Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism: chat

Original poster

Live not by lies: Solzhenitsyn (no tambourines involved)

43 replies

EmbarrassingHadrosaurus · 23/10/2021 13:15

There has been such a roll call of courageous women this week: Ceri Black, Jo Phoenix, Maya Forstater and her legal team, Sophie Scott, Raquel Rosario Sanchez, those who donned the dino suits and others who attended various events from conferences to raising awareness of Stonewall. There are many unseen acts of courage, some of which are 'refusing to say that which we do not think'.

"When violence intrudes into peaceful life, its face glows with self-confidence, as if it were carrying a banner and shouting: “I am violence. Run away, make way for me—I will crush you.” But violence quickly grows old. And it has lost confidence in itself, and in order to maintain a respectable face it summons falsehood as its ally—since violence can conceal itself with nothing except lies, and the lies can be maintained only by violence. And violence lays its ponderous paw not every day and not on every shoulder. It demands from us only obedience to lies and daily participation in lies—all loyalty lies in that.

And the simplest and most accessible key to our self-neglected liberation lies right here: Personal non-participation in lies. Though lies conceal everything, though lies embrace everything, we will be obstinate in this smallest of matters: Let them embrace everything, but not with any help from me.

This opens a breach in the imaginary encirclement caused by our inaction. It is the easiest thing to do for us, but the most devastating for the lies. Because when people renounce lies it simply cuts short their existence. Like an infection, they can exist only in a living organism.

We do not exhort ourselves. We have not sufficiently matured to march into the squares and shout the truth out loud or to express aloud what we think. It’s not necessary.

It’s dangerous. But let us refuse to say that which we do not think.

This is our path, the easiest and most accessible one, which takes into account our inherent cowardice, already well rooted. And it is much easier—it’s dangerous even to say this—than the sort of civil disobedience which Gandhi advocated.

Our path is not to give conscious support to lies about anything whatsoever! And once we realize where lie the perimeters of falsehood, each sees them in his own way."

honestyculture.com/alexander-solzhenitsyn-live-not-by-lies/

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page
WaterThyme · 21/02/2025 22:45

The Dunning Kruger Effect is also interesting. It is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. Quite remarkably sometimes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

Tim Harford’s Cautionary Tales has an episode about it. Available on Apple Podcasts or BBC Sounds.

DrBlackbird · 11/02/2025 09:19

I wondered why an old thread was made new again but these links to authors and scholars intimately acquainted with how totalitarian thought control works is fascinating and alarming in equal measures.

There are interesting links when reading about how DrU attempted to exert dominance and control over others via the potency of GI (look at me when I’m speaking to you) but also what’s happening in wider politics.

The (not so far) right and the (not so far) left are really driven by similar underlying motives aren’t they? The right’s efforts are more tangible and therefore likely to result in resistance. The left going down the bekind route is more manipulative because of female social conditioning to be kind and because it’s harder to break social norms that apparently all the ‘good people’ espouse.

Also, how restricting language, restricts thinking eventually. I now have four more books to read including Lifton’s book.

BeanieSue · 10/02/2025 20:05

Thank you for bumping Embarrasing. Lots of interesting links.

Original poster
EmbarrassingHadrosaurus · 10/02/2025 14:10

Bumping for the discussion of lies and preference falsification.

OP posts:
RethinkingLife · 10/02/2024 18:06

That really is a fascinating article. I had no idea of the breadth of coercion of thought and language being exercised throughout so many different fields.

The whole impetus that we see behind trans activism is everywhere: maths! Who would have thought it possible.

Helen Joyce expresses the fusion of these so well through maths.

That article has stayed with me since it was linked here. You know that recent thread about 'How often does your DH think about the Roman Empire"? If you asked me about that article, it would be several times a week. I was in a meeting yesterday that reminded me forcefully of the omniscience of ideology.

ScrollingLeaves · 10/02/2024 17:00

Genesis1v27 · 05/12/2022 21:59

This is an excellent essay/paper by a professor of chemistry at University of Southern California who was raised and educated in the Soviet Union:

hxstem.substack.com/p/from-russia-with-love-science-and

That really is a fascinating article. I had no idea of the breadth of coercion of thought and language being exercised throughout so many different fields.

