virtues may appear obvious but it would be a mistake to confuse their apparentness with their ubiquity. They are habits that must be learned and like any habit they are only as strong as they are practiced. They are especially crucial in the context of social media technologies loaded with filter bubbles and pernicious echo chambers. Everyone, regardless of their worldview, can benefit by considering the foundation of their mindset and taking steps to strengthen it with these healthy habits of the mind. BUT considering this a Marxist sub dedicated to critically examining identity politics, there’s a strong case that the more woke minded and steeped-in-cancel-culture segment of the left would benefit from these virtues significantly.
Identity politics seems to be the ideological result of this postmodern, technologically ove
... keep reading on reddit ➡This is a cut from his video, its basically what we have been commenting and screaming forever, but we were just the dumb alt-right pack, now that it cannot be more obvious what the definition is, now he can use it and tell us we all have been dumb for calling it half a decade!
You have to have moral courage to stick up to that - no matter what comes in your way, no matter what the obstacle and the opposition is.
...Indira Gandhi
Imagine: You cannot shoot a gun straight. you always miss. For various reasons that you don't even care to know about. Then one day, it came to you, you don't have a problem shooting straight, you are GREAT at "freedom to NOT shoot straight". Every missed target is just your creative expression of your "freedom".
and you just won yourself a prize!
Imagine: 30 children in a classroom with no adult supervision. Great! No more tyranny of the teachers! "Freedom" for everyone! But let's forget that even 30 children COULD still figure out how to supervise themselves?! Somehow, "freedom" is ONLY expressed when there is no discipline or self control at all.
Imagine: 1 Million Students show up in a square. Authorities do nothing to restrain their increasingly heated rhetorics and loud speeches. In a decade that followed, in the Cultural Revolution, they were "free" to go around "Lord of the Flies" fashion, persecuting their teachers, their elders, and even each other.
"Freedom" is good, when the intellect is lazy and dishonest.
When those who know better, don't want to make the hard choices, and instead simply let people make terrible choices, and it is called "freedom".
Blame it on "human weakness" for the bad choices, but praise yourself for letting people make terrible choices as "freedom". Equally dishonest and lazy.
if human beings are meant to be completely "free" to do whatever terrible choices, then why in the Universe did we even evolve to have brains?
*
This is the problem I have with some Chinese intellectuals, those who hold so dear "freedom".
The flipside of having religious-type faith in a belief system is that, at least mentally, you dismiss competing faiths. If you have faith in Christianity for example then you probably don't care about what the Q'ran has to say about say the afterlife. (It says in heaven you will be 100 feet tall.)
Is religious faith actually virtuous in some way, morally or intellectually or otherwise?
Why I think faith is morally weak: When you believe absurdities, you can commit atrocities. Consider Christian Science parents who deny medical treatment for their kids, with the best intentions, based on their faith. Or consider the willingness to write off homosexuality as a choice because that's theologically easier to do, even though it is fairly clear that we don't choose our sexuality. It sounds innocent to just have faith in a thing, but we see all too often that faith can lead to bad places - after all, religious faith entails a sort of credulity, yet unlike credulity, it is presented as a virtue. Why? Unless you have defensible reasons for believing in a position, then why would it be virtuous to believe it? Furthermore, beliefs inform and guide your personal behavior, so how can you behave responsibly if your beliefs aren't justified? If you forget to check your side-view mirror before you change lanes, you could kill someone.
