Social Justice and the Language of the Elite: A Conversation with Rob Henderson and Musa al-Gharbi
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- Опубліковано 7 жов 2024
- Does social justice rhetoric help uplift the marginalized-or is it simply a game of elite virtue signaling that often ignores their perspectives?
Join us for a conversation with Musa al-Gharbi, Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow at Columbia University, and Rob Henderson, Gates Cambridge Scholar at Cambridge University, about major disconnects between dialogue around equity and its effects on socioeconomic disparity.
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This channel is fantastic. I hope more people find it.
This is outstanding. Very significant and insightful observations. The point near the end about successful college students being the very sort of people who tend to be good conformists is so very accurate. And they further conform by telling themselves they are intellectually independent. Thank you.
Thanks for conversation and honesty. You really stripped away the varnish of the stories we build to protect our egos (I like mixed metaphors, that’s my rebel streak).
Thank you for your work, gentlemen.
This is so valuable. Great work.
Two of my favorite public intellectuals. Great conversation!
I'm wondering how much of this discussion dovetails with Will Storr's latest book The Status Game. There, he suggests that one thing that seems quite natural and irresistable to humans is a quest for status. And one outgrowth of this is that even when we think that we come to, hold, communicate, and defend our beliefs for individual and "substantive" reasons, analysis often reveals that we do this in part for reasons of status. So, does it make sense to say that one reason it is the higher-ups in society who adopt and defend these luxury beliefs (and increasingly censure other higher-ups for not holding them), is that the higher up the 'food chain,' the more everyone is trying to out-status each other?
Exactly. Marx had it backwards.
Great conversation!
My first time hearing Musa, he's thinking about these things very technically and I think he'd really enjoy some of the complexity thinkers like Nate Hagan and Daniel Schmachgenberger because they've got some great explorations in that direction. I think the big goal here is to pull apart the chaos, figure out what has people snapping at each other, and it sounds like EO Wilson's well-known statement about prehistoric emotion, medieval institutions, and increasingly god-like technologies has a lot to do with it in conjunction with a lot of the economics Mark Blyth talks about with respect to the break between wages and productivity in 1973 (possibly a delayed reaction to coming off the gold standard) and how that increasing pain level, along with the proliferation of social media and its recommendation and advertising algorithms, all have something to do with just how strange the mid to late 2010's were and how much populism we saw on the rise as well in the back half of the decade.
Well thought out, well expressed, but none of it makes any difference. When a tsunami sweeps you away, i.e. force majeure, the flailing of arms and screams mean nothing. Best observe from the high ground and recite, "Better them than me..."
@@hori166 no confusion on that point, just that an accurate accounting of the situation needs to be out there for the history books.
Rational discourse versus Virtue Signalling
36:46 - WEIRD - Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic.
Musa, based on the teases you give for what's in your book, I want to read it so badly! Any estimate on when it will be out?
Would a belief in the value of contemporary art be a luxury belief? Have our environments been wrecked by contemporary art, architecture and city planning? If you look at the four primary social functions of art that have existed for thousands of years amongst all people worldwide and contrast that with the functions of contemporary art you can see the major differences. The primary function of contemporary art is to allow people who have no talent to believe that they are artists. The art makes the artist, not the other way around. Contemporary artists and their supporters often reveal a real hatred for the general public, popular culture, capitalism (an ironic contrast with the extraordinary value of modern art), etc. I would say these luxury beliefs in art are incredibly malicious and damaging. I'm a children's book writer and illustrator. I avoid contemporary artists and their followers not only because I think their beliefs are often absolute nonsense, but because they are often indoctrinated in university and by each other to the point where they absolute despise what I do and are very vocal, often making for hostile environments. I've been told my work is "shit" to my face. In one weird case an artist with absolutely no talent who I never met before, dressed in black at an opening of an art show made the statement when I tried to talk with him; "I've heard of you. You're Duncan Weller. You'll never get into the history books." I have always been aware that contemporary artists and their supporters were working to ensure that I, and people like me, have no success whatsoever. Even though the public, especially parents, teachers, and children, love my books and art. Personally, I think we need another City Beautiful movement, one that blends the best of what art does with our concerns with the environment and sustainability. I'm all for people being creative any way they want to, but I associate contemporary art with some of the worst kinds of thinking and approaches to life.
I would agree with you.
BRILLIANT
I get the feeling that luxury beliefs are espoused by those who are aware of their social position and are attempting to assuage some guilt about that.
Thanks for the conversation. Please try to ensure better audio in the future.
👏👏👏🙂
Not sure a motivated "belief" can be sincere. If you convince yourself of something the evidence doesn't warrant, because saying that you believe it will advance your social life, you have sinned, intellectually. We all sin, but let's not pretend it's just fine.
