Why do so many of our political leaders support creationism? Here’s a disturbing glimpse of the way the neo-conservative elite thinks, discussing specifically Irving Kristol:
Kristol has acknowledged his intellectual debt to Strauss in a recent autobiographical essay. “What made him so controversial within the academic community was his disbelief in the Enlightenment dogma that ‘the truth will make men free.'” Kristol adds that “Strauss was an intellectual aristocrat who thought that the truth could make some [emphasis Kristol’s] minds free, but he was convinced that there was an inherent conflict between philosophic truth and political order, and that the popularization and vulgarization of these truths might import unease, turmoil and the release of popular passions hitherto held in check by tradition and religion with utterly unpredictable, but mostly negative, consequences.”
Kristol agrees with this view. “There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people,” he says in an interview. “There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn’t work.”
The masses must be kept ignorant and pacified. The ruling elite will keep the truth locked up, and dole out “truthiness” to the mob.
I think whenever you start talking about different “truths” for different people, you’re using the word incorrectly. There is a truth about the world, and what Kristol is actually suggesting is that there are lies, not truths, to be given to children, students, and those adults he does not fancy having in his privileged club of power.
I’ll also note that their cynical strategy does not work. Cultivating ignorance in the people in the belief that a cunning elite will be better able to manage them leads to situations like we’re facing now: where the ignorant and stupid are encouraged to thrive and take power, and where the Bushes and Becks and Palins rise to the demagogic top and find the mob malleable and easy to push into extremism and insanity. I suspect that an “intellectual aristocrat” would be appalled at the unintended consequences of his wretched plan…
I agree with everything you said, but I think you left something out.
The current crop of Democrats behave likewise.
Irving Kristol and his kind are evil.
It’s nonsense of course. Elitist. fascist, and Postmodern at the same time, a threefer.
Kristol was Jewish. The ideology he supported was similar to the one that got 6 million of his people killed in the mid-20th century.
George Santayana said it. “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Neo-conservatism was also a collosal failure. Two of my friends died in Iraq because of it.
I think the current crop of Democrats do not behave out of a cynical idea that they’re better than the masses, but out of cowardice and stupidity.
Yuck. And that’s about all I can say without starting to swear profusely.
It strikes me as a sinister version of a notion the authors (Stewart and Cohen, I believe) of The Science of Discworld put forth that they called lies-to-children (and lies-to-students and so forth). Which wasn’t about lying to keep people ignorant, but rather teaching them things that while perhaps not entirely correct are easier to understand at any particular level of education. Like telling a child that the earth is round instead of trying to explain what an oblate spheroid is.
Exactly right. There aren’t different truths, just differences in presentation. Of course, you don’t have to go into light and dark reactions when a three year old asks why grass is green. But you also don’t have to tell him that pixies painted it. You can tell the same truth but in less detail. That extends to every situation Kristol mentioned. I didn’t learn a different truth in grad school, just more detail about things I’d learned in college.
Kristol says what many fundie death cult xians say. They hate secular democracy. It prevents them from setting up a theocracy and heading on back to the Dark Ages.
I doubt that the US people will give it up though. People are fleeing from xianity by the millions every year. That New Endarkenment is going to be a tough sell.
Given a definition of truth as ‘how accurately something describes reality’ we do have differing values for true.
The Earth is flat
The Earth is a sphere
The Earth is an oblate spheroid
The Earth is an irregular shape that cannot precisely be modelled with any simple formula
All of these statements are true to a certain degree of precision. The truest one is also the least useful.
For most mundane purposes like building houses, we can accept the statement ‘the Earth is flat’ to be true. Your spirit level and plumbbob work just fine.
We teach children the world is round -it’s good enough for their purposes. Most students learn the polar radius is shorter than the equatorial radius. Few students ever learn of Airy, Clarke and IERS spheroids unless they take civil or mining engineering or geodetic surveying.
Wow. The irony here is that Kristol sounds very much like the kind of sniveling, elitist fop that the late William F. Buckley, Jr. raved against when he spoke of “overeducation.” (I didn’t agree with Buckley, but this is an interesting development.)
Conservatives: mirror. Look. Who are you?
There’s different ways of telling truths for different sorts of people, I think. I’d give him that much.
But at least Plato had the honesty to say that the common people were going to be told myths, not “different kinds of truths.” And his Republic was essentially Sparta, not much like what we have (actually, representative democracy exists in part as a tilt toward Sparta and away from Athens, but mostly we’re not too much like Sparta).
And no, we don’t have any business keeping people down, as Plato intended to do. The truth will not set all free, but all should have the chance to know the truth.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
I guess that makes it OK then?
Personally I can’t read minds. All I have is their words and behavior.
Why do I have this vision of Kristol wearing black robes, a motorboard headdress and a smiling silver mask?
(OK, this is a really obscure reference, but some of you old-school fantasy gamers might get it.)
I agree there are mostly negative consequences when this happens, primarily to the elite class purveyors of accepted and acceptable truth represented by Irving Kristol.
Abdul Alhazred, you make valid points. I suspect that we all want to protect those we hope are the ‘good guys’.
Be cautious, you might find a squid lurking, waiting to attack y….
Mormons send their missionaries out with this idea that there’s only a certain level of “truth” that can be given to “investigators.” Their phrase is “milk before meat” — and almost everyone, in their judgement, is ready only for milk and must not be given meat. Their General Authorities apply this technique even to members.
What this really amounts to is that anyone with a brain would be appalled by the “meat” of their message, so they don’t dare let you in on that until after you’ve been thoroughly hooked.
