Rick Roderick on Habermas - The Fragile Dignity of Humanity [full length]

[@rp627]

This might be the most accessible verbal or written philosophy I've ever come across. As a person from Virginia, this is a the most lucid. I hope it's equally lucid to others.

[@sselfless]

@@jose123001 respect to you both

[@nightoftheworld]

Rahil Patel Hell yes. Rick “the rock” Roderick

[@hinteregions]

He really is wonderful at explaining and yes he is!

[@hinteregions]

@Decker Santino You know we all do have a duty to report sad psychopaths like this. Don't bother with 'spam' - it's multiple ID's - go for 'harrassment/stalking' or whatever it is.

[@hinteregions]

@Carter Hoeck Making you guilty of a Federal offence. Thanks, we'll get right onto it.

[@PapaWhiskeyPapa]

That moment when you realise Roderick has been dead for nearly 20 years but that Habermas is still alive and well at 91

[@evenzero]

Habermas was probably not a cokehead

[@shannonm.townsend1232]

@@evenzero Rick was?

[@Driecnk]

@@shannonm.townsend1232 Pepsi just as bad

[@Driecnk]

@@evenzero Really

[@JB-ru4fr]

I would love to hear Rodericks thoughts today

[@ntodd6627]

Many of the comments here focus on Professor Roderick's appearance or his accent. This is unfortunate. His summary of Habermas' philosophy effectively does away with so much of the misinformation and conspiracy theories which are now being falsely propounded about the Frankfurt School among half-bright young Culture Warriors.

[@DaveE99]

Cults often use loaded language and thought terminating cliches.

[@michaelhaller1762]

Very nice to hear an American Professor talking lively about Jürgen Habermas. rgds from Germany

[@kjs4886]

Habermas is actually quite indebted to America, in the sense that he synthesizes American Pragmatism (the philosophical school) with Critical Theory.

[@nightoftheworld]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2200">36:40</a> *managerial hubris* “Workers have every reason to believe that their bosses are not prepared to engage in a process of _undistorted_ communication with them.”

[@NothingHumanisAlientoMe]

What do you mean *I need to be kept in line* ?

[@scoon2117]

My bosses look at me like I'm speaking Japanese

[@homerfj1100]

He is just so entertaining, so down to Earth, that I can understand what he is talking about. He has led me to many other sites including some of the Philosophers that he admires. All within the time they lived, so I can think about the time I am still living in,I am still learning in my 60s. The guy is so accessible . T

[@benmcconaghy3313]

What a tragedy that he died so young. I think he is the perfect teacher. This is a great series.

[@nightoftheworld]

Ben McConaghy such eloquence fueled by cigarettes and Big Macs

[@hinteregions]

I did not know that and I am a little sad. He really was a first rate thinker and teacher.

[@kellyoradio5029]

@@hinteregions And an exceptional gourmand.

[@hinteregions]

@@kellyoradio5029 Firstly, LOL. Happens to the best of 'em XD

[@zandermcconnochie6898]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2641">44:01</a> - "Orwell's vision of a horrible future, which was a boot stomping on a human face forever, is a utopian image because he assumed there would be resistance and human faces..."

[@adetya88]

That statement hits like a ton of bricks - realizing what we are fearing is our future has already engulfed us and we didn't even flinch.

[@arinafalk]

Aye, the simulacras up on offer to us, are near perfect in their seduction to us now. We will be to numb & dumbed down to know when we officially enter a tanshuman A.I. & fascist ran state existence which dislodges us from our innate humanity.. Insert the Matrix, "woman in the red dress" here..

[@polarnj]

