The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 7
In my line of work taking on Critical Social Justice and other forms of increasingly dominant societal insanity, I get asked a lot of questions. If there’s one question I’m asked more often than any other, it’s how don’t I go crazy looking at this stuff every day? To be fair, I’ve flown pretty close to that sun, but I didn’t fall in, and so I’ve reflected quite a bit on it. I thought it might help people to spell out some of the answer.
Because I was probably pushed pretty close to the brink more than once, I’ve had a chance to figure out what aspects of living in today’s Age of Narratives, of which Critical Social Justice is just one important and ugly part, really threaten my sanity. Honestly, a lot of it is the media more than the work, and this doesn’t just mean the media, but also social media, alternative media, and the rest of our whole media landscape. That said, I positively identify cable news as a serial and mostly useless offender and think you should just turn it off. News is noise, at least for the present moment.
I try to step away from politics and take care with my social media interaction as well, since it seems like those things do little to promote anything worthwhile in the world while making life unbearable from a perspective of subjective experience. For those things, I insist that partially unplugging is necessary to stay sane within our prevailing Age of Narratives.
Regarding the work, which is what people really want to know about, there are two things I do to stay sane. I did my homework to understand the insanity itself on its own terms, to learn its logic, to get into its head. What we understand might exasperate us or frustrate us, but it doesn’t make us crazy. I also did my homework to understand the alternative: consistent liberal principles. These combined let me avoid the gaslighting, know what I stand for and who I am, and make it clear that, despite all the wild narratives flying around me, I really am able to occupy some outcrop of rock on the mountain of the moral high ground. Knowing the seas we’re sailing in and where I can put a foot on dry land keeps me sane, and it can keep you sane too.
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9 comments
Dude;
It’s half-a-century after the Moon landing and economists can’t figure out planned obsolescence and talk about the depreciation of all of the consumer trash. But making and selling garbage is Economic Growth.
This has only been going on for 70 years. Ever heard of Net Domestic Product? Where is the consumer depreciation data?
The Economic Growth narrative is defective algebra.
I spend hours every day looking at this stuff and reading complex philosophy (Kant) who is soon misunderstood – I advice reading the last part (dialectic part)of the 3rd Critique where he explains his views on world government, which has been largely misrepresented and misunderstood. Also, transcendental idealism is the only philosophy which leads to empirical realism. It’s not all just in your head as many people claim. Kant is my reference to sanity, keeps me sane and keeps me from being driven nuts.
I find MSM to be toxic right now & use it mostly for weather reports. Trying to keep hold of Liberal Principles doesn’t seem difficult, but I think for younger people who are less grounded in them it will be a challenge.
This a power grab by those with an authoritarian bent. If there is no truth nor objectivity, those who control the narratives get to decide what ‘truth’ is and subsequently sell it back to the masses. Those who disagree with will be labeled liars and outcasts. Basically, this is what is currently happening in our universities.
Hi James,
I just started listening to your podcast and so far so good. I have been aware of you since the Grievance Studies days.
I don’t understand your comment that Do your own research = It’s my lived experience.
“Do your own research ” I thought meant “don’t take my word for it, look it up yourself and decide” which I take to mean find out the “truth” and to read more. “Lived experience” I have taken to mean “the only thing real is what I say is real”
Perhaps in a future podcast you can clarify this point.
Otherwise thank you for this and I will keep listening after I get done with the Crenshaw paper.
Just to clarify, one of Bauman’s key theses is that the project of modernity, which was to move away from tradition and superstition towards using Reason (in the Enlightenment sense) to classify and understand the world, is still with us, but is failing and has been failing to live up to the promises that it set for itself ages ago. In a globalized, computerized, networked, and neoliberalized world, the modernist project can’t cope with rapid change and an increase in risk, especially for those at the bottom who don’t have the means to escape from the pernicious, yet localized, fallout from globalized problems.
Though modernity is still with us and is still attempting to classify and understand the world, what was once taken as definite, as solid, is now liquid and slippery. The rise of the postmodern is with us, and the world has increasingly become “re-enchanted.”
Sounds like the same as the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’. When everything is political, politics is everything.
There is worse to come, the Meta-verse. Meta glasses and meta corneal lenses are now in the pipeline which will keep us connected online all the time- with penalties for not wearing them? Then there will be no escape from the Politics of Everything- and the Meaning of Nothing- and living in our individualised worlds’ will no longer be possible.
No one is forcing us to watch tv, look at YouTube, or twitter.
There are eco-villages, plots of land for sale. Places still to go to – like all kinds of small towns in America to live in if people want a more “real” place to be.
Take out a real U.S. map and look at it. Thousands, and thousands of towns all through the U.S.
Just go somewhere, spend a day walking around saying “Hi” to strangers, and strike up conversations. No one is forcing you to be on the phone if you don’t want to be. 😊