Choose Your Enemies
The old saying goes: "You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your enemies." But my inner dialectician likes to ignore this saying. I like to imagine a dominant conservative movement emerging in the 1950's that was different from the one we eventually saw. A movement that focused on intelligent and selective restraint of statism, seeking to apply market power creatively and harmoniously with the government, and dedicated to its conservative rhetoric of equal opportunity, to the point where it took responsibility for its actual occurrence. A movement without the nativism, dogma, and racist undertones of the Nixon era and beyond. And one in which, had it been around in the 1960's, could actually challenge and improve the Great Society in a productive and synthetic way.
Let's assume that the conservative movement in Tom's book isn't the only dominant one we might have seen. Imagine that Vietnam never happened and a consensus emerged that the Great Society was a roaring success. What would a more helpful conservative opposition look like? Who would be its intellectual forbearers? (Jane Jacobs comes to mind, though she might be surprised to learn I tagged her as a conservative.) How would the people in this movement behave differently?
Or...do you think that the political culture is best served with no opposition at all? Is the end of an opposition that is tilted even partially toward a greater preference for free markets the proper dream of progressive thinkers? To that, my inner dialectician says "nyet".
In many ways, the tension you describe is the difference between an adversarial relationship vs a collaborative relationship. In traditional societies, such as the Lakota Indians, for instance--adversarial relations among the members of the tribe did not exist. The notion of win-lose, was a shameful notion. Traditional societies needed to employ game theory to survive. Game theory is what enables some of the smallest human beings--the Pygmies, to hunt and kill an elephant with fire hardened sharpened sticks.
DNA is relentlessly conservative--we share the mechanism for sugar glycolysis with the earthworm. And yet, DNA is relenetlessly liberal, as well, as evidenced by the generation of millions upon millions of species of beetles.
We have to stop our useless identification with one or the other poles of a dichotomy, and transcend to a perspective where conservative and liberal and not opposite, but complementary. Both philosophies have elements that are useful as relativities--both are fatal as absolutes.
October 7, 2008 1:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
In many ways, "...the tension you describe is the difference between adversarial relationships vs. a collaborative relationship."
These are just a formalist narrow description of so called opponent "ways of life" possible (of societies). It actually starts with the identification of universalism of humanity with Pseudo-scientific binary models. They present themselves as "progressive"' for their "Dynamic" basic integral. It bases on the "traditional societies" sight of conceiving of the old cultures of lacking the basic metabolisms of hierarchy and power complexes, material hierarchy's and its meanings. It's not the face of it all, each one has pre-industrious-capitalism damages, but it sees them as in a timeless zone of pure 'goodness being'. There is much wisdom in their cultures, as down-periods. But just describing them as missing adversities is really a naive conception.
Saying they acted as in "game Theory" is a formalist fusion which has the great flaw of not being ever able calculate into its "game" parameters all the cultures' and historical evolvement to a depth account. It's never a game. If I may use this fashions' name as a too-obvious shallow way to refer to it. Bergson had similar complexities with his "Creative Evolution" and the "élan vital" concept. (Recommending Volosinov's and Bakhtin's work "Freudianism" on this subject).
To say that "The notion of win-lose, was a shameful notion. Traditional societies needed to employ game theory to survive." is self contradictory, and the following "Game theory is what enables some of the smallest human beings--the Pygmies, to hunt and kill an elephant with fire hardened sharpened sticks."- is just a poor romantic-condescending-height-giving-meaning (in a strange comparative of the height of the object you win to the way you live - a meaning given. so what do the Pisa tower say of the Italians, or the Pyramids on the ancient Egyptians, of the San Francisco bridge on the Americans? it says nothing whatsoever. it takes much more to mean anything... just like that association with us to the "...share the mechanism for sugar glycolysis with the " - which is very nice insinuating towards mystical meanings of so called scientific-cultural-human nature-and the meaning of life-some sort of truth (" DNA is relentlessly liberal"- this works very good with the bask in the neo-liberal-secular-'enlightened'-sunlight. ...But these are mostly symbols of meanings on crutches of pseudo science and different wishful romanticist tendencies. They testify more of today's complexes of meaning than on fundamental "truths" of the human nature and history and so forth.
It's true that Binary ties are a problem, but this state of mind is a part of the problematic Binary, those that are not antinomies.
Logic is essential for understanding, but the evolvement of human life and the condition of reality is never purely "Logical" and it is problematic to mix these two facts.
October 7, 2008 7:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can you and your friends hunt and kill an elephant with sharpened sticks? Sometimes I think maybe the Red Guards were on to something. I had a friend who is an engineer who was required by the Red Guards to leave the University and build terraced rice paddies for two years, back in 1968. For two years he hauled stones up steep mountain slopes in bamboo baskets. He was very grateful for the opportunity to be brought down out of his ivory tower and into the domain of stubbed toes and aching muscles. He concluded that abstractions divorce one from reality in it's most literal expressions, and recommended hard labor for any and all intellectuals.
October 7, 2008 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can you get 25 apartments for homeless families in a situation the public housing has been sold out 20 years ago, in a banana-capitalist- republic, during a 4 months fund less struggle?
That's rare. I've been involved in this with 9 more other people. We got the damn apartments. So what?
Still, challenges are false comparisons.
