Rachel, A worthy struggle to understand a polarising and disintegrating world. What is missing is “why”. Why should anyone seek to draw disparate groups into a wider community/society. At the base of our problems IS the absence of a meta narrative and a commitment to common values such as truth, honesty, fidelity, compassion, justice, etc. In the USA one of the biggest problems is the perversion of the word “freedom”. It seems to me that “freedom” in the USA has become a rather perverse form of licence which is completely disconnected from traditional values. Interesting times ahead in a post-truth world where 1500 insurrectionists are pardoned as hostages, the mainstream global media celebrate the release of 3 Israeli hostages but no lament or remorse for the death of over 1000 Palestinian babies in Gaza because of the Israeli bombardment with US supplied bombs, we are facing a world where the media is now quite blatantly a means of spreading propaganda and ensuring that the interests of the powerful are guaranteed, all underpinned by the most destructive “ism” of our time, FUNDAMENTALISM .
So let’s “drill baby drill”, while Rome, sorry, that should be Los Angeles, burns and the propaganda machines refuse to ask why the climate is shifting. As Lisi Krall writes in her book, we are in for a “bitter harvest”.
OMG, Rachel! It was incredibly easy to 'bear with' you on this one. I have not seen such an insightful integration of all the key elements in the cultural drift of industrial civilization in the past, I don't know how many, decades!!!
It is not just that I liked your integration of those elements, and the astute framing of the failures of postmodernism--though it did have a role--and the current left's being lost in the vagaries of its own reified imaginaries, and material denial of reality in trying to will its utopia somehow right past the Trumpery of the era. That is what I always felt uncomfortable with about postmodernism and about the increasingly obsessive gendering of everything. It should not be about forcing reality into our a priori categories; today we need an existential fix. Your post points clearly in that direction.
We desperately need to get grounded again in the objective world of the Earth System in which we live and from which we have forced our cultural separation from since before the industrial revolution, which precipitated all this craziness of industrial modernism. Even those many well-intended mainstream 'moderate environmentalists' keep trying to fit climate action into their version of human separation from, and modernist 'stewardship' of the living Earth System, which they do not understand engulfs them.
I have also often wondered why so little is made of the vast accumulation of immaterial "value" in what I prefer to call 'phantom money' among the power elites of Wall Street and Davos, who consider themselves the 'masters of the universe.' Of course, the universe they pretend to control is all abstract; but they have reified it even as they destroy objective living systems.
This post could/should be the core of whatever book you may be writing, or ought to write. It's intelligence is the opposite of 'artificial.' You have captured here the essence of the current conflict between industrial modernist culture and reality.
Anyway, this has got to be your best work ever. Not just some preliminary speculation, it hits the nail on the head, both intellectually and existentially, and ought to inform us emotionally too. Kudos!!!!!!
How to do that suggested combination of reality and words then? Politics nowadays is business of words. Journalism has devolved more towards same, relative, subjective reality. I wholly agree wordgames have huge effect on us, that's why those are used, and words are much cheaper to play with than reality, be it structure of government or corporation let alone tedious legislative process. Im from engineering side yet dont work with material things like many engineers do, but I have to think more "rigid" way in that work anyway. I liked this article's concise flavour. Lots of articles have lots of words but cannot get to core of issues.
It is simple and so complex. We need words, that is story, compelling enough to elicit a global social mobilization to force the power elites who wield extreme wealth and governing power, to take direct measures to transform the hierarchic structure of extraction, production, transportation, consumption, and waste (extremely unlikely) or get out of the way (only likely if forced by a global social movement big enough to have the force of numbers of people to overcome the numbers of extreme (phantom) wealth. No easy task by any means, but only overwhelming public pressure can do it.
Great piece. This brought to mind the work of Arendt and MacIntyre, do these figure into your work/thinking?
"What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope."
