What is social progressivism?

[d0rkyd00d]

Right, depending on one's assessment of them, gun control, progressive, and scientific authoritarianism can be seen as progressive, positive or regressive, negative.
I call progressives, progressives because that's what they call themselves and to contrast them with conservatives, not because I think they're necessarily progressive.

I think it's important to differentiate progressive authoritarians, the left with scientific authoritarians, which're neither the left, nor the right.
Progressive authoritarianism is the inversion of conservative authoritarianism.
Progressives maximize equality and inclusivity, conservatives inequality and exclusivity.
Scientific authoritarianism is not the inversion of conservative values, but the imposition of scientific values.
What are scientific values?
Scientists see the world less in terms of good and bad/evil, the way both conservatives, and progressives see them, and more in terms of functional, ordered, healthy, sane, rational and dysfunctional, disordered, unhealthy, insane, irrational.

If you think about it, we've never really had a country who's foundational ideology was scientific authoritarianism or technocracy.
We've had various conservatisms, libertarianisms and progressivisms, but not much technocracy.
But look how people responded to the scamdemic, when it comes to conservative and progressive authoritarianism, people have a lot of reservations, but when it comes to medical crises, real or imagined, people will very readily surrender their rights and freedoms.
A lot of people don't trust priests, conservatives or progressives, but they seem to trust technocrats.
The future of authoritarianism may be technocracy, rather than fascism or communism.

What part of the Constitution does mask wearing violate? I find this line of argumentation odd. What "rights and freedoms" are people having to surrender? The right to not wear a mask?

[Urwrongx1000]

Objectively, only Freedom is "Progressive", which means little to no government intervention.

That means government should not tell you what to do, no seat-belts, no guard rails, no mandates, no restrictions, no safety-net, no welfare, etc.


If you are Pro-Government and therefore Pro-establishment, then you are actually Regressive, not Progressive.

Progressive is inverted by the Liberal-Left as a way to politically leverage the Conservative-Right, for example, for "abortion rights", "environmentalism", welfare, and more.

What Modern-Post-Modern progressivists actually do, is Regressive, not Progressive.


It's also a coin-word, a phrase, that implies "if it's Progressive then it's automatically morally good, righteous, and superior." This is another common lie. What is "Progressive" is not necessarily good. As we see, many "progressive" examples are actually Regressive. And many objectively progressive examples might not be morally good, but the exact-opposite. "Good for whom exactly"?

[Urwrongx1000]

The phrase "Progress" means advancement toward a goal or solution.

But is all "Progress" actually forward movement? No, because people often make mistakes, need to back up to go forward, or need to find a new path left or right.

"Progress" can be backward when you are disoriented, which is proved by the exposition in this thread.


Another good contribution from Gloominary, one of the few worthwhile thinkers on this forum. Good philosophy.

[d0rkyd00d]

Objectively, only Freedom is "Progressive", which means little to no government intervention.

That means government should not tell you what to do, no seat-belts, no guard rails, no mandates, no restrictions, no safety-net, no welfare, etc.


If you are Pro-Government and therefore Pro-establishment, then you are actually Regressive, not Progressive.

Progressive is inverted by the Liberal-Left as a way to politically leverage the Conservative-Right, for example, for "abortion rights", "environmentalism", welfare, and more.

What Modern-Post-Modern progressivists actually do, is Regressive, not Progressive.


It's also a coin-word, a phrase, that implies "if it's Progressive then it's automatically morally good, righteous, and superior." This is another common lie. What is "Progressive" is not necessarily good. As we see, many "progressive" examples are actually Regressive. And many objectively progressive examples might not be morally good, but the exact-opposite. "Good for whom exactly"?

Define freedom?

[Urwrongx1000]

No.

[Gloominary]

Right, depending on one's assessment of them, gun control, progressive, and scientific authoritarianism can be seen as progressive, positive or regressive, negative.
I call progressives, progressives because that's what they call themselves and to contrast them with conservatives, not because I think they're necessarily progressive.

I think it's important to differentiate progressive authoritarians, the left with scientific authoritarians, which're neither the left, nor the right.
Progressive authoritarianism is the inversion of conservative authoritarianism.
Progressives maximize equality and inclusivity, conservatives inequality and exclusivity.
Scientific authoritarianism is not the inversion of conservative values, but the imposition of scientific values.
What are scientific values?
Scientists see the world less in terms of good and bad/evil, the way both conservatives, and progressives see them, and more in terms of functional, ordered, healthy, sane, rational and dysfunctional, disordered, unhealthy, insane, irrational.

