Conservative party/opposition watch

[UndercoverElephant]

Wow I seem to have stirred up a right hornets nest here.

Would it be fair to say in brief that the general meaning of woke has mutated from something positive
to a term of abuse for ideas put about as being sensible and "obvious" which really are no such thing as
they have no basis in demonstrable reality and reflect what the person says rather than what they actually do?

I am put in mind of a pompous academic I had the misfortune to come across once upon a time who claimed to be a
Marxist intellectual and who was involved in a whole series of dodgy property deals and speculations over rented properties.

Love it when folk claim something stands to reason when it clearly doesn't!

Not really, no. What you're talking about there are social justice warriors, especially the sort that spend a lot of time on social media but rarely get off their backsides and actually do anything. Attacking people for hypocrisy has become a very popular tactic in modern society, and is a particular favourite of the social justice warriors themselves, but just because somebody is a hypocrite doesn't make their argument wrong.

There is a much deeper problem, and that is that the arguments themselves don't have any basis in demonstrable reality, because they are the spawn of a philosophical movement which point blank denies there is any such thing. The problem with gender ideology is not that its proponents are hypocrites but because they are not only detached from reality but hell-bent on trying to make sure everybody else is detached from it too.

Marxism predates Critical theory and woke ideology. The people who invented it were ex-Marxist intellectuals who had been forced to come to terms with the failure of Marxism and devised a new strategy to try to bring down their ideological enemies: confuse the hell out of everybody with an endless stream of unintelligible nonsense, but make it sound really clever so people who can't understand it feel inferior and don't challenge you.

Here is Chomsky explaining it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjQA0e0UYzI

[Ralphw2]

When it comes to ideology which is denying objective reality there can be more than one relating to a given issue.

UE makes arguments that are not supported by scientific evidence, even the scientific evidence that was collected under social conventions that predate current "wokery" by many decades. His attitude towards gender is Victorian prudery writ large. Additionally the historical evidence of human nature from cultures predating or uninfluenced by medieval Christian (or other monotheistic moralities) shows that gender and behavior are a broad spectrum, and similar behaviors have been observed in many mammalian species.

In the grand scheme of things it just is not that important.

[mr brightside]

Wow I seem to have stirred up a right hornets nest here.

Indeed. I think it's time for a 'Wokery Watch' thread.

[UndercoverElephant]

When it comes to ideology which is denying objective reality there can be more than one relating to a given issue.

UE makes arguments that are not supported by scientific evidence, even the scientific evidence that was collected under social conventions that predate current "wokery" by many decades. His attitude towards gender is Victorian prudery writ large.

The definition of "prude" is "a person who is or claims to be easily shocked by matters relating to sex or nudity." Nothing I have said even remotely suggests I am easily shocked by that, or anything else for that matter. My objection to gender ideology is that it denies realism, and that doing this has extremely negative consequences in general.

Also, I do indeed sometimes make arguments not supported by science, but I never claim those arguments are supported by scientific evidence. Non-scientific arguments are fine, so long as they don't actually contradict science or claim to be science.

Additionally the historical evidence of human nature from cultures predating or uninfluenced by medieval Christian (or other monotheistic moralities) shows that gender and behavior are a broad spectrum, and similar behaviors have been observed in many mammalian species.

In the grand scheme of things it just is not that important.

I disagree, and it seems I need to explain why again. The term "gender" has no scientific meaning. If you don't agree with that claim, please do tell us what you think its scientific meaning is. Here is how this situation has progressed.

In English, until recently, the word "gender" referred only to grammatical constructions. Biological sex was always referred to as "sex", and there was no other relevant word. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender if you don't believe me.

Under the influence of Critical Theory in the 1970s it started to be used to refer to a malleable social construct, but it continued to be used to refer to biological sex also. The confusion this created was deliberate. It was a design feature, not a bug. Sowing deliberate confusion is the modus operandi of Critical Theory, and that is the reason why I consistently express such a vitriolic hatred for it. Fixing human society requires us to work hard to reduce the amount of confusion, not deliberately increasing it!

Now we have a situation where most of the public have no idea when to use the word "sex" and when to use the word "gender". This was done on the justification that the term "[biological] sex" was being used by dominant cultural powers to oppress a vulnerable group (transgender people). In other words, a political movement deliberately argued that an unambiguous scientific-physical term was oppressive, so intentionally replaced it with an ambiguous term which could be simultaneously used to refer to both biological sex and a vague social construct. They deliberately obscured the line between science and politics, and they justified it in terms of morality.

