tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post8132930224628815650..comments2024-03-08T14:23:31.503-05:00Comments on A Puff of Absurdity: Defining the LeftMarie Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13872774009526266579noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-75423194942416564802018-09-05T06:09:44.619-04:002018-09-05T06:09:44.619-04:00Yes, I see, equality of outcome via Employment Equ...Yes, I see, equality of outcome via Employment Equity / Affirmative Action policies. I had been looking at it from an entirely monetary point of view. While I agree with the policy in that people will naturally tend to choose to hire people most similar to them, so it's useful to encourage employers to aim to hire from all races and genders, I think the goal of 50/50 m/f is unrealistic because of the bit of biology that does affect us. It seems ridiculous to aim for 50/50 m/f kindergarten teachers or construction workers. But it's less ridiculous in congress or the house of commons. And equal pay for work of equal value is a no brainer, provided we're honest about the value of the work.Marie Snyderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13872774009526266579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-10083618275183967152018-09-04T20:43:51.972-04:002018-09-04T20:43:51.972-04:00I think we are largely in agreement, but I disagre...I think we are largely in agreement, but I disagree on the equality of outcome bit. W/r/t socioeconomic status broadly defined, I agree that the left largely stands for equality of opportunity. However, re certain identity groups it becomes equality of outcome in which men and women should have equal footing in the tech industry and Congress (for example). Because society generally (sometimes) agrees that women are not inferior to men intellectually and minority ethnic groups are similarly capable of inyelligence, equality of outcome becomes the de facto standard at which the end of oppression could be marked. I haven't met someone on the left who doesn't want to stamp out oppression full stop. We both agree the left is increasingly toothless regarding economic issues, but with identity-based oppression I do think equality of outcome is the goal. <br /><br />I think this seeming dichotomy between the political telos of class-based politics and identity politics is an obvious sticking point, leading white men focused on the economy (those chauvinisticchauvinistic who are all about the modes of production) to be derided as brocialists. Reduce inequality is perhaps the most inane, anti-utopian slogan possible while end oppression (read equality of outcome or thereabouts) is far more catchy. It is the latter battle cry that the "Tumblr left", as Nagel might call them, chooses to march to.Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-80367389536756145932018-09-04T03:16:16.101-04:002018-09-04T03:16:16.101-04:00I agree with you that there's a new belief sys...I agree with you that there's a new belief system that gender is entirely a social construct or "performative" as Judith Butler calls it. It's certainly partly true, but I've heard the extreme position from peers in social sciences, and I'm stunned by it. Surely it just takes a cursory understanding of genetics and hormonal interactions to recognize significant biological elements to gender. It's that dogmatic cheering of either of those polarized ends that's the problem. And I've agreed with Peterson <a href="https://apuffofabsurdity.blogspot.com/2017/01/on-gender-pronouns-and-petersons-case.html#more" rel="nofollow">before</a> on the problem with people from a minority group feeling untouchable because of their status <i>as</i> a minority, which adversely affects the potential for healthy disagreement.<br /><br />But do people on the left want equality of outcome, or just less inequality? Peterson argues against the leftist dream of equality of outcome, but I'm not aware of any well known leftists actually arguing for that. When I think "equality of outcome," I picture a 1984-type scene with everyone in matching jumpers. I think if we think about it a bit, we all (left and right) want people who work more or in a more specialized field to be able to earn more, but we also might all draw the line at CEOs making 300 times their employees. As Marx argued, we don't want to make everyone earn the same, we just want to stop the exploitation of the working class. So, it's not a matter, for instance, of the US giving up their power to weaker nations, but of the US being prevented from exploiting people, e.g. prison slavery or bare subsistence wages being paid in places with non-existent labour laws, or actual old-school slavery as still exists in chocolate, coffee, and cotton industries. <br /><br />But I'm with you on concerns with a PC power grab, and I think <a href="https://apuffofabsurdity.blogspot.com/2018/08/on-culture-wars.html#more" rel="nofollow">Nagle</a> did a good job of elucidating problems on both sides. The left isn't what it used to be, and we desperately need to fix it in order to better deal with some of the more frightening ideas coming from the right. Marie Snyderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13872774009526266579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-49845452839611326412018-09-04T02:09:11.091-04:002018-09-04T02:09:11.091-04:00I believe the ideologies intertwined with "po...I believe the ideologies intertwined with "political correctness" are rhetorically placed beyond reproach far more often than they should, and these neo-truisms, which portend to aim toward equality, become rhetorical hammers to fight oppression and privilege but also to dominate unsuspecting parents and conservatives (read bigots; I do take bigotry seriously but conservatives are almost exclusively painted as bigots in SJ circles). Academia has seemingly become transfixed by social constructions to the point that everyone is unquestioningly taught that gender, sex, and race/ethnicity have no biological component (I agree race is almost exclusively socially constructed but this seems to co-occur with the idea that genetic commonalities between sub-populations of people based on regions is nonexistent which is patently false). The redefinition of racism as prejudice+power is one