“If we can understand that we’re all imperfect, let’s come to God and come for his help. You’re not weak by doing that. I think that’s a common misperception of Christians, that you’re being weak because you can’t handle it. None of us can handle this world, dude! It’s eating us alive. But, man, I don’t wanna have to do it on my own.” - Justin Bieber
Almost all of the 'big idea' books of the 1950s shared the premise that self-fulfillment was the highest moral good.
By
BARTON SWAIM
Google the phrase "take America back" and you'll find thousands of people who feel their nation has been commandeered and must be retaken—maybe by force, maybe in a metaphorical sense; you're never sure. True, today the sentiment may be popular on the political right, but during the presidency of George W. Bush it was the left that wanted to take America back from right-wing religious nut jobs. It seems extraordinary that so many people can speak of their country as if it has been overtaken by a hostile force with whom they share no premises or aims.
The historian George Marsden, whose book "Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism" (1991) is widely and correctly regarded as the best historical treatment of Christian fundamentalism, traces this way of thinking—commonly summed up with the word "polarization"—to the 1950s. The '50s, Mr. Marsden argues in "The Twilight of the American Enlightenment," was a time of cultural and political consensus. The U.S. had beaten two deadly foes in World War II, and Americans were enjoying unprecedented levels of prosperity; the future seemed secure.
In politics, the opening of the Cold War had a unifying effect, and in religion the Protestant mainline enjoyed a quasi-establishment status. A sense of unified national purpose permeated the public sphere, and questions of personal morality were more or less agreed on.
But the midcentury consensus turned out to be flimsy. The liberals who dominated political and intellectual life, Mr. Marsden writes, "were passionately committed to principles such as individual freedom, free speech, human decency, justice, civil rights," and so on. But "their justification for these principles was not that they were fixed in a higher law or derived from an ideology. Rather, it was that these principles had evolved historically in the give and take of human experience in free societies." So, if the intellectuals' ideals weren't based on anything outside the self, the only other place to look was inside.
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ENLARGE
THE TWILIGHT OF THE AMERICAN ENLIGHTENMENT
By George Marsden (Basic, 219 pages, $26.99)
Mr. Marsden scrutinizes the arguments of several of the decade's "big idea" books, among them David Riesman's "The Lonely Crowd" (1950) and Erich Fromm's "The Sane Society" (1955), and finds that all but one share a premise: that the highest moral good lay in personal self-fulfillment. The one exception—"Essays in the Public Philosophy" (1955) by the venerated liberal intellectual Walter Lippmann—advocated a rejuvenation of thinking on natural law. Whatever the book's problems, Mr. Marsden says, Lippmann saw that a free and prosperous society couldn't sustain itself on the brittle principle of being true to one's self. Lippmann's book received a cold reception.
The other governing principle in the decade's intellectual discourse held that the only unquestionable kind of knowledge was knowledge arrived at through scientific inquiry. That this second principle flatly contradicted the first, as Mr. Marsden notes, gives you some idea of how weak the era's philosophical foundations were. Even mainstream liberal theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr, while resisting the more imperialistic claims of scientism, conceded the supremacy of scientific knowledge. As a result, Niebuhr wrote so that his many admirers could easily accept his conclusions but reject his God. Indeed for many educated people in the 1950s, Mr. Marsden observes, God was a kind of "useful ally" who confirmed their own opinions.
The midcentury consensus didn't allow much room for principles and opinions that were substantively informed by religious convictions. So it was not prepared when religion obstinately refused to decline as predicted and in fact grew in diversity and fervor. Liberal academics and intellectuals, still working with the old liberal-consensus model, tended increasingly to see religiously informed opinions on "public" topics as illegitimate; they insisted that religious conviction should be relegated to the sphere of "private" opinion.
