“Conservative concern for making things work is much less appealing in any academic status game than such lofty moralised knowingness.”
I suspect that you mistakenly conceive of “systems thinking” as being unrelated to “making things work” when in fact is is key to making things work *better*. And then you discount the progressive leanings of many such production optimizers as the detached pronouncements of educated elites.
It’s deeply unfortunate that you thereby dismiss the significant value that flows from joining conservative perspectives on what *has* worked (with whatever limitations honestly acknowledged) to the progressive perspectives on what *could* work better (with whatever constraints based on material reality also honestly acknowledged).
Similarly, the managers & bureaucrats who enable such measured progress are not inherently the enemies of “making things work”, though in my experience it is typically those who focus only on what the bureaucracy dictates explicitly — with *no* interest in refining such dictates to better serve the intended purpose — a conservative mindset, who are the most significant opponents of “making things work”.
Are you falling into the trap of believing that political conservatism is the drive to resist all change due to fearfulness, lack of imagination, stupidity, and ignorance, while political progressivism is driven by openness, imaginativeness, and intelligence? I would say that those traits correspond very poorly with the left/right divide in politics, though wokeness in particular tends towards the first set of characteristics
If human flourishing is your goal, you have to wrestle with the conservative questions. You don’t have to give conservative answers, but you have to wrestle with the questions.
My point was about the silencing of conservative voices and hence not wresling with the “make things work” questions, nor “what can we learn from past experience?” It was not about what answers such wrestling may lead to.
It’s no longer between the oppressed and the oppressor. Today it’s between lies, corruption, murder and power vs. freedom with ethics, morality and, dare I say, God. The whole oppressed vs. oppressor concept was always a lazy, morally corrupt, thug style mentality that resents beauty, creativity and productivity, it’s just always morphing to advance the gangster style agenda whether it’s education, politics, corporate style monopolies, laws, and religious institutions. Steering the Leviathan back to some sanity, morals, supply and demand economics and enforcing laws that uphold the moral dignity of society seems like an impossible task. The rot runs deep, the lies run deep, and the corruption runs extremely deep. Although your article recognizes some rather obvious epiphanies, you speak of Trump distastefully, you speak of more conservative parties with a degree of repugnance, and yet these movements are developing the strength of momentum to resist the beast. We’re beyond intellectual perfection, we’re beyond fixing this with ideas, the reality today is overcoming the corruption long enough for people to breathe, to regroup, to gain some footing, to stop the bleeding. When you can’t recognize the only solution of the day because you find it distasteful tells me how deep the lies and propaganda have gone in the world of intellectual elitism.
The only mention of Trump is in a quote, so is not by me, and the article does not discuss conservative political parties at all, so I am a bit bemused by where you go with your comment.
You are right. I think I was conflating current reality with historical perspective. I’m so used to the black pilling of some of these intellectual essays, I was jumping to the wrong conclusions. I have noticed many see the downfall of Marxist solutions, but cannot, and I believe out of fear of not being taken seriously by their colleagues, accept the direction Trump is trying to take us in. I don’t have a problem with disagreements here, but I do have a problem with elitist attitudes that are couched in rationals and the inability to see Trump as other than a buffoon.
The taproot of my misanthropy - those who succumb to such trivial stupidity deserve to be treated as something approaching livestock. Or I'm simply a defective human.
I tend to agree. Some people abandon reality in the pursuit of social status, with results ranging from the comical to the catastrophic, but always obnoxious.
Status is a human thing. They can do well, they can do badly. Status is a necessary element in a functioning society. At the heart of the “woke” madness is an attempt to redistribute status in a mad way.
Yes. That was a silly rationalisation for slavery that Romans generally regarded as Greek nonsense. But, unlike Aristotle, they were not moral universalists, so did not have to concoct some Just-So story to justify slavery. Slaves were just losers, end of story.
Stanislav Andreski's 50 yo classic 'Social Sciences as Sorcery' is not in print anymore as far as i know. So copies are rather expensive. Below a free pdf version:
A very helpful review. Perhaps Musa feels constrained by being within sociology as a discipline and therefore uses Bourdieu to give an avenue into his perspective. I took his use of Bourdieu to escape the Marxist idea of capital, but to point to competition over resources which is less obviously material (but nevertheless often translates into material gains). Critiques of woke from the right take its alleged Marxist lineage far too seriously. Al Gharbi has done a great service, but worth remembering that he is not a conservative, so his is a critique within the left tradition.
"Somehow, as a friend has noted, we have to “Make Doing Hard Things Sexy Again”. It is hard to see how we will manage that without profoundly reforming, even gutting, higher education."
I've heard a lot of concerns about higher ed. Some I agree, some I doubt. I have no clue what this one is intended to address.
Colleges vary from rigorous to not. Majors within colleges vary even more. Yet some students find the easiest major at the easiest school hard and others have no difficulty with the hardest major at the toughest school. Beyond that, there are students who fail out because they can't even show up to class and engage enough to see if they have what it takes.
“Conservative concern for making things work is much less appealing in any academic status game than such lofty moralised knowingness.”
I suspect that you mistakenly conceive of “systems thinking” as being unrelated to “making things work” when in fact is is key to making things work *better*. And then you discount the progressive leanings of many such production optimizers as the detached pronouncements of educated elites.
It’s deeply unfortunate that you thereby dismiss the significant value that flows from joining conservative perspectives on what *has* worked (with whatever limitations honestly acknowledged) to the progressive perspectives on what *could* work better (with whatever constraints based on material reality also honestly acknowledged).
