Americans Abroad (Free-style)

“To thine own Self be true...”
—Shakespeare: Hamlet

You should make amends with you,
If only for better health.
But if you really want to live,
Why not try, and make yourself?
—Incubus: Make Yourself

What does it mean to be an “Authentic Self;” or to be Authentic or true to one-Self? Throughout all of Human History there seems to have been a moral imperative to “know thyself,” but in Modernity this need took an odd turn. And now today, a strange mixture of anti-Capitalistic ire and obsession with a Psychological need for “well-being” has seemed to confuse the issue to the point that we no longer know exactly what we mean by this, nor how to go about achieving it.

This strictly Modern problem can be traced back to Rousseau’s radical distinction between Nature and Society. For him, Man in the State of Nature couldn’t help but be him-Self and live in accord with the dictates of Nature, and his specific nature, because there was no alternative; there were no “Alienating” structures that divided his loyalty and impressed conflicting beliefs or duties upon him. He lived as a unified whole and his Amour de Soi—Love of Self—was pure and uncontaminated by the corrupting influence of Ego, Vanity, Ambition and Jealousy that are unavoidable by-products of Society and social interaction.

But today, we have two, seemingly contradictory, notions of what it means to be “Authentic.”

There is the idea of being Authentic to one’s History and Culture—such as the Peruvian family in the 30 Rock clip that has been hat-makers for the last 2,000 years. The value placed upon this brand of Authenticity is its ability to resist the corrupting influence of money and status-seeking and vulgarity: hallmarks of the well-worn critique of Capitalism. We marvel at its longevity and respect for ancient Tradition—and the attendant “care” that is put into the act of creation. The point of production is not simply maximization of profit at any cost and there is a connection to the necessity out of which it was born; therefore not simply “a groundless commitment made in the void.”

But then there is also the complete opposite sense in which we use the word “Authentic”: being Authentic to one-Self. Supposedly, we are all born as an "Authentic Self," but become “Alienated” by the demands of Society/Social Duty and the Values that we are indoctrinated with beginning at birth. To be Authentic, to be a true “Individual,” we need to stay faithful to our nature—our individual, unique, special, one of a kind nature that is all our own—even if it is completely incompatible with the Culture we happen to be “thrown” into during the lottery of birth.

So which do we mean when we say that we value “Authenticity” or “being Authentic”? The goal of both types is an escape or solution to “Alienation”: estrangement from something that is “real.” In the first type, it is an Alienation from an Individual’s Cultural History and Man’s former connection to a more Authentic form of Labor, i.e. Craftsmanship; the second, an Alienation from one’s true Self. One is external, the other internal; but the goal of the latter is, in essence, about Freedom from the former.

What Modern Man ultimately desires is Freedom—especially its most extreme form: the Freedom to do or to be whatever you want; to make yourself. But is not a 2,000 year old family of hat-makers the complete opposite of that proposition? The awe-inspired reverence Liz Lemon has for this family is completely inimical to the goal of Modern Man. I bet somewhere along the line in the last 2,000 years there was at least one son who did not want to be a hat-maker, instead was really passionate about making shoes. But he was probably forced by his father to be one—in order to keep the family Tradition alive. What do you think Ms. Lemon would have to say if she knew that?

The cause of this reverence for these uncorrupted Cultures is to protect developing countries from what are seen as the ravages of the Capitalist System—so indepthly chronicled by the writings of Marx—but is it not, in essence, denying the citizens of these countries the very goal that people like Liz Lemon also hold in such high esteem—namely, Freedom? I can completely sympathize with the impulse, but we must be clear what exactly we are talking about if we are ever going to be able to accurately and honestly talk about a concept as illusive as “Authenticity.” Maybe the real conversation we should be having is: what does “Freedom” mean?

Do What I Say, Not What I do

God may be dead for most of the so-called "enlightened" West, but He appears to still be alive and well(?) in the Middle East. The battle over the Holy Land between Israel and Palestine continues to rage on and is a very contentious issue that I think would be better for me not to weigh in on because really neither side is innocent nor more guilty than the other. I will stop with a simple recommendation of this doc, which was very well done and is getting all sorts of international recognition.

Last week I went to a screening of this movie that was attended by the director Julia Bacha, as well. After the film she did a question and answer portion about the film and about the climate of the news media and entertainment today. I have nothing but respect for people who risk their lives to help "bring the war home" in movies like this one, as well as another really good one I saw recently about Afghanistan called Restrepo. It is very easy, from our comfortable haven in America, to forget the dire struggle our service men and women are going through on a daily basis, especially as our current wars have kind of lagged on and have lost the attention of the news media.