If you think about it, we've never really had a country who's foundational ideology was scientific authoritarianism or technocracy.
We've had various conservatisms, libertarianisms and progressivisms, but not much technocracy.
But look how people responded to the scamdemic, when it comes to conservative and progressive authoritarianism, people have a lot of reservations, but when it comes to medical crises, real or imagined, people will very readily surrender their rights and freedoms.
A lot of people don't trust priests, conservatives or progressives, but they seem to trust technocrats.
The future of authoritarianism may be technocracy, rather than fascism or communism.

What part of the Constitution does mask wearing violate? I find this line of argumentation odd. What "rights and freedoms" are people having to surrender? The right to not wear a mask?

Specifically, yea, the right not to wear masks.
More broadly, the right to bodily integrity.
The right to determine what goes on and into your body.
The right not to be forcibly medicated.
The right not to be prevented from accessing medicine and medical services, such as cancer patients being denied treatment, because they were supposedly worried hospitals would become overcrowded, which never came to pass.
Freedom of movement.
Freedom of association.
Freedom to conduct business.

People are choosing what's more important to them, freedom, or technocracy.
What comes first?
Do medical experts have the right to take as much freedom as they want without challenge?
Do they have the right to take freedom at all?
The political establishment seems to think so, but millions of people beg to differ.
They are fighting them in the courts, and by noncomplying.
It's up to us to determine whether we want to live in a free democracy or an unfree technocracy, or what degree of unfree technocracy we're willing to put up with.

[d0rkyd00d]

Right, depending on one's assessment of them, gun control, progressive, and scientific authoritarianism can be seen as progressive, positive or regressive, negative.
I call progressives, progressives because that's what they call themselves and to contrast them with conservatives, not because I think they're necessarily progressive.

I think it's important to differentiate progressive authoritarians, the left with scientific authoritarians, which're neither the left, nor the right.
Progressive authoritarianism is the inversion of conservative authoritarianism.
Progressives maximize equality and inclusivity, conservatives inequality and exclusivity.
Scientific authoritarianism is not the inversion of conservative values, but the imposition of scientific values.
What are scientific values?
Scientists see the world less in terms of good and bad/evil, the way both conservatives, and progressives see them, and more in terms of functional, ordered, healthy, sane, rational and dysfunctional, disordered, unhealthy, insane, irrational.

If you think about it, we've never really had a country who's foundational ideology was scientific authoritarianism or technocracy.
We've had various conservatisms, libertarianisms and progressivisms, but not much technocracy.
But look how people responded to the scamdemic, when it comes to conservative and progressive authoritarianism, people have a lot of reservations, but when it comes to medical crises, real or imagined, people will very readily surrender their rights and freedoms.
A lot of people don't trust priests, conservatives or progressives, but they seem to trust technocrats.
The future of authoritarianism may be technocracy, rather than fascism or communism.

What part of the Constitution does mask wearing violate? I find this line of argumentation odd. What "rights and freedoms" are people having to surrender? The right to not wear a mask?

People are choosing what's more important to them, freedom, or technocracy.
What comes first?
Do medical experts have the right to take as much freedom as they want without challenge?
Do they have the right to take freedom at all?
The political establishment seems to think so, but millions of people beg to differ.
They are fighting them in the courts, and by noncomplying.
It's up to us to determine whether we want to live in a free democracy or an unfree technocracy, or what degree of unfree technocracy we're willing to put up with.

Again I'd ask: define freedom. Tired of the word getting tossed around as a buzzword conflation for "good."

[Pedro I Rengel]

I don't think you would know what freedom is if we spent a year explaining it to you.

[obsrvr524]

Again I'd ask: define freedom. Tired of the word getting tossed around as a buzzword conflation for "good."

It means civil rights over authoritarian dictatorship. That is the divide between West and East.

In the East ALL people live only to serve the society (via authoritarian rule). In the West, ALL society exists to serve the people (constitutional law).

They are fundamentally diametric.

[d0rkyd00d]

I don't think you would know what freedom is if we spent a year explaining it to you.

Freedom is a tricky and slippery term, which is why it makes no sense to debate it until it is defined IMO.

[d0rkyd00d]

Again I'd ask: define freedom. Tired of the word getting tossed around as a buzzword conflation for "good."

It means civil rights over authoritarian dictatorship. That is the divide between West and East.

In the East ALL people live only to serve the society (via authoritarian rule). In the West, ALL society exists to serve the people (constitutional law).

They are fundamentally diametric.