The whole impetus that we see behind trans activism is everywhere: maths! Who would have thought it possible.

She writes:
What can be done? Here are some ideas. First, speak up. Do not submit to bullies. Refuse to speak Newspeak. If you see that the king is naked—say the king is naked

I would like to see the end of the umbrella term of LGBTQ+.

It does not make sense and creates problems. To imply those interests represented by the letters have an entirely common cause, or require common answers to any problems associated with them, is a fallacy.

Thank you MsGoodenough & Rethinking Life gor your bumps

RethinkingLife · 10/02/2024 11:14

Bumping this as it contains a number of useful extracts that are good companion pieces to the current discussions about

  • Doyle
  • Turner
  • evolving definitions of extremism
  • courtesy pronouns for friends but not others
  • compelled speech.
Genesis1v27 · 09/06/2023 14:00

Irish academic Colette Colfer examines "support" for gender ideology as a form of ketman, a term (notably from Czesław Miłosz) for individuals hiding their true beliefs and playing along with dominant ideologies in order to survive in totalitarian societies, in an essay for The Critic today.

https://thecritic.co.uk/gender-ketman/

HilarysMantelpiece · 05/12/2022 23:33

Genesis1v27 · 05/12/2022 21:59

This is an excellent essay/paper by a professor of chemistry at University of Southern California who was raised and educated in the Soviet Union:

hxstem.substack.com/p/from-russia-with-love-science-and

That is a searing essay Genesis.

Genesis1v27 · 05/12/2022 21:59

This is an excellent essay/paper by a professor of chemistry at University of Southern California who was raised and educated in the Soviet Union:

hxstem.substack.com/p/from-russia-with-love-science-and

RethinkingLife · 03/12/2022 14:04

Fascinating thread that I missed on previous times!

It highlights the common threads through all of these movements, doesn't it. It all feels so contemporary with what is happening in so many organisations that should know better.

WorkingItOutAsIGo · 03/12/2022 09:26

Fascinating thread that I missed on previous times!

RethinkingLife · 03/12/2022 09:15

Bumping this as it seems relevant to Susie Green and her ousting from Mermaids for not having a trans identity (according to Telegraph story).

Genesis1v27 · 08/07/2022 18:20

Thank you for posting those.

Rod Dreher, Jordan Peterson's guest in that video, wrote a book called "Live Not by Lies" (after Solzhenitsyn of course), published in late 2020. Dreher is a social conservative and a convert to Orthodox Christianity, and despite the book being subtitled "A Manual for Christian Dissidents" and having a Christian focus, it has a wider appeal for anyone wanting to endure and resist the modern totalitarianism.

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622436/live-not-by-lies-by-rod-dreher/

He has also written a lot about Havel's greengrocer, Czesław Miłosz, and other subjects in that interview on his blogs (at The American Conservative and on Substack). Miłosz's "The Captive Mind" is another necessary book in these times, it seems.

elizamondegreen.substack.com/p/czeslaw-milosz-appreciation-post

Original poster
EmbarrassingHadrosaurus · 08/07/2022 05:37

The first hour has segments with an interesting discussion of Solzhenitsyn's Live not by lies with spillovers into a broad range of topics; this includes Havel's greengrocer as well!

The quick overview of the kulaks put me in mind of Giles Udy's fascinating interview with Triggernometry about his book (I'm still disturbed by this and thinking it through): 'Labour and the Gulag: Russia and the Seduction of the British Left'

OP posts:
PerkyBlinder · 21/04/2022 01:50

Just seen this thread and it’s fascinating. Thank you!

The 1984 aspect of being forced to deny the evidence of your eyes jumped out to me when I read JK Rowling’s essay. I re-read that and also started to read more on Chinese history as we were in lockdown and it felt like this huge shift was going on.

