Split Thread Are post-feminism women happier?

[Paul2]

Can anyone actually name any discussion ever that got past the "No wait let's stop and define everything and THEN we can get started actually talking about...?"

What to you mean by, "define?"

 

[shuttlt]

Not sure what significance you draw from this. My only point was that liberalism is, at least in one group of cases, perfectly capable of being consistent with great happiness, contrary to your position (note that I did not say that liberalism created that happiness).

I'm not sure that I have ever argued that that the moment a country becomes liberal there is a thunderclap, clouds cover the sun and misery descends over the land. I have for multiple pages now described its effect as a process. That somebody still has their life together a week after taking heroin for the first time isn't a refutation of the idea that heroin has a generally corrosive effect on the lives of the people who take it.

When I look at the definition of liberal, I see little that they are not in line with (socialistic tendencies in their economies being the major factor).

Right, so in what sense are the nordics the poster children of liberalism? Culturally they are not the soil from which liberalism sprang. They have been under liberalisms influence for a comparatively brief period. They are at the edge of the liberal world. They still retain the cultural homogeneity, and associated high trust communities, that liberalism despises and seeks to undermine.

 

[shuttlt]

I see the definition of "liberal" has proven as slippery as usual, but perhaps we can come up with at least a semblance, if we can find a place where the division is clear enough that we don't have to parse it too finely. Like Korea. I think it would be hard for anyone in their right mind to deny that North Korea is far less liberal than South Korea, no matter exactly where the boundaries are.

Imagine you had to choose between those two places. You would, I think, get differing opinions on their level of happiness from their respective leaders. Which would you choose? Is happiness just one thing? Is it like scoring a car, this many point for comfort, this many for performance, this many for style? Does one size fit all?

And I am a little confused by the suggestion that the United States has been a liberal society for 225 years. Even if you can argue from now till doomsday about what liberalism is and is not, it is not a word you can apply across the board to a society when it is not itself applied across the board within it.

I think perhaps you are thinking of the political tribe within the US rather than the political philosophy "liberalism". In the political philosophy sense, conservatives in the US are liberals just as much as libertarians, "liberals" and progressives.

I mean, to belabor what I thought ought to be obvious, slavery and segregation are not liberal by most understandings of the term. We might even go so far as to suggest that the criminalization and persecution of homosexuality is not very liberal either. I can't say I've followed and transcribed the official utterances of feminists over the years, but those I've heard were suggesting, I think, that for a large sector of the population and for a long time, the vaunted liberalism of our society was a fiction.

When a political philosophy begins to act of a society, it doesn't change every aspect of that society overnight and then set every element of it in stone as a perfect and timeless representation of that philosophy. When I say that revolutionary America was liberal, I am saying that it's self conception was explicitly based on liberal philosophy and to the extent that older traditions persisted, they lost out.

A reason the American revolution worked and the French revolution turned into a bloody mess is that in America there wasn't an attempt to throw out everything that went before. Having said that, the philosophical justification of the ruling class in the US derives from liberal philosophical ideas of the 18th century. These ideas were changing Britain, and very obviously France, in the same period. My argument is about the impact of those ideas over time have in the real world.

 

[shuttlt]

So for gauging the success of liberalism the question of "how much choice do you have in how you live?" is a better question than "how happy are you?" even though trying to distill it to a single measure is almost always problematic. 80% of people feeling amazingly free and 20% feeling completely enslaved, for example, would be unacceptable. Side question: Is there a utilitarian model that takes distribution into account? Might be food for another thread.

Sure, distribution is probably important.... I'm not very focused on theory here, but I think generally inequality is a source of unhappiness. Minimizing the variance in happiness while maximizing the mean happiness, perhaps? Anyway, if average happiness were to go down, I would think that that would be a problem.

 

[mgidm86]

My ex-wife half jokingly said once (She's from Brazil) "American women blew it. Now we have to get jobs and do what men do. We had it made before."


She has two college degrees and is very independent btw, so whatever.

 

[bruto]

I think perhaps you are thinking of the political tribe within the US rather than the political philosophy "liberalism". In the political philosophy sense, conservatives in the US are liberals just as much as libertarians, "liberals" and progressives.


When a political philosophy begins to act of a society, it doesn't change every aspect of that society overnight and then set every element of it in stone as a perfect and timeless representation of that philosophy. When I say that revolutionary America was liberal, I am saying that it's self conception was explicitly based on liberal philosophy and to the extent that older traditions persisted, they lost out.

