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Anti-authoritarianism isn't Romantic or Enlightenment. You can be a Romantic authoritarian (again, I point to fascism) or an Enlightenment anti-authoritarian (Bakunin comes to mind) just as much as you can be a Romantic anti-authoritarian (such as myself) or an Enlightenment authoritarian (again, the USSR comes to mind). But Enlightenment anti-authoritarianism and Romantic anti-authoritarianism have different characters to them. For one, Romantic anti-authoritarianism tends to be much more pessimistic about the chances of anti-authoritarianism. More importantly, Enlightenment and Romantic anti-authoritarianism see different means as effective. Enlightenment anti-authoritarians see understanding of other people, greater human knowledge, and the advance of technology as the path to liberty (in fiction, you can find this in Iain M Banks's Culture series), while Romantic anti-authoritarians see it more in a personal struggle that will often fail, but some amount of meaning is found within it (basically think cyberpunk).
On another, but related note, I do think the characterization of Futurism as similar to cyberpunk was accurate. Cyberpunk is basically the anti-authoritarian trend within futurism. I mean, futurism was primarily fascist, but there were a significant chunk of futurists who were socialists or anarchists, and cyberpunk, such as one of my favorite anarchists Renzo Novatore.
Because, in the past, it's worked out for me better, but I don't really know which one will be safer. As far as I know, there is an assassin waiting in ambush outside of my door.
I mean, I'll go out my front door, but I make no pretensions of being able to know which was better or even being able to get close. I might have been wrong the whole time and the seventh story window would've always have worked, and I cannot possible have any knowledge about this. Maybe tomorrow I try to go out the seventh story window and I find out there was an invisible bridge that takes me into a magical land of magic which might have been there the whole time.
edited 30th Dec '14 3:53:57 PM by deathpigeon
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Sheeet, I dunno man, there's intellectual humility and then there's allowing for any shit whatsoever. It's the Fallacy Of Gray. You'll always have some uncertainty, but no assassin is more probable than assassin, which is more probable than magical bridge, given the priors available to you.
Sure, but I don't really know the priors. All my priors can, as far as I can tell, be entirely 100% wrong. I mean, people mess up all the time and we tend to be pretty stupid and irrational, so why should I assume that I have any true priors whatsoever or that I'm not just as stupid and irrational as everyone else making huge mistakes all the time.
I can say, at best, that, given my priors being truths, that's more probable, unless I've made a mistake in my reasoning. But I make no pretenses that my priors are truths.
Near the end of the Expanded Universe's lifespan (since Episode 7 all but killed it), they started admitting to the idea of "Gray Jedi"
—force practitioners that were not the Lawful Stupid Rules Lawyer-types which the Order became, but didn't lose control and become the Sith either. In general, "Gray" Jedi were Light-Side practitioners that believed in moral flexibility. Qui-Gon Jinn was retroactively considered a "Proto-Gray" Jedi because he was a Military Maverick sort that defies the Council's orders. Post-New Republic, Luke was also considered this, because of his tendency to obey the spirit of the Jedi code and not the letter of it.
Lucas himself, however, always staunchly argued that there was ONLY a Light Side and a Dark Side. His answers were usually vague and what the EU considered "Gray", Lucas would have considered flat out Light. He believed that the Light was shorthand for "everything good" and Dark was "everything evil". Thus, as long as Gray picked Good out of To Be Lawful or Good, they would fit Lucas's definition of Light.
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Sounds like solipsism to me. It's just not a practical way to live, in my opinion. You have to operate as if your perceptions of the external world are capable of both analysis and prediction, or you lose the ability to act effectively.
As I've said before, you may find it interesting to stand in the middle of the road contemplating the existential nature of the bus heading toward you, but natural selection will ensure, rapidly and efficiently, that you don't pass that tendency on to future generations.
edited 30th Dec '14 5:16:58 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Fighteer, you're strawmanning. Having doubt about the accuracy of your perceptions is not the same as disregarding the perception outright. The scenario you bring is specifically the root cause of narrow-mindedness and superstition.
Taking your analogy to a less extreme version, let's say you're a caveman and you and your buddy see a bush move. You assume it's evil spirits and run. Your friend goes to check it out and never comes back. This convinces you even more that 1) evil spirits are real and 2) you saw one in that moving bush. However, the truth is that he was mauled to death by a tiger. Your first instinct, that there was real danger, was correct. But your overall conclusion, that it was evil spirits, was wrong.
