So often 'overstating the problem' means 'focusing on a problem I don't find the most important.' That's fine but I don't think we all need to focus on the same problems. Specialisation is good. Speak to what you know. I know pomo thinking in academia.https://twitter.com/opticon_pan/status/974579333795753984 …
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This is (indirectly) what James and I wrote about in our manifesto re: existential polarisation.
@opticon_pan is right to be concerned about people maximising the lunatic fringe on the other side and presenting it as the whole of the other side. They're all Nazis/far-left loons.Show this thread -
Recognising tha vast majority of people are not extremist loons is essential. But there is also a tendency to minimise & even excuse the loons on your own side because the loons on the other side seem so much more dangerous & in doing so, internalise some of your side's lunacy
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"We don't need to worry about a few crazy leftist students when ethnonationalism is rising & there's a lunatic in the White House.' "We don't need to worry about a few neo-nazi loons when major institutions with great cultural power including universities are going nuts."
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I think we do need to worry about all of that but also try to avoid polarisation and recognise that most people are not lunatics. As a leftie, I think we need to both point out the worst of the right & fix the worst of the left if we want the left electable again.
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I agree, I think you and I would just quibble over whether the authoritarian left or the ethnonationalist right are more of a threat to human flourishing.
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Not unless you think the authoritarian left is. I think it's clear the right is much more scary right now. In our manifesto, we said we had our own very strong views on which fringe loons were the bigger threat. That will be the right.
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Ok, then we broadly agree I think.
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I thought we might. I don't think postmodernism & its offshoots are the biggest problem in the world. I do think a huge epistemological shift has taken place which is undermining the credibility of the left, feeding into right wing identity politics & post-truth society.
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Referring to this as 'postmodernism' causes confusion & it is more accurate to think of it as a postmodern epistemological & ideological shift & its evolution & normalisation within mainstream social conscience but this needs much unpacking. I am trying to do this.
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@Thesadredearth recently described it as 'logocentrism.' I think this encapsulates the problem much more neatly & gets at the reversals which have taken place in our understanding of the role of language and of subjective experience & objective reality.https://areomagazine.com/2018/03/10/the-world-made-flat-the-logocentric-left-and-the-politics-of-provocation/ … -
People have found this difficult to read as it deals with the ideas in their own economy, using their own language. But whereas postmodern approaches seek to complicate, confuse & find aporia, this piece seeks to dig into & define the underlying mechanisms of the symptoms we see
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