Excuses for lying to people abound in every religion. It is not okay to lie and call it something else. If you do that, you get used to the idea of hiding truth from yourself as well.
The funny thing is that the Capitalist economic theory which they supposedly support dictates that economies where wealth is divided are more prosperous than economies where wealth is centralized because the majority are better able to assess their own needs than a benevolent ruler. But, I suppose compartmentalization is God’s greatest gift, right?
I think it’s a perfectly sound idea. Detesting them, I mean.
Last night I started watching the History Channel series, “How The Earth Was Made”. I was thinking, wow, I guess hardly anyone knows about this. It goes back 4.5 Billion years and explains how it formed. If people only knew, I thought, they would know a “God” did not make the earth.
Well, then I stumbled across this website with comments about that show and I couldn’t believe it. Sometimes, I really believe there is no hope for humans to get out of the dark ages with theur skydaddy thoughts. Look at these comments, they are appauling, I couldn’t even bear to read them all. Below are some excerpts:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1946565/posts
History Channel – “How The Earth Was Made”
Posted on Monday, December 31, 2007 5:40:23 PM by SilvieWaldorfMD
So last night (Sunday, 12/30/07) I get ready in front of the T.V. at 8 p.m. with my son to watch the very much hyped documentary on the History Channel titled “How The Earth Was Made”. Since my son is a first-grader and very much into science, his main interests include Earth and the entire Solar System.
The two-hour documentary was fantastic, but it raised a key question in my mind and it made me, shall I say, more of a believer in God as Our Creator (not that I ever stopped ‘believing’, but I’m an open-minded person who believes both in evolution and creationism). However, this show changed my views. Let me explain:
Many of the scientists interviewed (and they had on the best scientists in the world) couldn’t explain how water got to Earth. Or how Earth created water. So, they proposed that perhaps the water source came from outer space in asteroids. Because asteroids contain moisture, they stated that these massive rocks from outer space (many of them the length and width of Mt. Everest) created water after the hit the Earth.
Baloney. It is so obvious that none of these scientists want to admit that God was the creator of water and of everything that flourishes in this planet. They should would not or could not state it on the program.
Even my grandmother — who is 96 years of age and saw the program in Puerto Rico — said to me this morning that she thought the program lacked “any mention of God”.
————————————————–
To: SilvieWaldorfMD
Yeah I’ve watched it twice and liked it.
I don’t have any conflicts over religious belief or scientific belief. Sure God created it all, by what process is a whole different question.
Lets not forget that the genesis of the whole big bang theory was a Catholic priest and scientist.
posted on Monday, December 31, 2007 5:43:52 PM by cripplecreek (Only one consistent conservative in this race and his name is Hunter.)
————————————————–
To: Misterioso
How witty.
Thinking is what I do. I believe the Holy Bible to be true, and that the visible evidence of the physical world can be best explained by a global flood around 4500 years ago, and the the universe and everything in it was created by God in six literal twenty-four hour days.
The physical evidence in the universe and this world all point to young, not long and slow.
Evolution is not real it does not happen it is a fable in the minds of those who believe they are god’s of their own world.
posted on Monday, December 31, 2007 7:00:30 PM by Creationist ( Evolution is a faith based science with no proof. Scientist are the prophets, teachers the preacher)
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Of course, there would be no need for these “different truths” if people weren’t told that myths are reality.
Abdul Alhazred,
“I agree with everything you said, but I think you left something out.
The current crop of Democrats behave likewise.”
No. While both sides of the aisle are full of cynical manipulators, only the right side of the aisle has gone so far as to actually question the relevance of reality.
Whether it is evolution, mountain-top mining or climate change, there are more democratic politicians on the right side of the issue.
A small difference, but a crucial one.
The truth shall set us free. That’s why framing is such insidious evil. (Yes, insidious, not sinister; that just means left-handed you dextro-normative jerk.)
I agree with Naked Bunny with a Whip; it’s shit like Kristol it’ll set us free from. Now, how do we take down the corporations? If they are really equivalent to people, can we imprison them when they murder and rob?
The problem with corporations IMHO is that they are democracy vacuums. When was the last time you voted for your boss?
Ah, A Ray in Dilbert Space pretty much put what I was thinking into words.
It’s an interesting attitude. I’ve heard a saying that “everything in Western culture is a footnote to Plato”, and this sort of paternalistic society run by intellectuals who only let dribs and drabs out to the public is very much in the tradition of the Republic, or at least a conservative interpretation of it. (The fact that Plato led directly to Aristotle, the biggest intellectual dead end in recorded history, would not appear to be relevant, at least not to types like Kristol.) I wouldn’t be entirely surprised to find out that things like this are at the very root of some palaeocons’ classics fetish — I mean, to the rest of the world, the classics are important but not the be-all, end-all of culture, but you won’t hear Kristols and Buckleys admitting that.
hm. One of Ronald Bailey’s few good articles. And it’s from 1997, if memory serves. A very clear explanation of why neo-cons are anti-science.
Is it just me, or does Reason magazine seem like the perfect name for a secular publication? And how did we let that name slip by?
Some folks want to be eaten last, but I say being eaten first saves a lot of grief. :)
Kristol has acknowledged his intellectual debt to Strauss in a recent autobiographical essay.
