Once upon a time, there was a guy named Francois. If you were into libertarianism, you had heard of him. He had an excellent show about atheism that I listened to all the time. He was also a hard-core market anarchist, and helped write an absolutely splendid blog called The Radical Libertarian (which is still around).
Today, he sucks. Ok, so that's narrowing it down pretty far. LOL. But as one looks at the Francois disaster from afar, one must ask: how did it all happen? How did an Objectivist-turned-market-anarchist (who should know better) reach this horrid state?
This is difficult, because Franc just doesn't talk about it. His ideological "evolution" (more accurately called devolving) remains a mystery. Like the Christians who just "felt the hand of god" (or whatever gibberish), Franc apparently just "felt the hand of Marx." He just woke up one morning and realized that our standards of living were too high, and that he wanted to brutally control other people. At least that's one theory.
A more realistic theory has to do with the seductive lure of leftism. Psychologist John Ray believes leftism is driven by intense ego needs more than anything else, believing this explains their hypersensitivity and abusive tendencies. It sounds like a plausible explanation. How else to explain Francois' recent eruption at SE's blog?
There, he writes,
Get my blogs off your blogroll, if your friends are as retarded as you are, I don't want them on my blog.
And that goes double for you Cork. I am tired of you fucking ancap anklebiters. Go back to Austria.
..From now on, all ancap comments will be banned on sight, so don't expect to have your say on this.
As you wish, Franc. I guess that if I was writing inane ultra-leftoid screeds, I wouldn't want people to visit my blog either. And if my ideology was so fragile that it could be broken by a handful of blog comments, I would be scared of letting critics on my blog too.
Franc calls himself a "mutualist," but it would be extremely unfair to lump other mutualists in the same boat. Few mutualists are as sensitive or "wishy washy" on their own doctrine as Franc is. Few of them have the same communistic or primitivist tendencies. And I've never met a mutualist (a real one, that is) who was actively terrified of competing ideas or viewpoints.
So what can the rest of us learn from Franc's intellectual decline?
The answer is: don't take up an ideology if you can't adequately defend it. And don't switch to an ideology just because you think you'll look hip or smart. You'll inevitably be asked questions about it. If that freaks you out, then your foundation is a house of cards.
Perhaps the ultimate lesson is that people who don't want to be mocked for their beliefs shouldn't make it so damn easy and fun.
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8 comments:
This type of nonsense is exactly why despite occasional emotional temptations to do otherwise, I always try & keep a sense of angnosticism regarding knowledge, a'la robert anton wilson, & try to resist the allure of rationalizations offered to us by various ideologies that, upon closer inspection, do not add-up.
In a sense, I think one must try & take a student's perspective to all of it: holding your own views, opinions, & perceptions, until you encounter good enough knowledge or information that would challenge them.
Of course, it takes a person who is capable of being honest with theirself to do this, & obviously not everyone is capable of such a feat.
I'm exactly the same way, Nitro. And you stated that perfectly.
There's a lot out there that "sounds good," or perhaps makes us feel warm and fuzzy. I think this is what draws people to neo-conservatism and other ideologies.
Neo-conservatism sounds warm and fuzzy at the surface. "We're standing up to the world's tyrants, terrorists, and dictators! And we're spreading democracy!"
The fact that they're tyrants themselves, or that they're killing and torturing more people than their enemies could ever dream of, never occurs to them.
Beneath the feel-good rhetoric is irrationality.
Per Franc's wishes, I also have removed his blog from my blog lists. He really does seem to have gone batshit crazy.
Franc buys into some really, really goofy shit. I started noticing his slide into kookery close to a year ago. His new ideas are just so stunningly terrible and contrived that they're embarrassing to read.
And now he has grown so angry at criticism of his nonsensical beliefs that he wants to live in his own little bubble.
I suppose that if he wants to waste his life believing in nonsense that will never have prayer of coming to fruition, he's free to do so. The rest of us prefer to live in the real world.
Hey Cork, I didn't know whether you caught my latest post on Profit. It's draw a lot of criticism, from Franc & others.
Very bad post...and you know what, I prefer the "not-so-new" François!
"He just woke up one morning and realized that our standards of living were too high, and that he wanted to brutally control other people."
This is outright bullshit!
"A more realistic theory has to do with the seductive lure of leftism. Psychologist John Ray believes leftism is driven by intense ego needs more than anything else, believing this explains their hypersensitivity and abusive tendencies. It sounds like a plausible explanation."
Outright bullshit again! John Ray talk about STATIST leftism and all type of STATISM is driven by ego!
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