One of the regular posters here urges us to 'Google Murray Bookchin'. This is actually well worth doing. I heard this man speak sometime in the late 60s/early 70s, and he's a pretty smart cookie. His influence remains after his death, bizarrely, among a Kurdish terrorist group whose imprisoned leader -- whom Christopher Hitchens once called a new Pol Pot -- has read Bookchin and apparently been persuaded by his ideas. Since the group's members take a personal oath of loyalty to the leader, they have followed. Well .. stranger things have happened in the world, and in that part of the planet a new start of some sort is not to be lightly dismissed. Anyway, here is an excerpt (I've re-paragraphed it) from Bookchin's writings, taken from here. "The 1960s also saw the emergence of yet another form of nationalism on the Left: increasingly ethnically chauvinistic groups began to appear that ultimately inverted Euro-American claims of the alleged superiority of the white race into an equally reactionary claim to the superiority of nonwhites. Embracing the particularism into which racial politics had degenerated instead of the potential universalism of a humanitas, the New Left placed blacks, colonial peoples, and even totalitarian colonial nations on the top of its theoretical pyramid, endowing them with a commanding or “hegemonic” position in relation to whites, Euro-Americans, and bourgeois-democratic nations. In the 1970s, this particularistic strategy was adopted by certain feminists, who began to extol the “superiority” of women over men, indeed to affirm an allegedly female mystical “power” and an allegedly female irrationalism over the secular rationality and scientific inquiry that were presumably the domain of all males. The term “white male” became a patently derogatory expression that was applied ecumenically to all Euro-American men, irrespective of whether they themselves were exploited and dominated by ruling classes and hierarchies. A highly parochial “identity politics” began to emerge, even to dominate many New Leftists as new “micronationalisms,” if I may coin a word. Not only do certain tendencies in such “identity” movements closely resemble those of very traditional forms of oppression like patriarchy, but “identity politics” also constitutes a regression from the libertarian and even general Marxian message of the “Internationale” and a transcendence of all “micronationalist” differentia in a truly humanistic communist society. What passes for “radical consciousness” today is shifting increasingly toward a biologically oriented emphasis on human differentiation like gender and ethnicity ―not an emphasis on the need to foster of human universality that was so pronounced among the anarchist writers of the last century and even in The Communist Manifesto." Now we can argue about Bookchin's impractical proposals for organizing the economy ('municipalization'), but the spirit of this sounds pretty good to me. (I hope I'm not giving it the kiss of death.) In any case, I wanted fellow conservatives to see what the Left used to be about. O tempora, O mores!
Bookchin like many other of the socialist/liberalist crowd, became immersed in a sort of psycho-babble. An artificiality, in which everything would work- assuming that everyone would think as they did. Nothing new about such delusions, and in a few creature societies, like ants, it works. It's amazing how humans always want to invent a better way to live that requires other people to become what they are not, and become miserable in losing themselves. There are many places one can watch examples of the process that really makes life work. One I'm familiar with and studied at great length has billions of citizens, huge diversity, vast variations in power, characteristics and preferences. At the same time, all these individuals live in harmony. They don't consume the natural resources, they don't trash or poison their world,, and they don't tell each other how to live or think. They self-regulate, so they need no government or laws at all. They also self-educate, there are no universities- yet they all manage their lives with wisdom, skill and success. 40 years ago when I was trying to figure out what the real rules to the game of life were- I watched this- hundreds of times, and always asked myself the same question- what do they know that we don't know? The master of the universe, the maker of all the fundamental rules, is nature. Find a great example of it and watch- the answer is there. Nothing man comes up with works well unless it is based on the fundamental principles of living that nature controls. I've lived very successfully, found peace within myself, achieved everything I have wanted, because one day that question was answered- watching the perfect example of a functional society, on a pristine coral reef. Everything is alive, and everything- large, small, weak or strong, is thriving; everything is harmonious. No shrinks needed, no courts, no politicians- natural success and harmony, regulated by only three natural principles, easily written on the back of a business card. I've lived my life by them ever since. Amazing that after reading so many books on so many solutions, listening to so many complex ideas on how to make life work- One discovers the real answers are so incredibly simple.