No one should miss this fact. Strauss acknowledged his intellectual alliance to fascism while safe in Paris just two months after its chief practitioners opened Dachau. Strauss explicitly endorsed “fascist, authoritarian and imperial principles” [his italics]. From Strauss’s 1933 letter to Karl Löwith:
See Scott Horton’s discussion of the question “Was Strauss a fascist?” and “Will the Real Leo Strauss Please Stand Up?” for more details.
Hilariously, and consist with other ahistorical neocon pronouncements, Harvey Mansfield reads Strauss’s 1933 letter as evidence that Strauss wanted to use Roman strength to fight the Nazis half a decade before WWII hostilities began.
Quote Strauss’s 1933 letter to Löwith to any necon and watch the self-contradictory denialism begin.
The thing is we have large swathes ofthe population struggling very hard to avoid being told the truth. They don’t want to know about evolution. They don’t want to know about climate change. They don’t want to know that alternative medicine is bullshit, or that the reason little Johnnie is autistic isn’t because he was vaccinated.
Joe Sixpack and Jane Winebox say, “WE CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”
Curious… one of the hallmarks of a mind control cult is that it withholds information (see also Scientology) and parcels it out selectively and gradually, if at all. This allows the cult to better manipulate its members, as well as to gradually indoctrinate them with bullshit in small increments.
And here I thought the neocons only took their pointers from Goebbels.
I, too, detest the Krystols and Strausses of the world. Theirs is a doctrine of enslavement, pure and simple. It is the uninspired credo of those who fear change and loss of power and status, and there’s nothing altruistic about it.
I honestly think that’s because they get all fucked up on non-truth early on and like a crack addict they have a hard time giving it up. Unfortunately, too few of us are innoculated against that kind of shit early on. Take your kids to zoos and on wilderness hikes and to planetariums, so when some dolt tries to blather on about the wonder and majesty of YHWH’s heaven they’ll hit ’em back with a “Heaven?! Are you serious? Have you ever even seen a coral reef?”
This is the kind of arrogant nihilism that, if the conservatives were honest to their supporters, would undermine all of their political goals.
The worst part is that criticizing this nonsense is just so easy: how do I know who has the truth and who doesn’t? How do I know that Irving Kristol gets and PZ Myers is a moron?
The epistemological insincerity is disgusting, and that’s just scratching the surface.
But…but…but… liberal elite…. looking down their noses…. in ivory towers…
This can’t be!
“Popularization and vulgarization” are the bedrock of democracy. If you can’t govern without keeping your populace ignorant, ur doin it rong.
It’s not one or the other.
Brownian said “I honestly think that’s because they get all fucked up on non-truth early on and like a crack addict they have a hard time giving it up.”
Well, we are social animals. If we are surrounded by people believing crap, we’ll wonder what’s wrong with us if we don’t believe in crap. That’s why it’s so crucial to fundie parents to restrict the info their child sees.
Me, I’m waiting for the eruption when all the anti-environmentalists find out the school system has turned their kids into tree huggers! That’ll be fun!
Er… What?
They’re not done yet. Some of the New Deal and shreds of the Great Society are still out there to be destroyed. These fuckers won’t be happy until those are all gone, then we can return to the 1880s, where the rich were rich and, everybody else was working themselves to death for shit wages, in shit conditions. No regulations, no protections. You’re on your own–good luck.
Welcome to the Libertarian utopia.
I don’t have much use for Harvey Mansfield (the book on being a “real man” was particularly stupid), but I can see in his take on the Strauss letter (and Horton notes it in his second article, too) a couple of points. Strauss is trying to find ways of opposing the Nazis from the right, and he’s looking to a “Roman” cultural tradition of stability and order as a way to do that. Given the world in 1933— not such a bad thing. The kind of traditionalist cultural conservatism Strauss admired had no hope of being implemented— the 1914/18 War and the aftermath killed it off —but it’s not a dishonorable position for its time. Certainly not when you think of the very limited set of alternatives in Germany.
Yeah, that is pretty thoroughly disgusting. I am not sure which disgusts me the most though, the existence of these cretins, or the large number of people that have allowed themselves to remain under the spell of these cretins for so long despite the floods of evidence that should condemn them.
It is truly disheartening to see people close to me taken in by the likes of Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck. Products, or tools, of the neocons whose political philosophy is perfectly illustrated by the likes of Kristol and Strauss. These people I am talking about are otherwise good decent people. I sometimes wonder if the reason they can get taken in by the likes of a Glenn Beck is because they can’t conceive of the idea that someone could be so blatantly dishonest in every way. In any case, it will always be easier to make shit up and lie than it will be to present the real story.
The Truth?
You can’t handle the truth! Look, we live in a world that has elected Conservatives. And those Conservatives have to keep being elected by men with underutilized brains. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Professor Myers? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for the facts and you curse the closed-minded. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that the supression of facts, while tragic, probably saved some synapses from actually firing. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves others from having to think…You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me to be the one talking to those idiots. You need me to be that one
I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps in fearful suspicion of the very theology I am trying to inflict, then questions the manner in which I attempt to inflict it! I’d rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a textbook and start explaining it to those yokels. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to!
;)
For some reason, I immediately thought of The Falsehoods put together by Greg Laden…
Kristol unabashedly advocated that lying should be socially acceptable all the time and is simply a tool to get what you want. Both the GOP and the Democrat party are great admirers of Kristol and it’s easy to see why the fundamentalists love him. Chris Mooney’s writing reminds me a lot of Kristol (pity there’s no hell for Kristol to burn in; the fact that he lived to long is another piece of evidence that the christian god is a myth).
already happening. every once in a while, there’s a quote on FSTDT about some non-homeschooling fundie parent lamenting the mother-earth worship their poor babies are being brainwashed with, and telling horrified stories about their innocent children wanting to start to recycle stuff! oh, the horror!
