The thing about “We can have an instance without sectarianism!” ignores that, Trotskyists splitting at the atomic level aside, the ‘sects’ are often founded on fundamentally different values, not just whether Jesus is homoousios or homoiousios.
In the end, this means that any dispute between sects will fundamentally raise the question of values, and no community nor authority is neutral on the matter of values. Which views count as following which values (for example, if someone regarded ‘racial equality’ as including ‘racial segregation’) is a fundamental question that, itself, invites sectarian splitting.
Ultimately, you can create a broad space, but the idea that all of the previous anti-sectarian attempts have failed simply for not being anti-sectarian enough is just… not so. Most of those ‘sectarian’ spaces are the end result of anti-sectarian attempts - because you have to draw a line somewhere, and wherever you draw the line, a large percentage of people will be upset about where it is.
Especially leftists, since we often revel in the broader value implications of small points.
Most of those ‘sectarian’ spaces are the end result of anti-sectarian attempts
This is a vital observation, and not just in this narrower context but in the broader context of leftism subverted by authoritarianism.
The thing is that we actually can have instances free of sectarianism. All it requires is a population among whom enough people hold to the value of non-sectarianism to not only establish such spaces, but for them to continue to be non-sectarian solely because nobody succeeds in driving wedges (or better yet, nobody even tries). And again, this dynamic holds in the broader context and not just in this narrower one.
But of course the problem, at whatever scale and in whatever context, is that we don’t have such a population, and there’s no indication that such a population will come to be in our immediate future either.
And that’s the exact point at which it starts to go wrong.
Through some combination of indoctrination and irrationality-driven-by-impatience, some number of people, faced with that fact, decide that that means that what we have to do is force it into being, which is inevitably doomed to failure, since it essentially boils down to establishing a hierarchy by which some claim the authority to eliminate hierarchy and prohibit authority.
The entire problem is that progressive liberals and social Democrats are actually worlds closer to left-lib types than MLs, but MLs cannot allow that narrative to exist at any level, be it explicit or inferred.
And that’s not to say libertarian leftists are even that close ideologically to progressive liberals. It’s more how absolutely massive the gap is between them and the authoritarian left.
Solid point here. The authoritarian axis is a real motherfucker when it comes to political divisiveness. Left v right doesn’t have the same impact as authoritarian v libertarian on the political compass, as flawed as the Nolan model and its derivatives might be. Nationalists are a danger regardless of which wing they claim to represent.
The thing about “We can have an instance without sectarianism!” ignores that, Trotskyists splitting at the atomic level aside, the ‘sects’ are often founded on fundamentally different values, not just whether Jesus is homoousios or homoiousios.
In the end, this means that any dispute between sects will fundamentally raise the question of values, and no community nor authority is neutral on the matter of values. Which views count as following which values (for example, if someone regarded ‘racial equality’ as including ‘racial segregation’) is a fundamental question that, itself, invites sectarian splitting.
Ultimately, you can create a broad space, but the idea that all of the previous anti-sectarian attempts have failed simply for not being anti-sectarian enough is just… not so. Most of those ‘sectarian’ spaces are the end result of anti-sectarian attempts - because you have to draw a line somewhere, and wherever you draw the line, a large percentage of people will be upset about where it is.
Especially leftists, since we often revel in the broader value implications of small points.
This is a vital observation, and not just in this narrower context but in the broader context of leftism subverted by authoritarianism.
The thing is that we actually can have instances free of sectarianism. All it requires is a population among whom enough people hold to the value of non-sectarianism to not only establish such spaces, but for them to continue to be non-sectarian solely because nobody succeeds in driving wedges (or better yet, nobody even tries). And again, this dynamic holds in the broader context and not just in this narrower one.
But of course the problem, at whatever scale and in whatever context, is that we don’t have such a population, and there’s no indication that such a population will come to be in our immediate future either.
And that’s the exact point at which it starts to go wrong.
Through some combination of indoctrination and irrationality-driven-by-impatience, some number of people, faced with that fact, decide that that means that what we have to do is force it into being, which is inevitably doomed to failure, since it essentially boils down to establishing a hierarchy by which some claim the authority to eliminate hierarchy and prohibit authority.
The entire problem is that progressive liberals and social Democrats are actually worlds closer to left-lib types than MLs, but MLs cannot allow that narrative to exist at any level, be it explicit or inferred.
And that’s not to say libertarian leftists are even that close ideologically to progressive liberals. It’s more how absolutely massive the gap is between them and the authoritarian left.
Solid point here. The authoritarian axis is a real motherfucker when it comes to political divisiveness. Left v right doesn’t have the same impact as authoritarian v libertarian on the political compass, as flawed as the Nolan model and its derivatives might be. Nationalists are a danger regardless of which wing they claim to represent.