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Post by irishconfederate on Apr 25, 2016 22:24:16 GMT
Hello,
Apologies if there's a thread already on the subject....perhaps this could be deleted if there is and I'll post there:
I think it would be of benefit if we could describe the soft-totalitarianism in Ireland and the nature of the reigning ideology more accurately and completely and directly. Perhaps here people could post instances which for them have highlighted the soft-totalitarian nature of Ireland, or people could post their workings out of how it is working.....are people happy with the term 'consumerist liberalism' being the name for the reigning ideology in Ireland? Or the 'state class' or 'neo-liberal sect' being the name for the body of people in the republic who are promoting the 'consumerist-liberal' line here, etc.
".....Our ‘teaching authority’, the liberal correctorate, operating mainly through the media, is a hybrid of liberal ideologues and business people telling us how to act, speak, think and be."
"it seems, then that to accommodate our ameropean totalitarium, a final adjustment to the definition tried above is needed; our totalitarium is ‘a composite political structure (instead of ‘a state’), a secular teaching authority, and international business, involving themselves, collaboratively and forcefully, in all aspects of the consumers’ lives’."
"...the state class, or Dublin 4, 'functions, politically, as a party, both inside and outside the Oireachtas, and has the national media as its party press'."
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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 26, 2016 11:25:35 GMT
I personally don't like the term 'soft totalitarianism'. I think it trivialises real totalitarianism and dismsises the real freedoms we enjoy in our society. If people don't make use of those freedoms, then ultimately I think it's their own fault.
What's wrong with consumerist liberalism anyway? If liberalism is defined as tolerance and pluralism, free speech and free association and freedom of conscience, I don't see anything wrong with it. If it's NOT those things, then it's not liberalism. As for consumerism, I'm not sure it's so bad that people have enough money to enjoy comforts. I've rarely actually met anybody who worshipped brand names or anything like that. I see that there is an element of banality to it, and I'm not sure how that is best addressed, but it would be interesting to have a discussion about consumerism here. It's a term used without much clarification a lot of the time.
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Post by Ranger on Apr 26, 2016 14:56:23 GMT
I think I'd agree with Maolsheachlann regarding the use of word 'totalitarianism,' although I can also see where you're coming from. I think in these cases we need some other sort of word to describe the hostility we face. I remember writing something before and using the term 'Persecution Lite,' but I ended up changing it afterwards to 'intolerance,' partly because of the reason Maolsheachlann mentions above and partly because the word has enough connotations that people think you're exaggerating way too much, which then means they're not open to hear anything worthwhile you have to say.
That said, I think the problem with 'consumerist liberalism' is that 'liberalism' has become synonymous with general left-wingery in common parlance, which is something different altogether. Our academic and media institutions are certainly left-wing, even if they're not necessarily liberal in the classical sense you describe Maolsheachlann (which I don't see anything wrong with either).
As for consumerism, well, there is a culture of trying to get the latest brand so as to feel 'up-to-date' with one's peers, or of trying to have a car with the same registration as the year (an '07 plate in 2007, because an '06 plate means being seen to be in financial difficulty, or not modern enough, or something). I think that one could describe consumerism as capitalism taken to an excess. I know that you say you've rarely met anybody who 'worshipped' brand names, but they are out there and I think often in different circles we're not part of. There is a degree of companies creating needs to sell useless products, for instance.
I was reading in the Irish Times Business section the other day about how Facebook, Google etc. are creating 'bots' which are essentially miniature AIs for their users. These AIs essentially make your Facebook or Google App do what your other apps do, so say if you want to order a taxi via Hailo, you can tell facebook to do it for you instead. I'm in awe of the fact that these companies believe they can sell a product that essentially saves you the time it takes to change from one app on a smartphone to another, but there you go.
Anyway, you're right in saying that my definition of consumerism might clash with yours or somebody else's. I'm not in any way against capitalism, free enterprise etc., but all things in moderation as they say.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 26, 2016 15:49:59 GMT
I will try to post more fully on this later, but I thought I'd make a few points now. (1) If the question is specifically about Ireland, then introducing Des Fennell's concept of "Amerope" distorts the issue, because there are significant differences between the US and Europe (though there are more similarities than there used to be) and because implicit in Fennell's treatment of the concept is the suggestion that Amerope represents an uniquely aggressive and malevolent anti-civilisation which is so bad that nothing could possibly be worse. (Examples of this would be Fennell's calling his account of the fall of the Berlin Wall A DREAM OF ORANGES, as if the only significant difference between the Eastern and Western blocs was the presence of oranges in the shops, which grossly trivialises what was wrong with the Eastern bloc; or the way he presents the expansion of the EU and NATO into the old East bloc purely in terms of Western aggression against Russia, as if the Eastern countries either lacked agency or were self-evidently delusional in preferring "Amerope" to Russia.)
