1 00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:02,120 Speaker 1: If you want to support the show and get the 2 00:00:02,160 --> 00:00:06,559 episodes early and ad free, head on over to Freemanbeyond 3 00:00:06,599 --> 00:00:10,359 the Wall dot com forward slash Support. I want to 4 00:00:10,400 --> 00:00:15,000 explain something right now. If you support me through substack 5 00:00:15,640 --> 00:00:19,719 or Patreon, you have access to an RSS feed that 6 00:00:19,760 --> 00:00:24,239 you can plug into any podcatcher, including Apple, and you'll 7 00:00:24,280 --> 00:00:27,239 be able to listen to the episodes through there. If 8 00:00:27,239 --> 00:00:31,120 you support me through subscribe, star gum Road, or on 9 00:00:31,199 --> 00:00:34,719 my website directly, I will send you a link where 10 00:00:34,759 --> 00:00:37,079 you can download the file and you can listen to 11 00:00:37,119 --> 00:00:41,439 it any way you wish. I really appreciate the support 12 00:00:41,520 --> 00:00:44,759 everyone gives me. It keeps a show going. It allows 13 00:00:44,799 --> 00:00:47,960 me to basically put out an episode every day now, 14 00:00:48,439 --> 00:00:51,119 and I'm not going to stop. I'm just going to accelerate. 15 00:00:51,640 --> 00:00:53,799 I think sometimes you see that I'm putting out two 16 00:00:54,600 --> 00:01:00,079 even three a day, and yeah, can't do it without you, 17 00:01:00,759 --> 00:01:02,880 So thank you for the support. Head on over to 18 00:01:02,920 --> 00:01:07,159 Freeman Beyond the Wall dot com, forward slash Support and 19 00:01:07,280 --> 00:01:11,879 do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone 20 00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:15,319 back to part seven of my reading of Raizard Lagut 21 00:01:15,439 --> 00:01:19,159 goes the Demon in Democracy. I'm going to start with 22 00:01:19,239 --> 00:01:24,719 chapter four and get about halfway through all Right, here 23 00:01:24,760 --> 00:01:32,079 we go. Chapter four is titled Ideology Part one. Both 24 00:01:32,079 --> 00:01:36,640 communism and liberal democracy have a strong tendency to ideology. 25 00:01:36,760 --> 00:01:41,040 The concept of ideology owes its career to Marxism. It's 26 00:01:41,040 --> 00:01:46,680 an interesting statement there saying there is no political ideology 27 00:01:46,760 --> 00:01:53,400 before Marx, Or maybe he's not saying that. Marx and 28 00:01:53,439 --> 00:01:57,079 angles made the following argument. People, they claimed, are not 29 00:01:57,159 --> 00:01:59,280 in control of the views they hold and profess. They 30 00:01:59,280 --> 00:02:02,519 accept as their own, usually without realizing it. The idea 31 00:02:02,560 --> 00:02:06,439 is produced by the socioeconomic system in which they live. 32 00:02:08,120 --> 00:02:10,919 Do you agree or disagree? That's the question I would 33 00:02:10,960 --> 00:02:16,039 ask you. You may not, But what do you say 34 00:02:16,039 --> 00:02:19,439 about most of the people around you? You know those 35 00:02:19,479 --> 00:02:22,759 people that you read pill all the time, and the 36 00:02:22,840 --> 00:02:24,840 next day you go back to them and they've completely 37 00:02:24,840 --> 00:02:33,960 forgotten what you talked about. Well, every such system generates 38 00:02:34,000 --> 00:02:37,599 not only institutions and economic relations, but also a more 39 00:02:37,719 --> 00:02:41,080 or less coherent set of ideas that legitimize it and 40 00:02:41,199 --> 00:02:45,199 delineate the boundaries of its change. Contrary to what most 41 00:02:45,240 --> 00:02:48,680 of us think, the prevailing opinions, theories, and convictions that 42 00:02:48,719 --> 00:02:52,120 we consider timeless and self evident are neither timeless nor 43 00:02:52,159 --> 00:02:55,479 self evident, but are the products of the economic and 44 00:02:55,560 --> 00:03:00,800 political arrangements peculiar to a specific phase of historical development. 45 00:03:02,560 --> 00:03:07,360 A bunch of people run around calling each other Marxists, right, well, 46 00:03:07,400 --> 00:03:16,000 they call people before that. Think about that before the Enlightenment. 47 00:03:16,800 --> 00:03:25,520 Say what kind of political pejoratives of people throw around 48 00:03:25,520 --> 00:03:36,199 at each other even before Marx tyrant whoever thinks otherwise 49 00:03:36,199 --> 00:03:40,080 and claims he speaks from a non committed, absolute absolutist perspective, 50 00:03:40,120 --> 00:03:43,360 is cheating himself, failing to notice that his supposedly politically 51 00:03:43,360 --> 00:03:48,719 disinterested consciousness has been fabricated by material conditions. This does 52 00:03:48,759 --> 00:03:50,639 not mean that we are all slaves of our time. 53 00:03:51,159 --> 00:03:53,879 There are those who see more clearly than others, not 54 00:03:53,960 --> 00:03:57,120 because they are free from a historical entanglement, but because 55 00:03:57,120 --> 00:04:00,719 their minds have a better grasp of the world to come. 56 00:04:02,479 --> 00:04:04,240 It is these people who speak in the name of 57 00:04:04,280 --> 00:04:08,360 the future and are purveyors of a revolutionary spirit. Both 58 00:04:08,400 --> 00:04:11,240 these types of consciousness, the one mystified by its false 59 00:04:11,280 --> 00:04:15,560 claim to timelessness, the other, anticipating a new era Marx 60 00:04:15,599 --> 00:04:22,639 and Engels called ideology. The concept vaulted to unprecedented popularity, 61 00:04:22,639 --> 00:04:25,480 primarily because it proved to be a most convenient tool 62 00:04:25,519 --> 00:04:30,120 in political conflicts. It allowed discrediting one's opponent without entering 63 00:04:30,639 --> 00:04:34,000 into a substantive argument. There was no sense in analyzing 64 00:04:34,040 --> 00:04:37,000 the opponent's view on their merits, such an analysis being 65 00:04:37,360 --> 00:04:42,079 usually inconclusive and politically inefficient. It was much better to 66 00:04:42,079 --> 00:04:46,079 show that his views represented his interests and were conditioned 67 00:04:46,120 --> 00:04:50,839 by his social and economic position. This way, under communism, 68 00:04:50,920 --> 00:04:54,959 much of philosophy, art in literature could be discredited as 69 00:04:55,000 --> 00:04:58,879 arising from a bourgeois ideology, legitimizing the domination of the 70 00:04:58,879 --> 00:05:03,560 bourgeois of bourgeois z and representing its interests. By being 71 00:05:03,600 --> 00:05:07,120 identified as serving the cause of the bourgeoisie, the philosophers, 72 00:05:07,240 --> 00:05:09,800 artists and writers could be arraigned on a charge of 73 00:05:09,839 --> 00:05:12,480 being on a charge of being the enemies of the 74 00:05:12,519 --> 00:05:14,920 socialist revolution and standing in the way of the future, 75 00:05:15,519 --> 00:05:22,560 often with lamentables consequences for the defendants. Ideology is always 76 00:05:22,560 --> 00:05:28,759 inherently simplistic and simplifying, as its function is instrumental, not descriptive. 77 00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:32,759 The purpose of ideology is not to disclose intricacies and ambiguities, 78 00:05:32,839 --> 00:05:35,920 but to make a clear statement. This and this reflects 79 00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:39,000 the interests of capitalism, and that and that reflect the 80 00:05:39,040 --> 00:05:42,879 interests of communism. Lenin called it very aptly the principles 81 00:05:43,040 --> 00:05:47,000 the principle of partisanship. One is either for something or 82 00:05:47,040 --> 00:05:49,600 against something. Whoever is trying to find a middle of 83 00:05:49,600 --> 00:05:52,920 the road position or to evade the dichotomy automatically passes 84 00:05:53,000 --> 00:05:57,240 to the enemy side. All philosophy CIVI, a well known example, 85 00:05:57,720 --> 00:06:02,000 is either materialistic or idealistic. Whoever wants to go beyond 86 00:06:02,000 --> 00:06:05,839 this distinction becomes, whether he means it or not, a 87 00:06:05,920 --> 00:06:11,199 traitor of the materialists cause, and slouches towards toward idealism. 