It sounds to me that it is not their opponents writ large who are the ones that are unreachable by persuasion. If this attitude is widespread among the educated youth, then that worries me deeply. To the best of my knowledge, revolutions generally don't begin amongst the working class. They tend to begin with disgruntled elites, propelled by the justifications of intellectuals. Despite all of our current problems, those problems pale in comparison to the horrors that widespread political violence brings. Just ask Lebanon.
At what point and how does speech intersect with knowledge and truth? Our world and the college campus - often the factory of fantasies - is filled with monstrous hoaxes, dogma and inventions. Do these students ever entertain the notion that they might be wrong? They need a lesson in knowledge as much or more than a lecture on free speech. A short history tour of the 1930’s intellectual glorification of communism would be a good start.
Good work. I don’t think we can underestimate the harm our two-party system has done to trust in our society. It’s not just been beautiful empty words, but good words and even intents twisted. No offense, but even your argument could be twisted to compliance unto death.
I hope we don’t cross this line (there’s no uncrossing it or where it ends), but if we do, I hope we’re prepared to see clearly our own actions.
Maybe have them read “On Killing” by Dave Grossman and see if they want to be killers after that. It’s strikes me that they probably don’t know violence like they think they do.
The students seem to be asking you to escalate. You're trying to persuade them that persuasion matters, and they're saying no, only force matters. Therefore, they are asking you to resort to force.
They are asking to live in a world where everything is settled by brute force. Maybe that's because they think in such a world they would always win? But that is unlikely. Maybe they should calculate, coldly, whether it's worth gambling on a such a zero-sum world, or if they'd consider negotiations in persuasion where the results will definitely not be ideal, but have a chance of being not-as-bad as Nothing Short of Total War?
I think this mindset has become commonplace and its violence made less obvious as a consequence of social gatekeeping: especially online you can choose who you see and don't see -- who EXISTS and who doesn't exist. People who have the wrong perspectives are removed, blocked, muted, or disappeared. But the IRL version of that is horrific. And what you do with people who don't think you're human is you show them that you're human. Demonstrate humanity.
I'd also argue that the reason you do not resort to becoming a monster is because your "decency" your "soul" your "character" -- whatever you want to call it -- matters.
> The strategic logic could not compete with a deeper mood: that speech is merely performative, and that power yields only to force or coercion.
There is a rich irony here. In rejecting pragmatic effectiveness in favor of taboo-violating actions, your students choose an action which they perceive as powerful but is actually impotent.
Superficially meaningful but ultimately hollow actions are definitionally performative.
Violence, done for political purposes, is no more or less a performance than is speech.
Although I agree with this essay, but also feel a great deal of empathy for these students (being only a few years older).
I think this sentiment is best expressed in el gato Malo's most recent essay regarding soft power Vs hard power.
America (and by extension, the rest of the Anglosphere) has just witnessed a "soft power" movement get well out of hand, and are now witnessing the transition to a hard power world, as such there is a great deal of trepidation about what comes next.
Whether these institutions can be reformed and America once again return to a (truth-seeking) soft power status quo remains to be seen.
Was it really a soft power world, or just folds of fine drapery hiding weakness and foolishness? Open borders, demilitarization, mass migration of incompatible cultures, net zero?
Highly recommend the essay I mention (on "bad cattititude" publication) as he goes into more detail about how soft power taken to extremes becomes an internalised contradiction.
It sounds to me that it is not their opponents writ large who are the ones that are unreachable by persuasion. If this attitude is widespread among the educated youth, then that worries me deeply. To the best of my knowledge, revolutions generally don't begin amongst the working class. They tend to begin with disgruntled elites, propelled by the justifications of intellectuals. Despite all of our current problems, those problems pale in comparison to the horrors that widespread political violence brings. Just ask Lebanon.
At what point and how does speech intersect with knowledge and truth? Our world and the college campus - often the factory of fantasies - is filled with monstrous hoaxes, dogma and inventions. Do these students ever entertain the notion that they might be wrong? They need a lesson in knowledge as much or more than a lecture on free speech. A short history tour of the 1930’s intellectual glorification of communism would be a good start.
Good work. I don’t think we can underestimate the harm our two-party system has done to trust in our society. It’s not just been beautiful empty words, but good words and even intents twisted. No offense, but even your argument could be twisted to compliance unto death.
I hope we don’t cross this line (there’s no uncrossing it or where it ends), but if we do, I hope we’re prepared to see clearly our own actions.
Maybe have them read “On Killing” by Dave Grossman and see if they want to be killers after that. It’s strikes me that they probably don’t know violence like they think they do.
The students seem to be asking you to escalate. You're trying to persuade them that persuasion matters, and they're saying no, only force matters. Therefore, they are asking you to resort to force.
They are asking to live in a world where everything is settled by brute force. Maybe that's because they think in such a world they would always win? But that is unlikely. Maybe they should calculate, coldly, whether it's worth gambling on a such a zero-sum world, or if they'd consider negotiations in persuasion where the results will definitely not be ideal, but have a chance of being not-as-bad as Nothing Short of Total War?
I think this mindset has become commonplace and its violence made less obvious as a consequence of social gatekeeping: especially online you can choose who you see and don't see -- who EXISTS and who doesn't exist. People who have the wrong perspectives are removed, blocked, muted, or disappeared. But the IRL version of that is horrific. And what you do with people who don't think you're human is you show them that you're human. Demonstrate humanity.
I'd also argue that the reason you do not resort to becoming a monster is because your "decency" your "soul" your "character" -- whatever you want to call it -- matters.
> The strategic logic could not compete with a deeper mood: that speech is merely performative, and that power yields only to force or coercion.
There is a rich irony here. In rejecting pragmatic effectiveness in favor of taboo-violating actions, your students choose an action which they perceive as powerful but is actually impotent.
Superficially meaningful but ultimately hollow actions are definitionally performative.
Violence, done for political purposes, is no more or less a performance than is speech.
Although I agree with this essay, but also feel a great deal of empathy for these students (being only a few years older).
I think this sentiment is best expressed in el gato Malo's most recent essay regarding soft power Vs hard power.
America (and by extension, the rest of the Anglosphere) has just witnessed a "soft power" movement get well out of hand, and are now witnessing the transition to a hard power world, as such there is a great deal of trepidation about what comes next.
Whether these institutions can be reformed and America once again return to a (truth-seeking) soft power status quo remains to be seen.
Was it really a soft power world, or just folds of fine drapery hiding weakness and foolishness? Open borders, demilitarization, mass migration of incompatible cultures, net zero?
Highly recommend the essay I mention (on "bad cattititude" publication) as he goes into more detail about how soft power taken to extremes becomes an internalised contradiction.