The Ivory Tower is Fascist Architecture, or is It? -
Actually written APRIL 21, 2023
I apologize in advance if this piece of writing seems pretentiously “over clever”. I hope you can bear with it and glean the general framing it provides for the rest of the book [blog].
I’m sitting on a bench on the campus of The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, USA [home of the 2017 Bret Weinstein drama].
My good “friend” Konrad walks over and sits beside me. We begin a conversation.
Konrad: “Greetings, my pompous, grandiose asshole friend. How are ya doin’ today?”
Me: “Pretty terrible as usual. I’m still lonely as fuck ‘cause people don’t like pompous, grandiose assholes like me.”
Konrad: “Ha ha. What happened to the Luke I used to know, the Luke who would defend himself from my branding him as pompous and all that?”
Me: “I’m at a crisis point. I feel like my whole life has been a sham. I feel like some mental disease seized my mind when I was a child and made me a pompous asshole. The disease has ruined my whole life, made me useless and even hurtful to others. I feel so unlovable and it’s too late to do anything about it now.”
Konrad: “Oh, man. I’m sorry to hear this. Ya. Sounds like a real low point for you. If it would help to elaborate on the reasons behind these feelings, I’m totally willing to hear you out.”
Me: “Ya. Ya sure. I think I’d like to tell you what’s going on.”
Konrad: “Do proceed, my friend. Do proceed.”
Me: “The reasons I love myself, and the reasons I had hoped others might also love me, seem very flimsy to me now, like they might be complete bullshit I conjured up to compensate for my otherwise mundane insecurities.
“As you well know by now, I loved myself for my unusually strong abstract benevolence and compassion towards all. So strong was this alleged benevolence that I suspected my level of benevolence was superior to just about everyone else’s benevolence. So I had a superiority complex. And I knew I had to keep all this to myself on penalty of insulting everyone with my grandiosity. Intimacy was impossible for me. So it was more like a Christ complex.”
Konrad: “And now you suspect the whole thing is just some wayward neurosis to compensate for some insecurities from way back in childhood. Well, sounds like some plausible speculation so far. After all, I myself have been suggesting this was the case since I met you back in 1992. Ok, so go on.”
Me: “Ya. So what am I without my superior benevolence? I’m nothing. I’m just an ugly old man on welfare and …”
Konrad: “Ya ya – stop right there. Spare me the details.”
Me: “Oh, ya. Sorry.
“But look at me. I’ll never be a real scholar. I don’t have the discipline. So I can’t really contribute anything of value to the project of relieving widespread sustained suffering by means of ideology.”
Konrad: “Well, at least you try. That’s worth something. Or, it could be worth something if you contributed it with appropriate humility and maybe packaged it more as poetic artful parody than serious analysis.”
Me: “But maybe I only try as I do just to feed my neurotic superiority complex.”
Konrad: “Yes. But maybe if you confess your neurosis up front and ask the reader to take what you write as poetic parody art, you could still help out, just a little, in a kind of ironic way. Your work could be a parody that warns others against such grandiosity. It could be like Bruce Cockburn’s album “Humans”, especially the song, “Fascist Architecture”. The idea is you made mistakes. Help everyone else by warning them not to make the same mistakes. That could really be worth something. And you, my old friend, now have this fantastic opportunity to contribute this uniquely valuable warning. You don’t have to be a disciplined scholar to contribute something helpful. You can just be yourself, as you now are, encumbered by chronic sadness and neurosis, and still help relieve suffering in your own way. Just share your bullshit ideas and say ‘Look at this bullshit I made. Don’t be like I was, making bullshit like this.’ To my knowledge, this kind of book has never been made. Yours might be a first. You could be a pioneer in a new genre of literature. This, my friend, is your value. Act on it. Give us your gift.”
Me: “Look, Konrad. You see the tears swelling up in my eyes? I’m doomed. I’m doomed to loneliness because this neurosis has already destroyed me. And it won’t stop. I keep relapsing into the grandiose asshole nobody wants. My ‘gift’ won’t be enough to redeem me. Parody warning or no parody warning, I’m gonna die an unloved pompous asshole. It’s too late.
“No. Let me clarify why I’m crying. I’m saying it doesn’t help me to know I’ve got a neurosis. The neurosis still rules me. By this I mean that it sets the terms for how I love myself and how I will feel loved by others. It means I can’t feel loved by anyone unless they love me because they agree that my benevolence is superior. They too, must comply with, and feed, my neurosis. The damage is done. I’m incapable of love. I’m doomed.
