I was re-reading this essay on Popper. It was written only in 2022, yet, in such a short time, we have seen every country of the West, every country descended from the principles of the Enlightenment, transformed from an Open Society to a Closed Society. Extraordinary.
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Interesting essay. And how ironic that society has become closed and authoritarian thanks largely to the efforts of Soros, who apparently (delusionally?) thinks he is promoting Popper’s vision of an “open society”!
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There’s a lot of it I don’t get. The author seems to lapse into philosopher-drone. (Popper himself was always lucid, even when wrestling with obscure ideas.)
She seems to miss Popper’s point about Plato’s Republic. It is a description of an authoritarian society, a closed society.
That Popper criticized a few things about his two-volume The Open Society and Its Enemies is simply proof of his intellectual integrity. Don’t all serious writers find inadequacies in their own books when they look back on them years later?
Your own comment, Cogito, about the open societies of the West closing now makes a much better point than any the philosopher makes - or tries to make. Yours is a true point. Terrifying.
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I appreciate your comment, Liz, on Soros’s delusion. Soros fanatically funds dreadful projects to create closed societies - dictatorships, woke hellholes. Calling his destructive agency the Open Society Foundations was either a cynical act of mocking irony, or he is a very stupid man - as much as he is a very evil man - who never understood Popper’s meaning.
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I’m pleased to see Soros’s international network of demonic organizations is beginning to fail. He’s laying off nearly half his workforce (of intellectuals dwarves). And he’s handing over the steering wheel to his son. That’s so often a formula for failure that it can rouse a little optimism, a chink of light between banks of dark cloud.
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Yes, it is hopefully good news. But who knows, his son may turn out to be worse than him.
I agree that calling it “Open Society Foundation” was a cynical act of irony, designed to deceive. I believe Soros is one of those rare individuals who are high-functioning psychopaths, sinister to the core and causing mayhem and injury for the sake of his personal satisfaction, for the fun of it, because he can.
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Thank you. The article attracted me because she outlined Popper’s criteria distinguishing Open from Closed societies:
"Open societies were distinguished by their democratic culture of criticism, which made commonly held beliefs available for critique and revision, and in so doing, embraced innovation. Closed societies, by contrast, lacked this “critical attitude.” They were instead sustained by the “dogmatic” power of myths, which preserved existing power structures and stifled social change.”
I found this very apt.
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I agree with you, Cogito, that where Popper speaks in her article, we find insight.
That passage explains what makes freedom - openness - possible. But it’s not a definition of open and closed societies as she seems to think it is.
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I think you’re probably right that Soros is “a high functioning psychopath, sinister to the core…”
A few others I’d put in that category - Bill Gates, Fauci, Schwab, Xi…
With so many psychopaths in power, it seems to confirm the idea that leftism is a mental disease, therefore those most diseased rise to the top…
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