Quote:
Originally Posted by dead_battery
well i am a recovering revolutionary utopian optimist.
if you read gray further you will see how todays progressivism and optimism and ideals of incremental improvement are descended from our religious past and are historically unique cultural ideologies. this is a fancy way of saying 'bullshit'.
but despite what you might think adopting positions like gray does does not imply conservatism. if anything his pessimism is a wish to defend liberal civilization even if it may be a hopeless and impossible endeavour.
this is what i like about gray and other pessimists, that at their core they are trying to defend basic civility in an indifferent universe. this to me is more noble and sensible than believing in moral progress as our state murders and tortures people on a daily basis.
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It's more directly linked to conservatism than John Gray's stuff, but you might find some of the arguments in this book interesting.
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/genera...=9780199968978