“I really do want to kill this neurosis so I can love and be loved. But I can’t. Every time I review the reasons that support the superiority of my benevolence, they seem so valid, so real. To deny those reasons seems, well, unreasonable. So I am continually at war with myself over the validity of the reasons supporting my neurosis. But the neurosis keeps winning. And I keep losing – losing all hope of love and intimacy.
“You know my history, Konrad. You’ve seen it play out a few times. I get intimate with someone who tries to love me. They try, but they eventually come to a fork in the road where they must choose between being infected with my neurosis so they can maintain their intimacy with me, or get out before they too suffer the general alienation that comes with that neurosis. They wisely choose to get out.
“My love is a disease, Konrad. Or a poison. Do you have any idea what it’s like to go through life knowing your love is poison, Konrad?”
Konrad: “Ok. I see your dilemma here. You have a point.
“But now, if you don’t mind, could you review again those reasons that support your having superior benevolence? Maybe I could spot some logical flaws that you missed. And if so, maybe you could use those exposed flaws to help free yourself from the neurosis.
Me: “Yes. Help me find the flaws.
“I think of it in terms of how a person of great abstract, ideological benevolence would act, what they would believe, given the world as it is.
“I obviously see myself acting these ways. But I don’t see anyone else acting these ways. This makes me suspect that I am the only person with such great abstract benevolence.”
“So what are the ways of a person of great abstract benevolence?
“The first way of great benevolence is to possess long term ideological skepticism. This comes from the fact that there exist many ideologies claiming to be the singularly best way to relieve widespread sustained suffering, and that these ideologies conflict with one another such that they cannot all be that singular relief. This fact logically means that one, or more, or even all, of these conflicting ideologies must be wrong – they are in fact not the best cure for widespread suffering (at least not the most comprehensive one). This would prompt the benevolent person to be skeptical of all of them, and to likewise be super careful in selecting the ideology most likely to cure the most widespread suffering. Furthermore, I imagine this cautious skepticism would last most of their lives, given that the project of relieving widespread sustained suffering is very complicated. And even further than that, this skepticism would be a feature of life so significant that it would have a single word to describe it, like we have a word for puberty, or marriage, any other significant phase of life.
“In terms of this first way, I see very little cautious skepticism among proponents of ideologies. Most of the time I see the opposite. I see such supporters filled with unwavering certitude. I see no discussion of any such cautious skepticism, let alone some singular word for it. [Two people who did express such skepticism are Robert Daoust of the Algosphere and Alozo Fyfe in his book, A Better Place.]
“So this is the first reason I feel my benevolence is superior.
“The second way of great benevolence is to worry about the validity of knowledge. This too is partly a consequence of the conflicts among ideologies. How can one know whether any ideology is the most effective cure for suffering without some way to validate that knowledge? This would prompt people of great benevolence to investigate the validity of knowledge – to get at the fundamental issues of epistemology – which, again, may take a lifetime of study without a firm conclusion.
“Again, I see myself studying epistemology in the service of benevolence, but almost nobody else. Some exceptions do exist, like Richard Rorty (whose conclusions I oppose) and maybe Stephen Hicks (whose conclusions are closest to mine), and probably many more. But it seems to me that if I consider all the proponents of various conflicting ideologies, most of them would also concern themselves with epistemology. They would demand courses in epistemology as early as high school. And such courses would be super popular in college (perhaps under names like ‘Evaluating Knowledge of How to Relieve Suffering’). But again, I don’t see this.
“Those are the two core ways of great benevolence. But there are some other ways I see as more optional, yet seem like real useful clues. And the third way is one of these.
“The third way is to worry whether morality creates more suffering than it relieves. And I don’t mean worrying about which morality is the most effective reliever of suffering. I mean worrying whether morality in principle (the idea that there is some way things were meant to be) does more harm than help. Personally, I see sufficient reason to suspect morality harms more than it helps. And so do some real, professional scholars.
“My own explanation for this runs as follows:
“I worry that morality psychologically insulates us from the suffering we inflict on others, thus enabling more cruelty than otherwise. If we feel the desire to hurt others, but would ourselves suffer some remorse from hurting them (or suffer being shunned by observers), we can make a moral issue out of it, claiming it is our duty to hurt them, thus reducing the remorse and shunning. ‘Don’t blame me for hurting them. I was only hurting them because it was my duty to oppose them – they were violating the way things were meant to be.’ This is the ‘morality excuse’, and to me it seems like a kind of collective ‘Jungian shadow’ where hidden callousness and malevolence lurks. So naturally, without the morality excuse, our malevolence would be exposed. We’d have to face up to our malevolence and the greater likelihood of being shunned. This may reduce the amount of suffering we inflict on one another.
