(It's a wonder American Thinker isn't afraid to even print those words in that order..
....oh....the RACISM of it all!)
What's most interesting to me is the following sentence at the very end of the article:
"Thus the world was transformed -- not by philosophers, scientists, or politicians, but by engineers, craftsmen, and entrepreneurs."
Since there is nothing less practical or able to deal directly with the material world as it really is than a Progressive, and since they are over-represented in exactly those areas that are less successful in actually "transforming" worlds: philosophy, science, politics, academia, media, and almost not represented at all in those fields that have proven to be the most effective in transforming the world: engineers, craftsmen and entrepreneurs....I am filled with something like hope.
Nice for a change.
The Gunslinger
Eh... well, this is one of those rare times when I've got to disagree, that story actually depressed me more than a bit.
ReplyDelete""Thus the world was transformed -- not by philosophers, scientists, or politicians, but by engineers, craftsmen, and entrepreneurs."
Sorry, but that's as idiotic as saying that Edison invented the modern world in spite of those dreamy fools who blathered on about 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness', without those dreamy fools taking a stand on the shoulders of Locke, Aquinas, Cicero, Aristotle, etc, there would have been no technological innovations to create the modern world with.
Without philosophers, scientists and politicians, there is no freedom or marketplace for engineers, craftsmen, and entrepreneurs to operate. Like the foolish distopian sci-fi flicks where society has collapsed, but they've still got plenty of handy dandy spaceships, computers and ray guns being created, sold and traded for them to play with, if and when philosophers, scientists and politicians plunge into a final stage of collapse and break with reality, the engineers, craftsmen, and entrepreneurs will immediately follow them into the darkness.
"Greeks and Romans were notorious in their disdain for technology. Aristotle noted that to be engaged in the mechanical arts was "illiberal and irksome." Seneca infamously characterized invention as something fit only for "the meanest slaves." The Roman Emperor Vespasian rejected technological innovation for fear that it would lead to unemployment."
That is true, and it was that philosophical view, more than anything else, which prevented them from creating the modern world 2,000 years earlier. And with,
"an unknown author noted the "mechanical inventiveness" of the "barbarian peoples" of northern Europe."
, the 'mechanical inventiveness' of the barbarian peoples of northern Europe produced almost exactly didly squat for untold thousands of years, extending no further than the same 'duh... tie this rock to... duh... this stick... and... uh... whack dat head... and..." rudimentary tools they had for thousands of years. All of their mechanical advances came from tweaking Roman designs, which traced back to Greek designs, which traced back to philosophers from Thales forward through Archimedes, etc.
(rant break)
(cont)
ReplyDelete"The Christian ethic of universal brotherhood slowly spread through Europe, and slavery began to disappear."
The Christian ethic and it's recognition of the value of the individual and the importance of their free choice, combined with the wisdom of classical learning (and Aquinas was the BIG push there), as well as 'opportunities' like collapsing political power and things like the Black Death making labor more valuable than swords, helped slavery to recede.
Now it is true that our current crop of idiot philosophers, scientists and politicians are so damned corrupt that they utterly fail to realize that if their ideas suck, if their ideas don't gibe with reality and the reality of human nature, then engineers, craftsmen, and entrepreneurs will have a progressively more difficult time creating new advances or any sort of wealth.
IOW, the economy and society will suck to the extent that our 'intellectual leaders' suck.
Proregressives are “...almost not represented at all in those fields that have proven to be the most effective in transforming the world: engineers, craftsmen and entrepreneurs”
Well... seen the political views from Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Google and Progressive Insurance? Sadly, the human mind has the ability to be sharp eyed in one realm and squeezed tightly shut in others, and there are no human minds which engineer, craft and sell without having at least some conception of ethics and politics which they look towards to guide them in doing so. A society is One, unitary whole, a Bill Gates raised in East Berlin would have spent his life sullenly passing out cold food in soup lines and died an alcoholic mess.
We're currently riding one of the last rings of ripples generated by the pre-20th century worldview... when they've lost their wave, if we don't manage to replace our philosophers, scientists, & politicians with a new crop who recognize and respect reality, well, there's a flip-side to "Nature to be commanded, must be obeyed", and it ain't pretty.
Ok, rant over, back to C++.
(God I Hate c++! Gosh!)
I tend to agree with Van in some respects but took something different from the article. To me, the struggle has always been the desire of some people to rule over others, the elitists versus everyone else. It is when "everyone else" is free to engage in industry and commerce as they choose that we see the advances that simply make life better.
