This is an extraordinary piece, and many of the quotes from this book are tremendous. Somehow I had never read it.
It is shocking how so many replies are hostile or defensive. The author (or the author the author is citing) isn't even claiming that movements are bad, or giving any qualitative judgment (e.g. citations about equal rights or the American revolution as if they're counterpoints somehow seem off the mark), just noting the qualities of most movements and the environments in which they occur. If you're looking to engineer a group for some cause, even if the cause is ostensibly good, this is a good how to guide.
It is extraordinary. Much of the hostility stems from the fact that most are distilling the article from the perspective of their tribe and somehow feeling attacked which is ironic considering the material.
The “frustration” echoed in the book and article is real. Most people today have had a taste of the things they didn’t know they wanted and more apt to join a movement.
This isn’t an overall guide to engineering a group for a cause so much as how to gather strength running a movement.
The green revolution and smallpox elimination operated very differently than something designed to create a regime or gather political power in a democracy.
Movements that have a truly profound impact in human history operate rather differently. Compare say the Age of Reason with Communism and they both caused revolutions, but first had a far more long term impact while the second had more zest.
Having been raised on the right then switching to a more left-center view, I don't see how it's demonizing. The right of my youth and today idolize some imagined past that never existed and fixates on threats to reaching that ideal. 'Good' changes are almost always a return to something old and 'trustworthy'.
Occasionally the left does get stuck on defeating some right-wing figure, settling for mediocre or even poorly suited candidates (cough Biden cough). Though more often I read/hear more about changes toward progressive goals than fear mongering.
By HN standards I am very left-leaning. But I also think the clamor against capitalism and even capitalists is getting silly. There are popular memes that assert that the reason you feel like staying in bed in the morning is capitalism.
>[the right] have no long-term view. They just want to keep things as they are.
Taking things nice and steady, respecting Chesterton's Fence and making sure things aren't changing for change's sake is a long-term view.
>[the left] have a long-term view how society can be improved along many dimensions.
Except most such "improvements" are changes for change's sake without sufficient thought given to them. Such changes generally to satisfy someone's desire for morals (FSVO moral) is a short-sighted view.
Chesterton's Fence is about ensuring you understand the reason a specific choice was made in the past before undoing it. The modern right has no interest in understanding that choice and then making carefully considered improvements. The modern right yearns for a fictional past, one that if it ever existed benefited only the most elite members of society.
In the past in my home country of Canada the Tory party roughly represented this idealized view of conservatism. I believe the UK Tories have been like this during parts of their history, but I'm much less familiar with their history. Here in Canada the red tories merged with social conservatives in the early 2000s. It was a hostile takeover, with all the party members who embraced rational, considered progress pushed out by the modern right, who have increasingly embraced conspiracy theories and populist positions.
Climate change has been decisively shown to be the result of human-caused emissions. Chesterton's Fence has been satisfied; clearly emitting greenhouses gases cannot continue, yet the right is, if anything, gaining hostility to efforts to reduce emissions. A last-gasp red tory style leader was recently pushed out of Canada's conservative party for, among other things, daring to acknowledge climate change required action in the official party platform.
Many social policies were demonstrably enacted to limit opportunities for people of colour, like red-lining in the US. There are perfectly reasonable debates to be had about the best way to correct this historic injustice, but many on the modern right deny these policies had any detrimental impact, or if they did, the effects are no longer being felt.
I can respect leaders who want to carefully consider change before enacting it, but once the science is in, denying the problem exists is not leadership, nor is it respecting Chesterton's Fence. That's just painting your own reality.
In my experience you have to be even more circumspect in choosing your words around the Left than the Right. The Right might blame "liberals" for 95 percent of the world's problems while the Left only blames the Right for 80 percent of them, but much of the discourse on the Left operates like an ongoing inquisition where one wrong opinion will get you branded an apostate.
> a lot of wrongs they want to address (but that’s not a devil)
Isn't it? The wrongs can end up portrayed as devilishly apocalyptic. American capitalism is consuming everything and might cause the extinction of life on the planet. The American state is intrinsically racist, founded on extractive unequal principles, to benefit the elites. The police serve solely as the protective arm of capital. The failure to appropriately censor incitement to hatred against LGBTQ people is literally genocide against gender-varying people.
I don't think the above is downright caricature? That is, one could find an American making those sort of statements pretty easily. (I've seen such things here in the HN comments.) I personally believe a weaker version of most of those claims. But I don't ramp it up to 11 like some people, who seem to need an incarnated, unambiguous evil to fight against.
The homosexual argument does not checks out at all. All around the world and history, making kids to reproduce was not an issue at all. The rather small amount of homosexuals not having sex with opposite gender would not be an issue at all for them. Keeping kids alive was an issue. Preventing yet another kid after you had 7 and little resources was an issue. Surviving childbirth especially first one, was an issue.
We ceased to have many kids only after contraception.
So you do not hear that argument, because it is historically unlikely to be true and is just a rationalization.
In general the left assigns a mortality to an issue rather than view something from objective viewpoint. Are trans rights a human right or an objective idea to be discussed by anyone? If a person can choose a gender identity why isn't it rational for someone to be able to choose a racial identity?
It is shocking how so many replies are hostile or defensive. The author (or the author the author is citing) isn't even claiming that movements are bad, or giving any qualitative judgment (e.g. citations about equal rights or the American revolution as if they're counterpoints somehow seem off the mark), just noting the qualities of most movements and the environments in which they occur. If you're looking to engineer a group for some cause, even if the cause is ostensibly good, this is a good how to guide.