{Greed, gender, dystopian gloom, and hopeful pessimism: bring it on!}
At Current Affairs, which he founded and which he edits, Nathan J. Robinson debunks the idea that either the Invisible Hand of the Market, the Law of Supply and Demand, or any other impersonal economic force drives capitalism; capitalism is fueled by greed. As Robinson explains:
We must reject the idea coming from many wealthy people that, as Jag Bhalla puts it, “unbridled greed is just simple human nature.” (Bhalla says we have accepted a “greedocracy.”) We ought to acknowledge the simple fact that those who try to get more than they need to live a life of basic comfort, have accumulated their luxuries because they have deprived others along the way. This has been done by choice. Everyone could have had plenty, because there is plenty to go around, but decisions are made every day that prevent this outcome. Nobody makes the capitalist maximize profits, or pay their workers less than they pay themselves, and “the market made me do it” is an excuse that should make socialists highly dubious. It is crucial for socialists to understand that human beings are not mere billiard balls whose moral choices are dictated by the systems we are in. We have agency, and that agency confers responsibility. There are no excuses for enriching one’s self and exploiting others.
Is Capitalism Built on Greed? ❧ Current Affairs
In “Why Is the Right So Horrified by Drag Queens?” Nathan Robinson also weighs in on the latest moral panic on the Right. “Pedophiles” and “groomers” are the insults du jour, and conservatives are horrified that children are exposed to “men in thongs,” which leads one to assume that conservatives believe children should not be allowed to go to a public beach. Robinson observes:
It is very interesting that the Right, strict defenders of parental rights when it comes to preventing children from exposure to critical race theory, suddenly starts talking about using criminal law and taking people’s children away if parents take their kids to a drag show. Here we see something fundamental about right-wing politics exposed: it is not actually, despite the endless use of the word “freedom,” about freedom at all. It is about freedom within a very narrowly prescribed range. The moment men start wearing women’s clothes and dancing, we must cover the children’s eyes in case they get infected with unconventional notions about gender roles.
One is tempted to ask, what are these people so afraid of? The obvious answer is, everyone and everything that is not like them.
Why Is the Right So Horrified By Drag Queens? ❧ Current Affairs
At Aeon, Audrey Borowski discusses a modern social philosopher so obscure that even I had not heard of him. Gunther Anders (1902--1992), Borowski informs us, was “a German philosopher and essayist of Jewish descent, whose work bears testimony to some of the 20th century’s major disasters and their effect on the intellectual landscape of the time. Anders set out to theorize those disasters and the impact of technology on modernity and the human condition, in particular technology’s gradual domination over all aspects of human activity – the commodification, dehumanization and even derealization of the world that had resulted from that domination.”
In the shadow of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, Anders—like his friend Theodor Adorno—grew ever more skeptical of the Enlightenment and the belief in “progress” that it spawned. His view, as Borowski explains, was that “Much of the recent technological takeover of our lives has been underpinned by the myth that it was synonymous with emancipation and progress – a conceit it was suspect to challenge even while that very imperative further contributed to the growth of inequalities, the destruction of nature and the waste of resources. ‘The real terrorists’ in this regard are the so-called experts in charge who were as ignorant as us but ‘who continuously frighten our common world with the threat of destruction.’ Rather than ‘enlightening’ man, the progress of technology had ended up further anchoring his obsolescence and placing him outside of history.”
Those who find this perspective too gloomy can be cheered by the fact that hardly any of Anders’ writings, including his two-volume The Obsolescence of Humankind, are available in English. Those who find Anders’ view of modernity thought-provoking can thank Audrey Borowski for calling the man to our attention.
Günther Anders, a forgotten prophet for the 21st century? | Aeon Essays
At Aeon, Mara van der Lugt considers the eternal question: Is life’s glass half-empty or half-full? Which is to say, ought we to side with pessimists or with optimists? “Just as the pessimists believe that optimists are deceived in their insistence on the goods of life, so too the optimists think the pessimists’ eyes are skewed towards the bad: each side accuses the other of not having the right vision. The question thus becomes: what is the right vision?”
In her entertaining and wide-ranging essay (from Voltaire to Greta Thunberg), van der Lugt rejects both sunny optimism and gloomy pessimism in favor of a third stance which she calls “hopeful pessimism,” of which she finds Thunberg an exemplar:
If there is hope, it’s a dark, bleak hope, full of rage and grief and pain for what is being lost – but infused also with insistence, perdurance, determination. It is clear that this activist, at least, will continue to strive even if her efforts are doomed to fail. This is not optimism: if anything, it is a hopeful pessimism, and I believe it has every right to be called a virtue in our age.
Hopeful pessimism breaks through the rusted dichotomy of optimism vs pessimism. It is this attitude, this perspective that is exemplified in Thunberg and other figures who by their example give an affirmative answer to the question posed by Paul Kingsnorth: ‘Is it possible to see the future as dark and darkening further; to reject false hope and desperate pseudo-optimism without collapsing into despair?’
In short, the philosopher we need today is Yogi Berra, who famously said “It ain’t over till it’s over.” He is also reputed to have said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” which applies perfectly to our contemporary American predicament.
In these dark times, the virtue we need is hopeful pessimism | Aeon Essays
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