The Death of the Author debate is way too blinkered in scope

[Ramza00]

^{(please do not take this the wrong way.)}

DomaDoma I don't know how I feel about you, except I know exactly how I feel about you but it is just merely complicated. You say things all the time that I like and make me smile for I agree with them , only for two seconds later say things I have a different opinion on (an opinion that makes me raise my eyebrow ), but at the same time I can respect this viewpoint

People like you DomaDoma in this world means this world will never be boring.

So why am I writting stuff that sounds like mush in my mind? Well it is the type of feedback that is not often communicated in this world / society for it is complicated. So I want to say thank you and I am grateful for people like you, I want to say I see you, I respect you, but you also cause conflicted feelings in me for I often agree with you only to very much disagree with you 3 breaths later

The shallowness of “progress” has indeed always existed as has the prison of tradition - we loose as much throwing out all of the old as we do ignoring all of the new. If we cannot accept new ideas if worth we will forever be left in the cave, and if we never listen to the past we will simply smack our heads against that same cave wall for eternity.

Yeah I agree on the shallowness of progress, for example many people we call "modernist thinkers / philosphers" or "enlightment thinkers / philosphers" were deeply critical of the idea of progress, yet at the same time we consider them part of the enlightment when in reality they were critical of the concept even if they partly disagreed with it.

For example David Hume, Adam Smith, Rousseau...dozens of other people we would consider skeptics or counter-enlightenment thinkers for they were very skeptical of one way track of history with meta-narratives. But we in modern times with a reductionist lense of history and not knowing the full writings (aka a middle school or high school understanding of history not an advanced course of high school history or college history) often teach these people are part of the enlightenment for even though they were skeptics they help "tighten" up things like the scientific method with their critiques, and since the scientific method leads to progress than they too must be for progress instead of being people who were naturally skeptical.

Case in point with Adam Smith. He loved markets for he thought markets that are healthy (and not unhealthy like few buyers and sellers, but a robust market) will uplift people from poverty. But in his writings he knew that markets are only good in the right conditions. Furthermore even in the right conditions they due have externality consequences completely seperate from the market. For example he writes in Section 3 Chapter 3 of Moral Sentiments a whole chapter on the corruption of our moral sentiments merely by who is rich and who is not. Literally this is the chapter title, Of the corruption of our moral sentiments, which is occasioned by this disposition to admire the rich and the great, and to despise or neglect persons of poor and mean condition, in it Adam Smith argues humans are not rational and we use motivated reasoning and this can corrupt our moral sentiments where we think the poor deserve their fate, and the rich deserve their fate, and the rich must be generous and virtuous and kind and we believe this merely for they have money. But we want to be rich and we think highly of our selves and since the rich is our ideal future with wealth we bring in emotional baggage without even realizing it, baggage that then corrupts our own virtues and makes us vindictive judders. And suddenly our morality system is turned upside down.

Yet people preach and say all the time (lying without realizing it) that Adam Smith was always for X when in reality he was a big skeptic through and through. And David Hume was even more skeptical, skeptic to the point of doubting the ability to proove causality for much of what we think is causality with cause and effect we are relying on induction and induction with imperfect information merely for our perceptions are imperfect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction Now Hume is super critical of inductive thinking, but he also acknowledge humans are kind of built to do it, and sometimes inductive thinking is beneficial, but make no mistake inductive thinking is not rational and Hume will argue inductive reasoning leads us to bad conclusions some of the time.