BoldVA5D if you watch this entire series on the self and post-modern continental thought, you can get sucked deep down a rabbit hole that is merely a very paranoid but interesting critique, but little more. Who cares if something is a Simulacrum? Society has always been a spectacle, only today the information and content can be mass produced and accessible to all. What's real today is the same thing that always has been, and that's your life and your world. The rest has always been partial truth, much myth, and much propaganda. Was a world believing in the Divine Right of Kings more "Real" than one that watches Trump on Twitter? Or the news pushing a war? Power is bullshit and always has been. Love is still available, family, the stages of life, solitude and nature...it's all still here waiting for your awe! All states or power structures have always been "fascist" in the way the left uses the word. But it's just life! Human nature in a massive context with all its complexities and little power plays. Life is good if you decide it is, your country is like 1984's Ingsoc fascism if you decide it is, life sucks and isn't worth living if you decide it is, etc. I appreciate the ideas of many of the post-modern post-structural etc etc thinkers, but they are really closer to conspiracy theory and a distortion of reality, even if they creatively warn us about certain dangers. But they fit into literature more than philosophy and the degree of paranoia and shaming society goes far beyond an objective free thinking perspective. Great and thought provoking, but very far from something that should be seen as Gospel. Philosophy needs some optimism mixed with its concern these days. This current foundation of sociological theory and continental philosophy is a dead end of hardline pessimism for the West. Let's go back to a fresh critique of an updated Hegelian view of modernity and start over with a Nietzschean skepticism and take the good from Western tradition, integrate non-Western ideas properly, without being Anti-Eurocentric but growing into a more global view with the West as our starting place, and synthesize, reconstruct and build! No more deconstruction and destruction unless it's needed. We have gotten so used to pulling things apart, we forgot how to build, and we have more tools and data then ever dreamed of before! It's the challenge of doing REAL PHILOSOPHY that terrifies us! The project is HUGE!

[@arinafalk]

Yeah thanks Pol, but my views do not come from listening to a lecture. And we are all to observe fro the soul, we are not drones that can think no further or deeper than any set of lectures or other people's thoughts. Don't be rude an imply such silliness.

[@polarnj]

BoldVA5D that wasn't rudeness, it's a passionate rejection of what I see as a deeply misguided and negative philosophy. I wasn't implying you are basing your entire belief on these excellent lectures but on continental philosophy of which I see as a philosophical dead end. It was not personal. Please respect hyperbole with thicker skin, this is the stuff of serious passion! But honestly no offense was meant

[@nightoftheworld]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="409">6:49</a> *instrumental reason and communicative reason in critical theory* “In the area of labor and _instrumental reason_ we have the sciences and in the area of _communication_ we have the humanities, which are supposed to enlighten us in dialogue, tell us more about how to talk to one another. For Habermas we really form ourselves as _selves_ in both dimensions, but we could not for Habermas possibly become subjects/selves without the communicative dimension of dialogue.”

[@nightoftheworld]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="459">7:39</a> *critical reflections* “We become selves in much the way we do for Mead (the great American sociologist) _We become selves in our interaction with other selves._ In other words it’s by seeing how other people respond to the things that we say that we cue in on who we are-we may adjust it and so on. I mean this seems to me at one level an obvious point.”

[@RichInk]

I miss Rick and am so pleased these lectures are available. Thank you.

[@nightoftheworld]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2631">43:51</a> *Orwell was a pie-eyed optimist* “Orwell’s vision of a horrible future-which was a boot stomping on a human face forever-is a utopian image because he assumed there would be resistance and human faces. Both of which may turn out to be false-so 1984 is not a book which scares me anymore.”

[@rb5519]

"Sublation Media with Doug Lain" channel just used that clip in his video: "Should We Love Big Brother?" Amazing stuff.

[@JerryNo2006]

Respect towards this accent: restored

[@jsmdnq]

I love this guy. I love his intelligence and his presentation. He seems extremely unique and special. He's able to connect so many different concepts in a practical and fluid way. I'm not a philosopher but a mathematician. So many overlapping concepts(I guess philosophy is more of the mathematics of the human mind and society) but I've never been a fan of how philosophy is presented(in fact, most things, it seems the communicator is key and almost people fail). Roderick was both a true philosopher and teacher. I could only imagine how different humanity would be if every young adult watched these. Although maybe the content is something that one can't truly comprehend until they've lived long enough to have the connecting experience.

[@nightoftheworld]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1664">27:44</a> *dialogic communication-undistorted non-monological communication* “When you’re in a relative position of power the other person’s aware of it too and of their role and you cannot expect an _undistorted communication._ And I again don’t mean personally but _systematically distorted._ This is systematically distorted-it’s distorted by relations of unequal power. If you’re to be *communicatively rational* _everyone has to have the same right to speak and be heard.”_

[@nightoftheworld]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2706">45:06</a> *hope in communicative reason* “Well what I admire in Habermas is the attempt (without being a complete idiot) to try to develop an account of reason that runs _against_ cynical reason. It does say to us, we _can_ speak to one another, we _can_ have processes of enlightenment, we _can_ learn to say what is true to one another.”