88 00:06:13,759 --> 00:06:17,759 The ideological interpretation of one of Marks's basic tenets, that 89 00:06:17,839 --> 00:06:20,160 the history of humanity is a history of class struggle, 90 00:06:20,560 --> 00:06:23,959 stipulated that this struggle leaves its stamp on human life, 91 00:06:24,040 --> 00:06:28,680 both individual and collective, on society, art, science, institutions, law. 92 00:06:30,600 --> 00:06:33,360 At the peak of communist domination, when culture was in 93 00:06:33,399 --> 00:06:36,399 the grip of the doctrine called socialist realism, it was 94 00:06:36,439 --> 00:06:39,480 officially proclaimed that nothing in the human world would not 95 00:06:39,600 --> 00:06:43,480 have an ideological dimension in other worlds. In other words, 96 00:06:43,759 --> 00:06:47,000 nothing could be neutral with respect to the conflict. Because 97 00:06:47,040 --> 00:06:51,079 communism and capitalism between the working class and the bourgeoisie, 98 00:06:51,439 --> 00:06:55,160 the past and the future. Anything that existed not only 99 00:06:55,199 --> 00:06:59,399 materially but also as thought or a seemingly harmless folly 100 00:06:59,399 --> 00:07:04,399 of imagination could be non mistakenly identified as correct or incorrect, 101 00:07:04,800 --> 00:07:11,639 bourgeois or proletarian, revolutionary or counter revolutionary, socialists or anti socialist, 102 00:07:12,040 --> 00:07:18,360 materialistic or idealistic, progressive or regressive. This practically put an 103 00:07:18,439 --> 00:07:22,279 end to any form of intellectual argumentation. No one argued, 104 00:07:22,319 --> 00:07:27,399 but either accused someone of ideological treason or defended himself 105 00:07:27,519 --> 00:07:37,800 against such a charge. Is this hitting anybody square on? 106 00:07:40,319 --> 00:07:43,519 Some people mad at him and disagreeing with him right now, 107 00:07:43,560 --> 00:07:47,959 maybe even a little. No wonder that those contaminated by 108 00:07:48,000 --> 00:07:51,800 ideology developed a deep suspicion toward ideas. They knew that 109 00:07:51,879 --> 00:07:54,759 ideas were not really ideas, and the person expressing one 110 00:07:55,199 --> 00:07:57,560 did not really say what he said, even if he 111 00:07:57,600 --> 00:08:00,560 personally thought so, but that he had a hidden agenda, 112 00:08:00,800 --> 00:08:03,959 even if he was not personally aware of it. The 113 00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:07,040 suspicion increased even more when Marx, who was called the 114 00:08:07,040 --> 00:08:10,879 master of suspicion, was joined by two other masters, Nietzsche 115 00:08:11,040 --> 00:08:15,759 and Freud. Nietzsche prided himself on having discovered the genealogies 116 00:08:15,839 --> 00:08:20,519 of ideas and disclosed the biological conditions that had generated them. 117 00:08:20,879 --> 00:08:23,560 Sometimes he claimed that their root was strength or weakness 118 00:08:23,560 --> 00:08:26,680 of the body. Sometimes health or illness, as for example, 119 00:08:26,720 --> 00:08:31,240 skin and gastrointestinal tract diseases were at the root of metaphysics, 120 00:08:31,519 --> 00:08:36,399 and sometimes even race. Usually Jewish. Freud, in turn, derived 121 00:08:36,440 --> 00:08:40,559 ideas from causal relationships between the conscious and the unconscious 122 00:08:40,679 --> 00:08:46,320 subconscious minds. The masters of suspicion practically annihilated a debate 123 00:08:46,399 --> 00:08:49,960 understood as an exchange of arguments. When someone expressed an 124 00:08:49,960 --> 00:08:52,960 opinion or put forward a thesis, there was no point 125 00:08:52,960 --> 00:08:56,799 in considering it in terms of truth or falsehood. It 126 00:08:56,840 --> 00:08:59,759 was much better to show, or rather unmask, the conditions 127 00:08:59,759 --> 00:09:03,639 that are originated this opinion or thesis. One could say, therefore, 128 00:09:03,759 --> 00:09:07,600 that the opinion had bourgeois content and served the interests 129 00:09:07,600 --> 00:09:11,240 of the bourgeoisie, or that the thesis arose out of resentment, 130 00:09:12,840 --> 00:09:14,879 or that at the bottom of a certain statement was 131 00:09:14,879 --> 00:09:21,039 the Oedipus complex of the speaker. In the ideological perspective 132 00:09:21,039 --> 00:09:24,879 of what looked innocent, whimsical, utterly non political in art 133 00:09:25,120 --> 00:09:29,559 philosophy or science. What may have had solely aesthetic, intellectual, 134 00:09:29,639 --> 00:09:33,000 or moral value, or no particular value at all, What 135 00:09:33,080 --> 00:09:36,440 more or less accurately described the world in human existence 136 00:09:36,960 --> 00:09:39,919 suddenly began to be seen in a new light. All 137 00:09:39,960 --> 00:09:43,039 of these were believed to be embedded in a political plan, 138 00:09:43,559 --> 00:09:50,240 sometimes all the more insidious because camouflaged. There was not 139 00:09:50,279 --> 00:09:53,519 a single writer or artist or thinker who was not ideological, 140 00:09:53,679 --> 00:09:56,919 i e. Who would not represent some attitude towards the 141 00:09:56,919 --> 00:10:03,879 mechanisms of power, whether affirmative or critical. The communist textbooks 142 00:10:03,879 --> 00:10:07,720 and encyclopedias invariably included the information that could pinpoint the 143 00:10:07,759 --> 00:10:16,600 ideological identity of artists or authors. Those who were ideologically correct, criticized, condemned, exposed, accused, 144 00:10:16,679 --> 00:10:21,399 and denounced what it was proper to criticize, condemn, expose, accuse, 145 00:10:21,600 --> 00:10:25,559 and denounce. Those on the wrong side of the ideological 146 00:10:25,639 --> 00:10:31,480 fence were described as uncritical, apologists, blind supporters, sellouts, serving 147 00:10:31,519 --> 00:10:36,159 the interests of lackeys of the ruling class, running dogs, 148 00:10:36,519 --> 00:10:41,799 and the like. At some point, actually, pretty quickly the 149 00:10:41,879 --> 00:10:45,120 ideology that first served primarily as the instruments, unmasked and 150 00:10:45,159 --> 00:10:47,720 discredit the false consciousness of those who were the mental 151 00:10:47,759 --> 00:10:50,799 slaves of the social and economic environment began to be 152 00:10:50,879 --> 00:10:54,279 used as a tool in the service of communism. The 153 00:10:54,320 --> 00:10:58,639 new communist ideology had to meet certain criteria. Similarly to 154 00:10:58,720 --> 00:11:01,639 a capitalist ideology. It had to be so simple and 155 00:11:01,679 --> 00:11:04,840 clear that everyone would understand what communism stood for and 156 00:11:04,879 --> 00:11:10,000 how to identify an enemy. The difference was that, contrary 157 00:11:10,000 --> 00:11:13,639 to the capitalist ideology, the communist counterpoint was not false 158 00:11:13,720 --> 00:11:17,279 and did not need to be exposed as a false consciousness. 159 00:11:17,600 --> 00:11:19,879 Its role was to shape a new mind dedicated to 160 00:11:20,000 --> 00:11:22,919 work for a new society. Though, because this new mind 161 00:11:22,960 --> 00:11:25,240 and new society were to emerge through the process of 162 00:11:25,320 --> 00:11:29,080 incessant bombarding of people with a few simplistic slogans, the 163 00:11:29,080 --> 00:11:34,480 communist ideology became indistinguishable from communist propaganda. In fact, the 164 00:11:34,519 --> 00:11:38,240 communists readily admitted it and used the two words interchangeably. 165 00:11:38,639 --> 00:11:42,240 For instance, every Communist party committee had its department of 166 00:11:42,279 --> 00:11:48,120 ideology and propaganda. The transition from ideology as a false 167 00:11:48,159 --> 00:11:51,120 consciousness to ideology as a true insight into the future 168 00:11:51,120 --> 00:11:55,159 of historical development, From the mind full of self deception 169 00:11:55,440 --> 00:11:59,600 to the mind permeated with truth was quite puzzling. How 170 00:11:59,679 --> 00:12:02,080 is it possible, one would ask that the same person 171 00:12:02,159 --> 00:12:04,480 can be, on the one hand, suspicious of all ideas 172 00:12:04,519 --> 00:12:08,200 as arising from particular conditions and having no truthful content 173 00:12:08,200 --> 00:12:10,840 of their own, and on the other be dedicated body 174 00:12:10,840 --> 00:12:12,960 and soul to a set of ideas that he finds 175 00:12:13,159 --> 00:12:18,879 mandatory and compelling. The answer is already included in the question. 