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“Sad Radicals”: A Very Insightful Read
I am increasingly fond of Quillette as a source of articles with a unique perspective. The recent piece Sad Radicals is remarkably insightful. A self-described former radical discusses the inherently destructive and self-destructive mindset that consumes the true believer:
The paradigm of suspicion leaves the radical exhausted and misanthropic, because any action or statement can be shown with sufficient effort to hide privilege, a microaggression, or unconscious bias. Quoted in JM, the anarchist professor Richard Day proposes “infinite responsibility”: “we can never allow ourselves to think that we are ‘done,’ that we have identified all of the sites, structures, and processes of oppression ‘out there’ or ‘in here,’ inside our own individual and group identities.” Infinite responsibility means infinite guilt, a kind of Christianity without salvation: to see power in every interaction is to see sin in every interaction. All that the activist can offer to absolve herself is Sisyphean effort until burnout. Eady’s summarization is simpler: “Everything is problematic.”
The piece is extraordinarily well-written and provides a marvelous encapsulation of the mental phenomenon:
Escape from the paradigm of suspicion is hindered by kafkatrapping: the idea that opposition to the radical viewpoint proves the radical viewpoint. Minorities who question it have internalized their oppression, and privileged individuals who question it prove their guilt. The only thing radicals are not suspicious of is the need for relentless suspicion. As Haidt and Greg Lukianoff write of similar norms on campuses, “If someone wanted to create an environment of perpetual anger and intergroup conflict, this would be an effective way to do it.”
I strongly recommend it to Ricochetti.
Note: The cite to Haidt and Lukianoff is the book The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, which details the destructive prevailing ethos on campuses. Also worth a read.
Published in General
Oh, that linked article is funny. It really fits perfectly what should be expected from committed radicals. We see this every day.
OldB,
Yes, you are right on to them. This is the end result of the Hegelian-Marxist-Nietzsche secular pseudo-religion. There is no Gd, there is no morality, there is no sin, thus there is no redemption from sin. Except there is an infinite guilt about everything without any personal responsibility for anything or a Gd to ask for forgiveness.
Don’t forget that Nietzsche died young in an insane asylum. Gosh, I wonder why.
Regards,
Jim
Funny? Sad, scary, depressing but funny?
I hit the ‘quilette’ and read the first article ‘Now I Know How Nelson Mandela Felt’. My bad.
It is a process abounding in perfectionism with no room for grace.
It is a place to die of despair rather than grow in forbearance.
Exceptionally good post, thx.
We are trapped in a paradigm of suspicion and gullibility. It is ignorance and the failure to learn critical thinking skills that enables me to be suspicious of those whom one should trust and trust those of whom one should be suspicious. From a practical point of view, not a spiritual one, I mean.
But even my ignorance is not proof against a good example by someone whom I had come to regard as a dangerous outsider to my tribe.
“If”?
Thanks. Hadn’t heard of it before. If they told me that by $ubscribing I’d get e-mail notification of new articles, I’d probably $ubscribe.
Very insightful. And for those involved, soul-destroying. What a sad way to live.
Not to mention dangerous. In the opening paragraph the 18 year-old who has not done anything significant in life as yet proceeds with the conviction that he knows everything there is to know about every issue confronting humanity. We see a lot of that today.
I find it sad how much energy we put into shunting discordant knowledge aside.
Tertiary syphilis is a favorite.
Whether the author of these thoughts was Steven Pinker in his book “The Better Angels of Our Nature” or Sam Harris in his book “The Moral Landscape,” the argument they made was that sometimes we are afflicted not with an absence of morality, but excessive morality.
At some point you have to let people be the imperfect human beings they are and not look under every rock and in every closet for a behavior that is racist, sexist, ageist, homophobic and so on.
I seem to remember Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian, saying that you can’t do comedy on universities because of this, “that’s immoral,” problem.
Or anything else, for that matter. Who wants to be around such people and who wants to be such a person?
Love this line: “Radicalism is like a clan too suspicious of outsiders to abandon cousin marriage, and, like incestuous offspring, radicalism’s intellectual offspring accumulate genetic load.”
I was busy reading this article while watching Fox when who shows up on Tucker Carlson but Conor Barnes, the author. I’m literally in an echo chamber!
I read three of the articles on Quillette.
The “Sad Radicals” piece is full of too-obvious truths.
“A Night Out with an Islamist and an Athiest” does not know what it is saying.
The last, “Now I know how Nelson Mandela felt”, was clearly a parody. If it was not a parody, it was really scary.
Sample quote, as John Derbyshire would say: “The permanent suspension (from Twitter, for threatening to punch UKIP supporters) only lasted for a day, but the experience was traumatic and lasting. I now understand how Nelson Mandela felt. If anything, my ordeal was even more damaging. Mandela may have had to endure 27 years of incarceration, but at least his male privilege protected him from ever having to put up with mansplaining, or being subject to wolf-whistling by grubby proles on a building site.”
What a pathetic website. Don’t waste your time.
That one was funny.
Good thing I’ve never slept with a tertiary.
I love how Ricochet has atheists and gays and orthodox Catholics.
But leftwingism is alll about educated white guys. So it’s not very interesting.
I want to know is going with everybody. Lets follow where the comments and the experience lead.
What about gay rights?
Studies have debunked this theory. Fewer that 0.3% of cases were found to have been contracted during sleep.