Is Leftism Intrinsically Provocative?

[Daktoria]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_agency
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic%E ... istinction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

A common theme among leftists is the priority of structure before agency. That is they engage in methodological holism where the proper form of society is what coheres, not what's founded.

This engagement can be otherwise interpreted as the priority of synthesis before analysis. Whether in terms of democracy or redistributive justice, leftists will advocate the synthesizing of ideas together before the analysis of ideas themselves. Their goal is to realize efficient consensus even if that means people have to compromise, and they'll do so while submitting to intermediating among others who come up with ideas in the first place.

However, this is intrinsically problematic from a philosophical perspective.

As anyone who knows anything about philosophy knows, synthesis is contingent upon theses. That is you can't synthesize unless you have something to synthesize.

In turn, contingency is a posteriori. Theses which are contingent must be experienced.

However, experience is a physical event. Whether as a matter of light, sound, touch, or whathaveyou, experience can only be had if a physically sensational impression is made. In fact, this is quite often a leftist justification for regulation - that people are irrational, so regulation is needed for peaceful coexistence. Otherwise, the emotionally judgmental pursuit of, and response to, sensations will lead to people clashing.

The implication is leftists are no different from computers. After all, that's how computers operate as well. They are literally physically engraved by laser sketching, and follow their sketches when the circumstances are right, firing off electrical circuitry too boot which is no differently from a person's nervous system.

Now unless we're supposed to be racist in judging leftists by how they look in contrast to computers, I'm not sure why they should be treated any differently.

That said, when a computer malfunctions (or even when it does not), it's permissible to throw it in the trash.

Now I'm not saying we should throw leftists in the trash too, but their thought patterns suggest they should be treated no differently. The only reason they are not is because of might makes right power politics.

Ergo, leftists seem to be agent provocateurs where they deliberately hide behind the threat of violence, and demand that others tolerate them "just because".

[Dylan]

[Indy]

Yes, because there's so many "leftists" out there, lurking about.

[The Dharma Bum]

No, leftism is a reaction to provocation.

[Daktoria]

[Indy]

[Daktoria]

[The Dharma Bum]

The provocation of taking the product of people's labor from them.

[Dylan]

The title is somewhat valid. Putting aside the pseudo-intellectual babble in the OP, leftism is generally progressivism, and progressivism is inherently provocative. e.g., the Civil Rights movement featured many actions that were intended to be provocative to the reactionary conservatives, and they had such an effect.

This begs the question of whether such provacative actions are good or bad though.

[The Dharma Bum]