The Institute of Art and Ideas
From the French and Russian Revolutions to the Suffragettes, violent action has been instrumental to creating a better world. Are struggle and conflict the forces of progress rather than reason? Is violence ever justified as a political strategy? Or should we always venerate Gandhi over Guevara?
#violence #enlightenment #pinker #tariqali #iaitv #politics #progress
** Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/IAITV
** Listen to our weekly podcast: https://soundcloud.com/instituteofart…
** Donate to the Institute of Art and Ideas: https://iai.tv/support-the-iai/donate
Author of Enlightenment Now and Harvard cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, political activist and author of The Clash of Fundamentalisms Tariq Ali and activist of the Kurdish women’s movement Elif Sarican investigate progress. Oxford Professor of History Rana Mitter hosts.
DELVE DEEPER
For debates and talks: https://iai.tv
For articles: https://iai.tv/articles
For courses: https://iai.tv/iai-academy/courses
Source
“Political education” as an idea feels…like it could go wrong pretty quick.
Great debate, amazing moderator, but it was too short! I think a two hour debate would have been much more fruitful.
Perhaps even some sort of consensus would have been reached if the debaters were given an hour or so to define the concept of violence. They finally got on the same wavelength right as the debate ended and that's when the conversation would have been deepest.
@32:19 — tariq Ali is savage 🤣 pinker is so out of his depth here. And all of his logic pedant sycophants actually think he belongs on this stage.
EXTREMELY SHORT "DEBATE" – Pinker is insufferable
Pinker cowers from Chomsky so Ali is a good sub.
A white man tells us to go hunger strike when western corporate forces inflict violence . Wow . Good to hear that .
Steven Pinker is an overrated pseudo-scientist and an overt apologist for Capitalism.
That's all America is about now. Especially the left.
If you disagree with someone's personal opinion, you use it to label them something horrific, and then use that false label of immorality as excuse and justification to assault that person.
And for some reason, mainstream media and the police seem to support the cowardly violence (?)
I dont know about all changes of power throughout human history, necessarily, but i know that every single socialist revolution has begun with violence from the ruling elite that has then triggered the socialist movement to defend itself and/or reply. The russian revolution, for example, ignited after the czar had his kossacks riding out and cutting down women in a womens demonstration in St Petersburg.
That omelette and eggs quote can be attributed to Napoleon, not some later russian leader.
Monsanto Is Corrupt-
-Get the corrupt United Nation and Monsanto CAFO Frming OUT—We need Biodynamic Regenerative Farming-Monsanto Roundup/Agent Orange-
Glyphosate etc.–get Monsanto/Bayer out of America—join the glyphosate residue project–Boy – as well as being one of the smartest people on the planet, Pinker does such a good job at trying to teach idiots who can't or won't be taught. D.A., NYC —and maybe the trolls below should actually read one of his books? And a lot of OTHER books besides. Start with history…
The woman is much smarter and authentic on the given topic.
It's funny because Pinker supports State as a concept, which is nothing but violence and threat of.
24:55 “If you need to transform an aspect of society but you’re not being listened to then yes [its justified to use violence]”
Dangerous words. For example, I feel that I need to transform the bakeries in society and I don’t feel listened to, therefore I’m justified in using violence. By this woman’s words.
Rana Mitter acts more like a debater with Pinker rather than a neutral host. And Elif Sarican is all over the place similar to most SJW's
Steven Pinker is distorting history and talking about Russian Revolution again and agin and forgetting about American empire and it's violence what kind psyche Steve Pinker has…..?? it's called depth psychology motivated by personal greed.
The development of pro-social tendencies within human-beings, were developed within functional bands, and communities of, distinctly cooperative women: and sometimes men.
Mothers and Others, Hrdy*
With the recent historical context of the state, and patriarchal oppression:
Does the normalized domination and oppression of half of the population of the planet, have have something to do with violence.
Pinker felt like he was arguing against all three at one point. (But I'll still give the moderator a pass because he wasn't softballing the other side. Though he definitely was harder on Pinker.)
