False Realism and Utopianism

re: False Realism and Utopianism

Brainpolice — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:27:09 GMT

Good points from both of you.

re: False Realism and Utopianism

EvilSmurf — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:17:32 GMT

What sucks about conservatism that it totally fails at both appealing to emotion and appealing to reason. Keeping things as they are and opposing changes hardly inspirises any enthuasism, especially among young people. At the same time it worships all kind of irrational crap like religion and blind commitment to tradition. Ayn Rand, for example, was very frustated with the arguments by which conservatives defended capitalism; it made it look like that the only reason to advocate free markets was passivity, irrationality, cowardice and backward-looking personality.

re: False Realism and Utopianism

Nitroadict — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 06:16:17 GMT

It's not a strawmen at all when you consider that conservatism is ultimately futile* & is contradictory with regards to evolution, which would obviously favor a dynamism, rather than stasis.

(*Although, this point is mute if in fact, one does not believe in evolution, so for the many conservatives that are religious enough, it's easy to see why they may not see conservatism as "futile" at all.)

"Turning The Clock Back" can also mean turning it ahead 5 minutes, then turning it back 10 minutes, which is essentially (metaphoricaly, albeit) what I think conservatives tend to do: display an air of progress by trying to revert things, which ties into their romantic involvement with the past itself, while standing for the status quo.

Pull a lever, any lever! As long as the levers are being pulled, and people still believe in the levers themselves, all will be fine!

I would attribute neo-feudalism (wage slavery, credit, etc.) & continued rule by oligarchies (whether it's by representative democracy, or other form of governance which ultimately is just oligarchical rule in different clothes) as possible manifestations of "dressing the past in new clothes", and marketing it to the present as something new.

It's worth noting however, that before the Internet, it was fairly hard to quantify the amount of people who were tired of the same old "marketing of the past", aside from the assorted mailing lists and possible few friends you knew in actual life that shared similar views. Since the Internet's inception however, the communication of ideas has exceeded anyone's imagination.

Even only considering this, it's becoming increasingly obvious & apparent that less & less people are not falling for the same old game anymore, or are at least learning the 'games' rules & making moves that the 'game masters' never previously envisioned them making.

(I'm using way too many metaphors... :grumbles: )

In this view, the Internet is probably a much more radical attempt at change (and a push for dynamism), then the establishment of this country ever was, despite the overtly classical liberal nature of the 1st century or so (following the revolutionary war), due to the fact that this country was still founded utilizing a Statist-like archetype for governance, just vastly limited compared to where are today.

Another difference was that the Internet was not intentionally created to be a grand experiment and/or test with regards to the traditional means and/or systems of governence typicall utilized by humans.

However, The United States of America was intentionally started for more or less that purpose (among other important reasons), and it was done so using variations on previous systems (variations on the systems of a republic, democracy, oligarchy, aristocracy which yielded more obvious influences of plutocracy, corporate rule, etc.).

re: False Realism and Utopianism

Brainpolice — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:35:50 GMT

It could be either preserving the status quo or trying to revert back to older forms. In the context of European conservatism throughout history, it was typically on the side of monarchy and theocracy that the conservatives stood. You can see the conservative's romantisization of the past manifest itself with respect to 1950's America, colonial America and fuedal Europe.

re: False Realism and Utopianism

EvilSmurf — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:14:22 GMT

If you're conservative/reactionary enough like these primitivist environmentalists, you're actually radical and therefore you don't associate with "conservatives." I think that talking about conservatives wanting to "turn the clock back" is quite a strawman actually, conservatism is really about preserving the status quo or advocating just small and slow changes. I very rarely hear conservatives talking about going back to monarchy, theocracy and the dark ages.

re: False Realism and Utopianism

Brainpolice — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:31:20 GMT

Yes. Interestingly, primitivism can be interpreted as a rather conservative view in the sense that it romantisizes the past as "natural" and advocates returning to the "natural".

re: False Realism and Utopianism

wombatron — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:21:23 GMT

Good points, especially the one about the use of the word "nature" (also applicable against enviros and luddites).