Political Philosophy vs. Reality: Examples Never Represent Ideals.
07 February 2018 [link youtube]
Proceed from particular examples to particular examples, don't get into the game of treating ideals as the criteria that we use to judge/filter the empirical evidence we're willing to consider (as "real"). Here's the link to my Patreon page, if you'd like to ask another question, and steer the conversation in another direction:
https://www.patreon.com/a_bas_le_ciel
Youtube Automatic Transcription
I have a question for my patreon
supporter I give the link below this video you can join me on patreon ask me questions and they're gonna respond it's just like this one so no way I'm clean-shaven and I'm recording at home not that story but it has my guild Melissa she can chime in anytime but she's kind of more off camera than on camel or this video spontaneously recording in our tub so I got an interesting question from to your supporter in response to a critique of Islam more than a month ago on this channel but I want to emphasize this question has a direct bearing on my critique of communism on political discussions of and criticism of Adam there's any conceivable political position but including important political questions within veganism animal rights ecology etc right now this is an interesting case where I took notes on the question and then came back and looked at the original wording I felt that this question boiled down to challenging me by asking does any particular example in politics really count how can you treat an example as representative and left-wingers and communist is very often just yesterday we heard Mexi and privileged vegan playing exactly the scheme where they want to pretend that the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin doesn't count like it's only a particular example of communism yet doesn't count in Congress was a whole uh-huh and the particular dictatorship in China under Mao Zedong doesn't count and you can see where this is going now I think a few people are immature enough that their problem really is a failure to apprehend the relationship between the ideal and the real but most of the time what you're dealing with is a completely cynical intentional misrepresentation of things to justify a particular ideological or political position you know I don't think it's the case that Mexi and a privileged vegan really fail to understand the gravity of the deaths of millions of people due to government engineered starvation in China under Mao Zedong something I have videos on you can click through the playlist maybe I'll be dealing but I do ask for some detailed videos talking about those issues on this channel could have brought two years ago thing I have done research on I'd you know details or you know policies even something that doesn't have such a big body count attached to it policies about freedom of speech that resulted in people being hunted down and killed for daring to criticize the government they resulted in people being put in prison for what we would think of today as not just not as trivial complaints as the government but sometimes just just pleas for help just reporting that people were starving in their own village and that they needed the government's help and that being responsive with terrible repression how'd you do a lack of freedom of speech and that doesn't add up to millions of deaths but of course as a horrible showing of fetanyl site we were just listening to two self-identified revolutionary socialists or communists making excuses along these lines and saying well you can't treat these examples as definitive and I think a more accurate way to phrase that is you can't treat this example as representing anything other than itself and if we phrase it that way of course that is absolutely true so for example political corruption in Florida in the United States that resulted in the election of George W Bush the first election of George Bush that is a problem that is a case study that's something we can study in political science and it would never really occur to anyone to raise this kind of ghastly specter of dismissing the significance of the rail of corruption and incompetence in that election and how the actual ballots were counted and many other things but including just the counting of ballots itself was one of the problems in that election okay so this was a correct direction this was a flawed Russian this was an illegitimate election why would anyone construe that as either representing or failing to represent an ideal of democracy I mean it doesn't even occur to us to say no no you can't look at this example as impugn a ting the ideal of what democracy ought to be because we already know it's a familiar enough thing in our culture in this political context that we're not discussing what democracy ought to me we're discussing what democracy is we're discussing a democracy in the United States of America around the year 2000 in Florida actually operates were engaged in discussion of the real knot of the ideal yeah now in matters of religion in matters of ideologies including vegan ideology ecology and more etcetera or Islam naturally people drift away from discussing the real is real and they do get caught up in this this this type of problem of demanding you know how dare you treat this example as representing something other than itself how dare you treat this example as if it represented an ideal and my answer is in effect every time know this example truly matters it's it's genuinely important in and of itself without representing anything outside of itself anything larger or anything smaller than itself so if you look at for example the history of democracy in Haiti or the whole history of politics in Haiti the history of Haiti is something tremendously important in itself and I think it would be laughable and observed if someone claimed that the history of Haiti represents the history of all black people like