And what would you say of the belief that freedom in itself is a paradox, an impossibility in its truest sense, as proposed by Isaiah Berlin?

Liberty seems to have the uncanny property of extinguishing itself. For, if I am free to do whatever I want and so are you, then I have no assurance that I can actually do what I want. You, being as free as I, may interfere with me. On the other hand, if my freedom is not absolute but limited along with that of everyone else, then I have assurance that I can do what I may do, that no one in other words, will interfere.

[Pedro I Rengel]

And what would you say of the belief that freedom in itself is a paradox, an impossibility in its truest sense,

Well there you go.

Sometimes they just give it to you on a platter.

[Silhouette]

Broadly there are two approaches to "progressing" social issues:

1) Relax measures that restrict certain social conducts
2) Increase measures to steer conduct in a direction deemed "better"

The latter is commonly referred to as "affirmative action" - and generally people only accept one of the above two options as "progression", rejecting the other as regression or moving away from progress.
This tends to be what distinguishes the libertarian from the authoritarian.

A common misconception is that this has anything to do with "left" or "right". Lumping them together tends to be a sure sign of political ignorance.
One can be an authoritarian leftist, a libertarian leftist, an authoritarian rightist, or a libertarian rightist (or some centrist or apathetic combination etc.)
"Left versus right" is down to economic progressivism, which broadly follows the same distinction as above but about economic issues instead of social ones.
However the left are often lumped in with authoritarians in general on this account - plus the authoritarian left are currently the loudest and most easily criticised, so the MSM loves them. The authoritarian right are mostly ignored in today's political spheres, being easily dismissed as Nazis/fascists.
Likewise, the libertarian left used to have a voice, but they have been politically marginalised on account of the actions of the authoritarian left. The libertarian right have gained a new identity as "alt-right", taking their place as the main opposition to the authoritarian left.

To briefly cover a more nuanced distinction, there is a difference between laws/regulations and mores/customs/traditions. Conservatives tend to hold onto the latter and reject the former. Authoritarian progressives tend to favour the former to enforce the latter. The Libertarian left and right both want to minimise the former, and are cool with variety in the latter. This allows democracy. You can tell the authoritarian progressives and conservatives by their clear rejection of alternative opinions - they need their kind to dominate, or else (to them), deleterious catastrophe is imminent. Democracy for them can be a significantly traumatic ordeal.

[d0rkyd00d]

And what would you say of the belief that freedom in itself is a paradox, an impossibility in its truest sense,

Well there you go.

Sometimes they just give it to you on a platter.

Eh? What are your thoughts on that?

[Pedro I Rengel]

Don't "eh" me.

[Gloominary]

The phrase "Progress" means advancement toward a goal or solution.

But is all "Progress" actually forward movement? No, because people often make mistakes, need to back up to go forward, or need to find a new path left or right.

"Progress" can be backward when you are disoriented, which is proved by the exposition in this thread.


Another good contribution from Gloominary, one of the few worthwhile thinkers on this forum. Good philosophy.

Why thanks, appreciate your contributions too.

[Gloominary]

Again I'd ask: define freedom. Tired of the word getting tossed around as a buzzword conflation for "good."

Socioeconomic freedom means we don't touch an individual or their property without their consent.
Of course this is a simplification, what constitutes touching and property is sometimes ambiguous.
There are various customs and laws for determining when a person's sovereignty over themselves and their property has been violated.
And I'm not saying there aren't any other moral concerns, there are, for most of us, just I tend to prioritize freedom over other concerns.

For me, freedom has intrinsic, and extrinsic value.
Sacrificing freedom for the greater good is at best occasionally a necessary evil or the lesser of two evils, and at worst often evil, it's never good.
Freedom is something we should cherish, be very reluctant to forego, for its intrinsic value, and because it's dangerous and stifling to, in a world where TPTB often mean us harm, and society will never understand us and our needs as well as we understand ourselves, in many ways, even when its intensions are benign.

Freedom is natural, we all want it.
Grab any man or beast unfamiliar to you and they will struggle to break free.
For better or worse, we had to be conditioned from a young age to allow government to take our freedom under certain circumstances.

I find people's faith in technocrats deeply disturbing.

[Gloominary]

Broadly there are two approaches to "progressing" social issues:

1) Relax measures that restrict certain social conducts
2) Increase measures to steer conduct in a direction deemed "better"

The latter is commonly referred to as "affirmative action" - and generally people only accept one of the above two options as "progression", rejecting the other as regression or moving away from progress.
This tends to be what distinguishes the libertarian from the authoritarian.