“Much of this turns on whether there really is a ‘way things were meant to be’ and a duty to comply with it. The field of philosophy has not settled this matter yet. And I suspect a person of great compassion who encountered this fact would adopt a skepticism about whether morality is even real. And, of course, that’s what I did.
“And that’s basically it. These are the three major ways I think a person of great benevolence would act. They seem so reasonable to me. So help me, Konrad. Help me see the bullshit in it.”
Konrad: “Oh, my realist brother, there is so much to say.
“I begin with a rhetorical question:
“If a real bully – someone who gleefully hurt others for sport – claimed to have superior abstract benevolence such that they have done their best to design an ideology that relieved widespread, sustained suffering better than any other ideology, would you take them seriously?
“Of course you couldn’t. There’s no way a gleeful bully can have superior benevolence of any sort, including at the abstract ideological level. Their direct interpersonal malevolence logically contradicts their alleged abstract ideological benevolence.
“Now I know you are no bully. But you’re no saint either. You went through a two week phase where you enjoyed watching videos of mice being electrocuted to death. You consent to being a welfare burden on U.S. taxpayers. I could go on about the things you fantasize about, but I’ll spare you that. Let’s just say there’s plenty about you that is ‘problematic’, to say the least. And it’s enough to cast doubt on your benevolence – of any sort.
“I’m not saying your malevolence makes you worse than average even. I suspect your malevolence is just average, that’s all.
“But ‘though average, I think it’s good evidence that you do not possess any superior abstract ideological benevolence.
Me: “Ya. I see that. I sure do have some malevolent Jungian skeleton shadows in my closet. And I totally own all of it.
“The problem is, my neurosis has a narrative for turning all that around to make me seem unusually benevolent. So let me tell you that narrative.
“The big idea is that I have average malevolence, but my superior benevolence uses that malevolence to learn about why people hurt one another. In the name of benevolence, I study my own malevolence for clues about how to reduce everyone’s malevolence in general. I doubt I could sufficiently understand the malevolence of others if I could not experience some mirror image of it in myself.
“So in this way my own malevolence is not completely contrary to my benevolence, but is somewhat useful in trying to understand malevolence with the aim of reducing it.
“The fact that I enjoyed watching mice get electrocuted to death was a red flag for me, prompting me to try figuring out why. I came up with a plausible explanation. And I do similar for my other malevolences. And so I use these plausible explanations to evaluate ideologies in terms of how well they might reduce the suffering we inflict on one another.
“So that’s the narrative that redeems my malevolence. In all honesty, I don’t know whether it is true redemption or just a rationalization supporting my deep neurosis. But since I’m in such a self-critical mood today, I’m siding with rationalization.
“So which do you think it is, Konrad?”
Konrad: “I’m betting on rationalization as well. I mean, the redemption narrative seems plausible and all; but in your case, I suspect you take it too far.
“Look at what’s going on here. The real you is sitting at home typing this dialog between us. Why? Because the real you is hoping to publish a book that will redeem his otherwise futile compassion. The real you is hoping to be admired for producing futile compassion theater. And he’s working two angles on it at once. He’s working as an agent of his neurosis still, trying to persuade us that perhaps he’s not so neurotic after all, that he may in fact possess some kind of superior yet tragically futile benevolence and compassion. But he’s also playing his own devil’s advocate through me, Konrad, the agent through which he accuses himself of neurosis, hoping that too will demonstrate an ironic kind of superior benevolence and compassion. He wins either way. He plays the theater and wins the admiration and redemption either way. And because he wins either way, I suspect the theater itself is the point, rather than the alleged tragically futile compassion played out in the theater. The real you’s primary motivation is to impress the world and be redeemed and admired, through a convoluted infinite meta-regress of confessing that this may be his primary motivation.
“Whatever you and I say here on this bench: it’s all just futile compassion theater.”
Me: “I see your point.”
Konrad: “Of course you would.”
Me: “Yes, this is theater seeking an admiring audience. But does that really mean the tragic futile compassion played out in the theater is insincere? Can’t the compassion still be authentic?
Konrad: “Maybe.
