I had no idea about #lolbrooks. I had a discussion-based class in undergrad that featured his articles heavily, and I hated it. If you want a classroom split into (pretty evenly) disengaged and enraged students, make them read David Brooks and talk about it together for a grade. I asked this question in Pubski last week: "To what extent is it our individual civic duty to try to reconcile with political opposition?" What Murphy doesn't touch on (yet?, I haven't finished) is that engaging in these racist frames is not only "vertiginous", it can be truly sickening. My wife is black; I'm white. It didn't occur in the conversation I referenced in the link above, but my interracial marriage has been leveraged against me in my conversations with far-Right aligned mavens. It's disorienting enough to listen to someone parrot "gorilla arms" insults about Michelle Obama, but I will not tolerate it about my wife. Yes. In some cases, you let them figure it out on their own. If that means they die in a cesspool of their own making, it wasn't for my lack of trying to get them out of it. They're not entitled to my conversation or my viewpoint.All I am saying is that to draw this line of militant non-engagement at the level of “thinking and speaking with a racist frame” would require us to tell millions of people to go die in the cesspool they were born into
My wife is Chinese (I'm white), which is more excusable in those racist frames. Personally, I feel no need to educate people with racist views, or to decide whether or not their condition was one of circumstance, or whether or not that question even makes sense because every condition is one of circumstance. However, what perplexes me, is that Murphy is carefully revealing common sense as enlightenment. The lamentable situation is that the left has their heads so far up their own asses that the even the contemplation of examining opposing ideology is considered to be bravery. Not only is shunning people that are 'wrong' self-defeating and hypocritical, we just aren't that fragile to begin with. When circumstances and motivation allow for reflection and engagement, then yeah, we should reflect upon and engage other points of view. It's not novel, and the benefits of doing so are pretty well understood.
Ahh. I wasn't sure what made this a bizarro #lolbrooks until you pointed out the mundanity of simply engaging those with differing viewpoints. It's sad that it's considered brave, but it's true. I'd ask your thoughts on what one of the commenters on Murphy's site said in response to this piece: I'd nominate Charles Murray as such a person. In The Bell Curve, he laid out a theory of how the world works: That cognitive skills increasingly determine whether a person can find a remunerative career, and that the potential to develop such skills varies widely at birth, consigning those without such gifts to become part of a permanent underclass. As a caring solution, he recommended a universal basic income. Given what's happened to him since, it's hard to argue that he didn't genuinely risk himself on solving the problem.> In my view, this tradeoff between being correct about how the world works and caring for each other enough that we can cooperatively change it in the direction of peace and abundance for all—this is perhaps the most vexing and urgent puzzle for a genuine revolutionary left today. Yet remarkably I am not aware of a single person genuinely risking themselves on solving it...
Charles Murray is a racist shithead. By engaging the "intellectual" through a frame of "research" you ignore the remarkable curve-fitting performed by Murray - if your core argument is that people fail because they're inferior, the rest of us do not benefit from acting as if you've contributed to the conversation. Unfortunately, most of these discussions are basically finches squawking at each other. If you can't say what you're trying to say in such a way that your waitress understands you, you have nothing to say.
Except it's not, at least in the specific way he means. Nick Land has gotten a lot of attention from the left, or at least accelerationists on the left. Moldbug less so, because blowhard bloggers aren't very interesting, but Nick Land wasn't a complete nutjob in the 90s so he got plenty of attempts at charitable reading when he came back all yay corporate feudalism.It's sad that it's considered brave, but it's true.
I haven't read The Bell Curve. It sounds a bit irresponsible if what I've read of it is true. IMO the failure of the left has much to do with navel gazing debates around the paradox of respecting differences and not wanting anyone to be treated differently. Just like the critiques of The Bell Curve point out, why you are doing it matters most. If a white guy in a group of black people dropped his keys before leaving, should you mention his skin tone in describing him? Yes, you should. It's idiotic to build a world so fragile. Now if you are sussing out why someone scored highest on the chem exam, then what the hell are trying to do? Murphy's comrades need such assurances of care because they, not so unlike Murray, are constructing differences, for ostensibly* different reasons, but to a similar effect. Their observance (creations really) of sacred differences are paralyzing and patronizing. *Yeah, ostensibly. I'm not convinced base tribalism doesn't underpin most of the motivations (comrades?).
It seems that by distinguishing 'smart people on the right' from just any right-leaning person, Murphy may have been precluding discussions with patently offensive persons who are only interested in the verbal equivalent of assault. That said, I'm sympathetic with your Pubski post. I've had my faith in humanity tested by some truly gruesome assholes after only a fraction of the time you spent engaged with one. It's hard not to be discouraged.What Murphy doesn't touch on (yet?, I haven't finished) is that engaging in these racist frames is not only "vertiginous", it can be truly sickening.