Alasdair MacIntyre - After Virtue
"The polis, properly speaking, is not the city-state in its physical location; it is the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people living together for this purpose, no matter where they happen to be. "Wherever you go, you will be a polis": these famous words became not merely the watchword of Greek colonization, they expressed the conviction that action and speech create a space between the participants which can find its proper location almost any time and anywhere[...]
Power is what keeps the public realm, the potential space of appearance between acting and speaking men, in existence[...] The only indispensable material factor in the generation of power is the living together of people[...]
Aristotle, in his political philosophy, is still well aware of what is at stake in politics, namely, no less than the ergon tou anthropou (the "work of man" qua man), and if he defined this "work" as "to live well" (eu zen), he clearly meant that "work" here is no work product but exists only in sheer actuality. This specifically human achievement lies altogether outside the category of means and ends; the "work of man" is no end because the means to achieve it—the virtues, or aretai— are not qualities which may or may not be actualized, but are themselves "actualities." In other words, the means to achieve the end would already be the end; and this "end," conversely, cannot be considered a means in some other respect, because there is nothing higher to attain than this actuality itself."
I would add, with Hannah Arendt, that we are living in an age where the “banality of evil” is patently evident. How else can one justify deporting 11 million “illegals”?
As you refer to upcoming, looming "dark ages". Bittersweet solace can be, "drill baby drill" uses up our gift from God, or dinousaurs, pick you flavour; faster, so we are closer to ground so to speak sooner, and that forces humanity as whole to change attitudes via reality. However 'laissez fair' as french say, is bad option here and leads to chaos but perhaps it wakes more people to brutal reality, as we react better to car accident or bomb going off than anything slow decline type phenomenom. Im not referring to weather as it is so volatile every day anyway, so mind cannot decipher why is it different today than yesterday.
If I read correctly, that part speaking of power, is what keeps our reality foggy on purpose... it serves them to keep us in the dark. But it also leads to laissez fair from my viewpoint. We will be wholly unprepared to any real, material crisis for that reason.
Is competence, ie thus social status in many ways, implicitly derived from power, control, thus giving it away is seen as 'weak' thing? Thus it is very hard to do and also risks getting out of that community, one of greatest psychological threats to human. I mean in daily life level, not in academic intellectual sense. Competent person who refuses to take authority is essentially seen as incompetent person in many contexts. In local community level that is only positive trait to do so, but in bigger organizational context it creates this problem of house of cards, that if you personally undermine yourself, structure is built so there is always someone threatening your position, be it from down in ladder or you get laid off and "better" person is replacing you. This comes to respect too. In other context, respect is tied to trustworthiness. Without respect, well person is on shaky grounds. (dis)respect can stem from infinite number of reasons in person to person level.
Just a slightly tangential comment on one of the threads woven together in this new piece. Andreas Malm, the Swedish climate activist and writer, argues very plausibly that objective truth began breaking down in mainstream discourse (as opposed to the extremist fringes or the academic left in love with French theory) with climate denialism. The campaign to de-legitimate the peer-reviewed conclusions of climate scientists from around the world was a direct attack on science itself as the modern world's paradigm of objective truth, the methodology which since the 17th century has been seen as grounding knowledge in a kind of certainty that religion and ideologies cannot provide. In other words, climate denial=denial of science=undermining the West's concept of objective truth itself. Having arrived at this point, subjective and convenient "truth" became everybody's right to determine for themselves according to whatever makes them feel good at the moment....
Of course, many other factors have been at work undermining objectivity, but Malm's claim points to something worth considering--that when a culture's central epistemological pillar is undermined, the result is an epistemological free for all--a post-truth world, or put another way, a world in which climate chaos disrupts much more than just weather patterns.
This seems well on point Rachel. Difficult stuff. I’ve often noted myself that one of the supreme ironies of the US Right’s criticisms of postmodernism (Baudrillard, Derrida etc.) and the hallucinated phantom they call ‘cultural Marxism’ (perhaps most closely represented by the Frankfurt School) is that they seem to have successfully weaponised so many insights from those groups and theories for their own purposes. As you note, the fixation on controlling discourse and language in order to exert power and shape reality is postmodernism 101. They also seem to do intersectionality pretty well too, building crazy alliances in order to drive home a socially conservative agenda. Strange times.
