Will Self 'Is there a Culture War and can it be won?' RISING 20

Will Self discusses the question 'Is there a Culture War and can it be won?' with Chenine Bhathena at RISING 20.

[@christopherbrookfield4785]

Will Self is almost too clever, by half. He knocks spots off virtually every other academic/intellectual. And he has a great sense of humour. Wicked! ✌️

[@IRISHINFIDEL]

you are certainly comically deluded if you are not using sarcasm

[@stuntroamer59]

All lives matter

[@MichaelMalou]

right on as usual. thx will

[@OzgurUyanik1]

Looking forward to the "cultural renaissance" post-apocalypse-this talk should be required viewing, sad to see so few views but hopefully there'll be an uptick soon.

[@sherlockholmeslives.1605]

What is the cultural renaissance, Ozgur? Lol! Does it ( being flippant ) mean loads of people queueing up to view the Mona Lisa, or packed out holidays to Florence? I am not interested in politics, haven't got a clue, whether the cultural renaissance is a revolutionary movement to educate us all? I really don't know what "cultural renaissance" is.

[@gbennett69]

not in the USA jack!......this guy is just a local crank....and irrelevent

[@KristinP-zi2dj]

well hm @@sherlockholmeslives.1605

[@HWangle-zv4el]

Outstanding insights. The lack of views describes precisely what he says about people’s avoidance to accept it

[@KristinP-zi2dj]

ok.

[@geoffreynhill2833]

Born at the end of WW2 to the distant reverberation of atomic weapons, my generation was only too conscious of the possibility of Armageddon next time around. Hence the prominence of CND, anti-Vietnam protest etc. rather than your own particular concerns. Our ecology was riddled with bomb-sites and millions of homes turned to dust so give us a break, Will! 😉 (from Green Fire) 🌈🦉

[@geoffreynhill2833]

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

[@mooseandspade6251]

Will Self is simultaneously brilliant and utterly exhausting.

[@longlittleness]

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

[@mooseandspade6251]

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

[@will8805]

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

[@kurisensei]

Never boring

[@biscuit4259]

@@will8805 that’s definitely your shit mate.

[@markdpricemusic1574]

''City of Culture you say? Here is the news. Cities are ecologically doomed. And culture is so commodified it is impotent. But on the plus side, these are REALLY intersting times....'' :)

[@markrowe5992]

Fella makes a lot of sense. Good to hear Ballard's friend Will Self. Intelligent.

[@danielnichols5632]

Will has never been to Coventry but probably been sent to Coventry lol

[@charlottemarceau8062]

"you wear a bit of paper in November" 😂😂😂

[@mbadiou]

3:52 is when Will starts

[@kurisensei]

Thanks!

[@karinturkington2455]

At two places in your presentation, your voice was muted. I wonder if this happened on your end or if you said something that someone didn't want the audience to hear. I didn't take note of the first, but the second silence occurred at 12:31 as you introduced your point that half of the greenhouse gases ever emitted have been emitted since the Kyoto Agreement was signed.

[@itsunclemonty5206]

Finger on the pulse, as per.

[@prasantbanerjee8199]

"Brilliantly joined...?

[@DaboooogA]

Thumbnail looks hellish

[@jackallenproductions]

How would you describe Will Self, his persona and his demeanor? What words come to mind? Smarmy? Smug? Full of himself? An enthusiastic pessimist? Authentic? Genuine? Thoughtful? Curious of other people's impressions.

[@andreusredloff2252]

Curious,passionately so and honest

[@alexritchie4586]

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.

[@patrickwhite8144]

20:33 Will Self's rebuttal to Steven Pinker's exhaustively evidenced claim that societies which embrace enlightenment values get better over time is nothing other than: "I don't think they have", and the current pandemic has intensified social inequality. As he said to Niall Ferguson, he needs to up his game.

[@lsobrien]

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.

[@lauramartin5579]

@@lsobrien wow

[@HkFinn83]

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.

[@patrickwhite8144]

@@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.

[@jackallenproductions]

@@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.

[@chrismarkjones3752]

Oh the crevice betwixt intellect and intelligence. Painfully nothing. People eat, sleep, work.

[@alexritchie4586]

This absolute snake speaking out both sides of his mouth. Thumps the tub for new infrastructure but made it his personal project to collapse HS2.

[@gbennett69]

an intellectual light weight who never made it in the usa.....if this guy is a rebel whats he rebelling against

[@johnharvey3748]

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

[@rigsby1454]

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

[@jackallenproductions]

@@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.

[@jackallenproductions]

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

[@NoLefTurnUnStoned.]

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

[@IRISHINFIDEL]

will self is a habitual liar

[@errgo2713]

bot

[@IRISHINFIDEL]

@@errgo2713 bots don't reply

[@radcow]

Lost all self respect for this guy during Brexit he's no longer revlerent

[@jackallenproductions]

What was his position regarding Brexit?

[@tomhart1654]

He tells many lies.

[@errgo2713]

bot

[@zetetick395]

Who doesn't?