Be Wary of the Orwellian "Enlightened" Class

Commentary from Robin Koerner on FEE.org:

It’s Not What You Believe. It’s How You Believe It

George Orwell’s novel 1984 has been selling in large numbers to people scared of a lurch toward authoritarianism in the USA. I recently noted that both that book and Animal Farm were written not as a warning against a particular political ideology but against the implementation of any ideology, however progressive, by people who think themselves too smart to have to test their politics against the emotions, sentiments, and experiences of those they would affect.

In his essay, My Country Right or Left, Orwell referred to such people as "so ‘enlightened’ that they cannot understand the most ordinary emotions."

He understood that the morality of a political ideology in practice cannot be determined from its theoretical exposition – but only from the actual experiences of those who would be affected by its real-world application.

To make the point to the people he felt most needed to hear it, Orwell, a self-identified socialist, called out the arrogance of his friends on the Left who experienced themselves as so “enlightened,” to use his word, that they did not need to consider the sentiments – let alone ideas – of those who were to them clearly politically ignorant.

Orwell had a name for this kind of self-righteous certainty – and it wasn’t fascism, capitalism, or communism.  It was “orthodoxy,” which he explains in 1984, “means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” It is a state exhibited by people who already know they have the right answers – at least in the areas that matter.

There is no political system so perfect that it will not be deadly when imposed against the will of others by people sure of their own righteousness. Orwell saw that no political theory – even the egalitarian socialism that he believed to be the most moral – can prevent its adherents from being anything other than tyrants if they are committed to it in a way that is immune to the protests and experiences of other people.

In other words, tyranny is not the result of a belief in a bad political theory; it is the result of a bad belief in a political theory – and that is an entirely different thing.

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The Epistemology of Tyranny

Science and scientism are superficially similar but epistemic opposites.

A true scientist remains doxastically open. That means that she works always on the assumption that her theory is a) false or incomplete and b) will therefore change.

The daily task of science is to identify the ways in which our current understanding is lacking. In so doing, science’s understanding of the world becomes less false.

Scientism, in contrast, is doxastically closed. That means that it identifies our best theory but then behaves as if it is a) absolute truth and b) will therefore not change.

Scientism, unlike science, has no need for data. It is deadly because it always uses the current paradigm to explain away potentially problematic observations. (E.g. the cat’s squeal isn’t telling me it’s in pain; it’s confirming that machines, including cats, have predictable responses to physical stimuli.)

Orwell’s “unthinking orthodoxy” is “political scientism.” That’s the epistemology of tyranny.

In my earlier article, I wrote about the authoritarianism of some of the “Social Justice Warrior” Left today, who would give moral privilege to groups they identity as victim groups in the name of eliminating privilege; who would eliminate the free speech of people with whom they disagree in the name of giving everyone an equal voice; who equate speech with violence to justify violence against those who speak.

Bizarre as those paradoxes clearly are, their advocates are not automatically dangerous if they are open to revising their moral or political theory in the light of falsifying data or contradictions in the theory’s application.

What makes it all dangerous is that it is allied with an a priori belief about competing views and political opponents that eliminate the possibility that any experiences or perspectives could provide data that could challenge the theory.

If potentially contradictory data can be rejected a priori on account of being explained away as the result of “fascist”, “racist”, “sexist” attitudes, for example, then the theory is inoculated against the human data against which all political theories must be tested.

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Since these scientistic non-scientists experienced themselves, rightly, as believing in nothing more than the most certain and proved human knowledge, if you disagree with them, you aren’t just wrong (which would be allowable), you are intellectually backward.* If you believe in spirit, whatever that might be, in a mechanistic universe, you aren’t just factually mistaken, you are rejecting human progress; you are believing in something that isn’t just not the case but isn’t even worthy of consideration.  [read more]

*Hillary Clinton called these people “irredeemable deplorables. “

Here is what conservative thinker Russell Kirk said on the matter:

Fascism, Naziism, and communism all have claimed to be scientific. A good representative of reformed scientific opinion is Dr. Edmund W. Sinnott, dean of the graduate school of Yale University, writing in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (December 1956). After presenting very fairly and even evangelically the case for scientific positivism and objectivity, he proceeds to demolish it. With Aristotle, Sinnott recognizes final causes: he is a teleologist. What animates every organism, what constitutes its nature, is purpose: “If it be accepted, the idea of purpose, of intention, of the motive power of a goal or ideal rather than of an organic‘drive,’ changes the orientation of our psychical lives.” Man, he argues, is drawn toward a goal; and that goal often cannot be perceived or apprehended through the methods of exact science. “The closest contact with reality for many people is through this unexplained, mysterious urgency in life experienced in flashes of insight, for these carry with them a great weight of authority.”

“The days of the evolutionary optimists are gone,” Sinnott continues, “who believed that progress is inherent in the nature of things and that man is bound to grow better almost automatically. If we are to find a way out of our troubles, we must appeal not only to the rational attitudes and methods of the scientist but also to man’s inner spiritual motivation. Love may turn out to be a more valuable resource than logic.”

For Sinnott, science cannot supplant religion; both science and religion “have indispensable contributions to make to the great task of building a society in which men will not only be safe and wise and happy and loving but will gain the serene confidence that their lives are in harmony with the universe itself.”

Source: “The Drug of Ideology.” The Essential Russell Kirk. Selected Essays (2007) by George A. Panichas [editor].