This is not quite so controversial as you think Samuél—I agree with you much more than you think I would. 🥰
1) I totally do rely on other people's thoughts to come up with my own. It is one of the greatest critiques I have of my own work and I frequently wish I could just come up with an original thought without reading what everyone else in the world thinks about it first.
The truth is I have a lot of ideas but no ideologies. I will read one book and be fully convinced by it, only to read an opposing view and be fully convinced by it. I think it's because when it comes up to dreaming up a better future, we can't possibly know if something will turn out to be good or bad. And even then we'll argue about whether it is good or bad! Will AI usher in the next renaissance or will it be our ruin? Only the future will be able to look back and make that judgement. Even then we won't agree.
2) Agree the internet/media/social media is largely a net negative for society.
3) I don't want to keep our conversation about genius alive because I agree it is already entering absurdity. But I do want to continue the anti-tech conversation. (No anti-aging, no autonomous vehicles, etc.). There are ways in which technology has greatly improved life and ways it hasn't, and I want to understand the luddite perspective. I have a stack of books I'm reading on the subject and maybe then I'll resurface with an essay that quotes a million essays, provides an idea about the optimum balance, and yet still provides no ideologies to speak of. My mind will forever be changing, I'm afraid.
4) I will remain an optimist. I would still rather live today than any day prior and that's why I must imagine the future will be even better, even if it will have its faults!
5) Thank you for the wonderful conversation. I could have a million of these with you!
1) I like this distinction between idea and ideology, especially since ideology is where things start to get sticky as far as authoritarianism or at the very least moral righteousness is concerned. I'm curious how you feel about intuition, since to me that's the only *potential* way we can know if something will turn out positively or negatively ("trusting our instincts" remains something I try to remind myself to acknowledge lest I only rely on my intellect).
2) Ooooh baby we agree on a big one! But to your point in (2) (3), my brain is wired to think "is it the opposite, in fact?" which is the very issue with binary systems of thinking I'm trying to break away from. So thank you.
3) The anti-tech conversation is fascinating and I'd love to know which texts you're focusing on right no. Luddites are a curious bunch of which I know almost nothing but feel some kind of kinship, probably more from my romanticized anarchist daydreams than anything else. Do let me know if you read a particularly valuable text.
4) I agree with you. Despite my interest in looking at the other side of the coin (at least for this essay), if I weren't an optimist, I wouldn't be writing to you from this space, let alone living in Paris, or building a life around reading and writing books, etc. I also agree with Gil in "Midnight in Paris": there's just no way I'd rather live at any other time than now. Can't wait to continue the conversation in one form or another elsewhere.
Utopian Dial-up Dreams sounds like a poem title I would have written... Salty Samuél you're becoming even more of a doomsayer than I am.
The optimism of my teen years in the 90s, the EU project, the Chunnel, the potential of the internet, feels like it's being drowned out by noise. I like to think this is just a result of the disruption that the Internet laid at our feet, but disruptions are by definition temporary. I like to think technology can save us, if only because it was technology (sticks, fire) that lifted us from the animal kingdom in the first place (for better or for worse, here we are). As Elle mentioned in her stellar essay, geniuses are so commonplace today that we don't even call them that.
A genius (or team of) invented the internet, electronic voting, decentralized currency, AI, that telescope you mentioned... A genius will figure out a solution to space debris. Another to cheap desalination, fusion, 3D printed pharma, sustainable everything. These will be bottlenecks for only so long. But the only way to ensure that is to give smart people something humanistic to work towards, like the dream of a better world even in the face of impossible odds. We've been doing this since the Enlightenment, and on a long enough timeline, that trajectory is still there under our feet even if it's not a straight line.
Ohhhbaby I'd love to read that poem. It sounds like a nice companion piece to your "Dawn of the Algorithm."
I just looked up "doomsayer" and it says "someone who predicts disaster" so in that sense, we can all be pretty sure disaster shall come in some form or another. But Salty Samuél STILL HAS HOPE YET.