ReplyDeletePhilosophers, scientists and politicans can be elite but not necessarily elitists. The temptation of power is unfortunately more than many can resist. Jefferson and Marx were both philosophers, but what a difference. Jefferson saw the merit of getting out of the way, Marx saw it just the opposite. If anything, the article reinforces the notion that elitists, like Marx, bent on transforming the world seem to never transform it for the better. The elite, like Jefferson on the other hand, see the wisdom of allowing the world to transform itself by the creativity and industry of free people.
Western Europe was more conducive for all the reasons stated in the article to breed the type of philosopher, scientist and politician that would get out of the way of progress, obviuosly with some major exceptions. I would suggest however, that it is the engineer, craftsman and entrepreneur yearning for expression that helps create the cultural and political climate that allows transformations for the better. It is the elitists philosophers, scientists and politicians that resist that yearning because they all know better than everyone else and must impose "order" where they see "chaos". We can see the result of their "transformations" in the old Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Burma and so on.
(Now back to Java and trying to forget everything I know about C++)
Yeah, I pretty much agree with what Trubolotta said (I'd say all, but wouldn't want his toes to get lax).
ReplyDeleteIt's not so much the part of saying that the tradesmen, doer's, etc, can do it on their own without the elites that bothers me, in fact once your standard issue competent human has picked up a decent education, there’s usually little or no reason for the elite to be in their way at all. It's just that having that attitude is an open invitation to the worst and most power hungry of philosophers and elites to step in and corrupt the doer's 'common sense', and soon enough where you had a system, as ours was, where the elites were either once working along with the tradesmen and/or otherwise keeping mostly out of the way to let the doers do what they were doing, things soon become twisted around and turned on their head.
Which is precisely what happened to our system, that was how the proregressives got a hold of our schools and wormed their way into power, through self styled non-elite 'for the people!' uber elites ("We don't need any of that elitist Greek & Roman crap! Just teach the people a trade!"), vomit buckets like Johnathan B. Turner (who I picked on at the end of a recent longwinded post) who urge a more ‘democratic’ education, better suited to their needs. What happens (and happened) next is that the people are no longer inclined to distinguish between what is beautiful, good and true on the one hand, and merely ok on the other; what is proper yields to what is useful and pleasurable; Right and Wrong morphs into pleasure and pain.
They are no longer educated to be skilled at detecting inferior, faulty and dishonest reasoning, and that state of affairs is quickly followed up by ("All wealth is only Physical labor, all managers, financiers and elites are parasites!" and "Workers of the world unite!"), and next thing you know, the non-elitist uber elites are in power, the workmen are soon out of work, and the non-elitist uber elite parasites gleefully feed on the carcass of their dying world.
Nothing more dangerous than 'common sense' notions like thinking deeply or making much of the finest of distinctions, is just an unproductive waste of time.
BTW, saw this yesterday, has two clips from the science historian James Burke's old "Connections" mini-series, that gives a very good (and entertaining) overview of how the Romans tripped up fell (Hint: Had to do with taxes & bureaucrats), how knowledge & craftsmen resurfaced and picked things back up, and what the development of spinning wheels had in common with, and eventually led to, satellite GPS systems.
Burke is always fun to listen to... I don't much care for his conclusions, but his travels through the details are always top-notch.
Trubolotta said "...and trying to forget everything I know about C++"
ReplyDeletesigh... dare to dream.
I just want to clarify how I use the word elite and elitists, the latter which I believe Van is referring to when he uses the expression "non-elitist uber elite parasites." Every area of human activity has its elite, those who excel at what they do and push the edge of discovery, invention and thought forward for the betterment of all mankind. Then you have the Barney Franks and Barack Obamas of the world, inferior minds that excel only in their ability to deceive and prey upon the basest human behavior and failings. Frank and Obama are going to save the world, starting right here in the US of A. Van mentioned Bill Gates earlier, and I have few things to say about him as well.
ReplyDeleteIf there was anything about Western Europe that was distinctly different from the rest of the world it was the embrace of Christianity. Not that this embrace was without its faults (Divine Right of Kings, the Roman Bureaucracy, etc.) but that it had two principles that distinguished it from all other religions (at least in my limited knowledge). The first was the primacy of man as God's creation. When you think of your fellow man in those terms, you may see him in a very different light. The second, but certainly as important was that man is a flawed and fallen creature. If man can't save himself, what gives rise to the arrogance that he can save others?
