Marxism and all its offshoots and emanations have always been an epistemic shell game where the result remains fixed: the con artist armed with "critical consciousness" (aka gnostic wisdom) wins every time, as they can always claim that their opponent stands outside their circle of the blessed and thus is some combo of corrupt, ignorant, biased and/or brainwashed.
Their strategy has never involved reason, logic or good-faith debate but only a corrupt simulacra of these things, designed to help their group and its members cohere through shared dogma, to influence gullible bystanders who are often disarmed by moral bullying and emotional blackmail, and to let any opponents know that fighting them is hopeless, as all they can expect are ad hominems and character assassination. Also, Marxist/Left theorists simply can't indulge in fair debate, as all their premises are easily sliced and diced: for instance, there are endless examples of aristocrats rebelling against the established order (Lord Byron and Philippe Égalité come to mind) and vice versa, which show that class and wealth are not the godlike determinants they claim them to be.
Marxism has always been a Christian heresy (with Marx its angry prophet), some parts Gnostic and some Manichean, all of it based on the human propensity to mark some of us as Good and some Evil, where those who claim to be the Good get to attack and injure (or worse) those they proclaim as Evil—and yet to do it with a good conscience and disguised as benefactors of humanity.
No matter how many times it results in failure and destruction, it seems to be a permanent part of the post-Christian West, an unkillable sacred idea. It is sort of a Church of Permanent Opposition or maybe just an ugly form of ideological herpes, that always flares up in times of stress.
The irony is "lived experience" only counts if it backs up the ideology of the privileged leftist class. Ask Thomas Sowell or Ayaan Hirsi Ali just how valued their lived experience is. But then Marxism above all detests any member of the oppressed class who thinks for themself, which is why the concept of "false consciousness" had to be invented. A handy excuse for sending out the riot police when the masses start asking "where are the sausages?" and other inconvenient questions.
For some reason standpoint theory only goes one way: for some mysterious reason, they do not believe that CEOs are the only one who understand how corporations actually work. Or that only white males know how racism and sexism actually works.
Standpoint theory is all a bad faith reasoning designed to persuade people to self-censor.
So much commentary at present resembles ‘this crazy thing makes no sense and yet everyone suddenly believes it now and I don’t understand why’ and I think, yeah, it is crazy and we didn’t believe that before, and no it makes no sense but it doesn’t need to, it just needs to be destabilizing. It’s Marxism. All it needs to do is work well enough.
Identity doesn't even need to come into the picture. It's objectively true that the Israeli State and Israeli government are engaging in a genocide. That it wasn't a part-time State. And that any Jewish person that says this is instantly labeled as a traitor falsely simply because of our involvement in a very bloody conflict that we should have not touched. All because of a displacement and mass ethnic cleansing. For people that had to suffer the speakers blasting into the ghettos you'd think they wouldn't repeat the same mistakes. You would think they would stop at the victory over Hamas. you wpulf think that they would understand that Benjamin Netanyahu was a genocidal bastard that said the river to the sea but just more politely in the 1990s and that the 1996 dossier's are Declassified.
I think it's more valuable to keep in mind that everyone has a standpoint and is therefore potentially biased, than to insist that people in a different position shouldn't be allowed to form an opinion on a given subject.
This might be a more benign version of the same argument.
I also think it's sometimes cruel and unfair to expect people who are directly affected by something to be cool and collected as though they weren't - this is something i see used against Israelis (such as myself) all the time. Whose pain "counts" for the purpose of standpoint theory is already a political, and foregone, conclusion, in that case.
I think it's also relevant who makes it into the in-group. I'm in camp "trans women are women", but I also define "trans women" much more narrowly than some might like me to; meanwhile, women who argue that trans women aren't women are suddenly not in position to argue at all (I'm a woman. Not trans. If that matters. And it shouldn't).
At the meta level, it gets ridiculous and useless very quickly.
