Diversity, Inclusion, Equity

[Immanuel Can]

I think a key tenet of modernity is that truth exists and that is can be known through reason.

It was. But that turned out not to be tenable.

The problem was not reason itself...but that reason is actually a method, not a universal set of conclusions. Like any mechanism or method, it's only as good as the stuff you put into it.

What Modernism put into that "machine" was a set of assumptions that included things like, "The world is a purely rational place, subject to science in all aspects; what is not amenable to physical sciences is delusion," and "There is no objective thing called 'morality'; it's a mere sociological epiphenomenon or personal delusion that anything can be objectively right or wrong," and "Human beings are fit objects for scientific testing, management and manipulation for control." Later, they added, "The universe is a product of only time, chance and physical causes, and has no inherent meaning, direction or purpose." There were others, of course, but those were some fundamental ones. And since the raw product that was being "rationalized" was bad, the products that came out of the far end were also bad. But they were "rational," if the foundational assumptions of Modernism had been correct. They never were, however.

Meanwhile, Modernism turned out to be highly utopian. It believed, for example, in the Myth of Progress -- that is, that human beings are the products of a long process of evolution not merely in physical things, but also in moral ones; so all we have to do is cooperate with the progressive process, and things will continually get better. Sweet reason would conquer the world, and everybody would soon become scientific, orderly, well-managed, systematic, healthy, wealthy, technologically sophisticated and maybe even, one day, immortal.

What destroyed this delusion in actuality (if not yet in the minds of many Modernist ideologues) was WW1 and 2, especially; because in them, the Modernist skills of science and technology were bent to the pure project of producing as many corpses as possible by as many nasty means as could be devised, human sciences were turned to the task of mobilizing armies, and rationalization was employed to manage munitions factory productions and the train schedule to Auschwitz.

So much for the myth that modernization automatically produces moral betterment. That was the end of that.

Are you familiar with the "Alan Sokal" affair? He was a scientist that got tired of pomo BS... fancy words that are put together in sentences devoid of meaning. So he wrote a piece of BS... literally, he intentionally wrote piece of garbage and submitted it to a pomo journal. Published. He was criticized for the effort and the pomo folk said "he didn't understand" (typical refrain) but I think he did prove a point.

Absolutely. And, of course, of the subsequent "Grievance Studies Affair" of Boghossian, Lindsay and Pluckrose. (I have their book on order, actually.) I totally loved what they did. I know that world, the world of academia, quite well...and they stuck a pin in a huge, pretentious balloon of nonsense, I would say.

Still, the problem with the term "Postmodernism,"is that as a term, it's actually huge and general. Some commenters actually trace its beginning back to things like the Pruitt-Igoe debacle in the mid '70s. But there was some hint of it earlier on, in the work of the Dadaists and Expressionists, or Kafka, or Kurt Schwitters and other interbellum artists and writers. Even back in the '20s, it was being seen that the so-called "Enlightenment Project" was producing some unexpectedly nasty fruit, and thoughtful people were beginning to criticize the mad dash toward Modernist goals.

So when we say something is "Postmodern," we could even be speaking of something from the 1920s, really. However, the full theorizing of Postmodernism seems to have been done in the '60s and '70s, so far as I can tell, and it really didn't enter the public imagination as a term until well into the 1990s, I think. And CRT, though it comes from the Frankfurt School of Horkheimer et al in the 1930s, didn't really get to its current size and influence until more recently, perhaps twenty years ago. Before then, it was one option, but not necessarily the controlling option in the universities, I would say. At least, that's how it went in my experience.

Postmodernism's complex. It's not really just one idea, but many, many ideas. They share in common a skepticism to practically everything (except the Postmodern narrative itself), and a critical view of Modernism. However, I don't think we beat Postmodernism by retreating into Modernism, because Postmodernism is actually right about some of the critical things it points out in which Modernism was clearly tragically failing. We don't want nothing but more mechanization, rationalization, sterilization, automation, centralized control, bureaucracy, conformity, environmental damage, dehumanization, objectification, manipulation, demoralization, mass management, and so on. They're ultimately pretty awful, and they're the fruit of Modernism.

[Immanuel Can]

There is always going to be a serious and potentially conflictual relationship between diversity and inclusion.
I think they can both go with equity, but they cannot all go together.

That's quite right, I would say.

The only way to make "equity" happen is to force things to become equal, because things clearly aren't naturally equal. So that means one has to us power to make "equity" come about, and use it unequally. One might raise the lowly, but it's not always possible to equalize in that way. For example, one cannot necessarily make every person into a genius or a super-athlete. So that means that the only real way to produce equity is to pull down the lofty, the mighty, the successful, the functional to the level of the lowly, the weak, the unsuccessful and the dysfunctional, and to do it by power.

