We are of a similar age and background. It's amazing how similar your high school was to mine, except I was in San Antonio at the time. My parents were children of the Great Depression and World War II, and fervent New Dealers and Great Society advocates until they morphed into Clintonite Democrats in the 80s and 90s. So I do empathize with much of what you said.
However, I'm a real, live socialist and Marxist, so I must point out that you are missing the elephant in the room. You mention "human capital" and "cultural capital," but you don't mention capitalism itself, which is the proximate cause of all of the things you justly criticize. The very term "capital" itself means something that can be bought, sold, or traded. Slaves were human capital at one time; employees are human capital now. I don't know what you mean by cultural capital.
Do you remember when governments and businesses had personnel offices? Now they are all "human resources," meaning the humans who can be exploited by the few with power to enrich themselves and, in the case of politicians running governments, their campaign donors, or sometimes themselves when they use their positions to trade stock for financial benefit, a system which the great "liberal" Nancy Pelosi very recently defended.
It is only fair that I define what I mean by capitalism, which is that economic and political system of which the only goal is more profit soonest for the few that control the fruits of human labor.
As Don Salmon, who appears to be an anarchist, said above, the terms liberal and conservative have little meaning anymore. It's top and bottom, capital and labor, authoritarian and libertarian. I still use right and left, but they are really synonyms for those who support the established capitalistic oligarchy and those who wish to see it lose both its political and economic power for the benefit of the many by placing the levers of power in the hands of the many.
You said in an earlier post that you were watching Breaking Points, which I find an excellent source of news for the most part. I respectfully recommend you watch some Richard Wolff videos or read his books if you want to understand more of what socialism has become in the 21st Century. I have a good idea of what you are going through yourself with your intelligent loss of faith in modern liberals and progressives, and I enjoy your posts. Please keep it up.
Thanks for your comment. I am not a Marxist and do not see that changing. I'm probably more of a social democrat than anything else - but, since we don't have that as a meaningful category in the U.S., it's of limited utility here (at least if you're trying to reach a broad audience).
Ideally, I'd favor a mixed economic model (not in favor of completely eliminating markets, for sure), democratization of the workplace, etc. I also resonate with the 19th-century American ideal of the "cooperative commonwealth" -- which, of course, no one who hasn't done that sort of historical study knows anything about today, either.
I subscribe to Jacobin and see them as closer to the postwar progressibe liberal vision I describe in this post than anything else out there today. And yes, I know that that's precisely why parts of the socialist or Marxist left reject them as closet liberals. But personally, I very much like the fact that unlike old-school socialists, who were quick to dismiss all conceptions of individual rights as bourgeois obscufactions of the ruling class (and look where that got them), someone like Bhaskar Sunkara is willing to break with tradition and explicitly endorse certain conceptions of inviolable individual rights.
However distorted, corrupted, and discredited by neoliberalism the ideal of individual liberty might be, it is still a priority to me. Hence, I still have a certain loyalty to the liberal tradition - although I wouldn't want to commit to being confined or defined by it, either.
I just subscribed to your very interesting Substack, and look forward to reading more. I will also put Richard Wolff on my reading list - a familiar name for sure, but I can't place him beyond that.
Oh, I believe in individual liberty. I'm no Stalinist or Maoist. As of Social Democrats, being in America I consider them allies. I supported Bernie Sanders twice, for example, because I'll take Social Democracy over our current political order in a heartbeat. For that matter, I'd take FDR or LBJ or even Richard Nixon over what we've got now without thinking twice. :)
Such an interesting story. It sounds like many who stuck with the progressive vision that seemed to many of us anarchists of the 60s to be already faded and passe.
There was another powerful story at the time - with an age-old history but with a new beginning as well. A small group of people in the late 60s and early 70s saw clearly that:
- the early 20th century progressive movement, with its necessary big-government policy reining in big capitalism, had already been coopted by big business by the mid 20th century
- the rationalism of the modern enlightenment, dating back several centuries, had by the early 20th. century, reached a dead end, and the physicalists, materialists and naturalists of the late 20th century were already far out of date and out of step, as David Chalmers would finally state explicitly in the 1990s, leading to most of the truly influential scientists of today (Iain McGilchrist among the finest of them) realizing that naive realism, physicalism, etc are more irrational and incoherent than even the most superstitious, fundamentalist religions.