black people in the United States of America or black people in Brazil and say no what are you talking about it this is fede this is mystery baby and of course there were some connections there were some payrolls there are some contrasts but even if you want to compare the history of Haiti to the history of Cuba Cuba is right next door no this doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense to generalize racially it doesn't make sense to generalize geographically either the history of he matters in themselves or it doesn't and you know the context of talking about politics or religion or anything or ideologies in these issues it's absurd to try to argue that it doesn't of course it matters that many of these people think about politics in a way that begins from the ideal and proceeds downward to the real and thus as soon as they encounter a problem that's real they try to retreat to the ideal to offer what I think can be properly called idealistic excuses so the question is as follows I'm going to slightly reward it just for clarity he opens by saying this was one of your most interesting and illuminating videos for me even though I am no fan of religion myself I still find your generalizations about Islam unacceptable why are they unacceptable because he says I worked from exceptional and extreme examples such as the history of Mauritania and the history of Saudi Arabia okay now again this is just as absurd as if someone said to you no no no the elections in Florida that elected President George Bush those aren't were presentative of democracy of course they're not they're a tremendously important political event in and of itself can we draw conclusions from those elections that are important for other elections in the future yes it doesn't represent anything other than itself this is about the separation of the real from the ideal and to plunge into and really engage with what's real in political history in a meaningful and sincere way right the history of mauritania mauritania is one country effort really matters in and of itself it really does my line of reasoning begins from something real and concludes with something real it's really not about ideals in this sense at all I'm not looking for more tinea to provide me with an ideal representation of Islam and I'm not looking for Florida or Haiti to provide me with an idealized representation of democracy nor for example do you I look at history United States or the history of Haiti to provide you with an ideal of revolution both of them are very different very interesting histories of revolution you come on a lot from studying the history of the revolution Haiti is through the revolution that states ok though he also says Saudi Arabia somehow doesn't represent Islam okay now yeah what could that possibly mean bring it back to Mexi and privilege vegan what are we talking about if we're talking about quint communism unquote but you're excluding from consideration China and Russia from the history room these are such enormous influential fundamental aspects of the history Commons I mean also a place like East Germany is tremendous important how could we possibly exclude from a discussion of Islamic politics the role of Saudi Arabia frankly in any period of the history of Islam so that's that's even more absurd though I I do think it's I do think it's fundamentally stupid to dismiss the history of Mauritania as something unimportant I do think it's stupid to dismiss the history of Haiti is something important I'm someone who spent a lot of time and energy studying history and politics of Laos the lower shows in Southeast Asia Cambodia and for example the Kree in a jib way those are all places again I think it would be stupid for someone to have a contempt of heard me I think it would be stupid for someone to have a contemptuous and dismissive attitude towards the political history of those peoples in those countries but many do many do why because it is possible for them to do so it is possible for people to dismiss ignore and overlook a small and powerless and poverty-stricken country like Laos or Haiti but it is absolutely impossible to overlook and ignore the political history of Russia China and Saudi Arabia so here I have to question the sincerity but the person asked the question although again it's a very polite world word a question and I will continue so you asked how can I possibly treat extreme examples with Mauritania and Saudi Arabia as an accurate or failure representation of the history and reality of Islam I don't think if you search in your heart of hearts I think you will find there is no conflict between the concept of extreme and of reality the problem you have is the contrast between the extreme and the ideal the misconduct corruption and incompetence that was demonstrated in the state of Florida in the election of drugs that we book you could say was extreme it's not typical for an American election it's not average it's not normal it's not universal and for all of these same reasons it's all the more important for us to study and for us to learn from when we deal with things that are real we this is an irrelevant right of a extreme or they average really typical at what stage will be say the history of communism in China is average or typical or normal rather than extreme of course you can these extremes but I'm not looking for those extremes to represent something other than what they actually are so this is a sense in which the sort of platonic or Neoplatonic bias in Western education I think poisons the engagement with politics and this is an example of how political philosophy forces us to base our discourse in what's empirically real only to proceed as I would say not just skeptically but nihilistic aliy and not to proceed from one ideal to another or not to treat the ideal as a criterion for the real if the ideal is moderate to discard the evidence from hyperbole what's real as failing to live up to that standard as be accurately representative of what's supposed to be ideal what you're doing is sifting through the evidence of what's real and only picking and choosing examples that will live up to your ideal and that is I think in the strictest sense insane