Ironically, to get equity, one has to treat people unequally, therefore. One has to brutalize and rob the successful in order to pay off the unsuccessful. Everything has to be brought down to the lowest "equity" denominator.

That's what makes equity different from equality, makes envy its primary driving motive, and makes it such a horrible ideal.

[Sculptor]

There is always going to be a serious and potentially conflictual relationship between diversity and inclusion.
I think they can both go with equity, but they cannot all go together.

That's quite right, I would say.

The only way to make "equity" happen is to force things to become equal, because things clearly aren't naturally equal. So that means one has to us power to make "equity" come about, and use it unequally. One might raise the lowly, but it's not always possible to equalize in that way. For example, one cannot necessarily make every person into a genius or a super-athlete. So that means that the only real way to produce equity is to pull down the lofty, the mighty, the successful, the functional to the level of the lowly, the weak, the unsuccessful and the dysfunctional, and to do it by power.

Ironically, to get equity, one has to treat people unequally, therefore. One has to brutalize and rob the successful in order to pay off the unsuccessful. Everything has to be brought down to the lowest "equity" denominator.

That's what makes equity different from equality, makes envy its primary driving motive, and makes it such a horrible ideal.

That's not quite what I meant.
Rightwingers like yourself always, either deliberately, or through ignorance misconstrue the meaning of "equality" by demanding that such thing is impossible since we are all different. I beg to differ. Equality has always been about equality under the law; equality of opporunity and equal access to the resources of society.
The real tension is between Inclusion and Difference, but equality can be applied to either, but not both. If people want to be different, you can't want to be different, and have different access to things because you are different: gay, black, white, female, male, trans, christian, muslim ad nauseam, AND expect to enjoy inclusion.

If you want to be "different" and assert that there are key differences, indelible, then you shall have to expect to be treated differently. Treated like a white person; treated like a homosexual - what ever that might mean. In circumstances like this equality of opportunity has to be tailored to ignore those differences, since the claim of the indentity politics brigade cannot avoid claims for special treatment.
Inclusion has to ignore difference since there can be no other path between it and equality but even handedness, colour blindness, gender blindness and so forth.

[KLewchuk]

I think a key tenet of modernity is that truth exists and that is can be known through reason.

It was. But that turned out not to be tenable.

The problem was not reason itself...but that reason is actually a method, not a universal set of conclusions. Like any mechanism or method, it's only as good as the stuff you put into it.

What Modernism put into that "machine" was a set of assumptions that included things like, "The world is a purely rational place, subject to science in all aspects; what is not amenable to physical sciences is delusion," and "There is no objective thing called 'morality'; it's a mere sociological epiphenomenon or personal delusion that anything can be objectively right or wrong," and "Human beings are fit objects for scientific testing, management and manipulation for control." Later, they added, "The universe is a product of only time, chance and physical causes, and has no inherent meaning, direction or purpose." There were others, of course, but those were some fundamental ones. And since the raw product that was being "rationalized" was bad, the products that came out of the far end were also bad. But they were "rational," if the foundational assumptions of Modernism had been correct. They never were, however.

Meanwhile, Modernism turned out to be highly utopian. It believed, for example, in the Myth of Progress -- that is, that human beings are the products of a long process of evolution not merely in physical things, but also in moral ones; so all we have to do is cooperate with the progressive process, and things will continually get better. Sweet reason would conquer the world, and everybody would soon become scientific, orderly, well-managed, systematic, healthy, wealthy, technologically sophisticated and maybe even, one day, immortal.

What destroyed this delusion in actuality (if not yet in the minds of many Modernist ideologues) was WW1 and 2, especially; because in them, the Modernist skills of science and technology were bent to the pure project of producing as many corpses as possible by as many nasty means as could be devised, human sciences were turned to the task of mobilizing armies, and rationalization was employed to manage munitions factory productions and the train schedule to Auschwitz.

So much for the myth that modernization automatically produces moral betterment. That was the end of that.

Are you familiar with the "Alan Sokal" affair? He was a scientist that got tired of pomo BS... fancy words that are put together in sentences devoid of meaning. So he wrote a piece of BS... literally, he intentionally wrote piece of garbage and submitted it to a pomo journal. Published. He was criticized for the effort and the pomo folk said "he didn't understand" (typical refrain) but I think he did prove a point.