A reason the American revolution worked and the French revolution turned into a bloody mess is that in America there wasn't an attempt to throw out everything that went before. Having said that, the philosophical justification of the ruling class in the US derives from liberal philosophical ideas of the 18th century. These ideas were changing Britain, and very obviously France, in the same period. My argument is about the impact of those ideas over time have in the real world.

All that may be true, but it seems as if you're blaming the parties who were excluded from the liberal dream for its lack of success.

 

[JoeMorgue]

The French Revolution is a LOT of steps from "Why can't women just be happy barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen?"

 

[Checkmite]

I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me why women's "happiness" over time, however that is decided, is even relevant to the validity of the women's rights movement. "So what" was an earnest question.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me why women's "happiness" over time, however that is decided, is even relevant to the validity of the women's rights movement. "So what" was an earnest question.

I'm assuming a very long, very tedious, debate about the philosophical value of hedonism/utilitarianism from people who suddenly decide that it's super-important to them landing right back on where we began should happen soon.

 

[shuttlt]

All that may be true, but it seems as if you're blaming the parties who were excluded from the liberal dream for its lack of success.

I don't understand which groups you are saying I am blaming. I don't think I am really blaming any groups.

 

[Paul2]

I'm not sure that I have ever argued that that the moment a country becomes liberal there is a thunderclap, clouds cover the sun and misery descends over the land. I have for multiple pages now described its effect as a process. That somebody still has their life together a week after taking heroin for the first time isn't a refutation of the idea that heroin has a generally corrosive effect on the lives of the people who take it.

So liberalism is consistent with postive effects early on, but eventually is corrosive? The more specific and detailed the claim is, the harder it is to get evidence to support it sufficiently, and even the easier claim you made about liberalism making women unhappy didn't have great evidence, either.

Right, so in what sense are the nordics the poster children of liberalism?

Their alignment with liberal values.

Culturally they are not the soil from which liberalism sprang.

This is an interesting variation of the genetic fallacy, I think.

They have been under liberalisms influence for a comparatively brief period.

See above.

They are at the edge of the liberal world.

Temporally or geographically? See above, or irrelevant.

They still retain the cultural homogeneity, and associated high trust communities, that liberalism despises and seeks to undermine.

I think you have just put more of your cards on the table. Despises? Really? I'll need some reference that liberalism **despises** high trust and cultural homogeneity, because I have a reference that says otherwise. I think you are working with the bogey-man's version of liberalism.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Here's a radical idea if you're gonna go "Tee hee hee I can't define it, could you do it for me?" over and over don't start a thread backhandedly accusing it of something.

 

[Delvo]

I think you are working with the bogey-man's version of liberalism.

Even that would be an upgrade in the level of internal consistency.

 

[shuttlt]

So liberalism is consistent with postive effects early on, but eventually is corrosive? The more specific and detailed the claim is, the harder it is to get evidence to support it sufficiently, and even the easier claim you made about liberalism making women unhappy didn't have great evidence, either.

I'm not sure that I said it was consistent with positive effects early one. To take the aspect under discussion at the moment, effectively you have a stock of social capital in the culture, customs, people and structures that hold society together - this gives you the high trust in the societies that we are talking about. Such things are then undermined by liberalism with its incessant focus on the individual. It's the equivalent of living off the principle rather than living off the interest of an inheritance. Certainly there are advantages to be had by living off the principle, and there are restrictions that come with living of the interest..... Whether at any point one calls the impact positive depends on your point of view.

Their alignment with liberal values.

I don't think that one can simply assert that. Are they in fact so aligned with liberal values? Again though, it's the impact of those policies over time that I am talking about.

This is an interesting variation of the genetic fallacy, I think.

I am not literally talking about the decayed leaf matter. Liberalism appeared in Britain, France and the US spontaneously because those currents had been working their way through those cultures already becoming slowly stronger over hundreds of years. You couldn't have put a liberal government in charge of Russia in 1900 and expected the country to instantly turn into something resembling Americas society... it is a process that reshapes people's ways of thinking and relating to one another.

See above.

You need to expand on this response. The history of a culture is relevant to the current state of a culture since we aren't all continually being zapped by the memory eraser from men in black. Why do you think some societies are high trust, and some low trust? It is not a fallacy.

Temporally or geographically? See above, or irrelevant.

