Hughes' star is just rising. He is a gifted, courageous man and bravely reflects his own direct experience. He is the antithesis to the Kendi poison. This young man has a glorious future, but not without radical challenge. I showed his rap video to my college freshmen in February. There's no end to his capacity to inspire.
Lots to ponder. I might add that I also studied philosophy at Columbia. CC65. One prof said my questions were interesting but not very philosophical. So, I became an anthropologist. I appreciate the essay opening with philosophy and then moving from those quanderies into those of a more empirical frame. And music is my channel into being able to hop from one standpoint epistemology to another. Wonderful essay.
I'll go along with that, Sir PatriotD. But I would be curious to know how one derives it.
The only Way I'm familiar with is meditation. Well, that's not entirely accurate either. I believe that Science can *approach* objective Truth. But until things are *perfected* within Science, things won't be "perfectly" objective, right?
Then the question is whether anything can be positively *proved* to be unassailably Truth. We've seen many cases where what *was* True became further refined Truth on further evidence, right? Newton's Laws *looked* unassailable. Until they didn't. And what might be "objective Truth" here on Earth? Can it be positively stated that it applies *everywhere* in the Universe?
I'm not very educated, so dunno if that's a philosophical question or an epistemoligical question. (Can't even spell latter. ;-)
Aug 2, 2022·edited Aug 2, 2022Liked by Free Black Thought
Neil deGrasse Tyson does a nice summary: scientific truth, religious truth, vs. personal truth. Objective truth most closely aligns with scientific truth.
Scientific truth is objective when it is exactly reproducible by many people and it is falsifiable, can be proven or disproven. It is necessarily incomplete as each question we answer, each truth we discover, leads to new questions and a broader understanding of physical reality. Newtonian physics was not wrong. In many contexts, it remains predictably right. However, it was incomplete, as general relativity shows, and on and on.
Science addresses the what and the how of what we observe, not the why. It struggles to define morality. CS Lewis and others claim it cannot define it. Perhaps we can observe it?
The danger is believing we know or can know enough to be infallible, to hold beliefs we hold as unfalsifiable. The socialists, i.e. ‘politically correct’ social justice warriors of identity politics, the fascists, and the religious crusaders of old, act or acted upon their unfalsifiable beliefs. Such beliefs nourish evil. Their historical outcomes are clear.
Religious truth seeks to bring meaning to what we observe and experience and to frame them usefully. Its focus is ethical and moral values expressed in ancient stories encapsulating millennia of human experience. Typically learned from family and culture and then grown or neglected by each of us, it infers or implies the why. It must also evolve. Religion attempts to capture centuries of human emotional and behavioral patterns along with their outcomes. Can religious truth be objective? When based on a shared observation of outcomes delivered, I argue it can.
Personal truth, I think ideally, is a mix of the above two types. And this leads to the reason for my comment to Joe Nalven. I hope Joe will forgive me if I misunderstood him. My response arose from contextual assumptions and the emotion they elicited. Let me explain.
Joe went to Columbia, the US home of the Frankfurt school of post-modernism. I assumed that school’s thought appeared here in its “standpoint theory” incarnation. So, I assumed Joe was possessed by that ideology and its claims that there is no truth outside of subjective “lived experience” and that personal truth is controlled not by freewill or personal agency but by societal groups of oppressors and oppressed. That is dialectical materialism, one of the unfalsifiable beliefs of Marxists - whether they understand it or not. Its Angela Davis vs. Martin Luther King. Or in my “lived experience,” Ibram Kendi vs. Thomas Sowell. I’m for Sowell.
Painfully ironic that the two groups SJWs claim most to support, poor blacks (critical race theory) and women generally (queer theory) and young women specifically (gender ideology), are the two groups most hurt by their “movement.”
To close, I believe we should judge beliefs and systems by their outcomes and not their claimed intentions. MLK drove dramatic, if incomplete, positive outcomes. Kendi, I can’t think of any outcome other than that he is an object lesson in how not to be.
SJWs don't care. For all their pretences, they're easy to see through. Through and through, because there's no there there.
Frankfurt school? I've forgotten some-a the basics like standpoint theory. But I know a little Marcuse and stuff like You pointed out and what I think of it can be summed as"pfffft." Kendi to Sowell is like a blown-out candle to a bonfire. I have a backlog of Sowell to catch up on.