[@cheri238]

Professor Roderick, your lectures jave been so important to me. RIP ❤️

[@nightoftheworld]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="955">15:55</a> *systematically distorted communication & analysis* “In other words I always suspect a belief if I hold it and I go, _’Well you know, the very powerful would love for me to believe that. Maybe I should rethink it because I don’t know exactly where all my ideas come from.’_ I have an idea that many of them come from the people who control the means and dissemination of information and communication.”

[@musicstewart9744]

Ya gotta love this Professor. "Come on in a sit a spell while I tell you about a German intellectual. You want a Lone Star beer with the BBQ I'll be bringing out in a bit?"

[@nightoftheworld]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="350">5:50</a> *Monologic & Dialogic / Science & Humanities* “Labor is understood as a kind of monological or instrumental endeavor. You know in other words it’s an instrumental endeavor _driven by the imperatives of efficiency_ and so on. It’s an instrumental endeavor and he defines it as being *monological.* He also says about it something that’s sort of banally true-he calls it a _productive endeavor._ It’s the endeavor surrounding production as opposed to those surrounding communication. Communication is, according to Habermas, by its very nature *dialogic.”*

[@taylorweaver7486]

One of the reasons I am proud to be Texan. Roderick is amazing.

[@arinafalk]

chuckles

[@taylorweaver7486]

+BoldVA5D I, unfortunately, have to search hard for reasons these days...

[@arinafalk]

Taylor Weaver I hear you! Have you ever read Homer's Iliad & Odyssey? That's maybe a odd question, but Homer was certainly passing something on there (Osirian / Isis story) and the same story the Roman's buried as they went about building Empire..... That system never left, it went underground and newer Empire joined hands... But note that Odysseus has a job to accomplish - there is reason & rhyme to landing ones but on "the River Nile" or River Styx"... Knowing what that reason is might be a good key to laughing more. It's all pretty dark humor though ;) Lol.

[@johnmiller7453]

Roderick is something special. He felt the philosophy he taught and so lived it. I hope that last 10 years worked out for him.

[@pianomanhere]

If only he were still with us...

[@volta2aire]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 2023 "Jürgen Habermas, born 18 June 1929, is a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere." age 94

[@differous01]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1770">29:30</a> ff "...the only force a free human being can ever recognise; that peculiar, strange, unforced force of the better argument." We can change our minds if we're free. [edit]The rub = We're only free when we take responsibility for our reason.

[@Stoner075C]

Gracias por subir estos videos.

[@davidfost5777]

I'm always looking for new interesting lectures on Psychology/Philosophy, please let me know if you guys have any recommendations, would be highly appreciated

[@nightoftheworld]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="630">10:30</a> “Now _don’t_ think that this is some fancy dan [showy] academic exercise. *A lot of people have died because they read a book the wrong way.”*

[@rentaghostokish5628]

Can you imagine what Rick would've thought of the age of social media like Face Book, Twitter, etc?

[@farmerboburbanite]

The 8th lecture of this series (Baudrillard) touches on this. He talks about "Hyper-real" as something being more than real. Like how during the gulf war cnn was somehow more real for homecoming soldiers than being in the war. Social Media has that effect too. It can make us experience things that simulate life as more real than the actual complexities of our lives. Another example he uses is that blood in a movie seems more real to us than blood in real life.

[@Bojoschannel]

He would have taken the Mark Fisher route

[@burmanhands]

This project is where philosophy meets consciousness. All of us already have internal dialogue between our "ego" and our inner "observer" (our subjective transcendent self,) This is where lies and deception begin. You don't need another person to have communication. Once we start to behave from our observer,s position we don't need defensive posturing and lies. This is a complex thing to envision but it has been the goal of shamans, monks, mystics and some philosophers since man,s beginnings.

[@thenowchurch6419]

John Burman. Having another person is not absolutely necessary but really helps to reduce the chances of self-deception, which is a perennial problem in shamanic and mystic traditions. Solipsism and confirmation bias are way too common and easy. But I guess you did not need any one to reply !