I like the distinction that NOISE is drowning out the optimism of yore. It's also possible that the 1990s media system simply thought what was marketable could either be microwavable, turned into a boy/girl band, or made with plastic. I mean, Clinton got impeached for lying about a blowjob. Trump got impeached for abuse of power and inciting an insurrection.
I dig your technological optimism, especially since in "Dawn of the Algorithm" it seems to look at the opposite side of the coin. You know my feelings on VR and screens generally and its dehumanizing ways; but of course it humanizes too. The jury will forever be out on the good/bad debate, and thank the lawds for that. But you're also very correct: our lives, today, are definitely easier and more accessible thanks to technology. Whether that means "better" is a subjective opinion.
The sad thing is the Internet is a tool for the collective, but we've co-opted it for individualism, the Brit who invented it said as much in a speech once. So much potential for "progress" wrt stuff like big data aggregation (medical, legal, even experiential and anecdotal stuff), statistics, census, votes, public opinion. It's just too easy to manipulate in the current online wild west. I mean think of all the personal user data being used for advertisement and swinging votes, and imagine we capitalised on it fully for mental health diagnosis or direct democracy on a global scale. The open source movement, decentralized currency, even media piracy, is what this tech was designed for. The problem is proprietary, who owns the data? Who can use it and to what end? Once again, the collective (free sharing) vs individualism (property). As long as property is 9/10 of the law, the internet will be a crippled version of what it could be.
Well said. It's wild to me how despite all this "progress," we are still confronting that basic question of property. Your French brethren Rousseau (I'll give you 50% credit) was so clear about the challenge of property and inequality, i.e. possession also = DISpossession. It's as if we haven't learned anything, or something:
"The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of [the Internet] belong to us all and the [Internet] itself to nobody."
I studied transcultural communication aka translations. I never read more ridiculous academic books than during that period of my life. They were full of quotes backed by other quotes to prove the point of the first quote. And the topics they analyzed bordered with the ridiculous.
Years later I attended a few courses at the agricultural university in the study of landscape architecture and I was mind blown 🤯 I continued learning and reading about the topic long after I finished the courses and the ideas still impact the way I see the world.
Education does make a difference. But it has to be the right kind of education. And it might even give birth to genius. And genius should be used in the service of society. I actually wrote a fiction story in response to Elle’s prompt about cultivating genius: https://claudiabefu.substack.com/p/welcome-to-gulmohur
"This quote" proves that "this quote" proves that "that quote" is proof of the aforementioned quote. LOVE IT. And I also do agree with you--education makes a HUGE difference. One of the privileged benefits of being able to criticize academia like I tend to do is having had the benefit of been through it. So it's all part of the big ole soup of complexity and subjectivity. To your point re: agricultural school, studying subjects that have an immediately practical/actionable approach does reveal benefits in a much clearer way. I'm still thinking about whether or not a table is actually a table ...
Thanks for including your piece, I'm looking forward to reading it. This space is an education, and I'm damn thankful for it, all in all.
You really went for it in this article, but it was refreshing to read. I was always very good at school until went to university and studied translation and lost my interest in studying. I had to drag myself through that BA. But now you confirmed that it wasn't me, it was THEM! 😂
I generally enjoy reading your newsletter, keep up the good work! And I'm looking forward to know what you think about the short story. I need some constructive criticism (and I was almost afraid to post the link 😅).
Thanks so much for the kind words. Which languages were you focusing on in translation?
This piece took me a while to wrap my head around ... turns out trying to attempt to make sense of what we believe about incredibly complex and often amorphous concepts is damn hard. But this is why we try to do it with the written word, ain't it? I'll be responding to your piece in the comments!
A response to Samuėl Lopez-Barrantes’s (if not, Paris) response to Elle Griffin’s response to his Cultivating Genius Part 1
I felt odd reading your response Samuėl (if not, Paris), and couldn’t figure out what it was, but I know the more I read the more tensed up. I agreed with your conclusions but for the life of me I struggled with the rest of it.
