"Taking On The System"
by JoyPolitics isn't a focus of this forum, and participants here cover the spectrum of political views and policy leanings. This is not a thread about politics, please don't use it as one.
That out of the way, I'd like to post a few excerpts from a review of progressive activist Markos Moulitsas' new book Taking On the System, because his words have broader social application.
This review was penned by Al Giordano. I think many here will find parallels to the bad old Culture War in this neck of the woods. For instance, here's a citation from the book that if you squint your eyes a little bit, should speak loudly to ID's struggle against the gatekeepers of NDS orthodoxy…
"I started the site [DKos] for a simple reason - I felt ill-served by the undemocratic gatekeeping mentality so prevalent in our society. And, at that time, we seemed to be on an inexorable march toward war with no avenue for dissent. There was an assumption by the powers that be that the rest of the citizen body couldn't think for ourselves. That we needed self-appointed and so-called experts to tell us what to think, what to do, and what we should - or should not - know. For far too long, these gatekeepers controlled the national conversation."
To which Giordano adds in his own view…
Kos expands his anti-gatekeeper view of politics to other key sectors of society: the media, the music industry, and Hollywood among them. Don't presume that this is a book about Democratic Party politics: It is only marginally so. It's about organizing in any and every field where creative individuals and communities must learn to bypass or to crush the self-appointed wardens…
Italics mine. Giordano includes a summary from chapter five entitled "Feed the Backlash," that could easily be applied elsewhere…
"When your enemies begin to notice you - and attack you - you have arrived. Instead of avoiding confrontation with gatekeepers and opponents, embrace it and feed it. Stoking the flames of controversy brings visibility to your issues, raises your profile and effectiveness, and begins a cycle of ever-increasing attention that you can use to your advantage."
In this thread I'd like to see some thoughts on the legitimacy of organized tactics for the purpose of challenging the status quo anywhere a status quo (a.k.a. "orthodoxy") maintains a cadre of gatekeepers to keep dissent at bay. And some thoughts about whether the status quo being challenged has much room for whining about organized tactics if they've an arsenal of organized tactics themselves to serve their gatekeeping function.
August 20th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
[...] Telic Thoughts recommends, and I agree Taking On The System: The Must-Read Political Book of the Year Markos Moulitsas Zúniga Is Our Era’s Very Own Saul Alinsky By Al Giordano Special to The Narco News Bulletin August 19, 2008 [...]
Pingback by Darwiniana » Taking on the system — August 20, 2008 @ 4:21 pm
August 20th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
The big difference with ID is that the "NDS orthodoxy" is an imaginary construct that exists only in the minds of ID supporters. No one would describe people who believe in gravity as followers of the Gravity Orthodoxy. No one would talk about the Round Earth Orthodoxy. The NDS Orthodoxy is simply a culture war sound bite.
Comment by Todd Berkebile — August 20, 2008 @ 5:05 pm
August 20th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Todd B.:
Oh, I dunno. Googling those very terms yields 24,300 hits, not all of them from TT. The terms "Darwinian Orthodoxy" garner 595,000 hits. "Neo darwinian orthodoxy returns 44,200. I don't see that they're all ID sites or supporters.
Still, the term Moulitsas used was "gatekeeper," in line with his last book, Crashing the Gates. Sticking to a theme [meme?] and all, one of the tactics he espouses. Do you deny there are zealous gatekeepers working to the purity of an orthodox view in evolutionary biology? Are you denying the existence of a "Politics" category over at Seed's SciBlogs main page, or that they ever included a category labeled "Culture Wars?"
The gatekeepers in this case are the mainstream orthodoxen. They've got clubs, websites, blogs, back alleys and all other technological organizational tools available to the scientistic elite these days. They control education, academia, peer review, publication and media in addition to the heavy 'net presence and expertise (scientists, not Al Gore, invented the internet).
I don't think there's a lot of difference between orthodoxies (status quo gatekeepers) and how they operate, no matter what sphere of human sociopolitical interaction you're looking at. We tend naturally to self-organize into camps of agreement, on various levels of sociopolitical interaction. This dynamic leads to what jurisprudence calls the "Adversarial System."
The Jews acutely analyzed this natural tendency thousands of years ago and organized the Mother Of All Orthodoxies around it. Which still influences our law and politics to this day. Even if you don't subscribe to religion, you've got to admit that's a pretty impressive sociopolitical feat.