They succeeded. We now have a situation where I go to poultry-keeping facebook groups and see loads of people asking how to find out the "gender" of their young birds. And on a much more serious note, we have major public arguments about whether biological males should be allowed to compete in female sports or be held in female prisons.

My argument is that public discourse and education in modern western society has been seriously damaged by this and related forms of systemic anti-realism. This has absolutely nothing to do with Victorian prudery. I am not being small-minded and petty. I am trying to address serious problems in western society by identifying and fixing their root causes.

I know you aren't stupid, Ralph. You are perfectly capable of understanding what I just wrote, and going to check it for yourself to make sure I am correct. Please do not misrepresent my argument again. This absolutely does matter. We live in a world where the public is bombarded with misinformation, and this is a perfect example.

Understand this: I cannot and will not back down. I can't, because this is the closest thing I have got to a religion. Unlike you, I don't think human lives are meaningless. I have deeply held views about what is right and wrong (based on critical thinking, not dogma), and I am committed to defending the truth from people who deliberately obscure it in all circumstances. And if that means I have to politically ally myself with various sorts of far right nutjobs then so be it. I am not the only one. The consequences of this full-frontal attack on reality is to drive reasonable centrists into the arms of the far right and it ultimately risks putting Farage in Downing Street.

[UndercoverElephant]

Wow I seem to have stirred up a right hornets nest here.

Indeed. I think it's time for a 'Wokery Watch' thread.

I'm in. However, it is probably also time for a "Reform Watch" thread, and they are likely to cover much of the same ground. And this actually gets us back on topic, because I suspect we are heading for a situation where Badenoch becomes tory leader and both she and Farage spend much of their time banging hard on an anti-woke drum while what remains of the social left wing of the Labour Party tries to put Starmer under pressure to cave in to the woke brigade. Starmer will be left in the middle, trying to "cool things down", and that may turn out to be impossible. There is no middle way here -- either you accept the validity of the word "gender", or you don't. Sex is either mutable, or it isn't. The situation is binary, because biological sex itself is binary. I think this argument is going to become much more unpleasant in the coming years.

[mr brightside]

...gender and behavior are a broad spectrum...

Which cultures, and how reliable is the information/theory/data?

[UndercoverElephant]

...gender and behavior are a broad spectrum...

Which cultures, and how reliable is the information/theory/data?

To be fair, gender and behaviour are a broad spectrum. The problem is the intentional conflation of gender (which can be interpreted however anybody wants to, because it is purely a cultural creation) and biological sex, which is the exact opposite of a broad spectrum. The gender ideologues don't just want to be able to talk about a rich and varied cultural construct -- for their pernicious nonsense to have the desired effect it is necessary that the general public does not understand that gender is merely a cultural construct. They want the public to believe it is a cultural construct and also a synonym for "sex" (detached from "biological"). Having played all these dishonest linguistic tricks, they can then claim it is possible for a man to become a woman. Reality flushed down the toilet by evil, hateful bastards like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler.

I could tone down my language, but I want people reading this to know exactly how angry I am. My anger and hatred for her reflects her own intense hatred for believers in biological reality. She's the only living philosopher I'd describe as evil. She's also very clever.

[Potemkin Villager]

I suspect we are heading for a situation where Badenoch becomes tory leader and both she and Farage spend much of their time banging hard on an anti-woke drum while what remains of the social left wing of the Labour Party tries to put Starmer under pressure to cave in to the woke brigade.

Now let me try and understand this.

Who in particular to you represents the "social left wing of the Labour Party? What does caving in to the woke brigade mean in practice? Indeed who exactly is "the woke brigade"?

Seriously I am not trying to wind you up but trying to understand the substantive issue here that pushes all your buttons and gets you so spectacularly hot under the collar.

[UndercoverElephant]

Now let me try and understand this.

Have you read all of my recent posts in this thread? I am trying very hard to be understood.

Who in particular to you represents the "social left wing of the Labour Party?

The most high profile example is probably Diane Abbott, but she is the tip of a very large iceberg. Admittedly it has melted somewhat recently, as Labour has started to lose its left wing. Quite a lot of these people have recently defected to the Greens and smaller far left parties.

What does caving in to the woke brigade mean in practice?

For example, it means allowing puberty blockers to continue to be used. It means ignoring the Cass Report and loosening the controls on gender self-ID. I am focusing particularly on the gender issue because that happens to be where the biggest ideological front line battle is being fought, but the war is much wider than this.