176 00:12:19,240 --> 00:12:22,159 Ideology is a mental structure that allows a combination of 177 00:12:22,200 --> 00:12:28,759 conflicting traits and extreme distrust of ideas and a blind dogmatism. 178 00:12:29,279 --> 00:12:35,559 The ideological man is thus both absolutely suspicious and absolutely enthusiastic. 179 00:12:36,440 --> 00:12:38,320 There seems to be no idea under the sun that 180 00:12:38,360 --> 00:12:41,279 he would not put into question and make an object 181 00:12:41,320 --> 00:12:44,799 of derision, skepticism, or contempt. No idea that he would 182 00:12:44,879 --> 00:12:48,440 not reduce to an offshoot of hidden instincts, mundane interests, 183 00:12:48,480 --> 00:12:53,840 biological drives, and psychological complexes. Hence, he is likely to 184 00:12:53,879 --> 00:12:58,559 despise reason as an autonomous faculty, to downgrade lofty ideas 185 00:12:59,120 --> 00:13:02,159 and to debunk the path past, seeing everywhere the same 186 00:13:02,240 --> 00:13:05,879 ideological mystification. But at the same time he lives in 187 00:13:05,919 --> 00:13:09,279 a constant state of mobilization for a better world. His 188 00:13:09,360 --> 00:13:12,879 mouth is full of noble slogans about brotherhood, freedom, and justice, 189 00:13:13,159 --> 00:13:15,360 and with every word he makes it clear that he 190 00:13:15,440 --> 00:13:17,919 knows which side is right, and that he is ready 191 00:13:17,960 --> 00:13:21,360 to sacrifice his entire existence for the sake of its victory. 192 00:13:22,519 --> 00:13:27,279 The peculiar combination of both attitudes, merciless distrust and unwavering affirmation, 193 00:13:27,679 --> 00:13:31,440 gives him an incomparable sense of moral self confidence and 194 00:13:31,559 --> 00:13:39,639 intellectual self righteousness. So how is he going to relate 195 00:13:39,759 --> 00:13:45,600 all of that to liberal democracy? Part two? One should 196 00:13:45,639 --> 00:13:49,279 think that liberal democracy is relatively free from ideological temptation. 197 00:13:51,360 --> 00:13:55,120 The emergence of one unifying ideology seems rather unlikely when 198 00:13:55,120 --> 00:13:58,879 there is considerable differentiation in a society, and it is 199 00:13:58,919 --> 00:14:02,960 precisely such a differentiation that liberal democracy promised to tolerate 200 00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:06,759 and even stimulate. If, as liberal logic seems to indicate, 201 00:14:07,120 --> 00:14:09,720 people are more and more concerned with their private matters. 202 00:14:10,000 --> 00:14:13,759 If following the logic the democracy political power is available 203 00:14:13,759 --> 00:14:17,639 to any party in the democratic pendulum prevents power from 204 00:14:17,679 --> 00:14:20,720 staying in the hands of one party for a long time. If, 205 00:14:20,879 --> 00:14:24,399 thanks to the efficiency of the liberal democratic institutions, a 206 00:14:24,519 --> 00:14:29,080 system acquires remarkable stability and a high degree of prosperity, 207 00:14:29,440 --> 00:14:37,080 the need for ideology seems rather insignificance. So basically liberalism 208 00:14:37,159 --> 00:14:40,399 is sold as non ideological because you're allowed to believe 209 00:14:40,440 --> 00:14:47,120 anything you want you're an individual. That's pretty much the 210 00:14:47,120 --> 00:14:57,919 way it's sold. But continuing the ideological propaganda was useful 211 00:14:57,960 --> 00:15:00,559 in the communist countries with structural and stability in poor 212 00:15:00,639 --> 00:15:04,960 economic performance, where it serves to disarm people's dissatisfaction and 213 00:15:04,960 --> 00:15:08,360 to restructure their minds by means of aggressive propaganda in 214 00:15:08,399 --> 00:15:11,840 accordance with the directives of the polic bureau. But in 215 00:15:11,879 --> 00:15:14,679 a country where people are free and prosperous, where they 216 00:15:14,759 --> 00:15:17,440 enjoy the role of law and institutional stability, in a 217 00:15:17,440 --> 00:15:21,679 country where human desires are not inhibited and life plans 218 00:15:21,759 --> 00:15:24,720 are not regulated, where there is no pollet Bureau and 219 00:15:24,799 --> 00:15:27,720 no department of ideology in propaganda, there does not seem 220 00:15:27,799 --> 00:15:30,679 to be any place for or need of ideology in 221 00:15:30,720 --> 00:15:35,799 the system toward which noble goals. Can human consciousness and 222 00:15:35,840 --> 00:15:39,720 the human energy be mobilized to achieve democracy and freedom. 223 00:15:40,279 --> 00:15:43,679 They have already been attained. Bread for all, it's already 224 00:15:43,679 --> 00:15:48,600 here in excess universal delienation. Who while living in a 225 00:15:48,639 --> 00:15:54,480 stable consumer societies characterized by mobility and unlimited access to 226 00:15:54,559 --> 00:15:57,799 information and knowledge would be lured by something so ephemeral. 227 00:16:00,360 --> 00:16:03,360 In the nineteen fifties, a number of prominent writers, independently 228 00:16:03,399 --> 00:16:06,279 of one another, came up with a widely discussed thesis 229 00:16:06,279 --> 00:16:09,399 that the age of ideologies was coming to an end. 230 00:16:09,840 --> 00:16:14,080 So said the Americans Daniel Bell, Seymour, Martin Lipsett, and 231 00:16:14,360 --> 00:16:18,759 Edward Shills, and Europeans such as Raymond Aaron. While they 232 00:16:18,759 --> 00:16:21,600 did not foresee the total demise of ideological thinking and 233 00:16:21,720 --> 00:16:24,240 even thought that it would continue to be popular among 234 00:16:24,360 --> 00:16:29,480 some groups, such as intellectuals, they genuinely saw conspicuously declining 235 00:16:29,600 --> 00:16:32,799 need for and less readiness of societies be mobilized for 236 00:16:32,879 --> 00:16:37,120 a radical transformation by means of simplistic slogans which they 237 00:16:37,159 --> 00:16:41,960 thought were irreparably worn out. A liberal, democratic world with 238 00:16:42,039 --> 00:16:46,240 a markedly reduced level of ideology seemed a likely prospect, 239 00:16:47,840 --> 00:16:50,840 But soon the experience dealt a blow. But soon the 240 00:16:50,919 --> 00:16:54,399 experience dealt a blow to these predictions. The sixties was 241 00:16:54,399 --> 00:16:58,799 the time of ideological explosion, with the intensity unexpected and unforeseen. 242 00:16:59,320 --> 00:17:02,679 A revolution rhetoric swept across the entire Western world and 243 00:17:02,720 --> 00:17:06,759 awoke a surprisingly strong response. Radical calls to overthrow the 244 00:17:06,759 --> 00:17:10,160 system and replace it with another one unheard of for decades, 245 00:17:10,319 --> 00:17:14,640 found millions of sympathetic minds and ears. Even more surprising 246 00:17:14,759 --> 00:17:18,359 was that the ideas behind those calls had strongly Marxist undertones, 247 00:17:18,839 --> 00:17:22,680 and indeed were often inspired directly or indirectly by Marxism, 248 00:17:23,079 --> 00:17:26,440 the theory that, as some thought, Western societies had long 249 00:17:26,480 --> 00:17:31,960 put into the dustbin of history, intellectuals played a major 250 00:17:32,039 --> 00:17:34,559 role in igniting and maintaining the flame of the revolution, 251 00:17:35,039 --> 00:17:39,359 and in this respect the sociologists, predicting their natural commitments ideology, 252 00:17:39,440 --> 00:17:43,960 were right. But mobilization left no segment of society unmoved. 253 00:17:44,519 --> 00:17:49,000 Such turbulence the liberal democratic societies had not lived through 254 00:17:49,039 --> 00:17:55,279 for many decades. No institution, social practice, moral rule remained intact. 255 00:17:56,480 --> 00:17:59,640 As one would expect, the new ideology showed its old face, 256 00:18:00,079 --> 00:18:04,680 a combination of suspicion and enthusiasm. Suddenly, millions of residents 257 00:18:04,680 --> 00:18:08,039 of affluent societies became disciples of Karl Marx, ready to 258 00:18:08,119 --> 00:18:11,279 lay bare the dishonesty of the established truths and to 259 00:18:11,359 --> 00:18:15,880 search for the economic, political, and biological conditioning. But an 260 00:18:16,039 --> 00:18:18,680 enthusiasm was there as well for the new world, the 261 00:18:18,720 --> 00:18:24,039 age of Aquarius, love, peace, brotherhood, freedom, and spontaneity. The 262 00:18:24,119 --> 00:18:28,599 hypnotizing power of the war word utopia, previously sotled with 263 00:18:28,680 --> 00:18:35,440 bad connotations and often associated with inhuman experiments, miraculously resurrected itself. 