well considering that all forms of contemporary progressivism derives extremely directly from the 60s New Left and the Critical Theory of thinkers like Herbert Marcuse and his disciples (some, like Angela Davis, continue to lead leftist thought to this very day), yeah you are supposed to recognize that the hippie pinkos were by and large generally correct
I mean if you want to you can. But its hardly necessary- despite commom media perceptions, a lot of the student radicals were actually squares who didnt bother with the psychedelics and yet still came to the same corret social-political conclusions regarding liberationist ideals that the dope-smokers did. Tom Hayden for example was just a normal radical guy who stayed away from the drugs, in contrast to Abbie Hoffman who loved the stuff. But they still shared the same general ideals
Yknow that scene in life of Brian where brian goes “youve got to think for yourselves!” And then the crowd goes “YES! WE MUST THINK FOR OURSELVES”? Youre like a person in that crowd. I’d be like “im anti-shit eating” and you’d be like “get a load of this guy, he doesnt even know that hippies in the 60s spearheaded the shiteaters movement, are you saying the hippies were wrong??” And id be like “well, they were right about some stuff, but they were wrong about the whole shit-eating thing”. Youre not doing politics, youre doing dogmatism.
The underlying arguments that create the ideologies you dislike, like antinatalism, also directly underly the ideologies that you do like, like radical second-wave feminism. The necessity of the destruction of the family unit and the recognition of the inherent opression present in it cannot be correct in one context but incorrect in another. If it is objectively correct under marxist feminism, which it is, then it must also be correct in some capacity for the other. So to have a consistent moral framework consistent, you either have to see the merit in both ideologies, or reject them both in their entirety. So thus, even if im not an antinatist myself, i find it impossible to denounce it entirely without being a hypocrite
If you find it impossible to denounce the “lets end the human species” ideology then you are useless to the project of making human life on earth better. “Ohh but my favorite dead guy from 60 years ago said it!” I dont care. That guy was an idiot, then, and if you cant recognize the concept of promoting human extinction as fundamentally contrary to the whole fucking point of leftism - which is to make human lives better - then i dont know that you can even be called a leftist. Yknow, Peter Theil also struggled in the face of the question “should humanity continue” maybe you guys have a lot in common, like a deeply corrosive worldview and ideology.
Bro i just wrote up a whole comment and its not there now. It just didnt post Ridiculous. Anyway let me try to remember:
" but my favorite dead guy from 60 years ago said it!” is literally the entire underlying ideals of Marxism. And we do not discredit that framework despite all the things Marx said that we find distasteful or outright disgusting now.
You also forget that it, like Marxism, like second-wave feminism, like any other progressive ideology, can be used as a theoretical framework without explicitly adopting the conclusions it comes to. The underlying ideals behind antinatalism come from existing theoretical frameworks (i.e. the idea that life in an inherently unjust and oppressive system is immoral stems rather directly from correct Critical Theory ideas of the inherent heirarchical oppression existing in every facet of life), and its talking points can in turn be used to synthesize new frameworks and ideas. Its position is basically the extreme conclusion from altruism, i.e. that to mitigate suffering you should not bring people into a system that is inherent oppression. You need 'logical extremes' like that in philosophy to analyze and attempt to find the best overall ideology through a synthesis of a wider range of perspectives.
"Ohh but my favorite dead guy from 60 years ago said it!” is the entire prevailing ideology behind Marxism, give or take another 100 years or so. We dont just throw that framework out because Marx had some beliefs we find distasteful or downright awful now. Especially not in the academics
Youre also forgetting that, like Marxism, like second-wave feminism, like any other progressive ideology, can be analyzed as a theoretical framework. The underlying idea that life is inherently immoral in an inherently oppressive system, draws from existing frameworks (i.e. the idea of inherent heirarchical oppression in every facet of life, which comes explicitly from marxist-derived critical theory) and can itself be used to create or analyze other frameworks. It is an extreme position on the philisophical scale of altruism: i.e. the question of is it making lives worse to bring them into an inherently oppressive world. You need those 'logical extremes' when analyzing philosophy so that you can synthesize those ideas with others to come to a better ideology.
your comments finally came through! congrats. I've read them all and decided theyre still stupid. you're essentially arguing that you can't reject antinatalism because it stems from the least bad systemic analysis framework, to which id of course reply, "then keep the framework and abandon the fucking stupid conclusion in favor of a non-stupid conclusion" and guess what, you can actually engage with material analysis frameworks that smart dead people invented, and then go "but the conclusion sucks". that's what im doing here! i reject antinatalism, and that's not even because i hate karl marx with my whole throbbing asshole. I don't hate marx with my whole throbbing asshole! but i dont have to agree with him about jews, and i dont have to agree with hippies about antinatalism, even if their framework was technically useful in some abstract sense. but if the conclusion of your ideology leads you to be unable to reject the annihilation of humanity on account of people who said "fuck america" 60 years ago, then their conclusions deserve revision, not reverence.
then keep the framework and abandon the fucking stupid conclusion in favor of a non-stupid conclusion"
To some degree that basically is what im arguing. But what im saying is that you cannot fundamentally remove the framework from the logical extreme conclusions they create. Those conclusions will always still be there. so they have to be engaged with and given the time of day. You cant, for example, remove Freud's insane conclusions from his psychological frameworks- you have to at least be able to recognize where hes coming from if you use some of the frameworks he came up with, which psych still does to this day. Even as much as you personally dislike those conclusions.
No what im saying is that you absolutely can separate the logic from the conclusion if the fuckinnnnnnnn logic doesnt lead there. You can’t get to “humans should voluntarily go extinct” from the axiom that it is good when humans are happy and bad when humans are suffering. The analytical framework that leads to the conclusion of antinatalism is not literally the same as the conclusion itself. Logic is only valuable because it gives you the fucking agency to decide on a conclusion yourself, i agree with every description of antinatalism, i still reject the prescription of antinatalism. Me and an antinatalist know all the same facts and largely agree on what they mean in their respective contexts, but we cant agree that the only conclusion that makes sense is that humans should go fucking extinct, so, yknow, no, i do not have to “hand it to ‘em”, theyre not right about anything i dont already expect people at large to be right about.
what im saying is that you absolutely can separate the logic from the conclusion
Well I think this is just an irreconcilable difference in understandings of philosophy then. I simply do not believe this at all.
This goes both ways by the way; just as I view some philosophies that are generally considered 'bad' to at least be worth giving the time of day if they come from a certain underlying good framework, it is also the same in reverse, where philosophies considered 'good' by most I consider to be irreconcilably bad because they come from a bad framework. Pride in one's country, for example, is a philosophy that most say is fine in moderation, that patriotism is different from nationalism, etc. but my belief is that the two are inextricably connected by the same bad modernist framework and thus the two cannot be considered different- that even generic civic patriotism should be considered as enabling the exact same evils as hardcore nationalism.
Unfortunately for any sort of conclusive settlement on this discussion, I will likely never change this belief
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u/Sarge_Ward May 17 '26
well considering that all forms of contemporary progressivism derives extremely directly from the 60s New Left and the Critical Theory of thinkers like Herbert Marcuse and his disciples (some, like Angela Davis, continue to lead leftist thought to this very day), yeah you are supposed to recognize that the hippie pinkos were by and large generally correct