In many senses. Liberalism is heavily centred on the anglosphere, so they receive some protection from by not being part of that. Geographically they are further from the heart of liberal culture and are far more connected to the illiberal world. This is a set of ideas playing out in the world. The practical realities of it matter just as the isolation of the British Isles mattered when it reduced and retarded the influence of Christianity even after it had Bishops and Christian kings.

I think you have just put more of your cards on the table. Despises? Really? I'll need some reference that liberalism **despises** high trust and cultural homogeneity, because I have a reference that says otherwise. I think you are working with the bogey-man's version of liberalism.

To retain cultural homogeneity you have to restrict the freedom of the individual in order to maintain some kind of traditional pre-liberal cultural relic. What would the liberal argument be for saying that Norwegian immigration needs to be restricted to preserve Norwegian culture and efforts need to be made to preserve the cultural homogeneity within Norway? Maybe you are sufficiently creative to think of some justification. In practice what happens is that such things are held to be an offence to the universalising individualism of liberalism. Liberalism seeks to free people from such cultural baggage.

Look at the statement from John Adams: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." The problem is that that morality, and that religion are pre-liberal, and more importantly the belief in them was non-rational and non-individualistic... the appeal to the freedom of the individual from custom not justified by reason eventually stripped that away. It took quite a while, for sure...

 

[Paul2]

I'm not sure that I said it was consistent with positive effects early one. To take the aspect under discussion at the moment, effectively you have a stock of social capital in the culture, customs, people and structures that hold society together - this gives you the high trust in the societies that we are talking about. Such things are then undermined by liberalism with its incessant focus on the individual. It's the equivalent of living off the principle rather than living off the interest of an inheritance. Certainly there are advantages to be had by living off the principle, and there are restrictions that come with living of the interest..... Whether at any point one calls the impact positive depends on your point of view.

It's not incessant. Balance, compromise, and negotiation are inherent to liberalism. Once you have individualism, you need a way to negotiate conflicting desires.

I don't think that one can simply assert that. Are they in fact so aligned with liberal values? Again though, it's the impact of those policies over time that I am talking about.

I didn't just assert it, I quoted liberal values from Wikipedia. Is your point that those Nordic countries aren't really interested in, say, freedom as a social and political value? I'm happy to stand corrected on such a point.

I am not literally talking about the decayed leaf matter. Liberalism appeared in Britain, France and the US spontaneously because those currents had been working their way through those cultures already becoming slowly stronger over hundreds of years. You couldn't have put a liberal government in charge of Russia in 1900 and expected the country to instantly turn into something resembling Americas society... it is a process that reshapes people's ways of thinking and relating to one another.

And, yet, to my knowledge, a lot of what happens in those Nordic countries is liberal.

You need to expand on this response. The history of a culture is relevant to the current state of a culture since we aren't all continually being zapped by the memory eraser from men in black. Why do you think some societies are high trust, and some low trust? It is not a fallacy.

It's not totally determinative, either. What happens in those happy Nordic countries is pretty liberal. How can that be if liberal values can't just be imported in, as you're claiming?

In many senses. Liberalism is heavily centred on the anglosphere, so they receive some protection from by not being part of that. Geographically they are further from the heart of liberal culture and are far more connected to the illiberal world. This is a set of ideas playing out in the world. The practical realities of it matter just as the isolation of the British Isles mattered when it reduced and retarded the influence of Christianity even after it had Bishops and Christian kings.


To retain cultural homogeneity you have to restrict the freedom of the individual in order to maintain some kind of traditional pre-liberal cultural relic.

Liberalism does not seek to give the individual absolute, total freedom, even though it wants to maximize it. Liberalism needs a community in order to carry out its goals. There's a tension there, for sure, but the issue is the tension, not the absolute, total power of the individual in his/her freedom.

What would the liberal argument be for saying that Norwegian immigration needs to be restricted to preserve Norwegian culture and efforts need to be made to preserve the cultural homogeneity within Norway? Maybe you are sufficiently creative to think of some justification. In practice what happens is that such things are held to be an offence to the universalising individualism of liberalism. Liberalism seeks to free people from such cultural baggage.

See directly above.

 

[shuttlt]

It's not incessant. Balance, compromise, and negotiation are inherent to liberalism. Once you have individualism, you need a way to negotiate conflicting desires.

Sure, which is why government has to expand to legislate and clean up after the squabbles that break out when you don't have shared cultural traditions to manage things.

I didn't just assert it, I quoted liberal values from Wikipedia. Is your point that those Nordic countries aren't really interested in, say, freedom as a social and political value? I'm happy to stand corrected on such a point.

