Ray Girn, The Self Made Child: Maria Montessori's Philosophy of Education

(these are paraphrases after the > unless in quotes, because it's from audio and he chose not to offer a transcript for better discussion.)

> (5min) presents a concept of reason and says purpose of education is to impart this to child so he can be a reason-using adult.

i disagree. there's no conception here of the child disagreeing, or of error-correction of the parent/educator's conception of reason. there's no concept of it being the child's life, and his decision what ideas to accept. the parent should offer these things, but rely on persuasion. the goal should be to help the child, not to decide before the child is born what ideas the child should have in his head when he's 20 and then figure out how to get that result. that kind of predetermined and not-open-to-disagreement parental agenda ends up meaning trampling all over the child as an autonomous individual with a mind and rights.


> advocates parents using force to limit TV, and takes that for granted as right. puts it in the same category of as helping child not get run over by a car or die from guzzling lighter fluid.

note the key difference: the child does want to watch TV, but does not want to be hit by a car or be poisoned by lighter fluid. the child is not actually trying to commit suicide and doesn't want that. but does want TV. so the examples are completely different. but Girn mixes them together as the same thing, as cases where he thinks parental force is clearly OK.


> says you can't compel THOUGHTS (as opposed to using compulsion for ACTIONS like drinking poison), can't force a child to have certain ideas, like how you shouldn't force people to read Atlas Shrugged

ok


> Montessori idea is, instead of freedom, to offer the child prepared freedom – design an environment to channel and leverage child's nature (instead of using compulsion)

yeah, it's all manipulation for the predetermined parental agenda. no fallibilism, no error correction of parent's agenda, no full freedom for child, just (this is common today) trying to find ways to control child without it being force.

> (14min) quote "the child will receive a lesson from the adult, a demonstration of (this is probably a 2.5 or 3 yo child) this activity, and then will be left free to kinda explore and repeat at his leisure"

notice how the child is explicitly free AFTER the lesson – NOT free about whether he wants this lesson. that's not an accident of wording, it's the child being compelled. he goes on to say things like "children work through activities like these" – it's decided in advance before the child is born and he doesn't have a choice. that is force.


> nothing in the mind that doesn't come from the senses

emphasis on training senses


> various activities, like blocks and number rods

the numbers stuff is trying to connect sound, symbol, amount. the activity itself sounds just kinda painfully awful and unpleasant, something i would have hated. there's an element of taste here and some people would like it better, but it's not presented as this thing for 20% or even 50% of kids, it's presented as what the kids do at Montessori. (i'm sure they have some choice if they hate one particular activity, but i think they get offered a bunch of activities which, in certain ways, are all similar, are all coming from the same kind of design philosophy. choice is limited and someone who doesn't like one activity of this style could easily dislike most of them).

these activities aren't open ended. they are designed to have a single outcome, and if child does it a different way that he thinks is better, he gets corrected. it's not like real life where you're doing exploration and coming up with your own goals and it can lead to other things. it's all predetermined and setup to go a specific way, like people at regular school doing the science experiment in the textbook in order to get the already-known result they are told to get, rather than as part of following their interests.

like my friend's kid tried to make a train out of blocks at a Montessori school, and then got corrected cuz that wasn't how the blocks were supposed to be used. that's mean. and it's not just some aberration at that school, it fits the Montessori way of thinking. the audio lecture was just saying how the activities are self-correcting, the toys are designed to only work one way and if the child does something else it doesn't work. meaning the adult already has in mind his mind a specific way the stuff should be used, that's the intended point he's trying to ensure happens. so of course that kinda perspective isn't friendly to deviance or innovation. the whole prepared environment thing is trying to do things like take away distractions, and decide which things a child should learn, that's the whole design here, not to let the child pursue his own interests and goals (like making a train out of blocks instead of learning the adult's lesson).



> curriculum not offered by teacher but embedded in world the child explores

this is dishonest. the teacher set up the curriculum in an indirect way, then pretends it's just child exploring the world.

and it's so controlled. the child doesn't get any non-Montessori toys, isn't allowed to have other stuff he might want like iPads or legos. so then the child, given only Montessori stuff, ends up doing some of it, rather than nothing. then parents see that as evidence the kid likes the stuff.