To simplify: yes, pragmatic survival should be a priority under most circumstances, but that does not mean you stop doubting or questioning the perceptions you've drawn for the expediency of survival. If anything, those should be questioned most of all.
edited 30th Dec '14 5:11:14 PM by KingZeal
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Well, of course my perceptions are capable of analysis and prediction, but they also make mistakes and they are theory laden, so I'm not gaining any knowledge in them. I have no certainty to anything, and I get my biases confirmed by them because my biases are written into how my sense-data become the phenomena I actually experience.
Man, this always happens. A fascinating discussion develops, and I have to attend to real life. I'll try to keep up, but right now I have to go back to DP's wall 'o text all the way back at post 134.
"I think I disagree with demarquis's characterization of liberalism as romanticism and conservatism as enlightenment. I mean, in modern politics, the enlightenment has won. Romanticism has been beaten back to the edges, to places like the Situationist Internationale and Punk Rock. But liberalism, conservatism, and even socialism are all products of the enlightenment and revel in it."
It would be more accurate to say that liberalism contains elements from both romanticism and enlightenment values, but it falls more heavily toward romanticism. The traditional conservative consensus in similar fashion also contains elements from both. In one sense you can claim that any political ideology is going to be inherently romantic, because it will inevitably stress emotions over objective reality. But in general, I classify any ideology that accepts the idea of general social progress as "Romantic". That includes everything from Marxism to Social Democracy.
Political Enlightenment may have a progressive view of human knowledge, but it has no such view of human society. To the extent that human nature can be documented and observed, it isn't expected to change. Nearly every model of culture and society that I can remember contains some element of the pursuit of self-interest in it, which leads to the idea that the competition of interests can never be transcended, merely managed, as in a market system. There is no "right" or "wrong" (science doesnt recognize such categories), only "winners" and "losers". Enlightenment-inspired politicians generally come down on the side of the winners. The rights of property is seen as paramount over all else (a la John Locke). Laissez Faire Capitalism and Free Market Conservatism are the modern descendants of Political Enlightenment.
Conservatism defines modern society as "good"? Really? Do I even need to refute this?
Again, everyone is defaulting to the most extreme Romantic positions, including both Fighteer and Death Pidgeon. I assure you that Rousseau believed in getting out of the way of the bus. And Punks and anarchists arent the only ones protesting the oppressive nature of modern social institutions, including the effects of systematic racism and sexism.
I previously (post 11) defined the essence of Romanticism as "In other words, the way to live a life that maximizes your satisfaction, according to Romanticism, is to see the universe literally as a work of art." A work of art that is the result of everyone working together. Add to that the idea that society should encourage everyone to express themselves fully while transcending individual conflicts of interest and guaranteeing human rights, while removing barriers to human progress including poverty and want, and you basically have the Consensus. Individual autonomy must be preserved, but so must social unity.
John Rawls didnt create the current Liberal Consensus, at least not in political terms. That goes all the way back to the origins of socialism in Europe, (one of whose roots can be found in Rousseau). It began to become politically successful during the Reform Age in the 1920's, and took over in the West shortly after WWII. All John Rawls did was codify a certain version of social justice.
I would argue that Rawls isn't a romanticist either, he's one of those philosophers who tried to strike a balance between the two, like Kant. His concept of the "Veil of Ignorance" (judge everyone as if you had no idea what kind of person you are or which population you belong to) is enlightenment-inspired, but his overall goal of reconciling all conflicts of interest so that society can transcend conflict is romanticist. This is what we often get when someone tries to overcome the flaws of both perspectives: a philosophy that borrows it's goals from Romanticism, but it's methods from the Enlightenment.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.Handle, I'm just thread hopping, but the above quote reminds me of another quote.
"Science transcends mere politics. As recent history demonstrates, scientists are as willing to work for a Tojo, a Hitler, or a Stalin as for the free nations of the West."
- Edward Abbey
Abbey is often identified as a modern reincarnation of Thoreau, so you can kind of get the Romanticist appeal seeping from that quote. There is an assumption in Romanticist thinking that science is potentially dangerous because it is not tempered by moral inclinations - that it is amoral by it's very rationalist nature. Of course there are a number of problems with this argument, as I've already typed up here.
