
Don’t Romanticize the Present - imartin2k
https://thefrailestthing.com/2019/02/06/dont-romanticize-the-present/
======
hirundo
> We should romanticize neither the past nor the present, nor the future for
> that matter.

I disagree. Seeing the world strictly through a lens of cold eyed rationalism
is demotivating. Awe is a perfectly practical use of the senses. I watched
Neil and Buzz bound around on the moon. That's a romantic past that was once
my romantic present. There's no particular benefit in discounting those
feelings.

Here's some cold eyed rational scientific work demonstrating the massive
collapse of poverty in our time:

[https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-history-
methods](https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-history-methods)

If we can't romanticize this present day accomplishment then what the heck is
romanticism for? We're participating in a culture that is reducing extreme
human suffering at an unprecedented pace. A rationalist would miss the full
picture if he couldn't feel the heroic nature of that.

~~~
mreome
Being in awe of an achievement, past or present, does not necessarily mean you
are romanticizing it. You can have strong emotions and positive feelings about
something without romanticizing it. Romanticizing means viewing something in
an idealized or unrealistic way, ignoring or downplaying anything that does
not fit into that "Romantic View" of it.

We can be proud of our accomplishments, past an present, and feel good that in
some areas there have been huge advancements. But, we do ourselves a
disservice if we romanticize the world and and don't view things in context.
We need to understand what it took to make those advancements, accept that
some advancements come with consequences, and not ignore those areas where
there are still much to be done.

~~~
hirundo
We seem to be converging on this sense of the word (Merriam-Wester 4):

> marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic,
> adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized

Surely, even in full context, certain things can be legitimately seen as
heroic, adventurous, remote or mysterious without being overly idealistic in
an unrealistic way. It seems valuable, to a point at least, to allow our
emotional reaction to such events guide our dreams and plans. That's an upside
to romanticism.

I'm a fan of SpaceX, et. al. If those outfits had to be funded and staffed by
unromantic people primarily interested in return on investment, would they
exist?

~~~
mreome
I think this is just a subtle semantic issue. In my previous post, and what I
think the original article is talking about is the act of romanticizing
something that is not romantic (or not entirely so). Parts of it may be so,
but automatically extending that to a larger context is fallacious and
potentially dangerous.

The moon landing example you made is a good one. It is a grand achievement,
and is rightfully a romantic vision of what humanity can accomplish. But over-
extending that romantic view to the entire area in history that it occurred in
would mean ignoring the cold war and the ever-present threat of nuclear war.

I'm not saying, and I don't think the articles authors was intending to say,
that you shouldn't have emotional and romantic responses to things, but rather
that we need to not let those responses (and perhaps our desire to focus on
the positive/romantic) blind us to the wider contexts that may not be so
romantic.

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trevyn
I find works of philosophical non-fiction written by horror fiction writers
useful for not romanticizing the present:

“Like many who have tried their hand at metaphysics, Bahnsen declared that,
appearances to the contrary, all reality is the expression of a unified,
unchanging force—a cosmic movement that various philosophers have
characterized in various ways. To Bahnsen, this force and its movement were
monstrous in nature, resulting in a universe of indiscriminate butchery and
mutual slaughter among its individuated parts. Additionally, the “universe
according to Bahnsen” has never had a hint of design or direction. From the
beginning, it was a play with no plot and no players that were anything more
than portions of a master drive of purposeless self-mutilation. In Bahnsen’s
philosophy, everything is engaged in a disordered fantasia of carnage.
Everything tears away at everything else … forever. Yet all this commotion in
nothingness goes unnoticed by nearly everything involved in it. In the world
of nature, as an instance, nothing knows of its embroilment in a festival of
massacres. Only Bahnsen’s self-conscious Nothing can know what is going on and
be shaken by the tremors of chaos at feast.”

\- Thomas Ligotti, “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race”

~~~
apocalypstyx
Eugene Thacker's 'In the Dust of This Planet', 'Starry Speculative Corpse',
and 'Tentacles Longer Than Night' could probably also fit into this category.

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waynecochran
I have heard a similar term : "Don't be a chronological bigot." Essentially
assuming that folks in the past, even in the ancient past, were less
intelligent or less enlightened. I am mesmerized how Bronze Age folks figured
out how to form an alloy out of copper and tin ... I am not sure how many
folks could reproduce this from first principles and the knowledge base they
had to work with.

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haberman
The article's main argument is: "We are not obligated to love technology.
[...] If we allow ["technology"] to stand as an umbrella term for everything
from modern dentistry to the apparatus of ubiquitous surveillance, then we are
forced to either accept modern technology in toto or reject it in toto. We are
thus discouraged from thoughtful discrimination and responsible judgment."

This seem uncontroversial -- I doubt even Steven Pinker would disagree with
that.

Maybe some internet trolls make low-quality arguments like "so you want to go
back to horses and buggies?!?" but basically nobody is arguing that technology
should reign unregulated. Who thinks civilians should be able to own nuclear
weapons?

All of this seems quite unrelated to the dispute between Pinker and Hickel of
whether global poverty is decreasing or not.

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40acres
As someone relatively new to following "public intellectuals" (think Tyler
Cowen, Jonathan Haidt, Pinker, etc.) I've been surprised at who reductive
their arguments seem to be.

There is a lot of talk among this class of people regarding the current state
of debate but as in many cases I've seen examples of two people who are
absolutely grounded in their beliefs and use straw man arguments, diversion
and reductive reasoning to defend their points. If you ever listened to the
Ezra Klein v. Sam Harris podcast you know what I mean.

This isn't the first occasion that I've seen someone rebute the philosophy of
Pinker's work only for him to double down on the same argument. I guess I
shouldn't be surprised because persuasion is difficult in general, but I
expected a deeper dive into the complexities of these arguments.

~~~
smacktoward
Once a public intellectual reaches a certain level of public
visibility/celebrity, they spend most of their time having softballs lobbed at
them by worshipful audiences at venues like TED and Davos. It's not hard to
imagine how that sort of treatment would atrophy their muscles for engaging
with criticism.

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derriz
There's far more romanticizing the past than there is of romanticizing the
present. So naturally it presents a better focus for critical examination.

If you ask the average person, the majority (in my experience) are far more
likely to think that the world has more poor people than ever or that people
have fewer rights, that opportunities are less, that corporations have more
power, that kids were safer, etc.

Pinker and the rest do a valuable service to point out that these lazy
assumptions are questionable to say the least and they do so using
quantifiable indicators and statistics. This is important in my opinion
because this narrative of a world getting worse and worse seems to be promoted
by the extremists at both left and the right.

I had to force myself to read past the words "neoliberal globalists" in
Hickel's rebuttal. Like the phrase "neomarxist progressives", you know already
that the content will be about politics instead of any sort of historiography,
statistics, facts, etc. Generally articles containing phrases like this are
about appealing to an existing political base - and not about honest debate.
Some other comment got downvoted for claiming this article is "pure politics"
but I agree with this assessment.

The article's link to Pinker's rebuttal of Hickel (strictly speaking the
rebuttal isn't Pinker's although the meat of it includes lengthy quotes from
Pinker) is actually worth a read -
[https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/is-
the-w...](https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/is-the-world-
really-getting-poorer-a-response-to-that-claim-by-steve-pinker/) \- as the
quoted email from Pinker clearly provides supporting citations. Admittedly, I
think he could have avoided pointing out Hickel's professed political leanings
as the facts themselves are convincing enough.

------
drugme
flagged - pure politics

~~~
confounded
I wish you hadn’t, I thought the article was worthwhile, and very much at home
on HN.