supporter I give the link below this video you can join me on patreon ask me questions and they're gonna respond it's just like this one so no way I'm clean-shaven and I'm recording at home not that story but it has my guild Melissa she can chime in anytime but she's kind of more off camera than on camel or this video spontaneously recording in our tub so I got an interesting question from to your supporter in response to a critique of Islam more than a month ago on this channel but I want to emphasize this question has a direct bearing on my critique of communism on political discussions of and criticism of Adam there's any conceivable political position but including important political questions within veganism animal rights ecology etc right now this is an interesting case where I took notes on the question and then came back and looked at the original wording I felt that this question boiled down to challenging me by asking does any particular example in politics really count how can you treat an example as representative and left-wingers and communist is very often just yesterday we heard Mexi and privileged vegan playing exactly the scheme where they want to pretend that the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin doesn't count like it's only a particular example of communism yet doesn't count in Congress was a whole uh-huh and the particular dictatorship in China under Mao Zedong doesn't count and you can see where this is going now I think a few people are immature enough that their problem really is a failure to apprehend the relationship between the ideal and the real but most of the time what you're dealing with is a completely cynical intentional misrepresentation of things to justify a particular ideological or political position you know I don't think it's the case that Mexi and a privileged vegan really fail to understand the gravity of the deaths of millions of people due to government engineered starvation in China under Mao Zedong something I have videos on you can click through the playlist maybe I'll be dealing but I do ask for some detailed videos talking about those issues on this channel could have brought two years ago thing I have done research on I'd you know details or you know policies even something that doesn't have such a big body count attached to it policies about freedom of speech that resulted in people being hunted down and killed for daring to criticize the government they resulted in people being put in prison for what we would think of today as not just not as trivial complaints as the government but sometimes just just pleas for help just reporting that people were starving in their own village and that they needed the government's help and that being responsive with terrible repression how'd you do a lack of freedom of speech and that doesn't add up to millions of deaths but of course as a horrible showing of fetanyl site we were just listening to two self-identified revolutionary socialists or communists making excuses along these lines and saying well you can't treat these examples as definitive and I think a more accurate way to phrase that is you can't treat this example as representing anything other than itself and if we phrase it that way of course that is absolutely true so for example political corruption in Florida in the United States that resulted in the election of George W Bush the first election of George Bush that is a problem that is a case study that's something we can study in political science and it would never really occur to anyone to raise this kind of ghastly specter of dismissing the significance of the rail of corruption and incompetence in that election and how the actual ballots were counted and many other things but including just the counting of ballots itself was one of the problems in that election okay so this was a correct direction this was a flawed Russian this was an illegitimate election why would anyone construe that as either representing or failing to represent an ideal of democracy I mean it doesn't even occur to us to say no no you can't look at this example as impugn a ting the ideal of what democracy ought to be because we already know it's a familiar enough thing in our culture in this political context that we're not discussing what democracy ought to me we're discussing what democracy is we're discussing a democracy in the United States of America around the year 2000 in Florida actually operates were engaged in discussion of the real knot of the ideal yeah now in matters of religion in matters of ideologies including vegan ideology ecology and more etcetera or Islam naturally people drift away from discussing the real is real and they do get caught up in this this this type of problem of demanding you know how dare you treat this example as representing something other than itself how dare you treat this example as if it represented an ideal and my answer is in effect every time know this example truly matters it's it's genuinely important in and of itself without representing anything outside of itself anything larger or anything smaller than itself so if you look at for example the history of democracy in Haiti or the whole history of politics in Haiti the history of Haiti is something tremendously important in itself and I think it would be laughable and observed if someone claimed that the history of Haiti represents the history of all black people like black people in the United States of America or black people in Brazil and say no what are you talking about it this is fede this is mystery baby and of course there were some connections there were some payrolls there are some contrasts but even if you want to compare