The section below I found very interesting. The term 'I use' is the moto for the astrogical sign of Capricorn, which has ruled the last several decades. Now we are moving into Aquarius gradually leaving that meme behind as we learn the lesson of 'I know' or 'I universalize'. Interesting that your artcle suggests where we have been and wherecwe need to go next: towards communiality.
You quote:
"Rather, this is about how theory becomes lost in translation when applied only to the Self, as if everything ever produced has its utmost value in how it can be put to use for me. This, sadly, is how I see the current mainstream movement on the left, an entitled demand for the world to be remade by the words I use, and for everyone to fall in line to respect them, rather than a considered application of how to remake the world in the benefit for the many."
Yes. The linguistic turn in postmodernism and its view that language is a fundamental construct that shapes our perceptions of reality is so dangerous. How is the idea that babies are ‘chest-fed’ rather than breast feed become a thing in our NHS? What kind of reality are we constructing through linguistic practices such as these? Who decided it was OK to denigrate health workers if they balk at the language being foisted on them.
"Going forward, the fight cannot just be linguistic. It has to be material, relationship-building and grounded. It has to be connected to the many, not just to the self, and has to reveal the world for what it is, not cast spells to make it as we wish it were."
You're about to be given the chance to achieve what we both want, and chances are — you'll never even know it. If you read the following piece, you'll understand why that's the likely outcome. But if you do what you asked of your readers, all will become clear:
"I hope you’ll be patient with me as I try to work them out."
The Social Dilemma opens with the Sophocles’ quote “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.” While the documentary was well done, it would never occur to them that in their attempt to address the curse — they created another one. It's just another vehicle for conveying concerns without an ounce of effort to act on them. The doc demands nothing from your mind, this does: The Social Dilemma Division: Never in History Have So Many Cared So Much and Done So Little.
A lot of that goin’ around!
Same goes for this: People getting a fix for feeling like they're participating in addressing a problem they're perpetuating by the very nature in which they participate.
"Our society no longer has time for elegance, beauty and complexity; we have synthesis, but not clarity; speed, but not efficiency; information, but not knowledge! We know too much and too little, at the same time. Because, we can no longer connect things. People can no longer think."
— Telegram Poster/Guendalina Center
What would it mean to Like those lovely words then turn into an automaton in the face of “elegance, beauty and complexity”? Such questions don’t compute in a culture where sharing beliefs has become equated to acting on them. In today’s town square where nothing has to square — it’s considered critical thinking to Tweet about critical thinking.
It’s all normalized now — in a world where the rush is everything:
• The rush to respond
• The rush you get from responding
• The rush to roll out the next issue of concern
• Repeat and never reflect
What does it say to you that across communities where claims of critical thinking are everywhere — I haven’t found it anywhere? It’s become a pastime for people to take endless delight in advertising their immaculate critical thinking skills. But the second they’re challenged on anything that is even perceived as threatening their interests: Don’t do anything with even a hint of what's bolded below, but right on cue (are exactly aligned with what came before it).
"Indeed, nowadays, we tend to take in and repeat whatever the values and beliefs of those around us have rather than forming our own independent thought and stopping to organize and evaluate the information we are receiving."
— Ann Baker, Critical Thinking: A Fading Skill in the Age of Information Overload
Perfectly put — except for the “fading” part. In our Age of Unenlightenment — “fading” is an understatement for the ages.
It’s all window dressing with The Critical Thinking Crowd.
I’ve come across claims of insatiable curiosity by people who have none. Someone once replied, “What makes you think I’m not interested in deep discussion?” To which I wrote, “The fact that you responded with that question — instead of something of substance on what’s in question.”
He was more interested in telling me he’s interested in serious-minded discussion than demonstrating it.
