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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Triggernometry Day the Delusions Died

86 replies

RethinkingLife · 29/10/2023 11:38

It's in the context of the conflict in Middle East but it has wider key questions about philosophical perspectives on whether we can legislate or social policy our way out of conflicts or can only manage them.

I keep thinking about the political and philosophical perspectives. I've always hoped that conflict can be remediated away. I've often feared it can only be managed for limited periods of time over history and that Sowell is right, "There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs".

I'm interested in this in the context of women's rights and living in a tolerant, pluralistic society despite inflammatory rhetoric from activists decrying a society in which people's values and human/civil rights are recognised as values and rights in a way that they aren't in many other countries.

I'm apprehensive about the increased likelihood of a desperate dystopia in which women will continue to be eradicated as a sex class and yet will mysteriously be allocated under-recognised caring responsibilities and lower pay.

y

VIRAL SPEECH: The Day the Delusions Died by Konstantin Kisin

A lot of people woke up on October 7 as progressives and went to bed that night feeling like conservatives. What changed?https://www.thefp.com/p/the-day-the-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?ab_channel=Triggernometry&v=uyW4SMK0Fpc

OP posts:
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PaperWalkAndTalk · 29/10/2023 11:44

A professor recently said that "Palestine is a trans rights issue", because everything always comes back to that.

Israel/Palestine seems to be more divisive than trans rights. But both issues now seem to excuse awful violence and sexual violence if you support the cause.

RethinkingLife · 29/10/2023 12:25

Sexual violence is a familiar and abhorrent tactic in warfare amidst the general horrors.

My belief for the longer-term is that climate and displaced populations forced out by extreme weather and uninsurable habitation areas may well make a nonsense of human conflict.

But it feeds into my concerns for greater poverty, social tensions and instability that will disproportionately impact children and primary caregivers (women).

I hope for a progressive utopia. At my core, I believe in management and containment of conflict at best.

OP posts:
ArthurbellaScott · 29/10/2023 13:28

I watched this and found Sobel's central assertion about left/right very interesting - unconstrained v constrained.

What I'd really like to read/hear is some rigorous criticism of the right's position.

The left only seems to work on the basis of ad homs and a general 'RSOH' principle.

I'm pretty sure there are sensible criticisms to be made of the right/constrained position, but who is making them?

ArthurbellaScott · 29/10/2023 13:30

(I want to believe in the centre ground, if not hopeful leftie politics.

But in order to do so, I need rigorous examination of both sides. I think there are various people making perceptive and useful comment on the failings and shortcomings of the left; who is doing this for the right?

Self justification and self righteousness are just not enough.)

RethinkingLife · 29/10/2023 13:48

I'm pretty sure there are sensible criticisms to be made of the right/constrained position, but who is making them?

Yes. As the judge in Mr Miller’s case, Mr Justice Julian Knowles, expressed it: “In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society.”

In Scotland, I fear it's moving towards those very things as an aspiration, in the name of progression towards utopia.

I've never fully reconciled myself with what I learned from Giles Udy's Labour and the Gulag: Russia and the Seduction of the British Left.*

I, too, would welcome a thorough going critique of the constrained position.

In January 1930, the New Statesman reported that dekulakisation was a "cruel experiment" involving "imprisonment and execution." Over the next two years, 1.8 million kulaks were arrested and deported to the North. Some 240,000 died. By 1931, 60,000 Russians had been arrested on religious grounds and 5,000 shot. The exact numbers may not have been known in the West, but the basic facts of Soviet mass murder, disenfranchisement, and slave labour were available to any literate Briton by the end of the 1920s.

More than a million people in Europe took part in "Prayers for the Persecuted" in 1930, effectively a mass protest again Russian barbarism towards the clergy. The Soviets’ use of unpaid prison labour to produce timber in the unbearable conditions of northern Russia was well documented and led many countries to boycott Russian timber in the 1920s. British sailors travelling to northern Russia saw the conditions with their own eyes, and numerous stowaways and escapees were able to provide the grim details. The evidence was there for those who had eyes to see.

