You might call me a “progressive” because my views and preferred outcomes generally align with many people’s idea of a “progressive.”
The problem with calling oneself a “progressive” is that entails adopting a label, a label that might also carry unwanted baggage. I don’t know how many times someone has characterized me wrongly as a “progressive” only to say “… you progressives think X” (and be completely wrong)
For example: “You progressives all want to tear down people’s ability to succeed!”
Me: which people?
Leigh Ufan: Marking infinity. Is this art about the spaces between the stones, or about the stones? [gug]
My favorite zen koan as a kid was this: “Shusan The Sage held up his walking stick and said, ‘This is a stick. To say anything else is foolish. To say anything more denies its essence.’ What is it?” [wc] I was in my forties when I came up with my answer, which is “let us look at the stick together.” The koan, to me, is about the problem of labeling things. As Shusan says, “to say anything more denies its essence.” You could call it a “Stick+” or a “Stick of Progress” but it’s still a stick. It might have a pointy end. Then, you could call it a “pointy stick” but it’s still a stick. Shusan’s lesson, it seems to me, is that we layer our understanding of things on top of the reality of them. Is a skeptical asshole an asshole or a skeptic? If we call them just a “skeptic” we have missed something important, same as if we just call them an “asshole.” I do not wish to allow anyone to trap me, thus. As a skeptic, and an atheist, I am comfortable sitting down with someone and having a conversation at any necessary length as to whether or not I am a “protestant atheist” or a “skeptical atheist” or whatever.
The trick to dealing with labels is to answer, “If you wish me to bear a label of your choosing, you need to define for me what that label is, first.”
That is when we look at the stick together. Does a “progressive” believe in free education through college? Does a “progressive” believe in free medical care? Does a “progressive” believe in free medical care even to people who have ruined their lungs vaping, and need a lung transplant? Does a “progressive” believe in humanitarian military interventions? Does a “progressive” notice that those seem to result in more lives blown apart than defended, sometimes? When you look at the stick together, you see it’s a stick with a bumpy and complex surface, indeed.
Recently there has been a spate of what PZ Myers calls “dictionary atheism” – attempts to restrict the use of the label “atheist” to only what is written in a typical dictionary. I.e.: “does not believe in god.” But let us look at the stick: there are consequences to not believing in god. Does an “atheist” also believe there is no afterlife? Does an “atheist” believe that, since there is no god to balance social injustice, it falls upon us to do so? The cure to “dictionary atheism” is, I am sad to say, nihilism. It is to not wear a label anyone offers you, and say, “labels are too simplistic; I want to transcend them. I have complex beliefs and the chances that any one label will neatly encapsulate all of them is effectively zero.” Let us look at the stick, together.
Nihilism got a bad name from Nietzsche, who did quite a hatchet-job on it, in order to oppose it with his own form of crypto-christianity. [See how I just applied that label on old Fred?] His “Ubermensch” is just Nietzsche’s remix of Jesus Christ without the flaws of weakness or caring what others think. Nihilism appears to me to be the end-form of skepticism; an acceptance that it is very hard to support any assertion at all, other than assertions about opinion. I do not know if Nietzsche was familiar with the writings of Sextus Empiricus on pyrrhonian skepticism, but I doubt it, simply because Nietzsche would have felt obligated to attack Sextus Empiricus, too – and good luck doing that. never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: Never go in against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line and do not debate a pyrrhonian skeptic. I used to sometimes adopt pyrrhonian tropes but I realized that nihilism was just a little step farther: I’m not even going to waste my time hedging my bets with a lot of “… it appears to me now.” and “It seems as though…”
The important thing is that nihilism is not a chain that binds us; it’s a solvent that dissolves everything. If endless debates about labels bother you, simply demolish them all by pointing out that labels are just words we use to package concepts and – since my packaging of concepts appears to be unique to me – we can begin any discussion by searching for agreement where it exists, and outlining where we disagree, too, so we can understand each other better. Nihilism also frees us from the manipulation of loaded language: you can’t trick someone (as Sam Harris often tries to do) by saying “X is obvious” Oh, really? What is X and what is “obvious” about it? Spray a little of the universal solvent on someone else’s words and it’s obvious where the gaps are, as they sizzle and fall to pieces.