264 00:18:36,759 --> 00:18:38,920 The feeling that a new utopia was right around the 265 00:18:38,920 --> 00:18:41,799 corner lasted a few years and then began to subside, 266 00:18:42,319 --> 00:18:45,039 but the ideology did not loosen its grip on the 267 00:18:45,319 --> 00:18:48,759 Western mind. Though the course language of the Paris Barricades 268 00:18:48,960 --> 00:18:54,039 was softened. The Flower Children quietly retreated from the stage, 269 00:18:54,039 --> 00:18:57,200 and so did the Age of Aquarius and the counterculture manifestos. 270 00:18:57,559 --> 00:19:00,640 But the society never returned to a pre protest identity, 271 00:19:01,000 --> 00:19:03,400 and there was neither a scenario nor a desire to 272 00:19:03,440 --> 00:19:07,839 move away from ideology. Soon the ideology reasserted itself, this 273 00:19:07,920 --> 00:19:13,880 time in less menacing form. Now it was the ideology 274 00:19:13,920 --> 00:19:18,920 of liberal democracy, slightly more complicated than that form of communism, 275 00:19:18,960 --> 00:19:24,279 but comparably simplistic and equally impoverishing people's range of thought. 276 00:19:24,480 --> 00:19:30,759 See here's the thing about liberal democracy. Somebody who has 277 00:19:30,839 --> 00:19:35,039 the will can take it over and make it whatever 278 00:19:35,200 --> 00:19:41,160 they want. Because when it comes down to it, liberal 279 00:19:41,160 --> 00:19:44,759 democracy in its purest form has no gatekeepers. There's no 280 00:19:44,799 --> 00:19:47,000 one there to go, No, you can't teach that here, 281 00:19:47,920 --> 00:19:49,920 because as soon as you say no, you can't teach 282 00:19:49,960 --> 00:19:59,200 that here, you become what national socialists. So you have 283 00:19:59,240 --> 00:20:05,839 to have this phone the marketplace of ideas, where the 284 00:20:05,880 --> 00:20:12,400 best social engineers win and take over until someone comes 285 00:20:12,440 --> 00:20:18,839 along and says, there's not going to be any competing ideas. 286 00:20:20,880 --> 00:20:26,200 Who are we? Where do we come from? The ideological 287 00:20:26,240 --> 00:20:28,640 man has colonized a vast part of the public life 288 00:20:28,640 --> 00:20:31,240 and private thought, and his conquests are not yet over. 289 00:20:31,799 --> 00:20:35,119 As did his communist predecessor, he exhibits a mixture of 290 00:20:35,160 --> 00:20:38,680 suspicion and enthusiasm, which gives him a comparable sense of 291 00:20:38,759 --> 00:20:43,839 self righteousness. In one respect, at least, these ideologies differ 292 00:20:43,960 --> 00:20:48,039 to the disadvantage of liberal democracy. The influence of ideology 293 00:20:48,079 --> 00:20:51,400 and communism had a downward trend. At the beginning, everything 294 00:20:51,480 --> 00:20:53,920 was ideological, but over a long period of time the 295 00:20:53,960 --> 00:20:58,839 ideology began retracting, not without resistance, to be sure, For 296 00:20:58,880 --> 00:21:01,400 those who lived in these country it was clear that slowly, 297 00:21:01,599 --> 00:21:05,599 too slowly, of course, the ideological vigilance weakened. The crew 298 00:21:05,720 --> 00:21:09,119 dichotomies were losing their clarity. The new was fighting the 299 00:21:09,160 --> 00:21:12,720 old with less zeal. With the disappearance of the ideological 300 00:21:12,759 --> 00:21:16,839 smoke screen, reality began to disclose itself in all its 301 00:21:16,920 --> 00:21:20,240 richness and complexity. The world, in short, was becoming more 302 00:21:20,359 --> 00:21:27,839 and more interesting. In liberal democracy we have been, unfortunately 303 00:21:28,240 --> 00:21:32,319 observing a reverse trend. The ideological smoke screen is becoming 304 00:21:32,359 --> 00:21:36,640 more dense and more impenetrable than before. The entire system 305 00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:41,519 seems to be embarked on a great transformation. One would 306 00:21:41,519 --> 00:21:43,640 be tempted to say that the system created by its 307 00:21:43,680 --> 00:21:47,400 own liberal democratic version of the old communist theory, that 308 00:21:47,400 --> 00:21:49,680 the building of a new society must coincide with the 309 00:21:49,680 --> 00:21:54,759 intestification of the campaign against its enemies. That liberal democracy 310 00:21:54,799 --> 00:21:57,160 has ambitions to create a new society and a new 311 00:21:57,200 --> 00:22:00,200 man and that is and that it is pre out 312 00:22:00,240 --> 00:22:04,839 of its achievements, is being proclaimed with deafening vehemence. But 313 00:22:04,960 --> 00:22:07,200 at the same time one is the impression that the 314 00:22:07,240 --> 00:22:10,799 concluding chapter of this magnificent project is always receding into 315 00:22:10,839 --> 00:22:14,039 the future. No matter how much work has been done, 316 00:22:14,079 --> 00:22:17,079 the enemy is still as strong as ever. How Else, 317 00:22:17,759 --> 00:22:22,400 how else one could explain the growing officiousness of ideology. 318 00:22:22,920 --> 00:22:25,440 There is more and more of it in politics and law, 319 00:22:25,480 --> 00:22:30,519 and education in the media in the language under communism, 320 00:22:30,640 --> 00:22:34,160 let us repeat the conceptual engine that animated the communist 321 00:22:34,200 --> 00:22:37,440 ideology was the idea of class struggle, supposedly fought throughout 322 00:22:37,440 --> 00:22:41,680 the entire history of humanity. In a liberal democracy, this engine, 323 00:22:41,759 --> 00:22:44,160 believed to have been present in the history of humanity 324 00:22:44,400 --> 00:22:47,440 since the beginning of time, is an improved version of 325 00:22:47,480 --> 00:22:51,759 the original. The Marxist had only classes an ideological leverage. 326 00:22:52,119 --> 00:22:57,240 In today's liberal democracy, the main ideological triad is class, race, 327 00:22:57,519 --> 00:23:03,359 and gender. But this triad does not exhaust all forces. 328 00:23:03,359 --> 00:23:06,200 On the battlefield between the old and the new. We 329 00:23:06,240 --> 00:23:15,880 have eurocentrism, eurocentrism versus multiculturalism, heterosexuality versus homosexuality, logocentrism versus 330 00:23:15,880 --> 00:23:19,480 its opposite, whatever it may be. But even this is 331 00:23:19,519 --> 00:23:22,160 not enough. The war goes on between black and white, 332 00:23:22,480 --> 00:23:25,960 Africa and Europe, metaphysics and politics, old and young, skinny 333 00:23:25,960 --> 00:23:32,240 and fat. We have sexual, ecological, educational, climactic, and literary ideologies, 334 00:23:32,279 --> 00:23:36,359 as well as dozens of others. Schools and universities absorb 335 00:23:36,440 --> 00:23:39,759 more and more ideology, politics as steeped in it, and 336 00:23:39,799 --> 00:23:42,880 the media make it their religion. In the European Union, 337 00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:46,359 the ideology has been emanating with such intensity that each 338 00:23:46,440 --> 00:23:50,720 prolonged contact with its institutions requires a thorough detoxification of 339 00:23:50,759 --> 00:24:02,000 one's mind and one's language. Think about that, you can't 340 00:24:02,079 --> 00:24:15,000 even interact with these forces without having to detoxify your 341 00:24:15,079 --> 00:24:25,720 minds prior and post the liberal democratic mind, just as 342 00:24:25,720 --> 00:24:28,200 the mind of a true communist feels an inner compulsion 343 00:24:28,240 --> 00:24:32,440 to manifest its pious loyalty to the doctrine. Public life 344 00:24:32,440 --> 00:24:37,319 is full of mandatory rituals in which every politician, artist, writer, celebrity, teacher, 345 00:24:37,720 --> 00:24:41,759 or any public figure is willing to participate, all to 346 00:24:41,839 --> 00:24:45,200 prove that