Society/Culture Ben Shapiro

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sorted said:
How do you know they weren't living in a mud hut because of bad decisions? Like the father spending all their money on beer. And maybe it's an old photo and they are now living in a four bedroom brick house with a proper roof.
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There's an equal and opposite scenario which could also apply.
 

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sorted said:
A few posts have gone missing round these parts so I suspect it's not worth spending the time.

However...

I believe that describing 'postmodernism a reaction to totalitarianism in all its forms' is a misrepresentation of the phenomenon.

The postmodernists fundamentally rejected the Enlightenment project - the rationalism of Descartes, the empiricism of Bacon’s and Locke. The ideas that resulted in capitalism, liberal forms of government, science and technology - that led to people becoming freer, wealthier, living longer, and enjoying more material comfort than at any point before in history.

Instead of experience and reason, we got linguistic subjectivism. Instead of individual identity and autonomy, we have ended up with various ethnic, gender, and class groupisms. Instead of human interests as fundamentally harmonious and tending toward mutually-beneficial interaction we have conflict and oppression.

Why the postmodernists when down this path is complex but I believe it owes more to cognitive dissonance at the perceived failure of Marxism than disgust of the obvious horrors of the prevalent totalitarian regimes.
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Lyotard himself said:

“Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.”

Dialectical materialism is the most meta of meta narratives

Most of the Ben Shapiro style critique is based on hoary old decontextualised one liners that misrepresent the narrative of the books

The insight that “Birth of the Clinic” gave us is (for example) that what physicians had regarded as “mad” has changed through time - that is an insight that adds to the Enlightenment project


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Contra Mundum said:
Lyotard himself said:

“Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.”

Dialectical materialism is the most meta of meta narratives
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Im trying to follow the logic.

Cultural Marxists are still marxist because they went with ideas that totally refute Marxism.

I remember having a chat to a bloke at uni years ago. He said that in the 80s, it was postmodernism. When he went back, unis treated it as Post-Modernism. But the institutionalisation hadn't come from within the academy. It came from the neolibs who wanted to use it as a pinata. In their minds, it constituted a set of doctrines that fit snugly on the post-enligtenment/pre-enlightenment, rational/irrational, reason/unreason continuum.

It's all very sloppy.

Which in itself, is probably the intent of these dastardly pomo theorists who have infected every public and private institution. Bastards.
 
Contra Mundum said:
French post modernism grew out of Marxism but fundamentally rejected it - it was basically a revulsion fr the bullshit idea that the vanguard party can embody the will of the proletariat - any history of the birth of post structuralism will show you that

Shapiro rabbits on about enlightenment values but himself rejects any idea associated with “equality” or “fraternity” and his concept of “liberty” is entirely “freedom from” which is anathema to what the Encyclopedists understood that term - obviously a fame whore with a bog standard undergraduate degree


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Contra Mundum said:
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One of the better works on the subject of the project of the Enlightenment comes from Adorno & Horkheimer in their 'The Dialectic of Enlightenment'; where the notion of the enlightenment itself is exposed as one prefaced upon human mythology.....That rather than escaping from old habits of human imagination, it merely recapitulates them in yet another form.....Namely: That we can have perfect & thorough knowledge founded upon an 'objective reality' independent & removed from human subjective reality.

"By this, the authors mean that the historical progression of the enlightenment tradition has actually subverted its original intentions of, as Francis Bacon wrote, making man the sovereign of nature, and has actually produced the opposite: barbarity and domination of the social nature in fascism and Stalinism."

"The project that Horkeimer and Adorno engage in is correctly titled an “immanent critique”; called by Habermas “ideology critique.” This type of critique arises out of Kant and Hegel. In this approach, a system, or ideology is investigated internally to see whether its presuppositions are consistent with one another. If they are not, then the system is considered self-refuting. Thus, Horkheimer and Adorno make the case that the enlightenment tradition fails the test, and the inheritors of the enlightenment tradition, namely the Vienna Circle positivists and nominalists, are involved in promulgating a self-destructive, self-refuting ideology."

"Horkheimer and Adorno set forth their case in the essay, “The Concept of Enlightenment.” They hold that enlightenment thinking has displayed a couple major motifs: demythologizing the natural world through knowledge and control, dominating that demythologized nature through autonomous, instrumental reason. These motifs are inter-connected, and actually interact and affect one another in a dialectical fashion. First, they argue that the enlightenment tradition has, from mankind’s beginning, been bound up with myth. A study of the social evolution of ancient societies demonstrates, according to Horkheimer and Adorno, myth actually arises as a response to mystery and the domination of man by the natural world. Thus, one can see in the earliest known human societies the mythological scheme actually produces a kind of classification, a seeking for origins, and reductionism, though not self-consciously. In other words, just like enlightenment, “myth seeks to explain.”4Enlightenment, however, since Bacon, Kant, Hume, and up to the positivists, has failed to recognize this dialectical relationship. Instead, For the Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into numbers, and ultimately into one, is illusion; modern positivism consigns it to poetry. Unity remains the watchword from Parmenides to Russell. All gods and qualities must be destroyed."

https://jaysanalysis.com/2011/06/03/horkheimer-adorno-habermas-and-the-dialectic-of-enlightenment/

It is on this point that the theories over what constitutes advancement & the fundamentals of the Enlightenment project itself are discussed by Jurgen Habermas at length, in his Theory of Communicative Action....A work that questions the fundamental tenets of Enlightenment, as Ayn Rand did herself, in her Objectivist philosophical system.
 
