The problem right now is that the left craves a moral system, but neither the Nietzschenian dissolution of all values or Marxism (the other dominant left tendency of the last 100 years) can provide that. Which is why so much of left morality is liberal bourgeois manners with radical slogans. Practically, this is open to abuses (call out culture, basically), and, intellectually, this is thin gruel compared to the before mentioned ideologies (as well as conservative Christianity and classical liberalism). But I don't what the path to a left moral system is. We struggle to build on the strange intellectual heritage that Nietzsche has provided us with.
I like bourgeois liberalism tho! I never saw the big issue with it. I mean the meritocracy is a sham, but the quality of life is still good, and personal freedom is nice. There's some feeling that even for the top 20 percent life is somehow meaningless and unbearable, but why? Life is pretty good!
Like if even the people on top of society are so dissatisfied then there really must be a big problem! But what is so wrong w the secular religion we grew up with? Do your best, try to do good, and self actualize yourself through some poorly understood communion with your inner self. Just do those things until you die. We don't need to achieve ultimate and everlasting bliss, we just need to keep productively occupied until we are dead
It makes sense. Our political marketplace provides huge incentives to create ingroups and outgroups. Envy is a powerful force in playing this 'divide and rule' game. The old religions had some safeguards against fanning the flames of envy. However, those 'Gods are dead'. And we have not supplanted them with secular philosophies that are powerful enough to keep envy at bay.
I remember two sayings from my reading of Nietzsche, which sum up much of my academic experience, in fact.
1. “The will to a system is a lack of integrity.” I destroyed a graduate student in Philosophy critiquing this sentence, by pointing out the Nietzsche was not making a distinction between good and bad systems-he was saying that any system, externally imposed or internally selected, was a crutch that reduced one’s freedom. I thought this idea was rather exciting, in the way many 19 year olds might. It seemed that none of the other students had any idea what we were talking about, but later I realized they were just more prudent than me.
Later in the same book, I read another line which ended my fascination with Nietzsche. If you are familiar, perhaps you can guess the sentence?
2. “When going to women, carry a whip.” Perhaps this is a slight paraphrase, but you get the gist here. Having grown up on a ranch where whips were used for a variety of purposes, none of which involved men wanting to date me, it was immediately apparent that Nietzsche’s idea of what constituted “mankind” was extremely narrow, did not include me (one of those ‘women’ he felt such a need to both approach and protect himself from), and showed that that other interesting thing he said to be a miserable lie. I still got an A in the Intro Phil course thru the simple expedient of not bothering to try to discuss this with the graduate student at all. I expect the other students were grateful for my forbearance.
I had already encountered the same problem with Freud, when I realized that anytime he spoke of sexuality, he was discussing male sexuality, with “the female” being the focus is sexuality, not an active generator of sexuality for myself, and a rapid scan forward from tat point convinced me that Freud was a puzzled man too limited by the cultural milieu within which he found himself to address how women actually interacted with men at all. But Nietzsche was the last straw. I turned to neuroscience and the oversimplifications of Skinnerian behaviorism after that. Ugh.
The problem right now is that the left craves a moral system, but neither the Nietzschenian dissolution of all values or Marxism (the other dominant left tendency of the last 100 years) can provide that. Which is why so much of left morality is liberal bourgeois manners with radical slogans. Practically, this is open to abuses (call out culture, basically), and, intellectually, this is thin gruel compared to the before mentioned ideologies (as well as conservative Christianity and classical liberalism). But I don't what the path to a left moral system is. We struggle to build on the strange intellectual heritage that Nietzsche has provided us with.
Good writing as always though!
I like bourgeois liberalism tho! I never saw the big issue with it. I mean the meritocracy is a sham, but the quality of life is still good, and personal freedom is nice. There's some feeling that even for the top 20 percent life is somehow meaningless and unbearable, but why? Life is pretty good!
Like if even the people on top of society are so dissatisfied then there really must be a big problem! But what is so wrong w the secular religion we grew up with? Do your best, try to do good, and self actualize yourself through some poorly understood communion with your inner self. Just do those things until you die. We don't need to achieve ultimate and everlasting bliss, we just need to keep productively occupied until we are dead
Charlie Munger thinks this dissatisfaction you describe is due to 'Envy', and our weaponisation of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvo85awCm1w
It makes sense. Our political marketplace provides huge incentives to create ingroups and outgroups. Envy is a powerful force in playing this 'divide and rule' game. The old religions had some safeguards against fanning the flames of envy. However, those 'Gods are dead'. And we have not supplanted them with secular philosophies that are powerful enough to keep envy at bay.
I remember two sayings from my reading of Nietzsche, which sum up much of my academic experience, in fact.
1. “The will to a system is a lack of integrity.” I destroyed a graduate student in Philosophy critiquing this sentence, by pointing out the Nietzsche was not making a distinction between good and bad systems-he was saying that any system, externally imposed or internally selected, was a crutch that reduced one’s freedom. I thought this idea was rather exciting, in the way many 19 year olds might. It seemed that none of the other students had any idea what we were talking about, but later I realized they were just more prudent than me.
Later in the same book, I read another line which ended my fascination with Nietzsche. If you are familiar, perhaps you can guess the sentence?
2. “When going to women, carry a whip.” Perhaps this is a slight paraphrase, but you get the gist here. Having grown up on a ranch where whips were used for a variety of purposes, none of which involved men wanting to date me, it was immediately apparent that Nietzsche’s idea of what constituted “mankind” was extremely narrow, did not include me (one of those ‘women’ he felt such a need to both approach and protect himself from), and showed that that other interesting thing he said to be a miserable lie. I still got an A in the Intro Phil course thru the simple expedient of not bothering to try to discuss this with the graduate student at all. I expect the other students were grateful for my forbearance.
I had already encountered the same problem with Freud, when I realized that anytime he spoke of sexuality, he was discussing male sexuality, with “the female” being the focus is sexuality, not an active generator of sexuality for myself, and a rapid scan forward from tat point convinced me that Freud was a puzzled man too limited by the cultural milieu within which he found himself to address how women actually interacted with men at all. But Nietzsche was the last straw. I turned to neuroscience and the oversimplifications of Skinnerian behaviorism after that. Ugh.