[extropy-chat] Re: The Force of Human Freedom

Greg Burch gregburch at gregburch.net
Thu Feb 3 01:04:04 UTC 2005


[This is a post I tried to send early this morning CST.  I have a crunch coming on at work, so I may not see replies for a while.]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Giu1i0Pri5c0
> Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 3:48 AM
> To: ExI chat list
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Re: The Force of Human Freedom
> 
> 
> The "misogynistic warrior-cult" of islam is clearly the opposite of
> the "crippling relativism" that you dislike in modern western culture:
> they believe in their holy war against the west with a fervor
> untainted by doubt, complex ideas, and crippling relativism.
> So it seems to me that if you disapprove relativism in our culture,
> you should approve its absence in theirs.
> Or are just stating that we are good and they are bad without
> accepting the burden of proof?
> Or have I misunderstood something?
> G.

There does seem to be a misunderstanding.  Doubt and skepticism are crucial elements of the modern Enlightenment world-view.  And of course it is just the lack of this that marks the premodern mind-set as so perfectly exemplified in salafist Islam, as you rightly observe.  However, it is the slide from skepticism to cultural relativism that marks the self-destructive "post-modern turn" as Best and Kellner so aptly called it in the title of their book on the subject.  But just as the systematic doubt that is the crucial foundation of the scientific method doesn't bar one from finally reaching conclusions in science, so cultural skepticism need not -- as the most radical postmodernists who have seized power in academia and elsewhere in our cultural apparatus in the west conclude -- reduce one to moral bankruptcy.  Bertrand Russell once described the result of the scientific method as "successive approximations of the truth."  The same can be said of Enlightenment modern morality and cultural values.  It is the post-modern rejection of the concept of moral truth that is, in my opinion the chief weapon in the salafist Muslim warrior's arsenal against the concept of progress.  

This has led to the nearly universal alliance between the left and Islamic radicals in the West.  We have the absurd result of so-called 'progressives" being unwilling to lift a finger to oppose the most horrific oppression of women in the Muslim world when 70 years ago they lined up in droves to go to Spain to fight the fascists -- where is the 21st century equivalent of the "Abraham Lincoln Brigade" in which communists and socialists from the U.S. fought and died in Spain? where is the "Susan B. Anthony Brigade?"  Now we are told "it's their culture -- if you condemn them you are being a cultural imperialist!"  Long-time leftists like Christopher Hitchens who have pointed out this fundamental hypocrisy have been vilified and summarily excommunicated from the fold.  To even pronounce his name in the midst of the Chomskyite faithful is to risk launching an avalanche of opprobrium.  How often do we hear the left condemn what has happened to Salman Rushdie?  Where is Hollywood when a fellow filmmaker like Theo van Gogh is murdered by a religious fanatic?  The silence from the Western mainstream cultural left about these topics is deafening. If they hadn't been enfeebled by post-modernism, we'd see feminist commando groups parachuting into Iran, guerrilla filmmakers infiltrating Egypt, insurgent poets making hit-and-run attacks on madrassas in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

At the risk of constantly citing myself, I urge you to read the text of my talk at Extro 5 on this subject:

http://www.gregburch.net/progress.html

This talk was given just three months before 911.  

As to accepting "the burden of proof," I do.  After 911, I realized that I had a huge gap in my knowledge of human culture and worked for two years to remedy it, reading literally tens of thousands of pages about Islamic history, theology and culture.  I am more than willing to shoulder the burden of proof; I just ask that we be willing upon considering the evidence to actually make some judgments.

GB




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