> (22min) materials are selected by what's enticing to child, what child directly needs, what child indirectly needs to gain something else, and then they're all set in order. then it plays this clip of Maria Montessori saying the choice of what to do is up to the child and the teacher is in the background.

but the teacher is deciding what teacher thinks child needs to accomplish teacher's agenda that was set before child was born. teacher is deciding what teacher thinks entices children (not what they actually find enticing like more TV watching). teacher is totally controlling the child's environment to control the child, and this is all on purpose, and then at the same time teacher is claiming to merely be in the background.


> (23min) Maria Montessori says b/c the curriculum is embedded in the materials, whatever the child chooses he ends up working on the curriculum

so you see the child has no choice, it's work on the curriculum or work on the curriculum. he's heavily controlled.

then Maria Montessori elaborates that even that isn't enough control. for example, if the child chooses geography stuff over and over, then she'll come up and push math on him in a way where she doesn't feel like a thug but she makes sure to get her way...

> freedom for child to engage in reasonable forms of activity, not anarchy

so it's: you have freedom as long as you don't deviate too much. you can disagree as long as it's within the scope of what the authority considers a reasonable disagreement and allows, but nothing more.


> (29min) ground rules

> can't interrupt unless you follow a politeness procedure

> only may use materials if you receive the presentation (b4 that, off limits)

and if the child wants to use a material but not receive the lecture? then the RULES are enforced by FORCE, right? gentle force if possible – trying to guide the child, ask him to stop, put subtle pressures on him. (just like the government doesn't send armed men to collect taxes, they just mail you some forms to start with, most people never see the guns)

(concretely, what they frequently actually do is kick kids out of the school to dodge the issue. if the kid is noisy, doesn't obey some rules about what materials he can use, stuff like that, and their pressure doesn't work, then the kid can just get kicked out, which is pretty common.)


> talks about uninterrupted time

actually there is a preset schedule which interrupts the children, even if they don't want to be interrupted, a few times a day. (how? what if child doesn't obey? you take it from there)

> says how adult is guide, comes in now and then (yes, during "uninterrupted" 3 hour work period), not directing the process, shows a learning period video

this is dishonest. the adult is controlling everything indirectly. does less directly. then talks about not directing things because his control is indirect. it's just a rationalization of control, and they keep talking about it like it isn't control.


> (41min) says how child is learning to be free in this citadel of knowledge where nothing is accidental, it's all lovingly selected. rich knowledge designed for purpose of "allowed" child to learn how to live well.

how to live well according to parent's concept of living well, which child is not free to disagree with.

> (44min) says to prevent 10 year old from playing video games all day or drinking a bottle of whiskey

prevent by force. why do those particular things justify force? what's so bad about video games? it's just convention, it's saying stuff lots of people believe, not doing philosophy. and there's an element of whatever children like is assumed to be bad: http://www.takingchildrenseriously.com/video_games_a_unique_educational_environment

> says something about engendering curiosity

Girn has this concept that the child kinda sucks. he has to be carefully controlled to get good. he doesn't have curiosity at birth, you have to find some way to make him curious. he's not rational, you make him rational.

this contradicts my understanding of Atlas Shrugged where John Galt is a **normal man**, and the reason other people aren't like that is because they are broken. you don't have to do something special to get a John Galt, you just have to not break the kid. but Montessori isn't about making sure not to break the kid, it's trying to do all this special stuff.


> (48min) wonders how much education should emphasize transmission of integrated body of knowledge, deep knowledge of the "Western canon". Girn is unsure

> if child won't learn it voluntarily, it's our problem as educators (to figure out how to get him to learn it voluntarily). says stuff about cultures of learning, respect for intellect, role models, inspiration, resources, materials, lessons which give motivation

as long as the end result is predetermined and inflexible, no amount of trying to make it voluntary will ever make it actually voluntary.