I think Tariq's Israel/Palestine conflict example is a bad one. There's so many factors in the conflict, the foremost one being religion.
I would argue that the second most pertinent one is the "tit-for-tat" / "eye-for-an-eye" attitude between the two groups. The cycle is unending that way. How do you make it so that one's rights don't get trampled on by another state? That's more complicated than saying definitely " you CAN or CANNOT use violence". Pinker was arguing this more mediated position.
It seemed like an undertone of his "whiteness" was frustrating Tariq and Ali. Pinker represents the old way of thinking because he (a well off Canadian) is living a cush life where he doesn't have to deal with the problems minorities experience in the "real" world.
The identity behind the ideals seems like a more important point then the ideals themselves.
But honestly, do the laws of physics only work for Christians because Newton was an insane Christian?
I'm probably reading far too much into the subtext of this debate, but that's still the vibe I was getting.
Great debate but very frustrating that no one is really addressing Pinker and his definition of violence, especially since he embodies the system and ironically, his "premise" seems to have violently locked the debate. We live in highly patriarchal, institutional and bureaucratic societies where some people have more freedom than others. Obviously, someone like Pinker who is a white, upper class, male, who has a certain level of agency which enables him to navigate through the system and negotiate peacefully, will hold onto ideas of violence as being physical and something made worse through "revolutions and uprisings". The Kurdish uprising has caused over 50,000 deaths in the last 40 or so years. By Pinkers definition, that would make Kurds violent and he probably thinks we are terrorists (in relation to the Turkish state since he seems to think systematic violence isn't really violence but some sort of innocent failure and cops out of explaining N.Korea). He refuses to acknowledge systematic violence carried out through policies. But if you ask a Kurd, the Turkish state annihilated millions of them both culturally and historically before any sort of uprising. For them, erasure was the worst kind of violence. There's a reason why people happily face death through armed resistance just to be able to obtain basic human rights like freedom of expression. There were Turkification policies, displacement, forced assimilation at every societal level you can imagine – not to mention your every day social pressure, taboo and shame that comes from simply saying, "I'm Kurdish" in public. What would a white, upper-class man know about that? It's not his experience.
Also, I was quite surprised at the mediator firmly stating that people who had experienced violence in their recent history had a hard time letting it go. I would question what makes him so sure of that. Look at Rwanda – they went through a horrific genocide and now they're on the list for the top 10 safest countries in the world (4th place I believe) and all because they were able to tap into their humanity and forgive each other. They literally built forgiveness communes where victims and perpetrators had to live side by side and communicate. They had aid workers going around simply bringing people together and trying to get them to make up.
The same goes for Rojava. If you speak to the people of Rojava who experienced ISIS rule and witnessed their attacks, they would tell you the reason why they fight so hard to establish a democratic system is precisely because they saw exactly what, and to whom, they could lose to and they desperately fought against that. People want peace, people are at their core peaceful creatures but the way the world is set up is oppressive to the masses and it takes deep, often violent struggles for us and our oppressors, to realise a better world. Anyway… great debate but the woman-interrupting, mansplaining and unchecked privilege gave me cancer.
Edit: watched it till the end and Pinker is a Zionist who has carefully constructed his idea of violence to avoid incriminating himself and exposing Israeli state terrorism. Ay ay ay.
Pinker: Violence is not justified for bringing about socio-political change when effective non-violent alternatives are available. Violence may be justified when it's the only option for mitigating greater violence.
Sarican: You're a white middle-class male who's never experienced oppression first hand.
Ali: I'm going to sit here with my arms folded tightly against my chest and look up at the ceiling whenever you speak.
Unfair debate.
She talks like patriarchy is an isolated phenomenon that you can disappear and keep all other appendages. You can not. Patriarchy is simply the preference of men – and that would require totalitarianism to remedy, something I am positive feminists would have no problem with. Lets get more females empowered, like Aung San Suu Kyi : she was "empowered" for 2 seconds and started a genocide. The times make the man, they obviously have the same effect on the woman.