[@nightoftheworld]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="624">10:24</a> _”Don’t_ let *hermeneutics* throw you because it’s a big word. It means _interpretation of texts.”_

[@gr8fultokr]

Roderick kinda has an old Luke Skywalker look to him! Or does old Luke have a Roderick look to him...?

[@DCdabest]

Chris Beltran Old cranky and slighy cynical (albeit beloved) teachers seem to have the same look going on haha

[@nightoftheworld]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2481">41:21</a> *ubiquity of interpretation in human life* “Interpretation in fact may be one of the fundamental conditions for selfhood. One of the problems in the current situation with what I have called previously _information overload and complexity_ may be the difficulty that gives us in interpreting everyday life situations. Because everyone whether they know it or not is always already an interpreter. When you stop at a stop sign you’ve interpreted something already.”

[@JudoJonny5]

My mind was just elevated

[@mendali]

"fancy dan". I love it.

[@duckfilth3407]

His comments regarding television are really interesting.

[@marklloyd9584]

Rick is an amazing being and sadly missed

[@TJmK1]

Brilliant lecture. May he rest in peace

[@edgardoortiz4664]

RIP !!! T - J , - BEAUTIFUL LADY !!! !!! !!!

[@sagar8642]

He is alive

[@AndrewTech-f7t]

I would give my pinky finger to see Rick and Slavoj in conversation. To Habermas or to Lacan that is the question.

[@timothycook8334]

I wonder what Paul Grice would've thought about Habermas's maxims.

[@MarshallPust]

Semiannual re-listen time! Gimme that Rick!

[@yazanasad7811]

Ideology - making comments that are in the interests of classes other than our own. Test - does what i believe benefit any other interests The idea that the ruling ideas are those of the ruling classes We have interest in removing distortions to communications (but what is purely undistorted communications) Rational: When you speak a sentence you have a desire/built in is universal unconstraint understanding. Equal opportunity to talk and listen (pure symmetry) equal chance for questions and answers. Based on dialogical grounding Try to make it relevant, true, sincere, moral (relevant, true, sincere, symmetrical). Some domains have different prioritises. Science - truth, art (maybe sincetiy). Etc.

[@yazanasad7811]

Criticisms - workers think managers/owners won't engage in this symmetry. Marxism isn't psychoanalysis writ large Elitist factory, conditions held in a seminar room lol. Habernas response: universal, includes all, and can only include participants (no leader like a teacher).

[@yazanasad7811]

Humanities - science is also interpretive, not just reduced to texts. Interpretations maybe one of the fundamental conditions for selfhood. Constant interpretors (links to vervaeke model). Interpretation has never been more difficult. Tribute to habernas - defend reason in spite of all things sent. Reason without cynical reason. Can learn to speak to true. Money and power distort our language (needs to be harmonised admittedly)

[@willowbell3756]

The trouble with the Polish Solidarity movement was its attitude to workers in other countries e.g. the South Wales colliers. Mrs Thatcher loved Lech Walesa, as he helped her ambition to close down our collieries, when the NUM was the only remaining trade union opposition to neo liberalism in Britain.

[@grizcuz]

Didn't know this. Tell me more, please? What did Solidarity do to hasten the fall of coal mining in the UK?

[@willowbell3756]

It's just that Mrs Thatcher sung the praises of Lech Walesa and what he did in Poland, she liked him because to all intents and purposes he and his trade union was anti Russian (I don't know much about his politics). What was worse though was the British govt began importing Polish coal in order to undercut cost and defeat the British coal miners, which she succeeded in doing. I don't know if it was his fault, it's a distant memory, but it hurt our coal mining industry in South Wales. @@grizcuz

[@grizcuz]

@@willowbell3756 Thanks, I was only a kid at the time so I didn't know all the details. Apart from the govt. importing Polish coal to try to break the strike. That period certainly helped form my general political outlook though. It felt like class warfare was being waged and I'd argue that it's continued unabated ever since. I'd even suggest that the Brexit result was part of something that started back then in some ways.