- the categories of liberal and conservative, Right and Left, already outdated in the mid 20th century, are among the greatest obstacles to visioning a new politics
- finally, by committing to pure reason, to sanity, and to utter honesty, bravery and sincerity, it is possible to see that the entire nihilistic, physicalist delusion on which so many have based their lives is at an end.
This is the key. Those who refuse to face this are simply unwilling to engage in rational discussion, retreating to fundamentalist superstition and irrationality.
Thanks for your comment. I bought the McGilchrist ,but have not started reading it yet. I think that once I do, I'll have a better sense of where you are coming from, since you've referenced his work so many times.
Personally, I don't think that a society that cares about the material well-being of ordinary people is necessarily a "materialist society." Man may not live by bread alone, as the saying goes, but as embodied beings, we do need bread - and, of course, other food, and shelter, and health care, and dwellings, and public safety, and education, and so on.
Ideally, having a solid material foundation would enable more people to pursue spiritual, artistic, athletic, and other pursuits simply for the love of it, rather than being forced into an exhausting struggle to pay the rent on a day-in, day-out basis. Of course, that's not the culture we live in - but, at least in theory, it's not unimaginable or illogical.
McGilchrist is not talking about solid material foundations, he's talking about the belief that the universe is ultimately dead, unconscious, unintelligent, etc.
There's an interesting video conversation between Sam harris and Rupert Spira where Sam gets to the point where he understands - rather miraculously - that using scientific methods and what is currently accepted as "reason" it is impossible to provide one scintilla of evidence that anything purely material exists.
he goes on to say "But the best speculation we have is that what does exist is dead, unconscious, purely physical stuff" (in so many words, that is).
McGilchrist has spent the last 30 years providing an extraordinarily clear understanding of why Harris (like Dawkins, Dennett, the Churchlands, etc) are not only wrong, but essentially, no different from any religious fundamentalist. Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpr6WhJEnIs&t=524s
In 50 years, I've found, without exception, if a physicalist or naturalist or materialist is WILLING to follow reason, they get to the same point Sam did.
The problem is, it's a religious commitment and usually they get scared at some point. It's a very interesting phenomenon and I wonder if McGilchrist is going to succeed where so many others have failed. McGilchrist himself has no doubt that virtually ALL societal problems have this materialist, nihilist view at their core. I fully agree. I differ from people like Bernardo Kastrup, who has become very popular in the last few years, writing about this for scientific american, in that I don't think it's a philosophic problem. the absurdity of materialism is so obvious it's clear that the attachment to it is religious, not rational.
Followed up on your links above over the weekend. Really like the 11-minute McGilchrist video very much and highly recommend it to anyone who happens to be reading this thread. (Note though that you have to watch it; you can't just listen to it like a podcast, as the visuals are important.)
The Harris/Spira discussion I found interesting but less fully engaging as it doesn't make the same sort of explicit links to everyday life. That said, I think that Harris is at his best in these sorts of discussions - even if he will NEVER change his mind, he asks good questions and allows space for good answers.
Yes, something that actually needs paying attention to - so rare in today's world.
I've already set up a series of dialogues through "La Grace Integral" (based in South Carolina but webcasting throughout the world) with a physicist friend. He tends to talk at a very high level (doctoral level physicist) whereas my aim is to support people in working through physicalist superstitions at a junior high school level.
I've had success talking with 11 or 12 year olds at a level they understand, so I know it can be done. It's older folks - especially those already involved in meditation and contemplation who are committed to the fundamaterialist superstitions that are the hardest! (but I think they can be switched from left-mode rigidity to integrated brain functioning as well! - Maybe I'll write to McGilchrist - who is open to mindfulness and other meditative pathways for more integrated brain functioning!)