It struck me how utterly Maoist gender ideology is. Also how Mao actively got everyone to fight each other all the time especially during the cultural revolution. The young being brainwashed to fight the olds. The struggle sessions as part of thought reform. Our new cultural revolution is less violent although the terf is a slur site shows how happy many would be if terfs could be violently dealt with. But the attempt to change language and how we categorise ourselves in society and the attempt to silence anyone wanting to discuss issues with it and the thought terminating cliches just feels like gender ideology has Mao and cultural revolution stamped right through it like those sticks of rock you can get from the beach.

i also find it interesting that the foundation blocks of democracy in our society such as our free press and the checks and balances in place such as the House of Lords and our justice system so far is giving us some ability to fight back although the push to capture the judiciary and how much our major institutions have been infiltrated is frightening. It’s a fight I’m still not sure we can win because it’s not just the U.K. Every western country is fighting the same fight at the same time and the U.K. is one of the few really pushing back. If all the others fall and the international institutions are captured then we become completely isolated and would we be able to stand strong or would our need to be accepted on the global stage take priority?

I was really worried when stonewall went to the UN and tried to get the EHRC downgraded and am so thankful it was rejected.

But it definitely feels like a huge world fight is going on - a modern cultural revolution fought everywhere both online and off with Russian troll factories and influencers paid by China to misinform, to fan the flames of division and to create unrest and division in western society.

ChopinBoard · 20/04/2022 22:13

Such an interesting thread, thank you

picklemewalnuts · 20/04/2022 21:43

Oh Lord, that's eye opening!

Original poster
EmbarrassingHadrosaurus · 20/04/2022 19:31

I've quoted part of this elsewhere so I'm adding it here.

Harry Frankfurt published On Bullshit in the Raritan Quarterly Review in 1986, and although it attracted some attention it seems to have grown in relevance as more people recognise the ideas that he discusses.

The closing pages are thought-provoking because they've become so familiar:

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose. [pp 55-56]

Both in lying and in telling the truth people are guided by their beliefs concerning the way things are. These guide them as they endeavor to describe the world correctly or to describe it deceitfully. For this reason, telling lies does not tend to unfit a person for telling the truth in the same way that bullshitting tends to. Through excessive indulgence in the latter activity, which involves making assertions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say, a person’s normal habit of attending to the way things are may become attenuated or lost. Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. [pp 59-61]

The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality, and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These "antirealist" doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry. One response to this loss of confidence has been a retreat from the discipline required by dedication to the ideal of correctness to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by pursuit of an alternative ideal of sincerity. Rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns toward trying to provide honest representations of himself. Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself. [pp 64-66]

OP posts:
MsGoodenough · 06/04/2022 12:11

Bumping this again as it's such an important and fascinating thread.

noraclavicle · 20/03/2022 01:52

My Dad introduced me to Solzhenitsyn when I was practically knee-high. In one respect I’d rather have remained ignorant, but actually, I thank him for it. He freed me intellectually. However hard it is to swim against the stream, it HAS to be done. Power to you all.

allmywhat · 19/03/2022 23:23

I didn’t realise this was an older thread at first. And when I read about the students trying to force the VC to display pronouns, I was surprised.

It makes sense as 2021 behaviour but I can’t quite see it now. I think they’re too much on the back foot for that kind of random tyranny. This has cheered me up.

Original poster
EmbarrassingHadrosaurus · 19/03/2022 23:03

Maya Forstater's tribunal is getting a lot of attention.

There is a gripping tale involving an economic development think tank unfolding publicly in real time.

People watching from the sector have all read timurkuran's classic on preference falsification. They've all read Vaclav Havel.

QTs: At the start of the #ForstaterTribunal tribunaltweets gathered 6 million impressions of its tweets. At the end of the first week - 20 million. Make sure you have policies in place that can be safely scrutinised by millions of eyes

twitter.com/i/web/status/1505132868065972226

I'm bumping this because preference falsification has been mentioned upthread as has the Havel essay that Maya means.

OP posts:
FOJN · 15/02/2022 10:20

I think it was The State Media video on gender ideology where I heard TRA tactics described as Maoist and I think it applies to most of the recent social justice movements. I'm not sure whether most people appreciate yet that what we are seeing is a cultural revolution.