Hence the "culture wars": disputes about politics and morality in which the disputants seem to operate from completely different sets of assumptions about life. While secularized liberals tried to rule the opinions of religious people somehow out of bounds, many Christians in fundamentalist and evangelical traditions responded by advocating a return to the allegedly Christian principles of the nation's founding—often sounding as if they would take us back to 17th-century New England. Brushing aside the rhetoric of both sides, Mr. Marsden astutely points out that fundamentalists and evangelicals on the political right are not theocrats; they value Enlightenment principles of individual rights and economic opportunity as much as their secularist adversaries.
Here Mr. Marsden moves from a tone of (mostly) detached historical analysis to one of measured exhortation. Instead of engaging in yet more culture warfare, he counsels, members of the "religious right" should consider the "principled pluralism" of Dutch theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920). Kuyper, prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905 and a devout Christian believer, rejected the idea of a "neutral" public sphere. In his writings and policies he advocated openness about presuppositions—whether of the secular or religious kind—and insisted that even those who disagree on fundamental principles can work toward equitable compromise...
Mr. Swaim is writing a book on political language and public life.
From Physicist George Ellis who co-wrote a book with Stephen Hawking answering the question can Lawrence Krauss answer why there is something instead of nothing
Certainly not. He is presenting untested speculative theories of how things came into existence out of a pre-existing complex of entities, including variational principles, quantum field theory, specific symmetry groups, a bubbling vacuum, all the components of the standard model of particle physics, and so on. He does not explain in what way these entities could have pre-existed the coming into being of the universe, why they should have existed at all, or why they should have had the form they did. And he gives no experimental or observational process whereby we could test these vivid speculations of the supposed universe-generation mechanism. How indeed can you test what existed before the universe existed? You can’t.
Thus what he is presenting is not tested science. It’s a philosophical speculation, which he apparently believes is so compelling he does not have to give any specification of evidence that would confirm it is true. Well, you can’t get any evidence about what existed before space and time came into being. Above all he believes that these mathematically based speculations solve thousand year old philosophical conundrums, without seriously engaging those philosophical issues. The belief that all of reality can be fully comprehended in terms of physics and the equations of physics is a fantasy. As pointed out so well by Eddington in his Gifford lectures, they are partial and incomplete representations of physical, biological, psychological, and social reality.
And above all Krauss does not address why the laws of physics exist, why they have the form they have, or in what kind of manifestation they existed before the universe existed (which he must believe if he believes they brought the universe into existence). Who or what dreamt up symmetry principles, Lagrangians, specific symmetry groups, gauge theories, and so on? He does not begin to answer these questions. It’s very ironic when he says philosophy is bunk and then himself engages in this kind of attempt at philosophy.
"...When I mentioned Ellis’s critique to Krauss, he claimed that Ellis, although once a physicist, is now a “theologian.” Ellis, a Quaker, has indeed written about religion, among other topics, but he is renowned for his work as a physicist. He co-wrote with Stephen Hawking the classic work The Large-Scale Structure of Spacetime, published in 1973. Just in the past five years, Ellis, now 76, has edited one book on quantum gravity and co-written another on cosmology and has co-written more than a dozen papers on physics, according to his website..."
"I don't know who it was first pointed out that, given enough time, a monkey bashing away at random on a typewriter could produce all the works of Shakespeare. The operative phrase is, of course, given enough time. Let us limit the task facing our monkey somewhat. Suppose that he has to produce, not the complete works of Shakespeare but just the short sentence 'Methinks it is like a weasel', and we shall make it relatively easy by giving him a typewriter with a restricted keyboard, one with just the 26 (capital) letters, and a space bar. How long will he take to write this one little sentence?"
Jason Riley has now joined the long and distinguished list of people invited -- and then disinvited -- to give a talk on a college campus, in this case Virginia Tech.
Mr. Riley is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal and, perhaps most relevantly, author of a very insightful book titled "Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed."
In short, Jason Riley's views on race are different from the views that prevail on most college campuses. At one time, 50 years ago or earlier, exposing students to a different viewpoint was considered to be a valuable part of their education. But that was before academia -- and the education system in general -- became virtually a monopoly of the political left.
