Cultural Context (Was: US Science Education Sucks)

From: Greg Burch (gregburch@gregburch.net)
Date: Sun Aug 26 2001 - 09:19:40 MDT


From: "Olga Bourlin" <fauxever@sprynet.com>

> I'm with you, Carlos. Even though I've been accused of being a nefarious
> exponent of "PC" on this list, to tell you the truth I don't understand PC
> myself. Having been an uncloseted atheist since I was a teenager, I've
not
> exactly been "PC" on this and a score of other issues.
>
> Charlton Heston (in that sucky Harvard speech that was posted to this list
> earlier) talks about PC, but wants to impose another (his own) brand of
PC?
> PC is a pretty meaningless term, the way I see it.
>
> Maybe PC is simply a knee-jerk response used to dismiss people with
certain
> differing political views. But what does it really mean? Without
> specifics, I don't think it's very useful.

Actually, I think the term "PC" has a fairly specific meaning, but isn't
used rigorously by a lot of people who employ the term. It's also had very
real impact on Western culture and I'm among those who feel that impact has
been almost entirely negative.

As I use the term, "PC" applies to a set of ideas, values and goals
characterized by:

<> post-modernist subjectivism
<> extreme cultural relativism
<> crypto-marxist condemnation of capitalism
<> antipathy to:
   <> "patriarchy"
   <> Anglic culture
   <> exercise of American political and military power in the world outside
the US

(Am I missing anything?)

Now, the problem in the contemporary cultural scene is that this
constellation of cultural values and vectors is:

<> almost wholly identified with "the left" (i.e. U.S. left-Democrats and
Social Democrats everywhere else)
<> at least in the U.S., became the dominant cultural foundation in academia
and, to a great extent in influential parts of the media
<> had a head-start as a fairly self-conscious ideology vis-a-vis the
reactive "cultural conservative" constellation that developed in response to
it.

All of these factors came together -- again in the U.S., certainly -- to
create a mentality of "siege" in the last two decades among many people who
perceive "PC" to be a bad thing. People who came of age in American
academia in the 1970s and 1980s, especially -- and did not buy into the PC
cultural paradigm -- correctly perceived that a major element of U.S.
culture had been essentially "hijacked" by a group of people whose values
and goals were very different from those who had created the institutions
that were being overtaken by policies and ideas shaped by "the PC paradigm".

Cultural phenomena often tend to operate "out of synch" with each other.
This seems to be the case with attitudes toward the PC paradigm.
Significant centers of cultural power have now coalesced around values
distinct from the PC paradigm, but many participants in those other cultural
streams still feel isolated and overwhelmed by the PC paradigm.
Unfortunately, almost all of those new cultural streams are reactive: "The
Moral Majority," the nasty white power groups and the like.

One phenomenon that I believe can be attributed in part to a reaction
against the inroads made by the PC paradigm into U.S. cultural institutions
is the renaissance of classical liberalism -- with its modern American label
of "libertarianism" -- in groups like the Cato Institute, publications like
Reason magazine, and renewed interest in both the origins of and the modern
expression of libertarian theory. This trend is largely an attempt to
salvage the liberal foundation of Western culture in a way that is not
reactionary.

Relative newcomers to the list should be aware that extropianism is, in a
very general sense, part of this latter cultural phenomena. Although the
general cultural impetus that gave rise to the renaissance in liberal
thought (in the original sense of the word) at the end of the 20th and
beginning of the 21st centuries may have been reactive (to the seizure by
the proponents of post-modernism and the PC paradigm of the "commanding
heights" of cultural institutions), extropianism is NOT a "reactionary"
philosophy. Unfortunately, too many people who are steeped in the
vocabulary of the contemporary polarization of political and cultural life
into "left" and "right" get confused about this.

The other day I joined in condemnation of material that had come from an
essentially reactionary web site, pointing out that we have to see the
context in which something is offered to really understand the CULTURAL
SIGNIFICANCE of that material. ASSESSING THE CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE OF
SOMETHING IS DIFFERENT FROM DETERMINING ITS TRUTH OR FALSEHOOD. This is a
fundamentally important distinction that is being missed in almost all the
discussions about public policy and ethics here lately, from posts about IQ
tests, to discussion of financing and control of education, to the
reparations discussion, to the talk about what people mean when they use the
word "Mexican". Interestingly, I think we're seeing a real example of the
different styles of thought and discourse among "the two cultures": In the
sciences, there's really no merit to talking about the cultural significance
of a proposition; it's either true or false, testable or not, fruitful or
not. In the humanities and politics, truth, testability and fruitfulness
are important, but they aren't the whole story.

Bearing this distinction in mind -- and the cultural history and context
discussed above -- might make for higher quality discussion here.

Greg Burch
Vice-President, Extropy Institute
http://www.gregburch.net



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:15 MDT