A lot of anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers and conspiracy theorists thrive on the notion that scientists lack the moral aptitude to weigh the cost and benefits of their research. Case in point, a few years back, everyone flipped out over that CDC controversy where scientists were developing a super-flu. Theories abounded about mad scientists, bio-weapons falling into terrorists' hands, and the government trying to control people by withholding the "cure", whatever that means. It turned out that the scientists were just constructing a stronger virus so they could synthesize a stronger vaccine to counter it.
Some of you have probably heard this ethics experiment before. You hear that your mother is trapped in a burning house. You are also told that if you leave her to die, the world will objectively be a better place. If you save her, she will live, but the world will be a worse place. Does the ethical rationalist leave his mother to die? Does the ethical Romanticist save his mother because he feels it is personally right despite being a selfish action?
There is a variation of this argument that applies to time travel, and many works of science fiction have explored it in detail. I recently watched Terminator 2: Judgment Day with Gabrael to retread old ground. That movie is actually very intelligent both visually and thematically. One of the major themes of the movie is that technology is not good or evil. It is only a tool that can be used for beneficial or harmful purposes by humans. Humans hold the key to their salvation and their destruction. I believe the movie see-saws between Romanticist and Enlightenment views. We created Skynet, but we can use our compassion and determination - and our technology - to fight against Skynet as well. The T-800 represents both the marvel of human innovation and the horror of modern science. The time travel device used in the movies represents the vastness and crushing power of space and time, yet it also represents human self-determination and the triumph of the rational thinking man over his fate.
This may sound weird, but Herman Melville's Moby Dick has a lot in common with the Terminator storyline. Both stories are about men attempting to confront their pasts. Both stories are about the power and danger of nature and man's continual attempts to conquer or at least stand equal to nature, chiefly through technology (Captain Ahab, the Pequod and their struggle against the white whale and the sea).
EDIT: Something else kind of worth noting is how machines integrate with humanity and how that consequently causes us to redefine humanity. The T-800 is played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, a hulking ubermensch of a machine. Captain Ahab is arguably a cyborg, with his artificial leg and arm, and we see both his very human rage and his very inhuman disregard for his crew as he pursues the whale.
I also recommend Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Some people have theorized that the mariner must spend all eternity telling story of killing the albatross and consequently dooming his crew because he is locked in a spatial-temporal limbo. I argue that the poem isn't just about man disrespecting nature. I think on a more abstract level it's about man learning to come to terms with his past.
Anyway, I'm rambling a bit. Carry on, guys.
edited 31st Dec '14 1:05:30 PM by Aprilla
Scientists are humans, and aren't much better than any of the other classes of humans that are willing to work for who-the-fuck-ever puts a dinner on their table and a roof over their heads. What a fucking discovery.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.I started watching Lucy, that movie with Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman. I appreciate the vibe I'm getting from it so far. Lucy is not the nicest person in the world, but she does use her powers for noble purposes, which may be a nod to the idea that we need to stop assuming that science is bad. If anything, the drugs improve her empathy and compassion. This message is actually somewhat funny when taken in with the fact that it uses a lot of junk science to prop up the idea in the first place.
There are multiple ways you can swing that quote. One interpretation may be "stop assuming that all scientists are corporate shills". Another interpretation may be "mad scientists do what they do because there's money in it, not just because they want to create superweapons or somesuch."
Then again, you have the people who honestly pursue questionable projects because they're sincerely interested in the results of their findings.
edited 31st Dec '14 1:19:09 PM by Aprilla
[[quoteblock]]Some of you have probably heard this ethics experiment before. You hear that your mother is trapped in a burning house. You are also told that if you leave her to die, the world will objectively be a better place. If you save her, she will live, but the world will be a worse place. Does the ethical rationalist leave his mother to die? Does the ethical Romanticist save his mother because he feels it is personally right despite being a selfish action?[[/qutobelock]]
Sounds like the plot of Heaven's Feel.
Late!Lucy sounds exactly like the type to let her mother die for the sake of an "objectively better word", whatever the f—k that means.