> classical education prioritizes gaining knowledge, loses importance of it and applications

> progressive education ignores that child needs knowledge

> Girn advocates third way between classical and progressive. mentions that child is left "completely free"

i think it's notable this "third way" doesn't reject the existing continuum and reconceive of education, it's just, by his own account, in the middle, trying to get the good stuff from two different schools of coercive education.

> (60min) what about consent? Girn knows it's important but hasn't been able to figure out how it affects these topics.

sigh. yes, consent is a big deal when you're trying really hard to control human beings. if they'd respect consent at all times, they couldn't do lots of what they do.

10 year olds don't *consent* to be forcibly prevented from playing video games they want to play. kids don't *consent* to being forcibly prevented from watching TV they want to watch. kids don't *consent* to having access only to Montessori materials, not iPads. Kids don't *consent* to being forced to have to do a presentation thing before using some materials even if they'd rather use those materials now.


> (65min) questioner asks about explicit training in mind self management, and generally about updating Montessori to teach newer stuff. Girn says they do some stuff like that

the whole premise is the educator deciding what the child does, rather than offering things to child that child might want and can make a choice about. it's authoritarian.


> (68min) question about whether/how to teach Objectivism. Girn says he doesn't really have an answer. says if kid is exploring it on their own then they can do a bunch, but if you're imposing it be more conservative.

so, you can impose some stuff on child, at all, ever. he's fine with that.

at the beginning it was like everyone agreeing not to make Atlas Shrugged required reading. but here he is being OK with imposing some Objectivism on kids, if you're like careful or something he hasn't worked out clearly.

> (76min) Girn says how some people have Montessori preschool, then regular school, then at University it's like Montessori again with choice.

given my view of universities, this is damning.



big picture: the whole thing is how to control the child while also thinking you aren't a thug. there's lots of stuff like this today because many, many parents want both of those things. but they contradict and this whole thing is irrational – it assumes the educator is right, doesn't concern itself with disagreements or with any error-correction of educator's ideas, and it doesn't respect the child as a real person.

there's a huge, fundamental difference between silence and (very) low quality discussion.

silence totally blocks progress.

low quality discussion, if continued persistently, is actually fine.

why?

in programming terms:

b/c the low quality discusser is exposing an API with various convoluted, messy, buggy, misnamed, falsely documented functions which people he's talking with can access.

but give a good programmer a shitty API and in general he'll find some kinda universality and make it do whatever the hell he wants. he'll find some way to get a NAND out of it, to manipulate bits and so some very basic tasks. and then he can define his own API on his own computer on top of the shitty API and use that. (i define on my computer a sequence of calls to your API which make it do some useful task. i repeat for several basic tasks. then i build up another layer of stuff on top of that. then i do what i want in that higher level meta-meta-API i made. so then i'm shielded by layers of abstraction from the low level mess. it's a lot like how some of x86 assembly is old messy backwards compatibility junk, but a javascript programmer never notices.)

universality is so easy to come by, even with a very limited array of bad functions.

another analogy is a hacker will simply find a buffer overflow in your API and then root your system and be able to install whatever software he wants.


what stops the meta-API approach or the security hole approach? silence. you can't get anywhere with an API that stops answering queries. you can't root a box that ignores all incoming requests.


if you're dumb but persistent, good discussers can figure out what you suck at and what can work, and start to focus in. they can try a variety of things, learn about how you block them, and then keep trying new workarounds (each time either discovering a new block or directly making progress). they have something to work with, like a puzzle to solve.

but if you're silent, they can't do a damn thing. if you keep dropping discussions, they can't help you.

persistent bad replies make a WHOLE WORLD of difference, vs silence.

Different standards is one of the primary reasons people don't like me. I have higher standards and expectations for them than they have for themselves. They can write explicit contradictions in the space of one paragraph and feel like they exceeded their standards and expect congratulations. Then I criticize instead. I think they should seek so much better in their lives. They don’t like that because they are trying to be content with what they are, or a little more, rather than striving for way better.