When someone calls me a “progressive” are they seeking to include me, or exclude me? It depends on how they see me, doesn’t it? So let’s just jump straight to that and be done.
I’m not a “progressive” but I believe all people ought to experience equal opportunity wherever possible.
I’m not a “progressive” but I believe that, in wealthy countries, the poorest should be supported and the military should go hungry.
I’m not a “progressive” but I believe that any political leader who stockpiles nuclear weapons has declared themselves to be the enemy of their people and ought to be hanged as a war criminal.
I’m not a “progressive” but I believe there are some things that are so heinous that we should not have to share a planet with people who believe in them. Getting rid of those people is problematic, because – and Nietzsche was right about this: “If you stare into an abyss, the abyss stares back into you.” I’d rather see nazis and white supremacists re-educated rather than elected to high office, or any office at all.
I’m not a “progressive” but I believe that who you love is your business, though you should feel free to sing your love aloud from the highest bridge. Love is rare and I celebrate yours.
I’m not a “progressive” but I believe in consent. Not just regarding sex, but that’s a great place to start. Do not reach over and grab sushi from someone else’s geta, or grab at their pussy, or manipulate them, or drug them into a coma, or use your position as a faculty-member; this is a long list, so just: don’t do it.
I’m not a “progressive” but I don’t define what your idea of ‘sex’ even is. That’s up to you because it’s not my decision, unless you invite me into your process somehow.
I’m not a “progressive” but I don’t believe in fake democracies. So I’m not going to browbeat you about whether or not you should vote for one fake candidate over another.
I’m not a “progressive” but I believe in revolutions. Sometimes you need to make a bunch of aristocrats remember what fear of the mob feels like; it’s the only way to get them to stop parading around in their mega-yachts and building rape-palaces.
I’m not a “progressive” but I believe violence is not a very good solution to any but an extremely rare set of problems. I also believe we should be working to make those problems rarer and rarer.
I am not a “progressive” but sometimes I still make macaroni and put ketchup on it when I am feeling lazy.
I’m not a “progressive” but I worry that Malthus was right and in a world where we’re overheating it with carbon dioxide emissions, our planetary carrying capacity could be reduced by several billion. Unfortunately, those several billion will be mostly in poorer countries, so they will not be able to come express their anger at the Koch brothers and Exxon management, or Donald Trump, when they start to die.
I think that’s enough to illustrate my point; the surface of the stick. Perhaps you, dear reader, are a “progressive” and you noticed an item or two on my list that made you flinch. If we were trying to be “progressives” together, then one or the other of us would have to anathematize the other – to throw them out of this little Movement of The Two of us. [Aka: a waltz] I’m not saying “let’s agree to disagree, either” – that’s also manipulative language of power: “let me decide what matters between us and what does not.” I’m saying ‘let us choose our battles carefully’. Because there are some disagreements that might be resolvable and others over which we could draw knives and choose to die. Because I’m not a “progressive.” I doubt there’s such a thing.
Figure 1: Worthless frog-spawn
Do not fear the nihilist, because the nihilist viewpoint is the endpoint of skepticism. Remember that when ethicists try to build systems of morality, they like to start by trying to build from nothing; i.e.: nihilism, and then build upward from there. It appears to me that most of them try to cheat and sneak unfounded assertions into the foundations of their systems; they should not fool you. Nietzsche was one of the greatest of the dealers in unfounded assertions, but damn he did it well, and he should be honored for saying the important things that needed to be said at his time: “God is Dead.” I’m not a “progressive” but that statement unlocks a lot of things we might think of as “progressive values.” If god is dead, the “divine right of kings” turns monarchs into Instagram influencers; they have no weight aside from the weight of their followers. If god is dead, then corporate fat cats are just lucky or rapacious, except for the ones that are both; we should not put them on pedestals as “philanthropists” for donating 2% of their wealth to a museum or a golf course. We should ask them why they don’t flip the numbers around and give 2% to their worthless frog-spawn and 98% to the needy? We should ask them why they still want to cut social programs for the poor, every time they claim they are “self-made” and their wealth was earned. If god is dead, we reject the main framework of the social order, which is repression. The nihilist also rejects the “cult of me” i.e.: libertarianism. If you look at libertarianism, it’s based on the same unfounded nonsense as the “gospel of wealth” and American propaganda about individual accomplishment: “don’t tax me or the real estate that I ethnically cleansed the natives off of, or the money I made by exploiting my workers.” We know, you stole it fair and square.
