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Showing posts with the label progress

Human Species, Intractably Divided on Questions of Value and Definitions of the Best Regime“

What is interesting in engaging with ChatGPT is not the answers themselves as the way it does generate them. My questions and comments are in red. _______________ “Human species, intractably divided on questions of value and definitions of the best regime.” How accurate is this? The quote —  “human species, intractably divided on questions of value and definitions of the best regime”  — is broadly accurate and reflects a deep tension in political philosophy, anthropology, and international relations. Here’s a breakdown of how and why this is accurate: Why it's accurate Historical Evidence Across history and cultures, humans have been deeply divided over: What constitutes justice (e.g., divine law vs. secular law). What makes a good society (e.g., hierarchy vs. equality, liberty vs. order). Who should rule (e.g., monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, technocracy). Competing Philosophical Traditions From  Plato and Aristotle  to  Rawls, Foucault, and Fanon , political...

Quote of the Week: Progress of the Enlightenment

Rosa Luxemburg was one of the pioneers of a study of racism and cultural appropriation as distinctive yet integrated components of an analysis of capitalism where exploitation and racial subordination are mutually reinforcing.  The progress of the humanistic era of the Enlightenment”, she remarked sarcastically while commenting on German colonialism at the end of the 18th century, could be seen in how the captain of a ship transporting slaves from Guinea to Guyana in South America, “to alleviate their [the slaves] melancholy and to keep them from dying off, allowed them to dance on the ship’s deck with music and whip cracks every evening, something to which the more brutal Spanish traders had not resorted. Luxemburg 1910 [CW: 209])

Age of Progress or Regression?

“Marc*: “We believe that there is no material problem … that cannot be solved by more technology. We had a problem of starvation, so we invented the Green Revolution.”  Göran**: “Sixty years after the Green Revolution, around 733 million people were hungry and undernourished in 2023, according to the World Health Organization — an increase of 152 million since 2019.” Marc: “We had a problem of darkness, so we invented electric lighting.”  Göran: “Almost half of sub-Saharan Africans — 600 million — live without electricity.” Marc: “We had a problem of cold, so we invented indoor heating.”  Göran: “There is still a pattern of increased winter mortality in the UK.“ Marc: “We had a problem of isolation, so we invented the Internet.”  Göran: “Social isolation remains a debilitating human condition.” Marc: “We had a problem of pandemics, so we invented vaccines.”  Göran: “Excess mortality as a result of COVID-19 has been found to cor...
The local and the globa l Göran Therborn employs a very interesting approach. I recommend the following articles: - Class in the 21st Century (2012) - New Masses (2014) - Age of Progress? (2016) - Dynamics of Inequality (2017) Note: you may not find free access to all of the articles unless you have a subscription.
Pinker is, after all, an intellectual darling of the most powerful echelons of global society. He  spoke to the world’s elite  this year at the World’s Economic Forum in Davos on the perils of what he calls “political correctness,” and has been named one of  Time  magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.”  His new book is Bill Gates' favourite book of all time! Pinker claims to respect science, yet he blithely ignores fifteen thousand scientists’ desperate warning to humanity.  It should be added that Pinker is an apologist of the US imperialist violence and he is Islamophobic. The grim takeaway ... is that racist violence against African Americans has not declined at all, as Pinker suggests. Instead, it has become institutionalized into U.S. national policy in  what is known as  the school-to-prison pipeline. Pinker  unquestioningly propagates one of the great neoliberal myths of the past several decades: that “...
"In opposition to the vulgar evolutionist brand of Marxism, Benjamin does not conceive the proletarian revolution as the natural or inevitable result of economic and technical progress, but as the critical interruption of an evolution leading to catastrophe."  — Michael Löwy “One can perceive as one of the methodological aims of this work to demonstrate the possibility of a historical materialism, that has annihilated in itself the idea of progress. Here is precisely where historical materialism has to dissociate itself from the bourgeois habits of thought."  — Walter Benjamin