Critical thinkers don't instantly respond — they dig to discover and inquire to clarify. They don't race to conclusions — they arrive at them by refraining from judgment on a journey in the interest of truth and understanding. They don't rest on who’s right and who’s wrong: They want to know if there’s something more to see, something to learn, something that sharpens the mind.
They're willing to rethink what they think they know!
They don’t eschew the demands of difficulty and discernment. They don’t concern themselves with website style-guide “standards” in weighing the worth of an argument. They look to listen and learn (and are willing to be wrong). They're not self-satisfied. They don't sling snippets of certitude — they craft arguments on the merits. They respect their intelligence by using it!
"I must be cruel, only to be kind: Thus bad begins and worse remains behind."
As I stand with Shakespeare, I'm in good company with critical thinkers who've not forgotten timeless truths America made outdated. In a society where you're praised for preaching principles while belittling people for practicing them: Is it any wonder this nation no longer understands how to understand?
Allow me to demonstrate how understanding works with even the smallest of considerations. It’s all the more educational because it wasn’t an ideal exchange on exactly how something like this should go. And this is with someone I hold in the highest regard for his integrity and intelligence (and has my best interests at heart). What he didn’t see from the start is not nearly as important as how he adjusted in the journey. At first, he didn’t comprehend the compilation of stories I share in the attached video. The operative words are “at first,” for in a matter of minutes — the purpose of the presentation became increasingly clear.
All it took was the time-honored tradition that’s fallen out of favor:
Understanding develops by degrees — Egyptian Proverb
The same principle required to understand every single story, slide, image, title, caption, quote, and how it’s all connected and tied to the song (right along with my purpose in putting it together). As in how 15 minutes later, I had a “hmm” from him (a tectonic shift in movement these days). And exactly 17 minutes later: “Yea, I am getting it now.” A turnaround that took all of 32 minutes — was reached simply by considering a series of short explanations in response (taking each element of information into account).
But had he done what he normally does in developing software: He would have seen from the start what he came to understand later. I’ve seen him work wonders by breaking things down into their smallest components. In so doing, he put us on the same page on what the issue was really about (at which point we solved the problem).
And lo and behold, that’s what “Sounds of Silence” is ultimately about. Hear me out and all will become clear. Isn’t that what a critical thinker would do? Get this story in the right hands, and you just might change the course of the country — by showing what critical thinking really looks like.
"We need to find ourselves in groups, and then find how those groups fit with one another. Until we do that, we are kites in the wind, lost without the ties that bind us."
this is the classic mistake of woke thinking or whatever this thought process is about..
lets be clear 2 sexes and one nation and no climate emergency and prosperity is number 1 ..... get over it!
Zippy, these references represent some very different takes on our situation, from philosophical to quasi- religious/ new age. Not easy to reconcile nor to ground them in any framework.
All of these references are part of a seamless multi-dimensional communication. In fact they are part of the most sophisticated and all-inclusive Spiritual, religious and cultural communication ever given on this planet.
There is nothing either quasi-religious of new-age about them.
Please find some references re Adi Da's association with the Hindu and Buddhist Traditions
Rachel, A worthy struggle to understand a polarising and disintegrating world. What is missing is “why”. Why should anyone seek to draw disparate groups into a wider community/society. At the base of our problems IS the absence of a meta narrative and a commitment to common values such as truth, honesty, fidelity, compassion, justice, etc. In the USA one of the biggest problems is the perversion of the word “freedom”. It seems to me that “freedom” in the USA has become a rather perverse form of licence which is completely disconnected from traditional values. Interesting times ahead in a post-truth world where 1500 insurrectionists are pardoned as hostages, the mainstream global media celebrate the release of 3 Israeli hostages but no lament or remorse for the death of over 1000 Palestinian babies in Gaza because of the Israeli bombardment with US supplied bombs, we are facing a world where the media is now quite blatantly a means of spreading propaganda and ensuring that the interests of the powerful are guaranteed, all underpinned by the most destructive “ism” of our time, FUNDAMENTALISM .