Being a nihilist is not just liberating; it’s tiring. Unless you want to be a Nietzschean ubermensch, you may find yourself questioning your own beliefs: how are they constructed? How do you defend your choices? Since god is dead, you must either ignore the burden of figuring things out, or shoulder it yourself. If you find yourself becoming a nihilist you may find yourself bemused by christians – they accept some dead old guys’ lies about morality, which, in itself, is incredibly lazy and probably cannot result in a set of useful ethics. And perhaps you’ll feel the same way about the “dictionary atheists.” Really, are your views so simple and circumscribed that you label yourself from a book someone else wrote? That sounds oddly familiar. The labels are everywhere, and they are all empty: oh, you’re a “humanist”? Is that like a “human supremacist?” Have you considered that other animals, our cousins, have feelings too? If you have to make your decisions based on your own other beliefs, and are seeking consistency and self-honesty, how can you walk around saying your atheism is circumscribed by a mere dictionary?
Lastly, I am not a “progressive” because I think that many who carry that banner are weak and do not understand politics. I don’t want to get into anathematizing people and throwing them off of my bandwagon but I don’t think that there is a real “progressive” on the Democrat ticket; they’re part of the machinery of oppression, they’re just waving the flags of “hope and change” as a way of suckering in votes, like Obama did. It is with regard to the Democrat party that I am most inclined to reject the label of “progressive” – those horrible manipulative jackasses have tried to suborn that label so they can use it to manipulate the other half of the ignorant American public. I mention this as a warning to those who want to use that label on themselves: look at what Donald Trump has done to the label ‘conservative’; that is your future, “progressives.”*
If you have any questions about my politics, I will answer them in the comment section. Please don’t be too rough on me about the ketchup and pasta thing. Sometimes I’m too tired to cook good food.
* Fortunately, those drums have fallen silent, but do you remember the brief attempt to trot out yet another Kennedy descendant as a Democrat candidate? In case you want a measurement of how stupid the Democrat party thinks their constituents are, that’s a yard-stick for you. The divine right of aristocratic blood is dead, damn it. Ask Fred.
As one of my favourite bloggers* once wrote: “someone who can describe their political beliefs with a single word does so correctly only if that word is ‘imbecile'”.
(*Ex-blogger, he quit years ago.)
I don’t know about any attempts to restrict the meaning of atheism to that; what I recall was a bunch of people pointing out that that meaning is what the word was coined to describe, and that meaning is how it is most commonly used to mean – and hence that is what it currently means. As for consequences…
Atheism is not a stance on the subject of an afterlife. So, either way is compatible.
Likewise, atheism is not a stance on the subject of morality / justice.
Hmm. Could you describe what you mean by this label? :)
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More broadly though, I agree that using labels to describe politics is an approach that risks massive miscommunication, as it relies on you and the listener having the same concept in mind with respect to the label you choose. “Socialist” stands as an obvious example of this. Identify yourself as a socialist to a Bernie Sanders fan and you will convey to that person a certain meaning; say the same to a Trump fan and you will convey a very different one.
I have no problem with labels, as long as everyone is quite aware what labels are, what they do, and what their limitations are. I think they can have significant utility in some circumstances. Even the very vague ones that can mean almost whatever you want them to mean. Language has power, and I think that power can sometimes be used for good.
