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Originally Posted by demonrail666
OK, so the Enlightenment helped define/codify and in a sense promote racism.
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racism, male supremacy, global takeover by ethnic europeans, colonialism, science as extermination, eugenics, etc etc etc
but that is not really what i am still trying to say
what i have been saying is that the subject of the enlightenment is a male white european etc etc.
this is important!
to me all of these shortcoming do not not disqualify the enlightment, but it brings into the foreground many of its discontents and the reasons for their discontent
the problem with the enlightenment is that it has not delivered on its promises. it’s a nice club to be a member of, but in contradiction with its philosophical underpinnings, it has been, historically, an exclusive club.
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Originally Posted by demonrail666
The point is what do we do now?
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now we listen first, and not rush
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Originally Posted by demonrail666
No one with a serious interest in the Enlightenment (Peterson and Pinker included) are unaware of its problems - although they may not interpret them in quite the way that article does.
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it’s because they are white male educated affluent etc etc bla bla bla
perspectivism is a thing
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Originally Posted by demonrail666
But the point is they (and I) still prefer it to what the Liberal/Left is currently offering via the zero sum game of Intersectional politics.
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it doesn’t have to be an either/or.
i like pinkert as a science writer, i agree that the enlightenment has brought us real progress
but peterson seems to me too eager to preserve not just the promise of the enlightenment, but the primacy of the original club membership
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Originally Posted by demonrail666
If rational discourse is essentially a white straight male one
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no it’s not
the woman, the negro, the wild indian, the miscegenated, the low-born, the subtropical, haa haaa haaa, we all have proven (to whom? to massah?) capable of rational discourse.
the problem is that rational discourse has historically been used not as a pure objective clarity of thought in search of truth, but as instrumental reason to justify all manner of oppression and exploitation and outright extermination in clearly ethnic imperial enterprises.
but the same tools of the enlightenment are now are being used to undermine these oppresive structures.
maybe you want to call them absurd and lacking in logic, but it is discourse and it is within the parameters of rationality, especially when you compare it to some of the shit the great “forefathers” were spewing in their day.
like science, the enlightenment has the virtue of self-questioning and self-correction.
i’m pinning my hopes on
that
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Originally Posted by demonrail666
one then all I can still think is that rational discourse remains the best way of working on that.
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yes!
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Originally Posted by demonrail666
You won't agree with that because within your discourse that's an impossible contradiction
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i do what?
you seem to be stuck in some either/or polarity and you’re missing the point of my position which is neither.
i’m for the enlightenment. i’m for the enlightenment
for all.
that means that the supreme subject of the enlightment needs to change.
that doesn’t mean the end of the enlightenment project. it means the fulfillment of its promise.
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Originally Posted by demonrail666
but until something better comes along in terms of actually helping us out of this mess, I'm sticking with it, even if I'm holding my nose while I do.
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i don’t see anything better either. but it doesn’t have to be “the white judeochristian menzes vs. the world.” that’s very close-minded. that’s fucking tribal.
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Originally Posted by demonrail666
Interesectional Politics appeals to a certain impulse because it .doesn't seek reconciliation as a way forward but rather a multitude of little micro-wars between genders races and sexualities.
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i still do not think we have a good workable definition here to discuss this. you’re talking from your experience in academia, i’m talking from my experience in everyday life in america, and things are being lost in translation.
but it’s okay to put this aside for a moment because i’d like to get some agreement on the premises at least.
the premise is that the enlightenment project, as it stands today, is, in spite of its universal promise, still a very ethnically charged and gendered enterprise.
can you agree with that or at least see why some can see it that way?
i think you already did but before we look for solutions to its problems we have to agree that it has some serious shortcomings
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Originally Posted by demonrail666
Enlightenment rationalism may never achieve that reconciliation either but I do believe (counter to the points in that article) that it at least aspires to it, even if only conceptually through the idea of a dialectic. The Enlightment can essentially settle on a 1-1 draw. Interectional Politics needs one group to win which by default means another group has to lose.
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i did not write that article and that is not my point.
the article merely provides supplementation to my point, which is/was/ as i have been repeating: WHO is the subject of the enlightenment. who is the member in that club.
please take that article as supplementation to my argument not as its main thrust. i only posted the link because, the writer having being paid to write it, having more energy and resources at hand, and just ultimately being better at it, he provides ample documentation for what i wanted to say.
but his interpretation is not mine. mine is not his.
*i am not against the project of the enlightenment*
*i am for the enligtenment*
but i am against the ridiculous claim that its project has already been fulfilled and we shouldn’t rock the boat or complain
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Originally Posted by demonrail666
We're gonna have to fundamentally agree to disagree on that cos you can always point to problems within the Enlightenment (many of which I'll concede) but I'll still consider it preferable to Intersectional Politics.
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again not what im saying, not stuck in this either/or dialectic
i’m for the synthesis of this temporary oppositon, and for analyzing why and where this comes from, not just blindly opposing it
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Originally Posted by demonrail666
Apart from that, I'm sort of more interested in the real world problems of why the Dems have lost political ground, than going into abstract philosophizing that might underpin certain points but ends up a topic on its own.
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it’s not abstract philosophizing.
in the real world, all the minorities left out of the enlightenment project are banging at the doors clamoring for access.
yes, some of those people banging at the doors want to destroy the club altogether. especially academics in the humanities. lol, the idiots.
that’s not me though.
me, i want universal admission. which we do not have right now.
that’s the real-world practical problem: extending those inalienable rights to those who have been originally and historically left out of it, shot, raped, hanged, discriminated against, bled dry, used, kept out to keep the inside “cozy and clean....”
it’s gonna be a messy process to adjust this membership though there has to be some tolerance for disorder and dissension.