The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 51
You may have noticed that times are turbulent and that something very nefarious seems to be afoot. You’re not wrong, of course. That’s exactly what’s happening, and it presents a dangerous time for humanity. The question is why it’s happening because the answer to that question informs us significantly on our prospects going forward. On the one hand, and this is correct, a global push for a kind of communo-fascism is underway: a power grab of the grandest proportions in human history. This is consistent with Communist visions stretching back over a century and must be recognized and resisted. On the other hand, it’s happening now instead of at some other time. Is that merely because the technological tools to make this attempt finally exist, with digital technology and social media enabling new forms of propaganda and social credit systems for unprecedented social control? Partly, yes, but merely, no. The internet, like its nearest conceptual predecessor, the printing press, has changed everything. Understanding the nature of that change sheds useful light on the world we now inhabit along with how we should address this new threat and what we have to look forward to if (or when) we succeed.
In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay walks us through a view that breaks out of our limited historical parallax and considers the question of what’s going on around us in a broader frame. What he sees is the dawn of the Second Enlightenment, which will change the world in unbelievable ways for the better if it can set the world ablaze and spread its light. Drawing on lessons from the previous Enlightenment, which unfolded from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, Lindsay makes a case that for all it did accomplish, it didn’t do the one thing that most educated liberals believe it did. The First Enlightenment did not create a Marketplace of Ideas. It created an aristocracy of ideas, which was a huge step in the right direction away from the magisteria of the Darker Age that preceded it. Now, with the advent of the internet and the ability for the average person to hold “information property” by the fruits of his own research, the Marketplace of Ideas is finally emerging. It’s also threatening the power of the “information aristocrats” in the Expert Caste, including its worst offenders, the technocrats. These are doing everything in their power to re-establish a technocratic information aristocracy in the form of a new administered information economy: an information socialism totally under oligarchical technocratic control. Join James for this eye-opening discussion here on the New Discourses Podcast.
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16 comments
Late to the party here (just found this on a FB post) but since this podcast was made we have had several examples of the “aristocracy” claiming the sole possession of truth. We had the Biden administration with its attempt to create a “Ministry of Truth” (I can’t recall the actual name) and a more blatant example when the Prime Minister of New Zealand came right out and said, in effect, do not seek the truth (about anything Covid) anywhere except from the government. I’m sure there are more examples but those two sprang to mind immediately.
What I find most curious is the MSM’s participation in the driving of the “accepted narrative”. Is it because without it they would actually have to do journalism or are they ideological “useful idiots” that think they will go down with the ship if the “deplorables” seek alternatives to their spoon fed “news”?
Very interesting. I have some comments about this discourse.
– The often repeated conclusions throughout this presentation could have benefited from more evidentiary support or references.
– The many phases (6?) of history seemed to be elevated as an averred fact of the matter that could now be used as a predictor of current events and future events. Should we now trust Hegel and Marx as having been on the mark all along?
– The crisis in confidence toward academic/government institutions and experts likely has many sources and seems to affect some disciplines more than others. Democratization of computation and information certainly contributes to that, no doubt, but one culprit seems to be the global, Neo-liberal, adoption of the business ethos in academia and government since the early 1980s. Spending your time looking for financing and meeting publication quotas leaves little time to reproduce others’ published results, or do actual research and teach.
– Younger generations of researchers are already adopting more open approaches toward sourcing and publication, shunning pay-walling and deficient peer-reviewing mechanisms. Hopefully, some issues related to experts’ unwillingness to adapt will naturally go away over time.
– I would like to know where I can find objective demonstrations of Ivermectin, Hydroxy Chloroquin, and vitamin D as suitable therapies for mitigating Covid or possibly obviating vaccines, masks, and distancing. I could do my own research, but it seems that that has already been done, so, evidence… do you speak it?
– Painting with a broad brush all liberals and all democrats (either politicians or voters) as having drunk the critical social justice theory Kool-Aid is inaccurate. Many (most?) who seem to adhere to those ideological constructs do so intuitively and in agreement with common acceptations of words, not the deranged ones intended by woke academics and militants. The vast majority of democrats and liberals do not realize they are partaking in Gnosticism, and most are educable, therefore they should be treated as wrong, not complicit.
Hope the above is viewed as constructive and that further presentations on this topic will ensue.
Interesting. I think a couple of issues here are:
a) There is only so much research ordinary people can do, particularly when it comes to empirical science. Randoms on reddit can parse through the scientific evidence, but don’t really have the resources to say, conduct a randomised control trial on the effectiveness of Ivermectin.
b) Echo chambers are a problem
now here come the “Anti-Disinformation” media companies to “restore social trust” . I know I’m relieved.
James I suggest you check out Martin Gurri’s Revolt of the Public. Similar conclusions slightly different approach.
Keep up the great work.
I tried to share this to Facebook with a fairly in depth summary and my Facebook account was disabled for breaching the community guidelines.
