"The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country. [...] The educated citizen knows how much more needs to be done, and criticizes because he cares, not because he despairs"
Criticism of society cán obviously be a force for good, and the openness to do so is one of the things that separates Western societies from many others. But the people criticising must actually want that society to do better, not break it down because it's 'inherently bad/evil', etc.
A prevalent trend I have noticed and written about, in the West at least, is how many government agencies and departments begin with good intentions but end up becoming the very thing they were intended to create.
For example, the FDA was set up, ostensibly, to save lives, but today it kills more people than it saves by denying them life-saving treatment. I wonder if something similar is happening in Western society, where the society that gave birth to the modern industrial lifestyle is turning against the very factors that led to its rise.
Interesting take. As East Asia gets wealthier, will we see a similar rise in “biting the hand that feeds you” or will this remain distinctive to the West?
Anti-West, anti-fossil fuel not realizing or ignoring 80%-ish of all energy comes from it, anti-Christian, anti-capitalism yet pro everything should be free, anti-logic, anti-development, anti-white, anti-straight, anti-male, anti-Human, anti-reproduction, anti-tradition, anti-responsibilty, anti-consequences to one's actions, non-existent gratitude, anti-military without giving any credence to the idea that it may be whats keeping the peace, etc pro-simplistic colonial belief system, pro-environment, to the extent that they think the Avatar movie is real, pro-DEI-ignoring merit totally, pro-dogma, pro-violence to those who oppose the dogma, pro-victim/oppressor ideology, pro-revolution with an idiotic/ignorant idea of what's to replace the current system, etc I may be wrong on some of these but it's an idea I have pieced together over the last decade. This guy confirms my bias.
The west lives increasingly impractical lives, imaginary parper (silicone chip) ones, inside city bubbles. For the lanyard classes everything is disconnected and abstract and therefore you are not truely connected to the consequences of your ideas and actions. This has now also gone on for many generations.
Compare with the parctical lives of those, such as farmers, fishermen or builders, who's very exsistance is practical in every way and every action has consequences. You can't pretend something is not what it is. You can then see why the west increasingly bites the hand that feeds itself.
I saw Steven Pinker share this article. There’s two major factors that people like you and him never consider.
The first is the near complete collapse of expertise and institutional trust. We’re clearly in a competency crisis. The fact the likes of Pinker can’t see this only proves the point. The mandarin bureaucrats have no clothes on.
The second is the unprecedented levels of mass immigration into the west. In America, the share of the white population has declined precipitously in but one generation, the boomer generation. The replacements are from every corner on the earth, completely disparate cultures and religions smashed together in one location in record time. Totally unprecedented in all of human history. The end result is a fractured and disconnected population with no common bonds. Truly the Tower of Babel.
Environmentalism rejects the fruits of modernity? It would be good to distinguish between reactions to modernity without proof, such as that of Rousseau, and rational concerns about the impact of modernity? Is the underlying thought that modernity will always find a way out of whatever obstacles might be hit? Or is this a caricature of environmentalism?
True that environmentalism may come with a healthy portion of hypocrisy but you cannot dispose of logical argument by that convenient dodge.
Even if environmentalism can only thrive in a free society, how does that invalidate anything? Meanwhile China, while still pragmatically building coal fired stations, is leaving the USA behind in its environmental ambition.
Environmentalism primarily does reject the fruits of modernity, especially when it takes stronger and more strident forms. Environmentalists feed fear of carbon dioxide but then oppose nuclear power (with a few encouraging exceptions).
"I’m an inveterate optimist," said Maarten Boudry in conversation with Chelsea Follett.
Inveterate optimism is a deep-seated, habitual, and enduring form of optimism. It refers to a person who consistently and naturally maintains a positive outlook, regardless of the circumstances. This is not fleeting cheerfulness, but a steadfast belief that good will ultimately prevail even in the face of adversity.
Another inveterate optimist was Joe Biden.
"Look, I get accused of being an inveterate optimist. I call that the “Irish of it.” We’re never on top, always stepped on. But we are optimistic like Dr King was optimistic." That was a touch of optimism and good-humour in President Joe Biden's speech honouring Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia (January 2023)
Thank you for this. The crituque I level at Adorno and Foucault is their disresiect for cognitive evolutionary psychology. Adorno abuses metaphore, Foucault leaves a trail of misinformation he writes off as rhetoric. This is broadly the motte and baily. The system lives in tension against itsactivism, sonetimes to the point if a conflict of interest.
As far as the encased communism, disrespecting pre-natal object permenence which means neglecting how it applies to the aural, ends up undermining those more gifted in these ways. I have a list of beefs that I can attribute to how this activist sociology is abusive and communistic.