I think the harm in faith are generally diffuse and subtle, even though people are quick to mention terrorism. E.g. Hindus believe in karma, that our born station in life is a reflection of our past actions. They take this on faith of course. An interesting corollary of this belief is that poor people are presumably deserving of their poverty - after all, had they been decent in their past life, they wouldn't then be reincarnated as a poor person! Isn't this interesting? Not coincidentally, India has a rigid caste system and poor people are indeed treated like shit. Switching to Christianity, consider how the Prosperity Gospel sends a similar message that wealth is evidence of goodness. This even undercuts Jesus' central teachings about generosity and the perils of riches, yet, wouldn't you know it, Prosperity Doctrine is increasingly popular among rich Evangelicals. Isn't it obvious that both karma and the Prosperity Gospel only worsen existing social inequality? It may be obvious, but if you believe those doctrines, then social inequality is not just perfectly permissib
... keep reading on reddit ➡All the usual suspects are here
- Abusing "downvote" as a "disagree button"
- Four letter emotes ("rofl", etc)
- Weaponized ignorance as Obscurantistism (I don't know what you're talking about so it must be wrong [sic])
- Artifical incredulity "(I hope you're trolling")
- Proud celebration of anti-intellectualism
- Obligatory "/r/iamverysmart" reference.
If you speak English. You are appropriating the cultures of countless societies. If you watch film you are appropriating the cultures of countless societies. If you dye your hair you are almost certainly appropriating the culture of a different society. If you listen to music, you guessed it, you’re a culture appropriater. So next time you’re going to accuse someone of culture appropriation realize that everything you do and have done has most certainly come from another culture, and then STFU. We are all human, it’s all of our culture to be shared.
Obviously this doesn’t include blatant mockery.
Christopher Lasch and Camille Paglia? I mean, sure I guess... but they draw on much better primary sources. Here's a list for y'all:
- Frederich Nietzsche: at the heart of nearly all RS discourse.
- Sigmund Freud: ditto
- Dona Marsden: suffragette and philosopher, who drew strong inspiration from Nietzsche in her defence of women's rights.
- Arthur Schopenhauer: arch pessimist, incel musings.
- Georges Bataille: proto-surrealist philosopher of transgression and part-time literary pornographer.
- Julia Kristeva: exquisite theorist of melancholy and the abject.
- Jacques Lacan: the man who brought together Freud and structuralism, and is the primary intellectual influence on fan favourite Slavoj Zizek.
- The Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis: many people don't realise that Zizek is part of a whole subfield of theory combining Hegel with Lacan, including other great philosophers Alenka Zupancic and Mladen Dolar.
- Simone Weil: leftist activist turned Christian mystic and philosopher of absence.
- Ivan Illich: critic of institutions, apophatic theologian and advocate for the interplay of gender.
- Jacques Ellul: *the* definitive critic of technology, the man who inspired Ted Kaczynski.
- Jean Baudrillard: his book Seduction is a succinct summary of the ability for women to "top from the bottom" in the symbolic sphere.
- Byung-Chul Han: possibly the greatest living philosopher and cultural theorist today IMO - a critic of cultural permissiveness tied to technocapitalism and the absence of negation.
- Michel Foucault: ignore what the American academy did to my boy, his latter writings on bio-politics are definitive for understanding the current moment.
- Georgio Agamben: *the* biopolitical thinker of our time, willing to critique pandemic politics.
- Ray Brassier: pushing the limits of nihilist theory.
- Peter Sloterdijk: the thinking man's conservative.
- Avital Ronell: at times a shitlib, her writing has a feminine Nietzschean tone that can be quite insightful. Sexual predator.
- Emil Cioran: mystic pessimist
Who am I missing?
**Some additions in the comments**
- Carl Jung: how could I have missed the gnostic Freud?
- Paul Virilio: what does it mean to be churned through modernity?
- Nicolás Gómez Dávila: aphoristic writing by a traditionalist.
- Walter Benjamin: Jewish wisdom on tech and aesthetics.
- Jacques Derrida: once you get past the writing style and the shitlib appropriations of his work, there is insight there about the mysteries hidde
The former Bush (43) speechwriter and token conservative on the Atlantic staff today published an essay outlining how modern Trumpian conservatism differs from the historical intellectual tradition of conservatism as defined by Edmund Burke.
Brooks' idea is that classic Burkean conservatism is based on community, family and tradition, and that strong social institutions do a better job of creating good citizens and societies than ambitious plans concocted by technocratic elites.