“unintended consequences” PZ? You think?
David Horton
Kristol’s abusing the fact that we simplify things so people can understand them. For example, we’d hardly make a first-grader study the human body in its entirety; they wouldn’t get it. It’s too complex. Therefore, we use models. However, the more complex knowledge of these systems should not be available only to a select class of people; everyone should have the opportunity to discover the inner workings of these amazing things.
In short, Kristol’s arguing that we should keep everyone at a first-grade level of understanding about immensely complex things. I’m sorry if I haven’t been completely clear; I’m still upset about the vicissitudes of Indiana weather.
Certainly the first thing I thought of was accommodationism.
But then I recently posted this over in the Comity and Reconciliation Thread.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/comity_and_reconciliation.php#comment-2225963
The basic idea is that the accommodationists are cynically pushing a form of denialism, and misrepresenting fundamental ideas in science as well as specific science relevant to religion. (In particular, they push a false idea of unfalsifiability, and how scientists regard unfalsifiable hypotheses.) In the name of science, of course.
Lying for Darwin, indeed.
@ Zeppo-marx #40:
Careful with parodying that quote: it can get you in trouble.
DesertHedgehog: “I can see in [Mansfield’s] take on the Strauss letter … Strauss is trying to find ways of opposing the Nazis from the right, and he’s looking to a “Roman” cultural tradition of stability and order as a way to do that. … it’s not a dishonorable position for its time.”
What “Roman” means in this context (without the quotes) is precisely Il Duce‘s Italian fascism. This is the conclusion from which Mansfield attempts to flee. So you describe Horton’s take on the letter, not Mansfield’s.
It is not merely dishonorable, but reprehensible that Strauss explicitly endorsed the construction of a police state led by an absolute ruler intent on wars of aggressive nationalism and supported by violent paramilitary gangs of blackshirts.
So which is it? Do you actually mean to say that Strauss’s endorsement of Mussolini’s fascism is “not dishonorable”, or, as Mansfield attempts to argue, that Strauss didn’t really mean what he wrote about fascism in his private letter?
@ #40. Nicely done. If memory serves correctly, didn’t someone else use the whole “A Few Good Men” speech parody on another of PZ’s posts several weeks ago?
Kristol sounds like he overdosed on Plato’s Republic and its notion that an educated elite of “guardians” should run the state.
@ Brownian #47 – Yup, that’s exactly what I was thinking of. For the record, I thought it was a pretty apt adaptation of that speech.
But if we don’t keep the proles satisfied with happy platitudes, how will we be able to keep them down?
Thanks, The Pint. I like Zeppo-Marx’s version too. It’s a pretty versatile speech.
I think our founding fathers would have had something to say about that attitude.
Interestingly, you see this same type of thinking from so-called religious moderates. “Of course, god isn’t really a bearded man in the sky, or some sort of anthropomorphic tinkerer, so you atheists don’t really get it. But the thought of him that way makes people [read: people dumber than us] feel good.”
Welcome to the Libertarian utopia. – Aquaria
I loathe glibertarianism as much as the next decent person, but Stauss and Kristol were/are not glibertarians but authoritarian conservatives shading into fascism. It’s a serious mistake to think that all those with views you loathe agree with each other.
As Glen@9 was first to note, the view that it is right to lie to the masses goes back to Plato. The core of his “noble lie” was the “Myth of the Metals in Man”: the doctrines that people came in four hereditary types – gold, silver, bronze and iron, which must not be mixed. I think the less naive glibertarians are also consciously lying, but the lie is almost the direct opposite: that anyone with talent and energy can and should rise from a destitute childhood to billionairedom.
So which level of “truths” was the lieutenant governor of South Carolina using when he said of welfare recipients: My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better, then?
I had missed the earlier version. Darn – now I feel terribly unoriginal…..
But yeah, that speech always seems to pop to mind when anyone talks about playing with the truth. Now, I’ll grant the notion that in some circumstances facts are subjective. But for a group that constantly decries notions like the Great Liberal Nanny State,they don’t even give the people enough credit to trust them with the knowledge under which an informed vote might be cast.
“Don’t worry dear, we’ll explain it all to you when you grow up”.
Sure you will – if you think you can get some political advantage out of it.
“There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people”
I think our founding fathers would have had something to say about that attitude. – Leon
Really? Including the hypocrites like Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, who prated about liberty and held onto their slaves?
“Including the hypocrites like Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, who prated about liberty and held onto their slaves?”
“Give me liberty or give me death!” -Patrick Henry (at a time when he owned around 75 slaves)
This kind of attitude is not unheard of. Usually it goes with some sort of religion-pushing. You know: we enlightened ones know better, but for the populace it’s good to believe in an old guy sitting in the coulds, who watches and punishes them. I regret to say that my favourite writer, HP Lovecraft, himself a great materialist thinker, tended to share this sort of views, in his delusion of belonging to some sort of aristocracy.
Although, curiously, in most of his work the horror comes about precisely from discovering some truth too awful to comprehend.
I agree with Knockgoats. Whatever you think of libertarianism, this is not libertarianism, by any stretch of the imagination. It’s the opposite – a philosophy of state paternalism, that advocates controlling the masses by feeding them misinformation and propaganda. It can be (and has been) used in the service of a variety of ideological goals – from fascism, to Marxism-Leninism, to Christian or Islamic theocracy – but it is entirely antithetical to libertarian principles. So I don’t quite know what Aquaria is talking about.
