squeers:"It is conservatism that dismisses the radicalism of youth, that smiles benignly on its innocent extravagance, never stopping to ponder its smugness—distilled from disillusionment."

Certainly the wisdom of age includes the knowledge of what has failed to work in the past. That is useful data. One may choose to view the process of acquiring it as disillusioning or informative, but the data remains.

Likewise, one may view the confidence of maturity as conservative smugness, but would be foolish to ignore the knowledge that has been learned.

As you said, youth is naive. That is not an admirable condition in a mature adult, since it implies a lack of knowledge and of the wisdom to apply it usefully. In youth, it should, at its best, allow flights of fancy, dreams of possibility that lead on to the realisation of some other possibility. At its worst, it leads to gullibility and an ovine inability to make useful decisions ("he's easily lead"). The maturation process replaces naivete and a reliance on received wisdom with, at best, a genuine ability to analyse situations in the light of experience. At worst, the received wisdom of youth becomes the certitudes of age, leading to stultification and "smugness".

I suspect it is that latter condition you find most offensive, as I do. It is equally as common among old lefties as among old tories.

squeers:"The formative years are mere process, a leavening of the dough?"

Of course. What else can they be? All the enthusiasm in the world can achieve nothing without the knowledge to direct it. The formative years provide the chance to acquire that knowledge.

squeers:"Do we not have the capacity to think and act outside our biology, or our culture? "

Oh, certainly, but you can never be a chimpanzee or a dog, even though you may well learn a great deal about interacting with them.

squeers:"I suspect you’re an anthropologist?"

Wash your mouth out!

Antiseptic.
“Certainly the wisdom of age includes the knowledge of what has failed to work in the past. That is useful data. One may choose to view the process of acquiring it as disillusioning or informative, but the data remains.”
This Panglossian view implies that the “data” is or was inevitable; that the state of affairs we find ourselves in is the best of all possible worlds. My contention is that our utterly scripted lives under capitalism are impoverished of aspirational spirit—within the individual and en masse. The human search for meaning (which includes the option of elaborating one’s own philosophy) has been reduced to just another range of commodities. But ideals of a better world are not given up easily; they’re gradually deferred in favour of the baubles of consumer culture, and compensated for with the hubris I mention above, until they blossom in maturity (generally) as full-blown, blind cynicism (what you call “wisdom”), or disillusionment. And not only does the overwhelming patronage of commodity culture degrade the human spirit, it also spreads corporeally as a virulent cancer (also based on exponential growth) rapacious of the whole biological sphere. None of this is hyperbole, but indisputable fact. Human culture is headed over one or another of several steep cliffs, and its wretched denizens have no choice but to partake of the action of the whole.
This is why so many turn to religion, I believe, because the alternative is despair; they give up on this world in favour of the next.
I’m saying that we have to reaffirm youthful ideals, and imagine a better world—cynicism makes this sound fantastic. But if we can't imagine a better world, if we can't even contradict this one! then we may as well turn to God.

Mankind as a whole has no more intelligence than the lemming.

squeers:"full-blown, blind cynicism (what you call “wisdom”),"

Not at all. My wisdom, such as it is, is not cynical at all, but it does encompass all of the things that I've learnt. As it happens, I've learnt broadly and have a decent layman's knowledge of several fields and much better than that in a couple. This society and culture, for all its faults, has given me a great deal of freedom to move into different fields when I got bored, which I've probably done much too frequently for most people's comfort.

The data are not inevitable, except in the sense that they are inevitably gathered through living life. Each individual's experience is unique, and each one contains lots of data about things that don't work, from sticking your hand in a fire to marrying a feminist...

squeers:"I’m saying that we have to reaffirm youthful ideals, and imagine a better world"

I'm on your side bro'. Sorry, can't help taking the p!ss. I agree with you, really I do. Those ideals don't have to include wilful ignorance, do they? If the particular "better world" model has been tried and found wanting, is it not a good thing to know this and factor it into your thinking?

Getting back to the point, Marxist/Trotskyist feminism, as practised within the Union movement, the public service and Gender Studies Departments at second-rate "institutions of high-enough learning" all around this land, has had its day. There is no need for it any more. Women are in control, both in the home as always, and increasingly in the public sphere. The campaign to "undermine the gender enemy" can end, comr...sista.

Antiseptic: "squeers:"full-blown, blind cynicism (what you call “wisdom”),
"Not at all. My wisdom, such as it is, is not cynical at all, but it does encompass all of the things that I've learnt. As it happens, I've learnt broadly and have a decent layman's knowledge of several fields and much better than that in a couple. This society and culture, for all its faults, has given me a great deal of freedom to move into different fields when I got bored, which I've probably done much too frequently for most people's comfort."
I was careful to use the phrase "blind cynicism" i.e. the possessor has no idea that that is what lies beneath his thin veneer of "hubris"; my posts have made this clear, and your opening salvo does have a hubristic pong to it...
Antiseptic "Those ideals don't have to include wilful ignorance, do they? If the particular "better world" model has been tried and found wanting, is it not a good thing to know this and factor it into your thinking?"
No they don't; but because something has failed to work, it doesn't mean it can't work, and certainly doesn't mean that we should stick with the current disastrous system by default.
In any case, it is not the socialist model that failed, but humanity that failed it, both in the form of individuals like Stalin, and via the ideological and actual stand-off with the West. It comes down to the human heart/psyche/soul being utterly prone to manipulation and corruption.
Your last paragraph is not worthy of a response.

squeers:"the possessor has no idea that that is what lies beneath his thin veneer of "hubris""

Hubris implies a false sense of pride or an unwontedly-inflated sense of self-worth. A justifiable confidence in one's own capacity to make judgements is not hubristic.

On tho other hand, presuming to tell someone else that they "have no idea" about what underlies their own thoughts is clearly the product of a hubristic sense of elitism, untempered by the wisdom gained through experience. See the difference?

squeers:"because something has failed to work, it doesn't mean it can't work, and certainly doesn't mean that we should stick with the current disastrous system by default."

Certainly fresh eyes may see a way around a problem that has been missed by others. That doesn't mean the way is worth following, as it may simply lead to other, more difficult problems.

That's where experience comes in to the picture. Following one's nose willy-nilly is rarely going to lead anywhere except down the garden path.

If a social system is truly disastrous, such as say Nazi Germany, or Khmer rouge Cambodia, it doesn't take fresh eyes to see it and it is likely that almost any path chosen will lead to something better.

If it is not, such as say Australia or modern day Israel, then the wise person will recognise the particular negative aspects and deal with them as they can. Some may even try to influence the way in which others deal with those negative aspects, but it is unlikely that they would be able to convince those others to tread a path that diverges too greatly from the one they already know to be OK, if not perfect. The chances of coming up against some unforeseen problem are too great.

squeers:"Your last paragraph is not worthy of a response"

So much for the idea that we should challenge received wisdom, eh? Radical, man...