(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



SPEAKING TRUTH ABOUT NATURE, SCIENCE, AND SOCIETY [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2023-02-15  

The alt-right takeover of the Republican Party has brought conspiracy paranoia mainstream. The wacko-space alien ideas are still fringe phenomena, but a majority of Republicans have slid from questions about “how did Trump not win the election?” to a more general belief that our government, schools, culture, and economy are being manipulated by secret groups whose goal is to destroy “traditional” America. Conspiracies of small groups of greedy people in high places do occur, probably more frequently than we know. And it's a process that is much easier to understand than the subtleties of class dynamics – a topic that keeps the most brilliant theorists in endless and inconclusive argument.

But the extreme paranoia and fanned fury at the invisible evil-doers that QAnon so successfully promotes pushes people into a kind of apocalyptic hysteria. This kind of belief destroys people’s willingness to work through the slow discussions and compromises that democracy requires, justifying the appeals of authoritarian vigilantism. Just as insidiously, it throws open the door to traditional prejudices against Others – from Jews to Blacks to non-Christians to foreigners to Communist/anarchist/socialists to urban elites to criminal gangs and more.

FROM PREJUDICE TO LIBERTARIANISM

As if that’s not bad enough, there’s another far-right theme with equally disturbing implications. In this era of brutal regional wars, headline-grabbing international terrorism, socially disruptive mass migrations, natural and human-made weather disasters, and increasingly unstable economic conditions it is easy to see life as a jungle. If your job has run away, your rent or mortgage payments are unaffordable, grocery bills busting your budget, it’s not hard to feel that you’re on your own, that “every tub stands on its own bottom,” that the people who are running things not only don’t care about you but may even be working to hurt you.

After all, we all know that we’re ultimately responsible for ourselves. Success starts from believing in yourself. Aspire high. God helps those who help themselves. We can become whatever we work hard enough for. If life gives you lemons it’s our job to make lemonade. The “gospel of success” is an American tradition.

It’s not all self-centered – there is an ethical twist to taking care of your own. It is morally correct that your first responsibilities (beyond yourself) are to your family, then to your friends, and only afterwards in widening and less intense circles outward. Not that you don’t care at all for others, they’re just a much lower priority than those you directly love and know. It is human, natural, and proper to share what you have with outsiders only after your family needs are met. And, in times of crisis or limited resources, it is totally appropriate to draw the circles tight. It is not immoral to demand that the US take better care of our own before we are diverted into helping people in far-away places.

But at the core of all this lurks a vicious social Darwinism, a distortion of evolutionary science that sees all of life as a battle of each against all, of dog against dog. Self-interest rules. It sees human life as an endless competition that is simply the inevitable extension of nature’s reality – a struggle by every living thing for dominance and even survival over every other living thing. Nature is brutal and unforgiving to the weak. It is, as Tennyson wrote, “red in tooth and claw.” Lions eat their prey alive.

In fact, putting too much emphasis on helping the weak, the lost, the losers is unnatural, perhaps even unethical. It diverts your attention and resources from your own climb. It increases competition and the collective depletion of resources. It weakens the community. From there it’s not much of a leap to agree that tax-funded public social services and public health are misguided at best and possibly even dangerous attacks on your own well-being.

This radical libertarianism is attractive to many because it’s not all that different from traditional American individualism. Our society offers opportunity, not results. Freedom means doing your own thing. Liberty means not being constrained by others, especially by governments.

TIME TO BE PUSHY

At some point, progressives have to more explicitly address the fallacies of the science and philosophy of these far-right beliefs. Nature is as symbiotic as it is parasitic. The inter-dependence and mutually beneficial relationships between living things is as defining as their competition. We now know that even the trees talk to each other through networks of subterranean fungi, sharing food and information. Ecological science has clarified that all of life exists within systems of endless variety and scale.

And human beings are inherently social animals. If not connected to and cared for by others at birth, we die; if left alone during childhood, we go psychopathic. No entrepreneur ever built anything without building on the social and physical contributions of others. Yes, we build our own lives and worlds, but we don’t do it alone and we don’t do it in isolation.

Simply proclaiming that “life is good” is not enough, and not even totally true. Life, in all its forms, is complicated, but of tensions and contradictory forces. Our job is to find a sustainable balance that allows us to live and work together as part of the larger, natural whole. Not being true to ourselves leaves us empty; but without empathy and community we flounder.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/15/2070865/-SPEAKING-TRUTH-ABOUT-NATURE-SCIENCE-AND-SOCIETY

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/