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L did some political activism and got in a newspaper. (Something like a publicity stunt involving no serious or important ideas.) L got a brief quote included, in which she claimed to be for free expression and contradicted herself.

On Facebook, F saw this as a great and impressive accomplishment, despite admitting that L did indeed contradict herself and that there was room for improvement.

No one should be impressed. Here is some of the criticism I explained:

why so impressed by the prestige of a bad newspaper? what do you expect this stuff to accomplish?

Wynand owned bad newspapers, and you know how that worked out. you merely got an article in one. so what?

by designing a portion of your life so it could more easily be picked up by a bad newspaper, you lived their values. you let them have some control over you.

when Hayek won a nobel prize, that was not a symbol of success, it was a symbol of his depravity.

Rather than argue against any of this, L Facebook-liked the paragraph about Hayek which pointed out that getting into the newspaper was depraved by her. L also wrote a comment defending me against haters (not F) and asked them to stop.

F expressed the concept that higher standards would be nice, but are unnecessary. F thinks L’s message was good enough.

It has been claimed to me that F is an Objectivist. I wonder how she read, “PART I NON-CONTRADICTION” (Atlas Shrugged).

How can F accept contradictions – and expect me to accept them too and still be impressed? By having much lower standards in life than I do. By having lower points of comparison, lower expectations. F's standards are not low compared to the typical person, but they're low compared to mine or Ayn Rand's.

F compares L to something like a typical member of her social circle. In this, L exceeds expectations, despite the contradiction and other problems. So F is impressed.

I think that typical person is stupid and incompetent. F thinks of that more like average intelligence, or perhaps above average. This is a clash of standards and expectations – do you compare to your idea of the average person in society or to objective standards for what it takes to think well, be highly effective in life, etc?

F does not expect to ever meet a John Galt or Ayn Rand on Earth. F doesn’t look for that. F doesn’t compare people to that kind of standard. F has a circle of friends who contradict themselves regularly, and F contradicts herself regularly, and F thinks that’s all there is and that’s how life is. F is content with that. Greatness might be for some rare other person who is outside of F’s life.

F is by no means the worst example of any of this. Plenty of other people have similar ideas, and some of them are worse. And plenty of people have lower standards than F. This is not a comparison of F to her conventional people.

I compare to things like Ayn Rand or Howard Roark. Those are my standards. Why not? It’s good to aim high. L should aim high. People could be so much better than they are, but most won’t even try for it.

L is struggling to aim high. L has, like most people, some second-handedness. L likes and seeks praise like F and others hand out for L’s conventionally-impressive-but-actually-immoral “achievements”. F and many others are making this problem worse and are encouraging L to have low standards and to destroy herself.

This is a sad waste of potential, talent, and capability. F thinks she’s kind by never even imagining L in the same realm as great men. F praises mediocrity as if it was greatness because her standards are set that low. This does no moral person any favors.

“What is kinder—to believe the best of people and burden them with a nobility beyond their endurance—or to see them as they are, and accept it because it makes them comfortable? Kindness being more important than justice, of course.” (Ellsworth Toohey, The Fountainhead)

Justice is what matters and what actually helps people. Expecting the best of people is the right thing to do. Encouraging them to take comfort in accepting mediocrity is depraved.

---

F, stop trying to drag L down (and stop dragging down everyone else too). Stop encouraging her to play in the mud, instead of do things that have any connection to greatness. When you do that, you are part of the irrational mob that plays a large role in the destruction of most human beings.

A big part of L wants to be great. Any friend of hers would encourage that. Criticism is helpful. Encouraging higher standards is helpful. Arguing with people who do that, in favor of standards so low L already meets them, discourages seeing greatness as the normal, natural and expected. It spreads a destructive sense of life.

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Standards are not a matter of taste. Objectively, people like Mises and Popper are around the minimum necessary to accomplish much for the cause of reason. Even Rand wasn't very effective. E.g. ARI is bad. Where is any big positive influence by Rand on more than a handful of people? Rand helped a lot of people a little. It's something. It's not that much. It's nothing like making TCS or liberalism or reason actually be popular. L, and others, ought to aim for accomplishments more like that. (Or at least aim to learn enough to make an informed decision about whether to do that.)