Procrastinator35 said:
One of the better works on the subject of the project of the Enlightenment comes from Adorno & Horkheimer in their 'The Dialectic of Enlightenment'; where the notion of the enlightenment itself is exposed as one prefaced upon human mythology.....That rather than escaping from old habits of human imagination, it merely recapitulates them in yet another form.....Namely: That we can have perfect & thorough knowledge founded upon an 'objective reality' independent & removed from human subjective reality.

"By this, the authors mean that the historical progression of the enlightenment tradition has actually subverted its original intentions of, as Francis Bacon wrote, making man the sovereign of nature, and has actually produced the opposite: barbarity and domination of the social nature in fascism and Stalinism."

"The project that Horkeimer and Adorno engage in is correctly titled an “immanent critique”; called by Habermas “ideology critique.” This type of critique arises out of Kant and Hegel. In this approach, a system, or ideology is investigated internally to see whether its presuppositions are consistent with one another. If they are not, then the system is considered self-refuting. Thus, Horkheimer and Adorno make the case that the enlightenment tradition fails the test, and the inheritors of the enlightenment tradition, namely the Vienna Circle positivists and nominalists, are involved in promulgating a self-destructive, self-refuting ideology."

"Horkheimer and Adorno set forth their case in the essay, “The Concept of Enlightenment.” They hold that enlightenment thinking has displayed a couple major motifs: demythologizing the natural world through knowledge and control, dominating that demythologized nature through autonomous, instrumental reason. These motifs are inter-connected, and actually interact and affect one another in a dialectical fashion. First, they argue that the enlightenment tradition has, from mankind’s beginning, been bound up with myth. A study of the social evolution of ancient societies demonstrates, according to Horkheimer and Adorno, myth actually arises as a response to mystery and the domination of man by the natural world. Thus, one can see in the earliest known human societies the mythological scheme actually produces a kind of classification, a seeking for origins, and reductionism, though not self-consciously. In other words, just like enlightenment, “myth seeks to explain.”4Enlightenment, however, since Bacon, Kant, Hume, and up to the positivists, has failed to recognize this dialectical relationship. Instead, For the Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into numbers, and ultimately into one, is illusion; modern positivism consigns it to poetry. Unity remains the watchword from Parmenides to Russell. All gods and qualities must be destroyed."

https://jaysanalysis.com/2011/06/03/horkheimer-adorno-habermas-and-the-dialectic-of-enlightenment/

It is on this point that the theories over what constitutes advancement & the fundamentals of the Enlightenment project itself are discussed by Jurgen Habermas at length, in his Theory of Communicative Action....A work that questions the fundamental tenets of Enlightenment, as Ayn Rand did herself, in her Objectivist philosophical system.
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It’s the only Adorno book that is readable


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geelong_crazy26 said:
Trusting a marxist makes you as dumb as can be.
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You won't get a real education by listening to columnists that merely repeat your beliefs.....A universal education is gotten by reading as extensively as possible across a broad spectrum of cultures & historical epochs....Usually the works that comprise the English Classical education canon will do that for you.....Beginning with Plato, Aristotle & Classical Greece.....That's as good a starting point as any from which to garner our current political climate & predicament.
 
Contra Mundum said:
Lyotard himself said:

“Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.”

Dialectical materialism is the most meta of meta narratives
Click to expand...

The meta-narratives Lyotard was referring to were
- the heroic tale of humanity being liberated through the advance of knowledge as derived from the French Revolution
- the progressive unfolding of the truth which came from German Idealism

If an incredulity towards meta-narratives was the defining feature of Postmodernism, then you would expect to find postmodernists represented across the political spectrum. But all the major players in Postmodernism have been far left in their politics. You could say the same about the postmodernists skepticism of reason.

Contra Mundum said:
Most of the Ben Shapiro style critique is based on hoary old decontextualised one liners that misrepresent the narrative of the books
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Ironic then that you quoted an hoary old decontextualised one liner from Lyotard.

Contra Mundum said:
The insight that “Birth of the Clinic” gave us is (for example) that what physicians had regarded as “mad” has changed through time - that is an insight that adds to the Enlightenment project
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Foucault didn't add the Enlightenment project - he rejected it. He deconstructed reason and truth then set them aside. He wrote 'reason is the ultimate language of madness, there is nothing to guide or constrain our thoughts and feelings. So we can do or say whatever we feel like'.
 
Kidd Vicious said:
Im trying to follow the logic.

