.

And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again? Archilochus

Thursday, July 18, 2019

More Critiques of Cynical Reason

*Slawomir Sierakowski, "Voters who knowingly usher in morally bankrupt governments are driven by “cynical reason”, unwilling to sacrifice material gains for abstract principles like liberal democracy."
We all know that politicians are cunning and cynical, but could the same now be said for the electorate?

Many of those who voted for US President Donald Trump did so knowing that he is a habitual liar with suspicious ties to Russia, just as the rank and file of the Conservatives in the United Kingdom know that Boris Johnson has lied and cheated his way to the top.

In Poland, it is no secret that the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party is packing governing institutions with its lackeys, misusing public media, rewarding cronies and undermining the independence of the courts.

Nonetheless, PiS trounced Poland’s opposition parties in the European Parliament election in May.

The fact that Poles, Britons and Americans have all ushered in morally bankrupt governments is symptomatic of what German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk described in the early 1980s as “cynical reason.”

Sloterdijk argued that, in the absence of widely shared narratives of progress, the Western elites had absorbed the lessons of the Enlightenment, but applied them in the service of narrow self-interest rather than the common good.

Social problems such as slavery, poverty and inequality were no longer attributable solely to human ignorance, and yet enlightened people lacked the determination to solve them.

As Slavoj Zizek has put it, the operation of ideology today is not “they do not know it, but they are doing it” — it is “they know it, but they are doing it anyway”.

The great ideas promising significant social change are only finding resonance among the older generation.

In Sloterdijk’s view, this cynicism began with the elite.

Now we all behave like enlightened egotists. Although we know how to fight inequalities, they are still increasing. Authoritarianism (whether Russian or Chinese) deals more efficiently with poverty than democracy does. Rich societies are little moved by wars or refugee crises.

The great ideas promising significant social change, whether social democracy or Christian democracy, are only finding resonance among the older generation.

Voters who don’t care that populists such as Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban change their stated positions from one day to the next are not blind admirers of power. They are simply advocates of their own particular interests.

If reducing greenhouse-gas emissions means closing down coal mines and coal-fired power plants, those with an interest in the coal sector will not support climate policies, just as those in wealthier areas don’t care much about laid-off coal miners.

Post-ideological axis

In Europe, the emerging division between Greens and populists seems to reflect a new post-ideological axis. On both sides of the divide, voters now behave like political operatives, highlighting certain topics while studiously avoiding others.

They have internalised the party line (often a patchwork of former left and right policies), which they then repeat in focus groups, on social media, and around the dinner table.

Political parties no longer represent voters; rather, voters represent parties, sometimes even before they emerge, as was shown by the Yellow Vest protests.

The Trump presidency, the United Kingdom’s Brexit debacle and the rise of PiS and Orban suggest a widespread loss of faith in progress.

The Eastern European vision of progress was long synonymous with the transition from communism to capitalism, but three decades of belt-tightening and waiting for a better tomorrow have taken a heavy toll on people’s confidence in liberal democracy.

Populism appeals to voters with its promise of a kind of Copernican Revolution, reversing the belt-tightening as well as the prevailing assumptions of the past.

Shortly after PiS’s victory in the European Parliament elections, in which it captured 45.5 per cent of the vote, the online news service Oko.press asked Poles: “Does the current PiS government pursue its party interest more than earlier PO-PSL (Civic Platform-Polish People’s Party) governments?”

Altogether 68 per cent of respondents answered yes, and only 24 per cent said that PiS is less self-interested than its predecessors. Even among PiS voters, 38 per cent acknowledged that the state apparatus is more politicised now than it was under PO and PSL.

When asked whether the current PiS government does more for the personal financial gain of its officials than earlier PO-PSL governments, 58 per cent deemed PO and PSL more honest.

Nonetheless, in focus groups of Polish voters, one consistently hears things like: “I know that PiS is not particularly honest, but they look out for the people; they steal and they spin, but at least they share.”

In other words, these voters support PiS despite its obvious flaws, because they do not believe they can afford to vote out the party that has been funneling cash and other social transfers their way.

Between ‘bad’ and ‘worse’

Prospect theory, the behavioural-economics model pioneered by Nobel laureates Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, predicts that people will become less risk-averse if presented with only bad options.

