Thin Red Line For Left?
In several of his videos, Jordan Peterson has asked a clear and straightforward question: 'What is the red line that separates left and extremist left'. The problem isn't easy on its own as it would require a proper definition of what 'left' is, and that is a minefield on its own. However, recently, after reading the book by Geoffrey Hodgson "The wrong turnings." I think I have come close enough to answer the question. What we have to remember is that original 'left' - were a bunch of people opposing monarchy and sitting to the left of the presiding member's chair in parliament. The most important thing for the original left was what John Locke called God's rights or fundamental natural rights - as some might call them - "life, liberty, and property."
Marx and 'bolsheviks' after him essentially deprived people of the property right (not that everything else was fine). God's rights (inalianable rights) probably defined the thin red line between left and extremism. Hence, in essence, it is all fine as long as people aren't deprived of their inalienable rights.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.There is right and wrong if I have to think about it and get my feelings involved it is usually wrong. To me there is no grey area. To me the question you are asking is what is the difference between wrong and really wrong. Socialism is fine as long as it is voluntary. When you run out of other people's money it fails.
Allen-Qiller
Level 4
Dec 25, 2019
0
Indeed socialism on the big scale is impossible and that has been shown experimentally and theoretically. However, left exists and should continue to, but it is important to understand the redlines.
Civilization it seems to be is based on freewill. It is counter intuitive in the sense that social structures such as religion appear to limit choice or what has come to be known as freedom. Punishment is rather absurd, even or maybe especially punishment in an after live, if the individual cannot choose to do otherwise. Socialism to quote E.O. Wilson is a great idea, wrong species. Ants do not have freewill because there was no evolutionary advantage in them evolving it. Ants do not act socially to avoid punishment but humans do.
Even in our primate cousins the social structure is maintained by punishments and rewards but as Peterson has pointed out structures based on too much punishment tend to collapse. It should be fairly obvious that the advantage of individuals having choice is that it is more adaptive than ant like behaviour.
The deep question is if social structures in complex animals are abstract. Freewill in humans is clearly a social construction and fundamentally abstract in the way money is. The confusion results from the misunderstanding that the abstract isn't "real". Even social insects have "language" bees do dances to communicate the direction and distance to food sources among other things. The dance can be seen as an abstract representation. It would be surprising if more complex social animals would not have even more complex abstractions such as "wild justice".
Once you have established that abstract representations are real it isn't that much of stretch to start seeing "freewill" as "real". It doesn't matter if you take a strict determinist view as say Dan Dennett does and hold that even consciousness is an illusion.
The problem with socialism is, especially today where the success of scientific determinism is so evident, is that even if it were possible for it to not be authoritarian it denies individual responsibility. The individual responsibility that depends on freewill.
The question becomes who has the freewill necessary to make choices. Is it only the intellectual elite? You don't have to deny that complexity increases choice to see how terribly badly that is going to go. If the less gifted are going to be held responsible for failing to follow the edicts of their betters punishment becomes either arbitrary or robotic in ways the species is not evolved to cope with.
More latter if the mood strikes me.
wolfhnd
Level 8
Nov 10, 2019
0
I understand that abstraction is real and just in this case can be simply substituted by the word generalisation. However, I need to think about your assertion that "free will is a social construct".
I see you belong to the Sam Harris group. To keep my arguments grounded in in some minimal degree of intellectual rigor I have adopted Daniel Dennett's definition of freewill more or less. I think what many people missed when Dennett and Harris debated freewill is that Dennett is as much a determinist as Harris. The difference I believe between the two is that Dennett has adopted something of the American pragmatism in his thinking. He doesn't believe in freewill he simply believes that the concept is a necessary component of civilization. I think to his scientific friends such as Harris that makes Dennett a fuzzy thinker.