I don’t propose to analyse libertarianism, or the similarities and differences between libertarianism and conservatism, on this thread in any detail, since (a) I’m exhausted and have had a really strange day, and (b) it’s irrelevant to this thread.
(I meant Knockgoats’ post at #56, btw. I don’t endorse his attacks on Thomas Jefferson, though I’m too tired to argue the point.)
I’ll also note that their cynical strategy does not work.
But what’s the choice? If people know the truth, then they demand equality (“unchecked passions”). What happens then?
The cons are forced to crush them to defend their privilege. Then, either mass numbers are murdered, or a nasty revolution happens that just recreates the old order.
That’s the issue that Strauss, Kristol, etc, are really talking about — that the truth generally known would demand a change in the order of things, and the folks with the advantages under the current order will not submit peacefully.
In that sense, the Strauss position is “moral”. They’re saying “Don’t make me have to kick your ass,” so the lies are to protect us from them.
Ya gotta take a long hard look at reality. The truth that we are all biological almost indistinguishable — well that’s lead to to massive warfare around the planet to end slavery, to end colonialism… The truth that economic systems are human created systems have led to how many dead?
Kristol is just saying that the serfs are better off as happy serfs — because they’ll never be anything but serfs.
Leon: I think our founding fathers would have had something to say about that attitude.
Please read Madison’s notes from the constitutional convention debates. The message I get is that “the people” must be satisfied that they have a voice in the system — but the actual power must be confined to the oligarchy. In other words, the people only consent to be ruled, but the actual questions of rulership belong to a small class.
It’s about responsible patronship — I think Kristol would agree, and claim them as his own.
“Kristol is just saying that the serfs are better off as happy serfs — because they’ll never be anything but serfs.”
Kinda contradicts the whole “America is so great because anyone can pull themselves out of the gutter by their own bootstraps” myth that the conservatives seem so bent on perpetuating, doesn’t it? Sure, a lucky few can elevate their social/economic status through extremely hard work, but it’s a rare occurrence and most people are going to be stuck being “serfs” as it were, no matter how hard they try. Apparently it’s one of those “truths” that, while really untrue, keeps the great, unwashed masses occupied and mollified.
As old Lionel Hutz said, there’s “The TRUTH” (said in a dark, ominous voice) and “The Truth!” (said in a sugar-coated tone of bright and peppy optimism).
I’m exhausted and have had a really strange day – Walton
Yeah, I sympathise, that’s how I felt the first couple of times I did acid!
(Joking, Walton, just joking!)
Whatever Kristol said, comment 7 is correct, there are different truths, depending on the intended audience. The funny thing is, this is itself a truth that isn’t true to a child too young to grasp its meaning. You can’t make sense of the statement “all theories are necessarily wrong” when you’re 5 years old. Unfortunately the subtly is lost on many adults.
ThePint: Kinda contradicts the whole “America is so great because anyone can pull themselves out of the gutter by their own bootstraps” myth that the conservatives seem so bent on perpetuating, doesn’t it?
Well, that’s one of those “truths” that Kristol is talking about that is good for the merely well-educated and down, but that is inappropriate for the mover’s and shaker’s.
Isn’t it better to avoid the Paris Commune, knowing what the end result will be? If we know that Darth Vader is going to win, isn’t the right thing to kill Luke in his infancy?
Yes, but not just because it’s more accurate. In your progression from steps 1 to 3, each step not only was more correct than the previous, it also carried more information. You broke from that pattern when going from step 3 to 4. You dropped information. You could just as easily said, as your step 4: “The Earth is nearly an oblate spheroid, but with some small ‘bumps’ that make it a little out of shape that you have to get down very close to the surface to see.” That would have been more accurate, but not less useful.
I may be picking at nits, but you seemed to be trying to build the argument that more accuracy equals less usefulness, and that’s only because you crafted the example that way on purpose by dropping information, not because it has to be that way.
PZ: I think the current crop of Democrats do not behave out of a cynical idea that they’re better than the masses, but out of cowardice and stupidity.
Most politicians aren’t as sophisticated as Kristol. They all (including Kristol) think they are doing the “moral” thing. It’s not cowardice and stupidity, in a simple sense, but that they have certain assumptions about what is possible, what works, which make them act pretty much as if Kristol was right.
It’s all about “necessary” assumptions — usually not articulated, often not empirically based — which allow people to think of themselves as good and brave, while doing terrible things.
Does Harry Reid see himself as a coward? I doubt it. Does Kristol see himself as a cynical Satanic figure? Not in the least — just as a “very educated” man, doing what is necessary — he may even see himself as a bit of a martyr. “Wouldn’t life be easier if I was just another one of the people? If I didn’t have to worry about saving the people from themselves?”
The human mind is not transparent to itself. It’s why we end up with things like religion.
@ frog, Inc. #70 –
I’m not sure if I buy that argument as the end result merely perpetuates the status quo, one in which the elite are aware of an inequality but won’t move to correct it because “meh, why upset the proles if they’re happy being on the bottom?”
And if you’re going to use Vader as an analogy, no, you don’t kill Luke as an infant because there’s no absolute certainty that Vader is going to win. The only way that Vader wins absolutely is if you go ahead and kill Luke before he’s ever given a chance to fight and again, the result is that the Empire lumbers on.