(2) I do think there is a consumer capitalist civilisation which is based on the view that the highest good is the immediate satisfaction of human desire through individual choice based on hedonist utilitarianism, that this requires the expansion of a bureaucratic system (varying in how much power is given to a bureaucratic state and how much to private corporations) and that any imtermediate institutions or associations which restrict this vision of human flourishing (e.g. by teaching that there are certain things for which one should be willing to suffer and die, and certain spheres of life which lie beyond the control of the bureaucratic regulatory regime) must be rooted out. A comparison might be made with the development of absolutist bureaucratic monarchies in the early modern period - indeed Hilary Mantel's demonisation of Thomas More and glorification of Thomas Cromwell springs from exactly this mindset. (3) Part of the problem with the "soft totalitarianism" definition is that it implies that this phenomenon is imposed entirely from the top and from outside. In fact quite a large number of people have historically been willing to make the Hobbesian or Lockeian bargain, of accepting the power of Leviathan in return for peace, prosperity and protection. (A parallel with the flaw in "soft totalitarianism" would be views of the Reformation which present it entirely as a bankers' or aristocrats' conspiracy and fail to acknowledge that many people have been and are genuinely attracted to the Protestant worldview, despite its flaws.) (4) I would say that ANY society will be experienced as oppressive by those who dissent from its basic self-definition. The central question is whether that basic self-definition is right or wrong, and its oppressiveness is to some extent incidental (which is not to say that it's irrelevant, or that the extent to which it oppresses is not significant).
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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 26, 2016 16:01:31 GMT
I suppose the feeling I get when I hear about 'soft totalitarianism' is that it seems to be complaining that the battle of ideas isn't going our way. You hear the same thing from the radical left, when they disdain Western democracy for being corporatist etc. Democracy, in my view, is only as good as its voters. If people vote based on marketing or the newspapers are whatever, that's a shame, but it's not to say that they are being coerced. They're not being coerced. They are voting freely for the parties and candidates they vote for. Anyone could start a party of their own if they wanted.
Implicit in this outlook is that if we had Some Other System we would do better. How do we know that, under some other system, we wouldn't do worse? Some sorts of Catholic hanker for a Catholic absolutist monarch, but I wonder if they would be happy with it if they got it.
Personally I think the 'open society' hailed by Karl Popper is the best we can hope for, structurally. Then it is up to us to make the arguments, and other people to listen to them. Media bias or commercial conditioning isn't persecution, or evidence that a system is fundamentally flawed.
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Post by assisi on Apr 26, 2016 16:07:06 GMT
I do think this is one of the great problems we have both in Ireland and globally, trying to describe what we all see happening in the culture of the West on a daily basis. Some people will talk about about consumerist liberal ideology, others secularism, individualism, positivism, modernism, postmodernism, relativism, scientism, multiculturalism, cultural marxism, atheism......the list is legion. Because of this it is hard to convince or alert a general public to what is happening around us. If there was even an agreed terminology that roughly summed up what was happening, some phrase that most people can understand and relate too, then the battle against the trend(s) would be easier.
I liked 'consumerist liberal' because it referenced 2 important areas - one economics (consumerist) and the other political/philosophical (liberal). Consumerism views us as customers and 'purchase machines' rather than human beings. Liberal is a more problematic term in that many see 'liberal' in positive terms such as tolerating and accommodating, whereas the reality of the modern Western ideology is to carefully tolerate and promote only those elements of culture that fit into a materialistic worldview.
It is becoming clear that the West is moving toward a human situation whereby one will be able to almost re-invent oneself at will. From a sex/gender point of view one could declare oneself heterosexual one year and bisexual the next for example (our identities being 'fluid' and dependent on what we feel rather than any objective truth). Is this individualism?
Alongside this, spirituality and religion are pushed to the side in favour of a materialistic culture.
I would be interested if, even among the people in this forum, we could come up with a summary term that succinctly describes the trends we are seeing in a way that most people can relate to? From my point of view the use of the term 'materialistic' would be a good overall term to begin with. Anyone got any other suggestions?