What one means by "freedom" has shifted radically over time. I am telling you, again, that this is a process. Just as the invention of the printing press was something that fundamentally changed cultures that were exposed to it, liberalism changes cultures that are exposed to it. That doesn't happen immediately. You also have different pre-liberal cultures for these changes to work their magic on.

What liberalism does, by focusing on the freedom of the individual, is break down the existing culture and customs of the country. Local culture is replaced by a lowest common denominator global, commodified culture.

And, yet, to my knowledge, a lot of what happens in those Nordic countries is liberal.

Like what? Is there something intrinsically liberal about a welfare state, say? It's not as if liberalism invented the idea of looking after your population.

It's not totally determinative, either. What happens in those happy Nordic countries is pretty liberal. How can that be if liberal values can't just be imported in, as you're claiming?

I didn't say they can't be imported in. I said, repeatedly, that these are processes that takes time.

Liberalism does not seek to give the individual absolute, total freedom, even though it wants to maximize it.

Yes, I know. To give an extreme case, liberalism typically wouldn't give people the freedom to kill whoever they wanted.

Liberalism needs a community in order to carry out its goals.

Yes it does, regrettably it undermines that community so the state has to step in over and over to take on the functions of the lost community and address the various consequences from this process.

There's a tension there, for sure, but the issue is the tension, not the absolute, total power of the individual in his/her freedom.
See directly above.

Yes, but this isn't how it actually plays out in practice. What happens in practice is that liberalism undermines community. In an ideal world, maybe Communism would have worked. In an ideal world, liberalism would be managed in such a way that it didn't undermine community. This isn't the best of all possible worlds, so unfortunately that is what happens.

 

[Paul2]

Sure, which is why government has to expand to legislate and clean up after the squabbles that break out when you don't have shared cultural traditions to manage things.

The point was that you can’t say that liberalism has an incessant focus on the individual. But your comment imagines that liberalism destroys any sense of community, and that's just incorrect. Liberalism's goal is to maximize individual freedom while still maintaining a shared foundation for a community. Those two goals are not mutually exclusive.

What one means by "freedom" has shifted radically over time. I am telling you, again, that this is a process. Just as the invention of the printing press was something that fundamentally changed cultures that were exposed to it, liberalism changes cultures that are exposed to it. That doesn't happen immediately. You also have different pre-liberal cultures for these changes to work their magic on.

We may not have seen enough time to understand all the influences of liberalism in the Nordic countries beyond the nearly 100 years since it really began there. We don't know either way.

What liberalism does, by focusing on the freedom of the individual, is break down the existing culture and customs of the country. Local culture is replaced by a lowest common denominator global, commodified culture.

See my last point below.

Like what? Is there something intrinsically liberal about a welfare state, say? It's not as if liberalism invented the idea of looking after your population.

Look at the summary of the Nordic model and tell me what isn’t liberal there. I see nothing, but maybe you can glean something.

I didn't say they can't be imported in. I said, repeatedly, that these are processes that takes time.

See above.

Yes, I know. To give an extreme case, liberalism typically wouldn't give people the freedom to kill whoever they wanted.

That’s disingenuous. You know what I mean and that wasn’t it. Please address what I’m saying.

ETA: Oops, I might have interpreted your comment incorrectly. Sorry if I did.

Yes it does, regrettably it undermines that community so the state has to step in over and over to take on the functions of the lost community and address the various consequences from this process.

And the community undermines the individual. So it’s a question of balance and negotiation and compromise. Only if you presuppose community over all else is liberalism a problem, and in that case, I must admit, liberalism does not focus on the community at the expense of all else. I now see why you think liberalism is absolutely committed to the individual, it’s because your argument here is based on an absolute commitment to community at the expense of anything individualistic.

Yes, but this isn't how it actually plays out in practice. What happens in practice is that liberalism undermines community. In an ideal world, maybe Communism would have worked. In an ideal world, liberalism would be managed in such a way that it didn't undermine community. This isn't the best of all possible worlds, so unfortunately that is what happens.

If, by "undermine," you mean "seek to balance with individual freedom," then -- guilty as charged. And thus I would welcome you to the not-best-of-all-possible-worlds in which the best possible balance must be negotiated.

Please read from here to the end before replying.

In summary then, the actual data that has been presented here about happiness is (1) a mere correlation between a decrease in women’s happiness over the past 50 years in the face of liberalism in the US, and (2) the greatest measured happiness in the liberal Nordic states currently, and we have a mere hypothesis that liberalism will destroy community in the Nordic states, which it hasn’t done - yet - in nearly 100 years. From this we conclude that liberalism despises community and decreases happiness?