banal example of this sort of redefinition that is constantly used to bop unsuspecting students (and especially parents) over the head when they describe a minority group member's outgroup hostility as racism. "Black people can't be racist because they're a marginalized group. Racism is power+privilege." Is this white suburban teen seeking justice by redefining racism or smug superiority over their ignorant family members? I'll give you an example of rhetorical silencing/redefinitional power in real life. After a black history museum visit, a black student in a black majority class explained how annoyed they were with all of the white people there who kept getting in their way or talking. They lamented that they wished no white people had been allowed to come in that day, maybe they should only be admitted certain days. As a white person, if I had exclaimed, "That's racist!" I would have been summarily lectured on power+privilege <i>ad nauseum</i>.<br /><br />Even if my thesis were partially right (I don't want to claim that more extreme feats of PC culture are only power-motivated at their root), this doesn't negate the reality that there are real, systemic issues of inequality in US society. I agree completely with the sources you cited re the effects of racism and support the left political platform you advocate almost completely. Perhaps the "issues" I have outlined have little effect on the long march toward justice, but I take issue with what I see as implicit assumptions within the left: 1. Empirical research and free thought can and should be subjugated to the pursuit of justice (often without acknowledgement). 2. If equality of outcome were to be reached w/r/t race, economic status, or whatever else this equilibrium would be more or less maintained (that is, there are no incentives for identity groups to attempt to obtain and maintain privilege either social or economic) and 3. This mission of progress and equality can be applied to international relations in which the evil, neo-colonialist US peaceably transfers its inordinate economic and military power to the global south while maintaining the prosperity which allows for such altruistic politics and does not result in ecological destruction. I fear that the rabid, sometimes bordering on delusional, beliefs of the left are setting the west up for a Trotskyite->Neocon type conversion that will pale in comparison to the post-9/11 era. As I have begun to interrogate the dogma (and truths) that I picked up as a SJW, I have realized just how much panoptic, self-disciplining there is involved in PC/SJ rhetoric, especially for a cis, hetero, white, able-bodied male. I have constantly countered any questioning of my prior beliefs with an inquisition as to the privileges I am trying to protect and the repressed racism/homophobia/etc that may be propelling these thoughts. I am quite perplexed and somewhat saddened that I have begun to view PC rhetoric as a disguised power-grab. The hermeneutics of suspicion are and remain strong in the left.<br />Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-47702063657948180532018-09-04T02:04:40.569-04:002018-09-04T02:04:40.569-04:00Hi Marie, I recognize this comment is three month...Hi Marie, I recognize this comment is three months overdue, but I have only recently begun to delve into the Peterson PC extravaganza. Of course the Munk debate comment section on YouTube was filled with JP adherents enraged by the blatant racism of Dyson and somewhat unsurprisingly the debate itself was bland. However, this issue is interesting to me as someone who spent the last 7 years reading and agreeing with leftists and SJWs of the type that are oft-caricatured by anyone who is against political correctness. <br /><br />For reasons that are not altogether clear to me, the last year has brought increasing doubt and even more recently strong disagreement in response to some of these beliefs. My intellectual focal points shifted from Marx/Trotsky/Chomsky toward the postmodernists during the portion of the time I spent with qualitative social science. I agree with your objection to Peterson's understanding of Foucault, as one of the central points of Foucault's oeuvre is that power is generative of and coextensive with knowledge. However, I think this position is central in analyzing and understanding leftist PC norms. What JP tirelessly argues (often with more panache and less facts) is that the postmodernists emerging from May '68 retain Marx (more accurately Gramsci) almost as an <i> a priori </i> framework which continues to elusively ground their anti-empiricism. I think this is ultimately more or less correct, or at least a sort of bourgeouis iconoclasm, as evidenced in Foucault's discussion of the prison system and the retraining of power toward self-discipline (panoptocism) as an increase in power which is all the more maniacal because we view it as a beneficial means of helping a person to fit in. What Foucault calls the increased focus of power, most social scientists (or at least lay people) would call an education in social norms and self-discipline, which is more obvious when Foucault critiques the school as a reincarnation of the prison model. <br /><br />One of Foucault's most obvious influences is Friedrich Nietzsche, who argues in the Genealogy of morals that egalitarian ideology is nothing more than an exercise in self-interest by the weak, downtrodden, or self-important ivory tower folk (the last a modern addition). Nietzsche's logic follows that to cede equal power to the downtrodden is a one-way ticket to a reversal of lots, not to mention a complete misunderstanding of the purpose and beauty available in life. Equality is not an end, it should not be the defining goal of one's life but instead self-mastery. This antiquarian stance is obviously reprehensible from our modern liberal perspectives, but the characterization of power relations as ubiquitous, capable to generate knowledge, and driven by self-interest for all groups is instructive...<br /><br />Johnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-54906724191836994222018-05-29T03:44:00.637-04:002018-05-29T03:44:00.637-04:00Charles taylor is of course completely wrong.Charles taylor is of course completely wrong.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com