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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 26, 2016 18:38:56 GMT
"My name is Legion, for we are many."
I think there are in fact many disparate ideologies at work, and so it's impossible to come up with an umbrella term.
And I actually do believe those ideologies are really different-- they are not just the same thing, the united anti-Christian or anti-God alliance. I used to think like that for a long time but then it seemed to me that there really were profound differences between libertarians, liberals, scientific materialists etc. You can see it in how they behave. I think there are plenty of left-wing people who would like to hold onto Christianity and plenty of libertarian atheists who really do respect religious freedom, for instance.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 26, 2016 19:48:42 GMT
I think the disparate ideologies do have certain underlying features in common (denial of transcendent purpose might be one way of putting it) but they are not necessarily aware of that themselves. Both Marxism-Leninisim and nazism presented themselves as the antidote to nihilism, and yet they both contained profoundly nihilistic elements. I agree with Maolseachlainn about the intense danger of writing off large proportions of the human race as "sheeple" who are simply mindless dupes and whose reasons for acting/thinking as they do are unworthy of attention. That leads straight to the darkest forms of spiritual pride. I don't object to people who say they would prefer another system - what I do object to is their refusing to discuss how it might work in practice, and simply insinuating that the present world is so bad that anything would be better.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 26, 2016 20:11:15 GMT
Here are a couple of recent Rod Dreher pieces on how the recent redefinition of sexuality as purely a matter of the will relates to a wider refusal of human limits, and an assumption that human nature is infinitely malleable. Bear in mind (as in CS Lewis's ABOLITION OF MAN and Dostoyevsky's DEMONS) that what looks to its votaries like absolute freedom can be seen by its critics and opponents as absolute slavery (this is what the President of Nicaragua in Chesterton's NOTTING HILL means when he says of the new world order that the one question he would ask is whether he is free to say he would rather be a toad in a ditch) and indeed (what is probably the source of Lewis's comment) Plato's demonstration in THE REPUBLIC that the most unrestrained tyrant is in fact the most abjectly enslaved of all, enslaved to his own passions. www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/what-is-human/www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/america-unbound-bacevich/
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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 26, 2016 20:30:01 GMT
My problem with the model of hedonistic immediate gratification that Hibernicus proposes is that it seems to be contradicted by many streams of modern thought which are anti-hedonistic.
For instance, many forms of feminism have an extremely puritanical attitude towards male sexual desire, or even romantic interest. And many feminist men seem to be in a constant state of self-reproach about this.
Then take the green movement. For good or bad, many of the most left-wing and 'with-it' people in our society view the human race as a ravening beast whose appetites must be curbed at all cost.
In a less political sense, take the arts. If you are 'progressive' you are more likely to favour (or at least, to pay lip service) to poetry, art and drama which disregards the pleasure principle and seems to go out of its way to frustrate audience desire.
So I think it's complex.
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Post by irishconfederate on Apr 26, 2016 20:31:14 GMT
A friend wrote to me:
"Regarding your references to totalitarianism in your document, let me just make you aware of how it manifested itself in the same-sex marriage referendum.....Participating on the Yes side openly by statements or significant action were all the political parties, the heads of a number of multinational companies, some state boards including the onethat searches for foreign investment, the Garda Representative Body and prominent individuals of one kind or another and webecame aware of heavy financing of the Yes campaign by big USmoney. It was a manifestation of what is called in the US the ‘pink’ or ’gay’ dollar. Regardless of which side you would have been on if you were here it was an example of how it would have been if there were a referendum in Soviet Russia."
I think soft-totalitarianism is a good term to describe the way the reigning ideology is promoted from everywhere in a degree which has never been done before. I like the term because it makes you think of hard-totalitarianism and that that would mean prisons, beatings, intimidations, restrictions of liberties whereas soft-totalitarianism conjures up a successful way of controlling peoples lives differently.
(Why aren't Catholics opposed to consumerism.....consumerism basically is at war with virtuous self restraint.....its outcome is contraception and obesity, pornography, ......does anyone really think there can be logically such a thing as a Catholic Consumerism?)
The thing is those pushing the reigning ideology -whatever it is- describe themselves as 'liberals', it confuses the matter,
I agree with the point made by assisi:
'I do think this is one of the great problems we have both in Ireland and globally, trying to describe what we all see happening in the culture of the West on a daily basis. Some people will talk about about consumerist liberal ideology, others secularism, individualism, positivism, modernism, postmodernism, relativism, scientism, multiculturalism, cultural marxism, atheism......the list is legion. Because of this it is hard to convince or alert a general public to what is happening around us. If there was even an agreed terminology that roughly summed up what was happening, some phrase that most people can understand and relate too, then the battle against the trend(s) would be easier.'