L's recent political activism is not on the path to greatness. It’s going the wrong direction. It’s self-destructive. It’s making things harder in her future, not easier. She's taking time off learning ideas worth spreading to get some non-intellectual attention. She's on path to be a mini Gail Wynand – similar themes on a much smaller scale.

If you think some standard – e.g. non-contradiction – is too high or otherwise wrong for a situation, argue your case. Say why it's not achievable, and say what the standard should be (e.g. what contradictions are to be allowed).

Remember to look at standards in terms of whether they will achieve particular goals, not whether they are beating other people. You could easily do way better than your friend, but still fail badly at your goal.

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People like F think if they agree with Ayn Rand that contradictions are bad, they are on her side. Then they set standards dramatically lower than Rand did – e.g. they accept many contradictions as good enough. That isn't agreeing with Rand. That is being Rand's opponent.

It's like when someone says "I like reading Rand, that's on my todo list," but they prioritize it low enough it doesn't happen. Then deny they are rejecting Rand.

Considering something (reason, non-contradiction, liberalism, TCS, etc) nice, but then not expecting much of it, is a way to pseudo-agree with its advocates, but not actually substantively agree. It's a way of evading disagreement and preventing learning the full issue. By sweeping conflict under the rug, it prevents the persuasive truth-seeking resolution of that conflict. This sort of irrationality is really common.

These people, who are half on the side of reason – but with low standards (like allowing explicit contradictions in a single paragraph) – are an example of the men in the middle that Rand spoke of in Atlas Shrugged. For example, people who won't chose to take non-contradiction seriously or to oppose it:

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice.

...

"You, who are half-rational, half-coward, have been playing a con game with reality, but the victim you have conned is yourself. When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it's picked up by scoundrels—and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously uncompromising evil.

Many people have a vague fear of future employers. What if they say something that one day prevents them from getting a job? So they watch what they say online, where statements get saved and often still exist decades later.

This fear dramatically affects people's lives. Many people are quite scared and won't speak their mind in public. They hide their values from the world. Some people won't even speak their mind in private to friends.

People make a big deal out of this. Large numbers of Facebook groups – with hundreds or thousands of members – are "closed" and have rules that the content is all private. This privacy is illusory (sharing secrets with a thousand strangers doesn't work), but people are so fearful that they really want this comforting lie in order to be willing to discuss their ideas.

The issue is not only fear of future employers. Some people are scared their friends or family will find out their ideas about parenting. People are scared of all kinds of true information being had by others, so they hide it. The employer case is especially common.

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Some people have concrete fears. For example, they have a job and a secretary. They are afraid of getting in trouble for sexual harassment if they ask her out. Or you're worried that if you tell a particular idea to a particular friend, he'll get mad at you.

As long as you're thinking about specific actions right now, and you have concrete reason to believe that fear is reasonably likely to happen, it's a concrete fear. That may be bad, you may be making a mistake, but it's not the topic of this essay.

This essay is about hiding values with no specific knowledge of a concrete danger. It's about vague fears of what could maybe happen in the future. It's about thinking your values don't have a chance in the world in general.

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The issue with future employers is: one day I might want to trade with someone who doesn't like my values and won't trade with people with significantly different values. Therefore, I'll hide my values for my whole life, just in case.

People hide their values from the world, for their whole life, not out of any concrete fear, but just because of some vague maybes.

And people go through their whole lives that way, keeping their values out of their life. They keep their values hidden away in their head. It's very sad.

(One reason people hide their values is because they think morality and pragmatism conflict. So by sharing values, they must damn themselves as either immoral or impractical.)

---

Hiding values destroys them. It involves living by other values lots of the time. And it involves avoiding discussion of your values. So you don't get to learn more about your values, and discuss how to best follow them, and get criticism when you mess up. By hiding your values, you make it much harder to improve your values or deal with errors in your understanding of them and how you act.