My own studying in a variety of fields, including history, cultural and social anthropology (African cultures) and psychology, has led me to see an even deeper reason why the westerner is biting the hand of the society and people that feed him. In the colleges about Africa by professor René Devisch and Philippe De Boeck, we came to learn that in that African continent, the normal, overall attitude is just the inverse. Young and old citizens, inhabitants, do not tend to criticize their political system, their dirigants, their economy. Personally, I see a mechanism that can explain. Infants worldwide have been carried on the body of the mother for centuries, for probably thousands of years. Everyone has seen a picture of a Chinese mother working in the rice fields, carrying her baby on the back; or of a mother in a village in sub-Sahara Africa, stamping the manioc in front of the hut, carrying her baby on her back. Strange fact: as a historian interested in images form the past, what we call "iconographic source materials", I have never encountered images of White European mother's doing the same. These facts, I connect to recent conclusions in the field of education and upbringing about the huge importance of infant years with enough body contact and being carried on the parent's backs. It is said literally: "a child receives the strongest recognition, the message "you are welcome! This world is good for you!" when... it is caressed, frequently touched in a friendly way and carried on the body of an adult. This is exactly how "Mama Africa" raises her children. And this is exactly what is missing in recent western infant handling and education, where mothers go to work outside the home and leave behind the classic role of the House mother (huismoeder) in ever increasing numbers since about the sixties. My theory is that the white world infants carry a grudge, due to this "mis-handling". A professor in psychology of KU Leuven with a lot of experience as a therapist states it this way: “Niet aangeraakt worden, (also in the life of a couple) is ook mishandeld worden” – “Not being touched is a way of being abused”. Children in this modern scenario grow up, and are frustrated with life, just because they have been frustrated in their natural need for skin and body contact.
One big example may be Greta Thunberg, the prophetic champion in criticizing the western civilization, economy and technology: her story is well known, it is described in the book by her mother "Our House is on Fire!": this mother, Elena Ernmann, is a famous opera singer. Who spent a minimum of time with her highly intelligent daughter Greta when she was a baby and an infant!...
Dans ce passé, on avait faim, on était très vulnérable sur le plan médical, le travail était plus diversifié en êffet, mais il ne s'arrètait jamais.
Les enfants venaient l'un aprés l'autre dans le sein de votre famille, et le curé t'espionnait pour que cela reste comme ça.
Tu te sentait coupable et gèné(e) en jouissant (?) du sexe et de l'auto-erotisme.
On ne connaissait pas du tout le voyage ou le tourisme. Les livres étaient hors question parce que trop chères, et on'avait pas le gout de la lecture. Fallait bosser avant tout.
Le film n'existait point.
Le travail avec les grandes bètes donnait certainement de la satisfaction et une forme d'amitié et de paix... mais engendrait aussi beaucoup de moments d'immersion dans la plus grande saleté.
Etcetera, etcetera.
《Une image peut mentir comme 1000 bons menteurs.》
Or like Maarten Boudry expresses it in his You Tube talk of mid june '25:
“There was a recent study about how the hotspots of degrowth—the philosophy that calls for an end to economic growth and a controlled shrinking of material production—are all in wealthy countries. You don’t hear a lot of degrowth-ism from people in developing countries because they have a more immediate understanding of the benefits of capitalism and industry. But if you’ve been prosperous and well-fed and affluent for a long time, you tend to take those things for granted. If you read the degrowth literature, they seem to have no clue at all about what it means to farm, for example, and be self-sufficient. They romanticize it, and they can afford to romanticize it because nobody is there to tell them what it was like. Even their grandparents never experienced it.”
Makes me think of a quote by JFK:
"The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country. [...] The educated citizen knows how much more needs to be done, and criticizes because he cares, not because he despairs"
Criticism of society cán obviously be a force for good, and the openness to do so is one of the things that separates Western societies from many others. But the people criticising must actually want that society to do better, not break it down because it's 'inherently bad/evil', etc.
A prevalent trend I have noticed and written about, in the West at least, is how many government agencies and departments begin with good intentions but end up becoming the very thing they were intended to create.
For example, the FDA was set up, ostensibly, to save lives, but today it kills more people than it saves by denying them life-saving treatment. I wonder if something similar is happening in Western society, where the society that gave birth to the modern industrial lifestyle is turning against the very factors that led to its rise.
Interesting take. As East Asia gets wealthier, will we see a similar rise in “biting the hand that feeds you” or will this remain distinctive to the West?