Everybody who can be made to care will choose a camp to stand with. Defenders of the faith versus barbarians at the gate. This is the way of all things human, and history is a purely human pastime. Along the bell curve of True Believers [TM] on either side, there's a relatively broad middle spread, where each camp hopes to influence choices of belief. Organization can make all the difference, depending on who your target audience is.
Can you see that and work with it? If not, there's probably not much on topic that you can contribute to this thread.
Comment by Joy — August 20, 2008 @ 5:45 pm
August 20th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Joy:
Haha, actually "NDS orthodoxy" (with the quotes, which you must have left out) yields 2 hits, both from TT.
Comment by Raevmo — August 20, 2008 @ 6:05 pm
August 20th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Um… nope. I'm now getting 24,500 hits on "NDS orthodoxy." Maybe your country's Google returns only what their Google-Monitors decided you were looking for?
Stop it, Raevmo. This is stupid, way too easy. I will send further diversions to the hole.
Comment by Joy — August 20, 2008 @ 6:35 pm
August 20th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Nope. Google.com (USA) same result: 2 TT hits (Yahoo.com same). I get 24000 hits when I leave out the quote marks. You should learn how to use the Google.
Comment by Raevmo — August 20, 2008 @ 6:50 pm
August 20th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Darwinian Heresies
Ed. By Lustig, Richards & Ruse
http://assets.cambridge.org/97...
Comment by Rock — August 20, 2008 @ 7:00 pm
August 20th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
LOL!!! Oh, my. Raevmo's the only person and/or pseud I've ever met who automatically includes the quotes in the search terms. Who also lectures fairly regularly on Boolean logic…
He's outta here.
Comment by Joy — August 20, 2008 @ 7:14 pm
August 20th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Thanks for the link, Rock o' My Heart. Have Downloaded, Will Peruse. §;o)
Comment by Joy — August 20, 2008 @ 7:20 pm
August 21st, 2008 at 5:14 am
I suppose gatekeepers exist in for all belief systems but for the most part most gatekeepers do not perceive themselves that way. I prefer intellectual inertia as an explanation for why most people resist counter mainstream ideas. The phenomenon extends to science as well as non-scientific realms as any review of the history of science would reveal. In fact one need not go beyond the present to find over the top intellectual assaults on those with the temerity to propose Unexpected Results.
Conceptual inertia is part of human nature.
Comment by Bradford — August 21, 2008 @ 5:14 am
August 21st, 2008 at 6:28 am
I am bound to be accused of being a sock puppet, but anyway… Some weeks ago I tried to post on TT, but there was a fault with the site. When the fault was resolved, the TT cookie had gone and my PC no longer remembered my password. Neither did I. I tried the "forgot password" facility, but got an error. I informed Krauze (as I happened to have his e-mail) and he passed on the problem, but it was never sorted. So here I am with a new name.
I had to comment to this thread because of the wonderful irony of Joy posting about gatekeepers censoring opposing views, and then, just four hours later, there she is preventing dissent on her own thread.
A lot of them are from uses of the Nintendo DS! Only two - both at TT - have the words together (as can be determined by using quotes).
Use quotes, and that drops to 5,900, and from a casual glance the majority of them by creationists and IDists.
Now Joy advocates not using quotes, while Raevmo advocates quotes, so the interesting question is what sites does Joy want to include, that Raevmo would not. We can find them using:
Darwinian Orthodoxy -"Darwinian Orthodoxy"http://www.google.com/search?h...
Here is what Google abstracts from the first ten (my comments in square brackets):
One of these has nothing to do with Darwinism, several are talking about the relationship between Darwinism and Christian othodoxy. Are these really the sites Joy thinks should be included to support her claim?
If you are searching for a phrase, it is wrong not to include quotes. What were you trying to prove, Joy? That NDS and orthodoxy are common words, or that NDS orthodoxy is a common phrase?
Comment by The Pixie Again — August 21, 2008 @ 6:28 am
August 21st, 2008 at 9:31 pm
It is not only ID’ists who see “gatekeepers.” Paleontologist Nile Eldredge sees essentially the same thing.
According Eldredge it is the geneticists who occupy the “High Table of evolutionary discourse.” Historically he argues the geneticist have excluded the paleontologists, like himself, from participating in the discourse of the High Table.
In his book, Reinventing Darwin: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory, he writes:
In other words, in Eldredge’s opinion, those who occupy what he calls the “High Table” (those who control the research agenda’s) are addicted to a highly reductive way of thinking. This highly reductive way of thinking, according to Eldridge, has kept us from investigating some other important questions concerning evolution.