And if you aren't trying to live your values at all times, every time you violate your values can be excused. It really blurs the line about which deviations from your values were a mistake or a strategy.

Fear is a bad sense of life to live with. And more subtle things, like hesitation worry or stress, are bad too. One should be proud of one's values. A good life is proudly confident in one's value, one's values, one's mind, one's judgment and ones ability.

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When you apply for a job, there is a fact of the matter of whether you are suitable and would be a good hire. If you should be hired, an employer who rejects you due to something irrelevant is mistaken or acting irrationally. He is harming his own business. Why do you want to work for an mistaken or irrational employer that has something against your values in particular?

Why would you want to hide your values from someone for the sake of having ongoing interactions, 40 hours per week, with someone who has values incompatible with your own? Why not find something better to do with your life than get a job where your values aren't wanted?

There are other jobs. Or you could start your own business. Why do you imagine you'll be so desperate for one particular unsuitable job in the distant future? Why do you expect your life so be so fragile and to have zero other good options? And why harm your life, today, for fear life will never work out? By making your life worse now, you're actually causing a worse life situation in the future – the very thing you feared.

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The underlying mistake here is the malevolent universe premise. People think their values have no chance in the world, and the best thing to do is suppress their values so they can get along with the evil world they hate. And they are so fearful and pessimistic, in the face of vague potential future danger, that they don't even want to try to live a good life and see if maybe that can work out after all.

People may not recognize this applies to them because it's hard to live while hating and fearing the world and one's life. So people come up with rationalizations. People start telling themselves their life is OK, and the rest of the world is OK. And they start changing their values to more conventional ones.

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If someone doesn't like your values, it's good that you communicated your values. Now you both know you have a clash of values, and can look for more compatible people (or, perhaps, discuss the matter and try to figure out the truth). That's much better than having an ongoing clash of hidden values that confusingly blights your interactions.

(Or if the values in question are irrelevant to what you want to do together, you can continue anyway and drop the irrelevant issue. But note that if someone is unwilling to drop it, they don't consider it irrelevant. If you disagree with them about what's relevant, that is itself an incompatibility between you.)

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Don't let vague fears that the world is a bad place, and something bad might happen to you one day, ruin your life now. Don't live in fear and hide the very values that could create a better world in general, and a better life for yourself. Don't hold a malevolent universe premise.

Do your best to figure out good ideas and good values. Stay open minded to rational criticism. Then deal with the world proudly, confident that a moral and rational life is practical. We don't live in hell. Don't give up without trying. A good life is possible, it can work.

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Update: I found a great comment to add from a mini Ann Coulter biography article:

"... there's nothing more conformist than to just talk about the college rape epidemic as being America's biggest crisis. But to be a woman who's going to go on TV and just declare the college rape epidemic to be a load of crap, that takes guts."

...

The first time Coulter told me she was punk rock, I thought she was joking, but this time, she wasn't trying to make people laugh. While the rest of us save our most provocative thoughts for private moments, worried we'll be fired or offend someone, Coulter has purposefully built her life so she can speak her mind without fear about employment or financial repercussions.

"I didn't get the gene that makes you afraid," Coulter explained. "I really am the freest person in America right now. I can say anything."

I think people impersonating me in blog comments is confusing.

The following author names are now reserved only for me: "Elliot Temple", "Elliot", "curi". They are case sensitive. People can still use names like "E1liot Temple", "Curi", or "elliot". If they use a reserved name, their comment will show up as from "Anonymous Impersonator".

This policy is only retroactive a few minutes, there are still a few recent impersonations in comments. I am not the only one being impersonated, but I think it's more confusing and problematic to impersonate the admin.

Edit: Harsher anti-impersonation measures were taken due to people putting effort into workarounds.

Edit 2: Only the 3 literal names are reserved again. They are now colored green and bolded if they're definitely real. So people can make stuff that looks identical if they want, but it won't have the special font.