If you have any other data about happiness and liberalism, now would be the time to present it, because, failing that, we can’t conclude what you are implying/concluding.

Note that the presence of the greatest happiness in the Nordic states is not an argument for the cause being their liberalism, it’s only the refutation of the claim that liberalism decreases happiness.

 

[Chanakya]

It is at least a practical reality that is about a real time and place in the world. Since I don't really believe the French Revolutionary project of creating a rational society based on self evident principles is possible, I am very dubious about our ability to imagine some kind of theoretical society in a way that is connected to the real world. Without the specifics of the world, all the context that would make the question answerable are missing.


Not at all. I think though that if we are to pursue a course of action and start to see signs that it is making us unhappy and dissatisfied with our lives, it's maybe worth considering whether we are going the right way. Do most women expect to be made less happy by feminism? I'm not sure that they do. If you want to tell me that Emmeline Pankhurst, or Susan B. Anthony didn't care whether their cause made the average woman happier.... I'm open to it, I'm less convinced that that is what the average woman in the street who supported them expected.


But nobody is doing this either, and nobody is going to do this. The whole project is anti-empirical. Emily's Cat mentioned Protestantism earlier. I agree with her. Much of progressive liberalism is like a secularised from of Protestantism..... and historically, that is one of the sources of it.


Is anybody doing these calculations? Is this actually what people are/were sold? I agree if you read papers by think tanks, the WEF, UNESCO and places you will find them saying some quite frank things about what the lives of non-elites in their utopia will be like. The last thing like that I saw was Yuval Harari talking about placating people's sense of purposeless and alienation in the world of tomorrow with computer games and drugs. That's not really the way these things are pitched to ordinary people though - "you will own nothing and you will be [given drugs to simulate happiness]".


Again, I don't say there can be nothing but happiness. I think when we start to think of happiness as some kind of inter-generational thing we are trying to build, and we strip out any concept of transcendence, almost everything will reduce down to that long term happiness. Locke kind of does this when he founds the idea of liberty. But again, who is actually checking the foundational assumptions of any of this stuff? Add some more variable in if you like. All the stats I see produced act like getting >=50% women into some job or qualification is a good in itself. That's the only kind of metric that ever gets checked. The direction of travel is no more questioned than whether "all this God stuff is a good idea" would have been seriously questioned at the height of Catholic power.


The materialism and individualism of this question are features of liberalism. I don't accept them. I have duties and connections to other people around me that don't reduce to money, 0s and 1s in a computer, or chemicals in my brain.


That isn't my issue. The issue is that the monstrous world where such a device would exist needs to be taken into account. I guess you've popped it into existence by magic, so I don't need to worry about such things? Well, I hope my family would be hurt if I abandoned them for this device, and to make me happy to abandon them you would have to make me stop being me.... so what you are offering is death.


I don't approach the world based on abstract principles. Absent of a world and my connection to it, the question is not answerable.


Fulfillment sounds to me a lot like a specific type of happiness. We could probably deconstruct fulfillment as well if we have a mind to.

I don't think mastery of oneself was ever conceived as a good in itself. I would see it as being important in prioritising more sustainable forms of happiness .... One sacrifices today for tomorrow generally towards a purpose rather than as a good in itself. Even religious mystics would, I think, have some end in mind motivating their self denial.


We aren't being asked consent now any more than we were then. Nobody consents to liberalism any more than they consented to feudalism. There has never been a social contract. There is never "consent" for these great world changing projects. What has happened is that we have moved from a world of homogenous cultural communities where the constraints on people's lives were the traditions and culture of the community they had grown up into, to one where diverse communities with diverse traditions have to have their interactions policed by the state. The most powerful king or noble of the middle ages could never have dreamed of the power and control that exists over the lives and thoughts of ordinary people today. I would say that we are only freerer in a very legalistic, theoretical sense.


All of these things are the work of so many people that you just end up with trite ******** like feminism is "just about equality for women". You are also, when you go back to the 18th century talking about a world where things were justified in religious terms. Now that the liberal project has pushed religion aside, the question is what justification is left? This isn't really a problem for me, because as I've said, I see liberalism more as the justifying myth of mercantilism.... but that isn't the sales pitch. Locke and Jefferson both ground liberty in the pursuit of happiness. I think that is the basic expectation that remains.