the history of Haiti to the history of Cuba Cuba is right next door no this doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense to generalize racially it doesn't make sense to generalize geographically either the history of he matters in themselves or it doesn't and you know the context of talking about politics or religion or anything or ideologies in these issues it's absurd to try to argue that it doesn't of course it matters that many of these people think about politics in a way that begins from the ideal and proceeds downward to the real and thus as soon as they encounter a problem that's real they try to retreat to the ideal to offer what I think can be properly called idealistic excuses so the question is as follows I'm going to slightly reward it just for clarity he opens by saying this was one of your most interesting and illuminating videos for me even though I am no fan of religion myself I still find your generalizations about Islam unacceptable why are they unacceptable because he says I worked from exceptional and extreme examples such as the history of Mauritania and the history of Saudi Arabia okay now again this is just as absurd as if someone said to you no no no the elections in Florida that elected President George Bush those aren't were presentative of democracy of course they're not they're a tremendously important political event in and of itself can we draw conclusions from those elections that are important for other elections in the future yes it doesn't represent anything other than itself this is about the separation of the real from the ideal and to plunge into and really engage with what's real in political history in a meaningful and sincere way right the history of mauritania mauritania is one country effort really matters in and of itself it really does my line of reasoning begins from something real and concludes with something real it's really not about ideals in this sense at all I'm not looking for more tinea to provide me with an ideal representation of Islam and I'm not looking for Florida or Haiti to provide me with an idealized representation of democracy nor for example do you I look at history United States or the history of Haiti to provide you with an ideal of revolution both of them are very different very interesting histories of revolution you come on a lot from studying the history of the revolution Haiti is through the revolution that states ok though he also says Saudi Arabia somehow doesn't represent Islam okay now yeah what could that possibly mean bring it back to Mexi and privilege vegan what are we talking about if we're talking about quint communism unquote but you're excluding from consideration China and Russia from the history room these are such enormous influential fundamental aspects of the history Commons I mean also a place like East Germany is tremendous important how could we possibly exclude from a discussion of Islamic politics the role of Saudi Arabia frankly in any period of the history of Islam so that's that's even more absurd though I I do think it's I do think it's fundamentally stupid to dismiss the history of Mauritania as something unimportant I do think it's stupid to dismiss the history of Haiti is something important I'm someone who spent a lot of time and energy studying history and politics of Laos the lower shows in Southeast Asia Cambodia and for example the Kree in a jib way those are all places again I think it would be stupid for someone to have a contempt of heard me I think it would be stupid for someone to have a contemptuous and dismissive attitude towards the political history of those peoples in those countries but many do many do why because it is possible for them to do so it is possible for people to dismiss ignore and overlook a small and powerless and poverty-stricken country like Laos or Haiti but it is absolutely impossible to overlook and ignore the political history of Russia China and Saudi Arabia so here I have to question the sincerity but the person asked the question although again it's a very polite world word a question and I will continue so you asked how can I possibly treat extreme examples with Mauritania and Saudi Arabia as an accurate or failure representation of the history and reality of Islam I don't think if you search in your heart of hearts I think you will find there is no conflict between the concept of extreme and of reality the problem you have is the contrast between the extreme and the ideal the misconduct corruption and incompetence that was demonstrated in the state of Florida in the election of drugs that we book you could say was extreme it's not typical for an American election it's not average it's not normal it's not universal and for all of these same reasons it's all the more important for us to study and for us to learn from when we deal with things that are real we this is an irrelevant right of a extreme or they average really typical at what stage will be say the history of communism in China is average or typical or normal rather than extreme of course you can these extremes but I'm not looking for those extremes to represent something other than what they actually are so this is a sense in which the sort of platonic or Neoplatonic bias in Western education I think poisons the engagement with politics and this is an example of how political philosophy forces us to base our discourse in what's empirically real only to proceed as I would say not just skeptically but nihilistic aliy and not to proceed from one ideal to another or not to treat the ideal as a criterion for the real if the ideal is moderate to discard the evidence from hyperbole what's real as failing to live up to that standard as be accurately representative of what's supposed to be ideal what you're doing is sifting through the evidence of what's real and only picking and choosing examples that will live up to your ideal and that is I think in the strictest sense insane