The elitist (non-elitist uber elite) are free from the opiate of the masses and not restrained by any such beliefs. Man is not a divine creation but a mere accident of nature, a biological mechanism no different than any replaceable machine part. Some men (themselves included of course) are superior to others and can save man from himself. For the elitist, there is no pride in being God's creation and no humility in being a fallen crature. They are above that.
Most of the religions I am familar with outside of Christianity preach and teach a different lesson, unlike that learned by the Western Europeons. You can save yourself and even achieve some level of perfection through ritual, certain practices, what you eat and who you worship. You can earn your way to paradise by the deeds you perform. You can rise above your station in the next life. Those who have succeeded in any of these paths are naturally the elite of those societies, though accidents of birth are certainly permissable.
Bill Gates is an elitist. He didn't start out that way, but he was among the elite of his field. Of course, he was also the beneficiary of family backing and perhaps the most stupid contract ever signed by an American company, IBM. Is Gates going to save Africa with Billy Brand condoms? He thinks so.
So in a nutshell, Christianity teaches both reverance for God's creation and humility about our limits, and I postulate those are the very qualities that circumvent rule by elitists.
BTW Van, I feel your pain! (lol) I grew up in the age of spaghetti code. Along came OOP promising to straighten it all out, and we ended up with spaghetti and meatballs. The problem is not learning C++ as a language per se (it is C after all) but the massive libraries (meatballs) that come with it.
Trubolotta said “…Then you have the Barney Franks and Barack Obamas of the world, inferior minds that excel only in their ability to deceive and prey upon the basest human behavior and failings…”
ReplyDeleteYes, and those are the ones I had in mind, particularly those who are essentially satisfied with the already perfect state of their own ideas and capabilities of and Right to, impose them on others. As well as the mass of mankind being less aware than they are, and therefore necessary to be molded and nudged into what they determine is best for them, or as Rousseau put it, “they must be forced to be free”.
There have always been the power hungry and tyrants, but this is a new, or at least more sharply defined, wrinkle on the scene, and they are central to what has become Proregressivism.
A number of thinker’s went into making that line of thinking possible, Bacon, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza and a great deal of discredit goes to Descartes, and Hume as well, but the one who grasped what their errors could be used for, and deliberately set about putting them to that usage, was Rousseau.
Unlike the other thinkers, Rousseau , didn’t just churn out notions and principles, he gave them a rallying point, a poetic imagery of naturalism, the Nobel Savage and the all wise and benevolent Legislator, more in tune with a semi mystical harmony with nature in politics and primarily education, he gave an exciting rebelliousness to civilization and a new conception of ‘Reason’ that didn’t concern itself so much with facts, but with ‘more authentic feelings’, and the mandate to overturn and disdain established customs and virtues – especially those of Christianity.
Ayn Rand liked to target Kant as the uber-villain of modernity, but one problem with that is that it was well under way before Kant was even heard of. Kant, to be sure, did give the philosophical explanation and justifications (meaning long, convoluted and with enough equivocations and arbitrary assertions as ‘proofs’ to snow the best of minds), but he was dry as dirt and would have been forgotten but for the man who inspired HIM to ‘awaken from his dogmatic slumbers’, Jean Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau captured the imagination, Kant (and later Hegel, Fichte, Wundt) gave it a intellectually respectable leg to stand on, and with that in place, it was simplicity itself for second rate freeloaders like Marx to cash in on.
To get an idea of Rousseau, his first intellectual contribution to modern philosophy was an essay that "Civilization, Arts, Sciences have produced no beneficial effects upon the temper and morality of Man, but in fact have only corrupted him", and even more telling, he made a huge effort to devise a ‘new’ system of music - this was in the general age of Mozart, Bach & Beethoven mind you - of a system of music that sought to eliminate harmonies from music as much as possible (I posted here on Rousseau (with links) and Hobbes).
Get the picture?
Regarding Bill Gates, and adding his many predecessors such as Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, Rockefeller, Carnegie, etc, etc, etc, nearly every business success in our culture, feels inferior to our endarkened intellectual lights, and all the intellectual lights that come from, or care about the respect of wackademia, give their intellectual allegiance to Europe, or try to out-europe the Europeans, and that means finding a business titan who is not in one way or another leaning heavily left, is a rarity. If for no other reason than the fact, that, as Trubolotta said, they give credence to the notion that you can know best and know what is better for the little people to do, because you are so high above them.