So let’s “drill baby drill”, while Rome, sorry, that should be Los Angeles, burns and the propaganda machines refuse to ask why the climate is shifting. As Lisi Krall writes in her book, we are in for a “bitter harvest”.
OMG, Rachel! It was incredibly easy to 'bear with' you on this one. I have not seen such an insightful integration of all the key elements in the cultural drift of industrial civilization in the past, I don't know how many, decades!!!
It is not just that I liked your integration of those elements, and the astute framing of the failures of postmodernism--though it did have a role--and the current left's being lost in the vagaries of its own reified imaginaries, and material denial of reality in trying to will its utopia somehow right past the Trumpery of the era. That is what I always felt uncomfortable with about postmodernism and about the increasingly obsessive gendering of everything. It should not be about forcing reality into our a priori categories; today we need an existential fix. Your post points clearly in that direction.
We desperately need to get grounded again in the objective world of the Earth System in which we live and from which we have forced our cultural separation from since before the industrial revolution, which precipitated all this craziness of industrial modernism. Even those many well-intended mainstream 'moderate environmentalists' keep trying to fit climate action into their version of human separation from, and modernist 'stewardship' of the living Earth System, which they do not understand engulfs them.
I have also often wondered why so little is made of the vast accumulation of immaterial "value" in what I prefer to call 'phantom money' among the power elites of Wall Street and Davos, who consider themselves the 'masters of the universe.' Of course, the universe they pretend to control is all abstract; but they have reified it even as they destroy objective living systems.
This post could/should be the core of whatever book you may be writing, or ought to write. It's intelligence is the opposite of 'artificial.' You have captured here the essence of the current conflict between industrial modernist culture and reality.
Anyway, this has got to be your best work ever. Not just some preliminary speculation, it hits the nail on the head, both intellectually and existentially, and ought to inform us emotionally too. Kudos!!!!!!
How to do that suggested combination of reality and words then? Politics nowadays is business of words. Journalism has devolved more towards same, relative, subjective reality. I wholly agree wordgames have huge effect on us, that's why those are used, and words are much cheaper to play with than reality, be it structure of government or corporation let alone tedious legislative process. Im from engineering side yet dont work with material things like many engineers do, but I have to think more "rigid" way in that work anyway. I liked this article's concise flavour. Lots of articles have lots of words but cannot get to core of issues.
It is simple and so complex. We need words, that is story, compelling enough to elicit a global social mobilization to force the power elites who wield extreme wealth and governing power, to take direct measures to transform the hierarchic structure of extraction, production, transportation, consumption, and waste (extremely unlikely) or get out of the way (only likely if forced by a global social movement big enough to have the force of numbers of people to overcome the numbers of extreme (phantom) wealth. No easy task by any means, but only overwhelming public pressure can do it.
Great piece. This brought to mind the work of Arendt and MacIntyre, do these figure into your work/thinking?
"What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope."
Alasdair MacIntyre - After Virtue
"The polis, properly speaking, is not the city-state in its physical location; it is the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people living together for this purpose, no matter where they happen to be. "Wherever you go, you will be a polis": these famous words became not merely the watchword of Greek colonization, they expressed the conviction that action and speech create a space between the participants which can find its proper location almost any time and anywhere[...]
Power is what keeps the public realm, the potential space of appearance between acting and speaking men, in existence[...] The only indispensable material factor in the generation of power is the living together of people[...]
Aristotle, in his political philosophy, is still well aware of what is at stake in politics, namely, no less than the ergon tou anthropou (the "work of man" qua man), and if he defined this "work" as "to live well" (eu zen), he clearly meant that "work" here is no work product but exists only in sheer actuality. This specifically human achievement lies altogether outside the category of means and ends; the "work of man" is no end because the means to achieve it—the virtues, or aretai— are not qualities which may or may not be actualized, but are themselves "actualities." In other words, the means to achieve the end would already be the end; and this "end," conversely, cannot be considered a means in some other respect, because there is nothing higher to attain than this actuality itself."