“But look, just because I suspect you are neurotically insincere doesn’t mean I think your theater has no value. I want you to play the theater. I want your readers to appreciate the art in it, the artful parody warning against this neurosis that hurts people. You still win some redemption. And I want that for you. I don’t like seeing you suffer like this.”
Me: “Well, I’m glad you care for me that much, Konrad.
“Oh fuck, this neurosis just keeps churning away at my emotions. Like, when you suspect my compassion is fake, I feel the urge to scream – a kind of rage against someone who’s trying to destroy everything I love most about myself. I want to defend myself but feel hesitant that I’d just be defending my neurosis. I don’t know. I’m confused and all messed up.
“Can I just say something a bit more emotion-based in defense of my compassion’s authenticity?”
Konrad: “Sure. I’m here to listen.”
Me: “Konrad, this bench we’re sitting on: it has meaning for me right now. It symbolizes my compassion’s authenticity.
“The reason for this is because there’s an audio recording of me weeping in compassion for a real person I barely knew, as I sat on this bench 13 years ago.
“What’s particularly relevant here is how my emotional sensibilities exploded from pity for one single person, to pity for everyone generally. Weeping for his misery instantly became weeping for everyone’s misery.
“But what makes this even more relevant is the situational context surrounding my pity for the man and the entirety of humanity he represented. I was out for a walk at night talking to myself about my life, my loneliness, my world view and so on. And I wanted to record my thoughts as I walked and talked.
“I sat for a spell on one of the bus stop benches over there and eventually this man I barely knew approached me and told me of how the police had ruined his life. I surmised that his dealings with the cops had traumatized him so much that he could only obsess over it and blame the cops endlessly. My big take-away from our conversation was an overwhelming sense of tragic hurt and blame.
“After he left, I moved over here to this bench and reflected on my pity for him.
“The man’s story had triggered my sense that all of us are frail beings at the mercy of a harsh but impartial world of traumatic frustration, but who had to cope with this traumatic frustration by blaming others. And that it was cyclic: the cops who traumatized this man were also frail and hurting, and therefore vengeful. We’re all under stress that is ultimately nobody’s fault, but we make it someone else’s fault to cope with it. [In this book, my most succinct intellectual elaboration of this ‘frail beings’ world view is the writing titled “Objective Scarcity Presumptive Theory”.]
“But then, I criticized myself for this view and speculated that my ‘frail beings’ brand of compassion is inauthentic bullshit emotional performance for my own ego.
“So you see, even on that night, 13 years ago, I was struggling with feelings of compassion theater guilt.
“And to me this is evidence that my compassion is at some meta level, authentic. Somewhere in the convoluted self-critical compassion theater is some authentic yet confused compassion producing and critiquing that theater. And there is my best love for others. And there is my best love for myself.
“And I feel like screaming in rage against anything that tries to destroy my best love. And I feel like my weeping that night was, to some extent, a prelude for that kind of scream.”
Konrad: “I hear you, my brother. I hear you.
“That’s a great story about your emotions. Unfortunately, it doesn’t prove anything. And you know this.
“I know that you love yourself very much for that ‘frail beings at the mercy of a harsh and impartial reality’ type of compassion. But it may help you to challenge it if you would just remember this:
“You formed that sentiment when you were just an impressionable child, around age 4, I suspect. And that is way before you had any significant reasoning skills. Now look at yourself at age 61. Now you’ve got adult reasoning skills. Doesn’t it seem like all your adult reasoning skills have done nothing but add sophistication to the sentiment you’ve had since age 4? Isn’t it plausible that the intellectual sophistication you’ve acquired your whole life has mostly evolved to defend that literally childish sentiment? And isn’t this reason enough to critically scrutinize that immature sentiment for once?”
Me: “Exactly. Yes, that is still more reason for my ongoing compassion theater guilt.
“But still, it doesn’t help me much. My heart is still stuck where it was at age 4. Critique it as I may, I can’t get past that 4-year-old view of humanity. I still find it beautiful.
“So, back to square one, then. I’m still doomed to be the neurotic asshole nobody wants.”
Konrad: “I’m sorry, my brother.
“I’m probably barking up the wrong tree here, but I can at least demonstrate my care for you with some of my pragmatist therapy you hate so much.