A label can be a powerful talisman of belonging. I have seen plenty of people feel much better about themselves because they have a label they can cling to, whether it’s a description of their sexuality they can feel proud of, or a diagnosis of a mental health condition that makes them feel they have a socially approved explanation of why they are the way they are, or a national or ethnic identity. Even political labels can do this. I think a lot of people who would say “I am a progressive” tend to mean by it “I’m a good person”. Admittedly, people who say “I am a conservative” tend to mean that too. Tribalism and group-think are obvious dangers in this, but I certainly wouldn’t want to diminish the power that a sense of fellow-feeling and identity has in people’s lives, and the value of having language to express it.
Furthermore, I think labels like “progressive” are necessary in social organizing. It’s all very well being comfortable with a detached, analytical mindset where we privilege an awareness of how tentative our categories and divisions of reality are in the face of epistemological uncertainty, but that’s not going to get anything done about the injustices of the world. Organizing a grass roots movement to protest corporate capture of democracy, or climate change, or racism, or anything else, tends to need a banner and a communal focus that can be easily expressed. You don’t tend to get very far marching as Nihilists for Justice or the What Would Pyrrhus Do Movement. Labels are effective tools in shaping the public conversation – and denying their efficacy only goes so far as a countermeasure. There comes a point where refusing to use them concedes the territory to opponents, and lets ones enemies define the labels they use for you as they wish.
I am a theoretical nihilist, and a pragmatic optimist.
When you say “I am a progressive” and someone says “Oh, so you believe X” you can say “no, Y” and in a few minutes you can sort out the rough shape of who you are, progressive-wise, sufficiently well. Your conversational companion can remember that, and later on, it need not be re-hashed.
Language works. It’s not precise, and the post-modernists aren’t wrong: when you start to examine where meaning comes from, it gets spooky. But it works.
When it fails between two fluent speakers, it is in general because of bad faith on someone’s part. You can always make a buck or score points with your twitter followers by offering up some shitty take on something someone said, and it is maybe increasingly becoming standard practice to do so. When scoring points is more important than mutual understanding, language becomes a marvelous tool for non-communication.
But when both people speak in good faith, with a spirit of generosity, language is a marvelous tool for communicating.
It is a stick. Yes, the surface is fractally complicated and we could talk about the stick at length, but for now, I shall use it as a walking stick. Let us find a stick for you, and let us walk, and speak of things more interesting than sticks.
Talk about missing the point. The art is about the pillows upon which the stones rest.
I would offer that you can be lazy and still have a better meal than ketchup and pasta. There are plenty of decent jarred pasta sauces that could be heated up in the time it takes you to boil your pasta, and your meal would be more nutritious as well as more tasty.
I remember you getting called a “fake progressive.” That’s even more amusing considering how a person cannot be a “fake X” if they themselves never claimed to be “X” in the first place.
Whenever people try to attach some label to another person, that often happens in order to discredit whatever they actually said and substitute their exact words/opinions with a caricature. (This reminds me the last time somebody called me a “libertarian” as a substitute for discussing the actual conversation topic.)
Labels can also be used as tools to limit other people’s expression. For example, some Americans fear advocating for social justice due to being afraid that somebody will label them as “socialists,” and the word “socialist” is somehow an insult. Or women fear advocating for their rights fearing the negative connotations of the label “feminist.”
No leaders—yes, I agree.
No heroes—well, it depends. For example, if some woman opens a school for girls in a region where women suffer under strict religious oppression and are forbidden from attending a school, then said teacher who risked their own life would be a de facto hero.
No movement—I’d say I disagree. An atheist movement can be potentially beneficial for a society.
This is why I use labels to describe myself only when some label has a very narrow meaning. For example, the word “progressive” has such a broad and varied meaning, that I wouldn’t call myself one. “Nearsighted,” on the other hand, is a medical term with a narrow meaning, which, unfortunately, applies to me. I’m even reluctant to use a label like “genderqueer,” because the experiences of non-cis people tend to be very varied, and it’s better for me to just explain what’s going on with me.