I am not at all sure it really is so multivariate... again, Locke and Jefferson both found liberty in the pursuit of happiness. Life satisfaction and fulfillment are just types of happiness. I think in the 18th Century you effectively have two justifications.... religion, and happiness. Religion is now gone as a justification for progressive liberalism, so we are left with happiness.

I appreciate your patiently spelled out arguments, shuttit, but as far as I can see you're contradicting yourself.

Is there anything more important, or at least as important, than happiness? If yes, what are those things?

If there are, and if we can clearly spell them out: then, to see if something/anything -- including feminism -- has been worth it, we'd need to evaluate that something/anything (including feminism) across all of those parameters.

And if there aren't, then I don't see what objection you can possibly have to having your happiness enhanced by hooking you up to a hospital bed for life.


[eta]That is, you're clearly using two separate standards. On standard for you, and your near and dear ones. And another, very different, standard for women-qua-women/feminism.[/eta]


-----


Some objections I see you raise, I'd like to very briefly discuss:


(1) You suggest that in opting for happiness via hospital bed you'd be abandoning your family, which you're not prepared to do. Two responses to that: first, that shows that you're considering other parameters than just happiness as far as you yourself, isn't it; and second, and more importantly, I'm offering to do this exact same thing for your family as well, so that no, you aren't abandoning them, you'd be giving that same enhanced happiness that you yourself would be going in for.


(2) You'd raised techinical/practical issues in your last post. I'd suggested that we consider, for the sake of argument, that all such purely technical issues have been settled, and that we discuss only the principle of the thing, this proposition that I offer you and your family. To which your objection is that you don't want to deal in such impossibilities and abstractions, and look at only the real world, only what can be. There is some merit in such a practical approach: but then, isn't that special pleading as well, because after all the world we live in is already fact, and no one can possibly undo what has already happened, so what is the point of even evaluating whether or not feminism has been a success?


-----


No matter how you do this, this is special pleading.

For you yourself, and for your family, you're clearly using a multi-variate paradigm to evaluate your choices, rather than just one variable (happiness).

While for women/feminism you're content to evaluate this across one single variable, happiness.

With the further special pleading that you're not open to evaluating abstractions and might-have-beens and can-bes and theoretical propositions when it comes to you yourself, and your near and dear ones; while you're content doing that when it comes to women/feminism, in as much as considering a scenario where feminism did not happen is simply an abstraction.

 

[shuttlt]

The point was that you can’t say that liberalism has an incessant focus on the individual. But your comment imagines that liberalism destroys any sense of community, and that's just incorrect. Liberalism's goal is to maximize individual freedom while still maintaining a shared foundation for a community. Those two goals are not mutually exclusive.

The goal of Communism has been articulated as a similar liberation where "the average man in a communist society would be able to go fishing in the morning, work in a factory in the afternoon and read Plato in the evening". That's lovely. Is that where the ideas of Marxism actually lead when they are loosed into the world? I'm sure the claimed goals of liberalism are wonderful things and infinitely preferable to candy canes and rainbows. The question is what do these ideas in fact produce in the world.

We may not have seen enough time to understand all the influences of liberalism in the Nordic countries beyond the nearly 100 years since it really began there. We don't know either way.

OK. Neither of us seem to know enough about Scandinavian society to talk in any detail about the impact of liberalism on them. I'm vaguely aware of the postwar pornography boom, so I kind of assume that is related.... equally, they have always had kind of a different attitude to nudity to the English speaking countries. I hear mixed things on their attitudes to race with a liberal guilt need to open their borders combined with a lack of acceptance of immigrants that makes me wonder how deep all of that has actually gone. They seem to be very keen on being led by women, I don't know if that is liberalism?

See my last point below.

See my answer. All political philosophies, economic plans and practically everybody else claims to be directed at a noble goal. Do they all actually deliver their claimed goals when applied in the world? No they don't.

Look at the summary of the Nordic model and tell me what isn’t liberal there. I see nothing, but maybe you can glean something.

That's a difficult question to answer since liberalism is a set of ideas rather than particular policies that are delivered. I assume that the gender equality in the workplace thing is coming from liberalism (equally you find those kinds of ideas swimming about in protestant sects in the 17th century), and in as much as they are capitalist.... that is presumably also connected to liberal ideas. Then again, you had capitalism under fascism. I assume there are significant liberal elements to scandinavian society, but that article seems to miss the point.

See above.

That is no answer.

That’s disingenuous. You know what I mean and that wasn’t it. Please address what I’m saying.

