We are being managed, nudged and increasingly coralled by an entitled network which I now believe to be parasitical: they produce nothing-except endless dystopian diktats-they spread anxiety, alienation and loss of trust amongst an increasingly resentful public and seem to consider their decisions to be immune to debate or protest.
But then, along come Farage and GB News, taking the fight to the well connected, entitled coterie which believes itself to be beyond reproach.
In the US, a judge has thrown a legal spanner into Hunter Biden's plea deal arrangement with the D o J and revelations hitherto hidden from the public are now coming to light.Uncle Joe is no longer fireproof, despite the Democrats' best attempts :
I increasingly think that 'wokeness' has peaked - enough ordinary people are now noticing it, and noticing how completely inhumane and incoherent most of it is, so we are beginning to see a pushback that will grow.
I have thought for some time now though that the culture war is a bit of a distraction. There is something much bigger at stake - basically, a rapid decline in Western institutions and societies, of which the 'woke' thing is a symptom rather than a cause.
Welcome back to Uncibal, David - hope your absence was for pleasant reasons! Translating Machiavelli's virtù as 'virtuosity' is inspired. although I feel that it could be translated as 'virtue' provided one understands how this term is used historically ('excellences' is a good choice of synonym in either case).
I do not know if we have torpedoed 'virtue' intentionally or merely accidentally, but as I have repeatedly argued, we have no complete ethical framework without considering agents (virtue), rules (duty), and outcomes (consequences). Up to the Enlightenment, everybody knew this. Today, outcomes are forced to dominate, with inevitable and disastrous results.
Yes, the problem with 'virtue' is that its use has become very unclear. Crick translates it as 'civic spirit'.
I think we've torpedoed it accidentally in the sense that nobody has done it deliberately. But as you rightly point out it's a kind of deterioration of an understanding of ethics. Nothing Alistair MacIntyre didn't predict!
Oh indeed, the undermining of virtue ethics was not part of anyone's stated agenda (and as you say, MacIntyre saw all this quite clearly). Yet the latter half of the twentieth century saw a philosophical world cup featuring 'deontology vs consequentialism' - united in the shared assumption that virtue ethics did not even qualify to compete. Perhaps this bizarre tournament could only have manifested once the tempering effects of virtue had already been lost, but this misguided drive to find 'One Ethic to Rule Them All' was the origin of a myriad such acts of 'torpedoing', the fallout from which we are still encountering...
Hello David. Thank you for this piece - and your other excellent writings. I share your concerns, and approach them via a different route. Would you care to review my recent book? https://www.hughwillbourn.com/book If you contact me via my website I can arrange to send you a copy.
We are being managed, nudged and increasingly coralled by an entitled network which I now believe to be parasitical: they produce nothing-except endless dystopian diktats-they spread anxiety, alienation and loss of trust amongst an increasingly resentful public and seem to consider their decisions to be immune to debate or protest.
But then, along come Farage and GB News, taking the fight to the well connected, entitled coterie which believes itself to be beyond reproach.
In the US, a judge has thrown a legal spanner into Hunter Biden's plea deal arrangement with the D o J and revelations hitherto hidden from the public are now coming to light.Uncle Joe is no longer fireproof, despite the Democrats' best attempts :
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/28/why-the-hunter-biden-scandal-matters/
These developments indicate that the wheels are starting to fall off the woke/technocratic people carrier. We can but hope.
I increasingly think that 'wokeness' has peaked - enough ordinary people are now noticing it, and noticing how completely inhumane and incoherent most of it is, so we are beginning to see a pushback that will grow.
I have thought for some time now though that the culture war is a bit of a distraction. There is something much bigger at stake - basically, a rapid decline in Western institutions and societies, of which the 'woke' thing is a symptom rather than a cause.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/28/the-culture-war-is-a-political-fight-and-the-tories-cant-al/
An accurate summation of wokus pokus
Indeed, I think decline and fall summarises the present parlous state of much of the west, particularly in the anglophone world.
Welcome back to Uncibal, David - hope your absence was for pleasant reasons! Translating Machiavelli's virtù as 'virtuosity' is inspired. although I feel that it could be translated as 'virtue' provided one understands how this term is used historically ('excellences' is a good choice of synonym in either case).
I do not know if we have torpedoed 'virtue' intentionally or merely accidentally, but as I have repeatedly argued, we have no complete ethical framework without considering agents (virtue), rules (duty), and outcomes (consequences). Up to the Enlightenment, everybody knew this. Today, outcomes are forced to dominate, with inevitable and disastrous results.
Stay wonderful!
Yes, the problem with 'virtue' is that its use has become very unclear. Crick translates it as 'civic spirit'.
I think we've torpedoed it accidentally in the sense that nobody has done it deliberately. But as you rightly point out it's a kind of deterioration of an understanding of ethics. Nothing Alistair MacIntyre didn't predict!
Oh indeed, the undermining of virtue ethics was not part of anyone's stated agenda (and as you say, MacIntyre saw all this quite clearly). Yet the latter half of the twentieth century saw a philosophical world cup featuring 'deontology vs consequentialism' - united in the shared assumption that virtue ethics did not even qualify to compete. Perhaps this bizarre tournament could only have manifested once the tempering effects of virtue had already been lost, but this misguided drive to find 'One Ethic to Rule Them All' was the origin of a myriad such acts of 'torpedoing', the fallout from which we are still encountering...
Hello David. Thank you for this piece - and your other excellent writings. I share your concerns, and approach them via a different route. Would you care to review my recent book? https://www.hughwillbourn.com/book If you contact me via my website I can arrange to send you a copy.
According to Proudhon, "property is theft." The reality is that government is theft.