Or at least, first sightings by me of a couple ideas that have apparently been floating around for a year or two: Moral ambition, and progressive realism. There are new ideas in the world. Because experience and knowledge accumulate.
Big Think, Tim Brinkhof, 8 Jul 2024: Effective altruism is stumbling. Can “moral ambition” replace it?, subtitled “In ‘Moral Ambition,’ Dutch historian Rutger Bregman argues that all would benefit from a collective redefinition of success.”
Miscellaneous items today, including a few from a couple weeks ago.
Race to the bottom. How un- and mis-informed can we make our children? And ill-suited for life in the 21st century?
AlterNet, 27 Jun 2024: Oklahoma now requires all public schools to teach from the Bible as a ‘historical’ document
The State of Oklahoma appears to be poised to outdo Louisiana in its effort to inject Christianity into public schools, after a new announcement by the state’s superintendent of public instruction.
On Thursday, ABC affiliate KOCO 5 News reported that Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters is now requiring all K-12 public school classrooms keep a copy of the Bible on hand, and to give it the same regard as a history textbook. The new policy is to be implemented “effective immediately.”
Conservatives would suppress many elements of American history, yet would promote an ancient document that in no way can be considered reliable history. They want to tell stories that bind the tribe together, not to tell the truth or prepare students for life in the modern world.
Continuing from yesterday’s theme.
Robert Reich, 8 Jul 2024: Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia?, subtitled “The evidence is increasing”
For all that many people accuse the mass media of being biased toward the left, that’s not always the case.
Robert Reich, 5 Jul 2024: The Pile-on
Joe Biden is being treated far worse than Donald Trump by the two institutions critical for deciding the outcome of the 2024 election: the political parties and the media.
The Republican Party has closed ranks around Trump — despite the fact he’s a convicted felon, twice-impeached con man, sexual abuser, fraudulent businessman, self-described aspiring dictator for a day, pathological liar, and ringleader of an attempted coup against the United States.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is in a panic about Biden. Many party insiders are trying to force Biden out now, at the last minute, because he had a bad debate performance.
Once you see it, or someone points it out to you, you see it everywhere. (This is called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon or more colloquially the frequency illusion, a cognitive bias, a variety of confirmation bias.)
Still, that doesn’t mean a sudden awareness of how everything fits together *isn’t true*. Right? Great scientific breakthroughs have occurred this way.
Two items from today’s NYT.
For all that progressives like to think that we progress, have progressed over the centuries and decades, maybe we don’t, except in isolated pockets that shrivel up and dry over time. A hundred years ago, the issues in current American politics were similar to those of today.
NY Times, Dan Barry, 5 Jul 2024: Divided and Undecided, 2024’s America Rhymes With 1924’s, subtitled “Hearing echoes of Independence Day a century ago, when Americans were clashing over race, religion, immigration and presidential candidates.” (shared link)
Via Jerry Coyne, a long piece at Quillette by Matt Johnson: Liberalism and the West’s ‘Crisis of Meaning’, subtitled “Many liberals are strangely eager to concede that liberal societies are morally and spiritually bankrupt without religion to give life meaning.”
This is an enduring topic, triggered here by a recent David Brooks column in NYT (which I discussed here).
No time to read it just now. But a couple quick comments: some who address this topic think that Christianity is the only thing that can fill this “god-shaped hole” as Coyne puts it; but that’s probably because we here in the West don’t see similar arguments that only Buddhism, to take a random example, can provide the meaning of life (by people who are just as sincere as the Christians are). Second, this worry strikes me as a simple failure of imagination, and a lack of knowledge about the world outside their own tribe. Third, which is to say, this isn’t about religion, or theology, or which of the many of those is correct; it’s basically an issue of psychology and human nature.
It’s worth paying attention from time to time what conservatives really want, and more importantly, their rationales.
NY Times, Ruth Graham, 4 Jul 2024: Why a New Conservative Brain Trust Is Resettling Across America, subtitled “Pro-Trump professionals aren’t just talking about remaking Western civilization. Some are uprooting their lives to show that they mean it.”
I’ve addressed this subject — what the “intellectuals” at the Claremont Institute think, and if they have any motivation beyond the dominance of their own particular religion — several months ago, here. Damon Linker, author of that piece, characterized them as “Claremont Catastrophists,” who predicted the end of the world unless they manage to prevail.
This piece seems similar, as it concerns how some of “Claremont’s key figures have been leaving California to find ideologically friendlier climes.” Why?
“A lot of us share a sense that Christendom is unraveling,” said Skyler Kressin, 38, who is friendly with the Claremont leaders and shares many of their concerns. He left Southern California to move to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in 2020. “We need to be engaged, we need to be building.”
OK, says I, so what? Continue reading
What is fiction, and why are most people attracted to it? This isn’t just about reading books or short stories; what also is the attraction of movies and TV shows that are all about imaginary people facing imaginary problems? Why do people bother? The general consensus, these days, among psychologists and sociologists, is that stories (like play among children) are ways of vicariously rehearsing the challenges one might face in one’s own life. We like to see how others would deal with problem we might have. And it’s related for similar reason to gossip among neighbors, which actually serves a useful function, both to understand others’ problems, and to pass along values of honesty, trust, and shame, as appropriate; a way of demonizing ‘cheaters’ in the unwritten social contract of small groups.
NY Times, essay by Lyta Gold, 1 July 2024: Book Bans Are on the Rise. But Fear of Fiction Is Nothing New., subtitled “Nearly 2,400 years ago, Plato worried that stories could corrupt susceptible minds. Moral panics over fiction have been common ever since.”
Excerpted from a forthcoming book (from a small press publisher, that does some genre books).
I’ll quote the opening para’s:
I’m not the first to make this observation. Trump’s rise echoes a famous 1935 novel called (ironically) It Can’t Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis. Wikipedia:
The novel describes the rise of Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, a demagogue who is elected President of the United States, after fomenting fear and promising drastic economic and social reforms while promoting a return to patriotism and “traditional” values. After his election, Windrip takes complete control of the government via self-coup and imposes totalitarian rule with the help of a ruthless paramilitary force, in the manner of European fascists such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
Americans brag about their system of checks and balances in our government, but look how quickly some of those balances are being chipped away. Note how in this book’s description, and in authoritarians who have come to power in the last decade or two, how they appeal to “traditional” values.
NY Times, 1 Jul 2024: Trump Amplifies Calls to Jail Top Elected Officials, Invokes Military Tribunals, subtitled “A post that Mr. Trump circulated on Sunday called for Liz Cheney to be prosecuted by a military court reserved for enemy combatants and war criminals.” [shared link]
Thought for the day. On the other hand, rather than thinking we must be living in the worst of times (see last Wednesday’s post), perhaps we are merely experience regression toward the mean. I’ve mentioned this notion several times. The idea is that democracy, and science, are exceptional in world history. While progressives like to think humanity is on an upwards path toward a better, more egalitarian, future, a future better-informed about the nature of reality and overcoming tribal instincts of nationalism and religion that actively deny that reality (in science fiction, that was portrayed by the original Star Trek), perhaps that is not realistic. Perhaps that future will never be attained, except only temporarily, before returning to than mean, based ultimately on human nature, established over millions of years, and which cannot easily be swayed.
On the other hand, humanity *has* advanced, overall, in recent centuries. Our politics and our understanding of the world, and thus our ability to control it, are far better here in the 21st century than they were, say, 500 years ago. We no longer accede to the divine right of kings; we no longer believe in demons and spirits to explain the natural world.
Well, some of us don’t. Others still do. There is no consensus among the entire world, or national, population. Case in point.
The big news today Continue reading