I don't think there's a single thing that's more important in terms of resolving the world's conflicts. As long as most of us are living in delusion, any solutions we offer will be based in delusion.
Carol, good to see this writing project of yours. Only a few years older -- I started Kindergarten in 1961, in my NYC public school, we very much were taught of the horrors of slavery and the civil rights movement was "Current Events". My dad was a stone mason, a union man, whose small contracting company employed three Black men (alongside my dad and uncle). And I learned nothing of the labor movement (and its ties with Socialism). As you write: "Conceptually, class was subsumed by a particular conception of race, one that essentially presumed poverty to be a Black problem. With the ongoing robustness of a middle-class-centered economy taken for granted, the primary cause of socioeconomic inequality was assumed to be racial discrimination and inadequate human capital development." Given this "robustness", the exploitative and oppressive structure of capitalist markets remained unseen and unspoken.
I also think the valorization of the individual's right to "unfettered individual freedom" in an environment that failed to see the more communitarian aspect of class, labor, and economic structures that "favored the racially and economically privileged" created the conditions for Reagan and the neo-liberalism that has dominated American culture (including the yoga and "wellness" communities we have had experience with) and which has only exacerbated the disparities we see today.
In the first phase of the post-World War II boom, and Cold War paranoia, the generation that lived through it seemed to have a much greater civic and community-minded perspective. They may not have had any class awareness, but they were not as individualistic as those of us coming to maturity in the more permissive 70s.
Super nice to hear from you again!! Thanks for sharing some of your family background. That never came up before and is very interesting.
I totally agree with your observation about neoliberalism and hope to write about that more in the future.
I think that we're also moving from a culture of excessive individualism into one of shattered individuals lacking that sense of self-assurance that the old "Me Generation" had. It's very tragic to see and I worry a lot about the younger generations - who, in my opinion, should be our priority.
I think you’ve sourced your political faith in your personal experience, Carol, which is authentic for anyone. However, the Evanston context is not quite a broader American context. I think you’re seeking a political faith for modern America, which has been a very challenging project for sincere progressives since the Second World War.
In 1967, when you started kindergarten, Carol, the Detroit uprising took place, with mass casualties. In 1968, when you were in first grade, there were many more uprisings, rooted in structural injustice, in American cities, with people killed and injured.
You mention the Great Society. You’re the master of how the 1968 presidential election threw the social-democratic spirit of the Great Society under the bus. In that election, George Wallace received more than ten percent of the vote in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana. Wallace ushered in a new era of racist demogogery in politics nationwide.
The “1970’s libertine culture,” as you say, brought disastrous personal consequences for some people. There was an effect on politics, because people were distracted and out of it while super-important developments were taking place in the world. (There would have been disruption to certain politically important activities of the 70s, such as viewing the evening news, and the regular family dinner gathering.)
After the United States began serious troop withdrawals from Vietnam, young people didn’t mobilize very much politically. Episodes such as the fall of Saigon, the energy crisis, and the Iranian Revolution didn’t register that much with a lot of young people.
Another political effect is that many Americans want to keep their families and children away from the “libertine culture” that you describe, and lean on evangelical Christianity or other life-comprehensive religious structures. Republicans tend to work that philosophical vein intently, and a convenient sine qua non for a lot of them is anti-abortion, of course.
Yes, it is strange looking back. Given how many terrible things were happening in U.S. society during the late 1960s-70s, how the hell did I (and, I think I'm far from alone for a certain demographic - nowhere close to the whole country by any means, but an influential segment of it nonetheless) manage to emerge with such a positive narrative about the onwards and upwards course of American democracy intact? I think it was because there was such a positive, compelling vision in progressive political culture at the time that was undergirded by solid, material change that had benefitted countless people.
We are of a similar age and background. It's amazing how similar your high school was to mine, except I was in San Antonio at the time. My parents were children of the Great Depression and World War II, and fervent New Dealers and Great Society advocates until they morphed into Clintonite Democrats in the 80s and 90s. So I do empathize with much of what you said.