ReplyDeleteI work in the Corp. world… if anyone wants to find a thicker nest of leftists outside wackademia, look no further than the Corp Human Resources dept’s… and they absolutely set the PC bar and standards of allowable thought for any college graduate executive who somehow escaped indoctrination at school. The notion that Big Business is in the pocket of the Right, is ludicrous, and has been since the very early 1900’s.
And with some not so important quibbles, I’ll accept your characterization of Christianity and it’s influence and importance to the development of the West – and so it’s being targeted, along with the Founders era of Classical Liberalism, by the proregressives.
Trubolotta said "Along came OOP promising to straighten it all out, and we ended up with spaghetti and meatballs. The problem is not learning C++ as a language per se (it is C after all) but the massive libraries (meatballs) that come with it."
ReplyDeleteLoL, that sums it up well... and dry, crumbly meatballs at that!
Thanks for that link Van. Rousseau is indeed the template for the modern day elitist, the demi-god that is above it all. They are the ultimate zookeepers of the ultimate zoo. To them, ideas like Christianity are for nit-wits worshipping an unseen God while they offer gods in the flesh and a path to true happiness only they can discern. We ordinary folk are just to corrupted and stupid to appreciate them.
ReplyDeleteI have to wonder if this explains the leftist infatuation with Islam and the status given to the fatwahs of Islamic clerics. It is a religion where at any given time a human can become the spokeman for the moon god and use that authority to direct any facet of human life. That's quite a bit of power.
Many achievements are wrongly credited to Islam and properly belong to the cultures that were conquered. Once those cultures were Islamicized, progress stagnated. Most of the Islamic world remains mired in poverty and misery save those with natural resources developed by others, most notably Christians.
In terms of bettering the lot of mankind, both materially and spiritually, Christianity is a winner and Islam (along with many other religions and philosophies) is a loser.
No one is suggesting that an organizing philosophy isn't necessary for an advanced civilization.
ReplyDeleteSuch ideas are necessary, but they don't necessarily come from philosophers.
Thinking is not confined to them.
Nor are great ideas.
Nor are all their ideas beneficial.
Lack of an organizing idea may mean commerce without progress, as in Van's distopian example.
But a bad Philosophy will make the world much darker and more dangerous.
What is worse in the long run:
1) A Wild West/Gold Rush type existence, without much law & order, but with a LOT of free-wheeling innovation and invention going on.
or
2)A well-ordered, "peaceful" world designed on the comprehensive Ivory Tower, Intellectual PHILOSOPHY of Communism.
I'll take #1 all day long.
Gunslinger said “No one is suggesting that an organizing philosophy isn't necessary for an advanced civilization.”
ReplyDeleteWell… I am… actually, depending of course on what you mean by ‘organizing’, but in the direct, active sense, that is exactly what proregressivism is explicitly based upon – organizing society based upon its philosophical notions – which is evil incarnate, and the true source of its attraction and serial failures.
“Such ideas are necessary, but they don't necessarily come from philosophers.”
Ideas which come from philosophers, are almost universally flawed, if not downright false (Descartes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, etc). The better philosophies come from philosophers who spend most of their efforts on observing nature, and people, and teasing their philosophical principles from those observations (Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Adam Smith, Burke, etc). Good philosophy enhances what you already know and are already doing (assuming you aren’t a corrupt leftist sort), Bad philosophy commands you to change and do as it declares.
“Thinking is not confined to them.
Nor are great ideas.
Nor are all their ideas beneficial.”
Exactly so. And under the influence of a good philosophy, those are the conclusions you will come to. Those are not the conclusions likely to come from someone raised in USSR, Cuba, N. Korea, Berkeley, etc.
“Lack of an organizing idea may mean commerce without progress, as in Van's distopian example.”
Stepping over the ‘organizing’, my point with that example wasn’t that there would be commerce without progress, but that it was a ridiculous notion (derived from bad philosophy) that there could continue to be commerce at all, or that products of an advanced technological nature could even continue to be created, let alone understood or sold, in such a scenario.
“But a bad Philosophy will make the world much darker and more dangerous.”
Absolutely no argument there whatsoever.
(break)
“1) A Wild West/Gold Rush type existence, without much law & order, but with a LOT of free-wheeling innovation and invention going on.
ReplyDeleteor
2)A well-ordered, "peaceful" world designed on the comprehensive Ivory Tower, Intellectual PHILOSOPHY of Communism.”
