PS: I'm still hopeful about Nero-Gliberalism. I hope it'll be stone dead by Christmas. ✝

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@@errgo2713 bots don't reply

Curious,passionately so and honest

I generally see him as a thinks-he's-too-clever by half nihilistic cynic who wears the trappings of the working class to disguise his rather comfortable life amidst Britain's client press. I will never forgive this man for being one of the leading figures in deliberately collapsing the HS2 project, not because he had good reasons but because he thought it was 'a shit idea'. Another overpaid, overstuffed columnist using his privileged platform to snipe and swipe at things he personally doesn't like or want.

ok.

you are certainly comically deluded if you are not using sarcasm

All lives matter

Do you have to ‘make it’ in the USA? 😂

@@johnharvey3748 Its the country where people think Jordan Peterson is an intellectual

@@rigsby1454 Got to make those spicy claims and play the optics games. Really proselytize those tribal narratives. " 'Group B' are awful and will be the death of everything you love if you & the rest of 'Group A' don't fight back tooth & nail" Also make sure you focus on fringe cultural issues, like transgender or Critical Race Theory. Make a big fuss about all of those things while dismissing any issue that is even remotely salient and poses an actual threat. Be sure to spew out a few pop-psychology generic self-help books and be very self-assured about how profound you are. Then make sure you're addicted to benzodiazepines and rather than struggling with the withdrawals and following standard treatment options- get shipped off to Serbia and put yourself into a medically induced coma.

@@rigsby1454 Sorry for the mostly nonsense rant, guess I had it pent up and needed it off my chest.

@@johnharvey3748 Who gives a flying kite about the USA?

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Who doesn't?

Thanks!

Pangloss was a professor of Voltaire’s invention, who, despite living in a world where rape, destitution, war and weaponised stupidity were all commonplace, insisted that this was the “best of all possible worlds”. Certainly living between the ivory tower and the highest courts of the land helped in maintaining the delusion. But even when he was forced face-to-face with just some of the horrors produced by his species, his insufferable brand of Optimism, that had made him a star in salons across Europe, prevented him from registering them. So it is with Pinker. His grand thesis goes: as capitalism went global, so did Liberalism, and they, together, became the source of all good things. Passed over is the brutal institution of capitalism, of which Marx (capitalism’s greatest surveyor yet) was only too aware. “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of … capitalist production.” Blankly ignored is the forceful imposition of state-backed capital in the “Third World,” an invention of that those Victorian decades. An overlooked and tragic period explored by Mike Davis, during which perhaps 60 million perished. It was the IdEaS of Locke, Hobbes, Malthus and the race scientists which carried the day. It is often said, by Pinker and others, that “capitalism lifted millions out of poverty,” without considering what it is was that dispossessed them to begin with. Morons on message boards may be excused, a “leading public intellectual” can not. But even if you could disregard the explosion of those dark, satanic mills, and our vast “underclass” of slaves, on which the whole beast - from its very inception - depends, you’re still left with the looming cliff edge. Capitalism, and its insidious cult of growth, is not sustainable. Liberal Capitalism saw off feudalism, Fascism, Communism and countless threats from the Third World; it can’t, it seems, survive hegemonic domination. Building upon Karl Polanyi’s concerns about disembedded markets, Wolfgang Streeck has written: “…Having no opposition may actually be more of a liability for capitalism than an asset. Social systems thrive on internal heterogenity, on a pluralism of organising principles protecting them from dedicating themselves entirely to a single purpose, crowding out other goals that must also be attended to if the system is to be sustainable.” Without the counterforces of trade unionism and socialism, capital accumulation - that “mad quest for singularity” - has made Progress synonymous with suicide: the telos, fittingly, of Professor Pangloss’s logos.

@@lsobrien wow

Pinker isn’t an historian and his knowledge is fairly shallow. I’m sure he’s knowledgable in his area of psychology, but that book clearly started with a neat conclusion and worked its way backwards.

@@lsobrien I have read The Better Angels of Our Nature, but I am not absolutely familiar with everything Pinker has written. That said, this is my response: 1) I don't think Steven Pinker is claiming that the current state of the world (or the west) is the "best of all possible worlds" so I don't think you comparison with Voltaire's Pangloss is accurate. 2) I don't think Pinker claims that capitalism and liberalism are the sources of "all good things". His claim is that societies which embrace Enlightenment values get better over time. It's true that the societies which have embraced these values are all liberal democracies with capitalistic economies but that is different from the claim that capitalism and liberalism are the fundamental basis of this progress. 3) The fact that bad things have happened in capitalistic societies does not mean that societies which embrace liberal values, and which happen to be capitalistic, do not tend to get better over time. 4) Even if it is accepted that capitalistic economies are not sustainable, that still does not refute Pinker's argument, because Pinker is not making a case for capitalism per se; he is making a case for enlightenment values, as already mentioned.

@@HkFinn83 it certainly weaves an optimistic narrative about where global civilization is heading. Cherry-picked statistics that most would find hopeful & inspiring. Portraying this certain techno-utopia we are supposedly trending towards. Unfortunately, there is a lot of omission. While some of the trends Pinker highlight may appear all and well, there's a lot of turning the blind eye to existential risks we face. Lack of recognition of how fragile all these institutions are. How easily it can all crumble down. We've equipped ourselves with tools of gods, that are becoming easier & easier to access. Potential to blow up the world with a flip of the switch. Have these devastating tools where we dont have the foresight to know there second & third order effects. Lacking the wisdom how to, or even if we SHOULD implement these technologies. I worry that Pinker just lulls the public into a false sense of security. We live in a society where people are just comfortable enough that they dont feel the need to change. And I cant really blame them. Exhausted from their shit jobs and programmed to consume luxury goods to settle any anxieties when they arise. The way we are organized isnt sustainable. Too many of us manage to "get by" to be driven enough to put energy into making the fundamental structural changes necessary.

What was his position regarding Brexit?

I’m curious as to what in particular you find exhausting about him?

I don't know, but for some reason I end up looking like Gollum every time I finish a Will Self lecture.

@@longlittleness perhaps because whilst he has a handful of good insights he’s utterly pretentious and droning.

Never boring

@@will8805 that’s definitely your shit mate.