One common feature of critiques of Maple which is especially frustrating to me, especially from ex Maplers, is that they can only be made by recourse to some secular liberal scientism, and refuse to meet Maple and Soryu, as they say, “where they’re at.”
I watched a couple of Soryu’s videos, and I came away deeply unimpressed with him as a philosopher (though I don’t rule out that he might be masterful along other axes).
One thing that I found kind of shocking is that he attributes a huge amount of power and influence to the secular humanist ideology (the “religion that rules the world”) but then gives completely un-ITT passing not-even-straw-man account of what that ideology is, or what it’s proponents would say about specific topics, or why anyone would find it compelling.
Without rewatching it, I believe he states explicitly that “it doesn’t make any sense” (because of some circular dependency?) without (apparently) any curiosity about why this ideology rules the world despite not making any sense, or where it’s power came from. He seems to just brush past it.
It looked to me like he doesn’t understand the ideology that he’s critiquing, at least on it’s own terms, very well. Which doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have some good points, but sure makes me less interested.
(There were also some other signs that his philosophy wasn’t very good / he wasn’t very interested in bridging to people outside his bubble.)
Is this an example of my failing to meet him where he’s at?
I’m also pretty displeased with him as a philosopher and sociologist or whatever. I think when he says things like what you’re referring to, it’s both rhetorical abuse, and he’s trying to do something like evoke the “functional core” or “revealed affective posture” or maybe just “vibe”, regardless of whatever the explicit arguments are that some ideology uses. I think this is definitely the right move sometimes but I agree that Soryu kind of sucks at it, or is using mostly inappropriately.
Is this an example of my failing to meet him where he’s at?
Fair, no, obviously giving people a normal kind of fair shot is fine, though this wasn’t really what I meant. The thing that I was criticizing in that line would be more like “criticizing the output of his views without addressing the generators” (which is sorta what you’ve done here, but I’m not bothered by in context), vs “addressing the conception of value in which his claims are made.” So specifically, eg. that awakening is more valuable than ~all kinds of material wealth, that species extinction and also just killing of animals generically are a kind of extreme moral injury, etc. Those are fine to disagree with, and I disagree with them, but ignoring those kinds of cruxes makes the critiques mostly sort of useless/irrelevant.
awakening is more valuable than ~all kinds of material wealth
This general sort of claim has never made sense to me. Is there an accessible to outsiders attempt to justify it in a way not obviously contradictory with the materialist scientific understanding of the world? In particular, I’m confused about why we would evolve with a capacity for extremely valuable “awakening”, when presumably not a single of our distant enough ancestors had ever “awoke”, and very few contemporaries ostensibly do.
I watched a couple of Soryu’s videos, and I came away deeply unimpressed with him as a philosopher (though I don’t rule out that he might be masterful along other axes).
One thing that I found kind of shocking is that he attributes a huge amount of power and influence to the secular humanist ideology (the “religion that rules the world”) but then gives completely un-ITT passing not-even-straw-man account of what that ideology is, or what it’s proponents would say about specific topics, or why anyone would find it compelling.
Without rewatching it, I believe he states explicitly that “it doesn’t make any sense” (because of some circular dependency?) without (apparently) any curiosity about why this ideology rules the world despite not making any sense, or where it’s power came from. He seems to just brush past it.
It looked to me like he doesn’t understand the ideology that he’s critiquing, at least on it’s own terms, very well. Which doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have some good points, but sure makes me less interested.
(There were also some other signs that his philosophy wasn’t very good / he wasn’t very interested in bridging to people outside his bubble.)
Is this an example of my failing to meet him where he’s at?
I’m also pretty displeased with him as a philosopher and sociologist or whatever. I think when he says things like what you’re referring to, it’s both rhetorical abuse, and he’s trying to do something like evoke the “functional core” or “revealed affective posture” or maybe just “vibe”, regardless of whatever the explicit arguments are that some ideology uses. I think this is definitely the right move sometimes but I agree that Soryu kind of sucks at it, or is using mostly inappropriately.
Fair, no, obviously giving people a normal kind of fair shot is fine, though this wasn’t really what I meant. The thing that I was criticizing in that line would be more like “criticizing the output of his views without addressing the generators” (which is sorta what you’ve done here, but I’m not bothered by in context), vs “addressing the conception of value in which his claims are made.” So specifically, eg. that awakening is more valuable than ~all kinds of material wealth, that species extinction and also just killing of animals generically are a kind of extreme moral injury, etc. Those are fine to disagree with, and I disagree with them, but ignoring those kinds of cruxes makes the critiques mostly sort of useless/irrelevant.
This general sort of claim has never made sense to me. Is there an accessible to outsiders attempt to justify it in a way not obviously contradictory with the materialist scientific understanding of the world? In particular, I’m confused about why we would evolve with a capacity for extremely valuable “awakening”, when presumably not a single of our distant enough ancestors had ever “awoke”, and very few contemporaries ostensibly do.