Quidam Viator posted:

I include, for your consideration, the text of this Aeon article about the self-examination of one's own intellectual vices and virtues:


So, I'll take a cue from the author and start by admitting my failures, and trying to begin from a point of humility: I believe people have good reason to be pissed off at some of the posts I've been making in DnD. I have a tendency to reach for extreme solutions without considering the consequences. I often zero in on small problems while missing the big picture. I admit that my beliefs that we have a limited time left in which to make major changes in how we live, govern, and consume are based on climate, finance, and resource evidence that's still controversial.

Still, I offer this post and my opening mea culpa in the hopes of inspiring others not to simply dismiss the questions raised in this article, but to really dig into the nature of our dialogue in DnD and ask if we might unwittingly be contributing to an institutionalized set of intellectual vices.

Now, you can simply dismiss me and the article. I'm not sure what that says if you choose to do so.

I think in particular about a lot of posts and messages I have been seeing where people are upset about the balance of force between the Democratic and Republican parties in America. I and a few others contend that the liberals and progressives of this country should be acting more radically and with more intensity in the face of very strong Republican offense. Others say we are deluded.

In particular, I, almost alone, have advocated for accelerationism. This reading has really made me rake and winnow my thoughts and try to understand why I'm inclined to believe the things I do. I went back and read previous things I had written for DnD. Eleven years ago, I wrote a thread called "Faith, Reason, and the Millennial Party Shift," in which I claimed that the GOP had figured out a way around rational argument by simply substituting the methods of Christian faith for the methods of rational inquiry, and would learn how to create an entire GOP base completely immune to reason.

Three years ago, in the RNC convention thread, I posted this screed and it provides more evidence about where my weird accelerationism might come from. By 2012, I was getting angry and frustrated not just at the tribalism that felt like it was separating America into two halves: the responsible, compassionate type, which I associated with DnD posters, and the FYGM conservatives, but especially at the apathy and lethargy I believed I saw in America's political middle. I can see myself, three years ago, getting crazy about how in the hell we would ever create real change. Did I overstate how severe the problem of political apathy was? Am I still way too worried about what happens if we just continue with business as usual? Am I REALLY willing to commit myself to being killed by angry Republicans if I WERE to be part of a push to let Republicans win? Am I unduly panicking about how much danger this country and the entire world is in right now?

Well, I'd definitely be committing the intellectual vice of hypocrisy if I didn't ask myself those hard questions first before asking you to do the same yourself. When I go back and look, I can see the flaws in my thinking. What REALLY pisses me off though, is an internal thought loop I can't seem to break myself of: I cannot convince myself that the liberals and progressives of this country have an honest and clear view of the existential danger they are in, and I do not believe that they have a sufficiently solid or actionable plan to counteract Republican advances. I can't tell if this is an intellectual failing of my own or a thing I should be rationally concerned about.

I've been butthurt about being taunted and mocked, but I'm done with that poo poo. Someone challenged me to put my views out in the open and really check myself for intellectual vices. So, in humility, I submit this post, in the hopes that it might open (EDIT: not just my eyes, but) even one other person's eyes to their own intellectual vices, so that we all might have better and more virtuous discussion in DnD.