Syncretism
20 Apr. 2008
I had a conversation with Tim yesterday in which I managed to repel him by admitting that I'm currently trying to wean myself off caffeine. Things quickly degenerated, ending with him grunting about the end of civilization and something about prying coffee from his cold, dead hands.
I was thinking about this conversation a few moments ago as I was walking home from the nearby bagel shop, clutching a nice, warm cup of coffee in my hands. The crux of Tim's argument was that the act of drinking coffee is so intensely pleasurable, that he feels so magnificent after having just had a cup, that he can never bring himself to give it up. I didn't actually disagree with his assessment of the sybaritic pleasure of a cup of joe (hence why I was in the middle of imbibing even as I am trying to stop), but I realized as I was walking that my disagreement with him is over which aspect is so pleasurable. It's not the caffeine. It's not even the coffee itself. It's the ritual of having a favorite drink, at a certain time of day, and allowing yourself to momentarily do nothing but wallow in the ritual. When I drank Dr. Pepper, nothing could be as heavenly as the peppery, sweet bite in the back of my throat and the mild irritant of the fizzy water. When I switched to Italian soda, the sharp bite of the bubbles continued to please. And, now that I drink coffee, I delight in its warmth when I have it hot, and its creaminess when I have it cold. And always, always through the three I have engaged in my sinful little delight at the same times of day.
As I admired this intriguing little realization, it struck me that it's not at all unrelated to the whole host of other disagreements I am currently having with a whole host of other people and ideological positions. I've struggled recently - painfully unsuccessfully, I might add - to articulate to myself and others exactly why I'm having such a nasty break with so many positions I thought I held or that others expect me to hold. Why can't I bring myself to be a feminist if I'm both a lesbian and a liberal? (This particular failing has been especially infuriating to many people I come across, as I am apparently "supposed" to be a feminist.) Why have I suddenly decided I am against the death penalty when I had no problems with it before? Why do I suddenly think Democrats are absolutely 100% full of shit even as I continue to identify as liberal?
Let me back up just a bit before going on. Although the discussion Tim and I had is finally allowing me to answer all of these questions, it was preceded several nights ago by a different conversation that laid the foundation for my coffee-inspired realization. The conversation was over whether the death penalty is acceptable or not. I was surprised that, save one, all of my friends said it was. My argument against it was twofold.
The first part was that, although at any given time we must out of practical necessity put our faith into the fact that we are right, history consistently proves us wrong. We now know that the earth is not flat. There is no such thing as the ether or the vapors. Freud was mostly wrong. Newton's been proven inadequate and Einstein's starting to look a little shaky himself. Personally, I'd go so far as to say there may not be such a thing as truth, but that's beside the point - all of those theories and beliefs have proven immensely useful while they were in vogue. They worked. They allowed us to make decisions, create worldviews, get things done. They gave us a direction and let us put our shoes on in the morning. So I'm not saying that we should discard any effort to believe things or choose a position. But I am saying that you'd have to be just plain stupid not to exercise a level of humility when it comes to your beliefs. Greater men than you or I have been proven wrong by the cruelties of time and popular opinion, and I, for one, simply cannot bring myself to believe that I will escape that fate where they did not.
The crux of the second was the same - that you'd have to be just plain stupid not to exercise a level of humility when it comes to your beliefs - although in this case substituting the words "misguided and dangerous" for "stupid." I was struck fully by the repercussions of this when watching, of all things, the movie Jesus Camp. There's a scene in which the leader of the camp is discussing how her goal is to create "God's Army." When noting how that differs from, say, Muslims teaching their kids to lay down their lives for Islam, she laughs a slight, dismissive laugh, as though she can't believe the obviousness of the answer and says incredulously, "because...excuse me...because we have the truth!"
And, in essence, this understanding of the possibility of error is what I see the entire American democratic system being based on. The system is built to mitigate error through the use of checks and balances and through heterogeneity. The idea is that an unchallenged belief system becomes extreme because there is no way to identify errors. And, god forbid that belief system happens to be wrong, the possibility for disaster is increased exponentially. In essence, America is founded on the idealism that through reason and Enlightenment we can become greater than we are, even as it also relies heavily on the practical realization that people are fallible. The system relies on the use of heterogeneity to mitigate error, given that homogeneity magnifies them.
Given that, it seems to me that the death sentence is inherently un-American. It removes the ability to come back later and say, "Oops. Heh heh. Sorry we locked you in jail for 30 years. We fucked up." The person is dead - there is no rectifying that error. The death sentence wraps the judicial system in the mantle of infallibility and removes the ability to check or balance its decisions in retrospect. Likewise (to finally, finally bring this back around to what I was talking about initially), I find that many ideological positions wrap themselves in that same cloak. It's wrong, they say, for our opposition to engage in (fill in the blank - building armies, refusing to listen to outsider voices, discriminating, refusing to pay taxes for our cause - the list is endless), but because we're right, it's okay for us to do that.
So that's the ultimate realization I've had with regards to my inability to reconcile myself with any number of positions I feel like I ought to be taking but just can't. It's not that I necessarily have any problem with the theoretical position. It's that I have a problem with the practice of carrying the ideas to fruition. The air of infallibility taken on by practitioners, the willingness to engage in inherently dangerous and fascist behavior because we're Just. So. Sure. that we're right. Our society laughs behind its hands at Machiavelli, calls him wicked and wrong and says we'd never do that, yet to our peril we live his philosophy every day.