James is right to view the invention of the Gutenberg press as a pivotal event in the West by further promoting the dissemination of knowledge and enabling the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Although that isn’t the whole story, and I don’t like a strict technological-determinism, I found the mediology of Régis Debray really interesting when thinking about these ideas in the past, in addition to the ideas of Marshall McLuhan, both of which can be synthesised. I was also struck by how insightful Noam Chomsky’s Propoganda Model was for understanding the old and ‘heavy’ media of newspapers and analogue TV which began to loose power from the late 60s onward as cable, more radio stations, etc., came on the scene. The internet represents the coup de grâce over these old media forms which once dominated, hence why they are probably the first now to call for the censor of social media.
Sadly, I don’t share all of James’ optimism surrounding the consequences of internet 2.0’s information dissemination capabilities. even if experts are admittedly, and sadly, ‘all too human’ and credentialing institutions imperfect. Firstly, the analogy of the marketplace of ideas is just that, and it isn’t a good one. The truth that the market will, in the long run, produce goods and services that people want isn’t to (by analogy) say that, in the long run, people prefer true ideas. There is plenty of research in psychology and social psychology to show the exact contrary, which I don’t have time to go into now. Just look around at the fervent anti-vaxxer and QAnon nonsense that has spewed forth from this brave new world of ideas, for example. This is degenerate knowledge.
Furthermore, one can accept that credentialing institutions and their experts are imperfect without using the analogy of an aristocracy. These credentials are (for the most part) issued on merit and not for other reasons (like birthright in an aristocracy). It’s a meritocratic hierarchy! Certainly, for experts in science and engineering, there isn’t a hiding place from having to make testable predictions. The humanities in general aren’t as disciplined, however. Now we’re supposed to believe that a flattened out hierarchy where my ignorance is given the same weight as your expertise can product more or better knowledge?! Who’s going to be the first to get their cancer treatment on Reddit?
“look around at the fervent anti-vaxxer and QAnon nonsense”, in contrast to the Infinitely Wise stuff from MSNBC, NPR, WaPo, NYT etc., about CRT, and “Trump Collusion with Russian Hacking”, and Nick Sandmann etc. Mobbing the Native American Elder?
By “anti-vaxxer”, do you mean those like RFK Jr., or do also mean to demonize all those with doubts about the covid vaxes?
You’re wasting your breath on such people — they are Elites — they know all; you know nothing. Now they are demonizing the “unvaxxed” as unclean, filthy and lowborn with their smug Woke-Aristo arrogance. Yet not once do such people demonize let alone admit the truth that left-wing politicians and their lackey academic and media advisors caused covid in the West, not the “unvaxxed”.
For example, when covid lethally exploded in China in Jan 2020 some people in Canada said close the borders to China and all countries until we understand this virus. Justin Trudeau and every leftist politician, academic and media in Canada (which is almost everyone) screamed hysterically, RACIST!!! Trump! Nazi! Xenophobe! WorseThanHitler! They refused to stop planeloads of people arriving every hour from China, the middle east (4 flights a day every day from Pakistan throughout the entire covid period), and from everywhere while covid skyrocketed while Canada’s ‘Pravda’, the CBC (their budget is one billion tax dollars annually) blamed Trump for covid (because Trump was their go-to Satan) and all their woke left cult devotees smugly rubbed their hands and said, yeah it was Trump and not anything we did — we’re moral and good not evil like hick deplorables and redneck RACISTS.
A few months later a study revealed that if the borders had been closed when warned in Feb 2020, covid would not have happened in Canada. Trudeau responded: “Oh those racist Tories!” Same in the U.S. when Trump said close borders to China to prevent pandemic and leftists screamed RACIST and said all welcome and caused a viral catastophe. This woke action was direct literal causation and not a “right-wing conspiracy theory”.
Yet people like the hater of “deplorables” above (she uses the slur “degenerate” like a good leftist witchburner) stigmatizes easy target “unvaxxed” while utterly ignoring who made this happen. Politicians with their woke screams of RACIST caused this entire mess. Deliberately and maliciously to show they are woke they ignored reality and screamed RACIST instead of taking steps to cut off infected people from arriving. Where is her hatred of these woke politicians, the real “degenerates”? Where is her rage and fury at the people who deliberately made this two-year nightmare happen? Nowhere. Because they pay her salary, benefits, mortgage, kid’s Red Guard college fees (the training her woke kids need so they can follow in her public servant unionized upper middle class urban employment footsteps) and smug woke-bourgeois lifestyle.
All politicians, academics and media are vile and corrupt. This is an unpleasant fact of life like dog vomit or skid marks. But it’s not these natural born scum who make societal disasters happen; it’s people like this condescending and contemptuous commenter and the millions of her ruling class that use woke to demonize and stigmatize ordinary people as sub-human thereby distracting attention from their own vicious culpability in maintaining their status and power by supporting their woke rulers. This calumny of what Joel Kotkin calls the new “Clerisy” class is the real root of all these interconnected societal catastrophes. A well greased guillotine would wipe the woke smirks off their smug ruling class lackey faces.
ps the groups who are the least vaxxed remain blacks and muslims — I dare you to scream “deplorable” and “degenerate” at them and see how long you’ll keep your govt-paid job
JS, even if what you say here about Canada isn’t all true (tho I suspect it is), the failure of the Elites to say boo about such simple remedies as vit. D, and the Elites’ deceitful dissing of such treatments as HCQ and Ivermectin, is one for the ages.