ETA: Oops, I might have interpreted your comment incorrectly. Sorry if I did.

Yes, I was just meaning to show in a light hearted way that I accepted that liberalism wasn't about absolute individual freedom. I was thinking of that line about your freedom to swing your fist stopping where my nose begins.

And the community undermines the individual.

It undermines the individual as conceived by liberalism. The older idea about individual freedom being to do with mastery of oneself is much more compatible.

So it’s a question of balance and negotiation and compromise.

But that isn't what happens in practice.

Only if you presuppose community over all else is liberalism a problem, and in that case, I must admit, liberalism does not focus on the community at the expense of all else.

No. The issue is that liberalism, as it actually operates, not as an abstract ethics problem, dissolves community. As Burke points out the fabric of society can't really justify the restrictions on the individual that make society function in the rationalistic, individualistic terms that liberalism wants, so they are found to be unreasonable and are removed.

There never is, or never can be the balancing of community and individual that you talk about because the limitations on the individuals freedom are known and immediate, while the ways in which those limitations hold the community together are diffuse and less immediate. You can't just rebuild these communities, and the culture, customs and norms that go with them, so you have a one way ratchet.

I now see why you think liberalism is absolutely committed to the individual, it’s because your argument here is based on an absolute commitment to community at the expense of anything individualistic.

No. The issue is with liberalism, not the individual. Every society has balanced the needs of the community with the individual. The issue is that liberalism dissolves communities, cultural norms and so on. It's a tragedy of the commons process.

If, by "undermine," you mean "seek to balance with individual freedom," then -- guilty as charged. And thus I would welcome you to the not-best-of-all-possible-worlds in which the best possible balance must be negotiated.

This is not how liberalism actually operates though.

Please read from here to the end before replying.

Ooops

I summary then, the actual data that has been presented here about happiness is (1) a mere correlation between a decrease in women’s happiness over the past 50 years in the face of liberalism in the US,

Right. And the impact of that observation, now widely observed for decades, has been precisely zero because there is in fact no balancing process, no feedback loop checking that things have gone too far, or that something is off with the assumptions.

(2) the greatest measured happiness in the liberal Nordic states currently,

OK, but we haven't established that they are more liberal than other less happy countries or shown any evidence that liberalism has made them happier. Again, I am talking about liberalism as a set of cultural ideal that have implications over time.

and we have a mere hypothesis that liberalism will destroy community in the Nordic states, which it hasn’t done - yet - in nearly 100 years. From this we conclude that liberalism despises community and decreases happiness?

Well, since neither of us have actually looked into the cultural history of any of these countries, I think such assertions are based on almost nothing. I haven't based any of what I have claimed on the nordics, I have based it on the histories of the countries that have been at the centre of liberalism for 300 years and whose history and culture I am far more familiar with.

If you have any other data about happiness and liberalism, now would be the time to present it, because, failing that, we can’t conclude what you are implying/concluding.

The discussion of happiness was about feminism and was the way in to this discussion of liberalism since I see feminism as a particular manifestation of liberalism. I don't think statistics on happiness or life satisfaction will go back far enough to say much about liberalism as a whole.

Note that the presence of the greatest happiness in the Nordic states is not an argument for the cause being their liberalism, it’s only the refutation of the claim that liberalism decreases happiness.

It doesn't refute the claim that liberalism decreases happiness. The original claim about happiness was specific to feminism. My opinion regarding happiness and liberalism is as follows:

In so far as liberalism makes people happy, it is by giving them things which make people happy for a little while, and then they need a new thing to make them happy. Liberalism and capitalism put society onto a hamster wheel that must spin faster and faster to keep generating the things that are needed to keep people happy. In the case of Capitalism, debt borrowed against anticipated profit puts a growth requirement into society that, unless one believes in infinite growth, eventually has to collapse. On the way to that cultural, national and any other barrier to trade has to be driven out, because otherwise the music is going to stop. Obviously there are compensations. Liberalism is just the cultural aspect of all that, removing cultural barriers to the individuals participation in the market as producer and consumer. In return for the cultural world and community life that was built up and sustained people over centuries, we are compensated with xBoxes, free porn and being able to enter the bathroom of our preferred gender. Liberalism can't stop itself any more than Capitalism can.