Marxism and all its offshoots and emanations have always been an epistemic shell game where the result remains fixed: the con artist armed with "critical consciousness" (aka gnostic wisdom) wins every time, as they can always claim that their opponent stands outside their circle of the blessed and thus is some combo of corrupt, ignorant, biased and/or brainwashed.
Their strategy has never involved reason, logic or good-faith debate but only a corrupt simulacra of these things, designed to help their group and its members cohere through shared dogma, to influence gullible bystanders who are often disarmed by moral bullying and emotional blackmail, and to let any opponents know that fighting them is hopeless, as all they can expect are ad hominems and character assassination. Also, Marxist/Left theorists simply can't indulge in fair debate, as all their premises are easily sliced and diced: for instance, there are endless examples of aristocrats rebelling against the established order (Lord Byron and Philippe Égalité come to mind) and vice versa, which show that class and wealth are not the godlike determinants they claim them to be.
Marxism has always been a Christian heresy (with Marx its angry prophet), some parts Gnostic and some Manichean, all of it based on the human propensity to mark some of us as Good and some Evil, where those who claim to be the Good get to attack and injure (or worse) those they proclaim as Evil—and yet to do it with a good conscience and disguised as benefactors of humanity.
No matter how many times it results in failure and destruction, it seems to be a permanent part of the post-Christian West, an unkillable sacred idea. It is sort of a Church of Permanent Opposition or maybe just an ugly form of ideological herpes, that always flares up in times of stress.
The irony is "lived experience" only counts if it backs up the ideology of the privileged leftist class. Ask Thomas Sowell or Ayaan Hirsi Ali just how valued their lived experience is. But then Marxism above all detests any member of the oppressed class who thinks for themself, which is why the concept of "false consciousness" had to be invented. A handy excuse for sending out the riot police when the masses start asking "where are the sausages?" and other inconvenient questions.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
For some reason standpoint theory only goes one way: for some mysterious reason, they do not believe that CEOs are the only one who understand how corporations actually work. Or that only white males know how racism and sexism actually works.
Standpoint theory is all a bad faith reasoning designed to persuade people to self-censor.
A well told examination of the issue !!!
Succinctly put. This needs wider exposure.
How many of the “pink defenders” of Clancy have had kids or postpartum psychosis? The data would be interesting, I believe.
So much commentary at present resembles ‘this crazy thing makes no sense and yet everyone suddenly believes it now and I don’t understand why’ and I think, yeah, it is crazy and we didn’t believe that before, and no it makes no sense but it doesn’t need to, it just needs to be destabilizing. It’s Marxism. All it needs to do is work well enough.
Identity doesn't even need to come into the picture. It's objectively true that the Israeli State and Israeli government are engaging in a genocide. That it wasn't a part-time State. And that any Jewish person that says this is instantly labeled as a traitor falsely simply because of our involvement in a very bloody conflict that we should have not touched. All because of a displacement and mass ethnic cleansing. For people that had to suffer the speakers blasting into the ghettos you'd think they wouldn't repeat the same mistakes. You would think they would stop at the victory over Hamas. you wpulf think that they would understand that Benjamin Netanyahu was a genocidal bastard that said the river to the sea but just more politely in the 1990s and that the 1996 dossier's are Declassified.
This shit was planned
I think it's more valuable to keep in mind that everyone has a standpoint and is therefore potentially biased, than to insist that people in a different position shouldn't be allowed to form an opinion on a given subject.
This might be a more benign version of the same argument.
I also think it's sometimes cruel and unfair to expect people who are directly affected by something to be cool and collected as though they weren't - this is something i see used against Israelis (such as myself) all the time. Whose pain "counts" for the purpose of standpoint theory is already a political, and foregone, conclusion, in that case.
I think it's also relevant who makes it into the in-group. I'm in camp "trans women are women", but I also define "trans women" much more narrowly than some might like me to; meanwhile, women who argue that trans women aren't women are suddenly not in position to argue at all (I'm a woman. Not trans. If that matters. And it shouldn't).
At the meta level, it gets ridiculous and useless very quickly.
And argument is not an identity. But the left pulls it off somehow.
Yes, but only when talking to themselves.