Can you recommend the page, for us to bone up on how Trudeau handled this?
“Trudeau says ‘knee-jerk reactions’ won’t stop spread of COVID-19
Canada has no plan to ban foreign travellers arriving from coronavirus-affected regions” Kathleen Harris · CBC News · Posted: Mar 05, 2020 1:10 PM ET
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid19-trudeau-coronavirus-travel-1.5486799
note that the term “kneejerk” = RACIST
also note that the downtown Toronto LTC Home, where my 92-year-old father with late stage dementia died Mar 3 2020, had the highest covid LTC senior death toll in the city: 35 deaths within 2 months of Trudeau’s policy refusal to close borders because “kneejerk”
Somewhat similar to what you are discussing here is the most recent piece from Steve Patterson, where he presents that we have been in a dark age.
http://steve-patterson.com/our-present-dark-age-part-1/
If you are not familiar, Patterson decided to pursue studying philosophy outside of academia because he did not find it useful for learning philosophy.
http://steve-patterson.com/about/
Overture to James Lindsay (and other interested folk):
I am a big fan of your work in exposing many of today’s harmful myths, but without question, you have revealed on a regular basis that you gullibly accept and also promote many of the myths about the so-called Enlightenment as well as related myths about the so-called Dark Ages. In both instances, it was mostly men of ideas of the 17th and 18th centuries who pushed and promoted their philosophies and claims, many of which were actually unenlightened, that basically named these eras to make themselves and their ideas look better than opposing views, especially those offered by the Church.
I sincerely invite you to more honestly, carefully, and intelligently review the reality and true history of these time periods and the claims about them, and in doing so, I encourage you to get a very good start by first reviewing a few of the works of a recognized historian of merit: Rodney Stark. Dr. Stark has dispelled many of the myths you unquestioningly accept, so I hope you will engage his work. One book of his in particular that I highly recommend was first published in 2014: “How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity.” In this book is an entire section of some 70 pages entitled “The Not-So-Dark Ages (500 – 1200), ” and in it you will learn about various scientific and other discoveries and developments that took place long before the “enlightened” ones of many years later falsely claimed credit for discovering and/or developing.
Later on in Stark’s book is a declaration of his that he follows through on in subsequent pages. I now leave you with this declaration to hopefully whet your appetite when it comes to the numerous false claims of the Enlightenment so you will indeed look more deeply into these claims:
“In particular, I will dispel several widely advocated but spurious claims, each of them a variation on the theme that science could arise only during the “Enlightenment” because by that point the churches, sufficiently weakened, could no longer suppress science. Since this is an obvious falsehood, so too are claims derived from it. The first of these claims is that most of the great scientific stars of this time had freed themselves from the confines of supernaturalism and faith. The second is that the Protestant Reformation had freed England and many parts of the Continent from “the dead hand of the Catholic Church,” thereby making real scientific thinking possible — or, in the case of Puritanism, a moral duty. The third claim is that science arose outside the universities because they were controlled by the churches and therefore were inhospitable to new ideas. Finally, all these factors are said to have combined to explain why England was the center of it all.
Overwhelming evidence falsifies each of these claims. Indeed, Christianity was essential to the rise of science, which is why science was a purely Western phenomenon.”
(from “How the West Was Won,” 2015 Paperback edition, p. 304)
Interesting irony here: to be truly enlightened, one must learn the true history of the Enlightenment instead of accepting many of its false claims because the narrative that goes along with these claims is a preferred one…but it is not the truth.
Good luck.
This type of comment is one of the reasons why the Western world has been doomed by its own “intellectuals”. Hyper-pedantic show-off micro obsessing crushing any symbolic hope for ordinary people while ignoring the real life raging woke “revolutionaries” who are carring out the elite ruling oligarchy’s totalitarian agendas by burning the whole Western shithouse to the ground. Hopeless. Utterly without any hope. We deserve to be slaughtered and replaced.
I hope you have read Joel Kotkin’s book from last year:
https://books.google.ca/books/about/The_Coming_of_Neo_Feudalism.html?id=dDzDDwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y
A hopeful Oct 2021 article by Joel Kotkin on peak woke and the backlash that is building among many unrelated (non “right wing”) groups and people after suffering through a solid decade of being continually stabbed in the face by woke tyrannical revenge politics maniacs.
SVWs (Social Vengeance Warriors) are high on their power and the seeming ease with which the ruling classes granted it to them — they will never let it go until the ruling class no longer has a use for them — and then they will be tossed to the hyenas like the traitorous multi-gendered human garbage that they are — I hope I live to see that glorious moment.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/10/20/have-we-reached-the-high-water-mark-of-woke/