A common misconception is that this has anything to do with "left" or "right". Lumping them together tends to be a sure sign of political ignorance.
One can be an authoritarian leftist, a libertarian leftist, an authoritarian rightist, or a libertarian rightist (or some centrist or apathetic combination etc.)
"Left versus right" is down to economic progressivism, which broadly follows the same distinction as above but about economic issues instead of social ones.
However the left are often lumped in with authoritarians in general on this account - plus the authoritarian left are currently the loudest and most easily criticised, so the MSM loves them. The authoritarian right are mostly ignored in today's political spheres, being easily dismissed as Nazis/fascists.
Likewise, the libertarian left used to have a voice, but they have been politically marginalised on account of the actions of the authoritarian left. The libertarian right have gained a new identity as "alt-right", taking their place as the main opposition to the authoritarian left.

To briefly cover a more nuanced distinction, there is a difference between laws/regulations and mores/customs/traditions. Conservatives tend to hold onto the latter and reject the former. Authoritarian progressives tend to favour the former to enforce the latter. The Libertarian left and right both want to minimise the former, and are cool with variety in the latter. This allows democracy. You can tell the authoritarian progressives and conservatives by their clear rejection of alternative opinions - they need their kind to dominate, or else (to them), deleterious catastrophe is imminent. Democracy for them can be a significantly traumatic ordeal.

I conceive of things a bit differently than you.
For me, there's libertarians and two major kinds of authoritarians: progressives and conservatives.
Then there's three major domains or spheres: society, government and economics, libertarianism, progressivism and conservatism can be applied to.
Social libertarianism, political libertarianism (republic) and fiscal libertarianism (capitalism).
Social progressivism, political progressivism (democracy) and fiscal progressivism (socialism).
Social conservatism, political conservatism (dictatorship) and fiscal conservatism (corporatism).
There's also different kinds of libertarianism, but I don't wish to overcomplicate things more than I perhaps already have.

There's also scientific authoritarianism or technocracy, which I consider to be more conservative than progressive, because conservatism is all about hierarchy, and so is science (rationality>irrationality), whereas progressivism is all about overturning hierarchy.
Technocracy enforces things which're thought to be more objective, matter of fact, like education, health and safety as opposed to religion, morals and values.
Technocracy is compulsory education, compulsory healthcare and compulsory environmental conservation.

Since progressivism is the inversion of conservative values, so what conservatives consider good becomes equal or inferior to what they consider bad, perhaps one day there'll be an movement to invert scientific values.
There have been challenges to technocracy inside and outside academia here and there, but nothing on the level of progressivism's challenge to conservatism.
I think people underestimate technocracy, in light of recent events, I'm predicting it's going to really take off and come into its own in the coming decades.
I'm also suspecting both a libertarian and progressive backlash to technocracy after decades or centuries of its reign.

Some other important concepts to think about are globalism/nationalism, pacifism/militarism.

All of this is historical.
As humanity changes, for better or worse, new values and ways of conceptualizing and organizing things will arise.

[Urwrongx1000]

If you want examples of Scientific Authoritarianism, based on 'Rationality', then you should watch the last huge Philosophy debate between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris.

Sam Harris basically represents Scientific Authoritarianism and Post-Enlightenment values, which are the platform of the new Technocrat self-proclaimed "Elites".

It's 4 parts at 2 hours each. Sam Harris basically lays out Post-Enlightenment-ism by the letter. It's very informative and will stay relevant for at least a decade and probably much longer.


The issue that I see, more than anything, is that children in the US are taught Marxism in public schools, and they got rid of Civics and Ethics in the 1990s.

That is also why the Technocrats think they're "elite" and better than everybody else. They're out of touch with reality, which comes with the territory (plugged in Matrix style 24-7).

[Gloominary]

I conceive of things a bit differently than you.
For me, there's libertarians and two major kinds of authoritarians: progressives and conservatives.
Then there's three major domains or spheres: society, government and economics, libertarianism, progressivism and conservatism can be applied to.
Social libertarianism, political libertarianism (republic) and fiscal libertarianism (capitalism).
Social progressivism, political progressivism (democracy) and fiscal progressivism (socialism).
Social conservatism, political conservatism (dictatorship) and fiscal conservatism (corporatism).
There's also different kinds of libertarianism, but I don't wish to overcomplicate things more than I perhaps already have.