I go a bit further fuzzy than Dennett because I think that the Determinists may actually be wrong in a narrow sense. The world does seem to be deterministic at all but the tiniest of scales, such as those that quantum physics deals with, but as Stephen Wolfram has pointed out traditional science seems unable to adequately address complex chaotic systems. Not being a genius myself I have no idea why. It could simply be complexity itself.
Myself I'm a bit sceptical of immergent properties. I'm aware that to argue otherwise is to commit the logical fallacy of division. However I don't really accept Dennett's argument that consciousness is a delusion. I would agree that it is a necessary precondition but that could simply be a matter of degree not kind. What is missing is a unifying theory of information. As an intuitive position I would argue that those who are suggesting that "reality" is made of information are on the right track making "consciousness" a property not a condition.
To support my argument I offer Landauer's principle. Data it would seem is not just a cultural abstraction but has physical properties. This would be consistent with Wolfram's position that the best way to understand reality is through evolving patterns. It this way consciousness becomes a pattern of data in a physical not abstract sense and is likely a property not a product of complexity. Freewill then would also be a property that doesn't so much immerge from complexity but only becomes recognizable at a certain level of complexity. All evolved complex systems are in a way conscious, it is a matter of degree not kind.
I accept that I'm just playing a semantical game. That said language is a cultural tool. We don't think because we have language but language is a lever or extension for thought. That would be consistent with my position that information has a physical "reality". What would be consistent in terms of freewill then is that it is leveraged by swarm intelligence. It exists independent of but is leveraged by complexity.
Even the simplest organisms make "choices". They are attracted towards resources and a way from dangers. Those choices are based on information from the surrounding environment. What separates simple organisms from more complex organisms is how far into the future information can be projected to arrive at appropriate behavior to increase fitness.
Fitness is simply the ability to reproduce. Group selection however tells us that fitness can be either direct or indirect. E. O. Wilson set us free from thinking of fitness as a property of individuals. Human fitness is based on intelligence but not individual intelligence but swarm intelligence culturally transmitted. This is how freewill has become a necessary condition for "civilization". You can only understand it if you can imagine that termites also have a very limited capacity for freewill. That is the what Wilson missed when he said socialism great idea wrong species. Civilization in this sense is just a more complex pattern in humans than chimpanzees. It immerses out of population density. What makes socialism wrong for our species is it eliminates the randomness necessary for adaptation. The same randomness that drives not only evolution but computing and thought.
Left: Collectivist
Right: Individualist
I find that more useful, and more relevant, than the seating chart from a disastrous revolution upon which the terms originated. They were opposing monarchy, but in favor of the collective, not the individual.
They got it wrong. And we saw how that turned out.
The Red Line was the moment the Left abandoned the principle of Individual Sovereignty.
It is the very core principle of our society. It is the entire basis for recognizing inalienable rights in the first place.
There is no balance, no "correct amount" of tyranny. Tyranny always begets more tyranny.
It is a hole in the dam. It literally doesn't matter how small it begins, any hole at all is the beginning of the end.
Abandon that principle, and you've crossed the line. It doesn't matter why you crossed it, because the solution promises to be immeasurably worse than whatever problem you thought you were solving.
rway
Level 7
Nov 7, 2019
3
So does it mean that you would agree with me that betraying inalienable rights is the red line?
rway:
@Dr_Mike
Yes, exactly. But there is no point at which the Left "crosses the line..."
The Left exists entirely on the wrong side of the line, it's their defining characteristic.
The main point is what you pointed out: the entire question rests on the definitions of Left and Right.
I find it both sufficient and consistent, to consider the terms as the relative ends of a single continuum that represents where sovereignty resides; in the Collective (Left) or in the Individual (Right).
The continuum has a constant potential to the Left, driven by inescapable human nature: envy, greed, lust for power, etc.; even altruism when paired with gullibility and exposed to the rest.
This constant potential requires a nearly immutable barrier to prevent an otherwise inevitable and "Progressive" slide to the left and into tyranny.