However, I'm a real, live socialist and Marxist, so I must point out that you are missing the elephant in the room. You mention "human capital" and "cultural capital," but you don't mention capitalism itself, which is the proximate cause of all of the things you justly criticize. The very term "capital" itself means something that can be bought, sold, or traded. Slaves were human capital at one time; employees are human capital now. I don't know what you mean by cultural capital.
Do you remember when governments and businesses had personnel offices? Now they are all "human resources," meaning the humans who can be exploited by the few with power to enrich themselves and, in the case of politicians running governments, their campaign donors, or sometimes themselves when they use their positions to trade stock for financial benefit, a system which the great "liberal" Nancy Pelosi very recently defended.
It is only fair that I define what I mean by capitalism, which is that economic and political system of which the only goal is more profit soonest for the few that control the fruits of human labor.
As Don Salmon, who appears to be an anarchist, said above, the terms liberal and conservative have little meaning anymore. It's top and bottom, capital and labor, authoritarian and libertarian. I still use right and left, but they are really synonyms for those who support the established capitalistic oligarchy and those who wish to see it lose both its political and economic power for the benefit of the many by placing the levers of power in the hands of the many.
You said in an earlier post that you were watching Breaking Points, which I find an excellent source of news for the most part. I respectfully recommend you watch some Richard Wolff videos or read his books if you want to understand more of what socialism has become in the 21st Century. I have a good idea of what you are going through yourself with your intelligent loss of faith in modern liberals and progressives, and I enjoy your posts. Please keep it up.
Hey Ohio Barbarian (LOLOL, what a moniker) -
Thanks for your comment. I am not a Marxist and do not see that changing. I'm probably more of a social democrat than anything else - but, since we don't have that as a meaningful category in the U.S., it's of limited utility here (at least if you're trying to reach a broad audience).
Ideally, I'd favor a mixed economic model (not in favor of completely eliminating markets, for sure), democratization of the workplace, etc. I also resonate with the 19th-century American ideal of the "cooperative commonwealth" -- which, of course, no one who hasn't done that sort of historical study knows anything about today, either.
I subscribe to Jacobin and see them as closer to the postwar progressibe liberal vision I describe in this post than anything else out there today. And yes, I know that that's precisely why parts of the socialist or Marxist left reject them as closet liberals. But personally, I very much like the fact that unlike old-school socialists, who were quick to dismiss all conceptions of individual rights as bourgeois obscufactions of the ruling class (and look where that got them), someone like Bhaskar Sunkara is willing to break with tradition and explicitly endorse certain conceptions of inviolable individual rights.
However distorted, corrupted, and discredited by neoliberalism the ideal of individual liberty might be, it is still a priority to me. Hence, I still have a certain loyalty to the liberal tradition - although I wouldn't want to commit to being confined or defined by it, either.
I just subscribed to your very interesting Substack, and look forward to reading more. I will also put Richard Wolff on my reading list - a familiar name for sure, but I can't place him beyond that.
Oh, I believe in individual liberty. I'm no Stalinist or Maoist. As of Social Democrats, being in America I consider them allies. I supported Bernie Sanders twice, for example, because I'll take Social Democracy over our current political order in a heartbeat. For that matter, I'd take FDR or LBJ or even Richard Nixon over what we've got now without thinking twice. :)
LOL. Well, that was easy! I guess we are effectively on the same page then, Marxist or no.
Back in the day, all the Marxists I knew were implacably hostile to any whiff of liberalism.
Such an interesting story. It sounds like many who stuck with the progressive vision that seemed to many of us anarchists of the 60s to be already faded and passe.
