Quote:
Originally Posted by Tietäjä
george orwell once remarked that political thought, especially on the left, is a sort of masturbation fantasy in which the world of fact hardly matters. that's true, unfortunately, and it's part of the reason that our society lacks a genuine, responsible, serious left-wing movement
(chomsky)
|
Are you paraphrasing Chomsky or using him as an example of Orwell's proposition?
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by tietaja
now i've worked with those little things and i can definitely agree here
is there hope
|
There is a huge conflation I think between completely different aspects of thinking lumped together as "The Left". Pretty much any and all theories in the history of the humanities can be described as "Left", simply by virtue of their questioning the status quo. That is to say... Conservative values. To lump all these different concepts/theories together, simply because right wing thoughts/values are so hegemonic isn't particularly meaningful - especially when a lot of them share very little in terms of epistemology, methodology or ethics.
A lot of "Leftist" thought is indeed pretentious, ego driven drivel. But no one's claiming Leftists have transcended all the toxic aspects of our chimp brains. They've just managed to be a meaningful amount better than right-wingers.
Evryone would like to position themselves as the serious, sceptical, apostle of empiricism - that whatever the numbers say is their position. But the principle reason why the economics profession has the prescriptions that it does is not because of empiricism, it's because it is corrupted by money. The bankrolling of universities, foundations, think tanks, media outlets. This is the front-line of the class warfare that Buffet recently referenced as only one side fighting. And it's true.
In a world like this, you are going to seriously struggle to stick to analysis of numbers and stats in order to get to the truth and put forward a good case for Left values.
That is why you can't shy away from the subjective, the interpretive, even testimony, in the building of your case. History and psychology are the keys to a coherent, convincing case for the Left*. If you play solely with the numbers you are going to lose. The numbers available are rigged and the interpretation of them is bankrolled. That said, when you are able to find prodigious thinkers (Piketty, Steve Keen) who can take on such titanic resources through the sheer size of their brains, great. I have no doubt that they are the most potent weapons of the Left. But don't paint with one brush those who offer other avenues for convincing argument.
I have to say I'm not familiar with Zizek's "changing the chicken" (cba to google), but off the top of my head he's probably in the top ten culprits of what you're complaining about. He's a big name and the last time I remember trying to listen to him speak, he was interpreting cinema with psychoanalysis. Now that's a dead end if ever I saw one
*A great example being very cheap experiments in psychology completely smashing rational actor theory -an underlying pillar of free market economics- in the 70's.