Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 19:56:12 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re:  LEO ON MODERNISM/POST


On April 7, Leo clarified his views on the practical dimension of
reason and unreason.  The point that concerns me is:

>But as I think about it, the ways in which I deal with the

>obscurantism of the Nation of Islam, Five Percenters, Israelites


>and a host of other similar sects that are found in the inner
city

>is remarkably consistent with the arguments I made here.

You have just hanged yourself, Leo.

>I don't find it particularly useful to treat these views, when

>they appear in my classroom, as simply errors of logic or

>reasoning.

It is a social problem with much deeper roots, but errors of
reasoning are nonetheless involved.

>Take the conspiracy theories that surround AIDS. They are an

>amalgam of a lot of different things, a lot of which fits this

>notion of backwardness and superstition -- some of it is the most


>rank racial stereotypes (the worst white racism, with just
inverse

>valorization), some of it is the most silly and unscientific

>theories, and some of it is the most bizarre caricatures of how

>the mechanisms of power works.

Well, put: contemptible backwardness, superstition, and ignorance,
also aided and abetted by a religious culture which discourages
critical thinking.

>But there is something else also going on here: we live in a

>country where less than a half-century ago secret medical

>experiments were still being carried out on unknowing
>African-American subjects (the Tuskegee Syphilis study).....

>Like all 'myths', these conspiracy theories gather their power

>precisely because they offer an explanation, however distorted
and

>pernicious, for these realities.

Note that your reasoning is entirely reasoning by analogy: it's
happened before, so it must be happening now, which is what all
these conspiracy theories are based on.  Thanks for exposing how
infantile his mode of reasoning is.

>Unless a way is found to address these realities, both in action


>and in alternative world views, all of the explanations of the

>errors of logic and reasoning will go nowhere.

Alternative world views?  I know you don't mean the alternatives
provided by bow-tie zombies at subway entrances.

>There is a very precise correlation in American history between

>the decline of potential if interracial political movements of

>progressive change and the turn of significant numbers of

>African-Americans to Farrakhans and their ilk.

In other words, the capacity to reason is not detached from life,
but is a direct product of social circumstances.  True enough, but
does this make irrationalism any less contemptible or childish?
When I listen to the crap that I hear around me in Washington, I
can only think: "Inferior."

>How do I respond to suggestions that white people are devils?
....

I hope your various techniques work for you. But if you are aware
of what you are really up against, all the mythology in the world
won't help you, because there is no substitute for cultivating
rational thinking, above al rational thinking about society and
its organization.


     --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---