The point I have been trying to make, on numerous occasions, is that gradualistic reductionistic thinking can hinder science from exploring some very interesting and potentially important questions, because they don’t fit the “accepted dogma.”
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — August 21, 2008 @ 9:31 pm
August 21st, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Yet, oddly enough, JAD, when molecular biology began its rise to prominence, Neo-Neo-Darwinists, like Simpson and Mayr, argued that the thoroughly reductionist approach, reducing evolution to molecules-in-action, was contrary to the “true spirit” of evolutionary theory, which was organismal or systemic; dealt with the whole creature and not its infinitely divisible bits-and-pieces. Molecular biologists couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
Seemingly in contradiction to what Darwin himself wrote—evolution operates on the “whole machinery of life.” (“Machinery” of life?!) Of course, Darwin didn’t know squat about the molecular “machinery of life,” so who knows what he meant by that.
You can’t hardly criticize a theory you can’t pin down. Hence, Mayr’s and Simpson’s critique has been nearly universally ignored as irrelevant for molecular biology.
Indeed, their vague ideas about “organismal biology” have been completely subsumed, co-opted, by the rise of systems biology, which is thoroughly analytic and synthetic—attempts to relate, what the Neo-Darwinists could never do, evolution across all scales.
Arguing with old-school Neo-Darwinists is like arguing with creationists. They are so thoroughly out-of-touch with the currents of contemporary developments in biology that they are simply irrelevant.
As I’ve said before, some general theoretical perspectives are not so much falsified as they just argue themselves into irrelevance. They aren’t so much falsified. They are antiquated.
The Neo-Darwinist just couldn’t keep up with the science.
Like wide-brimmed hats, ruffles, snuff boxes, and buckles on shoes, Neo-Darwinism is out of fashion.
History.
Comment by Rock — August 21, 2008 @ 10:19 pm
August 21st, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Reductionism is not the enemy of the design, IDers. If your theory (if you ever come up with one) approx the truth then it should be robust wrt reduction, analysis, i.e., taking things apart to see how they work. How they are designed. Unlike Neo-Darwinism.
Reductionism is not atheism, evolutionism, scientism, Darwinism, or what have you. It’s just taking things apart in the attempt to figure out how they work.
Reductionism’s necessary complement in all science, natural and design, is synthesis: Putting the parts back together so that they work. (Damn! The very practice of science is so teleological! For want of a better word. LOL) Proving that you actually know how all the parts fit together and work. Even if it was purely by chance that you actually put all the parts together, etc.! That’s science! Design!
Comment by Rock — August 21, 2008 @ 10:55 pm
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I’m on a tear of rants lately, so what-the-hell:
Self-appointed gatekeepers of science inevitable get trampled in the rush of new discoveries. Their turf, that they so desperately and vainly attempt to protect, is fertile ground for science and is inevitably reclaimed by inquiring minds.
Science marches on, but not in a lockstep. Get in its way and you’ll be stepped on. The N-D’s thought attempted to put a stopper on science, by their theoretical dictums and it didn’t (never) worked. Their only success is by ex post facto admissions to their theory: Their theory, in name only, can admit just about any result by theoretical, interpretational, revision.
I have suggested to the IDers that they pursue that same tact: All I’ve ever required of you (IDers) is to reinterpret the very same set of facts from your own design-theoretic perspective. But you have no theory! All you’ve got are gaps in existing theory. That does not suffice for scientific purposes as you’ve been reminded innumerable times.
What you need is a theory of design. Nothing less will suffice for science.
Comment by Rock — August 22, 2008 @ 4:25 pm
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Rock wrote:
A clock is made up of gears and springs and things. But a clock is more than gears and springs and things. A clock has a function– to measure time. A clock is more than the sum of it’s parts; it is a purposeful arrangement of its parts. Even the simplest living organism is staggeringly more complex than a clock. And, like a clock living organism have functions that are more than the sum of it’s parts.
Reductionism in its most extreme form sees living things as nothing more than a collection of parts.
Nobody represents this view better (or with more crassness) than the late Carl Sagan. In his book, Cosmos, he writes:
“ I am a collection of water, calcium, and the organic molecules called Carl Sagan. You are a collection of almost identical molecules with a different collective label. Is that all? Is there nothing in here but molecules? Some people find this idea somehow demeaning to human dignity. For myself, I find it elevating that our universe permit’s the evolution of molecular machines as intricate and subtle as we. But the essence of life is not so much the atoms and simple molecules that make us up as the way in which they are put together.” (p105)
Well, at least in the final sentence, which seems more like an afterthought, I can find some common ground with Rabbi Carl. But this is exactly where ID parts company with “mainstream” science. ID focuses not on the collection of parts, but “the way in which they are put together.” This is more holistic approach than has been practiced by science for the last century.