Absolutely. And, of course, of the subsequent "Grievance Studies Affair" of Boghossian, Lindsay and Pluckrose. (I have their book on order, actually.) I totally loved what they did. I know that world, the world of academia, quite well...and they stuck a pin in a huge, pretentious balloon of nonsense, I would say.

Still, the problem with the term "Postmodernism,"is that as a term, it's actually huge and general. Some commenters actually trace its beginning back to things like the Pruitt-Igoe debacle in the mid '70s. But there was some hint of it earlier on, in the work of the Dadaists and Expressionists, or Kafka, or Kurt Schwitters and other interbellum artists and writers. Even back in the '20s, it was being seen that the so-called "Enlightenment Project" was producing some unexpectedly nasty fruit, and thoughtful people were beginning to criticize the mad dash toward Modernist goals.

So when we say something is "Postmodern," we could even be speaking of something from the 1920s, really. However, the full theorizing of Postmodernism seems to have been done in the '60s and '70s, so far as I can tell, and it really didn't enter the public imagination as a term until well into the 1990s, I think. And CRT, though it comes from the Frankfurt School of Horkheimer et al in the 1930s, didn't really get to its current size and influence until more recently, perhaps twenty years ago. Before then, it was one option, but not necessarily the controlling option in the universities, I would say. At least, that's how it went in my experience.

Postmodernism's complex. It's not really just one idea, but many, many ideas. They share in common a skepticism to practically everything (except the Postmodern narrative itself), and a critical view of Modernism. However, I don't think we beat Postmodernism by retreating into Modernism, because Postmodernism is actually right about some of the critical things it points out in which Modernism was clearly tragically failing. We don't want nothing but more mechanization, rationalization, sterilization, automation, centralized control, bureaucracy, conformity, environmental damage, dehumanization, objectification, manipulation, demoralization, mass management, and so on. They're ultimately pretty awful, and they're the fruit of Modernism.

One thing I, and others, have found interesting about pomo is it's inherent paradox (i.e. there is only one truth, that there is no truth except for the truth that there is no truth).

Which begs and interesting question. For some people, a paradox would be an indication of an error in an argument. Others appear to be able to hold such logical paradox which makes one wonder if pomo serves a certain psychological need. Stephen Hicks has commented on this; why would a person hold such a paradox:
Cognitive disintegration?
Unsophisticated thinking?
Aversion to truth (e.g. a convert from fundamentalism)?
Other values (i.e. easier to hold the paradox than seek to resolve it)?

I have the Lyndsay / Pluckrose book on my table. Also, Hicks.

Disagree somewhat with your WWII example. I agree that this was a catalyst for a response against modernity, but I don't think it was necessarily an appropriate response. Yes, technology was used for terrible ends in WWII but do we really believe that a cause was too much critical thinking? Really? Maybe too much Nietzche and Kant but not too much critical thinking.

[Immanuel Can]

Rightwingers like yourself always, either deliberately, or through ignorance misconstrue the meaning of "equality" by demanding that such thing is impossible since we are all different.

I didn't say it's "impossible." I'd say it's unethical and totalitarian. That's quite a different argument.

Equality has always been about equality under the law; equality of opporunity and equal access to the resources of society.

Until now. Now, the Left is making it about "equity," equalization, reparations, historical guilt, and a whole lot of other such nonsense.

Inclusion has to ignore difference since there can be no other path between it and equality but even handedness, colour blindness, gender blindness and so forth.

I agree that's what we ought to do... be blind to things like race. But today's Left won't have that. They want reparations. They want advantages. They want affirmative action. They want the high moral ground, and a new share of the pie, whether they've earned any of it or not. And they don't want to be blind to things like race, but rather to use them as identifiers for the "victims" and the "oppressors."

Your view is actually that of the moderates on the right, and of the traditional liberals. It's not at all the view of the modern Left.

[Immanuel Can]

One thing I, and others, have found interesting about pomo is it's inherent paradox (i.e. there is only one truth, that there is no truth except for the truth that there is no truth).

Yes. There are two types of relativism, really: epistemological and moral. Epistemological relativism says "There are no true facts," and moral relativism says "There are no objective values."

But epistemological relativism is obviously stupid, because all you have to ask is, "Is ER true," and it has to say "No" in order to remain rational. Something so self-defeating is obviously nuts. It's moral relativism that represents the persistent problem.

Hicks.

A sensible man.

Disagree somewhat with your WWII example. I agree that this was a catalyst for a response against modernity, but I don't think it was necessarily an appropriate response. Yes, technology was used for terrible ends in WWII but do we really believe that a cause was too much critical thinking?

Of course not. But PoMo's are not against critical thinking. They're against a lot of other stuff, but they love to be critical.

