Last week I wrote a joyful elegy for the Republican party as we know it today then lodged a complaint against our apparent ideological amnesia. We have an enormously problematic understanding of ourselves as a people and as individuals. This generally results from a tendency to understand ourselves and our beliefs as self-evident, transparent and beyond history.
The media, conventional wisdom and education reinforce this ideological blindness. Typically on the news we see a pair of talking heads, ostensibly expert in their fields, arguing over an issue in a five-minute span as if we should take a syllable of what they’re saying seriously. Even if they had a brain we wouldn’t know it because they have to simplify to fit the television format.
But who would complain? We can either take solace in our pride in being a noble red-stater, a true representative of the bayou common man, or we admire our blue-stained soul, finding our comfort in knowing just thinking how we are above the ignorant NASCAR-watching peasants. Everyone can find their little piece of happiness, and the media finds no reason why we shouldn’t be led to question our little dichotomies. The politicians who make their living on talk and posture would hardly wish for a change.
There is perhaps a sort of noble simplicity to all of this; a simplicity I’m sure many College Republicans will relate to.
The education system fares little better. We spend so much time being told how unique and individual we are that we scarcely have time to learn anything. When’s the last time, outside of a Creationist fever swamp, you learned in biology class that all people’s interpretations of biology were equally important? But in liberal arts classes, where people are under the delusion that they aren’t responsible for learning anything other than how to be tolerant and how to “know their feelings,” students resent teachers who expect quality of thought rather than simple opinion.
This is of course a generalization – one most true of literature departments, which to my mind are almost entirely lost at sea – but I think even the most skeptical can admit this type of educational dysfunction occurs often enough to be downright disturbing.
By the way, I really don’t care if the Confederate flag “offends you” – I’ll listen if you supply me with a good reason for indignation, but it smells like grand-standing to me.
Last week I located the source of many of our problems in the Romantic / rationalist dichotomy – a hangover from our Western, Enlightenment tradition. The relationship between the two, a relationship of both interdependence and antagonism, is quite complex.
The most common expression of this dichotomy will be quite familiar however. The public sphere is conceived as artificial, though necessary for the common good, wherein the highest principles are utility and efficiency (ironic considering our vast bureaucracy), though guided by some universal moral principles based in Reason. These principles are justice, or equality, or perhaps some divine commandments, and, for the most unimaginative, democracy – a foul word.
These principles are well and good, but the fullest expression of our life occurs in our individual existence, wherein we express our personalities. Above all, we have an abstract right to this individuality – unless we break the rules of the public sphere, which exists simply to guarantee the safe practice of our individual wants, our pursuit of happiness.
For the Left, this right of individuality tends toward some over-the-top valuation of tolerance, and equality, and thus tends toward a sort of socialism. For the Right, individuality is guaranteed only by the state, and best by the United States. Therefore they exaggerate the value of the powerful nation, and tend towards fascism. Free market capitalists and fundamentalist theocrats tend to place their faith in even sillier things.
When you spell it out, the premises of our supposedly vast political differences look rather tenuous and even absurd. The truth is that red state-blue state animosity arises from specific historical origins, and from very specific philosophical errors of judgment which have infected the entire age’s imagination and set the terms of debate, hundreds of years after their creation and development.
Our time, culture and media resent authentic thought, and generally turns its back on any attempt to examine the truth value of the opinions we receive so easily. Perhaps it’s hard to expect anything less from a democracy where all men are created equal and everyone has their say. A social world where people are equal – an interesting object of fancy. Seems like God’s place to me, yet maybe the notion has some merit. But opinions? Created equal they are surely not.
Ethan is a philosophy senior. Contact him at eguagliardo@lsureveille.com