I have to agree with PZ here: “Cultivating ignorance in the people in the belief that a cunning elite will be better able to manage them leads to situations like we’re facing now: where the ignorant and stupid are encouraged to thrive and take power, and where the Bushes and Becks and Palins rise to the demagogic top and find the mob malleable and easy to push into extremism and insanity.” This is precisely what happens when intelligence and intellectual curiosity are discouraged and even denigrated as a failing, rather than encouraged and lauded as a worthy personality trait.
We’ve certainly repeated cycles of violence in which economic and social classes struggle for power, but those cycles are often the result of the “ignorant masses” getting fed up with being managed by the “elite.” Even if the intentions are good, history has shown that those at the political/economic/social top fall into excess and abuse those they keep at the bottom “for their own good.”
I still maintain that on the whole, it’s better to educate the populace and not dole out “truths” that have been (often insultingly) dumbed down or altered, even if it leads to struggle, on the chance that it will result in even an iota of improvement, rather than throw up one’s hands, declare that the populace is, on the whole, too stupid to handle “the truth” and keep the masses in ignorant bliss and maintain the unequal status quo.
At the very least, the masses should be educated enough so that they can protect themselves against being exploited by demagogues on both sides of the aisle.
Yes, but not just because it’s more accurate. In your progression from steps 1 to 3, each step not only was more correct than the previous, it also carried more information. You broke from that pattern when going from step 3 to 4. You dropped information. You could just as easily said, as your step 4: “The Earth is nearly an oblate spheroid, but with some small ‘bumps’ that make it a little out of shape that you have to get down very close to the surface to see.” That would have been more accurate, but not less useful.
speaking of nits, could be wrong, but aren’t you really speaking more of precision than accuracy?
ThePint: I’m not sure if I buy that argument as the end result merely perpetuates the status quo, one in which the elite are aware of an inequality but won’t move to correct it because “meh, why upset the proles if they’re happy being on the bottom?”
I guess my irony isn’t clear enough. I don’t buy Kristol’s argument — I buy his logic if, and only if, you accept his basic premise.
That premise is that nothing short of a bloodbath can change the status quo in essence, and even then it’s likely to recreate the status quo (how different was Stalin from the Tsar, really?)
The only way that Vader wins absolutely is if you go ahead and kill Luke before he’s ever given a chance to fight and again, the result is that the Empire lumbers on.
Yeah — my analogy wasn’t fair to Kristol, since we know how the story ends! But Kristol would say that historically, Vader always wins — so even given the tiny possibility that Luke will win, the best bet is to help Vader out and minimize the losses from the fight.
But then, I believe in the Star Wars books, the Empire ends up coming back anyway, even nastier than before. So wouldn’t it have been better never to have the fight, if that’s the end result? That’s the assumption running throughout the world, from the Chinese system to the American system, that our choices are Mao or Reagan. If that’s the choice, why not choose Reagan?
Of course it’s self-reinforcing — that’s why the idea survives. It’s the method of unnatural selection.
That’s the same BS as esoterism.
That’s the thinking of those who lived with their asses in butter all their life and never blended with the “scum” they denigrate. They have to be utterly dumb and completely lacking empathy to believe that education and culture is the best way to better the world.
I’ve seen Spanish people emerge from the brutish and dumb grayness of Franco’s dictatorship, where only the powerful and rich got an education, to form one of the more modern and happier to live in nations of Europe.
That’s real, not their ivory tower dreams.
—
El Guerrero del Interfaz
Irving “Louis Roederer” Kristol:
Irving has fascinating notions about what constitutes “Enlightenment dogma” (not to mention when the Enlightenment began, and who counts as an “Enlightenment figure”).
#72 — Thanks for making my point much better than I did.
“I’ll also note that their cynical strategy does not work. Cultivating ignorance in the people in the belief that a cunning elite will be better able to manage them leads to situations like we’re facing now: where the ignorant and stupid are encouraged to thrive and take power, and where the Bushes and Becks and Palins rise to the demagogic top and find the mob malleable and easy to push into extremism and insanity.”
I don’t think that Kristol would see any of that as a bad thing. Kristol was one of the earliest and most consistent advocates of running Palin, IIRC.
Adam Curtis made a documentary series for the BBC, “The Power of Nightmares”, about neo-Cons in general but Strauss in particular (as the father of the movement). It compares him to one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Bin Laden’s mentor, Sayyid Qutb. Remarkably, they both came to the same conclusion about the US and the West.
It’s a fantastic series of films, which has had high praise. I heartily recommend it.
You can watch it on google video. link
Mansfield reminds me of the of the psychologist played by Plimpton in Good Will Hunting — you know, the one who gets all worked up by Damon’s description of dancing with the boys.
Just read “The manliness of Theodore Roosevelt”, and try to keep a straight face.
There’s a weird sexual component to all this — a worship of aggressive male sexuality and a fear of impotence. You even get a metaphorical “being in the closet” in distinguishing between truths fit for your mother, and the REAL truth.