However, he also admits that the seeds of the type of authoritarian conservatism practiced by Trump and Fox News are also present in traditional conservatism. The conservative emphasis on community can turn into xenophobia; its reverence for the past can stifle necessary social and economic change.
I've personally long though that the intellectual tradition of conservatism as described by Brooks was created by Buckley et al. in the 1960s in an attempt to smooth the rough edges from the burgeoning American conservative movement and make it more palatable to the American political establishment.
On the other hand, Brooks' descriptions of traditional conservative values have given me an insight into conservative communities (especially the rural communities that are the backbone of modern conservatism) that I had not previously considered. His arguments for the virtues of community and tradition are very persuasive.
Was the decline of Burkean/Buckleyan conservative ideals into Trumpism inevitable? Is it possible to have traditional, community-centered politics based on classical liberal ideals without xenophobia, anti-intellectualism and authoritarianism?
Let’s say hypothetically, for argument’s sake, the witnesses are right and it really is the truth… Why is it so difficult to believe? Especially for a logical and rationally minded person?
To play devil’s advocate, a PIMI would probably say something like “God only draws in sheeplike ones. After all, he has hidden these things from the wise and intellectual ones”. In rebuttal, if faith really is a virtue, why does God allow billions of other people to be drawn into “wrong” religions?
Another response I’ve heard is “It’s God who draws the right people to his organisation”. In rebuttal, then how come we have pedophiles and secret wrong doers here, has God drawn them to the truth too? How come there are good moral people in other religions? It makes no sense.
Not to mention all the hard evidence out there that you literally need to shove your head in the sand to, to continue believing what you want to believe. Why would a wise god tell us one thing, and then give us conflicting evidence in a world full of contradictions?
I have no interest in worshipping a god that priorities blind faith over critical thinking and rational thought.
Sometimes you just have to joke about things or else they're just too dark, you know? So here's my official ratings for all of the insults and rude comments we received yesterday, enjoy!
Being called idiots: 1/10. Not creative. No humor even attempted. The most basic of insults, was it even worth the time it took to type for its lack of impact?
Accused of “perpetuating the system”: 2/10. Points for the amount of effort this logical fallacy had to take to come up with, but ultimately nonsensical. Really just makes me want to study trolls who make these accusations to write a paper about how their brain can come up with these ideas and believe them.
Called "Internet Janitors": 11/10. HILARiOUS, honestly very accurate since we've really been taking the trash out lately, and unique because we haven't gotten it 100 times before, This is the best insult we got yesterday, hands down. It only gets worse from here.
Accused of secretly being Scheana and having no sense of humor: 6/10. One of the less bad cast members to be accused of secretly being and really a novel accusation. Loses points because I think I'm actually very funny (clearly).
Called a condescending cunt: 5/10. The c-word is pearl clutching coming from an American, but actually it's just misogyny. Anyone using this word as an insult seems like they're trying so hard to be edgy, but really it just gives angsty rebellious teen vibes.
Called a condescending bitch: 3/10. the follow up to the above insult. It's less impactful, still misogynistic, and just a snooze fest as far as insults go.
Asked to be banned because “fuck y’all”: 5/10. Points for the directness of the communication, it's important to ask for the things you want in life. Loses points because you're allowed to just leave the sub without being a big meanie about it first. Really just unnecessary.
Called the F-slur: -500/10. Literally never acceptable and just straight up hateful.
Accused of virtue signaling: 3/10. Yawn. If this is your go-to whenever you're upset that someone's discussing racial issues you need to learn some new keywords bc this one's old news.
Lectured by a grammar pedant: 0/10. The lowest form of internet bullying because of the elitist intellectualism. Also sometimes people just make typos! Zero creativity involved and anyone who does this is probably super boring at parties <3
Told to fuck off with the censorship : 1/10. We get this on every post about any rul
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