The Madeleine & Anvi Gallery of Excellent Effortposts

[Antonio the Sixth]

I approve of this initiative.

[Antonio the Sixth]

General distaste for all intellectual projects to recreate society.

What counts as an "intellectual project to recreate society"? Is it better to perpetuate the mistakes of the past, and leave things broken, because to do otherwise would be to "recreate society"?  Even if doing so in actuality pledges your fealty to a previous such intellectual project?  Even if inaction has victims– real living, breathing victims– of its own?

More generally, does everything always get worse over time?  Is there any space in your worldview to try and make the world a better place (in full knowledge that success is never guaranteed), or is it all just funhouse anti-Whiggishness all the way down?

[Antonio the Sixth]

I don't see what's excellent about that post. It's just the kind of rhetoric about Progress that Mikado's implicitly critiquing. "The mistakes of the past", "leave things broken", etc.

So you think no mistakes were ever made in the past and nothing is broken?

[Antonio the Sixth]

I don't see what's excellent about that post. It's just the kind of rhetoric about Progress that Mikado's implicitly critiquing. "The mistakes of the past", "leave things broken", etc.

So no mistakes were ever made in the past and nothing is broken?

Of course not, but the problem I have (and I don't know if Mikado shares this) is that Progress implies a continuum with barbarianism at one end and utopian supermen at the other. Taken to its extreme that thinking gave us the USSR and fascism. And what follows from this is that a dogmatic notion of Progress implies inevitably and permanence, which is obviously absurd. I think abolishing segregation and the invention of birth control were good things, but I don't think they form part of a steady march towards a "better world". This kind of atheist religious thinking is neatly summarised in that quote about the "arc of history bending towards justice" or whatever. I don't think there's any reason to believe that's the case.

You are the one who made the "rhetoric of Progress" into a strawman. Train's post was merely an apt rebuttal of the opposite extreme, which Mikado is increasingly espousing in his recent remarks.

But anyway, this thread isn't for arguing, so if you want to respond let's move to the thread where that post was from.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Can someone explain to me why Bushie is so hated here? Don't know much about him so...

Bushie a chronically unemployed, morbidly obese, developmentally disabled Oklahoman in his late thirties who has been financially dependent on his parents throughout his entire life. His journal ("Update") has been the premier feature of the Forum Community board for the better part of the past decade.

One factor behind Update's appeal¹ is Bushie's comically abusive behavior toward others. He frequently lies to his own family. When he has work, he's a skiver. His treatment of animals and the elderly is downright horrifying. Throughout all of this, he insists that he is an upstanding person and a good Christian. "You do not dare insult my good name." is one of his mantras. For more examples, Google the following: site:uselectionatlas.org "my good name" + update

¹Other than the simple and oh-so-good-natured pleasure of reading about the pratfalls of a disabled and obviously deeply troubled man, that is.