When I look at what I don't know I'm humbled. I'm no theologian. But most we can do seems to be to work on that personal truth, by understanding more-a the objective and religious kinds. Pleasurable duty, to last me the short time I have left. :-)
This reply goes to jt and PatriotD -- and to myself. I struggled, and continue to struggle, with all these comments about truth, objectivity -- however embodied. First off, we experience and know subject to a variety of human frailties. Certainty is not guaranteed. In my book, I and the Other -- a wicked inquiry, I start and end with those frailties, a radical individualism. However, I too except objective reality, but bracketed in this kaleidoscopic knowing and unknowing. If you suspect a spiritual dimension, you would be correct. Second, I include the 'why' in the artful science of cultural anthropology. If there is no 'why' to interrogate, then we are robots or cookie cutter clones of some 'authentic' construct -- to me that is simply caving to a cultural stereotype. So, I can play with standpoints as a riff without trapping my way of imperfect understanding or expressing it imperfectly. I hope that expands our conversation.
The former looks at today through religion and political history and the latter is the best, and I've read allot, explanation of the Post Modernism via a contrast of enlightenment and post-modern beliefs. If that's of interest, you could just read a few chapters and be done. If you want to understand sex and gender, it is a long book but lays it out extraordinarily well.
Both books are in the same pathway. I attempted to lay out a way to to deal with sex-gender. Here’s my way of puzzling through: Our Sex Starts in the Womb, Our Gender As We Toddle On - Minding The Campus
Wow, who are you? Seriously man, if you have written more I want to read it. I also wholeheartedly support the aim of reforming our universities. Can I help you with that goal somehow? My daughter starts college next year and I am really worried about it.
JT - you should read Joe’s essay. I can’t finish it right now but the first third is really good.
I've taught at the community College and university level. If I had a class, we'd all be reading FBT for how to have an open inquiry with the only ground rule is to respect each other. You can find other articles by me at Minding The Campus. The platform allows me to be weird. I highly recommend going to YouTube and listen to Jacob Banks' song Slow Up. My favorite lyric is: 'What I've learned from a mirror, look too hard and you'll find you a stranger. Love is a decision, the choice is yours.'
Another thought that might help we three. I too struggle mightily with truth, objectivity etc. Put another way, recognizing good and evil in myself and others and then acting appropriately.
The name "Israel" means to struggle with God i.e. to struggle with the moral and ethical dilemmas of life. Jacob is renamed Israel in the old testament because that is what he, most all biblical characters, spend their time doing. Only one was perfect, and that too, in context, has shades of meaning. I like how Jordan Peterson puts it "the bible stories are archetypical stories of incredible depth and meaning."
Aug 2, 2022·edited Aug 2, 2022Liked by Free Black Thought
Clear, coherent writing with footnotes. Well done!
Edited to add: I discovered Coleman Hughes about three years ago. He continues to inform and impress. I'm nearly always calmer and more focused after listening to him on nearly any topic.
Thank you for highlighting Coleman Hughes. He's a standout intellectual, articulate, reasonable, loaded with talent and exemplary critical thinking skills. His podcast interviews enrich my life and teach me things. Just the other day he offered a nuanced, ambivalent opinion on Julian Assange and Wikileaks that stopped me in my tracks.
Hughes is not even 30 years old. May he have a long life and contribute to the betterment of the planet for years to come.
Occasionally I find an essay that is *so* good that I copy it to Word. On the lame theory that I'll be better able to find it and read it again sometime. This is one such. Can't compliment M. Hughes enough. I've known *of* him for a long while. From FAIR and his appearances. Knew he *had* made a hip hop video but not what it was about.
As other commenters have noted, a polymath like him will have to set his own "the sky's the limit."
The interviewer, M. Blakeslee, did an outstanding job. I got a chance to see into the *soul* of M. Hughes. (If such-a thing exists, but You can get my meaning.) (I use “M.” like the French do, for Monsieur but ALSO for Madam and Mademoiselle EQUALLY. That’s just me.)
Can't thank You enough, all-a Youse.
Although separated from M. Hughes by race and a generation or two, he expresses my same views near-perfectly.
On reparations, I would disagree. Giving money away based on skin-color is, by definition, racist. I understand a little about the tragedies of red-lining, segregation, integration, and the difficulties that rained down on Black people.