These can be rearranged in various ways.
For example, someone could be a fiscal libertarian, a capitalist, but a sociocultural progressive or conservative.
Someone could be a fiscal progressive, a socialist, but a sociocultural libertarian or conservative.
On the other hand, someone could be a fiscal conservative, a corporatist, but a sociocultural libertarian or progressive.

To further complicate things, you can add globalism or nationalism and pacifism or militarism to them.

[Gloominary]

If you want examples of Scientific Authoritarianism, based on 'Rationality', then you should watch the last huge Philosophy debate between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris.

Sam Harris basically represents Scientific Authoritarianism and Post-Enlightenment values, which are the platform of the new Technocrat self-proclaimed "Elites".

It's 4 parts at 2 hours each. Sam Harris basically lays out Post-Enlightenment-ism by the letter. It's very informative and will stay relevant for at least a decade and probably much longer.


The issue that I see, more than anything, is that children in the US are taught Marxism in public schools, and they got rid of Civics and Ethics in the 1990s.

That is also why the Technocrats think they're "elite" and better than everybody else. They're out of touch with reality, which comes with the territory (plugged in Matrix style 24-7).

Awesome, thanks, gonna check that debate out.

Yea sucks there's no civics or ethics and hardly any conservative or libertarian perspectives in school.

The intelligentsia are totally out of touch with Joe and Jane average.

[Gloominary]

As humanity changes, his values, and authoritarianism changes too.
In the late 2nd millennium and early 1st millennium BC, European man was a pagan with conservative values and authoritarianism.
In the late 1st millennium BC and early 1st millennium AD, there were libertarian, progressive and monotheistic challenges to pagan conservatism.
In the late 1st millennium and early 2nd millennium AD, European man was a monotheist with conservative values and authoritarianism.
In the late 2nd millennium and early 3rd millennium AD, there were libertarian, progressive and scientific challenges to monotheistic conservatism.
In the late 3rd millennium and early 4th millennium AD, I think European man may be a scientismist, if you will, with conservative values and authoritarianism.
Eventually there'll be libertarian and progressive challenges to scientism.

The Pagan age preceded the monotheistic age and the monotheistic age preceded the scientific age.
What will follow the scientific age, I'm not sure, but the overall trend appears to be away from spirituality and subjectivity towards materiality and objectivity.
Will something come along even more materialistic and objective than science, or will the pendulum swing back the other way, towards spirituality and subjectivity?
Will there ever be a philosophical age, where philosophy is more popular than religion and science?

Science has always been around in some form or another, but throughout much of man's history, it was more in the background, or subconscious.
I believe science will increasingly come to the foreground, and our values and the way we structure society will increasingly reflect that.
Science is ultimately conservative, not progressive, progressive being a misnomer.
Science is both progressive and conservative.
We ought to start calling progressives subversives, because that's what they really are.
It's subversivism, not progressivism.

[promethean75]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_three_stages

[Gloominary]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_three_stages

Appreciate the link, yea seems like I'm on a similar train of thought to Comte.

[Gloominary]

I believe the age we are approaching is the scientific age.
Unlike the pagan and monotheistic ages that preceded it, which were focused on spirituality, society and subjectivity, on morals and values, what ought to be, the scientific age will be focused on materiality, nature (or converting nature into the artificial and synthetic rather) and objectivity, on health and safety, what is.

The scientific age won't be an individual libertarian or progressive i.e. subversive age, because science is progressive conservative, not individual libertarian or subversive.
It won't be individual libertarian, nor democratic socialist, instead it'll be characterized by dictatorship and techno-feudalism.
The age will fully begin sometime during the middle of the 3rd millennium and fully end sometime during the middle of the 4th millennium, if it ends.
For the first half of this thousand year age, it'll be dark, because the current age, the post-monotheist, individual libertarian, subversive and proto-scientific age will partly collapse.
The second half of this thousand year age will be golden, at least for the patricians if not the plebs too, or whatever remains of them, if anything, if they haven't been fully supplanted by robots.

Pagan and monotheistic conservatism on the one hand, and libertarianism and subversivism on the other, may never die, but they will have to go underground and outside.
Towards the end of the scientific age, if the plebs/undergrounders and outsiders survive with enough strength intact, there will be individual libertarian and subversive challenges to scientism, especially if frontiers open up in outer space, inner space or someplace else.
The scientific age could be followed by something even more materialistic and objective based on the latest advancements in Ai and cybernetics, or a philosophical age, or a pagan or monotheist revival, or something I can't begin to imagine.
But for at least the next thousand years, I'm anticipating scientism will reign supreme.

Of course all of this is complete speculation, just toying around with some ideas for fun.