People do incredible things every day. Also dumb actors sometimes do great acting in serious theater plays. What does that mean? Nothing. It's endless. Can you make 3000 dumplings in a day using 3 fingers? The mysterious fingers in big dim-sum chain workers do it. So what does that mean?
Stop condescending and comparing milkshakes to wombats or liver problems. I don't know maybe after I'll practice, and so would you- by the guidance of those long decease 'magnificent savages we would be able to kill the elephants. Wow! What a thought! - You put in this meaningless romantic-Pseudo-scientific hierarchy so that you (and your friends, in the academy or not in the academy) can employ what has a logical appearance only to give you the feeling this explains something.
recommending the Volosinov again. Check it out before you rule it out for the "Academia is BS to all its generations". It's legitimate to think in the academia or outside of it or anywhere. For your information, Mikhail Bakhtin Wrote all his life outside the academy being a dissident; lost his leg in a Gulag and Lived with his cat in exile in a north Kazakhstan village, being a high school teacher all his life. He wrote one of the most important social criticism corpuses. (Another recommendation: [1941, 1965] "Rabelais and His World"). Are you also intimidated with "academic" sound? maybe read the content (of my response) first and then decide.
October 7, 2008 9:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
No. I read the works of Wittgenstein 40 years ago and abandoned silly debates stitched out of cat's cradles of theories, critiques, and abstractions. Instead, I chose to spend my time in more rewarding activities, such as nomadic agricultural field labor. Idle speculation is a certain path to a break with reality. A fool and his grasp of reality are soon parted.
October 7, 2008 10:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Both. Elections should be about defeating as much of the opposition as we can. Governing should be about incorporating the best efforts of both sides.
October 7, 2008 1:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
As one who grew up in the fifties and became an adult in the mid-sixties within the North Shore suburbs of Chicago, might I suggest that this movement was not without its own racism, nativism and dogma. Most adults I knew were outspoken in their support of Joe McCarthy and expressed out and out racist and nativist opinions not a great deal different from what we now hear among the current crop of conservatives who speak about Macacas, ragheads and glassing cities.
No, though many would like to see a purer conservative shoot misdirected, sadly we are seeing the main growth of the seed.
October 7, 2008 2:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
There were always several things that troubled me about the conservative movement--as opposed to a conservative philosophy that precedes the movement. 1--William F Buckley worked for the CIA and his family came out of the Oil Industry. His values and speech mannerisms were those of a classic Tory. This is not a perspective that embraces egalitarian notions that are at the heart of Americanism. 2--Buckley opposed Civil Rights.'States Rights' became an early euphemism for what can only be called institutionalized racism. 3--the polarizing and progressive demonization of 'liberals' as well intended but misguided and foolish. Buckley liked to speak in a lot of generalized abstractions--but in practice it boiled down to 3 things: let capitalism run amok. Don't let labor organize. Keep the culture, and society, segregated. You could add a 4th--roll back Roosevelts entitlements--and a 5th--maintain a muscular belligerance towards Communists.
The problem with this agenda is that the first 3 goals produce an unhealthy situation of one-sidedness and monopoly. The 4th--is a safety net against populist revolution. And the 5th--China, today, is our biggest trading partner, and brother--are they Communist, or what? So--whose agenda is misguided and foolish? The Soviet Union unravelled for reason unrelated to the posturing of conservatives. So--where are the great achievements of the conservative agenda?
October 7, 2008 2:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
In other words, for the last (futile time) I think your own abstractions of evolution and DNA to human history are as wrong as the ones you say you hate. If you don't know what I'm talking about just say it. With Wittgenstein (who I think was detached of humanity and reality) ,who influenced many- just as you describe it- oh well... condescended ignorantly ahead, being just a farm's gall', much more connected to the ground than "me and my friends in the academy" (as your farming prooves your superiority) the philosophy fools who talk gibberish whith out knowing it.
October 8, 2008 3:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
When you are lost in the forest, everything seems so overwhelming. The trees are so big, the undergrowth so thick. But when you climb to the mountaintop, and look out, you see the boundaries of the forest, and the meadow beyond, and you are no longer FIXATED on single trees. This is called transcendence, and it is the foundation of understanding. The Buddha called it the recognition of interdependent causation, and counselled that the only important question was: how do I become enlightened. Wander on through your realms of Samsara, my priggish little friend. Someday you may find the path that winds to the top of the mountain, where you will be able to perceive for miles and miles all around you.
October 8, 2008 9:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Seems that CONDESCENDENCE is terribly good for enlightenment. Again, odd that you speak of Transcendence when your mentor is Wittgenstein, besides speaking of not seeing the miles around me (or the whole world) while ignoring what I tried to point to you as limiting. As long as it makes you feel superior and just... God bless you too.
October 8, 2008 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is amusing to me to watch how your mind works. A drop spills, and, by the time you are finished with it, the factory of your overwrought imagination has engineered and populated a whole Cosmic Divine Comedy replete with yourself as Virgil, a vast and ancient intricate history, and heavenly choirs singing Hosannas. If you can invent all of that from a couple of casual sentences left on a message board, why you should be writing science fiction, my son. Harness that imagination and put it to good use, instead of boring an old man.
'I'd rather have fun with fungi than idiocy with ideology.'--Aldous Huxley
October 8, 2008 2:42 PM | Reply | Permalink