In your opening statement to Elle, you said, “…this whole discussion about genius is at risk of reductio ad absurdum,” and I agree. Discussing ‘genius’ with reference to something that happened in the past – the Enlightenment – to only men, as you did in Part 1, and making that era a guide-rule of sorts for the future, the now, as it turns out, is absurd; especially when the criterion for ‘producing’ genius (without a clear definition of what it is) is claimed the result of Aristocratic-style tutoring. The only evidence put forward for the claim rests on wild speculation and spurious statistics.
You say “We live in an age when purchasing education and regurgitating others’ ideas has become synonymous with being an intellectual.” You seem to disparage your own higher education and the institute at which you received a ‘master’s’ education, but by doing so made yourself sound like a hypocrite. On the one hand you’re saying or intimated, as you did in Part 1, that there was something ‘divine’ about the Aristocratic tutoring your ‘male’ examples of ‘produced’ genius received, making them geniuses (but providing no evidence of how that happened, other than to say that it was a direct result of such tutoring – as in cause and effect) – yet all evidence to the contrary says it is the student, the receiver of an education, any education, who turns themselves into a ‘genius’. [Watch The man who knew infinity]
And on the other hand, you’re saying that your examples of ‘genius’ never once engaged in ‘intellectual’ discourse that involved discussing what others had said about whatever topic they were engaged in, even for comparative purposes. Ridiculous! A great debate has raged ever since people had contrary views to the ones expressed in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.
As someone who ‘idealised’ academia from an early age – this is not a defence of academia today – I fulfilled my childhood dream when I gained candidature in a PhD program at what I thought was a suitable institution. But I soon discovered there were no subject experts available at the institute, or in the country for that matter, and would have to make do with whoever I was paired with. A negative experience? Sure. But I stuck with it because I wanted to work in academia. I’m glad I did, but I’m also disappointed that ‘academia’ was not the space I imagined it would be – a space for ‘intellectual’ discourse. The world and attitudes had changed by the time I got there.
Reflecting on my undergrad years, I has realised that I had ignored the hints my lit theory and cultural theory lecturers had been tossing about like confetti to warn people. But what I was thankful for was their taking me into their ‘circle of academics’ to give me insights and encouragement on my journey to ‘academia’.
But what I have yet to do figure out is what the fuck you’re on about. You almost quote Hoel but credit him with saying correctly that ‘we have yet to see a glorious paradigm-shift in human affairs or human wisdom.’ A niece fantasy, but what paradigm-shift? Identitarianism has been around for millennia, not since the 2000s. And individualistic mythologies have been around since Moses – can’t get any more misguided than that. Everyone creates personal myths about themselves and who they think they are, why should this surprise you? Sure, some of these myths are downright dangerous, while others let people achieve lifetime goals. Again, the political hijacking of these important things should’ve been obvious, even predictable to everyone with an education in Derrida and van Dijk. Human nature. Shit happens.
And talking about reductionism, it’s essential to the sciences. Without it scientists cannot communicate very well – not that they always do – and humans could not live on this planet called Earth. Knowing the differences between food and what isn’t, and the health benefits of each is good, I’m all in. It turns out to be very necessary in the field of law because few people, accept lawyers and judges, can understand legalese; most people need that stuff broken down to their level of understanding. So yeah, I am a strong advocate for reductionism; without it I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between shit and coffee.
The only way to protect oneself from delusions or dissociative disorders, is an education in critical analysis, including self-analysis. Being able to question everything and get at the truth; whether it’s truth with a small t or a capital T. And I can’t emphasise enough how important this in this era of disinformation, misinformation, and post-truth. A Trump Truth-burger, anyone?