And yet it is the titular party of the left in America that primarily pushes identity politics. There are many things that seem good to a man but simply do not work in practice. What made the west the greatest power ever seen was not skin color but ideas sadly the west is now abandoning the many of the ideas that made them great. I am currently about a 1/3 of the way into Peter Ackrooyd's excellent Revolution subtitled the History of England from the Boyne to Waterloo. What put the great in Great Britain was economics even more so than its military and Navy. Rightly did Napoleon call it that damned nation of shop keepers. But that is where greatness lies it is what made America great in the latter half of of the 19th century oh we know about the socalled robber barons but the real story wasn't the robber barons but the thousands upon thousands of shop keepers, this is what we truly need to reclaim if we ever wish to be great again. It is the petite bourgeoisie that the left constantly maligns and has never really understood that makes a country great. It was they who for the most part gave rise to the Tea party movement. If a country wishes to be great all it has to do is kindle that entrepreneurial spirit among the masses and you can not do that with confiscatory tx policy and regulatory over burden that has much the same affect as confiscatory tax policy. And no you don't have to dye your population white to make it work. It works regardless of skin color or country of origin or ethnicity.
To Spiritgide: Hmmm... not sure what you mean here. The human animal is different in some respects from all others, so what we can learn from studying animal societies or complete ecologies has its limits. But maybe you acknowledge this. I think Bookchin was moved by gross inequality among humans, and the realization that the world, right now, could be so much better for us than it is. But like all radicals, or old-fashioned radicals, he was impatient. He imagined a kind of ideal society which, at our current stage of development, is impractical. However ... look ahead a few generations. Imagine our species redesigned as a result of advances in genetic engineering, so that everyone has an IQ approaching 200, has the optimum combination of genes controlling impulsiveness and other behavior, disease has been conquered, and AI-driven robots do all the nasty work. Who knows what social and economic arrangements our descendants will make for themselves? At the moment, liberal democracy with a lightly-regulated market economy, some state welfare provision, some income redistribution, is the best we can do. We're making huge progress under these arrangements, and will continue to do so, if we can just avoid a big war. But if you reincarnated me 200 years from now and I found myself in a Bookchin-like society, it wouldn't surprise me at all. To GaryD: Yes, I largely agree. Were Bookchin to be revived and to attempt to give a talk at Berkeley setting out his arguments against 'identity politics', he would be called a 'fascist' and his meeting attacked. As for what state policy should be, well, the devil is in the details. In general over-taxation and over-regulation are bad ... I mean, they're by definition bad, that's what we mean by "over". But we have to argue about each specific tax and each specific regulation, because taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society, and we need some regulations because the market works brilliantly for some things, but fails completely at others.
But we will still have the same moral conundrums we face to day smarter isn't necessarily better. AS a rule of thumb smarter thieves do not make for a better society and genetics are only the parts of which we are more than the sum.
Yes, of course. One can be intelligent but evil. However, a couple of points: we just at the beginning, just the dawn, of understanding our own neurology: how the brain shapes character. I'm not a biological determinist, but biology plays a huge role in our behavior. For example, the quality of "impulsiveness" seems to have a strong genetic component. If your biology makes you impulsive, this can apparently be overridden by a proper upbringing -- but if you're raised in a one-parent poverty-stricken home with no moral values, you have no over-ride. We'll finally understand this, and much more. And then ... we're going to start shaping our descendants genetic heritage. We're only at the beginning of being able to do this. Give us a few more decades and we'll see miracles. Intelligence is to a large extent a result of the genes you inherited -- which is completely unfair. Our descendants will be able to get the genes we want them to get. At the moment, we're just at the beginning of being able to understand and take action here, but it's coming. And note: 'human nature', even without genetic improvement, is enormously plastic, and sensitive to social circumstances: the Vikings were ferocious warriors, their descendants are the nicest people in the world ... same genes, different environment. All this is of course dependent on our making smart decisions as we move into the future.
Ah so now I can decide I want grand kids so **** can that gay gene provided someone ever finds it. It is indeed a brave new world we are looking at and one filled with all sorts of dangers we haven't even thought of yet. We are gaining knowledge by leaps and bounds while wisdom ever remains in short supply. The problem is we human beings for all our knowledge have still only scratched the surface. We are still at the stage where every new answer begets ten more questions. And we are likely to remain there for the foreseeable future. We borrow an immense amount of trouble when we get too far ahead of ourselves
Well, technically, we are getting smarter. Check out 'the Flynn Effect'. And I think we need to think in terms of fifty-year increments, and take a global view: over the last fifty years, capitalism has improved every aspect of life for almost everyone on the globe, including in levels of education.. And we're just getting started. But I agree with you that we could do a lot better, with current resources, in educating our young people.
We are not getting smarter we are gaining in knowledge without bothering to add the necessary wisdom to make effective use of that knowledge.
