Enjoying the view from Limbo
In a recent essay, “The Ultimate Labor-Saving Device,” I recounted my response to a student’s questions about artificial intelligence, related to my previous piece, “The Intellectual Welfare State.” A central theme of that earlier discussion was the likely, or perhaps inevitable, retarding effects of increasing AI dependency on human intellectual development. This time, prodded by the same thoughtful student’s subsequent correspondence, we cut...
It is typical these days, among those still sufficiently sentient and resistant to ideological indoctrination to have wayward thoughts, to wish others a Merry Christmas with a disclaimer to the effect that Christmases, at this historical moment, do not seem to offer much to be merry about. While I certainly sympathize with that mixed tone of well-wishing lamentation, I always try to remind...
Death by Education / What is Progressivism?
by Daren Jonescu · Published February 2, 2023 · Last modified February 3, 2023
An adjunct professor foolish enough to teach an art class at a totalitarian reeducation camp in Minnesota (aka Hamline University) showed a medieval painting depicting Muhammad, after having directly advised students in the course syllabus and during the semester that this painting would be shown and discussed in her online lecture, and offering an opportunity for any students who might be inclined to...
The explosive ones. — When one considers how much the energy of young men needs to explode, one is not surprised that they decide for this cause or that without being at all subtle or choosy. What attracts them is the sight of the zeal that surrounds a cause — as it were, the sight of the burning fuse, and not the cause...
Reason as hatred.— If disapproving of someone’s behavior, or disagreeing with his reasoning, is to be understood as an expression of hatred for the person, and if all hatred in turn may be regarded as violence, in the moral and perhaps legal senses, then all rational discussion or moral argument is effectively criminalized, and anyone who dares to express disagreement or disapproval of...
There is very little profit to be made from the truth, whereas there is tremendous profit to be made from lies. The reason is simple: People pay for what they think they need, and most people feel an overwhelming need for comfort and reassurance, which are precisely what all effective lies (and liars) are offering. Truth, by contrast, neither cares what will make...
Death by Education / Ideas and Reflections / Pandemic that Ate a Planet
by Daren Jonescu · Published September 14, 2022
George Clooney, a thoroughly inconsequential member of an ultimately inconsequential profession who because he is famous for being famous believes, like so many of his ilk, that the world ought to care what he thinks about important political issues, has praised Australia’s Covid-19 response, and declared, on the basis of his no doubt expert-analyzed calculations, that 900,000 lives would have been saved had...
The political problem.— If the best people — the most talented, most thoughtful, most learned, most dedicated, most nobly motivated — went into politics, the world would be almost exactly the opposite of what it is right now. But the best people, by definition, will never enter politics — or if they do, will fail and come to despise themselves. For “best,” in...
Good-and-Evil is the horizontal axis. Good-and-Bad is the vertical axis. The horizontal axis measures the moral realm — practical and “human, all too human” — where the standard is right and wrong in a social context. The vertical axis measures the cosmic or theoretical realm, where the standard is either wisdom vs. ignorance (Plato) or life-enhancement vs. life-diminution (Nietzsche). That either-or is not...
Every society, without exception, tends to harden its founding presuppositions and hopes into a set of stated and unstated rules for living. Gradually, the great character and thought needed to bring a society into being give way to the forced teaching and rote learning of the simplified and simplifying rules deemed necessary to preserve that society. And this in turn reduces maturation to...
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