Leo Strauss has always annoyed me since I took a few Classic courses in University. His doctrine of “esoteric” meanings coded in the texts because of a fear of persecution. Very often the “esoteric” and true meaning of the text was the opposite of it apparently said. Of course this “true” meaning could be understood by what can only be described as Kabbalistic techniques of analysis. So for example if Plato suggested that Women get the same sort of education as men in the Republic he really meant the opposite. Of course I wonder what he would say of the evidence that Plato had some female students? Of course Strauss claimed that Plato feared persecution in Athens and so had to hide his real views, (or some of them anyway). Well since Plato didn’t bother to hide his contempt of Athenian Democracy in his Dialogues, which was likely to annoy the Democratic Athenian “mob”, just why would he hide his real opinion? Of course you can bring up Socrates judicial murder for “corrupting the youth”, “bringing new gods”. Yet Plato openly attacked Athenian Democracy and Greek traditional ideas of the Gods. The notions that Strauss atributes to Plato are scarcely less inflamatory than those to Athenians of the time. Strauss seems to have also got the notion of persecution from the idea of a anti-intellectual witchhunt in Athens, under the democracy. It appears this is overdrawn, and frankly Athens was sometimes criticized for allowing too much freedom of speech.
Strauss’ “esoteric” meanings strike me as largely, imaginary.
That wasn’t my intent. It may often be true that unreasonably high precision is irrelevant and detracts from utility. My argument was that talking of only one ‘truth’ for all is a bit meaningless. Most of the ‘truths’ we know about the Middle Earth in which we live are not true at the quantum level or the very fast level.
Something can be useful without being completely true and for very good pedagogy we teach children simplified ‘truths’ that in many important respects are not true at all.
Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen explore this in The Science of Discworld
“A lie-to-children is a statement that is false, but which nevertheless leads the child’s mind towards a more accurate explanation, one that the child will only be able to appreciate if it has been primed with the lie”. They are using lie provocatively, but the meaning ‘something that is not actually true’ is correct.
They use this example
Weight is a constant
Weight is not a constant – what’s actually constant is mass
Mass is not a constant, but depends on the velocity of the object, relative to lightspeed, which is a constant.
Lightspeed is not, in fact, a constant, but may have been significantly larger than its current value during the early life of the universe.
Another example is
The Moon orbits the Earth
The Earth orbits the Sun
These statements are both false, the Moon and Earth orbit their common center of mass. The Earth, Moon and Sun orbit their commn center of mass. Given the mass differences the center of mass of the Earth moon system is very close to the center of the Earth and likewise the common center of mass for the Earth Moon & Sun is very close to the center of the sun.
But it would be wrong to insist on these truths for all people, who find it difficult to grasp the concept that the Earth and Moon are connected in any way. It’s much better that they think the Earth goes round the Sun than vice versa
The point is that almost every statement we can make is only an approximation to the truth, some are better approximations than others. Some are false in every respect. It behooves us to know the difference.
BTW, I wasn’t just referring to surface roughness with my example of the shape of the Earth. The equator is not perfectly circular and the south pole is flatter than the north pole. It’s important that the people who work with GPS satellites know this, children and Ken Ham less so.
The various elites of different societies, be they aristocracy, the rich, party nomenklatura, religious hierarchs, or whatever, are convinced they know how to rule and the lumpen proletariat should just submit to their rule. Kristol is just following in this well established tradition.
In the late 1880s Keir Hardie became the first Labour Member of Parliament. What caused him to run for election was being disillusioned by the Liberal Party. Hardie became convinced the Liberals merely wanted the votes of the workers but that it would not in return offer reforms that workers needed. Essentially Hardie was objecting to the Kristols of his day.
Quidam:
What’s your point? That all scientific truths so far are approximations, and different levels of approximation are useful under different conditions?
That, say, Newtonian physics isn’t actually “correct”, but simply a limit of relativity under a subset of conditions, but we still use it?
How is it relevant to the use here? I think it’s pretty clear that PZ understands that all scientific truths are relative and contingent. The examples you use aren’t “truths for children that aren’t true for adults” like Santa Claus or Jesus, but “relative truths that are approximations of more complete truths”.
What PZ is railing against is something that is actually false for adults — not an approximation of a more complex truth — but a lie told to hide the truth only accessible to better people.
For certain purposes, a perfect sphere and an oblate are exactly equivalent. But the existence of Zombie-Jesus is never equivalent to no Zombie-Jesus. Really, there are many descriptions of “The Truth” appropriate for different conditions — but that doesn’t mean there are different “truths” for different people.
@ frog, Inc. #75 – “I guess my irony isn’t clear enough. I don’t buy Kristol’s argument — I buy his logic if, and only if, you accept his basic premise.
That premise is that nothing short of a bloodbath can change the status quo in essence, and even then it’s likely to recreate the status quo (how different was Stalin from the Tsar, really?)”
Yes, I did miss the irony. Apologies – it’s been a long day and I was already in a sour mood thanks to work. It does make sense, according to Kristol’s logic, which only confirms my suspicions that his mind is not a pleasant place to be. What a self-fulfilling defeatist prophecy – must be really depressing to be him.
“I believe in the Star Wars books, the Empire ends up coming back anyway, even nastier than before.”
That’s what I hear, or at least that the New Republic is falling prey to the corruption that gave rise to the Empire in the first place. I haven’t read anything past Timothy Zahn’s initial trilogy (which were great), but in a way, that makes sense, although I was rather shocked after I heard RA Salvatore offed everyone’s favorite Wookie. No such thing as a happy ending, after all, but man, I’ve heard the Skywalkers have really been put through the wringer.
An excellent article this cynical stance of Irving Kristol was published on the New Humanist blog on 24, May 2007 and entitled, “Gurus of Endless War.” From that article:
Irving Kristol, … argued that there was no reason to choose between the rational atheism of Freud and the religion of Moses, since the two can be reconciled by adopting, “a double standard of truth. Let men believe in the lies of religion since they cannot do without them, and let the handful of sages, who know the truth and can live with it, keep it among themselves. Men are then divided into the wise and the foolish, the philosophers and the common men, and atheism becomes a guarded esoteric doctrine – for if the illusions of religion were to be discredited, there is no telling with what madness men would be seized, with what uncontrollable anguish.”