Hannah Arendt - The Human Condition
I would add, with Hannah Arendt, that we are living in an age where the “banality of evil” is patently evident. How else can one justify deporting 11 million “illegals”?
As you refer to upcoming, looming "dark ages". Bittersweet solace can be, "drill baby drill" uses up our gift from God, or dinousaurs, pick you flavour; faster, so we are closer to ground so to speak sooner, and that forces humanity as whole to change attitudes via reality. However 'laissez fair' as french say, is bad option here and leads to chaos but perhaps it wakes more people to brutal reality, as we react better to car accident or bomb going off than anything slow decline type phenomenom. Im not referring to weather as it is so volatile every day anyway, so mind cannot decipher why is it different today than yesterday.
If I read correctly, that part speaking of power, is what keeps our reality foggy on purpose... it serves them to keep us in the dark. But it also leads to laissez fair from my viewpoint. We will be wholly unprepared to any real, material crisis for that reason.
Is competence, ie thus social status in many ways, implicitly derived from power, control, thus giving it away is seen as 'weak' thing? Thus it is very hard to do and also risks getting out of that community, one of greatest psychological threats to human. I mean in daily life level, not in academic intellectual sense. Competent person who refuses to take authority is essentially seen as incompetent person in many contexts. In local community level that is only positive trait to do so, but in bigger organizational context it creates this problem of house of cards, that if you personally undermine yourself, structure is built so there is always someone threatening your position, be it from down in ladder or you get laid off and "better" person is replacing you. This comes to respect too. In other context, respect is tied to trustworthiness. Without respect, well person is on shaky grounds. (dis)respect can stem from infinite number of reasons in person to person level.
Just a slightly tangential comment on one of the threads woven together in this new piece. Andreas Malm, the Swedish climate activist and writer, argues very plausibly that objective truth began breaking down in mainstream discourse (as opposed to the extremist fringes or the academic left in love with French theory) with climate denialism. The campaign to de-legitimate the peer-reviewed conclusions of climate scientists from around the world was a direct attack on science itself as the modern world's paradigm of objective truth, the methodology which since the 17th century has been seen as grounding knowledge in a kind of certainty that religion and ideologies cannot provide. In other words, climate denial=denial of science=undermining the West's concept of objective truth itself. Having arrived at this point, subjective and convenient "truth" became everybody's right to determine for themselves according to whatever makes them feel good at the moment....
Of course, many other factors have been at work undermining objectivity, but Malm's claim points to something worth considering--that when a culture's central epistemological pillar is undermined, the result is an epistemological free for all--a post-truth world, or put another way, a world in which climate chaos disrupts much more than just weather patterns.
This seems well on point Rachel. Difficult stuff. I’ve often noted myself that one of the supreme ironies of the US Right’s criticisms of postmodernism (Baudrillard, Derrida etc.) and the hallucinated phantom they call ‘cultural Marxism’ (perhaps most closely represented by the Frankfurt School) is that they seem to have successfully weaponised so many insights from those groups and theories for their own purposes. As you note, the fixation on controlling discourse and language in order to exert power and shape reality is postmodernism 101. They also seem to do intersectionality pretty well too, building crazy alliances in order to drive home a socially conservative agenda. Strange times.
Very good Rachel!
The section below I found very interesting. The term 'I use' is the moto for the astrogical sign of Capricorn, which has ruled the last several decades. Now we are moving into Aquarius gradually leaving that meme behind as we learn the lesson of 'I know' or 'I universalize'. Interesting that your artcle suggests where we have been and wherecwe need to go next: towards communiality.
You quote:
"Rather, this is about how theory becomes lost in translation when applied only to the Self, as if everything ever produced has its utmost value in how it can be put to use for me. This, sadly, is how I see the current mainstream movement on the left, an entitled demand for the world to be remade by the words I use, and for everyone to fall in line to respect them, rather than a considered application of how to remake the world in the benefit for the many."
