From Chapter 15 of Cosmic Connections:
The biggest error is to think of the history of ethical growth as linear: on this understanding, we would just have to keep moving ahead, bringing more and more people to Enlightenment, liberalism, and freedom. Rather, the whole process should be seen more “dialectically,” in a sense that even Hegel couldn’t conceive, as I stated above.
Our greater grasp of the human good has unleashed a lot of hostility and violence; or, to think of another dialectic at work: we have won through in certain societies to some important insights, but these have bred egregious self-images of superiority over other peoples and civilizations, which have in turn legitimized much injustice. And then there is the “populist” backlash in many democracies where the demands to overcome certain historical discriminations have been pressed most urgently (see Section XI).
The road ahead is not just more of the same. It requires that we respond to these hostilities and injustices and resistances with measures of reparation and mutual recognition which can bring about reconciliation.
In the light of all this, the above account of the steadily advancing application of the principle of self-determination, while descriptively true, turns out to be highly misleading. What it leaves out is, for example, the way in which highly “progressive” figures in the nineteenth century, like John Stuart Mill and Marx, could justify British rule in India, on the grounds that it was bringing the fruits of advanced civilization to a backward society. What is the balance sheet of positive versus negative in this two-centuries-old movement?
We have ethical advances in both standards and real action (the latter rather spotty, but real), to be weighed against legacies of violence, hatreds, resentments, and stances of unmerited superiority. But through all this is a measure of perhaps irreversible advance: it is not likely, short of a civilizational collapse (but this is becoming a real possibility in the wake of our failure to act against climate change), that we revert to justifying political power by immemorial tradition (of which there are still vestiges in our world, like Russky mir!).
Dialectic, not linear, advance is virtually inevitable, because the measures which realize steps upward provoke resistance, and moreover involve methods which intensify this resistance, while the resultant conflict can easily give space for the all-too-human fascination with transgressive violence.
The crucial insight here is that advances in justice have to be accompanied by forward steps in reconciliation. A vital part of the ethical growth in the twentieth century has been a perception of this truth and the growth of insight into paths of reconciliation and healing, which we see with Gandhi, King, Desmond Tutu, and many others.
Taylor,. Cosmic Connections, pp. 572-73.
He’s saying the same thing as Andrew Huang,1 but in a different idiom. Moral progress is possible–the arc of history is long and it does bend toward justice– but stable moral progress cannot achieved by ramming it down the’throats of the benighted. Being technically right on the issues isn't enough. Moral progress requires real moral leadership, and the Left just doesn't produce Gandhis, Kings, or Tutus anymore. Politics as usual isn't going to get it done because politics as usual always seems to come down to the price of eggs and grievance.
Taylor goes on to talk about how democracy and self rule cannot work unless there is fundamental solidarity around core values. But there is no force in the history of the world that has been more fissiparous, more atomizing, more destructive of a sense of the common good and shared values than classical 19th-century Liberalism and its revival in late-20th-century Neoliberalism. Their rugged-individualist-bootstraps sanctimony, their Social-Darwinist, Mitt Romney/Paul Ryanesque, Ayn Randian, intellectually sophomoric ideological justification is poison for any polity. It's all but killed ours.
Taylor goes on–
This slide is a catastrophe for various reasons. It’s a catastrophe because it deeply divides, hampers, and paralyzes the democratic society, dividing us into first- and second-class citizens. But it is also a catastrophe in another way because it builds on the deprivations imposed on nonelites by the spread of a Romney-type moralistic outlook among the rich and powerful. In many Western democracies, this has brought about a frustration caused by a Great Downgrade in the living standards of workers, who, as a result, feel that the system is stacked against them, that they can’t affect it, and that their citizen efficacy is virtually nonexistent. They are ready for a program which would liberate the demos or give the demos power again, against the elites. Only the demos has now been redescribed—either in a moralist, or ethnic, or historical-precedence way that excludes many people—which has the double disadvantage that it deeply divides the society, and this second disadvantage, that it does not at all meet the actual problems and challenges of the Downgrade. (p. 577).
It makes the problems worse.
MAGA cannot solve the problems Neoliberalism has created; it can only magnify and exaggerate them because MAGA is Neoliberalism's reductio ad absurdum, its extremity from which–hopefully, sooner rather than later–we flip from it into its dialectical opposite. So, if a few years of Trump's cranks, cronies, and crooks is the price we have to pay, it might well be worth it in the long run. MAGA isn’t the problem; it’s just a symptom of a much deeper disease. If we cannot find a remedy for that, then we’re cooked. NY Times Editorial Board Liberalism is not it.
And so, in the meanwhile, we keep our eyes peeled for the emergence of a different kind of politics, one that is truly inspiring and morally serious , something that breaks new ground.
- "The Tao of I also discloses that when situations proceed beyond their extremes, they alternate to their opposites. It is a reminder to accept necessary change and be ready to transform, warning that one should adjust one’s efforts according to changes in time and situation. The Tao of I also says: In a favorable time and situation, never neglect the unfavorable potential. In an unfavorable time and situation, never act abruptly and blindly. And in adverse circumstances, never become depressed and despair."
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