Not everybody did. Timber made in gulags was illegal under the Foreign Prison-Made Goods Act of 1897 and the Labour Party had taken a strong stand against "sweated goods" when they were in opposition in the mid-1920s. And yet the Labour Party did not ban it once they were in power (the Conservatives finally did so in 1933), and many on the British Left refused to accept the evidence of brutality, starvation, and mass shootings long after the evidence was overwhelming."

https://www.acton.org/publications/transatlantic/2017/11/03/book-review-labour-and-gulag-russia-and-seduction-british

Book review, 'Labour and the Gulag: Russia and the Seduction of the British Left'

Labour and the Gulag: Russia and the Seduction of the British Left. Giles Udy. London: Biteback Publishing, 2017. 688 pages. When was the date of guilty knowledge for defenders of Soviet communism? At what point did Western supporters of the regime cea...

https://www.acton.org/publications/transatlantic/2017/11/03/book-review-labour-and-gulag-russia-and-seduction-british

OP posts:
Diggee · 29/10/2023 17:31

The left aere usually always wrong, about pretty much everything. And they’re often deeply immoral people too.

Most normal people tend to grow out of left wing delusions in their 20’s when reality hits them. The exception seems to be privileged and sheltered upper middle class people whose privilege seems to shelter them emu to keep their delusions going. Unfortunately these people are very influential which is why the country is so called woke. We need a proper right wing party not fake conservatives who are just more privileged liberals.

ArthurbellaScott · 29/10/2023 17:40

What's Noam Chomaky saying these days? I know he's been denounced as tramsphobic.

RethinkingLife · 29/10/2023 21:05

The left aere usually always wrong, about pretty much everything. And they’re often deeply immoral people too.

That feels like a generalisation comparable to generalising about most people on a political spectrum. (This may be leftist optimism showing in my hope that most of us are essentially good despite my core beliefs being more in line with Sowell.)

I am feeling politically adrift. I'd welcome good critiques of Sowell's unconstrained vs constrained and whether there's a blend within categories of Left and Right.

The unconstrained vision[edit]Sowell argues that the unconstrained vision relies heavily on the belief that human nature is essentially good. Those with an unconstrained vision distrust decentralized processes and are impatient with large institutions and systemic processes that constrain human action. They believe there is an ideal solution to every problem, and that compromise is never acceptable. Collateral damage is merely the price of moving forward on the road to perfection. Sowell often refers to them as "the self anointed." Ultimately they believe that man is morally perfectible. Because of this, they believe that there exists some people who are further along the path of moral development, have overcome self-interest and are immune to the influence of power and therefore can act as surrogate decision-makers for the rest of society.

The constrained vision[edit]Sowell argues that the constrained vision relies heavily on the belief that human nature is essentially unchanging and that man is naturally inherently self-interested, regardless of the best intentions. Those with a constrained vision prefer the systematic processes of the rule of law and experience of tradition. Compromise is essential because there are no ideal solutions, only trade-offs. Those with a constrained vision favor empirical evidence and time-tested structures and processes over intervention and personal experience. Ultimately, the constrained vision demands checks and balances and refuses to accept that all people could put aside their innate self-interest.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Conflict_of_Visions

A Conflict of Visions - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Conflict_of_Visions

OP posts:
Rudderneck · 29/10/2023 22:29

That is really interesting. Maybe not the most useful bit, but the comment at the end on how the word "woke" is used perhaps sheds some light on why people find it so descriptive/compelling.

Diggee · 30/10/2023 08:34

“That feels like a generalisation comparable to generalising about most people on a political spectrum. (This may be leftist optimism showing in my hope that most of us are essentially good despite my core beliefs being more in line with Sowell.)”