The other problem with it, tho, is that giving money away based on skin color will drive an irrecoverable wedge between poor Blacks and poor Whites. Why should middle-class (or better) Blacks get money, and poor Whites not? And I'm not at all certain that this unintended consequence of reparations, isn't actually intended.
I wish I had a chance to get educated in Philosophy. But then, I'm lucky. I think today's Philosophy, at least in Academia, has lost it's Way. For example, I understand the ontological question of "Do we really exist?" But what with *all* the problems we have in today's world, to me anyWay, that's like determining how many angels fit on the head of a pin.
Why not just assume that we do. Or, looked at scientifically, why not admit that what we think of Reality is actually our physical sensations filtered out by a brain obsessed with limiting the amount of information it has to deal with. Meaning, yeah, at one level we each have a unique version of Reality, so nobody can answer the question objectively whether we really exist or not. Or whether there's some objectively consistent Reality which is shared by all humans.
"Objectively consistent?" Why not just assume there's a version of Reality that at least *some* are capable of experiencing which is fairly close to being an identical shared Reality. "Close enough for gubmint work, anyway."
Then mebbe You can knock the idea that everything is determined (Hard Determinism), and yet we still have free will. Yeah, I know most philosophers these days are Compatibalists. I"m sorry, but that's just a plain logical contradiction. I've been told that it's true we have choices, but the choice we made was determined by biochemicals and prior experience (which itself is stored in biochemicals).
Pfffft. When Science can come up with an explanation for subjective experience, I'd pay more attention to issues like this. Being as subjective experience is outside the purview of Science, I'm not holding my breath.
That's one reason I give a lotta credence to intuition. Which is how I type this crap in.
TYTY again, to all those I mentioned at the top. And anybody that read this far.
(I don’t read what I type before I post, so errors are expected. TYTY.)
Hughes' star is just rising. He is a gifted, courageous man and bravely reflects his own direct experience. He is the antithesis to the Kendi poison. This young man has a glorious future, but not without radical challenge. I showed his rap video to my college freshmen in February. There's no end to his capacity to inspire.
Lots to ponder. I might add that I also studied philosophy at Columbia. CC65. One prof said my questions were interesting but not very philosophical. So, I became an anthropologist. I appreciate the essay opening with philosophy and then moving from those quanderies into those of a more empirical frame. And music is my channel into being able to hop from one standpoint epistemology to another. Wonderful essay.
Objective truth exists.
I'll go along with that, Sir PatriotD. But I would be curious to know how one derives it.
The only Way I'm familiar with is meditation. Well, that's not entirely accurate either. I believe that Science can *approach* objective Truth. But until things are *perfected* within Science, things won't be "perfectly" objective, right?
Then the question is whether anything can be positively *proved* to be unassailably Truth. We've seen many cases where what *was* True became further refined Truth on further evidence, right? Newton's Laws *looked* unassailable. Until they didn't. And what might be "objective Truth" here on Earth? Can it be positively stated that it applies *everywhere* in the Universe?
I'm not very educated, so dunno if that's a philosophical question or an epistemoligical question. (Can't even spell latter. ;-)
As You know, no need for reply. Just curious.
Neil deGrasse Tyson does a nice summary: scientific truth, religious truth, vs. personal truth. Objective truth most closely aligns with scientific truth.
Scientific truth is objective when it is exactly reproducible by many people and it is falsifiable, can be proven or disproven. It is necessarily incomplete as each question we answer, each truth we discover, leads to new questions and a broader understanding of physical reality. Newtonian physics was not wrong. In many contexts, it remains predictably right. However, it was incomplete, as general relativity shows, and on and on.
Science addresses the what and the how of what we observe, not the why. It struggles to define morality. CS Lewis and others claim it cannot define it. Perhaps we can observe it?
The danger is believing we know or can know enough to be infallible, to hold beliefs we hold as unfalsifiable. The socialists, i.e. ‘politically correct’ social justice warriors of identity politics, the fascists, and the religious crusaders of old, act or acted upon their unfalsifiable beliefs. Such beliefs nourish evil. Their historical outcomes are clear.
Religious truth seeks to bring meaning to what we observe and experience and to frame them usefully. Its focus is ethical and moral values expressed in ancient stories encapsulating millennia of human experience. Typically learned from family and culture and then grown or neglected by each of us, it infers or implies the why. It must also evolve. Religion attempts to capture centuries of human emotional and behavioral patterns along with their outcomes. Can religious truth be objective? When based on a shared observation of outcomes delivered, I argue it can.