There was another powerful story at the time - with an age-old history but with a new beginning as well. A small group of people in the late 60s and early 70s saw clearly that:
- the early 20th century progressive movement, with its necessary big-government policy reining in big capitalism, had already been coopted by big business by the mid 20th century
- the rationalism of the modern enlightenment, dating back several centuries, had by the early 20th. century, reached a dead end, and the physicalists, materialists and naturalists of the late 20th century were already far out of date and out of step, as David Chalmers would finally state explicitly in the 1990s, leading to most of the truly influential scientists of today (Iain McGilchrist among the finest of them) realizing that naive realism, physicalism, etc are more irrational and incoherent than even the most superstitious, fundamentalist religions.
- the categories of liberal and conservative, Right and Left, already outdated in the mid 20th century, are among the greatest obstacles to visioning a new politics
- finally, by committing to pure reason, to sanity, and to utter honesty, bravery and sincerity, it is possible to see that the entire nihilistic, physicalist delusion on which so many have based their lives is at an end.
This is the key. Those who refuse to face this are simply unwilling to engage in rational discussion, retreating to fundamentalist superstition and irrationality.
Hi Don -
Thanks for your comment. I bought the McGilchrist ,but have not started reading it yet. I think that once I do, I'll have a better sense of where you are coming from, since you've referenced his work so many times.
Personally, I don't think that a society that cares about the material well-being of ordinary people is necessarily a "materialist society." Man may not live by bread alone, as the saying goes, but as embodied beings, we do need bread - and, of course, other food, and shelter, and health care, and dwellings, and public safety, and education, and so on.
Ideally, having a solid material foundation would enable more people to pursue spiritual, artistic, athletic, and other pursuits simply for the love of it, rather than being forced into an exhausting struggle to pay the rent on a day-in, day-out basis. Of course, that's not the culture we live in - but, at least in theory, it's not unimaginable or illogical.
McGilchrist is not talking about solid material foundations, he's talking about the belief that the universe is ultimately dead, unconscious, unintelligent, etc.
There's an interesting video conversation between Sam harris and Rupert Spira where Sam gets to the point where he understands - rather miraculously - that using scientific methods and what is currently accepted as "reason" it is impossible to provide one scintilla of evidence that anything purely material exists.
he goes on to say "But the best speculation we have is that what does exist is dead, unconscious, purely physical stuff" (in so many words, that is).
McGilchrist has spent the last 30 years providing an extraordinarily clear understanding of why Harris (like Dawkins, Dennett, the Churchlands, etc) are not only wrong, but essentially, no different from any religious fundamentalist. Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpr6WhJEnIs&t=524s
Also, if you want to save a LOT of time, this 11 minute video about McGilchrist's ideas remains the easiest, best introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI
In 50 years, I've found, without exception, if a physicalist or naturalist or materialist is WILLING to follow reason, they get to the same point Sam did.
The problem is, it's a religious commitment and usually they get scared at some point. It's a very interesting phenomenon and I wonder if McGilchrist is going to succeed where so many others have failed. McGilchrist himself has no doubt that virtually ALL societal problems have this materialist, nihilist view at their core. I fully agree. I differ from people like Bernardo Kastrup, who has become very popular in the last few years, writing about this for scientific american, in that I don't think it's a philosophic problem. the absurdity of materialism is so obvious it's clear that the attachment to it is religious, not rational.
Followed up on your links above over the weekend. Really like the 11-minute McGilchrist video very much and highly recommend it to anyone who happens to be reading this thread. (Note though that you have to watch it; you can't just listen to it like a podcast, as the visuals are important.)
The Harris/Spira discussion I found interesting but less fully engaging as it doesn't make the same sort of explicit links to everyday life. That said, I think that Harris is at his best in these sorts of discussions - even if he will NEVER change his mind, he asks good questions and allows space for good answers.
Yes, something that actually needs paying attention to - so rare in today's world.
I've already set up a series of dialogues through "La Grace Integral" (based in South Carolina but webcasting throughout the world) with a physicist friend. He tends to talk at a very high level (doctoral level physicist) whereas my aim is to support people in working through physicalist superstitions at a junior high school level.
