Wednesday 8 February 2012

Modern society is like a man who has lied to his wife - Kristor comments

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From a comment by Kristor:

The problem of modernity is not a surfeit of logic and rationality, but a deficit thereof.

Or no, wait, that’s not quite accurate either. The problem is not that modernity is too rational, but that it is too timorous and dishonest, too afraid of the Real.

It applies its superabundant rationality – which is, after all, one of its strengths, its virtues (think of the brilliant achievements of massive coordination: DDay, the Moon landings, the internet) – to the development, elaboration – and, more and more, the rescue – of a fundamentally specious and inadequate model of reality.

Our society is like a man who, once having lied to his wife, finds himself forced thereby to devote more and more of his mental resources to the maintenance of his lie, keeping track of what he has said, and monitoring every word that falls from his lips.

That’s what PC culture is doing. The cost is the roughly 40% (or more?) of our economic resources that are devoted to the fake economy – to the business of fakery, pretense, and compliance with the ridiculous pretense.

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2 comments:

Ryan said...

The PC are aware they can't compete with Truth over quality. Hence, they're desperately attempting to drive up the price of verification with the expectation that, either lacking discernment or refusing to spend so much, we'll simply settle for cheap-enough knock-offs (which always require a scarcity of public honesty & faith).

Bruce Charlton said...

@Ryan - " desperately attempting to drive up the price of verification"

Nicely put.