Indeed who exactly is "the woke brigade"?

I have explained this in quite a lot of detail in recent posts, I think. I have explained who their intellectual leaders are. Large numbers of them are very active on social media. Elon Musk bought Twitter because he believed it needed to be taken from their control.

Seriously I am not trying to wind you up but trying to understand the substantive issue here that pushes all your buttons and gets you so spectacularly hot under the collar.

To understand this we need to take several steps back and put it in the entire context of what we're talking about. The question I am really addressing, at its root, is what has gone wrong with civilisation, whether it can be fixed, how it can be fixed and what is the best possible long-term outcome which involves the least amount of suffering.

Western civilisation is f***ed. Global civilisation is f***ed, but the tune global civilisation is dancing to is Western. It was invented in Europe. It has so far had three long phases. The first was antiquity, starting in the Athens of Pericles and ending with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The second was Christendom. The third began in the 16th century and is now drawing to its end. What are called "the culture wars" are a battle for what the fourth phase is going to look like, ideologically. We (on this forum) already know it is also going to be grim in many other ways, but the ideological battle is nowhere near over, and it is not clear who is going to win. What I call "the woke brigade" are the simple-minded foot soldiers doing the dirty work of the generals. My hatred is aimed at the generals, especially the ones that know that what they are doing is dishonest but don't care.

Because Western civilisation has managed to so successfully take over the world (in several senses), there is an illusion that somehow we must have got something spectacularly right, ideologically. At least that is what it looked like when Francis Fukuyama declared western liberal democracy to be "the end of history" (ie the end of social-ideological development). Our ecological predicament says we aren't right enough. And in fact we're nowhere near right. Science itself is certainly a spectacular success, but it is ideologically isolated -- marooned. The result is somebody like Ralph, who believes he is a meat robot with no free will.

We need an ideological reset. I have a very clear idea about what that reset needs to look like, and it involves what is best described as a "new epistemic deal" -- although it also involves what is in effect a new cosmology. It involves a combination of scientific realism and eco-mysticism, seamlessly joined together like Yin and Yang. This would be a Western equivalent of Taoism, which the Chinese are using as the ideological foundation of their project to create an ecocivilisation. To make this work we need enact a peace treaty between science and mysticism, of the sort outlined by Frijtof Capra in "The Tao of Physics". The reason I hate people like Judith Butler is that they are the ring-leaders of a movement which is dishonestly throwing a spanner in the works of this project by systematically denying both the Yin and the Yang. And the reason they're doing it is that they hate the truth. They hate the truth, because they feel oppressed by it.

In one sentence, they are the ringleader of organised hatred of the very thing that I believe is the only thing that can set humanity free.

If you PM me your email address I can send you the first 10 pages or so of my latest attempt at a book that explains this. It contains a 5 page introduction to the whole project and 5 pages outlining the new cosmology (which obviously isn't completely new -- it is a new combination of old things, with a small number of new ideas that are needed to make it all add up).

[UndercoverElephant]

I suspect we are heading for a situation where Badenoch becomes tory leader and both she and Farage spend much of their time banging hard on an anti-woke drum while what remains of the social left wing of the Labour Party tries to put Starmer under pressure to cave in to the woke brigade.

Now let me try and understand this.

Who in particular to you represents the "social left wing of the Labour Party? What does caving in to the woke brigade mean in practice? Indeed who exactly is "the woke brigade"?

Seriously I am not trying to wind you up but trying to understand the substantive issue here that pushes all your buttons and gets you so spectacularly hot under the collar.

Maybe a shorter answer will help. This is about an ideological dispute about the nature and value of Truth. The woke ideologues would not have capitalised it, because they literally don't believe in it. For them, there is no Truth, only different perspectives. It follows from this that all language is just manipulation of one sort of another, so they are morally free to manipulate it however they like in order to achieve whatever goals they have decided on. And what they've decided on is that various groups of other people have too much power, and that this power is all tied up in linguistic norms, and nothing else. So they've decided to majorly F--k about with language in order to redistribute power. That's their idea, anyway.

For me, this is both completely wrong-headed and deeply immoral. I believe there absolutely is such a thing as Truth, and seeking and defending it is the foundation stone of everything I believe in.

Do you believe there is such thing as objective truth?

Or in more detail:

Do you accept solipsism is false (ie there is a reality beyond your individual mind)?
Do you agree that we can know at least something about it?
Do you believe that if we can know something about it then our morality, politics and everything else should depend on acquainting ourselves with it?

