Why Do Liberals Keep Getting Schooled on Critical Thinking?

by Cauf Skiviers, Cultural Inappropriation, ©2024

(May 12, 2024) — In Goethe’s poem Zauberlehrling (“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”), the eponymous apprentice summons magical forces that eventually take on a life of their own and spiral out of control, causing more harm than good in an unpredictable fashion.

Any resemblance to modern Liberals is not a coincidence; it is a perfect cautionary tale on the perils of letting your wishful thinking interfere with reality. It is not difficult to see that progressives share a set of common traits with the apprentice, which define their personalities and the outcome of their actions:

• Naïve rationalism: a belief that desired outcomes can only be the product of direct control;
• Aesthetic worldview: the tendency to base one’s understanding of the world primarily on sensory perceptions, leading to a narrow and superficial understanding of reality;
• Narcissism: an exaggerated sense of self-importance and a need for constant validation and attention; and
• Oedipus complex: also known as ‘daddy issues’, an aggressive, irrational attitude towards the accomplishments of your predecessors.

If you view Goethe’s poem as a tragedy in four acts — each exploring one of the traits above — the work reveals striking similarities between the apprentice and modern-day Liberals. It is as if Goethe was predicting the attitudes and behaviours of modern progressives over two centuries in the future…

Act I — Naïve Thinking, the Genesis of Chaos

“Now that the old sorcerer has left me on my own at last,
I can make his forces labor just exactly as I ask.
I’ve learned in this tower, all his words and spells,
With these mental powers, his art is mine as well.”

Just like the apprentice, Liberals often believe that they can accomplish whatever they desire simply by the sheer virtue of holding power. This was the mindset in 2013 when Democrats voted to end the filibuster for judicial nominees, thrilled to confirm Obama’s choices without opposition.

However, they failed to consider that an eventual Republican president would use the absence of filibuster to appoint three SCOTUS Justices, who would ultimately dismantle the cherished — and now defunct — Roe v. Wade decision.

This is an example of what Karl Popper referred to as ‘naïve rationalism,’ a belief often professed by those who acknowledge its fallacy yet regard it as a harmless deception: we can manifest any desired state of nature simply by declaring it ought to exist, for example, “Free Palestine!”, “End fossil fuels!”, “Trans women are women!”

A kind of self-deception where we think we can harness the spontaneous order of society while, at the same time, actively shaping it to our will. This is not just misguided; it’s tragically flawed since it has always been acknowledging our limitations that have allowed humans to utilise their abilities to their full extent.

Under the enlightened influence of Rousseau, Condorcet, Voltaire, and Thomas Hobbes—who first applied Cartesian ideas to social and moral ‘sciences’—the belief that critical thinking requires recognising limitations was supplanted by the ‘constructivist ideal,’ which holds that all human institutions should be consciously created through human action; leading to the notion that only intentionally designed, or ‘planned,’ institutions are beneficial.

This idea underpins, for example, the ‘democratic socialist’ left’s disdain for free markets, deregulation, and religious institutions. It also underpins the sorcerer’s apprentice’s mistakes, arrogantly believing he could control forces beyond his grasp.

Act II — Growing Pains and Refusing to Leave the Aesthetic Stage of Life

“So come on, you dry old broomstick! Wrap yourself in these old rags;
Servant is what you are, toothpick; Obey me now and do not lag!
Stand up here on two legs, screw a head on top,
Run down to the stream’s edge, with the water pot!”

Liberals, it seems, don’t want to grow up, like a bunch of Peter Pans on puberty blockers. They remain stuck in what Kierkegaard described as the ‘aesthetic’ stage of life— characterised by a focus on seeking pleasure and indulgence in sensory experiences, concerned only with the immediate present rather than the future — or the past.

This idea helps explain why many progressives might display behaviours such as a fascination with drugs, unconventional sex, and conceptual art; a desire to change fundamental aspects of human nature for endless hedonistic pursuits, and a tendency to become easily bored or restless when desires go unmet.

Living in the aesthetic stage is, of course, an immature and superficial approach that focuses solely on self-gratification and ignores the needs or desires of others. It is ultimately unfulfilling and fails to provide a sense of meaning or purpose in life.

This belief in one’s invincibility, coupled with a blind trust that everything one desires is to one’s advantage, can lead to disregarding the consequences of their actions. Liberals don’t build for the future. They deconstruct for now.

Act III — The Descent Into Narcissistic Madness

Look, it’s running to the river; see, it’s made it to the stream,
Like an arrow from a quiver, shooting its way straight to me.
There and back already, for the second time,
Filling buckets stead’ly, as the water climbs!

Read the rest here.