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The Waiting Room Of Meaning...
Apr. 12th, 2016 12:31 pm(Not my phrase. It's Judy Horacek's. One of her better cartoons. The PA announces 'It's Been Deferred Again' and her protagonist comments: 'Damn That Derrida.' Comedy gold.)
People are still using the words Left and Right. As though they actually meant something. I'm so silly I don't even know what they are. But there, it seems impossible to walk across the waiting room of meaning without tripping over the shards of broken epistemologies these days. No wonder folks are so confused.
I recall, long ago in the student cafe at A Certain University, hanging out with Mr S where we worked out a 3-D continuum which might better explain people's political views. The three axes we came up with were Progressive/Conservative, Materialist/Spiritualist, and Libertarian/Authoritarian. And we thought it would be a good idea if folks could roughly guess where they stood in this trimensional block.
He was an Oz Democrat, later Green. I was (and am) a Tory. But we liked talking because we were both interested in ideas. And I don't think our model has yet been superseded. What I hadn't quite grasped at the time was how much each needs the other end of the axis. As if the ghost of Hegel still hovered over our joint project after all. I expect S knew it already. He is one really smart guy.
Without a sense of history, progressives easily degenerate into neophiliacs. It's new! It's shiny! Let's go there! Toryism without openness to new ideas ossifies into reaction. If you're a Tory, you always want someone else to dip their toe into the water first. But if we watch it for a while and it works, then yeah: we should look at this. No Tory would ever be the first to decriminalize drugs. But a Tory would ask what the hell we are doing fighting a war which enriches criminals and terrorists, costs the earth, and we're losing. How's Portugal going with their little experiment? Really? Well, maybe we wait a little longer to see it doesn't go pear-shaped. But yeah. We should probably do this.
And of course gay rights are a no-brainer for a British Tory. We have a very gay-friendly monarchy, ever since the Queen Mum. If you take your social cues from Buckingham Palace, then the time to shut up about the Gay Peril was when HM tapped an ageing pop star on the shoulder and dubbed him Sir Elton. Looking at you, Senator Bernardi. The rest of the Queer Ascendancy? Well, yeah, OK. I suppose it follows. Some of you folks are a bit intolerant, though. But perhaps this will shake down in due course.
Spiritual vs materialistic? Well, I'm sorry if you're still in the Dawkins camp, but religion of some sort is hard-wired in. And if you have ever seen the hordes of holy-rolling, hot-gospelling soi-disant Skeptics congratulating themselves on how Enlightened they all are... gee. It's a great look, isn't it? It's still religion. Just not a very good one. Get over it and accept it. What you should be more concerned about is quality control of spiritual experience. Because that's currently all over the place. How lucky was I, to have had an Anglican upbringing! Probably best seen as a vaccination against the more virulent forms of lunacy which infest the planet. And yet.... historical materialism? Yeah, it's a thing. The fact that Marx was horribly wrong about so many things should not blind us to his successes. (And has anyone read Eagleton's Why Marx Was Right? He always was crazy-brave. An interesting guy at all times, and a great exemplar of how old-fashioned Marxists are a cut above their successors.)
The most thorny one is libertarian vs authoritarian. The latter has become awfully fashionable of late and I don't like it one bit. Bloody Foucault again, I expect. And yet. Show me a libertarian who does not believe in the rule of law and I'll show you a Galt-Going liar. The question, as always, is what laws; where do they come from; who gets to enforce them; and why? Hence the British compromise of the idea of the Nightwatchman State. But there are many intractable issues here, with no easy answers.
Happily for us, we have a simpler tool available to us. Are you pro-Enlightenment (in the 18th century sense) or not? Would you rather follow Voltaire, or Rousseau? John Locke or Thom Paine? If you ticked the former in each of these pairs, then you are on the side of Enlightenment. If the latter, you belong to the Counter-Enlightenment. And good luck with that.