their liberal democratic creeds bring spontaneously from the 347 00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:48,599 depths of their heart. As listening to Jay Burden on 348 00:24:48,680 --> 00:24:51,960 Timeline Earth talking to the Timeline Earth guys this morning, 349 00:24:53,079 --> 00:24:55,200 and yeah, I mean, I know a lot of people 350 00:24:55,200 --> 00:24:57,400 have used this in the past, but look at a 351 00:24:57,400 --> 00:25:02,759 band like Green Day Day was singing a song American 352 00:25:02,799 --> 00:25:05,240 Idiot about how much of an idiot George Bush was 353 00:25:05,400 --> 00:25:12,319 George W. Bush was, And he was. But now they're 354 00:25:12,359 --> 00:25:15,880 completely on the side of everyone who cheerlead that cheerlead 355 00:25:15,920 --> 00:25:27,960 that war. And think about that, in the communist system, 356 00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:31,000 every citizen was expected regardless of the situation to mention 357 00:25:31,160 --> 00:25:35,000 something if only in passant about the absolute superiority of 358 00:25:35,039 --> 00:25:39,519 communism and or a brotherly friendship with the Soviet Union, 359 00:25:39,599 --> 00:25:42,319 or the devilish nature of the capitalist exploitation of the 360 00:25:42,359 --> 00:25:45,839 working masses today, and an equal knee jerk reactions of 361 00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:51,119 homicet reaction. One is expected to give one's approving opinion 362 00:25:51,160 --> 00:25:53,559 about the rights of homosexuals and women, and to condemn 363 00:25:53,640 --> 00:25:58,640 the usual villain villains, such as domestic violence, racisms, in aphobia, 364 00:25:58,680 --> 00:26:02,079 or discrimination to find some other means of kowtowing to 365 00:26:02,119 --> 00:26:06,359 the ideological gods. For instance, it is often advisable to 366 00:26:06,359 --> 00:26:10,440 add something about climate change, demonstrating that the outdated term 367 00:26:10,480 --> 00:26:13,000 global warming is no longer used, but at the same 368 00:26:13,079 --> 00:26:16,160 time not even with the quiver of an eyebrow, communicating 369 00:26:16,440 --> 00:26:23,400 that replacing one word with the other means anything. This 370 00:26:23,480 --> 00:26:27,200 language has practically monopolized to public space and invaded schools, 371 00:26:27,240 --> 00:26:31,559 popular culture, academic life, and advertising. This last phenomenon is 372 00:26:31,599 --> 00:26:34,759 particularly telling. Today. It is no longer enough simply to 373 00:26:34,839 --> 00:26:38,519 advertise a product. The companies feel an irresistible need to 374 00:26:38,599 --> 00:26:46,559 attach it to a message that is ideological, ideologically correct. 375 00:26:46,599 --> 00:26:50,440 We don't have TV, but we have like Amazon Prime, 376 00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:55,920 and you do get commercials, some TVs and some shows 377 00:26:55,960 --> 00:26:58,880 like if you watch tub or something like that. And 378 00:26:59,039 --> 00:27:04,359 I hadn't even done that in years. I stopped. I 379 00:27:05,279 --> 00:27:08,160 cut cable TV in like twenty fourteen or twenty and 380 00:27:08,240 --> 00:27:12,279 fifteen and just watch like DVDs and that's about it 381 00:27:12,359 --> 00:27:15,640 for a while, or recently I wanted to watch some 382 00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:20,880 stuff from overseas and the commercials, the commerce, Every commercial 383 00:27:20,920 --> 00:27:23,599 would have you believe that every couple is inter racial. 384 00:27:25,559 --> 00:27:28,400 That's not by accident, right, it's part of the religion. 385 00:27:30,559 --> 00:27:35,400 You're showing that you're a member of the church. If 386 00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:40,880 you don't, well, I mean the the only uh, I 387 00:27:40,880 --> 00:27:43,279 guess when you look at army ads now that they 388 00:27:44,039 --> 00:27:47,480 they're trying to ramp up war fever. That's only supposed 389 00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:53,640 to be for white people. Even if this message does 390 00:27:53,680 --> 00:27:56,559 not have any commercial function, and it hardly ever does, 391 00:27:56,920 --> 00:27:59,000 any occasion, is good to prove oneself to be a 392 00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:01,680 proponent of the brotherhood of races, a critic of the 393 00:28:01,799 --> 00:28:05,359 church Church with a capital see, and a supporter of 394 00:28:05,359 --> 00:28:12,759 homosexual marriage. The sycophant weedling is practiced by journalists, TV 395 00:28:12,920 --> 00:28:18,319 morons pornographers, athletes, professors, artists, professional groups, and young people 396 00:28:18,319 --> 00:28:23,359 already infected with the ideological mass culture. Today's ideology is 397 00:28:23,400 --> 00:28:26,359 so powerful that almost everyone desires to join the great 398 00:28:26,440 --> 00:28:30,079 camp of progress. This omnipotent urge to seek refuge in 399 00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:33,880 this great liberal democratic church somewhat contradicts the very ideology 400 00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:37,359 to which so many have been drawn. If ideology, by 401 00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:41,359 definition expresses particular interests of particular groups, then the world 402 00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:44,160 in which we live should be full of conflicts, or 403 00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:46,839 at least of debates in which we would hear the 404 00:28:46,880 --> 00:28:51,079 ideological claims of the male part of the population of Eurocentrists, 405 00:28:51,279 --> 00:28:54,960 home of heterosexuals, etc. But these claims are not to 406 00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:59,759 be heard. Individuals and groups seem to have seem to 407 00:28:59,759 --> 00:29:03,400 be contrary to the ideologies they were expected to espouse, 408 00:29:04,079 --> 00:29:07,920 but indulge in adulation of the other side. Moreover, they 409 00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:10,599 seemed to do it quite selflessly, out of pure love 410 00:29:10,640 --> 00:29:14,359 for the idea, completely ignoring their own alleged self interest 411 00:29:14,640 --> 00:29:23,039 condition race, class, and gender. This created a situation almost 412 00:29:23,079 --> 00:29:27,359 as surreal as that under communism. The ideology that was 413 00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:31,799 originally to reveal the roots of ideas economic conditioning group 414 00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:36,640 interests biological predilection turned into an independent agent of such 415 00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:40,160 a coercive power that if it forced people to say 416 00:29:40,240 --> 00:29:42,079 and to do things that in the light of this 417 00:29:42,160 --> 00:29:45,960 ideology they should not be doing. Men free themselves as 418 00:29:46,039 --> 00:29:52,240 male conditioning and become feminists heterosexual and become feminists heterosexual 419 00:29:52,319 --> 00:29:58,000 supposedly in the yoke of their gender. Praise homosexuality most profusely. Europeans, 420 00:29:58,039 --> 00:30:01,720 who were said to be the slaves of parochial criticized 421 00:30:01,759 --> 00:30:07,160 eurocentrism in Eurocentrism in the strongest terms possible. Philosophers who 422 00:30:07,200 --> 00:30:10,200 for ages have been the apostles of the logos treat 423 00:30:10,200 --> 00:30:14,599 it today with contempt, and the monas have quite unexpectedly 424 00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:24,519 become attracted to pluralism and multiculturalism. Part three. Political ideology 425 00:30:24,519 --> 00:30:28,319 made spectacular conquests in art and intellectual life. Captured by 426 00:30:28,359 --> 00:30:32,440 the ideological animus, both socialists and liberal democratic art abandoned 427 00:30:32,480 --> 00:30:37,160 the criterion of beauty, considered anachronistic and of dubious political value, 428 