I oppose capital punishment and that also includes hanging. Other than that, I was fine with your list.
Zen koans tend to be of the form “Question with several possible obvious answers” to which the “correct” answer is to somehow reject the obvious answers and refuse to answer the question at all, usually by means of some oblique statement that deflects the question and attempts to point towards the “profound” underlying “truth”. Sometimes this works (your example is a good one), other times it sounds utterly ridiculous and makes you think Zen is fundamentally just a pointless waste of time and effort.* It truly is a balancing-on-a-knife’s-edge thing.
Opinion: Most koans can be successfully answered by saying “Stop pretending there are any absolutes”, or if the person posing you the koan is the pretentious type (say, a “Zen master”), perhaps “Stop pretending there are any absolutes, you dunce!” It accomplishes most of the purpose of the whole exercise, and cuts to the heart of the matter.
Using a simple pack (or can) of chopped tomatoes is better than ketchup and not significantly more difficult.
* If you want to “get” what the Zen people are aiming at, you can do a whole lot worse than just contemplating the phrase “the Heat Death of the Universe” and working backwards from there.
In case it wasn’t clear, applying labels to things is an attempt to make absolute statements (e.g. “X is a progressive”). Marcus’s rejection of labels fits nicely as a specific example of my general attitude that there is no such thing.
I think @ Andreas Avester sums up the matter very well. It also depends on where you live.
I am a progressive to a Canadian is a silly statement. It is meaning less, since everyone here is a progressive Don’t ask.
Ketil Tveiten@#8:
Opinion: Most koans can be successfully answered by saying “Stop pretending there are any absolutes”, or if the person posing you the koan is the pretentious type (say, a “Zen master”), perhaps “Stop pretending there are any absolutes, you dunce!” It accomplishes most of the purpose of the whole exercise, and cuts to the heart of the matter.
I like that approach. I believe the other approach is to mutter, “I see you are the buddha” and start to draw your sword.
In case it wasn’t clear, applying labels to things is an attempt to make absolute statements (e.g. “X is a progressive”). Marcus’s rejection of labels fits nicely as a specific example of my general attitude that there is no such thing.
Well said. That was why I brought pyrrhonian skepticism into the discussion; in the presence of such a skeptic, it’s a fail-move to make a blanket assertion. I probably should do some postings on Sextus Empiricus.
you can do a whole lot worse than just contemplating the phrase “the Heat Death of the Universe” and working backwards from there.
I am sure you know how supremely beautiful that idea is.
jrkrideau@#10:
I am a progressive to a Canadian is a silly statement. It is meaning less, since everyone here is a progressive Don’t ask.
That’s another good point – in the US a “progressive” might or might not be a socialist. To someone from another country a centrist American is probably scarily reactionary.
It depends on your frame of reference.
Andreas Avester@#7:
No heroes—well, it depends. For example, if some woman opens a school for girls in a region where women suffer under strict religious oppression and are forbidden from attending a school, then said teacher who risked their own life would be a de facto hero.
We can now deconstruct what is freighted into the label “hero”; I suspect that it does not mean the same thing to us. To me, a “hero” is someone who is granted respect for their actions. The problem with that is that they may be heroic only on one axis; someone might write a good book that heroically takes christianity to task, but also be profoundly dishonest about their anti-arab/palestinian animus. “Hero” comes with a “halo effect” that tends to make us willing to reduce/overlook their other flaws. That’s inefficient – why not deal with their flaws and their good actions and weigh them without putting them on a pedestal? That is what I mean when I say “no heroes.”
No movement—I’d say I disagree. An atheist movement can be potentially beneficial for a society.
That’s a more complicated topic. I’d like to postpone it and try to do a posting explaining why I feel the way I do.
Reginald Selkirk@#5:
Talk about missing the point. The art is about the pillows upon which the stones rest.
Use of negative space -> cushion space. I’ll buy it.
Well played.