So what? morally we have been in a left wing paradigm since the boomer brats came of age and now the results of their self centred narcissism pretending to be good natured optimism are plain for all to see.

Do you think the current issues that are upsetting some feminists today came out of a centre left progressive incubator or did they just appear out of a vacuum?

The great David starkey one said that a prophet who fails at prophecy should be seem as what the are, a fraud. When leftists tell us that if we just do ABC then XYZ will be the outcome and society does ABC and ZYX doesn’t happen it means that they didn’t understand reality and were so out of touch with the real world that they couldn’t even get basic cause and effect right. they are almost always wrong.

AdamRyan · 30/10/2023 09:07

Diggee · 30/10/2023 08:34

“That feels like a generalisation comparable to generalising about most people on a political spectrum. (This may be leftist optimism showing in my hope that most of us are essentially good despite my core beliefs being more in line with Sowell.)”

So what? morally we have been in a left wing paradigm since the boomer brats came of age and now the results of their self centred narcissism pretending to be good natured optimism are plain for all to see.

Do you think the current issues that are upsetting some feminists today came out of a centre left progressive incubator or did they just appear out of a vacuum?

The great David starkey one said that a prophet who fails at prophecy should be seem as what the are, a fraud. When leftists tell us that if we just do ABC then XYZ will be the outcome and society does ABC and ZYX doesn’t happen it means that they didn’t understand reality and were so out of touch with the real world that they couldn’t even get basic cause and effect right. they are almost always wrong.

Since ww2, the Conservatives have been in power for 55 years and Labour for 23.

13 years of that was New Labour which was unashamedly central and adopted many of the "constrained" choices outlined above.

I think the evidence is the "Boomer brats" were/are more right than left wing and we are not in a left wing paradigm.

Abhannmor · 30/10/2023 10:45

There is an argument or opinion at least , expressed by eg Danny Dorling , that Tories have moved to the far right because Labour have occupied their former territory.
I never thought of it that way but it was nice cuddly Cameron who took the party out of the moderate conservative European Peoples Party and into the far right group with AfD and other borderline racist and homophobic parties.

Abhannmor · 30/10/2023 10:54

Diggee · 30/10/2023 08:34

“That feels like a generalisation comparable to generalising about most people on a political spectrum. (This may be leftist optimism showing in my hope that most of us are essentially good despite my core beliefs being more in line with Sowell.)”

So what? morally we have been in a left wing paradigm since the boomer brats came of age and now the results of their self centred narcissism pretending to be good natured optimism are plain for all to see.

Do you think the current issues that are upsetting some feminists today came out of a centre left progressive incubator or did they just appear out of a vacuum?

The great David starkey one said that a prophet who fails at prophecy should be seem as what the are, a fraud. When leftists tell us that if we just do ABC then XYZ will be the outcome and society does ABC and ZYX doesn’t happen it means that they didn’t understand reality and were so out of touch with the real world that they couldn’t even get basic cause and effect right. they are almost always wrong.

Ha very good! You mean like those silly lefties who kept telling us everything would be wonderful with privatisation. And when it isn't , they say ' we need an even less controlled market , we're just not doing it right! '

Oh wait....

ArthurbellaScott · 30/10/2023 11:14

AdamRyan · 30/10/2023 09:10

@ArthurbellaScott I found this podcast very interesting for the debate of Left v Right and particularly the recent move of the right to be alt-right via trump/Johnson

https://pod.link/1665265193

Thanks, will put it on my list, although I'm a bit allergic to podcasts! They don't seem to have transcripts, unfortunately.

Rudderneck · 30/10/2023 11:16

None of the governments of the UK in the past century have been either far right or far left. There has been some movement around a middle, by the various major parties. I don't think you can look just at the governments because in the end the political agenda and public discourse comes out of the different factions and viewpoints in the larger population.

So sometimes we can see two major approaches at the same time, often in tension with each other. (Which is not necessarily a bad thing at all.) And I would also say that there can be a difference which is dominant in which sector of life.