What I really want to talk about though doesn't really have anything to do with these movies, nor the wars that are going on, but instead with this "Attention Span" problem. On the surface, it would seem to be a slightly more trivial issue, but I feel that in the long run its consequences will be felt much more acutely than any sort of blowback resulting from these latest "foreign policy adventures." It has to do with a disconnect—not just the average citizen's from the realities of war, but, even more deeply, the average Individual's disconnect from reality itself.

During the question and answer portion, the topic of Attention Span of the average American today was brought up. The typical demons were blamed: commercials, multi-tasking on the internet, text messaging, the increasingly quick cuts used in Hollywood-style films. Bacha even admitted that one of her next projects would be a series of Shorts because of this very problem. She said she had found that even Budurs' meager 70min running time seemed problematic for some people.

And then, to really drive the point home, I looked to my right at the attendee sitting next to me and, I swear to God, the jack-ass was on his Blackberry checking his Facebook! I was completely astounded that this moron, first-off, could not see the irony, but even worse was so oblivious or obstinate that he did not find something wrong with his behavior. I mean this is a no-brainer; even if he had something really, really important to check on, he couldn't at least wait another 20 minutes till the talk was over? Or if he was so uninterested in the discussion, why wouldn't he just leave? And don't even get me started about how many phones rang during the movie and the discussion, as well. How hard is it to remember to turn off the ringer?

The degeneration in Attention Span is definitely a most worrisome trend, but this lack of even the most basic level of respect is absolutely abhorrent. This problem goes all the way to the top of our social hierarchy too. Remember our esteemed members of Congress tweeting during the President's State of the Union address last year? I realize that we have a Culture War going on that disagrees on just about everything, but can we at least use a little bit of Common Sense and form some sort of consensus on this issue. Agree or disagree with the President, he is still the Commander in Chief and deserves at least some basic level of respect. These esteemed members of Congress were acting like bratty little Middle Schoolers passing the 21st Century equivalent of notes behind the teacher's back. Is it a wonder how our children act in schools these days?

When People Resort to Name Calling

Last night I went to see Charlie Gibson, the former host of ABC’s Good Morning America and World News with Charles Gibson, speak about the increasing polarization and incivility of the media and the rise of political niche-ization of cable networks. If you are not familiar with Gibson, he was the interviewer who asked the so-called “gotcha” question to Sarah Palin in her first major television appearance after her nomination for VP about how she felt about the Bush Doctrine.

It was an interesting evening with some thoughtful analysis about the current state of American politics and how the media shapes our world-views. There, of course, were the requisite attacks on Fox News’ brand of political coverage, with its self-proclaimed assertion of “Fair and Balanced” coverage contrasting with the obvious reality of its not so subtle bias; followed by the lamenting of the death of Objectivity—or at least the attempt at the suppression of the Subjective—in news coverage. He also shared a very telling anecdote—I call it anecdote, as opposed to fact, because he willfully acknowledged that he was severely approximating these statistics, despite their relative accuracy—about how our Primary System and Off-Year Elections usually workout:

The country can roughly be broken up into ⅓ Republican, ⅓ Democrat, and ⅓ Undecided or Moderate. During Primaries, the only ones allowed in many states to vote are people registered for those two parties. Also, in general, the majority of people who are active in politics are the people with the most extreme positions—whereas most people in the Center are generally satisfied by the Status Quo, or are just too busy to care, therefore do not get involved in the process. This means that the candidates who then trickle-down into the General Election or who are voted in during the Off-Year Elections—to which barely anyone pays attention—are those with the most extreme Ideologies causing the Moderates to choose between the lesser of two evils—both of whom they probably don’t generally agree with. You then get the fringes of both parties representing the country, who hold the most extreme Left/Right positions that can find no source of compromise in order to govern our nation.

This analogy seems to make a lot of sense to me and alludes to something I have mentioned before about how “the meek voice of compromise always seems to be drowned out by the angry shouts of Commitment and Moral Indignation because Passion speaks louder than Reason—and has an actual agenda and game-plan for implementing its goals.” But this “Live and Let Live” attitude of the Moderates is perfectly consonant with Americans’ basic conception of Rights: the idea that we have the Right to believe anything we want as long as we respect everyone else’s Right to do the same. I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your Right to say it. But this has no longer become acceptable for the extreme voting blocs and is the foundation of our so-called “Culture War.”