Funny. I remember you saying you were “Anti-American”, and that there was something wrong with anyone who didn’t accept that label. I remember it precisely because it looked like an attempt to attach significance to a label, which has always been something that annoys the shit out of me.
Not even crushed canned tomatoes? Crimes against pasta
Now, of course, you must be careful: “all labels are wrong” (or even “applying labels to things is wrong”) is very much an absolutist statement. It is a useful thing to do, but one must of course be aware of the potential problems.
@Andreas Avester
If you talk about me, I did not call you a libertarian, I told you that you are arguing like a one. I tried to be careful about adressing your arguments, not attacking your person, but it seems to me you took it rather personally. So evidently I failed at that. I do apologize for poor writing that could be interpreted as a personal attack.
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@Marcus, I somewhat disagree with you here. Words are defined by use and are used for communication. Sooner or later everything becomes circular, no word can be exactly and precisely pinned down, all definitions are a bit hazy around the edges. Everyone imagines something different when you say “dog”, yet the word has meaning and is useful.
If in the population in which you are the word “progressive” has an agreed upon usage that has X-criteria atatched to it, and you fulfill most of those criteria, then you are progressive whether you like the label or not (and your fitting into the label progresses with the amount of criteria you fulfill), or whether someone tries to “no true Scotsman” you because they attach to the label some select specific criteria that in their mind are the only ones that matter, everything else be damned. Since English is not my first language and I do not perfectly understand the meaning of “progressive” as used in US politics, I cannot judge this specific case, but from what you yourself have written I think you are progressive as the term is commonly understood, only you do not like being called one.
I am allergic to this attitude because I have seen similar arguments being used by our racist and xenophobic president in recent years. Whinging about how labels are unfair and not useful and how nobody should be calling him racist and a xehophobe because he does not like those labels attached to him. Tough buns, racist is as racist does, he spouts racists tropes and advocates racist policies, therefore he is racist.
I do not like the label “leftist” but I do in fact advocate for most policies that are commonly understood as being part of the left political agenda. Therefore I am leftist, despite me not liking the label.
Similarly progressive is as progressive does.
Labels are useful. Labels are necessary part of communication. They can be used and abused in bad faith, lead to tribalism etc. etc. But there is no useful thing that cannot be used badly.
Marcus @#13
Yes, our definitions of a “hero” differ. I don’t think that writing a good book that refutes the Bible is heroic. I do think that saving human lives during a religiously inspired genocide is heroic. When I conclude that some person has done some heroic deed, I’m willing to say that said person is a hero. I’m acknowledging that this thing they did was amazing and heroic. I signal my approval for whatever they did. And that’s it. The fact that I acknowledge some person as a “hero” doesn’t have any further implications for me.
I am fine with being a part of some egalitarian organization or movement, where there is no leader and decisions are made by majority agreement. I can enjoy a community. Besides, a group of people can achieve more than a single person working alone. But I absolutely hate being part of some social hierarchy. I dislike it whenever somebody is above me in the social pecking order. I know that I cannot always be the boss (theoretically, I’d be fine with being at the very top of some hierarchy), so instead I just try to completely exempt myself from all the social hierarchies. I don’t want to look up to anybody, I don’t want to acknowledge anyone as my superior. In general, I try to respect everybody and always be polite to all people, be they a millionaire or a beggar on the street, a child or a senior citizen (of course, there are some exceptions, people who do particularly heinous deeds). I know that other people are more knowledgeable than me in various areas of expertise, so I listen to advice and obey instructions when it’s beneficial for me to do so. I know that some people have done amazing things or have awe-inspiring skills. I can admire some artwork. I can like some person’s actions and say “this thing you did was heroic and totally amazing.” But I will never go a step further and say: “Therefore I admire also you as a person.” I just never idolize people. I never assume that just because a person did one amazing thing they must be good in every way, that they must be a good person worthy of idolizing. People are flawed. Every one of us.