Personal truth, I think ideally, is a mix of the above two types. And this leads to the reason for my comment to Joe Nalven. I hope Joe will forgive me if I misunderstood him. My response arose from contextual assumptions and the emotion they elicited. Let me explain.
Joe went to Columbia, the US home of the Frankfurt school of post-modernism. I assumed that school’s thought appeared here in its “standpoint theory” incarnation. So, I assumed Joe was possessed by that ideology and its claims that there is no truth outside of subjective “lived experience” and that personal truth is controlled not by freewill or personal agency but by societal groups of oppressors and oppressed. That is dialectical materialism, one of the unfalsifiable beliefs of Marxists - whether they understand it or not. Its Angela Davis vs. Martin Luther King. Or in my “lived experience,” Ibram Kendi vs. Thomas Sowell. I’m for Sowell.
Painfully ironic that the two groups SJWs claim most to support, poor blacks (critical race theory) and women generally (queer theory) and young women specifically (gender ideology), are the two groups most hurt by their “movement.”
To close, I believe we should judge beliefs and systems by their outcomes and not their claimed intentions. MLK drove dramatic, if incomplete, positive outcomes. Kendi, I can’t think of any outcome other than that he is an object lesson in how not to be.
Phew! *Well* said, Sir Patriot. I agree.
SJWs don't care. For all their pretences, they're easy to see through. Through and through, because there's no there there.
Frankfurt school? I've forgotten some-a the basics like standpoint theory. But I know a little Marcuse and stuff like You pointed out and what I think of it can be summed as"pfffft." Kendi to Sowell is like a blown-out candle to a bonfire. I have a backlog of Sowell to catch up on.
When I look at what I don't know I'm humbled. I'm no theologian. But most we can do seems to be to work on that personal truth, by understanding more-a the objective and religious kinds. Pleasurable duty, to last me the short time I have left. :-)
TY for taking the time, Sir.
This reply goes to jt and PatriotD -- and to myself. I struggled, and continue to struggle, with all these comments about truth, objectivity -- however embodied. First off, we experience and know subject to a variety of human frailties. Certainty is not guaranteed. In my book, I and the Other -- a wicked inquiry, I start and end with those frailties, a radical individualism. However, I too except objective reality, but bracketed in this kaleidoscopic knowing and unknowing. If you suspect a spiritual dimension, you would be correct. Second, I include the 'why' in the artful science of cultural anthropology. If there is no 'why' to interrogate, then we are robots or cookie cutter clones of some 'authentic' construct -- to me that is simply caving to a cultural stereotype. So, I can play with standpoints as a riff without trapping my way of imperfect understanding or expressing it imperfectly. I hope that expands our conversation.
It does and thank you Joe.
Two books that I found very helpful in my understanding of today's issues are: Awake, Not Woke https://www.amazon.com/Awake-Not-Woke-Christian-Progressive/dp/1505118425 and The Gender Paradox https://www.amazon.com/Gender-Paradox-Discrimination-Disparities-Postmodern/dp/1794868704/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?crid=H63JOMK4Z0YM&keywords=gener+paradox+disparities&qid=1659448327&s=books&sprefix=gener+paradox+disparities%2Cstripbooks%2C134&sr=1-1-fkmr1.
The former looks at today through religion and political history and the latter is the best, and I've read allot, explanation of the Post Modernism via a contrast of enlightenment and post-modern beliefs. If that's of interest, you could just read a few chapters and be done. If you want to understand sex and gender, it is a long book but lays it out extraordinarily well.
Both books are in the same pathway. I attempted to lay out a way to to deal with sex-gender. Here’s my way of puzzling through: Our Sex Starts in the Womb, Our Gender As We Toddle On - Minding The Campus
https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2021/10/25/our-sex-starts-in-the-womb-our-gender-as-we-toddle-on/
Wow, who are you? Seriously man, if you have written more I want to read it. I also wholeheartedly support the aim of reforming our universities. Can I help you with that goal somehow? My daughter starts college next year and I am really worried about it.
JT - you should read Joe’s essay. I can’t finish it right now but the first third is really good.
I've taught at the community College and university level. If I had a class, we'd all be reading FBT for how to have an open inquiry with the only ground rule is to respect each other. You can find other articles by me at Minding The Campus. The platform allows me to be weird. I highly recommend going to YouTube and listen to Jacob Banks' song Slow Up. My favorite lyric is: 'What I've learned from a mirror, look too hard and you'll find you a stranger. Love is a decision, the choice is yours.'