Yes. The linguistic turn in postmodernism and its view that language is a fundamental construct that shapes our perceptions of reality is so dangerous. How is the idea that babies are ‘chest-fed’ rather than breast feed become a thing in our NHS? What kind of reality are we constructing through linguistic practices such as these? Who decided it was OK to denigrate health workers if they balk at the language being foisted on them.
Well, gold isn't valuable either 🤷♀️ Useful and pretty but it's just a rock.
"Going forward, the fight cannot just be linguistic. It has to be material, relationship-building and grounded. It has to be connected to the many, not just to the self, and has to reveal the world for what it is, not cast spells to make it as we wish it were."
You're about to be given the chance to achieve what we both want, and chances are — you'll never even know it. If you read the following piece, you'll understand why that's the likely outcome. But if you do what you asked of your readers, all will become clear:
"I hope you’ll be patient with me as I try to work them out."
Sounds of Silence: The Deafening Noise of a Nation Decades in Decline: https://youtu.be/WO86PeAV9Jc
The Social Dilemma opens with the Sophocles’ quote “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.” While the documentary was well done, it would never occur to them that in their attempt to address the curse — they created another one. It's just another vehicle for conveying concerns without an ounce of effort to act on them. The doc demands nothing from your mind, this does: The Social Dilemma Division: Never in History Have So Many Cared So Much and Done So Little.
A lot of that goin’ around!
Same goes for this: People getting a fix for feeling like they're participating in addressing a problem they're perpetuating by the very nature in which they participate.
"Our society no longer has time for elegance, beauty and complexity; we have synthesis, but not clarity; speed, but not efficiency; information, but not knowledge! We know too much and too little, at the same time. Because, we can no longer connect things. People can no longer think."
— Telegram Poster/Guendalina Center
What would it mean to Like those lovely words then turn into an automaton in the face of “elegance, beauty and complexity”? Such questions don’t compute in a culture where sharing beliefs has become equated to acting on them. In today’s town square where nothing has to square — it’s considered critical thinking to Tweet about critical thinking.
It’s all normalized now — in a world where the rush is everything:
• The rush to respond
• The rush you get from responding
• The rush to roll out the next issue of concern
• Repeat and never reflect
What does it say to you that across communities where claims of critical thinking are everywhere — I haven’t found it anywhere? It’s become a pastime for people to take endless delight in advertising their immaculate critical thinking skills. But the second they’re challenged on anything that is even perceived as threatening their interests: Don’t do anything with even a hint of what's bolded below, but right on cue (are exactly aligned with what came before it).
"Indeed, nowadays, we tend to take in and repeat whatever the values and beliefs of those around us have rather than forming our own independent thought and stopping to organize and evaluate the information we are receiving."
— Ann Baker, Critical Thinking: A Fading Skill in the Age of Information Overload
Perfectly put — except for the “fading” part. In our Age of Unenlightenment — “fading” is an understatement for the ages.
It’s all window dressing with The Critical Thinking Crowd.
I’ve come across claims of insatiable curiosity by people who have none. Someone once replied, “What makes you think I’m not interested in deep discussion?” To which I wrote, “The fact that you responded with that question — instead of something of substance on what’s in question.”
He was more interested in telling me he’s interested in serious-minded discussion than demonstrating it.
Critical thinkers don't instantly respond — they dig to discover and inquire to clarify. They don't race to conclusions — they arrive at them by refraining from judgment on a journey in the interest of truth and understanding. They don't rest on who’s right and who’s wrong: They want to know if there’s something more to see, something to learn, something that sharpens the mind.
They're willing to rethink what they think they know!
They don’t eschew the demands of difficulty and discernment. They don’t concern themselves with website style-guide “standards” in weighing the worth of an argument. They look to listen and learn (and are willing to be wrong). They're not self-satisfied. They don't sling snippets of certitude — they craft arguments on the merits. They respect their intelligence by using it!
"I must be cruel, only to be kind: Thus bad begins and worse remains behind."