Anti-West, anti-fossil fuel not realizing or ignoring 80%-ish of all energy comes from it, anti-Christian, anti-capitalism yet pro everything should be free, anti-logic, anti-development, anti-white, anti-straight, anti-male, anti-Human, anti-reproduction, anti-tradition, anti-responsibilty, anti-consequences to one's actions, non-existent gratitude, anti-military without giving any credence to the idea that it may be whats keeping the peace, etc pro-simplistic colonial belief system, pro-environment, to the extent that they think the Avatar movie is real, pro-DEI-ignoring merit totally, pro-dogma, pro-violence to those who oppose the dogma, pro-victim/oppressor ideology, pro-revolution with an idiotic/ignorant idea of what's to replace the current system, etc I may be wrong on some of these but it's an idea I have pieced together over the last decade. This guy confirms my bias.
The west lives increasingly impractical lives, imaginary parper (silicone chip) ones, inside city bubbles. For the lanyard classes everything is disconnected and abstract and therefore you are not truely connected to the consequences of your ideas and actions. This has now also gone on for many generations.
Compare with the parctical lives of those, such as farmers, fishermen or builders, who's very exsistance is practical in every way and every action has consequences. You can't pretend something is not what it is. You can then see why the west increasingly bites the hand that feeds itself.
As a former volunteer labourer in natural reserves in Flanders and a former hunter in the Belgian Ardennes, I agree.
I saw Steven Pinker share this article. There’s two major factors that people like you and him never consider.
The first is the near complete collapse of expertise and institutional trust. We’re clearly in a competency crisis. The fact the likes of Pinker can’t see this only proves the point. The mandarin bureaucrats have no clothes on.
The second is the unprecedented levels of mass immigration into the west. In America, the share of the white population has declined precipitously in but one generation, the boomer generation. The replacements are from every corner on the earth, completely disparate cultures and religions smashed together in one location in record time. Totally unprecedented in all of human history. The end result is a fractured and disconnected population with no common bonds. Truly the Tower of Babel.
The phenomenon the article describes predates these two factors, and in fact contributed to them.
Environmentalism rejects the fruits of modernity? It would be good to distinguish between reactions to modernity without proof, such as that of Rousseau, and rational concerns about the impact of modernity? Is the underlying thought that modernity will always find a way out of whatever obstacles might be hit? Or is this a caricature of environmentalism?
True that environmentalism may come with a healthy portion of hypocrisy but you cannot dispose of logical argument by that convenient dodge.
Even if environmentalism can only thrive in a free society, how does that invalidate anything? Meanwhile China, while still pragmatically building coal fired stations, is leaving the USA behind in its environmental ambition.
Environmentalism primarily does reject the fruits of modernity, especially when it takes stronger and more strident forms. Environmentalists feed fear of carbon dioxide but then oppose nuclear power (with a few encouraging exceptions).
"I’m an inveterate optimist," said Maarten Boudry in conversation with Chelsea Follett.
Inveterate optimism is a deep-seated, habitual, and enduring form of optimism. It refers to a person who consistently and naturally maintains a positive outlook, regardless of the circumstances. This is not fleeting cheerfulness, but a steadfast belief that good will ultimately prevail even in the face of adversity.
Another inveterate optimist was Joe Biden.
"Look, I get accused of being an inveterate optimist. I call that the “Irish of it.” We’re never on top, always stepped on. But we are optimistic like Dr King was optimistic." That was a touch of optimism and good-humour in President Joe Biden's speech honouring Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia (January 2023)
Are you an inveterate optimist?
What's Your Optimism Superpower?
Thank you for this. The crituque I level at Adorno and Foucault is their disresiect for cognitive evolutionary psychology. Adorno abuses metaphore, Foucault leaves a trail of misinformation he writes off as rhetoric. This is broadly the motte and baily. The system lives in tension against itsactivism, sonetimes to the point if a conflict of interest.
As far as the encased communism, disrespecting pre-natal object permenence which means neglecting how it applies to the aural, ends up undermining those more gifted in these ways. I have a list of beefs that I can attribute to how this activist sociology is abusive and communistic.