19:23 WOW Sadeface
Cottagecore trad lifestyleism is absolutely a right-wing luxury belief.
I would have guessed the meaning of "luxury beliefs" would be more like the kinds of errors people make in their judgements like suggesting a patient purchases sensitive toothpaste at $10 a tube instead of their routine option under $2. Or someone offering up other wellness advice only suitable for persons able to earn enough money to cover such costs.It's the opposite however.
If you've been in a difficult position financially with health costs you can't possibly meet it's the ill-informed suggestions that tend to grate. If you gently explain the amazing suggestion is of no use, owing to financial constraints, the person doing the suggesting becomes irate and rude now believing they are some sort of careers adviser. This leads to avoidance of such interrogation.
So I would've thought the phrase "luxury beliefs" would relate to people well off enough to make foolish suggestions who can only think that way owing to their own circumstances being favourable (and not having much insight into how others are faring and also a reliance on mental heuristics as opposed to proper listening skills and compassion). Those are the people who are well off enough to choose healthy options where as support interventions can be out of reach for people who are less well resourced.
It's amazing when their education has them believe that they could simply impose suggestions on to others to fix all the problems. They need engagement with people to remedy it before going out into the world to impose their "support".
So I've got the luxury beliefs if I advocate for less affluent people to make myself seem sophisticated and high class or something? Interesting idea. A way to elevate my status.
I do think it's a fair criticism behind someone demanding empathy etc. My mother was like that when I picked up on the "get a job you Bum" phrase Americans are shown to employ as a stereotype character thingy in movies. Trope? So they're seeing themselves as better morally and trying to guilt trip a wee kiddlywink who barely understands the world. To make themselves feel important.
I do think my Mother needed someone to draw her attention to these possible motives. As every decision she made with parenting probably stemmed from seeing a sibling pander to her and me stand my ground. So I got very unfair treatment based on not deferring to her and her viewpoint. She was horrible to me. I left when I turned 12. I wanted someone to do something and then I learnt about divorce and was sort of praying for it, for my Dad to find someone new.
Even when you come into some kind of money or a voucher your thinking is still gonna be different to someone who has more. Well poverty can have that impact. Some people will always be irresponsible with money and resources.
id suggest that minority rule can be achieved with as little as 2% of the population.
I believe the social pyramid has always had a tiny minority at the very top. I'm sure this is another luxury belief, though true.
@@dehaman_4_144 in Puritan society the richest 10% only owned like 20%,0 of the land,one of the least unequal societies of all time
Legislation can only make greed illegal, religion is required to make greed immoral
@@paulsansonetti7410 Proper decentralization. That's why I like Protestant Christianity more than Catholicism. Eventhough I'm not a Christian.
@@dehaman_4_144 protestant Christianity imo was likely deliberate schism, for the first 1500 years the Catholic church was anti usury, and it was the number one sin in christendom,today we can't even conceive it ever having been a sin.
The Catholic church was also the number one force world communists/freemasons were scared of.
That's why it had to be corrupted and destroyed.
But both protestantism and catholicism are completely corrupted and destroyed today, Catholicism since at least 1972( Vatican II)
Orthodox Christianity especially the Russian version is highly decentralized and the only one that isnt completely corrupted
If you want some evidence of how catholicism was destroyed see ( Bella Dodd's " school of darkness", Puritans empire by coloumbe, and " the slaughter of cities " by Dr E Michael Jones, he also has a lecture about the book on UA-cam)
@@paulsansonetti7410 I'm sorry to inform you, Russian Orthodox church is just a department of KGB. FSB today. Orthodox church since Byzantine times was an embodiment of the pyramid.
Thank you for the reading references.
Musa is really conflating 'Liberals' with 'Leftists', especially in the first 15 minutes - it's very typical in the US where they're (incorrectly) treated as synonyms. But it's particularly grating.
It's actually quite normal to conflate the two because the term Liberal has a different meaning in different countries. We Americans and Canadians refer to Marxists and communists and some activists at the "extreme left." I'm a progressive leftist and liberal, but I'm no fan of the extreme left wing beliefs.
I don't see the difference between so-called liberals and lefties in the US too. Care to elaborate?
@@dehaman_4_144 Liberty -> Liberalism...
The libertarians are actual liberals, Ronald Reagan was an actual liberal.
The ideology that American conservatives are conserving is literally liberalism.
The idea that the Democratic party in any way represents liberalism is TWENTY YEAR OLD lazy shorthand from when the Democratic party platform largely catered to "social liberals", and , who were ONLY socially liberal but leaned authoritarian in most other regards. This was contrasted with the significant presence of the socially authoritarian evangelical right as a major part of the Bush 2 coalition. (The term neo-conservative started out as a pejorative insult directed at republican neo-liberals that had hypocritically set aside their ideals to play international power politics.)