“Look, none of this futile compassion, theater or not, is working for you. It’s hurting you. And the extra benevolence you may or may not possess isn’t helping anyone else either. It is futile. And again, it seems to me you perform your contortions of superior yet futile compassion for yourself to make you feel special, like a tragic martyr. It would be practical to abandon this performed Christ complex and start believing ideas that would work better for you, ideas that would bring you closer to others.
“And I know you object to my argument from practicality here. You wanted something more focused on the truth and logic or your reasoning. Well, I’ve done what I could on that front. But now I want to go my whole nine yards and cut deeper into the very idea of truth and logic itself. The criterion for truth and logic is the very practicality I wish you would adopt, ie, it is that which works, ie, what most gratifies our strongest desires. Your reasoning about great benevolence is illogical and false for no other reason than it doesn’t work – that it doesn’t gratify your strongest desires, that it is futile.
“And I know you think I’m contradicting myself as I claim that truth is that which works, yet also expect you to believe my claim is true because that’s simply the way things really are, regardless of whether it works. But I’m not contradicting myself, as I believe in the practicality theory of truth because it is practical for me to do so. But even if I was contradicting myself, contradiction is just a feature of logic, the validity of which we are free to reject if it is practical to do so. And I do find it practical to do so.
“All logical arguments are just aesthetic arguments.”
Me: “Konrad, just stop. This isn’t helping.
“You know how I challenge you on this. The old story about someone whose suffering is so great that others can’t bear to acknowledge it. Believing the suffering exists would be false because it would be impractical to believe it was true. Hence the suffering ‘does not even exist’ if others find it more practical to believe so. And this to me seems very callous. It seems like a convenient excuse to ignore the suffering that definitely exists. The practicality theory of truth just seems way callous.
Konrad: “Alright then. You know my reply. You need to be practical about when to believe in the practicality theory of truth, and when to believe in the realist theory of truth.
“I like that you find it practical to believe in the suffering of others. But you go too far when you think your attitude about relieving suffering is superior. That’s too far, way impractical – and therefore false.”
Me: “I can see we’re at the same old impasse between us. It’s not helping me at all. I still feel doomed.”
Konrad: “Ok. It’s probably true that I can’t really help you here. And maybe nobody can. But I suggest you proceed with writing the book regardless. And on this prospect I have an idea.
“Give me a presence in the book [blog]. Put just enough of my actual voice in the book to taint the entire text with my haunting presence. Make the reader wonder which of us is the actual author. You do your best to state your case for the realist theory of truth and how it helps relieve suffering. But because you are a psychological mess with an alternate personality who is a pragmatist, the reader can suspect that even the most serious prose in the book is intended as a work of art – a poetic artful parody warning against this kind of futility, to be enjoyed aesthetically – the way I myself would intend.
“You write the realist version of the book. I will write the pragmatist poetic artful parody version. It will be the same exact physical collection of words. Which version those words comprise will be for the reader to decide.
Me: “Ok. I rather like this idea. It puts an interesting twist on the book.
“But I’m still doomed. I’m still the pompous asshole nobody can love. I always will be.
“My life and love are nothing but loss. And I don’t know how to grieve that loss. There’s nobody to give me visibility as I grieve. It’s all pent up.
“So ya. I’ll make the book. I’ll make the book because I can’t afford grief therapy. ‘Though I have a feeling I’ll be pushed to grieve more than I have ever grieved after the book is published. I strongly suspect people will continue shunning me, while cheering for you.”
Konrad: “Well, if it is any consolation to you, I love you, my realist brother. You may be a pompous asshole. But there’s a certain self-reflective honesty that compensates for your grandiosity. I know that seems contradictory, but, you know …
“I’m here for you. I always will be.
“Let me hug you. I want you to feel my closeness to you, my care, my love for you, my brother.”
Me: “I know you mean well, but… but your embrace feels both comforting and sinister.”
Konrad: “Hush. It’s ok. I’m not real.”
Me: “I re-absorb you. We merge and become Lukon. We are the paradoxical psychosis of the Town Idiot - The Town Idiot of the Kicking Giant song.”
…
Town Idiot: “In the spirit of artistic whimsy, I say this book is oh so snobbishly postmodern... It is lo-fi indie experimental garage grunge noise so authentic it is pretentious. This book is the Shaggs, Jandek, Merzbow... but also spurts of Cocteau Twins. Hopefully it blends into at least a Wet Leg or a Holly Herndon or a Khruangbin. This book just ruined its charm by trying to explain its charm, which is part of its ironic charm.”
Instance of Great Suffering: “And yet, the seriousness of relieving suffering …”
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