I just try to avoid all those social interactions in which I cannot treat the other person as my equal. I hate having to bow to somebody. (By the way, on numerous occasions my distaste for authority has gotten me in trouble for arguing against university professors. I always expected my professors to convince me that their position is correct by giving me proofs and arguments. Unfortunately, some professors had a tendency to assume that having a PhD means they will always be right about everything. Of course, I had to argue against such positions. And I got my grades reduced as a result. Oh well, at least I didn’t get kicked out of my university.)
This reminds me, back when I was still a child, I routinely heard my teachers talking about how kids need role models. The very notion seemed repulsive to me. I never wanted to be like some person. Sure, I could admire other people’s skills or deeds and wanted to achieve similar things, but being like said person, hell no.
Anyway, I know that my definition of “hero” differs from what other people commonly use, but I have skewed my definition so as to make it palatable for me. If I had to think about heroes as idols, I’d have to hate them instead of just liking their amazing deeds.
Of course, I agree.
Yes, when you really get into not only what does this word mean but also what does this word not mean, you run into the sorites paradox with quite possibly every word in any vernacular language, and probably a fair bit of technical jargon too.
My simple pasta is pasta with olive oil and grated cheese.
Holms:
Heh. Same thing, different perspective. Converse is already implied.
What? No, that’s a different thing.
(Are you thinking of essentially contested concepts?)
[pregnant, bachelor]
On-topic: Famously, Popeye’s asseveration: ” I Yam What I Yam & Dats What I Yam!”.
(Labels may influence perception, but they are but referents)
Marcus said: “Do you remember the brief attempt to trot out yet another Kennedy descendant as a Democrat candidate?”
You don’t need a very long memory for that. There’s a Kennedy spawn who is contemplating a run for Senator in Massachusetts right now.
You seem to accept the label Nihilist.
Cynic is also a label I’ve seen you use.
Humans are tribal in nature. They organize and every organization is both inclusionary and exclusionary. Language is needed for people to communicate within tribes and between tribes and labels are a form of shorthand. They should be a starting point for discussion. Defining terms and negotiating terms are part of that discussion, but if you need to negotiate every label the discussion would descend into meaningless semantics.
Labels are an integral part of human language and culture and we use them as descriptors. Kind- intelligent – lazy – funny – beautiful – compliant – big. Imagine trying to converse without labels at all.
Labels are a part of the duality of things. This implies that. Here implies there. Progressive implies regressive.
DonDueed@#25:
You don’t need a very long memory for that. There’s a Kennedy spawn who is contemplating a run for Senator in Massachusetts right now.
Yes, that’s the same Kennedy sprig from a year ago. He’s going to keep cropping up, I suppose. Because, when you’re rich, politics is a hereditary calling.
Rob Grigjanis@#15:
Funny. I remember you saying you were “Anti-American”, and that there was something wrong with anyone who didn’t accept that label.
I accept that if I apply a label like “Anti-American” to someone, they probably don’t understand by it what I understand by it. We’ve got nothing but language – this flawed and unreliable tool – for communicating, so we’ve got to use what we have.
Usually when I am writing or speaking informally, I do not bother caveating everything with “it’s my opinion that…” or “it appears to me not as though…” or “I know this is an undefined term but…”
I’d accept that there some Americans who hear me describe myself as Anti-American and think “why don’t you like Venezuelans?” It’s all vague. I’m not proposing to solve the problems inherent in language.
If I may add: since I accept that language is vague and we’d need to properly define things before we can really talk about them, I count that as another strike against the idea that there are objective or shared moral values or ethical systems. We might share some values, sure, but how would we even talk about it and be sure we were talking about the same thing? [That is a variant of the ‘mode of dispute’ from the pyrrhonian skeptic school]
Voyager@#26:
You seem to accept the label Nihilist.
Cynic is also a label I’ve seen you use.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t use labels. I’m saying that it seems that discourse is vague. When we can get by with it being imprecise, then we can get by. “Would you like to go for lunch?” does not require that we have a shared understanding of what “lunch” and “go” and “like” mean in that context.