[@willowbell3756]

Are you from Poland? it never occurred to me, but funnily enough we always had people in South Wales from Poland and Yugoslavia, they came mainly to avoid the German occupation and some people worked in the collieries. Went to Poland for the first time last Christmas and I don't think Ive ben in such a friendly country, everyone chatted, on public transport and in the towns and hostels, I visited. Warsaw had the most lovely Christmas walk, with white lights, where everyone in town seemed to be, not just tourists, and it had a bench that played Chopin. I was really ill with flu and a crippling cough, but got around, I was even allowed on the wrong bus going from Wroclaw to Warsaw, Polski, and found out by default. I was so ill I really needed people to be nice and they were.@@grizcuz

[@grizcuz]

@@willowbell3756 I can see why you could think that, but no. I'm from the north of England, on the border between Lancs and Yorks.

[@andrewgirvan3540]

Half way through and I realize he is saying "distorted" and not "destarted". 😊

[@Dubrangle1234]

What a gent. A brilliant synopsis.

[@haimbenavraham1502]

Love this guy. Only wish he was Still with us.

[@SwordShape]

Rick Roderick. if i could choose just 3 people to have coffee with for 1 hour... he'd be one of them.

[@robertosoria8630]

Can somebody translate this video to Spanish? Thanks

[@theRiver_joan]

But then you won't be able to hear his southern drawl. That's half of why I watch these.

[@KnightofEkron]

It's really sad that he's dead :(

[@thebelievertheone1625]

Fact: death is a present reality. Believe it or not. God bless you

[@alexcartagena1983]

The Bill Hicks of contemporary philosophy explication.

[@sselfless]

I'm so glad to find that someone else commented my thoughts on this person. He seems to arrive at the same place as Hicks re: UFOs in an earlier lecture, mainly on how country bumpkins always seem to be those in the news reports on the topic, a Hicks joke also exists with this as the punchline.

[@nightoftheworld]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2336">38:56</a> “Now I don’t wanna just _stomp on him_ with one of these west Texas ad hominem arguments here!”

[@michaelhebert7338]

A good lecture thanks for sharing.

[@s2586201]

If you're articulating a social theory, and seek to go beyond the philosophy of the subject (which Habermas, along with Hegel and also materialists like Marx all desired, though perhaps didn't successfully do), then you do need to go beyond the ego. This was Mead's basic point - we only become selves in our relations with other selves - and something Habermas integrates with the other great threads of sociology (Weber, Marx, Parsons et al) in TCA.

[@thenowchurch6419]

Morgan Gibson. Emmanuel Levinas and the religious thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti both stressed the critical nature of relationship in self realization. They believed we can only truly know ourselves in dynamic relationship with others.

[@anthonykenny1320]

what in tarnation is the ego

[@NoelComiX]

very clear and well spoken

[@anthonykenny1320]

if undistorted communication relies upon total equality in power then unfortunately undistorted communication is impossible, there will always be asymmetry between two or more people, if only because one person has a more fluid grasp of a common language, or if the language being used is not the native la nugget of one

[@ralphricart3177]

These days most people are hopelessly full of sh*t and incapable of coherent, rational and honest communication, so l'm not coming out of my cave.

[@mpcc2022]

Someone get Jordan Peterson these videos, so that he realizes his shortcomings as a philosopher and changes his ways.

[@MikeSchedule]

Anything goes with Foucolt and Habermas . No morality with these Post modern adherents.

[@NoiseOverMusic]

Had this dude seen what people be saying on social media he'd have been like nevermind lmao

[@lkyproject3086]

(n)arwhal --> Orwell fyi - this took me much long than expected

[@RileyCole-fh4kj]

What about Greenland? No one ever talks about Greenland.

[@tylergates6173]

Guy just casually throws in the most morbid examples possible to illustrate his point

[@naushadahmed8090]

Rick Roderick=Texan Zizek

[@mattendahl2236]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1250">20:50</a>

[@yp77738yp77739]

I’ve always wondered about this so I thought I’d try and understand. But to me, so much of it sounds counter logical and counter evolutionary. Just to take one example, to have to give equal right of communication to both the genius and the feeble minded is only going to have an outcome where poor decisions are made and therefore optimum civilisational survival and progress can never be made. This will result in bad outcomes for both the genius and the fool. How can that be good.