My own studying in a variety of fields, including history, cultural and social anthropology (African cultures) and psychology, has led me to see an even deeper reason why the westerner is biting the hand of the society and people that feed him. In the colleges about Africa by professor René Devisch and Philippe De Boeck, we came to learn that in that African continent, the normal, overall attitude is just the inverse. Young and old citizens, inhabitants, do not tend to criticize their political system, their dirigants, their economy. Personally, I see a mechanism that can explain. Infants worldwide have been carried on the body of the mother for centuries, for probably thousands of years. Everyone has seen a picture of a Chinese mother working in the rice fields, carrying her baby on the back; or of a mother in a village in sub-Sahara Africa, stamping the manioc in front of the hut, carrying her baby on her back. Strange fact: as a historian interested in images form the past, what we call "iconographic source materials", I have never encountered images of White European mother's doing the same. These facts, I connect to recent conclusions in the field of education and upbringing about the huge importance of infant years with enough body contact and being carried on the parent's backs. It is said literally: "a child receives the strongest recognition, the message "you are welcome! This world is good for you!" when... it is caressed, frequently touched in a friendly way and carried on the body of an adult. This is exactly how "Mama Africa" raises her children. And this is exactly what is missing in recent western infant handling and education, where mothers go to work outside the home and leave behind the classic role of the House mother (huismoeder) in ever increasing numbers since about the sixties. My theory is that the white world infants carry a grudge, due to this "mis-handling". A professor in psychology of KU Leuven with a lot of experience as a therapist states it this way: “Niet aangeraakt worden, (also in the life of a couple) is ook mishandeld worden” – “Not being touched is a way of being abused”. Children in this modern scenario grow up, and are frustrated with life, just because they have been frustrated in their natural need for skin and body contact.
One big example may be Greta Thunberg, the prophetic champion in criticizing the western civilization, economy and technology: her story is well known, it is described in the book by her mother "Our House is on Fire!": this mother, Elena Ernmann, is a famous opera singer. Who spent a minimum of time with her highly intelligent daughter Greta when she was a baby and an infant!...
Stef Hublou Sofrian – 26 June 2025
I read the transcription of your recent video talk on Why the West Turned on Itself with Chelsea Follett for Human Progress Podcasts with interest. I was happy to find a critique on the romantisized view that lives in the spirit of some people about the historic farmer life in the country; even if I am untill today not against degrowth idea's for certain reasons. What made me happy was this image that is circulating in the humor group "https://www.facebook.com/100DelireOFF?__cft__[0]=AZXn2IPm1E6lfnOGZnJmHvFwoHwdSJ-r4wYshRgSfX7e62yWO33SgDSGaGUyu8YSC4CNZH8os_szte9Bt9xAVLwWfkuq60K1kiP12t646oe3yvrXuVXcPeU7ztL1xctHsrDrxvJ41qnbGJeJv-Qn1-yA34a4lQqQ6l5zrdljewBUWEiCHiWoGKW6I9J23AUgpqmwEZ3Hmgz2Rq6Nec7ywasz&__tn__=R-R". It is an exception: it is taken as a truly beautiful ideal, a criticism of our own days, it is not meant as a joke. I took the liberty to add a comment that illustrates how this image is an illusion; my formation as an economic historian allowed me to do so. Here is my text, I let it be followed by your words in the aforementioned filmed interview: - "Quelle Illusion !"
Dans ce passé, on avait faim, on était très vulnérable sur le plan médical, le travail était plus diversifié en êffet, mais il ne s'arrètait jamais.
Les enfants venaient l'un aprés l'autre dans le sein de votre famille, et le curé t'espionnait pour que cela reste comme ça.
Tu te sentait coupable et gèné(e) en jouissant (?) du sexe et de l'auto-erotisme.
On ne connaissait pas du tout le voyage ou le tourisme. Les livres étaient hors question parce que trop chères, et on'avait pas le gout de la lecture. Fallait bosser avant tout.
Le film n'existait point.
Le travail avec les grandes bètes donnait certainement de la satisfaction et une forme d'amitié et de paix... mais engendrait aussi beaucoup de moments d'immersion dans la plus grande saleté.
Etcetera, etcetera.
《Une image peut mentir comme 1000 bons menteurs.》
Or like Maarten Boudry expresses it in his You Tube talk of mid june '25:
“There was a recent study about how the hotspots of degrowth—the philosophy that calls for an end to economic growth and a controlled shrinking of material production—are all in wealthy countries. You don’t hear a lot of degrowth-ism from people in developing countries because they have a more immediate understanding of the benefits of capitalism and industry. But if you’ve been prosperous and well-fed and affluent for a long time, you tend to take those things for granted. If you read the degrowth literature, they seem to have no clue at all about what it means to farm, for example, and be self-sufficient. They romanticize it, and they can afford to romanticize it because nobody is there to tell them what it was like. Even their grandparents never experienced it.”
Where does Christian Nationalist anti-intellectualism, JD Vance style, fit into this narrative? https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2025/02/the-professors-are-the-enemy-said-jd-vance-and-more-besides-pay-attention.html
Understandable reaction to the state of modern "intellectuals".