As I stand with Shakespeare, I'm in good company with critical thinkers who've not forgotten timeless truths America made outdated. In a society where you're praised for preaching principles while belittling people for practicing them: Is it any wonder this nation no longer understands how to understand?
Allow me to demonstrate how understanding works with even the smallest of considerations. It’s all the more educational because it wasn’t an ideal exchange on exactly how something like this should go. And this is with someone I hold in the highest regard for his integrity and intelligence (and has my best interests at heart). What he didn’t see from the start is not nearly as important as how he adjusted in the journey. At first, he didn’t comprehend the compilation of stories I share in the attached video. The operative words are “at first,” for in a matter of minutes — the purpose of the presentation became increasingly clear.
All it took was the time-honored tradition that’s fallen out of favor:
Understanding develops by degrees — Egyptian Proverb
The same principle required to understand every single story, slide, image, title, caption, quote, and how it’s all connected and tied to the song (right along with my purpose in putting it together). As in how 15 minutes later, I had a “hmm” from him (a tectonic shift in movement these days). And exactly 17 minutes later: “Yea, I am getting it now.” A turnaround that took all of 32 minutes — was reached simply by considering a series of short explanations in response (taking each element of information into account).
But had he done what he normally does in developing software: He would have seen from the start what he came to understand later. I’ve seen him work wonders by breaking things down into their smallest components. In so doing, he put us on the same page on what the issue was really about (at which point we solved the problem).
And lo and behold, that’s what “Sounds of Silence” is ultimately about. Hear me out and all will become clear. Isn’t that what a critical thinker would do? Get this story in the right hands, and you just might change the course of the country — by showing what critical thinking really looks like.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Richard W. Memmer
Sounds of Silence: The Deafening Noise of a Nation Decades in Decline: https://youtu.be/WO86PeAV9Jc
Artificial Intelligence Was Taking Over Long Before AI: https://centurionoftheseed.substack.com/p/artificial-intelligence-was-taking
"We need to find ourselves in groups, and then find how those groups fit with one another. Until we do that, we are kites in the wind, lost without the ties that bind us."
this is the classic mistake of woke thinking or whatever this thought process is about..
lets be clear 2 sexes and one nation and no climate emergency and prosperity is number 1 ..... get over it!
Thank you so much.
Yr take on postmodernism is a bit like calling quantum mechanics “the idea that reality is unpredictable.” Sort of, but no.
Please find a somewhat different thoroughly postmodern understanding of our situation via these references;
http://www.adidaupclose.org/Literature_Theater/skalsky.html
http://www.dabase.org/asana-science.htm The Asana of Science & The Transmission of Doubt
http://fearnomore.vision/human/what-man-represents
http://beezone.com/adida/quandramamashikhara/thelawofpleasuredomeedit.html
Plus this very radical communication re the Scapegoat Drama
http://beezone.com/adida/there_is_a_way_edit.html
Zippy, these references represent some very different takes on our situation, from philosophical to quasi- religious/ new age. Not easy to reconcile nor to ground them in any framework.
All of these references are part of a seamless multi-dimensional communication. In fact they are part of the most sophisticated and all-inclusive Spiritual, religious and cultural communication ever given on this planet.
There is nothing either quasi-religious of new-age about them.
Please find some references re Adi Da's association with the Hindu and Buddhist Traditions
http://www.adidam.in/forerunners.html
http://www.dabase.org/gnos-forward.htm an appreciation of his work - check out the table of contents too
http://www.adidaupclose.org/FLO/karmapa.html Adi Da acknowledged as the Dharma Bearer by the 16th Karmapa
http://beezone.com/latest/four_yanas_of_buddhismedit.html
A comprehensive appreciation of Adi Da's Life & Teaching
'http://www.integralworld.net/reynolds33.html
http://www.integralworld.net/reynolds38.html
http://beezone.com/current/tableofcontents-5.html Scientific Proof of the Existence of God! multiple references
http://spiralledlight.wordpress.com multiple more-than-wonderful references