Modernism's fault was not its critical thinking. It was all the other things I was mentioning, such as rationalization, standardization, uniformity, amorality, consumerism, instrumentalism, manipulation, mechanization, globalism, militarism, and so on. However, the PoMos are right that Modernity was way too credulous about itself, and didn't do enough critical self-reflection.

[Sculptor]

Rightwingers like yourself always, either deliberately, or through ignorance misconstrue the meaning of "equality" by demanding that such thing is impossible since we are all different.

I didn't say it's "impossible." I'd say it's unethical and totalitarian. That's quite a different argument.

Equality has always been about equality under the law; equality of opporunity and equal access to the resources of society.

Until now. Now, the Left is making it about "equity," equalization, reparations, historical guilt, and a whole lot of other such nonsense.

Inclusion has to ignore difference since there can be no other path between it and equality but even handedness, colour blindness, gender blindness and so forth.
I agree that's what we ought to do... be blind to things like race. But today's Left won't have that. They want reparations. They want advantages. They want affirmative action. They want the high moral ground, and a new share of the pie, whether they've earned any of it or not. And they don't want to be blind to things like race, but rather to use them as identifiers for the "victims" and the "oppressors."

Your view is actually that of the moderates on the right, and of the traditional liberals. It's not at all the view of the modern Left.

keep your prejudices to yourself and your head in the sand.
Don't forget to bow to the queen.

[Immanuel Can]

keep your prejudices to yourself and your head in the sand.
Don't forget to bow to the queen.

As always, your politeness and your wisdom are of apiece.

[KLewchuk]

Rightwingers like yourself always, either deliberately, or through ignorance misconstrue the meaning of "equality" by demanding that such thing is impossible since we are all different.

I didn't say it's "impossible." I'd say it's unethical and totalitarian. That's quite a different argument.

Equality has always been about equality under the law; equality of opporunity and equal access to the resources of society.

Until now. Now, the Left is making it about "equity," equalization, reparations, historical guilt, and a whole lot of other such nonsense.

Inclusion has to ignore difference since there can be no other path between it and equality but even handedness, colour blindness, gender blindness and so forth.

I agree that's what we ought to do... be blind to things like race. But today's Left won't have that. They want reparations. They want advantages. They want affirmative action. They want the high moral ground, and a new share of the pie, whether they've earned any of it or not. And they don't want to be blind to things like race, but rather to use them as identifiers for the "victims" and the "oppressors."

Your view is actually that of the moderates on the right, and of the traditional liberals. It's not at all the view of the modern Left.

Agree with your post. Adoption of critical theory, pomo, and neo-marxism mixed with religious template. Perhaps "pure evil" is an over-statement so let's just call it "mostly" evil.

So absolutely stupid, I am still amazed that people buy into it.

[KLewchuk]

One thing I, and others, have found interesting about pomo is it's inherent paradox (i.e. there is only one truth, that there is no truth except for the truth that there is no truth).

Yes. There are two types of relativism, really: epistemological and moral. Epistemological relativism says "There are no true facts," and moral relativism says "There are no objective values."

But epistemological relativism is obviously stupid, because all you have to ask is, "Is ER true," and it has to say "No" in order to remain rational. Something so self-defeating is obviously nuts. It's moral relativism that represents the persistent problem.

Hicks.

A sensible man.

Disagree somewhat with your WWII example. I agree that this was a catalyst for a response against modernity, but I don't think it was necessarily an appropriate response. Yes, technology was used for terrible ends in WWII but do we really believe that a cause was too much critical thinking?

Of course not. But PoMo's are not against critical thinking. They're against a lot of other stuff, but they love to be critical.

Modernism's fault was not its critical thinking. It was all the other things I was mentioning, such as rationalization, standardization, uniformity, amorality, consumerism, instrumentalism, manipulation, mechanization, globalism, militarism, and so on. However, the PoMos are right that Modernity was way too credulous about itself, and didn't do enough critical self-reflection.

Not sure I agree with your last point. For example, I could employ critical thinking to demonstrate that elements of pomo are "untrue". There response would not be to find fault with my critical thinking but rather to assert that this only represents my "narrative"'. There are other narratives, none "better" than any other but just more "interesting" or provides "closure". If you were to convince me of your position it would not be based on your argument and critical thinking but rather because I found your position "interesting". You could be selling snake oil and I would buy it if I found it interesting.

If pomo stopped with the critique that modernity reflected truth without morality and needed an injection of such...fine; that is a long way from skepticism and relativism.

Regarding Hicks; bit of a fan but not sure about his hobby with Ayn Rand (not a fan).