00:30:37,440 --> 00:30:43,400 and replaced it with the criterion of correctness. Ideas and 429 00:30:43,440 --> 00:30:46,480 works of art had to be ideologically correct. During the 430 00:30:46,559 --> 00:30:49,839 dark years of communism, artists were writing books, painting pictures, 431 00:30:49,839 --> 00:30:52,680 composing pieces of music that were meant to be straightforward 432 00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:57,680 eulogies of what was then called the correct party line, 433 00:30:57,839 --> 00:31:00,160 including the five year plans and the heroism some of 434 00:31:00,240 --> 00:31:05,200 the political security forces and their offensive against foreign and 435 00:31:05,279 --> 00:31:09,440 domestic fascists. These artists used their talents to depict as 436 00:31:09,480 --> 00:31:12,599 persuasively as they could the sinister role of the enemies, 437 00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:16,920 the US imperialists, Coolock's spies and subboteurs. But as I 438 00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:20,279 said later on, along with the cracks and ideology, art 439 00:31:20,319 --> 00:31:23,279 took on a more noble character. In fact, in Poland 440 00:31:23,359 --> 00:31:26,359 and probably in other countries of the region too, the 441 00:31:26,400 --> 00:31:30,400 weakening of communism was accompanied by an extraordinary blossoming of culture, 442 00:31:30,839 --> 00:31:36,440 which can only be fully appreciated in our time. It is, 443 00:31:36,519 --> 00:31:39,680 of course an open question whether there was any clear 444 00:31:39,720 --> 00:31:43,640 relationship between the relaxation of the ideological strait jacket and 445 00:31:43,680 --> 00:31:49,240 the development of artistic creativity, or weather which is more probable, 446 00:31:49,519 --> 00:31:53,119 this relaxation was simply, as it always is, a necessary 447 00:31:53,160 --> 00:31:57,160 but not a sufficient condition of any free activity, including art. 448 00:31:58,119 --> 00:32:01,880 Some other factors must also have been, presumably stronger, yet 449 00:32:01,920 --> 00:32:05,720 difficult to identify and certainly impossible to reproduce at will, 450 00:32:06,039 --> 00:32:08,400 as is usually the case when at a certain moment 451 00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:11,079 of history and in a particular place, we have a 452 00:32:11,079 --> 00:32:17,759 sudden outburst of artistic creativity. Similarly, it is probably the 453 00:32:17,799 --> 00:32:21,200 absence of these or related factors, as several decades later, 454 00:32:21,279 --> 00:32:24,680 prevented the artists of a Poland deliberated from Communism from 455 00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:28,799 reaching comparable heights of artistic achievement, despite the fact that 456 00:32:28,839 --> 00:32:33,279 they enjoyed considerable considerably greater freedom both as citizens and 457 00:32:33,359 --> 00:32:39,519 as creators of art. I saw a Polish politician have 458 00:32:40,359 --> 00:32:43,079 produced some incredible art last year with the fire extinguisher. 459 00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:47,519 In the liberal democracy of the last decades, we have 460 00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:51,000 also had a large crowd of artists who produced works 461 00:32:51,039 --> 00:32:54,119 meant to be correct. They depict and condemned fascism in 462 00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:57,359 all its forms, undermine the center and praise to periphery, 463 00:32:57,720 --> 00:33:01,359 call for emancipation and deploy discrimination, and declare the superiority 464 00:33:01,359 --> 00:33:04,920 of pluralism over fundamentalism. Write about the plight of homosexuals 465 00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:08,400 among intolerant heterosexuals or women in the world of the 466 00:33:08,440 --> 00:33:12,039 merciless patriarchy. They talk of the other of sex of 467 00:33:12,079 --> 00:33:15,559 the body. This virtually exhausts the message that the artists 468 00:33:15,599 --> 00:33:18,440 of today are conveying to their audience. The message is 469 00:33:18,480 --> 00:33:22,519 hopelessly simplistic, but its correctness cannot be doubted, which is 470 00:33:22,640 --> 00:33:25,640 enough to give the artists the necessary recognition among the 471 00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:31,279 dictators of artistic fashions. The artists who ignore the imperative 472 00:33:31,319 --> 00:33:36,880 of correctness have a harder road toward recognition. Correct art 473 00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:40,640 is not only political, but in fact apologetic towards the 474 00:33:40,680 --> 00:33:47,480 liberal democracy as it is envisioned by its ideology. In 475 00:33:47,519 --> 00:33:50,279 this respect, an artist loyal to liberal democracy is no 476 00:33:50,359 --> 00:33:53,319 different from an artist who is loyal to communism. Both 477 00:33:53,359 --> 00:33:57,279 fight against the enemies of their respective political systems. Both 478 00:33:57,319 --> 00:34:00,400 oppose what is deemed old and outdated. Make it for 479 00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:03,000 granted that the world was a terrible place to live 480 00:34:03,039 --> 00:34:06,480 before it became open to the benefits of socialism in 481 00:34:06,519 --> 00:34:09,960 the case of the socialist artists, or of liberal democracy 482 00:34:10,039 --> 00:34:13,079 in the case of the liberal democratic artist. Both tend 483 00:34:13,079 --> 00:34:15,960 to depict the human relations as a more or less 484 00:34:16,039 --> 00:34:20,800 accurate illustration or a consequence of the political mechanisms communist 485 00:34:20,880 --> 00:34:24,519 or liberal democratic, or the lack thereof. Both believe in 486 00:34:24,559 --> 00:34:28,079 their respective utopias at least as a mental exercise or 487 00:34:28,119 --> 00:34:31,239 a thought experiment, and both perceive within them the new 488 00:34:31,320 --> 00:34:34,559 man to be borne by discarding his past conditionings and 489 00:34:34,599 --> 00:34:40,239 thus acquiring a freedom to create his identity afresh. You're 490 00:34:40,320 --> 00:34:43,800 not allowed to live historically. It has to all be 491 00:34:44,039 --> 00:34:49,880 washed away. To be sure. There are different actors in 492 00:34:49,880 --> 00:34:53,239 both cases, and yet they perform similar roles. A proletarian 493 00:34:53,280 --> 00:34:57,840 was replaced by a homosexual, a capitalist by fundamentalists, exploitation 494 00:34:57,920 --> 00:35:01,719 by discrimination, a communist revel lutionary by a feminist, and 495 00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:06,519 a red flag by a vagina. One encounters a similarly 496 00:35:07,159 --> 00:35:11,760 a similarly narrow intellectual space in today's humanities, which ultimately 497 00:35:12,079 --> 00:35:14,840 are dependent on liberal democracies to the same degree that 498 00:35:14,920 --> 00:35:19,400 the communist humanities depend on communism. The language they use 499 00:35:19,480 --> 00:35:22,880 is not only political, but derived directly from the terminological 500 00:35:23,559 --> 00:35:32,239 storehouse of the liberal democratic ideology rights, exclusion, recognition, emancipation, equality, domination, colonialism, imperialism, etc. 501 00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:36,360 Entering the field of the humanities today exactly as in 502 00:35:36,400 --> 00:35:39,639 the communist past, is like entering into the battlefield. One 503 00:35:39,679 --> 00:35:42,280 has to join the forces to defend what is right 504 00:35:42,639 --> 00:35:47,760 against what is wrong. Literary critics, writers, performers, filmmakers, and 505 00:35:47,840 --> 00:35:50,639 theater directors imagine themselves to be listening to the voice 506 00:35:50,639 --> 00:35:55,719 of the excluded and searching for the deep roots of domination. Anthropologists, 507 00:35:55,760 --> 00:35:59,320 social scientists, journalists, and celebrities are preoccupied with pretty much 508 00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:03,760 the same, believing of course, that what they