On a societal level, it’s called Fascism or Totalitarianism. Both of which sound disgusting, and they are. But whatever Utopian world you and Elle are trying to envisage and see implemented, means everyone living in that utopia are of one mind, agree on everything, though your optimistic-pessimism wants opposing opinions to co-exist (?), have no need for technology, science, engineering, social sciences, and many other useful things seems an unlikely prospect. If nuclear war erupts with Russia, Sovereign Citizens will turn tribalists – until they run out of ammunition and must resort to clever engineering to make weapons to kill anyone who disagrees with them. Your Existentialism seems to be a cloaked regression to the 15th century but have no qualms about using modern technology to share your opinions with the rest of the world, or at least those with access. To quote one of your beloved ‘enlightens’, James Baldwin: People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
You keep railing against science, its ability to reveal the nature of reality, and its impact on society and culture, but it makes you sound anti-science, or oxymoronic. But any good scientist knows Blumenbach’s ‘scientific’ taxonomy of ‘race’ isn’t even scientific, let alone based on science. We’ve moved on – well most of us have – and left that shit behind, and that’s progress. As for swinging pendulums, it’s probably better to say they do not swing between only two poles but between many different points on an arc (depending on the force of gravity). Genius does not lead to equity for all, this we can agree on. Thus, it’s absurd to try to link genius with a presumed, endless(?), uphill progress (minus any advances science and tech may throw in the mix), and then connect these two to some kind of eventual utopia that doesn’t include science and tech; especially in the context of creating a ‘better’ world, one better than the last or the one we are lumped with in the early 21st century.
There are so many examples of how science and tech have made life better for humans. I don’t agree that it’s science and tech that have made the world worse or worse off than two hundred years ago. The thing that makes peoples’ lives better or worse is … other humans, ones with differing ideas and beliefs – don’t get me started on beliefs! – about what humans are and how they should live their lives.
The party is ongoing, you're just fashionably late.
My favorite line from what you wrote is: "what I have yet to figure out is what the fuck you’re on about." LOVE THAT. Because I am not sure I even know what I'm on about, which is kind of the crux of this ongoing dialogue, whose point, really, is to elicit thoughtful responses like yours that challenge my presumptions / thoughts at various turns. So thanks for the candid tone, truly.
If I were to be on about anything specific in my response, I think you suggested it with the renewed era of Fascism / Totalitarianism. I'm wary of it because that's also, to Baldwin's "trapped in history / history trapped in them" the subject I've studied more than any other in my 35 years around these parts. Obviously it's happened before and it'll happen again, and part of my *attempt* in my response to Elle's highlighting of the positive sides of science and technology was to illustrate how the very ideals we're talking about can/do also lead to serious fuckery ... you said it best, it all depends on how we humans wield the power. In that sense, a lot of people aren't past Blumenbach's "science" at all, and there are still plenty of pseudo-scientists out there who've updated their language to say more or less the same thing, which is that "white" is still at the top of the hierarchy. But reiterating the ways in which white supremacy is still a reality isn't the point of the essay, only symptomatic of the complex world we live in, wherein actual science is more mistrusted now by average people than it was a few decades ago (this my feeling, but I could easily be wrong).
I also appreciate your specification re: pendulum, there are many points on the arc, indeed, which is what I was hoping to illuminate by briefly discussing the net-positive of challenging the idea that anything in the world is binary ... but many people are reacting to this in predictable ways, and are en masse resorting towards the two poles, hence my concerns that, to your point, even in *speaking* of Utopian ideals, we are presupposing a societal-wide cohesion to *something* which can very easily become totalitarian in tone.
All that to say, I'm genuinely not sure I know what the fuck I'm on about in this response to responses to other responses, but I'm having a ball doing it, and I appreciate your input and thoughts, too.
PS: can you help me better understand how my Existentialism is a cloaked regression to the 15th century? I'm not saying I disagree, I'm genuinely curious what exactly you mean by this (for the record since I didn't say it above: I understand myself as an existentialist to the basic extent that I believe existence precedes essence, and that we are beings that have a responsibility/need to define *individual* meaning in our lives, without believing that there is any inherent, singular meaning to life that should be prescribed collectively. Viktor Frankl is as close as I could get to believing in any singular idea, for a time: "To be sure, a human being is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.”