 

[Paul2]

The goal of Communism has been articulated as a similar liberation where "the average man in a communist society would be able to go fishing in the morning, work in a factory in the afternoon and read Plato in the evening". That's lovely. Is that where the ideas of Marxism actually lead when they are loosed into the world? I'm sure the claimed goals of liberalism are wonderful things and infinitely preferable to candy canes and rainbows. The question is what do these ideas in fact produce in the world.


OK. Neither of us seem to know enough about Scandinavian society to talk in any detail about the impact of liberalism on them. I'm vaguely aware of the postwar pornography boom, so I kind of assume that is related.... equally, they have always had kind of a different attitude to nudity to the English speaking countries. I hear mixed things on their attitudes to race with a liberal guilt need to open their borders combined with a lack of acceptance of immigrants that makes me wonder how deep all of that has actually gone. They seem to be very keen on being led by women, I don't know if that is liberalism?


See my answer. All political philosophies, economic plans and practically everybody else claims to be directed at a noble goal. Do they all actually deliver their claimed goals when applied in the world? No they don't.


That's a difficult question to answer since liberalism is a set of ideas rather than particular policies that are delivered. I assume that the gender equality in the workplace thing is coming from liberalism (equally you find those kinds of ideas swimming about in protestant sects in the 17th century), and in as much as they are capitalist.... that is presumably also connected to liberal ideas. Then again, you had capitalism under fascism. I assume there are significant liberal elements to scandinavian society, but that article seems to miss the point.


That is no answer.


Yes, I was just meaning to show in a light hearted way that I accepted that liberalism wasn't about absolute individual freedom. I was thinking of that line about your freedom to swing your fist stopping where my nose begins.


It undermines the individual as conceived by liberalism. The older idea about individual freedom being to do with mastery of oneself is much more compatible.


But that isn't what happens in practice.


No. The issue is that liberalism, as it actually operates, not as an abstract ethics problem, dissolves community. As Burke points out the fabric of society can't really justify the restrictions on the individual that make society function in the rationalistic, individualistic terms that liberalism wants, so they are found to be unreasonable and are removed.

There never is, or never can be the balancing of community and individual that you talk about because the limitations on the individuals freedom are known and immediate, while the ways in which those limitations hold the community together are diffuse and less immediate. You can't just rebuild these communities, and the culture, customs and norms that go with them, so you have a one way ratchet.


No. The issue is with liberalism, not the individual. Every society has balanced the needs of the community with the individual. The issue is that liberalism dissolves communities, cultural norms and so on. It's a tragedy of the commons process.


This is not how liberalism actually operates though.


Ooops


Right. And the impact of that observation, now widely observed for decades, has been precisely zero because there is in fact no balancing process, no feedback loop checking that things have gone too far, or that something is off with the assumptions.


OK, but we haven't established that they are more liberal than other less happy countries or shown any evidence that liberalism has made them happier. Again, I am talking about liberalism as a set of cultural ideal that have implications over time.


Well, since neither of us have actually looked into the cultural history of any of these countries, I think such assertions are based on almost nothing. I haven't based any of what I have claimed on the nordics, I have based it on the histories of the countries that have been at the centre of liberalism for 300 years and whose history and culture I am far more familiar with.


The discussion of happiness was about feminism and was the way in to this discussion of liberalism since I see feminism as a particular manifestation of liberalism. I don't think statistics on happiness or life satisfaction will go back far enough to say much about liberalism as a whole.


It doesn't refute the claim that liberalism decreases happiness. The original claim about happiness was specific to feminism. My opinion regarding happiness and liberalism is as follows:

In so far as liberalism makes people happy, it is by giving them things which make people happy for a little while, and then they need a new thing to make them happy. Liberalism and capitalism put society onto a hamster wheel that must spin faster and faster to keep generating the things that are needed to keep people happy. In the case of Capitalism, debt borrowed against anticipated profit puts a growth requirement into society that, unless one believes in infinite growth, eventually has to collapse. On the way to that cultural, national and any other barrier to trade has to be driven out, because otherwise the music is going to stop. Obviously there are compensations. Liberalism is just the cultural aspect of all that, removing cultural barriers to the individuals participation in the market as producer and consumer. In return for the cultural world and community life that was built up and sustained people over centuries, we are compensated with xBoxes, free porn and being able to enter the bathroom of our preferred gender. Liberalism can't stop itself any more than Capitalism can.

Too many simultaneous issues, so I'm going to only choose one, and I'm going to bow out soon anyway.

On what time frame does the (ill) effects of liberalism operate? It seems nearly 100 years is too short for the Nordic model, but 50 years is not too short for women and feminism in the US.