You’ve probably even seen me describe things as “wrong” in a moral sense. That doesn’t mean that I expect you to understand the same thing I am writing when you read that. Rather. it is a starting-point for discussion, a shorthand, if you will. I may say “it is wrong for cops to shoot people for running” and we can probably still have a conversation after that, even though I would admit on a technicality that I don’t know what “wrong” is or that we don’t share an idea of “wrong” I have noticed in some places that nihilism is cast as asserting that “life has no meaning” – that’s what I’d consider a bold and unfounded assertion; we’d have to have a better shared understanding of what “having a meaning” means before we could sort that out.
As I see it (and argue) nihilism is a form of skepticism, or perhaps the end-point of skepticism. It doesn’t mean [death-metal voice]”kill the world and make everything burrrrrrnnnnnn!!![/death-metal voice] but rather an acceptance of a high degree of isolation because our ability to communicate is so poor. There don’t appear to be any gods, so our option in life is to stumble around turning pizza into poop and trying to do what we feel is interesting or worthwhile to us. [Note: we may do what we think is interesting or worthwhile to others, too, whatever.] The nihilist is not a Nietzschean ubermensch; they’re more like Diogenes the Cynic or Epicurus – they adopt ways of dealing with their lives that work for them, whatever that means. Diogenes appears to have valued being a wiseass. Epicurus appears to have valued good company, conversation, and food. I’ll note that even Epicurus had a character flaw in my book: he did not appreciate dogs. I think he could have learned a thing or two from a dog. Sometimes I used to imagine that Epicurus was actually the pen-name of a very frustrated canine who masqueraded as a human in order to be taken more seriously.
Even pyrhhonians appear to get hungry, which is why they sometimes seem to eat “food.”
There is a leftover piece of the puzzle, which is “how do you justify anything to yourself?” That is a fairly common riposte against extreme skeptics. The answer is, “look, I’m saying ‘I can’t construct an objective system of morality that survives my own skeptical challenge’ not that ‘I don’t want to breathe, or eat, or not get punched in the nose.’ I’m stuck in this life with you and everyone else and I’m trying to get by in a way that satisfies me. I am not trying to justify why what satisfies me should also satisfy you but if you also like what appears to be pizza, let’s go share an illusion, ok? Because I prefer that to getting punched in the nose.” In other words, my justification is entirely personal and mostly on aesthetic and hedonistic lines. I can’t say “all compulsion is morally wrong” but I sure as hell can complain if you put a gun to my head and tell me to dig a hole. As Saint Lebowski said, “that’s just, like, your opinion man.”
I am off to listen to Cold Black Suns by Enthroned, because I wanna see the universe burrrrrrrrrn, man. Hail Lucifer! LOL
One of my favorite quotes (translated, I have no Greek) is from The Oresteia by Aeschylus:
“Call no man happy until he is dead.”
(lines 928-929)
Gender-spectrum exclusivity aside, this bored down—for me—to the very heart of the language limits/labels/sometimes-useful-but-oft-problematic-shorthand questions you so eloquently describe and analyze.
Thank you for this post.
Still learning,
Robert
I’ve been trying to think of something useful to add, other than pasta sauce recipes, but I can’t really think of anything for sure.
I’m wondering if these sorts of labels (progressive, nationalities, hero) just lead to too many shortcuts in thinking. Maybe the intellectually rigorous option is to avoid them
“look, I’m saying ‘I can’t construct an objective system of morality that survives my own skeptical challenge’ not that ‘I don’t want to breathe, or eat, or not get punched in the nose.’ I’m stuck in this life with you and everyone else and I’m trying to get by in a way that satisfies me. I am not trying to justify why what satisfies me should also satisfy you but if you also like what appears to be pizza, let’s go share an illusion, ok? Because I prefer that to getting punched in the nose.”
So you’re [what I would call, based in part on my current understanding of what you wrote, assuming that was largely honest] a reasonable nihilist.
Yes, it is already implicit… but by stating it, the converse becomes explicit.
And yes, it is definitely the sorites paradox.