do has 509 00:36:03,880 --> 00:36:07,360 momentous weight upon the world. That is, as well as 510 00:36:07,440 --> 00:36:10,920 upon the world that will be what those people do. 511 00:36:12,039 --> 00:36:21,679 When you look at critics, writers, performers, filmmakers, theater directors, anthropologists, 512 00:36:21,719 --> 00:36:27,159 social science as, journalists, celebrities, they believe they're fighting for 513 00:36:27,840 --> 00:36:32,039 the little guy. They believe that, you know, the little guys. 514 00:36:32,239 --> 00:36:35,280 You know, he needs to be propped up, someone needs 515 00:36:35,320 --> 00:36:40,400 to be his hero. But really what they're doing, you know, 516 00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:45,639 in the if you understand Hilo versus middle as, they're 517 00:36:45,679 --> 00:36:51,639 just basically propping up the regime in charge and whatever 518 00:36:51,760 --> 00:37:04,639 it's ideologies, simple as they will never true dissidents are 519 00:37:04,679 --> 00:37:10,800 attacked by the regime. If you see someone who's not 520 00:37:10,840 --> 00:37:17,920 being attacked by the regime well and its apparatucks. Sometimes 521 00:37:17,920 --> 00:37:21,400 the regime will lay off of certain people, but their 522 00:37:21,400 --> 00:37:26,800 apparatucks will definitely come after you. Once we understand how 523 00:37:26,800 --> 00:37:31,239 strikingly the liberal democratic artisan intellectuals are mentally a mirror 524 00:37:31,280 --> 00:37:34,239 reflection of their communist counterparts. We will notice that the 525 00:37:34,280 --> 00:37:38,360 resemblance also extends to the way they behave In each system. 526 00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:41,880 The artists intellectuals willingly gather in herds. They treat the 527 00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:45,599 centers and outsiders with contempt and enmity. They shamelessly and 528 00:37:45,719 --> 00:37:49,159 theose over idiocies that bear the stamp of modernity, and 529 00:37:49,239 --> 00:37:51,760 exhibit a revolting temerity in the face of what they 530 00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:55,440 consider to be the imperatives of the time. Their cowardly 531 00:37:55,519 --> 00:38:00,920 behavior they call dignity, and their dishonorable adulation stupid, a 532 00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:05,519 conscious act of attunement the spirit of the times. In 533 00:38:05,599 --> 00:38:07,719 the past, they fell into raptures over the works of 534 00:38:07,760 --> 00:38:11,760 the Soviet comrades. Today they exhibit ecstatic agitation when reading 535 00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:15,760 the works of American feminists, although the intellectual quality is 536 00:38:15,760 --> 00:38:19,280 in either case comparably low. In the past they wrote 537 00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:24,280 dissertations about Thomas Hobbs as a materialist fighting idealism. Today 538 00:38:24,360 --> 00:38:28,280 they take Hobbes to be a misogynist defending patriarchy. And 539 00:38:28,320 --> 00:38:31,480 even if someone refrained from writing such things then and 540 00:38:31,519 --> 00:38:34,679 refrains from writing them now, he would not protest against 541 00:38:34,679 --> 00:38:39,079 this sad spectacle of intellectual degradation. Not because of his cowardice, 542 00:38:39,159 --> 00:38:43,199 to be sure, a wide to be sure, a widespread 543 00:38:43,239 --> 00:38:46,880 weakness among humans in general, and the intellectuals in particular, 544 00:38:47,320 --> 00:38:49,559 But because in his heart he believes or is not 545 00:38:49,639 --> 00:38:52,519 strong enough to shun the belief that there must be 546 00:38:52,559 --> 00:38:56,199 something fundamentally right in all this deluge of nonsense, and 547 00:38:56,239 --> 00:38:59,480 he persuades himself that depreciating it would be more wrong 548 00:38:59,760 --> 00:39:06,199 than keeping silent. Artisan intellectuals often resemble a character in 549 00:39:06,239 --> 00:39:08,440 a Polish film who said that he only liked the 550 00:39:08,519 --> 00:39:13,519 songs he knew. They too, reduce everything to what they know, 551 00:39:14,119 --> 00:39:17,159 being unable to recognize the value of anything else. So 552 00:39:17,239 --> 00:39:21,559 when they put Onigen on stage, they make the title 553 00:39:21,679 --> 00:39:26,119 character and his friend Lensky two homosexuals joined by mutual attraction. 554 00:39:27,159 --> 00:39:30,679 This is an absolutely idiotic supposition, but well illustrates what 555 00:39:31,280 --> 00:39:37,119 almost compuls compulsorily passes for originality today. When they staged 556 00:39:37,119 --> 00:39:39,480 a magic Flute, the Queen of the Knight becomes the 557 00:39:39,519 --> 00:39:43,400 owner of an escort service, obviously a positive character because 558 00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:47,440 she represents sex and secret represents freedom. On the other hands, 559 00:39:47,760 --> 00:39:52,159 Zarastro is made into an evil headmaster disciplining students because 560 00:39:52,239 --> 00:39:55,519 the head masters disciplining students today has to be a 561 00:39:55,559 --> 00:39:58,840 bad man, and the new productions Romeo and Juliet are 562 00:39:58,840 --> 00:40:02,719 two junkies, and the warriors from Troy nervously wait for 563 00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:05,880 a new supply of condoms, and so on and so forth. 564 00:40:06,840 --> 00:40:10,519 All of these examples real, not made up, are sad 565 00:40:10,639 --> 00:40:14,760 proofs that artists supposed to be models of creativity and 566 00:40:14,800 --> 00:40:18,239 independence have come close to being a heard of mediocrites, 567 00:40:18,280 --> 00:40:21,679 indistinguishable from one another, whose minds have been sterilized of 568 00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:26,239 all that is new, revealing, and unexpected. That's one of 569 00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:28,800 the points that needs to be made about that, Like 570 00:40:28,880 --> 00:40:34,199 clutting Gay at Harvard, when these people are being accused 571 00:40:34,320 --> 00:40:43,599 of plagiarism, they're all plagiarizing each where are they getting 572 00:40:43,599 --> 00:40:49,480 original thought from. There's nothing new under the sun for them. 573 00:40:51,199 --> 00:40:55,519 They're not allowed to let anything else in. They read 574 00:40:55,719 --> 00:40:58,320 the same things, and they read them over and over again. 575 00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:01,679 Of course it's going to be in there. There are 576 00:41:02,079 --> 00:41:07,239 sayings that I say that I don't even because I 577 00:41:07,320 --> 00:41:09,559 read a lot of the same I read a lot 578 00:41:09,559 --> 00:41:13,519 of the same authors. Sometimes I'll fall into the same 579 00:41:13,559 --> 00:41:17,239 thing where I'll just be repeating lines that I've read 580 00:41:17,239 --> 00:41:23,800 in a book because I think they're they're relevant. You 581 00:41:23,880 --> 00:41:26,599 read them enough times and you're just you're not going 582 00:41:26,639 --> 00:41:30,760 to give credit for them anymore, because I mean, basically 583 00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:37,480 it's become my own almost so the whole Oh, these 584 00:41:37,519 --> 00:41:42,320 are plagiarists and everything. There's only so much source material 585 00:41:42,360 --> 00:41:50,360 they can drive anything from. The authors and artists usually 586 00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:53,119 defend themselves by saying that they do all these pathetic 587 00:41:53,159 --> 00:41:56,079 experiments mainly for today's audience, who find the old text 588 00:41:56,119 --> 00:41:59,280 utterly unrelated to real experience, and who, in order to 589 00:41:59,360 --> 00:42:04,360 understand those text need translations into modern cultural idioms. The 590 00:42:04,480 --> 00:42:07,360 visitudes that befall the Capulets and the Montagues will appeal 591 00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:11,079 to modern theatergoers only if the families from sixteenth century 592 00:42:11,079 --> 00:42:14,920 Italy are turned into two gangs in an American metropolis, 593 00:42:15,119 --> 00:42:17,960 and if Romeo and Juliet, instead of wearing strange costumes, 594 00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:21,559 are making long speeches in a funny language, become two junkies, 595 00:42:21,639 --> 00:42:24,719 or some other characters well known from the movies and television. 