[Skepdick]

If pomo stopped with the critique that modernity reflected truth without morality and needed an injection of such...fine; that is a long way from skepticism and relativism.

It's strange that you would reserve this critique strictly for pomo without extend it to any philosophy which hails Hume's is-ought gap as dogma.

If moral values are Moral values; and facts are facts; and if the is-ought gap is truly unsurmountable by facts, then what do we need facts for?

[KLewchuk]

If pomo stopped with the critique that modernity reflected truth without morality and needed an injection of such...fine; that is a long way from skepticism and relativism.

It's strange that you would reserve this critique strictly for pomo without extend it to any philosophy which hails Hume's is-ought gap as dogma.

If moral values are Moral values; and facts are facts; and if the is-ought gap is truly unsurmountable by facts, then what do we need facts for?

I think we need to define "fact".

If you see me with my hand in the fire, the fact is that my hand is in the fire.
The fact that my hand is in the fire does not mean that it "ought" to be in the fire.
I "ought" to withdraw my hand from the fire because it increases my well being.
However, well being is another fact.

There are just facts and the consequences they have for well being.

[Skepdick]

I think we need to define "fact".

If you see me with my hand in the fire, the fact is that my hand is in the fire.
The fact that my hand is in the fire does not mean that it "ought" to be in the fire.
I "ought" to withdraw my hand from the fire because it increases my well being.
However, well being is another fact.

There are just facts and the consequences they have for well being.

If my hand is on fire I don't think my mind would be terribly pre-occupied with notions like "facts", "consequences" and "well-being"

I want the pain to stop. There's a multitude of actionable plans which can satisfy this desire.

Trivially: without an "ought" facts are entirely unnecessary.

[Immanuel Can]

Agree with your post. Adoption of critical theory, pomo, and neo-marxism mixed with religious template. Perhaps "pure evil" is an over-statement so let's just call it "mostly" evil.

So absolutely stupid, I am still amazed that people buy into it.

Yeah, I agree with your assessment of it. "Evil" is a good word. But it usually stars out cloaked in the language of "fairness," "caring," "sharing," and "justice." But it takes very little time after the "revolution" wins before the whole thing goes down the slanted floor, into the drain in the basement of the Lubyanka building, along with all the blood of the executed.

I think the real attractiveness is this: free stuff. It's just that venial, shallow and base. People are tired of taking care of themselves, and want the government to do it for them painlessly, effortlessly, endlessly and for free.

But they also want to clothe themselves in virtue, so they pretend to campaign for the good of everyone else. What they do is going to be "For the good of society," and "So everyone gets a fair share," and "So that the world can be a better place."

Really, though, they're just envious. And envy is no virtue. As George Orwell said of them, "You don't love the poor; you just hate the rich." They have the feeling that somebody, somewhere, has more than they do, and they want a piece of it...and, if possible, they want him to suffer as well, so he can feel what it's like to be as small, miserable and selfish as they are.

That's why the violence comes so easily to them when the revolution fails. The cast about for the rotten counter-revolutionaries who, they are sure, have prevented their certain Utopia from arriving, (They can't even conceive of the idea that their Utopia was a delusion in the first place, and never was going to come.) So their disappointment turns to spite, and hatred, and witch hunting for somebody else to blame. But the disappointment is unending, so the rage and vengeance are unending. And it's only when the whole thing collapses in utter economic and social failure that the bloodletting is finally over.

[Immanuel Can]

However, the PoMos are right that Modernity was way too credulous about itself, and didn't do enough critical self-reflection.

Not sure I agree with your last point. For example, I could employ critical thinking to demonstrate that elements of pomo are "untrue".

Oh, absolutely. But that's a species of the "tu quoque" fallacy. They may be wrong on many things, but that doesn't make Modernism right.

The question is, when they criticize Modernism for stripping meaning out of the world, for naively adopting ideologies like Materialism, instrumentalism and consumerism, and so forth, are they right? I think they are. And Modernism will not fix its ills until its proponents recognize some of its fundamental assumptive mistakes and change them. So any rescue project for Modernism will only benefit by taking some of those criticisms seriously.

There's an old aphorism about listening to one's enemies. Sometimes they tell you things your friends never will. So I would apply the same view to the PoMo's...listen to what they say, and use what makes sense, but be critical, and reject the parts that are nonsense.

Regarding Hicks; bit of a fan but not sure about his hobby with Ayn Rand (not a fan).

I read Rand. I'm not a fan either. I know why she swung to the excesses she did, though. She'd seen Socialism in all it's bloody glory, and she was having none of it.