I Finally Read James Lindsay’s Manifesto
Yes, He Has A Manifesto
It’s called “A Manifesto Against the Enemies of Modernity“, co-authored with the aptly surnamed Helen Pluckrose.
A fisking would produce an article sized to rival Gibbon, since Lindsay and Pluckrose endeavored to blunt criticism by writing a near-impenetrably long document; so in the interest of your patience, my friends, it will suffice to tease instead.
When I first heard the term ‘woke right’, championed by Lindsay, I thought it a wonderful description of those normally said to be “of the left”, but who had embraced an element or two of Reality: a modern version of ‘neo-con’ without the overseas passions. Turns out Lindsay meant it as one who is mostly “of the right” and who accepts the Reality that it is sometimes acceptable to base decisions on someone’s race.
He thinks that since, for instance, the woke promoted (with a vengeance) blacks because they were black, regardless of ability, any and all race-based decisions are wrong. If a white (and only a white) makes a decision in favor of his own race, he is ‘woke right’. Lindsay never argues why. He assumes his conclusions are obvious.
The same lack of argument is found throughout his Manifesto (grandiose word!). Science, the Good, truth, individualism, on and on, all marched out to agree with Lindsay. But he simply cannot be bothered to say what he means by any of these words. Nor can he be, as we’ll see, consistent.
He has a go at defining Modernity, that ideal state of the world he would see preserved:
“Modernity” is the name for the profound cultural transformation which saw the rise of representative democracy, the age of science, the supersedence of reason over superstition, and the establishment of individual liberties to live according to one’s own values.
He sums up his own argument with this, what he must have thought was brilliant, bullet point: “Most people support Modernity and wish its anti-modern enemies would shut up.”
What if my own values are contrary to and would do violence to Lindsay’s? Perhaps he’d say we’d vote to decide whose views will be imposed. What if my side wins? Is the outcome Reason? And is Lindsay’s losing side thus proven superstition? Is this outcome the Good?
Nearest he comes to defining the Good is this:
An earnest appreciation that the Good is best achieved through a balance between human cooperation and competition brokered and mediated through the interplay of institutions that work on behalf of public and private interests.
This is as close to a non-definition as you can get, and sounds more like a political slogan.
He correctly sees that strict post-modernism, the idea that everybody has their own truth which must be respected, is false. But, on the other hand, he warmly embraces the idea that everybody should live their own truth and that these “truths” ought to be respected! Here he is, for example, castigating “pre-moderns” for their rejection of that idea:
[Pre-moderns] are especially unhappy about those which brought in a relaxed attitude toward some drug and alcohol use, gender equality, sexual liberation, same-sex marriage, and transgender rights. Gender equality and sexual liberation, in particular, are believed in the socially conservative premodern worldview to have encouraged a selfish (and often “immoral”) individualism in relation to sexual behavior and gender roles, which has led to an alleged destruction of the family and, in many ill-informed views, economic and social chaos.
If you are a man who believes you’re “really” a woman, then you have departed from science and lovely reason and sunk into to the wilds of superstition and Fantasy. And there was no way of getting to that point, or to “gender equality”, or to all the rest of it, except via post-modernism.
That’s not the only point where Lindsay is inconsistent. Here he is again attacking his favorite pre-modern enemies:
Veer rightward instead, and you’ll be similarly disappointed. There, truth isn’t much different, although they wouldn’t call it “situated” (but it is). It is the kind of capital-T “Truth” that’s both “obvious” to everyone and too simplistic to be true, and it’s situated in the lived experience of the traditionally recognized everyman. This right-hand [i.e. pre-moderns’] Truth often arrives as some amalgamation of divination upon the everyday experience of rubes and the locally agreed upon exegeses of God’s parochially preferred ancient manuscripts. A more capital-S Sophisticated Truth can also be found along the right-hand path, placed there by Nature Herself in the form of philosophically reasoned-out Natural Law, despite the demonstrated meaninglessness of this term and its distinctness from anything established by the natural sciences. Truth, on the right, is thus exactly the “plainly True” Common Sense everybody “knows” (except the elites and experts, who are deemed too educated and too out-of-touch with Real Life to see what’s plainly the case).
Yet Lindsay assumes his own version of Truth, only stated, indirectly, in fragments, is also just common sense, but that pre-moderns refuse in their bigotry to see it. He knows Truth does not come from religion, however:
How can you know what’s “plainly True” along the rightward path, then? It is whatever seems immediately obvious, which “obviously” works good enough to be getting on with (so long as most complexities of systems and of human interaction are dropped), or it is that which accords with the views of the provincially correct religious or political deities or their self-appointed emissaries.
We will pass by all his historical errors and myths (in the old-fashioned sense of the word) of progress, especially in science, because most readers are well versed in these criticisms. Instead, let’s look at his fascinating conclusion of his science myth, reminding ourselves that we are reading a document which purports to show how Modernity is failing:
Still, anti-modernists [which include both post- and pre-modernists] lodge fair complaints, despite their overreactions. The Enlightenment project that swept in Modernity has been over-confident and taken too little care. In its search for objective truth and unified ethical and political systems of society, it has been simplistic, short-sighted, and far too sure of itself, and it has gotten things wrong, at times with tremendous consequences.
Projects do not need to be abandoned because they get things wrong, however, unless they are fundamentally irreparable and destined to continue getting things wrong. Modernity bears no such fatal flaw as it is rooted in self-correcting principles.
He admits of Modernity’s mistakes and of the other side’s fair complaints, but never really says what either of these are. How we do know that, say, gender Reality isn’t one of these fair complaints? Lindsay can’t be bothered with details. Instead, he retreats his beloved Modernity behind the same flimsy shield science does: that it is self-correcting.
If Modernity is self-correcting, then what’s the problem? Modernity, heal thyself! Incidentally, how do we separte the “fundamentally irreparable” from the fixable? Lindsay never says.
It goes on and on like this, at great length, daring the reader to finish. Most won’t.
A word, not the best, to describe this Manifesto is “diatribe”. That is far too complementary. Everybody enjoys a good tantrum, even when it’s directed at one’s cherished ideas. This is too dull to be a genuine diatribe. For instance, the best of Lindsay’s considered insults to pre-moderns is to label their ideas “odious poppycock” and “loathsome codswallop”. Just the kind of thing a whippersnapper would think stings.
Here are the various ways to support this work:
"It goes on and on like this, at great length, daring the reader to finish. Most won’t."
I could hardly get through your exposé of his poppycocking codswallop.
You read it so we didn’t have to.That’s an Order of Merit public service.