‘The Open Society’ Revisited

[Philosophy Now]

Alan Haworth on Karl Popper, his vision of a pragmatic, liberal society, and his assessment of its philosophical enemies.

http://philosophynow.org/issues/38/The_ ... _Revisited

[spike]

Alan Haworth tells us about Popper's open society concept. Haworth adds something that Popper didn't elaborate on, that closed, cocooned societies are not so easy to sustain, especially in this age of mass communications and economic interconnectedness. I don't recall Popper ever saying that closed societies would eventually collapse due to outside pressure but when the Soviet Union succumbed to it he enthusiastically responded with something like 'I told you so'.

But when it comes to sustainability there is something that neither Haworth and Popper thought about, that closed societies in the long run are unsustainable because inherently they are incapable of renewing or transforming themselves in order to continue. In order for societies to remain sustainable they have to be receptive to change, new blood and alternatives. Authoritarian, closed societies like those of fascism and communism never had any desire for new and alternative ways of governing, hence their methods growing old and stale, hence their nonexistence today.

[chaz wyman]

Alan Haworth on Karl Popper, his vision of a pragmatic, liberal society, and his assessment of its philosophical enemies.

http://philosophynow.org/issues/38/The_ ... _Revisited

I quite liked this article, but as soon as he mentioned falsification I knew that the writer would inappropriately set Popper's political theory of against his scientific one.
And with that enfolding inevitability, he did so on the last paragraph!!
Ethics and morals are not to be decided by a computer, as we have seen in another failed thread. Moral and cultural values cannot be quantified like the pressure in a gas bottle.
Science relies on the conceptualisation of closed systems in which distinct phenomena can be tested against controlled parameters. No humans society is like that , not even the most closed ones like Korea - thankfully.
The point about all societies is that they are a process, they evolve. One thing the writer failed to mention is that Popper was forced to accept that Natural Selection could never be falsified and had to offer it an an exception to his rule. Not that even NS can be used to explain the utter complexity in human behaviour society and civilisation - not in a way that invalidates Darwin, but in a way that accepts that the theory is not predictive. A closed society such as Plato's makes a false assumption that stasis can be avoided by static rules. (pun intended)
So The Open Society is not a scientific or epistemological thesis, or is it supposed to be compared with the other part of Popper's thinking: it is what it always intended to be, a thesis against tyranny, social and mental.

[chaz wyman]

Alan Haworth tells us about Popper's open society concept. Haworth adds something that Popper didn't elaborate on, that closed, cocooned societies are not so easy to sustain, especially in this age of mass communications and economic interconnectedness. I don't recall Popper ever saying that closed societies would eventually collapse due to outside pressure but when the Soviet Union succumbed to it he enthusiastically responded with something like 'I told you so'.

Maybe you could cite that? I do not think Popper would never have said that, as it would have undermined his thesis about the Poverty of Historicism. Popper did not think the fall of the Soviet was inevitable.
But when it comes to sustainability there is something that neither Haworth and Popper thought about, that closed societies in the long run are unsustainable because inherently they are incapable of renewing or transforming themselves in order to continue.

True - there is a lesson here about adherence to an out of date American Constitution.

In order for societies to remain sustainable they have to be receptive to change, new blood and alternatives. Authoritarian, closed societies like those of fascism and communism never had any desire for new and alternative ways of governing, hence their methods growing old and stale, hence their nonexistence today.

There is nothing inevitable about the failure of closed societies, there have been 100s of them that lasted for centuries, and 100s of open ones that have failed.
In fact most Empires in history were closed, and their failure was not due to that. Most open societies have succumbed to closed ones.

The Soviet Union collapsed from within. Nothing the bellicose West did encouraged that, nor did it make it happen any earlier. In fact the outside pressure from people like Thatcher and Ray-gun, put power in the hands of the tyrants by unifying the Soviets against an outside threat. This is what is still happening in Iran. Day by day the regime is strengthened by diverting attention from its own abuses and pointing to the threat by the West and Israel.
The Left democratic forces in Iran are made to look weak as they urge talking to the West. The Islamic right pillories their weakness and urges unity against the common enemy.

The Soviets changed because of the Beetles and Jeans, not because the threat of war, or external pressure.

