YouKnowWhoTheFuckIAM
Meditations on Moloch is “soul-wrenching”, apparently. Jesus fucking Christ.
In what world do these people grow up? “Oh my God, conflict exists between interests and values, things are hard, not every problem is tractable”.
There used to be a refrain that “Moloch” is effectively Siskind’s word for capitalism, because he can’t bring his libertarian heart to name what everybody understands. But that’s wrong, because Siskind’s view is no more than the shallowest Burkeanism. And the worst thing about every single anti-Utopian is that they all assume everybody else feels as mugged by imperfection as they do.
But that’s just the thing! Nietzche’s fundamental innovation is to view all of these things: morality, politics, economics, indeed any kind of social or philosophical question through an incredibly narrowly psychological lens. It’s his obsessive persistence in this, and his excessive sensitivity to the deep irrationality in human nature (I hesitate to go with many people in saying “brilliance”, because what’s “brilliance”?), which makes him such a powerful critic of Western culture. For Nietzsche, the entire history of the world is nothing more than the history of individual sick people working out their issues, and generally doing badly.
But Siskind doesn’t have any of that, because he can only think in terms of a shallow combination of overcoming bias and his own unexamined prejudices. Siskind’s problem is that he doesn’t even view the psychological psychologically.
Well I’m not really critiquing his writing style. I’m using a reasonably complementary analysis of his writing style to sternly criticise his thought. That means I fundamentally disagree with your own paragraph in praise of his thought, whereas I actually disagree with you that his writing is poor - I think he’s an intelligent and effective writer.
NSFW
He may have taught you to “manage” your narcissistic parent, that’s not for me to say, but that only means that he’s given you certain instruments which happen to help you deal with your relationship to somebody else’s problem. It actually tells us nothing about whether he genuinely understands that problem, and understanding that problem is both the task that he has set himself and the alleged skill you praise him for.
People like TW are the perfect distillation of the booksmart Slate Star Codex fan class, who are so completely sealed in their bubble that they aren’t even in touch with major parts of themselves anymore. They lose, or never developed, the capacity to even simulate a coherent theory of mind which would make appropriate sense of what the other person is saying. Brains like a Frank Gehry building with a roof made from sheer enthusiasm supported by warped tent poles of Scott Alexander heuristics sticking out at odd angles from each other.
Wow, I went looking for something else and found a deeply sad illustration of exactly what I’m talking about:
https://twitter.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1772398359745012139
These people really need the Tao Te Ching