Our calculus depends not merely on what we can win or lose in absolute terms, but by our current situation and expectations. When someone who is anticipating a high payout receives less than expected, they will feel disappointment, rather than satisfaction at having gained anything at all.

Such heuristics show how voters can become attached to politicians such as Trump or PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński.

Polish, British and American voters have made political choices that they know to be risky because they feel as though they have nothing to lose, and their options are between “bad” and “worse.”

Upholding lofty ideals such as liberal democracy, constitutional order and press freedom feels like an unaffordable luxury. They are not willing to sacrifice material benefits for abstract principles.

Upholding lofty ideals such as liberal democracy, constitutional order and press freedom feels like an unaffordable luxury.

Who can blame them? Western multinational corporations that do business in Russia, China and elsewhere have for years been sacrificing liberal ideals in the name of profit.

As Sloterdijk observed almost 40 years ago, cynical reason trickles down. If only the same were true of wealth, history might have turned out quite differently.
*Sławomir Sierakowski, founder of the Krytyka Polityczna movement, is Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Warsaw and a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin.

12 comments:

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

Cynical reasoning :)

I'm told illegal immigration will disrupt and destroy America's welfare state, so I want to form a convoy of 53' tractor trailers and start trucking the bastards in here faster.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

...and drop them off at Mar-a-Lago and other perpetual landscaping projects

Thersites said...

Kynical reasoning is a bit more "honest", imo.

Franco Aragosta said...

______ OUR BEASTLY NATURE ______



Be aware totalitarians

Spring not just from vain Aryans.

They can be Ecclesiastical

Or fanatically fantastical ––
Idealistic –– nihilistic –– 

Or plainly just barbarians.



A tyrant is a tyrant is a tyrant

Whether coming from the Right or Left.

He'll bite you and afflict you like a fire ant,

And then reduce your store of wealth by theft.



~ Kelly Lou Byrd

Franco Aragosta said...

We are now at the 50th anniversary of our historic Feat of landing and walking on the Moon,

I find the whole issue of Space Exporation fascinating, but more than a bit a bit chilling.

The spectre of the CHALLENGER disaster that took place in 1986 –– seventeen seventeen uears lafter we successfully landed on and returned from the Moon –– still looms large over the Space Program. . . .

I believed then, –– and believe still –– that unless and until we can learn from and adhere to the basic principles laid out in the Bible telling us how to be GOOD human beings, we will only bring the same vain, selfish, self-defeating behavior into Outer Space and Beyond.

I mean IF we manage to fulfill what-too-many-today-want-to claim-as our New Manifest Destiny –– that of destoying Mother Earth and making her uninhabitable, because we failed to get along with one another ––, what possible good could come from transporting our benighted, failed species to Parts Unknown?

ALL we'd do would be to REPEAT the RUINATION we'd brought upon ourselves here at home.

After all, as Doctor Seuss famously sid, "NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO, THERE yOU ARE!

Science and Technology give clear evidence evidence of our ucredibe brilliance –– always at finding New, Different, Exciting snd ever more Complex Ways to AVOID dealing with the FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM of CONQUERING our deeply flawed HUMAN NATURE.

We keep on and on making the same stupid mistakes over and over, because we desperately want to believe there is a CURE for everything that ails us that may yet be found OUTSIDE of OURSELVES, when conquering SELF should have been u main objecive all along.

"SCIENCE" cannot save us. Only JESUS could, and more than two-thousand years after His Birth we STILL choose to CRUCIFY Him every day in a thousand ways, because it's SO difficult for most of us to ACCEPT the RESPONSIBILITY we have to FACE OURSELVES and spend the bulk of ur energy attempting to, as Kierkegaard said, "work out our own Salvation with fear and trembling."

Gert said...

I read Sloterdijk all these years ago and found it a hard going slog.

Thersites said...

Indeed. The de-eroticization of philosophy and transformation into "will to power" in the late nineteenth thru late twentieth century's "political sciences" gave birth to new tragedies from which we are unlikely to ever recover lest we courageously shed this depressive outlook, and learn to love wisdom and life once again

Franco Aragosta said...

YOu guys have syour heads stuck in the wrong places. No WONDER at least one of you is so rude, ungracious, cynical, flippant, bitter, sarcastic and perennially edged!

];^}>

Joe Conservative said...

...it beats waiting for Godot. ;p

Joe Conservative said...

:)

Joe Conservative said...

...but I go on!

Joe Conservative said...

;p