Scientists are human beings, most of whom attempt to do their work with integrity and a sense of humanity. Science has no humanity in it at all- it's just a tool for seeing the universe as objectively as possible. Given that science often ends up making our social institutions more powerful, that's potentially very dangerous.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.Science makes everyone more powerful, including individual citizens. Who gets an edge in term of gains depends largely on the current state of science at any particular time, and how it interacts with the current state of society, law, values and attitudes at the same particular time. Conversely, ignorance and obscurantism make everyone weaker.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.Sure, but "Power" x= "Good", or "Wise", or "Benevolent". Power is just power, unless it is used in the service of some higher framework of ethics, which you wont get from science. Science cant tell you which course of action is "right", and which is "wrong". Nor will the objective universe. That has to come from somewhere else.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.Cultural misunderstandings of the aims and ethics of science can often be attributed to elements such as the pathetic fallacy. Nature is not sympathetic to human joy or human suffering, and an Enlightenment thinker might caution us not to use science as a moral microscope when observing natural phenomena. I felt that was the point of the comic Handle posted about Gaia theory.
For example, if you set aside the moral issue of killing endangered species, you still have to account for the wellbeing of areas such as coral reefs and wetlands because those ecosystems act as natural barriers against natural disasters. We've gradually deteriorated our wetlands and reefs through oil drilling, fracking and urban development, and Hurricane Katrina was a lovely reminder of what happens when you destabilize the aforementioned environments note . Again, this is totally setting aside wanting to save animals just because you really like animals (and you think they really like you).
The historically moralistic view of science probably makes more sense when you account for the fact that many Western pioneers of scientific inquiry were also religious scholars who received their training in a church. Some of the great Enlightenment thinkers were also devoutly religious.
edited 1st Jan '15 12:09:04 AM by Aprilla
Huh? No, liberalism is basically pure Enlightenment. Like, the forerunners of modern liberalism are Mills, Kant, and Bentham, aka paragons of the Enlightenment, and they fit the Enlightenment values to the t, from their embrace of progress and science, to their championing of autonomy, to their reverence of modernism.
...But embracing the general idea of social progress is one of the most basic elements of the Enlightenment and Romanticism heavily, heavily critiques that. I mean, if you look to actual romantics, they turned their eye against the general idea of progress, social, scientific, whatever. I mean, Frankenstein is a quintessential Romantic novel, and the whole thing about it was that scientific progress is dangerous, if a bit beautiful and fascinating. And Thoreau, another great romantic thinker, was all about the return to nature and eschewing the fruits of progress. You find the embrace of progress in the Enlightenment thinkers, like Kant and Marx., not in the romantics.
...None of this is at all in conflict with the idea of social progress, though. I mean, look at John Rawls. Humans are generally selfish, there is a conflict of interests, and there are things more important than "right" or "wrong", if such things are things that exist. Yet, out of this basic premise, he came up with a theory of justice that accounts for all of this, has a rational basis, and validates social progress by having something to progress towards that was constructed using self interests and taking into account conflict of interests.
...Conservatism is all about resisting change because the modern society, steeped in tradition, is generally good, so we should preserve as much of it as we can. Like, that's the very basis of conservatism. You can't really be a conservative without that.
...Have you ever actually read any Locke at all?
A man can no mare justly make use of another’s necessity to force him to become his vassal, by withholding that relief God requires him to afford to the wants of his brother, than he that has more strength can seize upon a weaker, master him to his obedience, and with a dagger at his throat offer him death or slavery.
God, the lord and father of all has given no one of his children such a property in his peculiar portion of the things of this world, but that he has given his needy brother a right to the surplusage of his goods, so that it cannot justly be denied him when his pressing wants call for it, and therefore, no man could ever have a just power over the life of another by right of property in land or possessions.
-John Locke
That is not the writing of someone who thinks that rights of property are paramount over all else. You have the rights to the fruits of your labor in as much as you can use, then the rest is due to everyone else as God intended for all things to be.
As with every romantic ever?
So? Protesting oppression isn't romantic nor enlightenment. It's the analysis of oppression that separates romantics and enlightenment thinkers. The romantic sees the struggle in them as inherent and even desirable, while the Enlightenment sees the restriction of autonomy the problem with oppression. They can both protest for or against oppression, but they'll do so for entirely different reasons. And liberals fight oppression because they believe it conflicts with their Enlightenment values, as do socialists, including most anarchists. The romantic anarchists and punks fight oppression for entirely different reasons.