Discuss how to do paths forward (summary blog post), including details like how to use text that isn't your own (so you can have positions on every major issue which you're responsible for), and how to deal with references from other people (like how to skim for a relevant part and reply when you have a criticism or problem, rather than reading the whole thing, and how to do this in such a way the discussion can still make progress).

What are all the practical ways people mess up discussion? Stuff that prevents them from doing the right thing of having this permanent body of knowledge that keeps getting improved, with recorded, public answers to all the issues that's all open to criticism, progress, error-correction.

Harry Walton writing on the Open Oxford Facebook group (to me, prior to the addition of a rule against external quoting):

Sure, I never said [Burke] didn't use reason. I just said he disliked the enlightenment and disliked liberalism.

But you wrote, "Individual reason was something that [Burke] held disdain for."

I sure don't think you meant Burke liked collectivist reasoning and was anti-individualist! That'd be ridiculous and I didn't see other claims along those lines from you. So, I read it like you said Burke had disdain for (proper) reason.

"Burke tried to explain to people how actual progress and reform work, how to go about that"

I mean, I like Burke so I'm going to agree that he showed how genuine progress and reform ought to go about. Could you give me a description of what you believe he argued for/said?

http://fallibleliving.com/thinkers/burke

"A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve ... would be my standard of a statesman.” – this interest in improvement is not conservative"

Firstly, it is important to note that it is the 'disposition to preserve' that is the important part.

No, the point as a whole is the important part, it's about having those two things together. Did you check the original context before making this claim?

http://www.constitution.org/eb/rev_fran.htm

A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.

I think that clears it up. But read more context and tell me if you still disagree.

Maybe we could put it like this: you think the "disposition to preserve" is the important part, so you're a conservative. Burke thinks the "disposition to preserve" and "ability to improve" need to go together, so he's a liberal (and me too). And then, some people care about "ability to improve" without much/any "disposition to preserve", so they are dangerous radicals, revolutionaries, utopians, etc...

It's the basic part of conservative thinking. My favourite essay by Oakeshott is useful to put here. It explains what it means to be conservative. If you have some spare time you should read it. It's probably the best way of describing conservatism I've seen.

http://faculty.rcc.edu/sellick/On%20Being%20Conservative.pdf

replies to this are at the end

"Seeking progress rationally is how liberalism works"

Liberalism is an ideology that has a set goal of 'freedom' as a value that it wants to pursue. Burke has no such value put forward first except for maybe tradition. The goal of liberalism is to maximise freedom. The goal of Burke is just a vague. One of the main reasons Burke likes change is because he believes it is necessary towards preservation of the nation state. I think the only person who you would see as 'conservative' would be Maistre.

This concept of liberalism is mistaken. That helps explain why you don't see the connection between Burke and liberalism. I think a lot of our confusion is because the opponents of liberalism have spread a lot of lies about what it is, and now most people don't have much understanding what liberalism is actually about.

And the claim Burke only wants change for preservation is silly given I just quoted him, and you requoted him, saying he wants *improvement*.

For understanding liberalism, start with:

http://fallibleliving.com/essays/rational-politics/100-liberalism

and read especially

http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1463

then you could find out what liberalism is – according to actual liberals! – before trying to claim and deny things about it.

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Liberal means things like: open to improvement and change, tolerant, favorable to individual rights and freedom, pro-liberty. All of those apply to Burke. Liberalism involves being willing to question and change tradition (which Burke was).

Conservative is a kind of pointless word if you define it such that someone is liberal and conservative, at the same time. It's perfectly possible to do that. The "conservatives" in the US today are pretty liberal (and the "liberals" are largely illiberal).

But if Burke is a "conservative" in addition to a liberal, then what do you call the tories? What word is left? Burke was a whig, the *liberal* party, who opposed and politically fought against the more conservative tories in many things. Burke was one of the reformers standing up to King and traditional authority – calling him a "conservative" is therefore confusing, since he put so much effort into politically battling the conservatives of his time.

Declaring Burke conservative and non-liberal would also get into awkward questions like whether you're going to do it to William Godwin too.