This is not quite so controversial as you think Samuél—I agree with you much more than you think I would. 🥰
1) I totally do rely on other people's thoughts to come up with my own. It is one of the greatest critiques I have of my own work and I frequently wish I could just come up with an original thought without reading what everyone else in the world thinks about it first.
The truth is I have a lot of ideas but no ideologies. I will read one book and be fully convinced by it, only to read an opposing view and be fully convinced by it. I think it's because when it comes up to dreaming up a better future, we can't possibly know if something will turn out to be good or bad. And even then we'll argue about whether it is good or bad! Will AI usher in the next renaissance or will it be our ruin? Only the future will be able to look back and make that judgement. Even then we won't agree.
2) Agree the internet/media/social media is largely a net negative for society.
3) I don't want to keep our conversation about genius alive because I agree it is already entering absurdity. But I do want to continue the anti-tech conversation. (No anti-aging, no autonomous vehicles, etc.). There are ways in which technology has greatly improved life and ways it hasn't, and I want to understand the luddite perspective. I have a stack of books I'm reading on the subject and maybe then I'll resurface with an essay that quotes a million essays, provides an idea about the optimum balance, and yet still provides no ideologies to speak of. My mind will forever be changing, I'm afraid.
4) I will remain an optimist. I would still rather live today than any day prior and that's why I must imagine the future will be even better, even if it will have its faults!
5) Thank you for the wonderful conversation. I could have a million of these with you!
1) I like this distinction between idea and ideology, especially since ideology is where things start to get sticky as far as authoritarianism or at the very least moral righteousness is concerned. I'm curious how you feel about intuition, since to me that's the only *potential* way we can know if something will turn out positively or negatively ("trusting our instincts" remains something I try to remind myself to acknowledge lest I only rely on my intellect).
2) Ooooh baby we agree on a big one! But to your point in (2) (3), my brain is wired to think "is it the opposite, in fact?" which is the very issue with binary systems of thinking I'm trying to break away from. So thank you.
3) The anti-tech conversation is fascinating and I'd love to know which texts you're focusing on right no. Luddites are a curious bunch of which I know almost nothing but feel some kind of kinship, probably more from my romanticized anarchist daydreams than anything else. Do let me know if you read a particularly valuable text.
4) I agree with you. Despite my interest in looking at the other side of the coin (at least for this essay), if I weren't an optimist, I wouldn't be writing to you from this space, let alone living in Paris, or building a life around reading and writing books, etc. I also agree with Gil in "Midnight in Paris": there's just no way I'd rather live at any other time than now. Can't wait to continue the conversation in one form or another elsewhere.
Utopian Dial-up Dreams sounds like a poem title I would have written... Salty Samuél you're becoming even more of a doomsayer than I am.
The optimism of my teen years in the 90s, the EU project, the Chunnel, the potential of the internet, feels like it's being drowned out by noise. I like to think this is just a result of the disruption that the Internet laid at our feet, but disruptions are by definition temporary. I like to think technology can save us, if only because it was technology (sticks, fire) that lifted us from the animal kingdom in the first place (for better or for worse, here we are). As Elle mentioned in her stellar essay, geniuses are so commonplace today that we don't even call them that.
A genius (or team of) invented the internet, electronic voting, decentralized currency, AI, that telescope you mentioned... A genius will figure out a solution to space debris. Another to cheap desalination, fusion, 3D printed pharma, sustainable everything. These will be bottlenecks for only so long. But the only way to ensure that is to give smart people something humanistic to work towards, like the dream of a better world even in the face of impossible odds. We've been doing this since the Enlightenment, and on a long enough timeline, that trajectory is still there under our feet even if it's not a straight line.
Ohhhbaby I'd love to read that poem. It sounds like a nice companion piece to your "Dawn of the Algorithm."
I just looked up "doomsayer" and it says "someone who predicts disaster" so in that sense, we can all be pretty sure disaster shall come in some form or another. But Salty Samuél STILL HAS HOPE YET.