Which is a definition that cherrypicks from the romantics. You'll see this in Nietzsche and Thoreau, but not so much in, say, Shelly and Poe. Indeed, romanticism generally has a much more negative view of the world than the Enlightenment. Eschewing the Enlightenment ideas of progress, especially as our salvation, eschewing the view of individuals as autonomous individuals who need just get their autonomy protected (with intense disagreement over what this entails) to flourish, and eschewing a positive view of what we have, romantics see the universe as harsh and bitter, with the individual existing as a tragic hero within the cruel reality of things, finding meaning and themselves only through their rebellion against the way things are.
Oh, he definitely did create the current liberal consensus. That's not to say he created it ex nihilo. A lot of the ideas he codified into the current liberal consensus were already in the air and his ideas go back to Kant and Mills, to which modern liberalism can trace their routes.
If you think Kant or Rawls are in any way romanticist, you've either never read either of them or you have no idea what romantics were all about. Given,
it's probably the later, not the former. I mean, Nietzsche, one of the great romantics, found conflict unavoidable and the idea of transcending it incredibly dangerous, while great Enlightenment thinkers, such as Mills and Kant and Smith and Locke and basically everyone in the Enlightenment ever has been all about transcending conflict. The democratic peace theory championed by Kant is one of the great Enlightenment ideas which basically though democracy would end war.
Yet its neither goals nor method that define Romanticism or the Enlightenment. It's how they see the world. Fascists and the Situationists were equally romanticist, but their goals and methods were at odds, but they shared in the basics of how the world functions, just with disagreements in the details.
Honestly, it seems like you're using a disney theme park view of Romanticism that polishes away the darkness that was absolutely central to it in an attempt to defend it against the Enlightenment. But all that achieves is ceding to the Enlightenment the fight and giving up what it means to be a romantic. You've defined romanticism in such a way that the great romantics wouldn't be romantics. You'll find no transcending conflict or social progress in Nietzsche, Thoreau, Shelly, Sorel, Poe, Marinetti, Dostoyevsky, or any of the others. You'll find harsh and tumultuous realities, critiques of progress and what we have, and an acceptance of struggle, trying to find meaning within it. By trying to pretty up romanticism to make it seem more appealing, you've lost everything that makes romanticism so powerful and so important. You're basically arguing for a faction within the Enlightenment, and calling it romanticism.
You accuse me of only dealing with the most extreme romantic positions, but, in doing so, you show you never understood Romanticism. Moderation is the goal of the Enlightenment. Romanticism has always been about the extremes, about the overwhelming greatness that comes in the extremities. Nietzsche spent his life work talking about the greatness that the individual achieves in turning their life into an art and embracing the extremities and becoming them. Marinetti was about extreme speed to life, extreme violence, and extreme politics, and his critiques in Futurism weren't saying his politics were too extreme, but that they were extreme in the wrong way. Taking the extreme position is entirely a value of Romanticism that is lacking in the Enlightenment who so often point to Romanticism and accuse us of being extreme, as if that is an insult. If you play it safe and keep to what is moderate and to consensuses, be they the conservative consensus or the liberal consensus, then you're not truly living your life. You're holding back with your timidness rather than diving deep into the raging ocean just to experience the wonder of the sublime around you. Moderation is a fear of living. A fear that, by going to the extreme, you will mess up and your life will be too short. But, in that trepidation of messing up and in that terror of your life being too short, you lose what it is to live. And, here, the Enlightenment in you shines through. You are content with the moderate caricature you have created of Romanticism which is all happy feel-y, trying to transcend conflict and bring the progress of the world forward, but you shy away from the true greatness and life which Romantics have spent their lives devoted to achieving and convincing others to achieve as well. Your less extreme romanticism is just the Enlightenment by another name.
No, Frankenstein is a family drama about how you should take responsibility for your children and about how you should show compassion to people even when they look hideous.
Anyone here read Mills? I tried, and I kept falling asleep.
Where do you get that? What danger do you mean?
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.Isn't slave morality an extreme to begin with? As for compromise and consensus, the thing about it is that it can compromise about itself, leaving room for great people to do their thing. Such exceptions are simply part of the consensus.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

The Doctor clearly believes in progressing towards a more ideal future, but his attitude is very anti-authoritarian.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"