This interview and the comments on it address many important issues, and everyone has expressed different, interesting opinions about them. But one might also address the approach one takes in addressing these issues, as opposed to addressing the issues themselves.
The interview, in terms of its approach, is informed by the concept of ide…
This interview and the comments on it address many important issues, and everyone has expressed different, interesting opinions about them. But one might also address the approach one takes in addressing these issues, as opposed to addressing the issues themselves.
The interview, in terms of its approach, is informed by the concept of ideology. The word “ideology” means a system of ideas, which is to say, a set of rational propositions. The propositions of an ideology may ramify into such areas as empirical observations, moral judgements, or economic, political, and psychological issues, among other areas. But every ideology is, in its nature, based on and fundamentally informed by rational propositions.
The problem with any ideological, which is to say rational, approach to the problems of humanity is that to build concentration camps or nuclear weapons is as rational as it is to build a peaceful, happy, prosperous, and egalitarian society. As the recent movie, “Oppenheimer,” reminds us, the greatest rational minds in history can work at the highest level for the purpose of creating instruments of global annihilation. The rational apparatus of democratic government will put those instruments to use. And all this activity will be fully rationalized by intellectuals acting in the service of the existing power structure of society. In fact, during the past three-quarters of a century, the US has invested more resources in precisely this kind of project than have been directly invested in any other project in the world.
For reason—our rational faculty—the idol of the Enlightenment—serves the death instinct as readily as it serves the life instinct. In fact, reason serves the death instinct far more readily than it serves the life instinct. Cultivating the life instinct can be done only one individual at a time, through tremendous dedication and labor. By comparison, it is easy to create a nation of spiritual zombies educated only in the STEM fields, as every US president instructs us we must do. When, for the sake of the rational faculty, the whole individual is thus neglected (or rather, cast into the dirt) and left undeveloped, the resulting vacuum will inevitably be filled by the selfish ego, which is to say, by the death instinct.
Every ideology consists of rational propositions—the currency of reason—and therefore no ideology can transcend the limits of reason. But human beings do not and cannot actually live by rational propositions. CH does not, Christian Parenti does not, I do not, and none of the other commenters does. No reasonably psychologically healthy person raises a child to live by rational propositions. If you try to make human beings live according to an ideology, you are trying to make them live by rational propositions. If a good society could be created on the basis of rational propositions, it would already have been done many times throughout history. The only possible result of trying to make people live by ideology, and therefore by the rational propositions of an ideology, is to produce deformed human beings whose humanity has largely been eradicated. We see such human beings all around us; in fact, they run the world. If you base your civilization on any ideology, it will eventually dedicate itself to building nuclear weapons and concentration camps.
Have we not conducted enough experiments on human beings (experiments few ever have consented to) in order to test the ideology of Enlightenment reason, the ideology of communism, the ideology of liberalism, the ideology of capitalism, the ideology of neoliberalism, the ideology of empire, the ideologies of pseudo-intellectualism serving the existing power structure of society, the ideologies of organized religions masquerading as spirituality? Can we not finally abandon ideology itself as the folly it is?
No ideology has ever contributed anything to humanity that is remotely comparable to what the spiritual leaders of humanity and artists have contributed to it. What is art? In the broadest sense, it is simply everything that is worth doing and is done well. And what are the highest creations of art but the creations of the spirit, the only creations worth pursuing? Living as we do in the controlled hallucinations of our super-rational society, to many this point of view sounds hopelessly lofty, nebulous, and idealistic. But to let the good be the enemy of the best means to dwell forever in this sick world of controlled hallucination.
I agree with you. If you haven't already, look up Iain McGilchrist. A prof of English Lit, he wondered why analysis of poetry (or any art) never really captured its subjects. He suspected it had something to do with how the brain worked so he went to med school,becoming a neuroscientist specializing in the differences between the left and the right hemispheres of the brain. While the R hemisphere is aware of the L, the reverse is not the case.
Seems you pretty much get the right hemisphere stuff; understanding gestalts, metaphors and symbols, both/and, etc. The realm of the humanities. Also what quantum physicists have been telling us about reality for a hundred years now. The left? Linear thinking, rationalism, reductionism, etc. It wants certainty and control. Disliking ambiguity, it insists on either/or. Sounds like what's wrong in the western Euro/Euro descent world, doesn't it?
I also recommend //Voltaire's Bastards (The Dictatorship of Reason in the West)// by John Ralston Saul. Written in 1992, a lot of it is prescient.
Thank you for your comments and suggestions, Rafi Simonton.
I will look into Iain McGilchrist’s “The Matter with Things” after I have read Charles’ Taylor’s “Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment” (now sitting in my stack), which approaches the same dichotomy in terms of the opposition between rational discourse and poetry. “Voltaire’s Bastards” sounds even more interesting.