Today one can literally go from kindergarten to becoming a graduate student seeking a Ph.D., without ever hearing a vision of the world that conflicts with the vision of the left. Conservative critics who object on grounds that the views of the left are wrong miss the point. Regardless of whose views become a monopoly, education suffers. John Stuart Mill understood this back in the middle of the 19th century.
As a young Marxist in college during the 1950s heyday of the anti-Communist crusade led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, I had more freedom to express my views in class, without fear of retaliation, than conservative students have on many campuses today.
After being invited by conservative students to give talks at various colleges, Jason Riley has then been surprised at how little those conservative students have said during the question and answer periods after these talks. But a Wellesley student explained: "You get to leave when you're done. We have to live with these people until we graduate."
Even liberal professors can be adversely affected by the narrow groupthink that prevails. Without an opposition to keep them on their toes, they can develop sloppy habits of dismissing or even demonizing differing viewpoints, instead of practicing and teaching their students how to come to grips with opposing beliefs.
It has been said by some that the thoughts and tweets of Deepak Chopra are indistinguishable from a set of profound sounding words put together in a random order, particularly the tweets tagged with "#cosmisconciousness". This site aims to test that claim! Each "quote" is generated from a list of words that can be found in Deepak Chopra's Twitter stream randomly stuck together in a sentence.
http://www.wisdomofchopra.com/
Some of the quotes I got below:
"Your movement is the continuity of unparalleled miracles"
LONDONーShortly after Leicester City’s improbable title run culminated in the club clinching their first championship, executives from the Premier League issued a statement Sunday vowing that order will soon be restored. “We would like to inform fans of the Barclays Premier League that steps will be taken to ensure the traditional paradigms are reestablished in time for the 2016-2017 season,” read the statement in part, which did not go on to offer any specifics regarding the measures it referenced, but did stress that a reversion to the league’s long-held competitive hierarchy would be “swift and permanent.” “This is an immediate priority that has our full commitment, and as such, we are willing to spend any and all requisite resources to guarantee a return to what is expected and acceptable. Until that is achieved, we will offer no further comment.” Just hours after the statement’s publication, the Premier League released the 2016-2017 season schedule, which reportedly indicated that Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Manchester City will each play 38 home games.
"...Elites, real elites, might recognize one another by their superior knowledge. The smug recognize one another by their mutualknowing.
Knowing, for example, that the Founding Fathers were all secular deists. Knowing that you're actually, like, 30 times more likely to shoot yourself than an intruder. Knowing that those fools out in Kansas are voting against their own self-interest and that the trouble is Kansas doesn't know any better. Knowing all the jokes that signal this knowledge.
The studies, about Daily Show viewers and better-sized amygdalae, are knowing. It is the smug style's first premise: a politics defined by a command of the Correct Facts and signaled by an allegiance to the Correct Culture. A politics that is just the politics of smart people in command of Good Facts. A politics that insists it has no ideology at all, only facts. No moral convictions, only charts, the kind that keep them from "imposing their morals" like the bad guys do..."
"...Kim Davis was behind the times. Her beliefs did not represent a legitimate challenge to liberal consensus because they did not represent a challenge at all: They were incoherent, at odds with the Good Facts. Google makes every man a theologian.
This, I think, is fundamental to understanding the smug style. If good politics and good beliefs are just Good Facts and good tweets — that is, if there is no ideology beyond sensible conclusions drawn from a rational assessment of the world — then there are no moral fights, only lying liars and the stupid rubes who believe them..."
Here's the conclusion I draw: If Donald Trump has a chance in November, it is because the knowing will dictate our strategy. Unable to countenance the real causes of their collapse, they will comfort with own impotence by shouting, "Idiots!" again and again, angrier and angrier, the handmaidens of their own destruction.