Given this, the only position I do find myself being able to take is the one that embraces - actually, truly embraces - the fact that opinions diverging from one's own are necessary and absolutely vital to a healthy society. To that end, I do buy into a lot of the Democratic party's platform. Diversity is vital to a vibrant, progressive, secure, and robust society, one that can withstand the most pressures from the most directions at any given time. And also to that end, I can't sit in a room with a bunch of Democrats vilifying "the enemy" or belittling divergent opinions as stupid or wrong. It's hypocritical and dangerous. Democrats wonder how they manage to blow it at the 11th hour every election cycle? It's because they don't practice what they preach and everyone realizes deep down that they're full of shit, their promises mere empty rhetoric. They say all the right things, they have all the right aims, but they don't look to the heart of why they are striving to achieve those goals.
In other words, they haven't analyzed their own positions. They think they want diversity, but they fail to appreciate why, and so they fail to realize when their own actions inhibit their ability to reach that goal. And when the chance for ritual presents itself, they pass it up, holding out, wrongly, for its pale shadow - a mere cup of coffee.
25 Apr. 2008 4:35 am
You'll be much more pliable once we get you off the caffeine.
Also, is it a categorical imperative that a lesbian should be a feminist? Because you are receptive to understanding ideas that are different that your beliefs, you might be able to explain the logic behind lesbian=feminist 4evr!!!
My issue with feminism is that for one, it promotes a point of view that misses the big picture. For example, there is the argument that the American education system fails girls. And then there are pundits like Christina Hoff Summers who argue that the education system really harms boys. Sometimes I want the two parties to meet and come to the conclusion that our current educational system doesn't do favors to many people regardless of gender... And so it goes.
Also, traditionally feminist perspectives have only taken into account the plight of a very small subset of women (white, middle class, etc.)
Not to mention that feminism offends those people who have chosen to live their lives "-ism" free.
25 Apr. 2008 2:01 pm
I have many of the same problems you do.
As for the logic behind "lesbian=feminist4evr!!!"? It's really an offshoot of the attitude I discussed in the post.
People are generally too self-interested to consider causes that aren't intricately linked to their own well-being. They also lack the imagination to consider that others may not feel the same. (This ties in to your complaint that traditional feminist perspectives are narrow.) Ergo - since I'm a woman and I like other women, so the thinking goes, I'm would seem an obvious shoe-in for anything that purports to improve my own personal situation as a woman.
I chose feminism as an example because I have had the most personal difficulty and fights with those who adhere to its strictures, but I do want to make it extremely clear that these attitudes are not unique to feminism. They aren't unique to the Left, either. But what makes it particularly infuriating to me coming from the Left is that we otherwise share a lot of points of agreement and find it disheartening to see the Left destroying its own chances at anything meaningful by being unable to rise above petty self-absorption, greedy self-interest, and smug self-satisfaction.
The self-satisfaction, especially, worries me - the Left's well-meaning but absolutely appalling history with eugenics, birth control, rehabilitation, social services, etc paints a pretty nasty picture of elitist technocrats who think the answer to the world's ills is converting everyone into Stepfordian mirrors of themselves. Terrifying stuff. Wanting to help others is one thing. But wanting to help them so that they can live your life is a whole different thing, indeed.
If I must pigeonhole myself, I suppose I could most closely be seen as an old school Republican influenced by modern understandings of science, society, and diversity. Diversity provides strength both biologically but also socially and politically...But that diversity cannot truly be achieved unless we embrace the widest possible range of behaviors, people, and ideologies possible. To that end, government programs and personal behavior that foster such things and allow opportunity are to be encouraged. Programs and laws that prohibit behaviors are to be used very sparingly, and only when they are a lesser evil than the behavior to be prevented.
26 Apr. 2008 12:34 am
The problem is, as annoying as it is for the elites to want to mold everyone in their own image-- this may be a genuine limitation reached by most people.
It might be near impossible for a person not to construct a world view intricately linked to self-interest.
And obviously, self-interest runs the spectrum from the classic Rawlsian veil of ignorance/original position to exquisite narcissism.
But, from an evolutionary standpoint, we are hardwired to preserve ourselves before we contend to the needs of the rest of the tribe. I am thinking back to Martha Nussbaum's theory of concentric circles, where you will act to preserve your own village's wellbeing and interests before you do the same for your country, etc.
It does seem to be a human blindspot, that even the best of us cannot rise above our unoriginal positions, and stop trying to do a one-stop rescue mission where we help our village and save the rest of the world.
That being said, you also need to consider why we do value what we value, and the ways in which our own values and ideas of the good life are intermingled, in a truly organic sense; and not incorrectly conflated, as you contend.
26 Apr. 2008 1:22 pm
....no, you've slipped in "and save the rest of the world" disingenuously. Nice try, though.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I agree that we are hardwired to be selfish. Okay. How on earth does that fact then extend to us feeling the need to extend that saving desire to the rest of the world? Other cultures do not exhibit this tendency, and even comment on how "American" it is for people to do things the government is meant to do (France especially comes to mind). That tendency is a social offshoot of our political roots - the original separation our country had between social tasks and government tasks (which were strictly relegated to diplomatic, trade, and infrastructural concerns).
I have considered why people value what they value (I am not sure in this case who you mean by we - the Left, you, or humankind?), and that is precisely why I have written this post. This post, which, I should point out, is a lament, not a call to arms. It is a lament that people do not consider why they value what they value. A lament that they do not question themselves so as to recognize when perhaps their values are self-defeating.
But, truthfully, I do not expect this to change. All of human history would indicate that this will not change. We are still grappling with the same questions we grappled with 2000 years ago. And that is why I lament but do not suggest "fixing" things. I can only change myself by becoming aware of the world around me, and nothing and no one more.