I agree with you about the libertarian thing, hell I feel it myself although pragmatically I wonder how livable it is as an idea (incidentally I do share the skepticism of gun control, within reason) and suspect with Gore Vidal that the whole modern post-1945 state is suspect (although again, I also reap the rewards of its existence, and don’t necessarily want to return to what preceded it!) On the language point I wanted to ask, did the idea that malign speech produces evil on a 1:1 basis, that there is no critical thinking, that representation produces reality come out of the academy too? I know there’s a little bit of it in the midcentury liberal critique of fascism as a product of radio etc, but beyond that I have no idea
The is-it-livable question is why I call it a sensibility; a state that operates within the constraints of this broad cultural sensibility will be better—i.e., less abusive toward the citizens—than one that doesn't. Logo and some other CCPphiles were bitching on Twitter that the US government's gradual backing-off on covid restrictions (when China was still locking down) just gave the liberal system more legitimacy because it revealed itself to be flexible. I was thinking: yes, this is the whole point of a liberal system!
I think in its modern form the language-violence equation is academic, a product of the linguistic turn in the humanities, from Nietzsche's idea that truth is a mobile army of metaphors, Heidegger's idea that language speaks us, Saussure's stress on language as arbitrary system constraining the speaker, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis—and then from all of this to the poststructuralist idea that the subject is wholly constituted by language. (I say in its modern form because the root of this idea is in magic spells, but then modern occultism, sigil magic and the like, is contemporaneous with the linguistic turn.) I see why a professor would be attracted to this idea, but find it strange when a novelist is, since a novelist should know how hard it is to fit even one word to the immense and shifting sea of idea-images in one's mind. Shelley said the deep truth is imageless, but, really, the deep truth is wordless.
All that makes sense-I'm familiar with about half of that (I'll leave it open whether I mean the philosophy or the occult magic stuff) with the internet and social media specifically providing the degrading effect wherein what was a (I think not entirely unwarranted) liberal suspicion of a certain kind of speech becomes the vulgar online left idea that merely to be exposed to propaganda is the same as believing! Although even there you have a curious case (like the point I made about trump last week) where even the online left themselves seem to quietly admit that this isn't really a livable idea, and admission of past bigotry/wrongthink etc still often gets you sent to the outer darkness. I've always thought if one really thought we were all completely conditioned to be racist/homophobic etc (I don't completely disagree that we are, just not to the point that it nullifies all agency) the whole idea of cancellation for past misdeeds would effectively be nonsensical!
I agree with you about the libertarian thing, hell I feel it myself although pragmatically I wonder how livable it is as an idea (incidentally I do share the skepticism of gun control, within reason) and suspect with Gore Vidal that the whole modern post-1945 state is suspect (although again, I also reap the rewards of its existence, and don’t necessarily want to return to what preceded it!) On the language point I wanted to ask, did the idea that malign speech produces evil on a 1:1 basis, that there is no critical thinking, that representation produces reality come out of the academy too? I know there’s a little bit of it in the midcentury liberal critique of fascism as a product of radio etc, but beyond that I have no idea
The is-it-livable question is why I call it a sensibility; a state that operates within the constraints of this broad cultural sensibility will be better—i.e., less abusive toward the citizens—than one that doesn't. Logo and some other CCPphiles were bitching on Twitter that the US government's gradual backing-off on covid restrictions (when China was still locking down) just gave the liberal system more legitimacy because it revealed itself to be flexible. I was thinking: yes, this is the whole point of a liberal system!
I think in its modern form the language-violence equation is academic, a product of the linguistic turn in the humanities, from Nietzsche's idea that truth is a mobile army of metaphors, Heidegger's idea that language speaks us, Saussure's stress on language as arbitrary system constraining the speaker, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis—and then from all of this to the poststructuralist idea that the subject is wholly constituted by language. (I say in its modern form because the root of this idea is in magic spells, but then modern occultism, sigil magic and the like, is contemporaneous with the linguistic turn.) I see why a professor would be attracted to this idea, but find it strange when a novelist is, since a novelist should know how hard it is to fit even one word to the immense and shifting sea of idea-images in one's mind. Shelley said the deep truth is imageless, but, really, the deep truth is wordless.
All that makes sense-I'm familiar with about half of that (I'll leave it open whether I mean the philosophy or the occult magic stuff) with the internet and social media specifically providing the degrading effect wherein what was a (I think not entirely unwarranted) liberal suspicion of a certain kind of speech becomes the vulgar online left idea that merely to be exposed to propaganda is the same as believing! Although even there you have a curious case (like the point I made about trump last week) where even the online left themselves seem to quietly admit that this isn't really a livable idea, and admission of past bigotry/wrongthink etc still often gets you sent to the outer darkness. I've always thought if one really thought we were all completely conditioned to be racist/homophobic etc (I don't completely disagree that we are, just not to the point that it nullifies all agency) the whole idea of cancellation for past misdeeds would effectively be nonsensical!