Cultural Marxists are still marxist because they went with ideas that totally refute Marxism.
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There's a mix of ideas, some of which refute Marxism but most others that retain their philosophical inspiration from that source. For example, connecting
technical issues in linguistics and epistemology to political activism.

Derrida - 'deconstruction never had meaning or interest, at least in my eyes, than as a radicalization, that is to say, also within the tradition of a certain Marxism, in a certain spirit of Marxism'.

Foucault - 'I label political everything that has to do with class struggle, and social everything that derives from and is a consequence of the class struggle, expressed in human relationships and in institutions'.

I think Postmodernism has been popular with the former Marxists because it provides an endless set of examples to 'prove the decadence of late capitalism'.
 
sorted said:
I think Postmodernism has been popular with the former Marxists because it provides an endless set of examples to 'prove the decadence of late capitalism'.
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The excesses, greed & decadence of unrestrained Capitalism, doesn't require a post-modern critique nor perspective by which to prove it.....A classical education alone is more than ample for that.....Or even a basic & rudimentary comprehension of the Bible & it's main tenets.
 
Ben's in the news. He's the go to twitter account for that beta mass shooter who cried so much he couldn't take himself out.

Another portion of the document shows that Bissonnette routinely checked the Twitter accounts of right-wing pundits, conspiracy theorists, and alt-right trolls. These include (but are not limited to) Ben Shapiro (whom he checked the most), Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones of Infowars, white nationalist Richard Spencer, alt-right troll Baked Alaska, conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich, former KKK leader David Duke, the far-right YouTube pundit and alleged cult leader Stefan Molyneux, Kellyanne Conway, Fox News personality Tucker Carlson and then-Rebel Media personality Gavin McInnes. (McInnes was a co-founder of VICE. He and the company severed ties in 2008.)
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Contra Mundum said:
Apropos our discussion about post modernism - the argument in this article is its useful: https://areomagazine.com/2018/04/15/the-necessity-of-postmodernism-in-the-post-truth-age/
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OK I'll have a butchers.

Here's a discussion between Peterson and Shapiro. I've not watched it all yet but it's clear from early on that Shapiro isn't just a someone for decontextualised one liners.



31.50 JBP. The postmodernists had a point. The world was subject to a near infinite number of interpretations. And it's difficult to rank those interpretations in terms of quality. The invalid conclusion was that - there are no qualitative distinctions between modes of interpretation.

49.00 Shapiro talks about Judaism and the relationship to the different brands of Christianity. Plus discussion of the relationship of the state to Judaism and Christianity.

1.08 JBP We are in a war of ideas. We are at a point where we are debating the validity of postmodernism. The reason postmodernists can't let go of neo-Marxism is that there's no impetus forward in postmodernism. That's its fundamental flaw.

'There's no grand narrative'.
'OK, what are you going to do tomorrow'?
'Well, I dunno because everything's the same as everything else'.
'You can't live that way'.
'We'll just sneak some Marxism by the back door'.​

That's prima facia evidence that your philosophy is pragmatically lacking.

1.23 JBP I've lived in constant existential terror of saying something that will be fatal. There's been a few things that 'skirted the edges'. Perhaps they did because if you say 10,000 things then something's going to skirt the edge. I've had to watch myself in an intensely hyper-vigilant manner to ensure that I don't provide those who regard me as their enemy with the tools to dispense with me.

1.36 JBP - Markers for parents to know when their children are being indoctrinated not educated. Students should stand up and leave the classroom when the teacher mentions 'equity, diversity, inclusivity, white privilege or gender.
 
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sorted said:
OK I'll have a butchers.

Here's a discussion between Peterson and Shapiro. I've not watched it all yet but it's clear from early on that Shapiro isn't just a someone for decontextualised one liners.



31.50 JBP. The postmodernists had a point. The world was subject to a near infinite number of interpretations. And it's difficult to rank those interpretations in terms of quality. The invalid conclusion was that - there are no qualitative distinctions between modes of interpretation.

49.00 Shapiro talks about Judaism and the relationship to the different brands of Christianity. Plus discussion of the relationship of the state to Judaism and Christianity.
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Peterson and Shapiro
Are you trying to give Proccy35 an aneurysm?
 
sorted said:
Voice and pathos aside, how are you at odds with what Peterson and Shapiro are saying?
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Interesting discussion from the first 15 minutes I watched of it last night....Very interesting.....That is, until young Ben's voice completely shredded my ear drums....And with it, the desire to watch & listen for a single moment more.

Watching & listening to them both, was a perfect encapsulation of what Jung terms the Senex & the Puer in action: In Peterson, we have a mature man whose knowledge is completely embodied & integrated into his emotional wiring.....And in Shapiro:, we have a kid whose entire body of knowledge exists entirely in his head & unlived....Completely cut-off from his body & his emotions.

It makes everything he says come off as completely inauthentic psychologically....Even his body language is unintegrated....No matter how right he is, he is still so very wrong.

Peterson I can buy....The Kid....Just No.

Wisdom comes from embodied knowledge of a lived life, where philosophical precepts are tested in reality & experience.....The kid has none of that.
 
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