596 00:42:25,280 --> 00:42:28,519 These arguments and practices that have trivialized a modern reception 597 00:42:28,559 --> 00:42:31,239 of the classical art bring to mind the arguments and 598 00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:34,880 practices of the communist artists, who just like their counterparts 599 00:42:34,920 --> 00:42:38,719 today organize themselves into a herd in whose productions were 600 00:42:38,800 --> 00:42:43,159 equally predictable. What they were doing was supposedly also for 601 00:42:43,239 --> 00:42:46,559 the audience, a different one, to be sure, but equally 602 00:42:46,840 --> 00:42:49,280 as it was then assumed, fed up with the old 603 00:42:49,320 --> 00:42:53,480 style view of literature. So the communist artists modernize the 604 00:42:53,519 --> 00:42:56,679 classics to adapt the old stories to the new sensibility 605 00:42:56,679 --> 00:43:01,000 of the communist society. They made Hamlet a progressive medical activists, 606 00:43:01,199 --> 00:43:05,199 and a Karenna a victim of class egoism, Antigone a 607 00:43:05,280 --> 00:43:11,280 pioneer of the woman's movement, etc. The truth is that 608 00:43:11,320 --> 00:43:15,280 the modern artists, no less than their predecessors, make those 609 00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:18,159 these crude updates of the classics, not for the audience 610 00:43:18,199 --> 00:43:22,199 but for themselves. Their works well reflect their imagination and 611 00:43:22,280 --> 00:43:25,559 mental capacities, which are just as flat and vulgar. They 612 00:43:25,599 --> 00:43:28,280 sometimes try to give the impression, mostly in interviews and 613 00:43:28,360 --> 00:43:32,679 press conferences, that this flatness is only apparent, that underneath 614 00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:39,000 their works boil with irony, ambiguity, and of subversive polemics 615 00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:42,599 with the old masters, all these being allegedly an attempt 616 00:43:42,599 --> 00:43:45,440 to bring to light an unorthodox message hidden in the 617 00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:49,400 classical literature. Sometimes the artists pretend to Sometimes the artists 618 00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:55,559 pretend to be like Gombrukwis Erdeduc, who rebelled against the Classics, 619 00:43:55,599 --> 00:43:58,719 asking resolutely, how come they impress us when they do 620 00:43:58,800 --> 00:44:02,519 not impress us at all? How come they impress us 621 00:44:02,559 --> 00:44:08,239 when they don't when they do not impress us at all? Huh? However, 622 00:44:08,280 --> 00:44:10,480 the same question, repeated a thousand times today by the 623 00:44:10,559 --> 00:44:12,880 vulgar minds, has come to have the value of a 624 00:44:12,960 --> 00:44:18,719 television commercial. Perhaps more adequate would be to compare the 625 00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:21,360 artists with their aversions of the Classics, to another of 626 00:44:21,440 --> 00:44:28,440 Gmbrus Gumberg Gumberwitz's characters, Miutus, known for his notorious fascination 627 00:44:28,519 --> 00:44:31,119 with the vulgar and the low. This last analogy may 628 00:44:31,159 --> 00:44:36,480 be quite instructive. Inferdituke infurditerk Meredis, I know I'm pronouncing 629 00:44:36,519 --> 00:44:41,880 that wrong. Don't be mad at me, especially Pollocks. I'm 630 00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:44,679 one of got half of that in me, so leave 631 00:44:44,719 --> 00:44:51,760 me alone. Inferdi Dirk minus defeats his adversary Siphon, a 632 00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:55,119 defender of the high and the sublime, by raping him verbally, 633 00:44:55,199 --> 00:44:57,679 that is, through his ears. Just as our authors and 634 00:44:57,840 --> 00:45:00,480 artists seem to triumph by raping us through our ears 635 00:45:00,559 --> 00:45:06,519 and eyes, and above all through intellect and Gumbrukwitz's Gumberwitz's 636 00:45:07,079 --> 00:45:10,400 the novel. The episode ends with the death of Siphon, 637 00:45:10,559 --> 00:45:14,559 unable to hear the humiliation and Mietus during his search 638 00:45:14,599 --> 00:45:18,000 for the vulgar, finally at his own request, to his delight, 639 00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:21,400 having his face slap by a young farm hand. For 640 00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:24,199 the time being, today's farm hands, far more culture than 641 00:45:24,239 --> 00:45:27,920 their literary counterparts, kissed the hands of meat dislike characters, 642 00:45:28,119 --> 00:45:30,519 but one cannot rule out that the time will come 643 00:45:30,559 --> 00:45:33,840 when they will slap their master's faces, and not necessarily 644 00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:38,239 at their request. The liberal democratic man, especially if he 645 00:45:38,320 --> 00:45:41,440 is an intellectual or an artist, is very reluctant to learn, 646 00:45:41,719 --> 00:45:43,880 but at the same time all too eager to teach. 647 00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:48,960 This trait of his character is in a way understandable 648 00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:52,800 once we remember that his nature was considerably impoverished by 649 00:45:52,840 --> 00:45:56,400 his turning back on standards of classical and Christian anthropology. 650 00:45:57,079 --> 00:45:59,880 He lost, or, rather, as his apologists would have put it, 651 00:46:00,239 --> 00:46:04,239 was relieved of the intellectual instruments deemed unnecessary that would 652 00:46:04,320 --> 00:46:07,639 enable him to describe the inadequacy of his existence and 653 00:46:07,639 --> 00:46:11,079 to articulate a sense of want. He is, as Ortega 654 00:46:11,159 --> 00:46:14,400 once put it, a self satisfied individual, not in the 655 00:46:14,440 --> 00:46:17,679 sense that he occasionally fails to feel his misery or 656 00:46:17,719 --> 00:46:20,480 to be haunted by a fear of death, a disgust 657 00:46:20,480 --> 00:46:24,239 of meaninglessness, a fatigue of the mystification that, as he 658 00:46:24,280 --> 00:46:27,719 begins to realize, more and more acutely surrounds him. But 659 00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:30,320 because he assumes, and never has the slightest doubt that 660 00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:33,719 he is in possession of the entirety of the human experience. 661 00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:37,880 Looking around, he finds hardly anything that would put this 662 00:46:37,960 --> 00:46:41,599 conviction into question, and a lot that gives it practically 663 00:46:41,639 --> 00:46:47,159 each day and with each development, a strong corroboration. All right, 664 00:46:47,199 --> 00:46:48,679 well up to part four. I'm going to finish it 665 00:46:48,800 --> 00:46:54,760 right there. We'll finish this out next episode. Yeah, that's it. 666 00:46:56,480 --> 00:46:59,320 Go to my substack. Look up my substack at Pekiniana 667 00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:04,440 Show and check out the updates I've done on North Carolina. 668 00:47:04,679 --> 00:47:07,400 What's going on with the relief in North Carolina and 669 00:47:07,480 --> 00:47:11,840 exactly what they need there, and I list exactly what's 670 00:47:11,920 --> 00:47:15,880 necessary to keep people warm and keep people housed up there. 671 00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:21,639 And if you can donate, and if you can contribute 672 00:47:21,679 --> 00:47:24,760 in any way, please do all right, thank you very 673 00:47:24,840 --> 00:47:28,360 much and see you on episode eight.