Does everyone accept that a major reason to why we have few younger members in the Church in Ireland -and everywhere else- is because of the soft totalitarianism which makes even a solid Catholic parent's job of passing on the faith.........really, really hard.......like never before.......and different to keeping the faith under Communism.......this works vey differently
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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 26, 2016 20:56:11 GMT
I don't agree that contraception and obesity and pornography are the outcomes of consumerism. Could you have consumerism without those things? Could you have those things without consumerism? Of course, in both cases.
It would be interesting to have a definition of consumerism. My problem is it's a rather vague term. If the claim is that people in our society view themselves first as consumers, as cutomers, I just don't think it's true-- it seems an exaggeration.
If it means people construct an identity around TV and music and other preferences, which boil down to how they use their disposable income, that doesn't seem all that sinister to me. I don't think it's the core of their identity.
Wikipedia says: "Consumerism as a social and economic order and ideology encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts." Well, that is clear enough, and I can see how this would be potentially at odds with Catholic teaching. If what is meant by consumerism is the need to come up with a different model, than I understand that. My problem is it's used to express so many other things.
As for the soft totalitarianism...during the marriage referendum, I wore a 'Vote No' badge for weeks. (I had to make it myself.) Nobody said boo to me. Actually, one person half-jokingly shouted 'Vote Yes!' to me in a supermarket, and someone made a face in a bus. That's it. There's no comparison to Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia at all.
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Post by Young Ireland on Apr 26, 2016 21:28:12 GMT
I think that calling it totalitarianism is probably hyberbolic, though I think that we are witnessing a phenomenon that would be better called groupthink, namely that society is heading a certain way and anyone who disagrees is treated like a crank. The problem is that even among social liberals there is a tremendous spectrum of differences from the ex-PD genepool to the Trotskyite parties, from post-nationalists like Eoghan Harris and Ruth Dudley Edwards to dissident republicans, so it's very difficult to pigeonhole exactly who is what. As it happens, I definitely think that there is definitely a tendency to project Dublin life onto the rest of the country: the Road Safety Authority has achieved a lot of good work in relation to making our roads safer, even if the motorways and other road improvements were a major factor in this, but they have imposed considerable hardship on learner and new drivers in rural areas. Also, I suspect that the current anti-obesity campaign is more about reducing the strain on the health service rather than any benevolent concern about healthy eating habits. So there is definitely a growing nanny-state all right, but it's certainly not totalitarian IMHO anyway.
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Post by assisi on Apr 26, 2016 21:39:20 GMT
While all the ideologies that I have mentioned have indeed different emphases and are travelling different paths, their paths do seem to go in a general direction, and that direction absents God from the picture, aggressively and consciously so in many instances. Once you lose Christian cultural roots and have no ready made replacement you have a ship that is directionless, and that is dangerous. People rarely call themselves or view themselves as customers or consumers but consumerism does manipulate them into believing that happiness and identity can be met by the products they buy. This lie, and it is a lie, will draw them further and further from any any spiritual self awareness ( As Descartes didn't say.....Tesco Ergo Sum - I shop therefore I am). Moreover can we really just ignore the avoidance of objective truth that is taking hold. Wouldn't it be fair to say that this could lead to chaos and frustration. Have a look at the following little clip. Ten years ago, it could have been a comedy sketch and got a few laughs: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfO1veFs6Ho
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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 26, 2016 22:20:20 GMT
That is zany. All the same, I think the students are rather endearing.
I have to admit that I am very influenced by having worked with undergraduates much like this for fifteen years, as a library assistant in a university library. I have been struck year after year by how polite, gracious and tolerant they are, from my interaction with them. "By their fruits you shall know them", and although you might legitimately question whether those are actual fruits, I find it hard to dismiss the cultural environment that has spawned children like that (so to speak).
To say that a man is a woman if he chooses to be a woman is barmy, barking mad, utterly bonkers-- no question about it. But the kind of tolerance that pushes barminess that far out of a desire to accommodate people-- I can see a value in that. It's misguided, it's wrong, but I can view it with a certain sympathy.
The reductio ab absurdum the reporter presents is an obvious one, and a legitimate one, but I think it misses the disinction-- modern society seems to have decided that making sex completely subjective has no social cost, so why not?
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