[spike]

A letter to the editor on the subject that appeared in issue 91:

"Perhaps it is a coincidence that Karl Popper was included in the issue devoted to environmental sustainability (Issue 88). Popper isn’t usually thought of as an environmental philosopher, but Alistair MacFarlane’s article on him got me thinking that perhaps his fierce anti-totalitarianism makes him one. To get to environmental sustainability, first there has to be an awareness of the degradation and depletion of the environment, then a change in human behavior to improve things. So sustainability is essentially impossible under totalitarianism, because any information about the degradation and depletion of the environment will be controlled by the state, and kept secret. For example, in the Soviet Union, lead contamination was many times higher than in the West. There was also no public scrutiny of hazardous nuclear waste dumps or chemical and oil spills. Had they known, people would have demanded change.

The Soviet regime didn’t share such information because that would’ve compromised it. Similarly, the Soviets never liked to announce major accidents or catastrophes. All this was made worse by the fact that the distrustful society the Soviet Union bred didn’t generate the wherewithal or know-how to motivate people and effectively deal with environmental disasters. Instead, such matters were pushed under the proverbial rug, to the detriment of everybody.

The creation of sustainability needs independent networking and feedback systems which totalitarianism inherently doesn’t tolerate. Also, it takes a certain volunteerism and personal willingness to achieve sustainability – something that is uncommon in totalitarian states since they rarely encouraged any personal stake in the wellbeing of the state.

Popper was probably buoyed up by the glasnost that eventually came to the Soviet Union. But he may have not appreciated the significance of the Open Society he championed as being fundamentally important for sustaining the environment – or any system, for that matter."

[Impenitent]

"We've always been at war with Eastasia"

-Imp

[chaz wyman]

A letter to the editor on the subject that appeared in issue 91:

"Perhaps it is a coincidence that Karl Popper was included in the issue devoted to environmental sustainability (Issue 88). Popper isn’t usually thought of as an environmental philosopher, but Alistair MacFarlane’s article on him got me thinking that perhaps his fierce anti-totalitarianism makes him one. To get to environmental sustainability, first there has to be an awareness of the degradation and depletion of the environment, then a change in human behavior to improve things. So sustainability is essentially impossible under totalitarianism, because any information about the degradation and depletion of the environment will be controlled by the state, and kept secret. For example, in the Soviet Union, lead contamination was many times higher than in the West. There was also no public scrutiny of hazardous nuclear waste dumps or chemical and oil spills. Had they known, people would have demanded change.

The Soviet regime didn’t share such information because that would’ve compromised it. Similarly, the Soviets never liked to announce major accidents or catastrophes. All this was made worse by the fact that the distrustful society the Soviet Union bred didn’t generate the wherewithal or know-how to motivate people and effectively deal with environmental disasters. Instead, such matters were pushed under the proverbial rug, to the detriment of everybody.

The creation of sustainability needs independent networking and feedback systems which totalitarianism inherently doesn’t tolerate. Also, it takes a certain volunteerism and personal willingness to achieve sustainability – something that is uncommon in totalitarian states since they rarely encouraged any personal stake in the wellbeing of the state.

Popper was probably buoyed up by the glasnost that eventually came to the Soviet Union. But he may have not appreciated the significance of the Open Society he championed as being fundamentally important for sustaining the environment – or any system, for that matter."

So where does it say he said "I told you so!"?

[spike]

From an obituary in the NYT:

In a 1992 interview with The Sunday Times in London, he remarked on the collapse of the Marxist states of Eastern Europe.

"I will not except to say, 'I told you so.' I just knew that these were beastly regimes and I kept saying so. That is all.

[chaz wyman]

From an obituary in the NYT:

In a 1992 interview with The Sunday Times in London, he remarked on the collapse of the Marxist states of Eastern Europe.

"I will not except to say, 'I told you so.' I just knew that these were beastly regimes and I kept saying so. That is all.

That is not the same as saying he predicted the fall of the Soviet.
Please link!

[Arising_uk]

Nice to see my old political philosophy lecturer is still going.

[spike]

Chaz: "The Soviet Union collapsed from within [not from external pressure]"

In the long run that is what happened, because the Soviet Union was decaying internally. The decay was self-inflicted because of the singular minded governing ideology it picked. If left alone the Union would have taken longer to collapse. But it happened sooner than later because of outside pressure; it could not keep up with its opponent, the more diverse, agile, technologically advanced West. The world was passing the Soviet Union by, hence its collapse. The world was also becoming more integrated, hence its collapse.

