I have been known to hold opinions that, on the surface at least, seem incompatible. Well, it's part of the inductive lifestyle.
But I was struck once more today at the hugely contradictory attitudes liberals espouse about nature, or Nature. A not simple idea, to be sure. But.
Their worship of Gaia and natural ecosystems is, well, worship. The liberal attitude is nothing if not deeply religious when it comes to endangered owls or CO2 levels or the evil of plastic bags. Nature is a pre-existent and inviolable whole which requires reverent compliance and absolute respect. It is not at all uncommon to hear liberals speak of humanity as a virus destroying the planet and to fantasize wistfully of how our species' demise would return our mother Gaia and her other children to her natural and unregulated paradisiac state.
But when it comes to human nature, all bets are off. Let the social engineering begin. And any appeal to things like the structures and functions of the human body --especially as a binary sexual difference--as a clue to identity or purpose, well, that's just essentialist concretizing, totally lacking in either anthropological or socio-historical sophistication.
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3 comments:
The strange thing is that the Gaia worship of liberalism is prominent in the natural sciences, which you would think would reduce the quasi-religious awe of religion. Of course, studying the Earth for so long does make humans a bit alien. When you ponder the natural world devoid of humans, they seem foreign after a while. But we are not viewed as just another species, but almost as an interloping intruder out of nowhere. Witness the attempts to put us somewhere in the mammalian family tree, and our apparent inability to be easily categorized.
-Sean
Its all because of Modernism. The world was screwed and destined to destroy itself after the French Revolution. part 1 was Protestantism, Part 2 was Modernism. and one birthed the other.
AD standing athwart history yelling "Stop!"
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