This interview and the comments on it address many important issues, and everyone has expressed different, interesting opinions about them. But one might also address the approach one takes in addressing these issues, as opposed to addressing the issues themselves.
The interview, in terms of its approach, is informed by the concept of ideology. The word “ideology” means a system of ideas, which is to say, a set of rational propositions. The propositions of an ideology may ramify into such areas as empirical observations, moral judgements, or economic, political, and psychological issues, among other areas. But every ideology is, in its nature, based on and fundamentally informed by rational propositions.
The problem with any ideological, which is to say rational, approach to the problems of humanity is that to build concentration camps or nuclear weapons is as rational as it is to build a peaceful, happy, prosperous, and egalitarian society. As the recent movie, “Oppenheimer,” reminds us, the greatest rational minds in history can work at the highest level for the purpose of creating instruments of global annihilation. The rational apparatus of democratic government will put those instruments to use. And all this activity will be fully rationalized by intellectuals acting in the service of the existing power structure of society. In fact, during the past three-quarters of a century, the US has invested more resources in precisely this kind of project than have been directly invested in any other project in the world.
For reason—our rational faculty—the idol of the Enlightenment—serves the death instinct as readily as it serves the life instinct. In fact, reason serves the death instinct far more readily than it serves the life instinct. Cultivating the life instinct can be done only one individual at a time, through tremendous dedication and labor. By comparison, it is easy to create a nation of spiritual zombies educated only in the STEM fields, as every US president instructs us we must do. When, for the sake of the rational faculty, the whole individual is thus neglected (or rather, cast into the dirt) and left undeveloped, the resulting vacuum will inevitably be filled by the selfish ego, which is to say, by the death instinct.
Every ideology consists of rational propositions—the currency of reason—and therefore no ideology can transcend the limits of reason. But human beings do not and cannot actually live by rational propositions. CH does not, Christian Parenti does not, I do not, and none of the other commenters does. No reasonably psychologically healthy person raises a child to live by rational propositions. If you try to make human beings live according to an ideology, you are trying to make them live by rational propositions. If a good society could be created on the basis of rational propositions, it would already have been done many times throughout history. The only possible result of trying to make people live by ideology, and therefore by the rational propositions of an ideology, is to produce deformed human beings whose humanity has largely been eradicated. We see such human beings all around us; in fact, they run the world. If you base your civilization on any ideology, it will eventually dedicate itself to building nuclear weapons and concentration camps.
Have we not conducted enough experiments on human beings (experiments few ever have consented to) in order to test the ideology of Enlightenment reason, the ideology of communism, the ideology of liberalism, the ideology of capitalism, the ideology of neoliberalism, the ideology of empire, the ideologies of pseudo-intellectualism serving the existing power structure of society, the ideologies of organized religions masquerading as spirituality? Can we not finally abandon ideology itself as the folly it is?
No ideology has ever contributed anything to humanity that is remotely comparable to what the spiritual leaders of humanity and artists have contributed to it. What is art? In the broadest sense, it is simply everything that is worth doing and is done well. And what are the highest creations of art but the creations of the spirit, the only creations worth pursuing? Living as we do in the controlled hallucinations of our super-rational society, to many this point of view sounds hopelessly lofty, nebulous, and idealistic. But to let the good be the enemy of the best means to dwell forever in this sick world of controlled hallucination.
I agree with you. If you haven't already, look up Iain McGilchrist. A prof of English Lit, he wondered why analysis of poetry (or any art) never really captured its subjects. He suspected it had something to do with how the brain worked so he went to med school,becoming a neuroscientist specializing in the differences between the left and the right hemispheres of the brain. While the R hemisphere is aware of the L, the reverse is not the case.
Seems you pretty much get the right hemisphere stuff; understanding gestalts, metaphors and symbols, both/and, etc. The realm of the humanities. Also what quantum physicists have been telling us about reality for a hundred years now. The left? Linear thinking, rationalism, reductionism, etc. It wants certainty and control. Disliking ambiguity, it insists on either/or. Sounds like what's wrong in the western Euro/Euro descent world, doesn't it?
I also recommend //Voltaire's Bastards (The Dictatorship of Reason in the West)// by John Ralston Saul. Written in 1992, a lot of it is prescient.
Thank you for your comments and suggestions, Rafi Simonton.
I will look into Iain McGilchrist’s “The Matter with Things” after I have read Charles’ Taylor’s “Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment” (now sitting in my stack), which approaches the same dichotomy in terms of the opposition between rational discourse and poetry. “Voltaire’s Bastards” sounds even more interesting.