I've had success talking with 11 or 12 year olds at a level they understand, so I know it can be done. It's older folks - especially those already involved in meditation and contemplation who are committed to the fundamaterialist superstitions that are the hardest! (but I think they can be switched from left-mode rigidity to integrated brain functioning as well! - Maybe I'll write to McGilchrist - who is open to mindfulness and other meditative pathways for more integrated brain functioning!)
I don't think there's a single thing that's more important in terms of resolving the world's conflicts. As long as most of us are living in delusion, any solutions we offer will be based in delusion.
Carol, good to see this writing project of yours. Only a few years older -- I started Kindergarten in 1961, in my NYC public school, we very much were taught of the horrors of slavery and the civil rights movement was "Current Events". My dad was a stone mason, a union man, whose small contracting company employed three Black men (alongside my dad and uncle). And I learned nothing of the labor movement (and its ties with Socialism). As you write: "Conceptually, class was subsumed by a particular conception of race, one that essentially presumed poverty to be a Black problem. With the ongoing robustness of a middle-class-centered economy taken for granted, the primary cause of socioeconomic inequality was assumed to be racial discrimination and inadequate human capital development." Given this "robustness", the exploitative and oppressive structure of capitalist markets remained unseen and unspoken.
I also think the valorization of the individual's right to "unfettered individual freedom" in an environment that failed to see the more communitarian aspect of class, labor, and economic structures that "favored the racially and economically privileged" created the conditions for Reagan and the neo-liberalism that has dominated American culture (including the yoga and "wellness" communities we have had experience with) and which has only exacerbated the disparities we see today.
In the first phase of the post-World War II boom, and Cold War paranoia, the generation that lived through it seemed to have a much greater civic and community-minded perspective. They may not have had any class awareness, but they were not as individualistic as those of us coming to maturity in the more permissive 70s.
Hi Frank -
Super nice to hear from you again!! Thanks for sharing some of your family background. That never came up before and is very interesting.
I totally agree with your observation about neoliberalism and hope to write about that more in the future.
I think that we're also moving from a culture of excessive individualism into one of shattered individuals lacking that sense of self-assurance that the old "Me Generation" had. It's very tragic to see and I worry a lot about the younger generations - who, in my opinion, should be our priority.
Hope you're doing well! (considering everything).
I think you’ve sourced your political faith in your personal experience, Carol, which is authentic for anyone. However, the Evanston context is not quite a broader American context. I think you’re seeking a political faith for modern America, which has been a very challenging project for sincere progressives since the Second World War.
In 1967, when you started kindergarten, Carol, the Detroit uprising took place, with mass casualties. In 1968, when you were in first grade, there were many more uprisings, rooted in structural injustice, in American cities, with people killed and injured.
You mention the Great Society. You’re the master of how the 1968 presidential election threw the social-democratic spirit of the Great Society under the bus. In that election, George Wallace received more than ten percent of the vote in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana. Wallace ushered in a new era of racist demogogery in politics nationwide.
The “1970’s libertine culture,” as you say, brought disastrous personal consequences for some people. There was an effect on politics, because people were distracted and out of it while super-important developments were taking place in the world. (There would have been disruption to certain politically important activities of the 70s, such as viewing the evening news, and the regular family dinner gathering.)
After the United States began serious troop withdrawals from Vietnam, young people didn’t mobilize very much politically. Episodes such as the fall of Saigon, the energy crisis, and the Iranian Revolution didn’t register that much with a lot of young people.
Another political effect is that many Americans want to keep their families and children away from the “libertine culture” that you describe, and lean on evangelical Christianity or other life-comprehensive religious structures. Republicans tend to work that philosophical vein intently, and a convenient sine qua non for a lot of them is anti-abortion, of course.
Yes, it is strange looking back. Given how many terrible things were happening in U.S. society during the late 1960s-70s, how the hell did I (and, I think I'm far from alone for a certain demographic - nowhere close to the whole country by any means, but an influential segment of it nonetheless) manage to emerge with such a positive narrative about the onwards and upwards course of American democracy intact? I think it was because there was such a positive, compelling vision in progressive political culture at the time that was undergirded by solid, material change that had benefitted countless people.