I like the distinction that NOISE is drowning out the optimism of yore. It's also possible that the 1990s media system simply thought what was marketable could either be microwavable, turned into a boy/girl band, or made with plastic. I mean, Clinton got impeached for lying about a blowjob. Trump got impeached for abuse of power and inciting an insurrection.
I dig your technological optimism, especially since in "Dawn of the Algorithm" it seems to look at the opposite side of the coin. You know my feelings on VR and screens generally and its dehumanizing ways; but of course it humanizes too. The jury will forever be out on the good/bad debate, and thank the lawds for that. But you're also very correct: our lives, today, are definitely easier and more accessible thanks to technology. Whether that means "better" is a subjective opinion.
I'm just a romantic flâneur at heart.
The sad thing is the Internet is a tool for the collective, but we've co-opted it for individualism, the Brit who invented it said as much in a speech once. So much potential for "progress" wrt stuff like big data aggregation (medical, legal, even experiential and anecdotal stuff), statistics, census, votes, public opinion. It's just too easy to manipulate in the current online wild west. I mean think of all the personal user data being used for advertisement and swinging votes, and imagine we capitalised on it fully for mental health diagnosis or direct democracy on a global scale. The open source movement, decentralized currency, even media piracy, is what this tech was designed for. The problem is proprietary, who owns the data? Who can use it and to what end? Once again, the collective (free sharing) vs individualism (property). As long as property is 9/10 of the law, the internet will be a crippled version of what it could be.
Well said. It's wild to me how despite all this "progress," we are still confronting that basic question of property. Your French brethren Rousseau (I'll give you 50% credit) was so clear about the challenge of property and inequality, i.e. possession also = DISpossession. It's as if we haven't learned anything, or something:
"The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of [the Internet] belong to us all and the [Internet] itself to nobody."
I studied transcultural communication aka translations. I never read more ridiculous academic books than during that period of my life. They were full of quotes backed by other quotes to prove the point of the first quote. And the topics they analyzed bordered with the ridiculous.
Years later I attended a few courses at the agricultural university in the study of landscape architecture and I was mind blown 🤯 I continued learning and reading about the topic long after I finished the courses and the ideas still impact the way I see the world.
Education does make a difference. But it has to be the right kind of education. And it might even give birth to genius. And genius should be used in the service of society. I actually wrote a fiction story in response to Elle’s prompt about cultivating genius: https://claudiabefu.substack.com/p/welcome-to-gulmohur
"This quote" proves that "this quote" proves that "that quote" is proof of the aforementioned quote. LOVE IT. And I also do agree with you--education makes a HUGE difference. One of the privileged benefits of being able to criticize academia like I tend to do is having had the benefit of been through it. So it's all part of the big ole soup of complexity and subjectivity. To your point re: agricultural school, studying subjects that have an immediately practical/actionable approach does reveal benefits in a much clearer way. I'm still thinking about whether or not a table is actually a table ...
Thanks for including your piece, I'm looking forward to reading it. This space is an education, and I'm damn thankful for it, all in all.
You really went for it in this article, but it was refreshing to read. I was always very good at school until went to university and studied translation and lost my interest in studying. I had to drag myself through that BA. But now you confirmed that it wasn't me, it was THEM! 😂
I generally enjoy reading your newsletter, keep up the good work! And I'm looking forward to know what you think about the short story. I need some constructive criticism (and I was almost afraid to post the link 😅).
Thanks so much for the kind words. Which languages were you focusing on in translation?
This piece took me a while to wrap my head around ... turns out trying to attempt to make sense of what we believe about incredibly complex and often amorphous concepts is damn hard. But this is why we try to do it with the written word, ain't it? I'll be responding to your piece in the comments!
Coming in late...
A response to Samuėl Lopez-Barrantes’s (if not, Paris) response to Elle Griffin’s response to his Cultivating Genius Part 1
I felt odd reading your response Samuėl (if not, Paris), and couldn’t figure out what it was, but I know the more I read the more tensed up. I agreed with your conclusions but for the life of me I struggled with the rest of it.
