From: Erin (macavity11@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Oct 17 2005 - 18:33:24 BST
Arlo
I agree with what you write about individual thinking
I just don't think you are doing it when you lump
liberals and conservatives together. If you want
people to act/think as individuals then the first step
is treating them as such and not lumping them into a
"party people" category.
Like Before you complained about using a "my team" or
"your team" football analogy BUT you were the one who
brought that analogy in the first place.
Just like when you consistently make statements about
"the right" and deny you don't follow Platt's
left/right dichotomy.
I just don't find consistency in your argument....and
that isn't an insult I think it is hard to be
consistent which these kind of topics.
Basically I guess what I am saying is I agree with
pretty much everything you wrote below I just don't
agree that your behaviors/comments are always
consistent with these beliefs.
So again I don't think that it is me not understanding
your beliefs, I just disagree that all of you
behaviors/comments are consistent with them.
Erin
--- Arlo Bensinger <ajb102@psu.edu> wrote:
> Hi Erin,
>
> I want to attempt to clarify something, something
> apparently I'm not
> getting across (to you or Platt, it seems). When you
> say "I agree with that
> people should seek authentic power
> but I am not willing to grant authentic power
> seekers to all Independents
> and corrupt power seekers to all
> Liberals/Conservatives", I realize my
> point is still not clear, so...
>
> My concern is not that there are, or may be,
> individuals who call
> themselves "liberal" or "conservative", and who may
> be seeking what you
> call "authentic power". Nor do I think that
> "independents" are ipso facto
> "authentic power seekers" and non-independents are
> not. I am concerned with
> the cultural dialogue, which sets these two
> nearly-comparable platforms up
> as polar antonymns, and then fosters an "all
> Good/all Evil" overlay on
> this. To use Pirsig's words, the analytic knife has
> split the entire realm
> of political discourse neatly into two sides,
> conservatives and liberals,
> and then conveniently says this split also mirrors
> the "Good/Evil" split of
> morality.
>
> What stems from this is a pathological situation
> where inquiry and dialogue
> is squelched under the need to uncritically support
> "my team". People
> become not authentic agents, but cheerleaders for a
> political party. They
> disempower themselves by turning their critical
> agency over to the Will of
> the Party. A way to recapture this authentic power
> is for individuals to
> recapture their critical agency. To begin looking at
> issues, politicians,
> etc through their own lens of value, and not the
> lens handed to them by a
> fractured media that does nothing but parrot the "my
> side is always right,
> period" mentality that undermines individual,
> authentic, critical inquiry.
>
> In short, it is not the expression (or lack thereof)
> of authentic power in
> politicians that is my concern, but in the general
> public. It is not
> whether Hillary Clinton or Karl Rove are seeking
> "authentic power" or not,
> but for individuals to make their decisions based on
> their own critical
> analyses. I know that this is (generally) not
> occurring when there are
> double-standards applied to actions of "my party"
> versus "the other party".
> Based on the history of dissent, I can pretty much
> say with confidence that
> if it were a "liberal" president who took us into
> war with Iraq, the
> conservatives would be leading the charge of it
> being an immoral war, and
> the liberals would be saying what a moral cause it
> was. This is the effect
> of the current malady in the dialogue. If it was
> Bill Clinton's advisor who
> was suspected of leaking the name of a CIA
> operative, the uproar from the
> conservatives would be of such high volume, but as
> it is they ignore or
> support, or call it a "liberal conspiracy". And, if
> it were, the liberals
> would be making the same excuses the conservatives
> are now. This is the
> petty "game", the distraction and lack of authentic,
> individual critical
> inquiry in the dialogue. This is evidence, to me,
> that individuals have
> disempowered themselves and turned this power over
> to the Party.
>
> The "game" (conservatives v. liberals) becomes more
> important than anything
> else. "My side" is all right, all good, all that
> matters. I support it
> uncritically and obediently. I do not question. I do
> not disagree. I serve
> it faithfully, and condemn the other side as all
> wrong. They are all evil,
> having nothing of value to offer. I condemn it
> uncritically. I disagree
> with everything they say, every stance they make I
> reply with with how that
> stance will destroy our lives, bring about the end
> of freedom, the end of Good.
>
> That is the mentality the current dialogue serves.
> Not authentic power, but
> the blind obedience to authority. And this gets me
> right into Peirce and
> his essay The Fixation of Belief. According to
> Peirce, there are four ways
> we "fix" our beliefs. Tenacity (or stubborn clinging
> to), Authority (or
> giving in to the belief of another), a priori
> reasoning (or inductive
> reasoning) and scientific methodology (or
> hypothesis, experiment, result,
> conclusion, repeat). To Peirce, all of the first
> three represent a
> de-empowerment of the individual. In the last, the
> individual is given the
> agency and "authentic power" to think and believe
> freely.
>
> This is Pirsig's belief that the Intellectual level
> has moral supremacy
> over the social level. We start with an issue, an
> event, a topic, and we
> reason outwards from there. We don't care "which
> party", or "who" or
> whether or not it means a "democrat" will have power
> or a "republican". We
> condemn and exalt both readily, as the issue, event,
> topic or act warrants,
> based on Intellectual level reason, not adherence to
> social level power. Do
> we, as individuals, arrive at different different
> perspectives? Certainly.
> And then we can argue and negotiate and disagree and
> agree based on our own
> "authentic power" and not based on the will of the
> party platform.
>
> Arlo
>
>
>
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