So, the issue is not parts, or figuring out how the parts are put together but a matter of focus. Do we focus on the parts or the thing that exceeds the sum of its parts?
Is that what you were trying to say when you wrote?
I would partially agree, again emphasizing that the focus of reductionism is on the parts. There are other approaches to science, including ID, which places its focus on the whole. After all, that is what we are really trying to understand, isn’t it?
As I have written numerous time before, I am not member the ID is science crowd. (Furthermore, I’m not sure it can be, or ever will be science.) Nevertheless, in its present form I see ID playing a more useful role as a conceptual framework. In such a role it may help us not only in the questions we ask, but also in the way we actually do science.
For example, just above you wrote: “All you’ve got are gaps in existing theory.” But why are there gaps? And why do the gaps always seem to occur at the crucial junctions? Are there natural explanations that can close those gaps or are we missing something? I don’t necessarily mean that the something is some kind of intervening intelligence. The something else could be some unknown natural process. An ID conceptual framework at least allows one to ask those kinds of questions. Questions that the “gate keepers” for some reason don’t like.
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — August 22, 2008 @ 11:01 pm
August 23rd, 2008 at 12:33 pm
“I am not member the ID is science crowd. (Furthermore, I’m not sure it can be, or ever will be science.)”
I can certainly understand your pessismism, JAD.
But scientists don’t fill those gaps in our knowledge with concrete. The material they use is spongy, porous, brittle, full of holes itself, it doesn’t fit the original gap very well, and tends to fall out when you turn your back to guard the gate. LOL When you attempt to fill (if you ever do) one of those gaps with a theory and positive experimental results you will quickly discover what every scientists knows–those gaps are in the theories and experiments! So don’t think you are going to fill all those gaps with anything that isn’t itself full of holes!
Does that sound even more discouraging? You bring the gloom and I’ll bring the doom. It gets even more discouraging!
A report published a few years ago about stupidity drew a bit of attention at the time. The researchers discovered that some people are so stupid they don’t even know they are stupid. Quite the opposite! They think they’re smart! (You know em, “gatekeepers.”) This is one of those scientific reports that informs you of what everyone already knew. LOL But it has to be done. Every scientist feels that way sometimes. How could I have been so stupid when I thought I was being so smart?!
But take courage. There are some stupid people who fully realize that they are stupid. I.e., all the rest of us. LOL So don’t allow yourself to be discouraged. Something I’ve tried to drive home in these discussions is that we are all in the same boat.
But to even begin to do science one has to precisely identify a problem and provide a possible solution and a way to test it. As I suggested above, I don’t think you guys are correctly identifying the problem. Or any problem! I don’t think you’re problem is gatekeepers. Not reductionism. Not materialism. Not the military-industrial complex. Not the Illuminati. Not even Darwinism! You are the problem. And you are the solution.
“…I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed.”—Michael Faraday
But you aren’t one of those people are you?
You guys are risk-takers. I believe in you.
So stop moping, get up off your lazy ass, and get to work!
Sheesh! C'mon, guys!
Comment by Rock — August 23, 2008 @ 12:33 pm
August 24th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
I don’t think that I’m being pessimistic, Rock, rather, I think that I’m being realistic. Instead of thinking in terms of stupidity I think we need to think in terms of our own smallness. If we begin by understanding our smallness, how little we really understand and know, only then will we start slowly inching our towards understanding something about this amazingly complex universe in which we live.
One scientist I know something about expressed this thought beautifully. He wrote:
“We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but it doesn’t know what it is. That it seems to me, is that attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws…”
The problems begin when some of the other children in the library after reading and studying a few of the books start announcing that they have figured it all out. You and I of course can see that even those these kids, are fairly bright, from the perspective of “the grand scheme of things” these kids don’t know squat.
So are these other kids stupid are just a little bit (maybe alot) more presumptuous about what they have learned? I would argue it is the latter.
The problem is when the presumption turns into arrogance. It’s compounded when such presumption and arrogance finds itself in a position of dominance and power. That's how you end up with self appointed gate keepers.
BTW the scientist that I quoted above was named Albert Einstein.
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — August 24, 2008 @ 11:25 pm