Brainwashing 101

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Odin


This is exactly the problem, too many people on the left see the past as all bad, a story of oppression, parasitical ruling classes, atrocities, and injustices and so try to invent a better world on purely theoratical grounds without trying to learn from history.

Amen.

[Odin]

"Scientific management of society" sounds like a blank-slater enviromental determinist's nightmarish fantasy, Brave New World anyone?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Odin
"Scientific management of society" sounds like a blank-slater enviromental determinist's nightmarish fantasy, Brave New World anyone?

And hence you lump yourself in with the anti-science reactionaries.

By the way "eppur si muove".

[Imran Siddiqui]

Most Conservatives take it much further than this. At root the idea they wish to resist at all costs is the idea that human decision making and human action can be the subject of scientific analysis and prediction.

You'll note most liberals and progressives think this way as well (not just in the US, but Europe as well.. witness the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights). To blame Conservatives for the notion of metaphysical human freedom is kind of silly. Those who consider themselves progressive or Social Democrat do believe in inherant human dignity and freedom just as much (if not more) than conservatives.

[Flip McWho]

That depends on what else the conservative holds dear.

There are conservatives who would like to see morality enforced and religious views supported by the state.

Some other conservatives want the state out of our affairs as much as possible, and view individual liberty as one of the most cherished traditions that we should guard at all costs.

These are both conservative views. What defines them is a view toward tradition, although different traditions.

So if society was conservative then it mainly boils down to whatever branch of conservatism is currently in the majority. For example if religious conservatives were in the majority then the individual liberty conservatives would be in opposition. Conservatism is inconsistent except in its general reliance on tradition, history and maintaining stability.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Agathon


And hence you lump yourself in with the anti-science reactionaries.

By the way "eppur si muove".

Your "Utopia" sounds like a totalitarian hell to me, it has nothing to do with science.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Flip McWho
So if society was conservative then it mainly boils down to whatever branch of conservatism is currently in the majority. For example if religious conservatives were in the majority then the individual liberty conservatives would be in opposition. Conservatism is inconsistent except in its general reliance on tradition, history and maintaining stability.

You could say that Communism is inconsistent except in its general reliance on equality and dislike of capitalism, seeing how many strains of Communism/Socialism there are. Its kind of silly to claim something is inconsistent except for its core beliefs, isn't it?

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Agathon

As the quote goes (more or less), we should learn history lest we repeat it. History gives us many lessons and tradition has been what has filtered down to us from those historical lessons learned by our ancestors. We'll add our own lessons for our descendants, and I hope they don't throw away that wisdom which we've found out simply because the past has been so bad. After all, failure can teach the best lessons (the Iraq War, I feel, will teach a pretty big one).

Most Conservatives take it much further than this. At root the idea they wish to resist at all costs is the idea that human decision making and human action can be the subject of scientific analysis and prediction.

Another gross stroke.

There are conservatives who work in psychology and psychiatry. No informed person rejects the notion that we can learn about human behaviour by observation.

Most conservatives would, however, resist the idea that all there is to be human is reducible to atoms and what-not as if what it is to be human can be reduced to billiard balls.

If that comes to pass, and all indicators lie in that direction, then religion is effectively dead, as is any notion of metaphysical freedom. Our crude attempts so far have already pointed the way - conservatives hate Marx, Nietzsche and Freud above all others because they all have in common the rejection of metaphysics and the false (and inherently religious) notion of human freedom.

And by your view, I would suppose conservatives must have been fated to do so since the course of all matter and energy were first charted in the nanosecond of the origin of the big bang.

We are currently living on a blank check of tradition in the very way that most of us think about personal identity. However, the theological backbone of this conception has long been discredited and the end result will be the total annihilation of the traditional view of the person. You can see the practical consequences of this shift in the abhorrence that conservatives have for diagnoses of mental illness in criminal cases. This is because they know that scientific explanations of deviant phenomena presuppose a causal picture that undermines the norm of personal responsibility. Personal responsibility and personal freedom as conservatives conceive of it is a metaphysical fiction -- in practice it means the set of behavioural norms that are common among wealthy white men. It's just fortunate that poor people, women and non-whites now have more of a voice and have begun to overturn it.

Funny how many conservatives are not wealthy white men, eh?

We aren't even half way there yet, but when we do get there the scientific management of society will become a reality and there will be no need to appeal to tradition, just as contemporary scientists do not appeal to folk beliefs in other, more developed, areas of investigation.

I would far prefer a society that granted the quirks of human nature as something that is OK, and to be respected, than to live in a beaker where busy bodies try to manage our every behaviour.

I wish no part of your petri dish of humanity.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui [q=OzzyKP]But the motivating idea that drives those two kinds of conservatives is a love of individual liberty and a love of religious morality. Those are concrete ideologies (as Ag said). "Tradition" is meaningless.[/q]

You've missed the point. If their motivating ideas are so different how can they both be under the same heading "Conservative"? The root of conservative is 'conserve' after all, and what links them is that they go after their 'motivating ideas' through an extrapolation from tradition.

Conservative is just a catch-all classification and many different constituencies are lumped together under it. There are certainly tensions in the Republican party between its various factions, as there are in the Democratic party. These labels are just very broad names that we affix to general groups of people and parties and such.

But on an unrelated point.... Agathon, your ideas have never scared me more than right now. Holy **** man, if ideas can be evil, yours surely are.

[Flip McWho]

Its kind of silly to claim something is inconsistent except for its core beliefs, isn't it?

Yeah that last sentence really ruins things for that post.

Hopefully to clear up a little:
Conservatism is a blanket term that only has those three beliefs in its core. Because change has to happen at some point these beliefs can't be then the deciding factor on what is to be changed and how. This is why conservatism as a blanket term is pretty damn useless as an ideology. It really tells us nothing more than people resist change. Which is fairly obvious.



Also, I don't have the view that all of history has been bad. There was hardly any point in answering that history had been a mix of good and bad. If you get to the guide behind conservatism it all depends on what branch of conservative you are.

[Odin]

Originally posted by notyoueither

I would far prefer a society that granted the quirks of human nature as something that is OK, and to be respected, than to live in a beaker where busy bodies try to manage our every behaviour.

I wish no part of your petri dish of humanity.

QFT

[Flip McWho]

Why do people see the word manage and assume the govt is gonna give a crap about every aspect of their life?

[OzzyKP]

Because the government already does.

[Agathon]

I would far prefer a society that granted the quirks of human nature as something that is OK, and to be respected, than to live in a beaker where busy bodies try to manage our every behaviour.

I wish no part of your petri dish of humanity.

If it's any consolation, you will probably be dead before it happens.

But you are thinking about it the wrong way. Mediaeval people would no doubt be horrified to learn about what it is like to live in modern society. Things will look a lot different to people in the future, and the things you think matter will have been relegated to the status of superstition.

[Flip McWho]

Because its the governments role. How much and where the management takes place is what the arguments lie. Conservatism as history, tradition and stability doesn't say anything here except do it slowly. It's all about the how [to change] and nothing about the what [to change].