Besides liberals and conservatives (meaning stuff like those tories Burke frequently opposed), another big category to be aware of and complete the picture better is *radicals* – the people who want revolutions, utopias, reimaginings of society. Radicals are the guys who don't respect tradition or piecemeal progress, who want replacement with their latest flakey idea instead of reform. (Objectivism does not use the word "radical" this way, but I do. I'm open to ideas about better word choices.)

So you get:

conservative – keep things the same
liberal – value tradition but seek progress, reform, improvement
radical – sweep away the cobwebs of tradition, replace with something new

or in programming terms:

conservative – the software works well enough, no new versions

liberal – let's refactor a bit and fix some bugs, and occasionally even add new features that we carefully think through

radical – i'm not satisfied with some of the design choices for our software, let's start over from scratch and do a full rewrite

again: if you want to define "conservative" differently, whatever. but then what word should i use to convey ideas like this? (pro-stasis?). can you see the logic to using words this way?

i think a big part of the issue is basically there aren't conservatives anymore. no one in the anglosphere wants *stasis* now. but in the past, lots of people really have wanted stasis, which is something moderns find hard to understand. there's still traces of people wanting stasis today, and problems there, but it's hard to find significant strands of thinking which are very thorough about stasis. and if you go further back in the past, or you look at other worse cultures, you get a lot more pro-stasis stuff. (have you seen David Deutsch's book, the beginning of infinity, and his discussion of the static societies of the past?)


http://faculty.rcc.edu/sellick/On%20Being%20Conservative.pdf

say it IS possible to

elicit explanatory general principles from what is recognized to be conservative conduct

good.

The general characteristics of this disposition are not difficult to discern, although they have often been mistaken. They center upon a propensity to use and to enjoy what is available rather than to wish for or to look for something else; to delight in what is present rather than what was or what may be.

Saying this isn't difficult is bad. It insults people who have difficulty with it, and doesn't add value.

Burke often wanted something else, something that "may be" – e.g. a different policy towards America, France, India, Ireland.

What is esteemed is the present; and it is esteemed not on account of its connections with a remote antiquity, nor because it is recognized to be more admirable than any possible alternative, but on account of its familiarity: not, Verweile doch, du bist so schon, but Stay with me because I am attached to you.

Where does Burke say we should hold the present in high esteem because we're familiar with it? I don't think he thinks that way.

In short, it is a disposition appropriate to a man who is acutely aware of having something to lose which he has learned to care for

Burke does have this. I am not denying that a fair amount of Burke's ideas have some overlap with some conservative ideas. But that doesn't stop him from being thoroughly liberal.

Now, all this is represented in a certain attitude towards change and innovation; change denoting alterations we have to suffer and innovation those we design and execute.

This idea of thinking you have to *suffer* alterations is just the sort of thing I would consider conservative. But Burke thought some alterations were good, not things to suffer.

The part about innovation has a grammar problem, I'm hoping to figure out what it means later.

Changes are circumstances to which we have to accommodate ourselves

averse from change, which appears always, in the first place, as deprivation

change is a threat to identity, and every change is an emblem of extinction

Changes, then, have to be suffered

This attitude is like, "stasis would be nice, but we'll have to figure out how to deal with a few deviations from stasis".

The idea of innovation, on the other hand, is improvement. Nevertheless, a man of this temperament will not himself be an ardent innovator. In the first place, he is not inclined to think that nothing is happening unless great changes are afoot and therefore he is not worried by the absence of innovation.

Burke was an ardent reformer, a vigorous seeker of improvement.

Further, he is aware that not all innovation is, in fact, improvement; and he will think that to innovate without improving is either designed or inadvertent folly. Moreover, even when an innovation commends itself as a convincing improvement, he will look twice at its claims before accepting them.

This is true and wise, and is also believed by liberals.

This essay stuff is a mix of stasis, of disliking change, of strong, old conservatism. And then also of liberal-compatible stuff. Whereas Burke is a liberal who had only the liberal-compatible parts of conservatism, but wasn't some kind of stasis-sympathizer.

For discussion in comments about marketing, promoting and spreading Fallible Ideas.