[Potemkin Villager]

That's pretty comprehensive I will PM you to take this off this thread.

[mr brightside]

of the sort outlined by Frijtof Capra in "The Tao of Physics".

Not one i've read thus far. My last outing saw me take on 'The Dancing Wu Li Masters' by Gary Zukov.

[UndercoverElephant]

of the sort outlined by Frijtof Capra in "The Tao of Physics".

Not one i've read thus far. My last outing saw me take on 'The Dancing Wu Li Masters' by Gary Zukov.

Edit: I have not read Zukov's book.

I'm talking in very general terms here. I mentioned Capra because he is one of the very few people that anybody has ever heard of who is even in the same ballpark as me. There's no shortage of academics heading in this direction, and it is increasing. I don't think many people outside of philosophy realise this. Metaphysical materialism is dying, but most non-philosophers who come from a scientific or rationalist background are completely oblivious to it so far. I think this is going to change, though I don't have much sense of how long it will take to filter through to the mainstream.

This is a Dutch-led organisation trying to spread the message. Set up last year:

https://www.essentiafoundation.org

The challenge

We live under a materialist metaphysics: all that supposedly exists is matter, an abstract entity conceptually defined as being outside and independent of consciousness. This metaphysics is often conflated with science itself, even though the scientific method only allows us to determine how nature behaves, not what nature is in and of itself.

The mainstream cultural endorsement of metaphysical materialism became firmly established in the second half of the nineteenth century. Since then, however, its strength has been derived mainly from intellectual habit and inherited assumptions, not from clear reasoning, evidence or explanatory power. As a matter of fact, over the past few decades evidence has been accumulating in foundations of physics, neuroscience and analytic philosophy that materialism is false.

Nonetheless, the cultural prevalence of metaphysical materialism has myriad—and arguably dysfunctional—implications at both individual and social levels: it impacts our sense of meaning and purpose, our value systems, our understanding of health, disease and death, as well as the way we relate to others, the planet and even ourselves.


Our goals

Essentia Foundation aims at communicating, in an accurate yet accessible way, the latest analytic and scientific indications that metaphysical materialism is fundamentally flawed. Indeed, clear reasoning and the evidence at hand indicate that metaphysical idealism or nondualism—the notion that nature is essentially mental—is the best explanatory model we currently have. This is known in specialist communities, but hasn’t yet been openly communicated, in an accessible manner, to the culture at large. Essentia Foundation hopes to help close this communication gap.

Although we acknowledge that analytic or scientific understanding, in and of itself, isn’t life- or behavior-changing—only felt experience or knowledge by direct acquaintance is—in modern culture the intellect is the bouncer of the heart. Therefore, we aim to create intellectual space and legitimacy for the notion that, at its most fundamental level, all reality unfolds in an extended field of mentation.

To be clear, I don't 100% agree with their proposed solution to the problem (we are totally agreed about the problem), because I think the term "idealism" is somewhat misleading and unhelpful, but in terms of their overall position and direction this is really an argument about presentation and details. These people are fighting the same ideological war as I am.

Part of the problem is a clash between eastern and western concepts. "Nondualism" is a term from Hinduism. "Idealism" is from the western tradition. I prefer non-dualism, but it confuses people because the dualism it is rejecting isn't any form of dualism in the western tradition. It can only be properly understood from the perspective of eastern philosophy, especially Hinduism and Taoism.

[mr brightside]

of the sort outlined by Frijtof Capra in "The Tao of Physics".

Not one i've read thus far. My last outing saw me take on 'The Dancing Wu Li Masters' by Gary Zukov.

Edit: I have not read Zukov's book.

I'm talking in very general terms here. I mentioned Capra because he is one of the very few people that anybody has ever heard of who is even in the same ballpark as me. There's no shortage of academics heading in this direction, and it is increasing. I don't think many people outside of philosophy realise this. Metaphysical materialism is dying, but most non-philosophers who come from a scientific or rationalist background are completely oblivious to it so far. I think this is going to change, though I don't have much sense of how long it will take to filter through to the mainstream.

This is a Dutch-led organisation trying to spread the message. Set up last year:

https://www.essentiafoundation.org

The challenge

We live under a materialist metaphysics: all that supposedly exists is matter, an abstract entity conceptually defined as being outside and independent of consciousness. This metaphysics is often conflated with science itself, even though the scientific method only allows us to determine how nature behaves, not what nature is in and of itself.

