"When you get older, you'll understand." So speaks the purported voice of "realism" when cautioning on the pitfalls of youthful idealism. The underlying message is that once one has "bought in" or "sold out" or however one wants wants to spin it, logic dictates that hungry radicalism must give way to a defensive stance. Lock the doors, man the barricades, and beware the ravenous hordes that covet your treasures.
The rousing, yet polite debate in the comments of the Crass post from the other day got me to thinking about politics, specifically where I stand on the ideological spectrum these days. I've dabbled with the various -isms on the left side of the dial over the years -- flirtations both tempestuous and mild with anarchist, socialist, and communist schools of thought. I'm a registered Democrat, but voted SWP and Green in a couple of elections, and have a lasting mistrust of self-labeled "liberals" and "progressives" over the recurring lack of conviction and undercurrents of paternalism on their part.
In the end, doctrinal semantics or theories built on wishful thinking matter less to me than a core principle, namely that everyone deserves a fair shake and equal access to essential goods and services. Egalitarianism is the cornerstone, and the rest is just trivia to be endlessly debated in closed, self-defeating circles.
Dogma and abstract theory have no purpose towards this end. My idealism is rooted in pragmatism forged by years of empirical evidence. Alliances and associations are made and broken depending on how well they serve the greater objectives, and if that means participating a electoral system that is fundamentally broken for the sake of seeing that rights are extended to those who deserve them or defended from those who would subvert them, then so be it. I would rather play a short term game for tangible benefits than a dubious long term strategy that hurts many in the meantime.
I'm with the Enlightenment thinkers on this: People will be people, no matter how educated they are, and the the best we can really strive for is to encourage the better angels of our nature and mitigate the impact of the worse ones.
No revolution, no shift in the political paradigm, no amount of education will eradicate the intrinsic pettiness of the human animal. Trust in socialist revolution and you end up with Year Zero. Trust in free-market self-interest and you end up with...well, take a look around at the mess we're mired in. Trust in mutual co-operation based on shared interests, and it's likely that you've never had to sit through the collective paralysis and bickering of a union gathering or town meeting.
Education and faith mean less than a modicum of awareness and a functioning sense of empathy. The framework of modern civilization has gotten so elaborate and the threads of interdependence so convoluted that it is too easy to fall into a false sense of moral hazard, so that even when the consequences of one's actions manifest themselves it is an easy enough matter to deny, shift, or ignore the blame.
Barring some massive depopulation of the species and a return to scattered tribes of hunter-gatherers, a shift from psuedo-free market capitalism to autonomous soviets or nationalized industries will not address the real problem. Indoctrination of the abolition of currency will not prevent the emergence of would-be Dick Cheneys looking for angles to exploit.
It's a classic Catch-22: Revolutionary change without a mass awakening in civic vigilance is pointless, but if the masses possessed such a sense of vigilance, a revolution would be redundant.
Ten Years After - I'd Love to Change the World (from A Space in Time, 1971) - The sound of the 1960s counterculture collapsing in on itself.
Comsat Angels - Waiting for a Miracle (from Waiting for a Miracle, 1980) - What's the difference between a miracle and the 134 bus? The 134 bus does show up on rare occasions. The only historical inevitability is that people will do foolish things for foolish reasons.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
tell me where there's sanity
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Vacation 2008: Day 5 - Objectivist hygiene
I've been slowly working my way through Blake Bell's Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko, a very well-written examination of the legendary comics creator's life and body of work. Bell does an outstanding job of addressing not only Ditko's unique sense of aesthetics, but also the man's fiercely Objectivist philosophy and personal eccentricities, and their effect on his artistic style and professional career.
Nowhere is Ditko's evangelism for the Ayn Rand school of petty selfishness "enlightened self-interest" so fervent and unrestrained as in 1973's The Avenging World. Not so much a work of sequential art as a bizarre illustrated primer espousing Rand's political theories in the most lurid, brute-force method imaginable, The Avenging World reads like a Chick tract adaptation of Atlas Shrugged set in the Dread Dormammu's Dark Dimension -- entertainingly bat-shit in the way only an embarrassingly sincere and personal project by a talented eccentric can be.
That doesn't mean that reading The Avenging World is anything other than a tough slog through repetitive dissertations -- in comic strip, illustrated text, and infographic format -- on the primacy of "rational self-interest" over collective obligation. I trend toward the left-libertarian/anarcho-communist side of things myself, but I temper my views with liberal doses of cynical pragmatism. The uncompromising rightist Objectivism in The Avenging World refuses to partition the "is" from the "ought," which is why the ideology tends to be in practice more justification than aspiration. "A = A" is an abstraction, and as such, is a hollow mantra in a world where the messy and inconclusive are commonplace.
Swap out the abstract for the concrete, and the philosophical scenarios presented in The Avenging World would go something like this...
Ideological purity is no substitute for a can of Ajax and some elbow grease.
New Order - Age of Consent (from Power, Corruption, & Lies, 1983) - A musical selection whose sublime and fragile beauty I trust we can all agree upon.
Monday, May 19, 2008
this cat is where it's at
People of America, I'm sure you've heard what the other candidates are proposing as the solutions to the challenges facing this great nation of ours. Before you cast your ballot, however, you ought to ask yourself if another four years of politics-as-usual is really what this country needs.
There's another way. A better way.
It's time for a new species of chief executive. It's time for a Tawky Tawny presidency. As a tiger who has managed to pull himself up by his own foreclaws (notwithstanding scurrilous rumors concerning the patronage of a being of godly power), Mr. Tawny is able to rise above the petty distractions of professional politics and offer a true vision of substance for America:
Tiger! Tiger! - So You Won't Deceive Me (from The Kind of Goodnight, 2007) - This Atlanta-based garage punk outfit has jumped to the #3 slot on my Last.fm "top artists" list, right behind The Clash and Lush. Fitting company, indeed.
Paul Anka - Eye of the Tiger (from Rock Swings, 2005) - The diminishing returns of irony, clearly illustrated.
(A big thanks to honorary "Tiger Scout" Dave Lartigue for his invaluable assistance.)
Friday, January 18, 2008
Friday Night Fights: Tis the Season for Reason
If you're anything like me (and if so I pity you), you might have found yourself muddling your way through Ayn Rand's overlong Objectivist screed, Atlas Shrugged, and wished that the tract-in-novel's-clothing featured more scenes of guys in colorful spandex costumes beating the shit out of each other.
It's a logical (or should I say "reasonable") enough response to the book, and we're fortunate that Charlton Comics' Blue Beetle #5 (November 1968; by D.C. Glanzman & Steve Ditko) has anticipated such a desire.
WOO-HOO! Go reasoned self-interest! Compromise and doubt is for moral looters, or even worse, hippies...
To think it took Rand, speaking through the character of John Galt, over fifty pages of speechifying to express the same sentiments.
Right-libertarians are not like you (I would hope) or I, and I thank Providence for that every chance I get.
Shriekback - Health and Knowledge and Wealth and Power (from Oil and Gold, 1985) - Can all be yours (though in all likelihood not), if you decide to smother any spark of compassion or empathy in favor of a ideology predicated on rational self-interest (also known as "narcissistic solipsism").
(An ideology unto himself.)
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