In your opening statement to Elle, you said, “…this whole discussion about genius is at risk of reductio ad absurdum,” and I agree. Discussing ‘genius’ with reference to something that happened in the past – the Enlightenment – to only men, as you did in Part 1, and making that era a guide-rule of sorts for the future, the now, as it turns out, is absurd; especially when the criterion for ‘producing’ genius (without a clear definition of what it is) is claimed the result of Aristocratic-style tutoring. The only evidence put forward for the claim rests on wild speculation and spurious statistics.
You say “We live in an age when purchasing education and regurgitating others’ ideas has become synonymous with being an intellectual.” You seem to disparage your own higher education and the institute at which you received a ‘master’s’ education, but by doing so made yourself sound like a hypocrite. On the one hand you’re saying or intimated, as you did in Part 1, that there was something ‘divine’ about the Aristocratic tutoring your ‘male’ examples of ‘produced’ genius received, making them geniuses (but providing no evidence of how that happened, other than to say that it was a direct result of such tutoring – as in cause and effect) – yet all evidence to the contrary says it is the student, the receiver of an education, any education, who turns themselves into a ‘genius’. [Watch The man who knew infinity]
And on the other hand, you’re saying that your examples of ‘genius’ never once engaged in ‘intellectual’ discourse that involved discussing what others had said about whatever topic they were engaged in, even for comparative purposes. Ridiculous! A great debate has raged ever since people had contrary views to the ones expressed in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.
As someone who ‘idealised’ academia from an early age – this is not a defence of academia today – I fulfilled my childhood dream when I gained candidature in a PhD program at what I thought was a suitable institution. But I soon discovered there were no subject experts available at the institute, or in the country for that matter, and would have to make do with whoever I was paired with. A negative experience? Sure. But I stuck with it because I wanted to work in academia. I’m glad I did, but I’m also disappointed that ‘academia’ was not the space I imagined it would be – a space for ‘intellectual’ discourse. The world and attitudes had changed by the time I got there.
Reflecting on my undergrad years, I has realised that I had ignored the hints my lit theory and cultural theory lecturers had been tossing about like confetti to warn people. But what I was thankful for was their taking me into their ‘circle of academics’ to give me insights and encouragement on my journey to ‘academia’.
But what I have yet to do figure out is what the fuck you’re on about. You almost quote Hoel but credit him with saying correctly that ‘we have yet to see a glorious paradigm-shift in human affairs or human wisdom.’ A niece fantasy, but what paradigm-shift? Identitarianism has been around for millennia, not since the 2000s. And individualistic mythologies have been around since Moses – can’t get any more misguided than that. Everyone creates personal myths about themselves and who they think they are, why should this surprise you? Sure, some of these myths are downright dangerous, while others let people achieve lifetime goals. Again, the political hijacking of these important things should’ve been obvious, even predictable to everyone with an education in Derrida and van Dijk. Human nature. Shit happens.
And talking about reductionism, it’s essential to the sciences. Without it scientists cannot communicate very well – not that they always do – and humans could not live on this planet called Earth. Knowing the differences between food and what isn’t, and the health benefits of each is good, I’m all in. It turns out to be very necessary in the field of law because few people, accept lawyers and judges, can understand legalese; most people need that stuff broken down to their level of understanding. So yeah, I am a strong advocate for reductionism; without it I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between shit and coffee.
The only way to protect oneself from delusions or dissociative disorders, is an education in critical analysis, including self-analysis. Being able to question everything and get at the truth; whether it’s truth with a small t or a capital T. And I can’t emphasise enough how important this in this era of disinformation, misinformation, and post-truth. A Trump Truth-burger, anyone?