Okay, I do a lot of research and it took me a very short time to know a bit about you.
1. https://www.joenalvenstudio.com/collages-montages#2 - brought tears to my eyes
2. https://www.joenalvenstudio.com/collages-montages#6 - made me laugh.
Nice to know you are out there. Thanks for the art work!
Another thought that might help we three. I too struggle mightily with truth, objectivity etc. Put another way, recognizing good and evil in myself and others and then acting appropriately.
The name "Israel" means to struggle with God i.e. to struggle with the moral and ethical dilemmas of life. Jacob is renamed Israel in the old testament because that is what he, most all biblical characters, spend their time doing. Only one was perfect, and that too, in context, has shades of meaning. I like how Jordan Peterson puts it "the bible stories are archetypical stories of incredible depth and meaning."
Clear, coherent writing with footnotes. Well done!
Edited to add: I discovered Coleman Hughes about three years ago. He continues to inform and impress. I'm nearly always calmer and more focused after listening to him on nearly any topic.
Thank you for highlighting Coleman Hughes. He's a standout intellectual, articulate, reasonable, loaded with talent and exemplary critical thinking skills. His podcast interviews enrich my life and teach me things. Just the other day he offered a nuanced, ambivalent opinion on Julian Assange and Wikileaks that stopped me in my tracks.
Hughes is not even 30 years old. May he have a long life and contribute to the betterment of the planet for years to come.
Thank You all. Author, subject, and JFBT.
Occasionally I find an essay that is *so* good that I copy it to Word. On the lame theory that I'll be better able to find it and read it again sometime. This is one such. Can't compliment M. Hughes enough. I've known *of* him for a long while. From FAIR and his appearances. Knew he *had* made a hip hop video but not what it was about.
As other commenters have noted, a polymath like him will have to set his own "the sky's the limit."
The interviewer, M. Blakeslee, did an outstanding job. I got a chance to see into the *soul* of M. Hughes. (If such-a thing exists, but You can get my meaning.) (I use “M.” like the French do, for Monsieur but ALSO for Madam and Mademoiselle EQUALLY. That’s just me.)
Can't thank You enough, all-a Youse.
Although separated from M. Hughes by race and a generation or two, he expresses my same views near-perfectly.
On reparations, I would disagree. Giving money away based on skin-color is, by definition, racist. I understand a little about the tragedies of red-lining, segregation, integration, and the difficulties that rained down on Black people.
The other problem with it, tho, is that giving money away based on skin color will drive an irrecoverable wedge between poor Blacks and poor Whites. Why should middle-class (or better) Blacks get money, and poor Whites not? And I'm not at all certain that this unintended consequence of reparations, isn't actually intended.
I wish I had a chance to get educated in Philosophy. But then, I'm lucky. I think today's Philosophy, at least in Academia, has lost it's Way. For example, I understand the ontological question of "Do we really exist?" But what with *all* the problems we have in today's world, to me anyWay, that's like determining how many angels fit on the head of a pin.
Why not just assume that we do. Or, looked at scientifically, why not admit that what we think of Reality is actually our physical sensations filtered out by a brain obsessed with limiting the amount of information it has to deal with. Meaning, yeah, at one level we each have a unique version of Reality, so nobody can answer the question objectively whether we really exist or not. Or whether there's some objectively consistent Reality which is shared by all humans.
"Objectively consistent?" Why not just assume there's a version of Reality that at least *some* are capable of experiencing which is fairly close to being an identical shared Reality. "Close enough for gubmint work, anyway."
Then mebbe You can knock the idea that everything is determined (Hard Determinism), and yet we still have free will. Yeah, I know most philosophers these days are Compatibalists. I"m sorry, but that's just a plain logical contradiction. I've been told that it's true we have choices, but the choice we made was determined by biochemicals and prior experience (which itself is stored in biochemicals).
Pfffft. When Science can come up with an explanation for subjective experience, I'd pay more attention to issues like this. Being as subjective experience is outside the purview of Science, I'm not holding my breath.
That's one reason I give a lotta credence to intuition. Which is how I type this crap in.
TYTY again, to all those I mentioned at the top. And anybody that read this far.
(I don’t read what I type before I post, so errors are expected. TYTY.)
What a wonderful article!