These days, the american left has been chugging the Maoist Kool aid they have been given by academics who neglected to mention that his dictatorship intentionally starved 40-60 million people to death to keep his own supporters fed, and what's left of the former social liberals have lost all pretence of actual liberty and have essentially become literal fascist state-corporatists.
@@Kieselmeister I don't think American conservatives are conserving liberalism. America is still a Christian country unlike European countries. Conservative Americans are conserving christian values. God bless America. God given rights and freedom. In God we trust. These are the values.
@@dehaman_4_144 The concept of "god given rights and freedoms", is literally the core ideological principle of english liberalism. (Which includes BTW the idea that no mortal authority has the right to dictate the nature of an individual's relationship with god, & is why the separation of church and state is in the #1 spot in the bill of rights. Which in turn means that the USA was founded as a nation OF christians, and not a "christian nation" with a state religion empowered with legal authority by the state, as the Anglican church was in england itself.)
The fact that you believe that those natural rights exist means that YOU, at least in part, believe in LIBERALISM.
I was also shocked by the election of Donald Trump (for good reasons). However, I took that as a call for action. I immediately started taking part in the Resistance. I am glad we were eventually successful.
The anatomy of the state - ua-cam.com/play/PL679DBBDBC762A8C6.html
Mr. al-Gharbi seems to be talking in circles a bit too much yet I wish him much luck in his scholarship ...
This talk hits different after the Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v Wade
I wonder if thinking people should have the right to abortion is a luxury belief
@@Michelle_Wellbeck Please check out my reply related to that very subject:
The woke are out in full force today wailing & gnashing their teeth about the possible overturning of Roe v Wade.
What they fail to understand is that for poor women abortion has not been accessible for decades. Poor women are not screaming about this because they couldn't afford abortions anyway.
These fools also don't understand that for working class women, abortion is almost always an act of economic desperation, not a chance to "fulfill their potential". Working class women get abortions so they can continue to feed the kids they have, not so they can go to grad school.
But hey, at least the woke have made it clear that men can get pregnant too, and that female biology does not exist as an axis of oppression.
#LuxuryBeliefs
Thank You both for your important work.
@@pennyadrian7774 I'm glad that we agree that access to Abortion services should be improved for women of lower economic status
@@emmanuelgarcia619 I completely agrre
People having the right to terminate life is a luxury belief.
I think "Pro-life" people won the rhetorical war by using "Pro-life" slogan. It's impossible to argue against that. Arguments against life are inherently moronic.
Musa is hyperfocused on race. Work is not exploitation. Every service someone in New York receives is paid for. I am sick of people like him who are so inexperienced yet have a lot of opinions.
Are you claiming that work is never exploitation? Of course it is, when someone's economic desperation is exploited to get them to perform dangerous or degrading jobs for very little compensation.
Also, why attack him personally? How do you know how experienced or inexperienced this man is?
Perhaps you need to start tipping more generously.
@@pennyadrian7774 is that the majority of jobs?
The claim that work is exploitation is being made without evidence and u are pretending that the other side is saying that no work is exploiting
Only 11 thousand subscribers?! Great conversation.
Lebowski vibes
One guy talks way too much.
I was out as soon as I heard "regular people", spoken. Good luck budding elitists.
Color blindness is NOT the answer. People will point to the “colorblind times” and think ohhh weren’t things great then? Because race relations were better? No, times weren’t better. That was before society really gave a shit about Black people being killed by the police, and before poeple started to pay attention to structurally racist things in American society. Being “colorblind” ignores all that. Yes race relations aren’t that good right now but we will overcome this and they can become good again. The way we can do this is by being patient with people and teaching them about structural racism without being condiscending and having a hatred for people’s lack of knowledge around the subject. That’s how I learned about systemic racism, when people were patient with me and they taught with empathy. We can be that society
What does structural racism mean to you?
@@DDeCicco 400 yrs of slavery, Black codes, sharecropping, segregation, employment discrimination, mass incarceration, single family zoning, etc
@@janedolores79 You mentioned a number of historical examples. According to your understanding of structural racism, is the United States *intentionally* structured in a way to perpetuate racism even today?
I agree that we should drop all discussion of racism and that the media relax their constant drumbeat of horrific race issues. By fixating on black/white disparity we are driving resentment underground only to emerge pathology in destructive unforeseen events that are unconsciously and collectively expressed.
Many other populations are ignored as if they are invisible such as Native American, Hispanic, South East Asian populations, Chinese, etc etc on and on. Actual needs and concerns for these subcultures are by in large ignored as if they don’t count. The real focus should be on class wealth disparity and efforts geared to remedy that split.
What systems are currently racist towards AA?