Now here’s the interesting question.
Given that Kristol et., al believe that there are separate truths for distinct classes, why do they say this openly? You don’t tell someone: “Well, now I’m going to lie to you”!
Imagine the faith they have in the system of media control, that they safely expect to say to one audience “We’re lying liars to the little people”, yet talk to another audience with those same lies! Sure, some bloggers will talk about it — but they believe they’re perfectly safe to push Palin, all the while quite openly saying that they’d use someone like her to enslave most of the population. They can perfectly trust “journalists” to protect their “secret”.
Who doubts Chomsky now? The conspiracies are all open and public — it’s all a magic trick.
The fact that it works is all the evidence they need to believe it.
Surely Kristol’s “TO each according to his abililty” philosophy can’t sit well with a lot of politicians. It would leave them getting dollops of truth along the lines of “We live on Earth” or “Spot is a dog” or “Friday is pay day”.
Truth is a commodity.
And it is also a commercial, political, and social opportunity.
That some folks feel moved to admit manipulation in no way invalidates the premise.
Let folks know what is required by the state…do not let them know what can damage the status quo…simple like so…that can be translated into who actually is the state holds the aces.
Religion learnt that lesson long ago!
If you teach a kaffir maths, the next thing he’ll want is his rights.
Some South African Prime Minister whose name escapes me.
In the book “The Science of Discworld” Terry Pratchett refers to these so called truths as “Lies to Children”. You don’t expose the complete truth to someone as they are developing because they won’t understand it, and it doesn’t help them. You tell them a half truth that is a good enough approximation for them at that stage. Eventually, if you teach them correctly, they’ll start to question these half truths, and you move on to the next level. Lets also not delude anyone, even our brightest minds function with a whole bunch of ‘Lies to Children” in effect.
*sigh* and the evidence of education being limited to those with money is more apparent…
Knowledge is power – and the Neo-cons are frightened of secular education provided without bias or caveats on one’s standing in society – and funded by the State.
As it leads to an informed populace who can think for themselves…
Kristol’s attitude is not only utterly cynical, but also contradictory. While he contends that the truth is not important, he is also certain that he is in possession of it and can use it to his advantage because he can “handle” it.
Yes, it’s true that you can’t teach kids about General Relativity. That doesn’t mean you need to lie to them. You can tell them about gravity and that everything in the Universe is pulling on everything else.
I had to do this on a regular basis when I was writing semi-popularized accounts of cutting-edge physics. The challenge was always to come up with a description that was sufficiently accurate, but not so detailed that it spoiled the narrative. It’s doable, but it takes work. The reader, however, benefits everyone with a better understanding.
Today we are seeing the risk of telling people all these just-so stories. They can’t understand complex issues like climate change, evolution, carcinogenesis…
Not only is the truth out there, it also matters.
Telling different lies to the different classes to ensure that your class stays in power indefinitely and that the masses don’t know how to resist you? Hm… “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.”
I become more convinced every day that Kristol, et al., think “1984” is an instruction manual rather than a warning.
Whenever I have to explain something I try go do so with as much accuracy and precision that I can. If it seems like they don’t understand, then I try harder to explain it, but I try not to dumb down my explanations for their benefit. I do this for a few reasons. First of all, I always assume that whomever I am speaking to will understand me. I don’t want to insult anybody’s intelligence. Secondly, I agree with a sentiment frequently attributed to Einstein which is that if you can’t explain something simply then you don’t understand it well enough. Finally, I believe that I have a responsibility to reality. I believe that it is my duty to present the facts to the best of my understanding and to modify that understanding when warranted by evidence. I do believe that there is an objective truth to the universe. I don’t think that that truth needs to be watered down so that it will be more palatable for the ignorant. Truth should be given in its purest form because ignorance is cured by knowledge.
Though I must admit to a little hypocracy, I do agree with what Quindam said in #83. To summarize my agreement I’ll just say that children don’t need quantum physics.
You’re just WAAAYYY TO FRACKIN’ NICE, PZ.
Leo Strauss and Kristol, IMHO, were malignant, iniquitous and vile cusses, who’ve caused more damage to the people of the USA than Hitler and Stalin could’ve EVER imagined.
Kristol and Strauss are fascist dream-boys! Delusional, repugnent and invideous, both should’ve been dragged and quartered behind horses and shat on. F#ck them!
–Rant–
Ahhhhhh, I feel much better now.
This Straussian nonsense is what caused me to leave the Ph.D program of a prestigious university (no names, but it rhymes with Michigan State). The professors there had bought into Strauss hook line and sinker, and encouraged all of the students to find the “hidden meanings” in classical texts–the meanings that were intended for the true intellectual who could spot them, but would remain hidden from the ignorant masses.
Needless to say, when you turn a bunch of 20- and 30-something bookworms loose on a text to find “hidden” messages, they’ll find them, all right–including messages that aren’t there, and even messages that directly contradict the actual text. And, as there was no objective answer, nothing was too outrageous and nothing could be questioned. Logic and evidence had no place in this pursuit.
I eventually figured out that the whole so-called discipline of political science was equally worthless–the worthwhile parts are done, better and more efficiently, in history, economics, sociology, psychology and mathematics–but that rotten department certainly started me down the road of getting the hell away from this nonsense!