Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00437)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Bart Lidofsky <bartl@s...> wrote:
> I think the evidence is that cultures evolved. The reason why the
> wealthy and powerful became wealthy and powerful was because they 
took
> advantage of the existing culture, rather than creating it. 

That is possible. My perception is that a host of people are 
creating it, in the sense of cooking up manipulative pseudo-arguments 
and trying to fool people into believing them. Collectively these 
manipulative pseudo-arguments are called political correctness, but 
some are more subtly presented than the garden variety politically 
correct correction.

> Freudian psychology has a similar problem. Freud was unaware of how
> much psychology is based on environmental factors.

I studied all that stuff at the university. Freud wanted to get it 
on with his patients. Hwe dealt with that by objectifying the whole 
thing and treating it like a bug in a bottle.

> That is also why the Frankfurt School, when it temporarily 
relocated to
> Columbia University in New York, started focusing its efforts on the
> United States, since it was a wonderful example of why Marx and 
Engels
> were wrong.

They wer wrong because they were predicting the future. When the 
revolts of 1848 broke out all across Europe they decided history was 
headed for a great dialectic resolution. That same year they 
published their opus but despite a lot of conspiring and mind gaming 
the European revolution never broke out.

> Consider the influence of the works of Frankfurt School members 
Erich
> Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, and, to a lesser extent, Wilhelm Reich.

I read Fromm years nago but got nothing out o it except a cure for 
insomnia. As for Reich, I have read him as well, but found it to be 
just Freudian crap. I never have read Marcuse.

> the influence of the Frankfurt
> School on the Left in the United States is not out in the open

As a Utilitarian, I find the left to be a species of disordered 
thinking an would be surprised if there is a philosophical influence 
at all.

> The
> whole reason why the Republican Party bosses tried to push W on the
> American public was to reduce the influence of the Religious Right 
on
> the Republican party.

That's news to me. I thought when he moved his mouth they pulled the 
string.

> But the philosophies in 1984 were based on the philosophies of the
> Frankfurt School, which was quite active in 1948.

I am not a big fan of Fromm and Reich, but I can';t believe they were 
THAT bad. Have you read 1984? The society he describes is Stalinist.

As for people who want ideas not completely identical to their own to 
be censored and suppressed, I am reminded of a song by Willy Nelson:

What are you looking at me for?
I ain't got nothing to say.
If you don't like the way I look
Then look the other way