In terms of economics there has been a real narrowing of possibilities for parties, and indeed nations. Under a globalist economy, there are really only a few options. A lot can't really be controlled by any state, at most they can choose to opt into the global economic structures, or not. There can be advantages and disadvantages, but they aren't hugely different in the end, barring complete isolationism.

Within the nation there is more room for divergent approaches in terms of things like privatization, social programs, centralization vs distribution of power, collectivism vs communitarianism vs individualism, and so on.

Overall I think the British have a small-c conservative approach to governance, the whole structure of governance is built on that and it's been remarkably effective and stable and flexible, which is an unusual and good combination. I deliberation don't say "right wing" here because I think in fact that certain kinds of leftism are actually quite conservative in their approaches, emphasizing low level, grass roots community structures and institutions that act to enhance fairness and justice in society.

Or to put it another way, I think much of British leftism and conservatism are both inclined to a very communitarian impulse, which is not the same as the kind of socialist collectivism that you sometimes see on the left and which has dominated in some places, and it's not the same as the kind of right wing libertariansm that we tend to see come out of the US.

That right wing libertariansm and high level socialism both tend to morph into a kind of oligarchic control by elites combined with a high level of bureaucratic "expert" governance. Left wing elitism and id politics also fits in here. Neither are really liberal-democratic. The latter tends to be the servant of the former, often unwittingly, IMO.

Identity politics is its own thing in a way, but it has strong features of a kind of collective determisnism that is what Sowell calls "unconstrained".

Rudderneck · 30/10/2023 11:17

The idea that Johnson is "alt-right" seems pretty insane on the face of it?

AdamRyan · 30/10/2023 11:43

It's probably my sloppy language - listen to the podcast, Harari is describing how he thinks the pace of change in the 21st century has made traditional "conservatism" impossible/irrelevant/out of touch and so the right has moved to being more populist and the left has been forced to uphold institutions which is a traditional conservative stance and not something left wing parties generally have the inclination and skills to do.

I found it very interesting and thought provoking about what's happening globally and to the political parties in this country.

Diggee · 30/10/2023 14:12

Abhannmor · 30/10/2023 10:45

There is an argument or opinion at least , expressed by eg Danny Dorling , that Tories have moved to the far right because Labour have occupied their former territory.
I never thought of it that way but it was nice cuddly Cameron who took the party out of the moderate conservative European Peoples Party and into the far right group with AfD and other borderline racist and homophobic parties.

The German AfD are a very moderate party and not far right, same as UKIP and Reform U.K really, it’s just mostly sensible centrist police’s from these parties. The only reason they might seem far right is because all the mainstream parties are so called progressive and liberal and follow an immoral mentally demented agenda that doesn’t correspond with reality. Fortunately the times are changing and the next 30 years won’t look like the past 30 years once the political situation flips over the next decade or so.

Far right is what the old BNP were. Or the German NDP, that’s what the far right actually looks like and 20 years ago everyone would have known this and been able to distinguish clearly between the likes of UKIP and the BNP. It’s just the we are so far off centre people think far right is now the likes of the AfD or UKIP.

AdamRyan · 30/10/2023 14:31

AfD and UKIP are not moderate parties

TripleDaisySummer · 30/10/2023 15:04

Most normal people tend to grow out of left wing delusions in their 20’s when reality hits them.

That may not be as true as it once was:

I'm not sure though that left and right are as meaningful labels as they once were.

Why Millennials aren't Getting more Conservative as they Get Older

TLDR Daily Briefing: https://youtube.com/tldrdailyConventional wisdom suggests that as you get older you get more conservative - it happened to our parents a...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixxeinSFfVE

Diggee · 30/10/2023 15:14

AdamRyan · 30/10/2023 14:31

AfD and UKIP are not moderate parties

Yes they are. It’s just that you might be a far left extremist? And if you are should be treated as such.

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