In the U.S. that barrier was supposed to be the Constitution, but I'm afraid it's been breached.
I think it boils down to control. On the left you have community driven ideals such as government funded this or that to help said subgroup. On the right you have more individualistic freedom with the choice to help others. The government helps on basic things but not to a larger amount like the left does. It gets extreme on both sides when control over peoples freedom is in play. As an example: For the right it would be the battle over right to choose/abortion and wanting to control people's options based on a moralistic faith based approach. The example for the left being controlling people's right to bear arms or their social viewpoints on individual based topics such as gender/sex/sexual orientation. If you do not agree then you are a part of the problem mentality.
In short, Whichever side wants to take control over individual freedom is when you have over stepped the line from right/left to far right/left.
250fusion
Level 1
Nov 4, 2019
1
rway:
You can't support human rights, and also claim a right to homicide; the two are mutually exclusive.
You can only reconcile that contradiction by pretending that the victim is not a human in the first place.
That pretense has no basis in reason or logic. It's just rationalization. Delusion.
Though this is largely true, I think it evolves from the doctrine state the left uses, as in that they have dogma and doctrine that must be followed, or you are "evil". You cannot be simply "wrong", and have made a mistake. Hence, their extreme end is a fanatic, trying to appear "more good" by their doctrines. Ask a catholic to identify an extremist catholic, to be nice about it, because we already know we can't ask about Islam, or the Climate Change doctrines. Answer: fanatics are just more "devout" members. Not something all will follow, but something some will admire from the doctrine and dogma standpoints used.
Hence, no definable line.
CraftyDwarf
Level 4
Nov 4, 2019
2
Extreme Catholic, don’t share much, they live their lives behind closed doors! They attend their churches, live by the laws of God, teach their children the same, and the process continues, until one of them falls out of Grace!
@Klm2029 Well, in part. The behind closed doors is definitely important, and the other definitions you mention are per the faith(seeming to be yours). Now, I am not speaking to offend, but to analyze deeply, and the difference is hard for most. If one of these internalized, extreme catholics gets into a dogma that more corporal based penance is the thing that must be done, for example, we would see similar effects. First, because their scope of view is of those more doctrine pure in the first place(those monks and priests nearby), this will only seems as somewhat severe to those around him, and likely acceptable. But should this person end up in broader public, they are very likely to get caught up in their own zeal, dole out some very medieval judgement on what trips them out the most. The most fanatic and zealous are almost always deep in the belief, clergy and monastic types. Having a family most of the time brings some mediation of reality to a belief. I am not saying whether that is good or bad for the belief, only that it happens.
The definition of the lines comes down to the definition of what Left is. Hodgson in his book Wrong Turnings does a good job of providing one
It's the same line that separates moderate and radical Islam. There isn't one, really.
LesLeslie
Level 3
Nov 3, 2019
1
I would disagree with this line of thought and it is not because I support Islam, but simply because this example isn't really working here.
@Dr_Mike
I think possibly the issue with most dogma is the degree to which it is adopted and acted on. As to religious dogma, of any faith, it depends on if you are devout to your faith, and practice it in your personal life, you remain safely within the "red line." When you carry that faith into the community and attempt to impress that ideology (physically confronting or harassing) on others who are disinterested, you have crossed that line. An example may be if you are an evangelist who practices your faith in church, sets up a revival tent on the public square and preaches to those who choose to enter the tent, you are doing ok. When you physically grab people by the arm and force them into the tent, you have crossed the line. A Muslim that considers homosexuality a mortal sin chooses not to do business with that community, or holds that group in contempt is fine, but if that contempt crosses over to throwing said homosexuals off a building, they have crossed that line.
@FarmhandMO again this is true in a private setting, but what do you do when your government is left wing
@Dr_Mike You participate in the political process to change the left wing government, or challenge it. There are many steps before either immigration or outright rebellion decisions must be made.
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