Excellent introduction! I'm not so much averse, it's just that I haven't read the foundational liberal thinkers (Hobbes, Locke, and Smith, attorneys at law) since late college or early grad school and would have to revisit them to comment in great detail. I think in general this empiricist liberalism had to be adjusted by the Romantic insistence on the shaping power of the imagination, which can be taken in constrained (we are slaves to our inner essences) or unconstrained (if we can dream it we can do it) directions or somewhere in the middle (romantic realism!). As a romantic realist I also believe cases can be made for accelerationism and sado-masochism, but probably not depressive realism. Too much like the sin of despair for my own residual/vestigial/incorrigible Ameri-Christian sensibility.
Well, the cases for both accelerationism and sadomasochism might just be (respectively) the familiar versions of right- and left-libertarianism I grew up with. Technological development plus unlimited economic growth will unconstrain us all. And if we all own our own S-to-M-and-back-again perversities rather than preserving them as secret sources of blackmailable shame, we can breathe more freely in our constraints. Seems like we partly tried the latter in the woke era and it didn't really work because we took identity too seriously, and are now (in America anyway) about to try the former in the based era, results pending Elon's latest brainwave.
I agree on the identity neurosis which turned kinks from psychoanalytically interesting information to human capital traits which can be categorised Myers Briggs-like. At least Sade had the imagination to be evil.
Excellent introduction! I'm not so much averse, it's just that I haven't read the foundational liberal thinkers (Hobbes, Locke, and Smith, attorneys at law) since late college or early grad school and would have to revisit them to comment in great detail. I think in general this empiricist liberalism had to be adjusted by the Romantic insistence on the shaping power of the imagination, which can be taken in constrained (we are slaves to our inner essences) or unconstrained (if we can dream it we can do it) directions or somewhere in the middle (romantic realism!). As a romantic realist I also believe cases can be made for accelerationism and sado-masochism, but probably not depressive realism. Too much like the sin of despair for my own residual/vestigial/incorrigible Ameri-Christian sensibility.
Thank you! I would especially be interested to hear the case for sadomasochism!
Well, the cases for both accelerationism and sadomasochism might just be (respectively) the familiar versions of right- and left-libertarianism I grew up with. Technological development plus unlimited economic growth will unconstrain us all. And if we all own our own S-to-M-and-back-again perversities rather than preserving them as secret sources of blackmailable shame, we can breathe more freely in our constraints. Seems like we partly tried the latter in the woke era and it didn't really work because we took identity too seriously, and are now (in America anyway) about to try the former in the based era, results pending Elon's latest brainwave.
I agree on the identity neurosis which turned kinks from psychoanalytically interesting information to human capital traits which can be categorised Myers Briggs-like. At least Sade had the imagination to be evil.
"Pending" indeed, but maybe I'm just a depressive realist!
Pleased to meet you, Mary Jane Eyre. Would you care for a line of Lucy Snowe? (Sorry)
Haha! Good one!
This is fun.
This is awesome! I love that this is your idea of speaking as simply as possible!
Thank you! I do confess I may not always the most reliable of narrators…