Comment by pron
5 days ago
> Regardless, we've had 10 years of trying such post-Enlightment policies, and predictably it's just resulted in just a flood of populism, crime and tribalism.
I don't agree that some centrist policies are in the spirit of the Enlightenment. They claim to be, but they ignore empirical observation and they don't question themselves, the latter of which is probably the biggest insight of the Enlightenment. I also don't agree we've had any "post-Enlightenment policies". The Enlightenment is at least as much about an ongoing process of introspection, doubt, and questioning as it is about any fixed directives.
For fun, here's something I read years ago, which I recall to have found quite entertaining. It's a treatment of how the Enlightenment is invoked by people who know little about it and internalise nothing from it: https://thebaffler.com/latest/peterson-ganz-klein Here's a snippet:
The strange paradox we face today is that the Enlightenment is being invoked like a talismanic object to thwart the very questioning of political hierarchies and norms that, for Enlightenment thinkers, was necessary for humanity’s emergence from tradition and subordination.
This is similar to what I claimed is bothering Graham more than the creation of new heresies: the questioning of old ones.
As for "a flood of crime", I'm not sure what you mean, at least in the US (https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...), and as for tribalism, here, too, I think context is necessary. Things may feel more tribal than in, say, the 1990s, but even if that could be quantified, America and other western countries have certainly been more tribal before (a particularly egregious example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States#...), and it may be that if things are indeed more tribal than recent history, it is recent history that's the anomaly.
> do you think you can seriously think your "woke" frameworks can compete?
I don't know what you mean by my woke frameworks (or even by woke frameworks, but that would take much to define, I expect). I've never implemented a DEI process, never seriously studied the effectiveness such practices (and so I cannot have any strong opinions one way or the other about them), never put any kind of banner or flag on my social media avatar, and I've never advertised my preferred pronouns.
My contribution is merely that I spent a few years in a former life academically researching history, and I have little patience for superficial "analyses" by people who have far too little knowledge of the matters they write about, and rather than acknowledge their superficial familiarity, resort to assertions that only show how much context they're missing (and do so with a straight face and no trace of humour). My purpose was only to highlight some glaring flaws in Graham's treatment.
For someone with even some training in historical analysis, Graham's article reads like what an article about the nuances of memory safety in programming written by a historian (and one that doesn't pretend to be even an amateur programmer yet writes undoubting conviction) would read to a programmer. Graham's piece doesn't even rise to the level you'd expect from an amateur. It's more a rant you'd hear from your grandfather about the good old days after he'd seen something in the news that upset him.
As to modernity, much of it was brought about by things that were called the analogous of "woke" by the centrists and conservatives of the time. As I wrote in another comment, claims of empty performance were contemporaneously levelled at the very same movements that Graham now characterises as substantive (radical chic). The way the arguments were presented were also similar: the feminists of the interwar period fought for something real but now it's all a show. You speak of the Enlightenment, but many things we take for granted were heavily debated in the West until the late 1960s at least, and those debates seem to be making a comeback. Many of the places you mentioned certainly have yet to accept some of the most basic ideals of the Enlightenment.
As to whether or not I think wokeness (once properly defined) is purely performative or also contains some substance, I hope to form a reasoned opinion in twenty years' time, but until then, I find it more helpful to discuss these matters with people who actually study the subject more rigourously (and comparatively to historical events with the appropriate rigour) and may have valuable insight rather than an opinion based on gut feelings.
>As to modernity, much of it was brought about by things that were called the analogous of "woke" by the centrists and conservatives of the time. As I wrote in another comment, claims of empty performance were contemporaneously levelled at the very same movements that Graham now characterises as substantive (radical chic). The way the arguments were presented were also similar: the feminists of the interwar period fought for something real but now it's all a show. You speak of the Enlightenment, but many things we take for granted were heavily debated in the West until the late 1960s at least, and those debates seem to be making a comeback.
Of course what passes as modernity today would have been considered progressive back in the past, but you fail to mention also that many such of those debates back then also never panned out and fizzled out (aka non-substantive), while others were actively fought against and rolled back.
The French Revolution, Communism, Fascism, The Cultural Revolution, society at many points has historically pushed back against radical progressive visions that ultimately turned into horrific failures that the majority opposed. And the helm of many of those movements were power-hungry Authoritarians, aka the "Aggresively-Conventionally Minded" PG is referring to. The point is that radical progressive movements often provide the unfettered space for Authoritarians to act out their own worst impulses on society, the Reign of Terror and the Cultural Revolution being a prime example.
That's why also the point of "conscious bias against defining new forms of heresy" is just reiteration of the etablishment view of slow, iterative change vs highly disruptive change, of which the former can more effectively keep authoritarians in check. This is not a paticularly controversial view either.
The point is that for PG, and for the majority that voted Trump, Wokeism isn't working, it's not the direction that people wish society to move forwards in. I don't think it's analogous here to Civil Rights or Feminism either because it's a question of speed rather then change. Equality via Long-term Integration (& Homogenization) vs Equality via Aggresive Multiculturalism, and I think people prefer the former.
> Of course what passes as modernity today would have been considered progressive back in the past, but you fail to mention also that many such of those debates back then also never panned out and fizzled out (aka non-substantive), while others were actively fought against and rolled back.
Sure, but Graham isn't suggesting there is some radical progressive movement with any real power. The question is whether wokeness, however defined, is mere performance or carries some real substance. The only people who believe there is any sort of ascendant left are on the far right, and Graham certainly isn't there (he's a middle-of-the-road neoliberal centrist).
In fact, the lack of an ascendant left was the argument used in the debate among historians and other scholars of authoritarianism on whether or not MAGA is a fascist movement. Some (those who typically associate themselves with the more radical left) claimed that MAGA cannot be fascist because fascism must be a reaction against an ascendant left and there isn't one. The response to that arguments by those who say MAGA is fascist is that even though it doesn't exist in reality, such an ascendant left does exist in the MAGA imagination.
> That's why also the point of "conscious bias against defining new forms of heresy" is just reiteration of the etablishment view of slow, iterative change vs highly disruptive change, of which the former can more effectively keep authoritarians in check.
Maybe, but Graham isn't claiming there's some radical left with some significant power. He's clearly not a radical, but his point is that wokeness isn't radical, either. If anything, he thinks it's mere radical chic and believes that to be different from the "real" protest movement of the sixties, and I pointed out that radical chic was levelled at the time against that movement, too.
> The point is that for PG, and for the majority that voted Trump, Wokeism isn't working
I seriously doubt Graham ever entertained voting for Trump, and those who did would find it hard to define what wokeism is (only that it's one of the many things they're against, including Graham's neoliberalism). They would find it hard to consistently define anything.