[@marcovanheugten1387]

on 33. there are more modes and systems.. of reason, so it can happen one laughs starting the conversation, thinking the other one speaks jokelanguage.. antisthenes did interesting stuff there, irigaray f.i. too.. etc. and in which language..? all these problems :)

[@tehdii]

Haber Mouse :) I love caption done by AI :)

[@UGDP773]

haha, you sound like Heidegger in his text Poetry, Language, and Thought where he ascribes the truth in painting to a certain "group of historical men"

[@oldworldhuman]

well said. ought be read by all...and so in a sense none. fun

[@Prakashbhim]

fruitful discussion one may get from his word

[@nightoftheworld]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="671">11:11</a> *baby slicing religion* _unreasonable_ interpretation of the constitution

[@socialist-strong]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="695">11:35</a> the moment when you realize all three Abrahamic religions have baby-slicing.

[@DCdabest]

A V Great on toast

[@NothingHumanisAlientoMe]

What does the comment section think of Jordan Peterson in line with this talk viewing "12 rules for life" as a reply to "The fragile dignity of humanity" ?

[@Jacob-hk6to]

Baby slicing

[@coreolis7]

Regresseur you have a lot to say. I suggest you start a Blog. But avoid name calling like "commie" or "nerd." We all have different strengths. Define "artificial?"

[@s2586201]

Pretty sure he's trying to sound like Nietzsche, Heidegger et al.

[@robertgreenwood2258]

i don't think he is 'trying' i think he just does.

[@JaredAllaway]

Not everyone in America can afford a dentist. Universal Healthcare now

[@rockycomet4587]

🤣🤣🤣

[@EsatBargan]

Young Anna Davis Elizabeth Perez Anna

[@NothingHumanisAlientoMe]

Cowboy Consciousness

[@democracyrespecterilovedem8607]

also the enlightment was trash

[@sandorfintor]

Peerless.

[@williammedford5891]

Roderick is generally brilliant, and I do not consider the Enlightenment an unconditional blessing by any means, but I question connecting Dachau directly to the Enlightenment, rather than to Marx. Nazis were socialists; Fascism sprang from Collectivism. It was the National SOCIALIST Party.

[@sl3ptsolong]

This ideology took a leftist label chiefly for tactical reasons. It demanded, within the party and within the state, a powerful system of rule that would exercise unchallenged leadership over the “great mass of the anonymous.” And whatever premises the party may have started with, by 1930 Hitler’s party was “socialist” only to take advantage of the emotional value of the word, and a “workers’ party” in order to lure the most energetic social force. As with Hitler’s protestations of belief in tradition, in conservative values, or in Christianity, the socialist slogans were merely movable ideological props to serve as camouflage and confuse the enemy. They arrested Socialists, Communists, trade union leaders, and others who had spoken out against the Nazi party; some were murdered. The claim that the Nazis actually were leftists or socialists in any generally accepted sense of those terms flies in the face of historical reality.

[@namelessdark4701]

Sure sure, just like the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a democratic republic, right?

[@sovietsofia]

You know it's just a word that they "stole" right?

[@NoiseOverMusic]

Sure, the hitler regime certainly wasn't leftist, but it's not accurate to say they merely co-opted the label. More accurate to say that revolutions never work, because obviously the revolutionary thinkers who were definitely considered leftists in their own time were all killed when Hitler rose to power.

[@cowboy4187]

This is such a stupid chud argument. Nazis murdered trade unionists, communists, and all types leftists generally. I wonder if you are really this ignorant or are just trying to launder your shitty right wing beliefs. This is the exact same type of lazy shit I would expect from Denesh Desouza or some equally cynical right wing stooge.

[@moiafro]

“fascism was the proof that enlightenment and tech had not led to lib of human beings” - umm chattel slavery and the colonization and genocide of Indigenous land n ppl? luv these lectures but that was a significant omission (unthought)

[@draw4everyone]

It’s important to mention that many enlightenment statesmen, Jefferson comes to mind, did defend the abolition of slavery in theory. Likewise, for many American intellectuals, the domination of the North following the Civil War was seen as the success of liberalism against the remnants of mercantilist confederalism. By the early 20th century, many similar liberal statesmen, Woodrow Wilson for example, entered politics with the ideal of maintaining the new liberal capitalist order. Wilson’s program, for instance, lie in the League of Nations.

[@johnstewart7025]

Enlightenment and tech did lead to the end of chattel slavery. Colonization and genocide? Not so much. Unless you find persuasive the sequence -- Enlightenment and tech; industrialization; colonization; "world war;" genocide; decolonization.