Saturday, November 15, 2014

Wrath of the Yurt

I like a lot of what John Quiggin has to say. That's why I find it disturbing when he lapses into an unprovoked ad hominem swipe at people living in yurts. Not only is it disturbing but distinctly peculiar.

Of course we're all supposed to understand that Quiggin isn't really talking about yurt dwellers when he refers to yurt dwellers. It's code. The label of yurt dweller is supposed to allude to some undefined fringe of political-economic non-conformists.

I have a problem with that. It is holding people up to ridicule, not for what they believe but for a mocking image of their (presumably) idiosyncratic personal attributes that is arbitrarily substituted for their opinions. This is what we used to refer to as stereotyping.

Exactly who is being ridiculed is left ambiguous. By a process of elimination, it is not the climate-change deniers on the right nor is it the "sensible" ecological modernizers in the center who Quiggin is mocking. That leaves the tree-hugging enviros on the left metaphorically dwelling in those patchouli-infested yurts. Like Naomi Klein. Or Herman Daly. Or Tim Jackson. Or Duncan Foley.

The trouble with the yurt dweller label is that it is infinitely expandable. To Senator Inhofe, people who accept the scientific consensus on climate change are yurt dwellers. Nicholas Stern, John Quiggin, William Nordhaus, Al Gore, the IPCC. Yurt dwellers all.

7 comments:

Peter Dorman said...

War to the palaces, peace to the yurts.

John Quiggin said...

As became apparent in the subsequent discussion, I had a particular target (Ted TRainer) in mind. Any my objection isn't to yurt dwellers but to people, like Trainer, who argue that unless we all go and live in yurts there is no point in doing anything

Sandwichman said...

John,

I was not familiar with Trainer but based on a quick scan of his website and some of his writing, I find your characterization of him a demeaning and offensive misrepresentation of his argument.

Let me be clear that I would prefer there to be some fundamental flaw in Trainer's argument. There is an apocalyptic/utopian strain in it that makes me uncomfortable. Wishful thinking can take negative as well as positive form.

But here is what I don't understand: if you find Trainer's argument unpersuasive, why do you have to pretend it is sillier than it is? Is that because although you find the argument unconvincing you can't refute it? One doesn't have to agree with everything one can't refute.

And what if you are 65% right and 35% wrong and Trainer is right about the 35% that you are wrong about? Wouldn't the rational, scientific approach be to listen and try to understand what is worth salvaging?

Most of what I know I've learned from listening to people I disagree with.

eric said...

"if you find Trainer's argument unpersuasive, why do you have to pretend it is sillier than it is? Is that because although you find the argument unconvincing you can't refute it? "

Yes, and probably also so as to show his audience that HE is not so indecorous as to propose that there are some fundamental problems with our whole modern way of life...

Sandwichman said...

Yurtophobia?

kevin quinn said...

The Aussie economist Quiggin
Dissed my preferred mode of livin'
Yes I live in a yurt
And I tell you it hurts
To be dissed by this Oz-dwelling Quiggin!

Myrtle Blackwood said...

I'd like to see a movie with back-to-the-land hippies portrayed in it that doesn't demean these individuals. Can anyone give examples of such??