The smug style resists empathy for the unknowing. It denies the possibility of a politics whereby those who do not share knowing culture, who do not like the right things or know the Good Facts or recognize the intellectual bankruptcy of their own ideas can be worked with, in spite of these differences, toward a common goal.
It is this attitude that has driven the dispossessed into the arms of a candidate who shares their fury. It is this attitude that may deliver him the White House, a "serious" threat, a threat to be mocked and called out and hated, but not to be taken seriously.
The wages of smug is Trump.
"...The smug style, at bottom, is a failure of empathy. Further: It is a failure to believe that empathy has any value at all. It is the notion that anybody worthy of liberal time and attention and respect must capitulate, immediately, to the Good Facts.
If they don't (and they won't) you're free to write them off and mock them. When they suffer, it's their just desserts.
Make no mistake: I am not suggesting that liberals adopt a fuzzy, gentler version of their politics. I am not suggesting they compromise their issues for the sake of playing nice. What I am suggesting is that the battles waged by liberalism have drifted far away from their old egalitarian intentions.
I am suggesting that open disdain for the people they say they want to help has led them to stop helping those people, too.
I am suggesting that in the case of a Kim Davis, liberalism resist the impulse to go beyond the necessary legal fight and explicitly delight in punishing an old foe.
I am suggesting that they instead wonder what it might be like to have little left but one's values; to wake up one day to find your whole moral order destroyed; to look around and see the representatives of a new order call you a stupid, hypocritical hick without bothering, even, to wonder how your corner of your poor state found itself so alienated from them in the first place. To work with people who do not share their values or their tastes, who do not live where they live or like what they like or know their Good Facts or their jokes.
This is not a call for civility. Manners are not enough. The smug style did not arise by accident, and it cannot be abolished with a little self-reproach. So long as liberals cannot find common cause with the larger section of the American working class, they will search for reasons to justify that failure. They will resent them. They will find, over and over, how easy it is to justify abandoning them further. They will choose the smug style.
Maybe the cycle is too deeply set already. Perhaps the divide, the disdain, the whole crack-up are inevitable. But if liberal good intentions are to make a play for a better future, they cannot merely recognize the ways they've come to hate their former allies. They must begin to mend the ways they lost them in the first place."
Rest at http://www.skeptiko.com/rupert-sheldrake-censored/
Alex Tsakiris: So let me switch out of the mode of trying to put forth the TED ideas as much as I can glean them from their numerous blog posts and website comments. Let me ask you a couple of questions in general about this because the irony of this is, if not hilarious it’s certainly inescapable. I mean, a reputable scientist like yourself publishes a book claiming that science is dogmatic and then is censored by an anonymous scientific board. It’s like you can’t script that any better.
What does this say about really the whole topic of your book? And about how science can be dogmatic without even realizing it’s dogmatic?
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: I think in a way this whole controversy and the people who have weighed in in favor of TED’s actions do indeed confirm what I’m saying. These dogmas are ones that most people within science don’t actually realize are dogmas. They just think they’re the truth. The point about really dogmatic people is that they don’t know that they have dogmas. Dogmas are beliefs and people who have really strong beliefs think of their beliefs as truth. They don’t actually see them as beliefs. So I think this whole controversy has actually highlighted exactly that.
The other thing that is highlighted is that there are a lot of people, far more than I imagined actually, who are not taken in by these dogmas, who do want to think about them critically. One of the remarkable things about these discussions is lots of people are really up for the discussion of these dogmas. They really want it to happen, far more than I’d imagined, actually. I’m impressed by that and I think this TED debate has actually helped show that the paradigm is shifting. There’s no longer a kind of automatic agreement by the great majority of people to dogmatic assertions by materialists.