Similarly, the managers & bureaucrats who enable such measured progress are not inherently the enemies of “making things work”, though in my experience it is typically those who focus only on what the bureaucracy dictates explicitly — with *no* interest in refining such dictates to better serve the intended purpose — a conservative mindset, who are the most significant opponents of “making things work”.
Are you falling into the trap of believing that political conservatism is the drive to resist all change due to fearfulness, lack of imagination, stupidity, and ignorance, while political progressivism is driven by openness, imaginativeness, and intelligence? I would say that those traits correspond very poorly with the left/right divide in politics, though wokeness in particular tends towards the first set of characteristics
If human flourishing is your goal, you have to wrestle with the conservative questions. You don’t have to give conservative answers, but you have to wrestle with the questions.
My point was about the silencing of conservative voices and hence not wresling with the “make things work” questions, nor “what can we learn from past experience?” It was not about what answers such wrestling may lead to.
Happy Holidays, Happy New Year
It’s no longer between the oppressed and the oppressor. Today it’s between lies, corruption, murder and power vs. freedom with ethics, morality and, dare I say, God. The whole oppressed vs. oppressor concept was always a lazy, morally corrupt, thug style mentality that resents beauty, creativity and productivity, it’s just always morphing to advance the gangster style agenda whether it’s education, politics, corporate style monopolies, laws, and religious institutions. Steering the Leviathan back to some sanity, morals, supply and demand economics and enforcing laws that uphold the moral dignity of society seems like an impossible task. The rot runs deep, the lies run deep, and the corruption runs extremely deep. Although your article recognizes some rather obvious epiphanies, you speak of Trump distastefully, you speak of more conservative parties with a degree of repugnance, and yet these movements are developing the strength of momentum to resist the beast. We’re beyond intellectual perfection, we’re beyond fixing this with ideas, the reality today is overcoming the corruption long enough for people to breathe, to regroup, to gain some footing, to stop the bleeding. When you can’t recognize the only solution of the day because you find it distasteful tells me how deep the lies and propaganda have gone in the world of intellectual elitism.
The only mention of Trump is in a quote, so is not by me, and the article does not discuss conservative political parties at all, so I am a bit bemused by where you go with your comment.
You are right. I think I was conflating current reality with historical perspective. I’m so used to the black pilling of some of these intellectual essays, I was jumping to the wrong conclusions. I have noticed many see the downfall of Marxist solutions, but cannot, and I believe out of fear of not being taken seriously by their colleagues, accept the direction Trump is trying to take us in. I don’t have a problem with disagreements here, but I do have a problem with elitist attitudes that are couched in rationals and the inability to see Trump as other than a buffoon.
"a very status-conscious species"
The taproot of my misanthropy - those who succumb to such trivial stupidity deserve to be treated as something approaching livestock. Or I'm simply a defective human.
I tend to agree. Some people abandon reality in the pursuit of social status, with results ranging from the comical to the catastrophic, but always obnoxious.
I disagree.
Status can be done badly but that's just a society working badly.
Wizards (The root of that term of course being "Wise") are respected and feared.
That's a society working well.
Status is a human thing. They can do well, they can do badly. Status is a necessary element in a functioning society. At the heart of the “woke” madness is an attempt to redistribute status in a mad way.
I think that was meant to be,
"Status is a necessary element in a functioning state/society"
correct?
So, Aristotle was incorrect when he claimed we are either master or slave at birth?
Yes. That was a silly rationalisation for slavery that Romans generally regarded as Greek nonsense. But, unlike Aristotle, they were not moral universalists, so did not have to concoct some Just-So story to justify slavery. Slaves were just losers, end of story.
Mr. Grok gave me the same answer. But my question remains, if some are losers and some are not, then does a binary reality still prevail.
No, because their are gradations in that and people can shift from one to the other.
"War is the father of all and the king of all. Some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, and others free."
Heraclitus
He was another Greek philosopher. Lorenzo has reminded me that in the grand scheme of things we are all agents of our own destiny, free to choose.
This is your best work for an age. Just superb
Stanislav Andreski's 50 yo classic 'Social Sciences as Sorcery' is not in print anymore as far as i know. So copies are rather expensive. Below a free pdf version:
https://gwern.net/doc/statistics/bias/1973-andreski-socialsciencesassorcery.pdf
Ta.
A very helpful review. Perhaps Musa feels constrained by being within sociology as a discipline and therefore uses Bourdieu to give an avenue into his perspective. I took his use of Bourdieu to escape the Marxist idea of capital, but to point to competition over resources which is less obviously material (but nevertheless often translates into material gains). Critiques of woke from the right take its alleged Marxist lineage far too seriously. Al Gharbi has done a great service, but worth remembering that he is not a conservative, so his is a critique within the left tradition.
"Somehow, as a friend has noted, we have to “Make Doing Hard Things Sexy Again”. It is hard to see how we will manage that without profoundly reforming, even gutting, higher education."
I've heard a lot of concerns about higher ed. Some I agree, some I doubt. I have no clue what this one is intended to address.
Colleges vary from rigorous to not. Majors within colleges vary even more. Yet some students find the easiest major at the easiest school hard and others have no difficulty with the hardest major at the toughest school. Beyond that, there are students who fail out because they can't even show up to class and engage enough to see if they have what it takes.
So I ask, what does hard have to do with it?