Maria Clara Vieira, Editor, Gazeta de Povo, March 2022
Interview of Stephen R. C. Hicks
To see the interview in Portuguese, please go to this link: Gazeta do Povo.
“The fight with Wokism will get ugly, but rationality will prevail”
Stephen Hicks
1) In conservative and “classic liberal” environments in Brazil, there is great concern with what is conventionally called “cultural Marxism”. For their part, Marxists insist that the “original” Marxism is not about culture. Would “cultural Marxism” be, after all, the postmodernism you talk so much about?
Hicks: Post-modernism is against the modern world’s major achievements and institutions—respect for individual freedom, science, technological progress, free markets, and more. In that, the postmodernists do come out of a generically Marxist tradition.
However, due to the disasters of Marxism in theory and practice, the post-modernists reject many aspects of Marxism (e.g., its materialism) while retaining and adapting others (e.g., its exploitation theory and its attraction to violence and subversion).
In my Open College podcast series, I devote all of Episode 23 to the similarities and differences between Marxism and Postmodernism.
2) It is curious to see, for example, how the fruits of postmodernism—cancel culture, “wokism”—are increasingly associated with powerful elites. Why does it happen?
Hicks: The effect of post-modern philosophy is to empty all confidence in the power of reason, social benevolence, and civil institutions. It teaches that we are all creatures of dominating non-rational forces and socially struggling for power by any means possible.
Young people seduced by post-modernism then say to themselves: I might as well just commit to whatever subjective values I feel strongly about and fight ruthlessly for them. Attacking others with ad hominem, or with lies, or cancelling one’s enemies, or any uncivil tactic is seen as legitimate in the culture wars.
The elites then simply join in and, from their positions of power, learn to use those strategies on their own behalf.
It becomes a downward, vicious cycle, as more individuals and groups give up on striving for win-win progress and adopt the mindset of win-lose war.
3) Do you believe that the old left can be an ally in the fight against postmodern cynicism?
Hicks: Yes and no. The old left believes in a knowable causal reality, in a set of universal moral values, and that progress can and should be made in striving for those values. So post-modern skepticism, relativism, and cynicism do challenge the old left.
But the old left also faces a huge internal conflict and a hard choice: Its versions of egalitarian leveling and big-government power really have been disastrous. So individuals attracted to the left must either maintain their commitment to evidence and logic and (as genuine liberals do) reject or modify significantly those egalitarian/big-government values—or decide they’re subjectively committed to those values no matter what and (as the post-moderns do) reject evidence and logic.
4) You have already said in your lectures that you are not a pessimist: you believe that the fight will still get “very ugly,” but that things will get better. Some say that, taken to the extreme, the so called identity politics can split the West. Can things “get ugly” at this point? How will it start to improve?
Hicks: It will get ugly in the short-term because many institutions have been corrupted and those running them are willing to do nasty things to their rivals and enemies. The collapse of civility is a serious issue and an indicator of a threat to civilization more broadly.
Yet, human beings are human beings, and most of us want genuine meaning in our lives and we are willing to actually work self-responsibly to create a good life. We also have a natural benevolence that, if cultivated properly, leads us to want to work with others to make cool and beautiful things and create genuine relationships. Especially young people with their boundless energy want those things. It takes a lot of damage to turn a healthy child into an adult human being who is an extreme cynic and defeatist.
Also, we have a large number of very smart and benevolent adults now who realize that they have a fight on their hands. The malignancy that is post-modernism and its offshoots of wokism and identity politics were largely able to develop in the darkness, so to speak, while the rest of the world was not paying attention. Now there are large numbers of people in all walks of life who are aware of the danger and doing something about it.
No guarantees, but I am cautiously optimistic that rationality and benevolence will prevail. Or at least we will muddle through to a healthier cultural atmosphere.
5) In your lectures and books, you point to radical skepticism as the source of postmodernism, marked by the belief in subjectivity, and advocate a “return” to Enlightenment, respect for reason and the search for objective truth. Might not faith in reason, on the other hand, lead to scientism, which is another problem we are facing?
Hicks: I advocate confidence in reason, based on good epistemology and the evidence of reason’s historical accomplishments. Those are most notable in the sciences and technologies, but also notable (though often under-appreciated) in improving our individual and social morals. In the modern era of respect for individual rationality and self-responsibility, we’ve seen a corresponding dramatic increase in respect for human rights and a widespread improvement in longevity and living conditions.
“Faith in reason” is an oxymoron—if by faith you mean acceptance without evidence or without critical assessment and a willingness to re-assess one’s assumptions. Of course, those who simply substitute faith in whatever scientists say for faith in whatever religious or political authorities say—they are not an improvement. That may be what you refer to as “scientism.”
Yet science is precisely the opposite: it is about using your own senses and reason systematically in coming to understand reality, and it is about questioning everything, including the ideas advanced by other scientists.
The current abuses of science are primarily a matter of paternalist and authoritarian attempts to impose particular scientific hypotheses. But that is a matter of bad politics and a betrayal of science. As Galileo taught us long ago, scientists reason with us; they do not threaten or coerce us.
6) Even the crisis of confidence is one of the hallmarks of the post-pandemic world. The phrase “believe in science” has never sounded so detached from reality, even though science remains important. Ordinary people don’t know which scientists to believe, they don’t trust institutions or authorities—whether their presidents or the UN. What could be the consequences of this crisis? Is there a way out of it?
Hicks: The major problem is a failure of education. We live in a complex, modern world, and education should be about developing young people who can handle those complexities cognitively, emotionally, and physically. Yet we know that much of mainstream schooling has been a failure (and in many cases a disaster), producing young adults incapable of self-responsible living in modern society.
The current worsened problems of not knowing which scientists, politicians, business, and other leaders to trust is a consequence of that. We all know that many politicians lie, some business people and scientists cheat or fudge the truth, and so on. Yet a well-educated mind can sense when a claim is unsupported, seems inconsistent with other claims, or is being pushed in a zealous rather than objective way. And a well-trained mind knows how then to look for other sources and how to acquire more information before making a judgment.
“Trust but verify” is traditional, excellent advice. But that means we need to do a much better job at teaching young people how to perform the complicated verification processes that complex modern society requires.
7) How to sustain a good conversation with a friend or relative who supports premises completely different from yours? Is this still a valid exercise?
Hicks: This is always a valid exercise for human beings, as it is foundational to the social aspects of life. Yet it takes a basic benevolence and commitment to open thinking. It takes initial serious work to think about our own views so we understand them well and so can present them clearly. It takes a willingness to listen genuinely to the friend or relative’s position. It takes a willingness to accept criticism and even to adjust our views in response to good criticisms. And to offer friendly criticism when helpful.
Of course, if a friend is completely unwilling to do any of those things, that person should become a former friend.
Life is about simple things and complex things. Even the most complex, value-laden and emotional things we do socially—family, business, politics—we need to know how to talk about them well. The idea that we cannot talk about something is a failure and a shrinking from life. Living fully means lots and lots of conversation, and continual learning about how to do it better.