NY Times Review You’re smart. You’re liberal. You’re well informed. You think conservatives are narrow-minded. You can’t understand why working-class Americans vote Republican. You figure they’re being duped. You’re wrong. This isn’t an accusation from the right. It’s a friendly warning from Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who, until 2009, considered himself a partisan liberal. In “The Righteous Mind,” Haidt seeks to enrich liberalism, and political discourse generally, with a deeper awareness of human nature. Like other psychologists who have ventured into political coaching, such as George Lakoff and Drew Westen, Haidt argues that people are fundamentally intuitive, not rational. If you want to persuade others, you have to appeal to their sentiments. But Haidt is looking for more than victory. He’s looking for wisdom. That’s what makes “The Righteous Mind” well worth reading. Politics isn’t just about manipulating people who disagree with you. It’s about learning from them...
...The problem isn’t that people don’t reason. They do reason. But their arguments aim to support their conclusions, not yours. Reason doesn’t work like a judge or teacher, impartially weighing evidence or guiding us to wisdom. It works more like a lawyer or press secretary, justifying our acts and judgments to others... ...He and his colleagues have compiled a catalog of six fundamental ideas that commonly undergird moral systems: care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity. Alongside these principles, he has found related themes that carry moral weight: divinity, community, hierarchy, tradition, sin and degradation. The worldviews Haidt discusses may differ from yours. They don’t start with the individual. They start with the group or the cosmic order. They exalt families, armies and communities. They assume that people should be treated differently according to social role or status — elders should be honored, subordinates should be protected. They suppress forms of self-expression that might weaken the social fabric. They assume interdependence, not autonomy. They prize order, not equality. These moral systems aren’t ignorant or backward. Haidt argues that they’re common in history and across the globe because they fit human nature. He compares them to cuisines. We acquire morality the same way we acquire food preferences: we start with what we’re given. If it tastes good, we stick with it. If it doesn’t, we reject it. People accept God, authority and karma because these ideas suit their moral taste buds. Haidt points to research showing that people punish cheaters, accept many hierarchies and don’t support equal distribution of benefits when contributions are unequal. You don’t have to go abroad to see these ideas. You can find them in the Republican Party. Social conservatives see welfare and feminism as threats to responsibility and family stability. TheTea Partyhates redistribution because it interferes with letting people reap what they earn. Faith, patriotism, valor, chastity, law and order — these Republican themes touch all six moral foundations, whereas Democrats, in Haidt’s analysis, focus almost entirely on care and fighting oppression. This is Haidt’s startling message to the left: When it comes to morality, conservatives are more broad-minded than liberals. They serve a more varied diet... ...One of these interests is moral capital — norms, practices and institutions, like religion and family values, that facilitate cooperation by constraining individualism. Toward this end, Haidt applauds the left for regulating corporate greed. But he worries that in other ways, liberals dissolve moral capital too recklessly. Welfare programs that substitute public aid for spousal and parental support undermine the ecology of the family. Education policies that let students sue teachers erode classroom authority. Multicultural education weakens the cultural glue of assimilation. Haidt agrees that old ways must sometimes be re-examined and changed. He just wants liberals to proceed with caution and protect the social pillars sustained by tradition... ...The hardest part, Haidt finds, is getting liberals to open their minds. Anecdotally, he reports that when he talks about authority, loyalty and sanctity, many people in the audience spurn these ideas as the seeds of racism, sexism and homophobia. And in a survey of 2,000 Americans, Haidt found that self-described liberals, especially those who called themselves “very liberal,” were worse at predicting the moral judgments of moderates and conservatives than moderates and conservatives were at predicting the moral judgments of liberals. Liberals don’t understand conservative values. And they can’t recognize this failing, because they’re so convinced of their rationality, open-mindedness and enlightenment. Haidt isn’t just scolding liberals, however. He sees the left and right as yin and yang, each contributing insights to which the other should listen. In his view, for instance, liberals can teach conservatives to recognize and constrain predation by entrenched interests. Haidt believes in the power of reason, but the reasoning has to be interactive. It has to be other people’s reason engaging yours. We’re lousy at challenging our own beliefs, but we’re good at challenging each other’s. Haidt compares us to neurons in a giant brain, capable of “producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system.”
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. - Aeschylus