;- )
This might sting, but the notion that the “Wild West/Gold Rush type existence” contained ANY “free-wheeling innovation and invention going on”, without much Law and Order, is a product of bad PHILOSOPHY!
A point which snuck up and whacked me on one of those rare occasions that I actually tried to do some light reading. I made the mistake of picking up a thin little Western from a WalMart on vacation in Gulf Shores Alabama, Louis L'Amour's "Sackett", and, well, I'll spare you, but it's a short post (by my standards), "Louis L'Amour: Laconic Law - From Cicero to Blackstone to You", but it illustrates how there was ZERO prosperity in the wild west, until solid steady hands, with level heads fed on Blackstone and the like, brought the rule of Law and property rights to town.
Absent that - tumble weeds and boot hill was it.
“I'll take #1 all day long.”
Maybe, but without reference to a proper philosophy, #2 is what you’ll bring home. The point of all of this is that freedom and innovation do not happen because they escaped from bad philosophy, but only in the presence of Good Philosophy, and the better the philosophy, the more it fosters freedom and innovation. Hopefully it is obvious that Good Philosophy is not intrusive or only felt from extensive intellectual aerobics – it is best felt, and least realized, when it’s few simple principles are learned and second nature.
If you want to see a fantastic illustration of freewheeling innovation and independent Men exhibiting the types of lives, attitudes and actions lived under (almost unknowingly) the influence of Good Philosophy, read Sacket.
BTW, my first comment was, truth be known, prompted less by your post, than a meeting we’d just had, where one damned fool had declared his intent to deliver up a thousand voters who he was sure he could convince to ‘vote twice’. I nearly hit the F’ing roof. And then shortly after I read your post, and it was too darned easy to read him into it. Sorry, I’m perhaps a bit over protective of freedom, but it’s got the deadliest of enemies lurking under the best of intentions.
I know, I know… ‘insufferable’ is one of the more printable names I sometimes hear used.
ReplyDeleteI think this sums up what I mean best, from the end of my “Sackett” post,
“it comes down to intelligence or stupidity, life or death - That is the very real choice we are in the process of facing. And it is your responsibility, as a civilized person, someone who is a Law Abiding citizen, to understand the Law and give it a place to abide, and act from and through. L'amour has his character William Tell Sackett again sum up the situation admirably,
"Only, the way I figure, no man has the right to be ignorant. In a country like this, ignorance is a crime. If a man is going to vote, if he is going to take a part in his country and its government, then it's up to him to understand."
The Truth of the Law, whispered down the ages, from Cicero, to Seneca, to Blackstone, to the Founding Fathers, to a 'fictional' American Cowboy's lips... to you - will you take heed of it? Will you give the Law a place to abide?”
Ok, leaving it alone now.
Van....I'm not saying philosophy isn't necessary...only that it doesn't have to be Ivory Tower PHILOSOPHERS who do it.
ReplyDeleteOh.
ReplyDeleteOk. I see. Nevermind.
"... that it doesn't have to be Ivory Tower PHILOSOPHERS who do it."
And for the record, I'm generally highly opposed to Ivory Tower 'philosophers', they tend to be much less Philo's of Wisdom, and much more Miso's (hater's) of Wisdom... what else can you say about someone taking it upon themselves to 'educate' the brightest youths that "No one can really know anything at all".
Misophers. Plain and simple.
I love your deeply wonderful comments though...even if they're in opposition. I learn so much.
ReplyDeleteThanks for being here.
Me,too! (thanks for the L'Amour post,"Van").I admit,sometimes I understand that big-wheel Nazi (Goebells?)'s comment "when I hear the word culture,that's when I reach for my revolver"...it's not about "culture" itself,it's the academic dogmatism.I love intellectual pursuit,but not the institutuionalizing of "Academia",where credentials,not credulity, become all-important.A recent 30-year reunion with friends hit an "awkward moment" when someone asked me "Why didn't you go into education,become a teacher---why are you a machinist?". I replied that True Ideas live on outside the "groves/graves of Academia" or some such cliche,and "Ya gotta keep grounded in Truth,Dude,and I make tools that others use to make things that make your life easier...and 'smart guys' in academia tend to kill millions with their "lofty ideals".As I said,awkward...
ReplyDeleteGunslinger said "... even if they're in opposition. I learn so much.
ReplyDeleteThanks for being here."
Nods, tips hat, "Ma'am".
(Made my day with that, thanks)