“Stuck in steerage on a sinking liner, the SS Neoliberal, hull crushed open by the iceberg of economic reality, the captains of industry drunk at the helm still convinced of their omnipotence, and no lifeboats on board because the designers said it was unsinkable, immutable: a self-evident truth.”
It's funny because the self-evident truth part precisely what they decried about socialist thought, i.e., the workers in possession of the means of production was the inevitable end of history. And here this cabal think that markets as the omnipotent guiding force is the inevitable end of history, and are willing to ram us into the iceberg rather than alter course.
My favourite essay of yours to date Alan. I nodded along aggressively to this in particular: "Politics has become an expression of faith, yet irrespective of political faiths, everyone fills the void with immaterial alternate realities. And nothing is held sacred."
Many of us--the non-psychopathic ones, at least--seem to live in a delusion of disenchanted Machine-ism characterised by naive views of scientism as a source of cosmic redemption, deranged views of human nature, and a blind disregard of our outrageously precarious existential risk landscape. These views are ushering in bizarre transhumanist projects among other anti-human scientistic disasters.
Where is our widespread acceptance of infinite mystery and the subsequent recognition of truth seeking as an inherently social endeavour? Where is our explicit acknowledgement of love's primacy and the subsequent fundamentality of inter-relation between persons and nature? These questions, while somewhat trite and fully cliche, seem paramount nonetheless.
That delineation between the scientism side and the mystery elements, I thought was very well described in the Unherd interview with Dr Iain McGilchrist. We veer into scientism as soon as we assume science can answer every question for us.
But an analogy I like to use for the dichotomy between what science can and cannot tell us is that of building a house; we require science to know that the materials we are building with are robust, that the angles of the walls will support the structure, etc. But science can't tell us what colour to paint it, or how to decorate it, or what will make it a home.
The problem now is that those latter questions, to the Scientism crowd at least, are portrayed as fluffy and cliche, as you say. But as someone with both a humanities undergrad (and I maintain that I'm still a humanities kid at heart) that is now in science, I cannot understand why we view this as a dichotomy. If the centrifrugal forces of the Enlightenment and Romantic Revolutions taught us anything, it is that having a tension between these forces enriches, rather than detracts from, the advancement both of human knowledge and human experience.
I read again today, and this rang so true it really stayed with me:
"The neoliberal model sought to replace society with markets acting as a self-correcting, omnipotent guiding social force: the social order itself. It has been a colossal failure. Its post-2008 authoritarian version of coerced austerity on the poor and socialist policies for the rich has been even more corrosive. In terms of catastrophic failures of economic theory, it is arguably second only to 20th Century communism."
The idea that we're trapped in a sort of mirror-image Soviet Union, just with Mammon replacing Marx, is both clarifying and unsettling.
Yes, I find the more I really scrutinise the economic ideologues of the past 40yrs, the more I find parallels with the Marxist creed they so despise.
As if we are stuck in our own loop now, not unlike the Soviet Union in the 1980's, where we all know this model is a catastrophe, but we invent this alternate reality in which we pretend like it is the only game in town.
Feynman always said we must not fool ourselves, and we're the easiest to fool...fait accompli!
“Stuck in steerage on a sinking liner, the SS Neoliberal, hull crushed open by the iceberg of economic reality, the captains of industry drunk at the helm still convinced of their omnipotence, and no lifeboats on board because the designers said it was unsinkable, immutable: a self-evident truth.”
Goddamn dude, this is so good. Brilliant essay!
Thanks mate, glad you enjoyed it!
It's funny because the self-evident truth part precisely what they decried about socialist thought, i.e., the workers in possession of the means of production was the inevitable end of history. And here this cabal think that markets as the omnipotent guiding force is the inevitable end of history, and are willing to ram us into the iceberg rather than alter course.
My favourite essay of yours to date Alan. I nodded along aggressively to this in particular: "Politics has become an expression of faith, yet irrespective of political faiths, everyone fills the void with immaterial alternate realities. And nothing is held sacred."
Many of us--the non-psychopathic ones, at least--seem to live in a delusion of disenchanted Machine-ism characterised by naive views of scientism as a source of cosmic redemption, deranged views of human nature, and a blind disregard of our outrageously precarious existential risk landscape. These views are ushering in bizarre transhumanist projects among other anti-human scientistic disasters.
Where is our widespread acceptance of infinite mystery and the subsequent recognition of truth seeking as an inherently social endeavour? Where is our explicit acknowledgement of love's primacy and the subsequent fundamentality of inter-relation between persons and nature? These questions, while somewhat trite and fully cliche, seem paramount nonetheless.
Nice work man.
Thanks buddy, always appreciate your inputs.
That delineation between the scientism side and the mystery elements, I thought was very well described in the Unherd interview with Dr Iain McGilchrist. We veer into scientism as soon as we assume science can answer every question for us.
But an analogy I like to use for the dichotomy between what science can and cannot tell us is that of building a house; we require science to know that the materials we are building with are robust, that the angles of the walls will support the structure, etc. But science can't tell us what colour to paint it, or how to decorate it, or what will make it a home.
The problem now is that those latter questions, to the Scientism crowd at least, are portrayed as fluffy and cliche, as you say. But as someone with both a humanities undergrad (and I maintain that I'm still a humanities kid at heart) that is now in science, I cannot understand why we view this as a dichotomy. If the centrifrugal forces of the Enlightenment and Romantic Revolutions taught us anything, it is that having a tension between these forces enriches, rather than detracts from, the advancement both of human knowledge and human experience.
Great analogy. I'll be stealing that 👌
great piece! thanks!
Thanks, appreciate you reading!
I read again today, and this rang so true it really stayed with me:
"The neoliberal model sought to replace society with markets acting as a self-correcting, omnipotent guiding social force: the social order itself. It has been a colossal failure. Its post-2008 authoritarian version of coerced austerity on the poor and socialist policies for the rich has been even more corrosive. In terms of catastrophic failures of economic theory, it is arguably second only to 20th Century communism."
The idea that we're trapped in a sort of mirror-image Soviet Union, just with Mammon replacing Marx, is both clarifying and unsettling.
Thanks for giving me so much to think about!
"Mammon replacing Marx" - brilliant!
Yes, I find the more I really scrutinise the economic ideologues of the past 40yrs, the more I find parallels with the Marxist creed they so despise.
As if we are stuck in our own loop now, not unlike the Soviet Union in the 1980's, where we all know this model is a catastrophe, but we invent this alternate reality in which we pretend like it is the only game in town.
Feynman always said we must not fool ourselves, and we're the easiest to fool...fait accompli!