But to attempt to think down from here to the level of left, right, left right... it makes my brain hurt. So if you speak of left and right as though it matters who sat where in the French National Assembly.... then I will stop reading. I'll probably still like you, but you're wasting my time and yours.
People are still using the words Left and Right. As though they actually meant something. I'm so silly I don't even know what they are. But there, it seems impossible to walk across the waiting room of meaning without tripping over the shards of broken epistemologies these days. No wonder folks are so confused.
I recall, long ago in the student cafe at A Certain University, hanging out with Mr S where we worked out a 3-D continuum which might better explain people's political views. The three axes we came up with were Progressive/Conservative, Materialist/Spiritualist, and Libertarian/Authoritarian. And we thought it would be a good idea if folks could roughly guess where they stood in this trimensional block.
He was an Oz Democrat, later Green. I was (and am) a Tory. But we liked talking because we were both interested in ideas. And I don't think our model has yet been superseded. What I hadn't quite grasped at the time was how much each needs the other end of the axis. As if the ghost of Hegel still hovered over our joint project after all. I expect S knew it already. He is one really smart guy.
Without a sense of history, progressives easily degenerate into neophiliacs. It's new! It's shiny! Let's go there! Toryism without openness to new ideas ossifies into reaction. If you're a Tory, you always want someone else to dip their toe into the water first. But if we watch it for a while and it works, then yeah: we should look at this. No Tory would ever be the first to decriminalize drugs. But a Tory would ask what the hell we are doing fighting a war which enriches criminals and terrorists, costs the earth, and we're losing. How's Portugal going with their little experiment? Really? Well, maybe we wait a little longer to see it doesn't go pear-shaped. But yeah. We should probably do this.
And of course gay rights are a no-brainer for a British Tory. We have a very gay-friendly monarchy, ever since the Queen Mum. If you take your social cues from Buckingham Palace, then the time to shut up about the Gay Peril was when HM tapped an ageing pop star on the shoulder and dubbed him Sir Elton. Looking at you, Senator Bernardi. The rest of the Queer Ascendancy? Well, yeah, OK. I suppose it follows. Some of you folks are a bit intolerant, though. But perhaps this will shake down in due course.
Spiritual vs materialistic? Well, I'm sorry if you're still in the Dawkins camp, but religion of some sort is hard-wired in. And if you have ever seen the hordes of holy-rolling, hot-gospelling soi-disant Skeptics congratulating themselves on how Enlightened they all are... gee. It's a great look, isn't it? It's still religion. Just not a very good one. Get over it and accept it. What you should be more concerned about is quality control of spiritual experience. Because that's currently all over the place. How lucky was I, to have had an Anglican upbringing! Probably best seen as a vaccination against the more virulent forms of lunacy which infest the planet. And yet.... historical materialism? Yeah, it's a thing. The fact that Marx was horribly wrong about so many things should not blind us to his successes. (And has anyone read Eagleton's Why Marx Was Right? He always was crazy-brave. An interesting guy at all times, and a great exemplar of how old-fashioned Marxists are a cut above their successors.)
The most thorny one is libertarian vs authoritarian. The latter has become awfully fashionable of late and I don't like it one bit. Bloody Foucault again, I expect. And yet. Show me a libertarian who does not believe in the rule of law and I'll show you a Galt-Going liar. The question, as always, is what laws; where do they come from; who gets to enforce them; and why? Hence the British compromise of the idea of the Nightwatchman State. But there are many intractable issues here, with no easy answers.
Happily for us, we have a simpler tool available to us. Are you pro-Enlightenment (in the 18th century sense) or not? Would you rather follow Voltaire, or Rousseau? John Locke or Thom Paine? If you ticked the former in each of these pairs, then you are on the side of Enlightenment. If the latter, you belong to the Counter-Enlightenment. And good luck with that.
But to attempt to think down from here to the level of left, right, left right... it makes my brain hurt. So if you speak of left and right as though it matters who sat where in the French National Assembly.... then I will stop reading. I'll probably still like you, but you're wasting my time and yours.