On a societal level, it’s called Fascism or Totalitarianism. Both of which sound disgusting, and they are. But whatever Utopian world you and Elle are trying to envisage and see implemented, means everyone living in that utopia are of one mind, agree on everything, though your optimistic-pessimism wants opposing opinions to co-exist (?), have no need for technology, science, engineering, social sciences, and many other useful things seems an unlikely prospect. If nuclear war erupts with Russia, Sovereign Citizens will turn tribalists – until they run out of ammunition and must resort to clever engineering to make weapons to kill anyone who disagrees with them. Your Existentialism seems to be a cloaked regression to the 15th century but have no qualms about using modern technology to share your opinions with the rest of the world, or at least those with access. To quote one of your beloved ‘enlightens’, James Baldwin: People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
You keep railing against science, its ability to reveal the nature of reality, and its impact on society and culture, but it makes you sound anti-science, or oxymoronic. But any good scientist knows Blumenbach’s ‘scientific’ taxonomy of ‘race’ isn’t even scientific, let alone based on science. We’ve moved on – well most of us have – and left that shit behind, and that’s progress. As for swinging pendulums, it’s probably better to say they do not swing between only two poles but between many different points on an arc (depending on the force of gravity). Genius does not lead to equity for all, this we can agree on. Thus, it’s absurd to try to link genius with a presumed, endless(?), uphill progress (minus any advances science and tech may throw in the mix), and then connect these two to some kind of eventual utopia that doesn’t include science and tech; especially in the context of creating a ‘better’ world, one better than the last or the one we are lumped with in the early 21st century.
There are so many examples of how science and tech have made life better for humans. I don’t agree that it’s science and tech that have made the world worse or worse off than two hundred years ago. The thing that makes peoples’ lives better or worse is … other humans, ones with differing ideas and beliefs – don’t get me started on beliefs! – about what humans are and how they should live their lives.
The party is ongoing, you're just fashionably late.
My favorite line from what you wrote is: "what I have yet to figure out is what the fuck you’re on about." LOVE THAT. Because I am not sure I even know what I'm on about, which is kind of the crux of this ongoing dialogue, whose point, really, is to elicit thoughtful responses like yours that challenge my presumptions / thoughts at various turns. So thanks for the candid tone, truly.
If I were to be on about anything specific in my response, I think you suggested it with the renewed era of Fascism / Totalitarianism. I'm wary of it because that's also, to Baldwin's "trapped in history / history trapped in them" the subject I've studied more than any other in my 35 years around these parts. Obviously it's happened before and it'll happen again, and part of my *attempt* in my response to Elle's highlighting of the positive sides of science and technology was to illustrate how the very ideals we're talking about can/do also lead to serious fuckery ... you said it best, it all depends on how we humans wield the power. In that sense, a lot of people aren't past Blumenbach's "science" at all, and there are still plenty of pseudo-scientists out there who've updated their language to say more or less the same thing, which is that "white" is still at the top of the hierarchy. But reiterating the ways in which white supremacy is still a reality isn't the point of the essay, only symptomatic of the complex world we live in, wherein actual science is more mistrusted now by average people than it was a few decades ago (this my feeling, but I could easily be wrong).
I also appreciate your specification re: pendulum, there are many points on the arc, indeed, which is what I was hoping to illuminate by briefly discussing the net-positive of challenging the idea that anything in the world is binary ... but many people are reacting to this in predictable ways, and are en masse resorting towards the two poles, hence my concerns that, to your point, even in *speaking* of Utopian ideals, we are presupposing a societal-wide cohesion to *something* which can very easily become totalitarian in tone.
All that to say, I'm genuinely not sure I know what the fuck I'm on about in this response to responses to other responses, but I'm having a ball doing it, and I appreciate your input and thoughts, too.
PS: can you help me better understand how my Existentialism is a cloaked regression to the 15th century? I'm not saying I disagree, I'm genuinely curious what exactly you mean by this (for the record since I didn't say it above: I understand myself as an existentialist to the basic extent that I believe existence precedes essence, and that we are beings that have a responsibility/need to define *individual* meaning in our lives, without believing that there is any inherent, singular meaning to life that should be prescribed collectively. Viktor Frankl is as close as I could get to believing in any singular idea, for a time: "To be sure, a human being is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.”