Popper didn't predict this nor did anybody else. People thought the world would always be divided into two camps, them and us.

[chaz wyman]

Chaz: "The Soviet Union collapsed from within [not from external pressure]"

In the long run that is what happened, because the Soviet Union was decaying internally. The decay was self-inflicted because of the singular minded governing ideology it picked. If left alone the Union would have taken longer to collapse. But it happened sooner than later because of outside pressure; it could not keep up with its opponent, the more diverse, agile, technologically advanced West. The world was passing the Soviet Union by, hence its collapse. The world was also becoming more integrated, hence its collapse.

Popper didn't predict this nor did anybody else. People thought the world would always be divided into two camps, them and us.

If left alone the Union would have taken longer to collapse
You are absolutely wrong here.
The fear of war kept the draconian regime in power far longer than would otherwise have been the case.
Reagan and Thatcher might have claimed credit for the fall of the Soviet but that is absurd.
There were many missed opportunities along the way for serious detante, such as Kruschev's visit to Nixon, but the leaders, and the military interests of both sides found much more political capital by maintaining the status quo.

We would have done much better selling them more beetles LPs and jeans - because that did more to overthrow the Kremlin than anything else.
Gorbachev loved the Beetles and had to listen to them on old X-Ray sheets re-cycled as 45 records.

I agree that Popper did not say "I told you so", as that would have been in direct contradiction to his Poverty of Historicism. His critique of Marx was based on Marx's false claims to know the future by some kind of Pseudo-evolutionary scheme of his own imagination, and I doubt Popper would have made any serious attempts to predict the future himself.
I image that Spike is taking bollocks on this point, but I am willing to see his reference.

Where have you been hiding, btw?

[spike]

Alan Haworth writes, "In short, we have ‘globalisation’. It would be interesting to know what Popper would have made of this. (One thing you can be sure of is that he would have been deeply unimpressed by Fukuyama’s historicist ‘end of history’ story.)"

I think Popper would begrudgingly accept globalization. He would see that in the end it would lead to more open societies, societies based on science and not ruinous ideologies, religions or superstitions. However, being an intellectual he probably would have preferred to see an open society occur in a more rational way, other than though the crass, hurly burly ways of capitalism and economic development.

As for the 'end of history', Fukuyama's argument encompasses the end of a particular history, the end of humankind's ideological struggle in determining how best to govern humankind, considering its needs and aspirations, and make it a wholly open society. So I think Popper would appreciate the merits of Fukuyama's argument.

[chaz wyman]

Alan Haworth writes, "In short, we have ‘globalisation’. It would be interesting to know what Popper would have made of this. (One thing you can be sure of is that he would have been deeply unimpressed by Fukuyama’s historicist ‘end of history’ story.)"

I think Popper would begrudgingly accept globalization. He would see that in the end it would lead to more open societies, societies based on science and not ruinous ideologies, religions or superstitions. However, being an intellectual he probably would have preferred to see an open society occur in a more rational way, other than though the crass, hurly burly ways of capitalism and economic development.

As for the 'end of history', Fukuyama's argument encompasses the end of a particular history, the end of humankind's ideological struggle in determining how best to govern humankind, considering its needs and aspirations, and make it a wholly open society. So I think Popper would appreciate the merits of Fukuyama's argument.

You do talk a lot of bollocks. The poverty of historicism is not a case for "the end of history", but the reckless nonsense that says we can predict the pathway of history. Popper is not saying that history is at en end, only twat like Fukwad would say that, Popper is aware that history continues, in unpredictable ways. Fukwad's "end of.." is the worst type of historicism and would have slated Fukwad had he still lived.

[spike]

You do talk a lot of bollocks. The poverty of historicism is not a case for "the end of history", but the reckless nonsense that says we can predict the pathway of history. Popper is not saying that history is at en end, only twat like Fukwad would say that, Popper is aware that history continues, in unpredictable ways. Fukwad's "end of.." is the worst type of historicism and would have slated Fukwad had he still lived.

It appears by this rant and butchering up of an idea that history has not been kind to the writer.