The mainstream cultural endorsement of metaphysical materialism became firmly established in the second half of the nineteenth century. Since then, however, its strength has been derived mainly from intellectual habit and inherited assumptions, not from clear reasoning, evidence or explanatory power. As a matter of fact, over the past few decades evidence has been accumulating in foundations of physics, neuroscience and analytic philosophy that materialism is false.

Nonetheless, the cultural prevalence of metaphysical materialism has myriad—and arguably dysfunctional—implications at both individual and social levels: it impacts our sense of meaning and purpose, our value systems, our understanding of health, disease and death, as well as the way we relate to others, the planet and even ourselves.


Our goals

Essentia Foundation aims at communicating, in an accurate yet accessible way, the latest analytic and scientific indications that metaphysical materialism is fundamentally flawed. Indeed, clear reasoning and the evidence at hand indicate that metaphysical idealism or nondualism—the notion that nature is essentially mental—is the best explanatory model we currently have. This is known in specialist communities, but hasn’t yet been openly communicated, in an accessible manner, to the culture at large. Essentia Foundation hopes to help close this communication gap.

Although we acknowledge that analytic or scientific understanding, in and of itself, isn’t life- or behavior-changing—only felt experience or knowledge by direct acquaintance is—in modern culture the intellect is the bouncer of the heart. Therefore, we aim to create intellectual space and legitimacy for the notion that, at its most fundamental level, all reality unfolds in an extended field of mentation.

To be clear, I don't 100% agree with their proposed solution to the problem (we are totally agreed about the problem), because I think the term "idealism" is somewhat misleading and unhelpful, but in terms of their overall position and direction this is really an argument about presentation and details. These people are fighting the same ideological war as I am.

Part of the problem is a clash between eastern and western concepts. "Nondualism" is a term from Hinduism. "Idealism" is from the western tradition. I prefer non-dualism, but it confuses people because the dualism it is rejecting isn't any form of dualism in the western tradition. It can only be properly understood from the perspective of eastern philosophy, especially Hinduism and Taoism.

The problem is that the world looks and feels very solid and real, so people have trouble getting to grips with the fact that it actually isn't. I like Heisenberg's summary of it, that matter behaves like a thought not a thing.

[UndercoverElephant]

The problem is that the world looks and feels very solid and real, so people have trouble getting to grips with the fact that it actually isn't. I like Heisenberg's summary of it, that matter behaves like a thought not a thing.

Yes and no. It certainly isn't real in the way it seems to be. Reality isn't local, even the hardest material is mostly empty space, and unobserved quantum entities can literally be in multiple places at the same time. Even time isn't how it appears to be.

However, it is very easy to take this too far. If reality isn't local and a photon can be in multiple locations simultaneously, then is there an objective world at all? Or is there only subjective consciousness? Or can the components of conscious experience somehow objectively exist without an observer? I think that this is not a helpful rabbit hole to go down. We will never be able to agree on the answers to these questions. Wittgenstein described them as a sort of "ritual", whereby we exorcise our need to talk about metaphysics but end up talking nonsense.

The world is real in the sense that the range of possible future observations is finite. Even though the future is not fixed, our options are strictly limited. If I climb out of a 10th story window and try to fly then I will fall to my death. When we open Schrodinger's box, we may find either a living cat or a dead one, but we will not find a dog. Even if retrocausality is true and the past can change, it can only change in certain ways. In nearly all practical senses, that is surely real enough. I think the only reasonable explanation is that the world actually is real -- it's just non-local, and there's no point in speculating about "what it is made of", because it doesn't make any difference. The only thing that does make a difference is which of three possible groups of QM interpretations are true -- MWI, objectively random or hidden forms of causality masquerading as randomness. The answer to that question makes the difference between Ralph believing he's a meat robot and me believing in free will, but we're both still realists. I am just a realist about more things than he is.

To get this back on topic...the core argument here is whether is comes before ought, or ought comes before is. Wokeism could be defined in terms of the belief that ought comes before is. I am defending the claim that is must come before ought. So the gender ideologies believe that we should treat trans people as they want to be treated -- we ought to accept that trans women are women (and if we don't then we must hate them). Whereas I believe that "ought" is irrelevant, because men can't become women. "Sex" belongs to the world of "is" -- to reality. "Gender" belongs to the world of ought. This conflict is binary. One side is right and the other is wrong. There is no middle way, and that's why the culture wars are going to have to be played out to the bitter end.