The Right is now being defined by its Christian, American Exceptionalism proponents and the Left is defined by the Cosmopolitan, Life-style Libertinism advocates and never the twain shall meet. The Middle is mostly defined by economic issues and their vote “swings” back and forth depending on the crisis our country happens to be facing at the time of a major election. It is hard to say where there could even be a source of compromise between the two extremes, at least as far as some sort of unified American Culture.

Another significant insight about current American voting patterns brought up by Gibson was the rise in homogeneity of counties, as high as almost 60% in many of them, who all vote for the same candidates. Gibson for all his probing insight into many other aspects of contemporary American trends, for some reason, could not come up with an explanation to this one. This really surprised me, especially in light of his awareness of the increasing niche-ization or balkanization of the American populace because I think these two things go hand-in-hand. As our opposition to political opponents becomes more and more uncivilized and divisive, of course we are going to cluster around those with like-minded Beliefs, Goals and Life-styles to find an anchor in a world gone mad.

This is also just an extension of our current search for Community and Culture because that is exactly what those two things mean—a shared set of assumptions which unites and binds a People. And, as the old grounding of these assumptions becomes ever more problematic, we are going to naturally gravitate towards and seek out like-minded people, who share the same Values and Goals as our-Selves. Unless we can find some new source to re-invigorate our old motto E Pluribus Unum, then this is a trend that is only going to be amplified to an even higher percentage.

It also doesn’t help that Marketers now divide us up in the same way when they talk about Target Markets and Demographics and then use Life-style Marketing that imprisons us in these constricted personalties and existences. As we increasingly learn to define our-Selves through Life-style choices, we begin to loose our sense of broader Community, Nationality and even Humanity. We become the narrowly-defined niche and our every action is expressed through this awareness.

It is hard to imagine what we will be able to use for the new foundation of Community, now that “God is Dead,” but this does not mean that it is not possible. Is Life-style really the best thing we can come up with, or can something more meaningful be found upon which to build the world of tomorrow?

It Felt Like a Kiss

Awesome new doc from provocative British film maker Adam Curtis. It is an examination of disparate forces that have arose over the last 50 years or so and their role in shaping the world the Individual now experiences on a day-to-day basis.

Or as Curtis puts it:
"I wanted to do a film about what it actually felt like to live through that time...Where you could see the roots of the uncertainties we feel today, the things they did out on the dark fringes of the world that they didn't really notice at the time, which would then come back to haunt us."

"The politics of our time are deeply embedded in this idea of Individualism, which is far wider than...consumerism or anything like that. It's how you feel. People think, 'Oh, if it's within me it must be true.' But it's not the be-all and end-all. It's not an absolute. It's a way of feeling and thinking which is a product of a particular time and power. The notion that you only achieve your true self if your desires, your dreams, are satisfied ... It's a political idea. That's the central dynamic of our life."

Word Up

This is a list of the Top 10 most looked up words on Dictionary.com right now.

1. Pretentious
2. Ubiquitous
3. Love
4. Cynical
5. Apathetic
6. Conundrum
7. Albeit
8. Ambiguous
9. Integrity
10. Affect/Effect

It appears that we are desperately searching for the words with which to describe our reality, but are not quite sure of their proper meanings. It appears to me that we are on the right track, if this list is any indication.

You Can Lead a Man to Reason, but You Can't Make Him Think

The word Kultur or “Culture” was first used in its modern sense by Immanuel Kant—who was thinking of Rousseau’s description of the Bourgeois—in an attempt to make up for the, supposed, deficiency in character of this new type of man. The Bourgeois was neither Citizen nor Individual, and his Self-Interest—even his Enlightened Self-Interest—it appeared, was simply not a sufficient basis upon which to unite a People and create a Common Good. After Rousseau’s critique, the new Liberal doctrines—based upon the early Enlightenment thought of Hobbes, Locke, and Montesquieu—had become insufficient, or at least too unattractive, to found truly Human societies upon. To “Enlightened” Europeans of the time, countries like America looked merely like an aggregate of Individuals, or disorderly marketplaces—dumping grounds for the refuse of real Cultures—where Individuals would simply bring their sellable commodities in the morning, and then at night return to the privacy of their own homes and enjoy, privately, the proceeds of their day.

These new Commercial Republics had as their foundations the pursuit of Material Well-Being and Self-Preservation and had stripped politics of its old imaginary goals—dedication to the preservation of throne, altar and country—leaving Man unclothed and unprotected in a new “civilized” War of All Against All. The idea of “Culture” was created as a way to somehow make up for the loss of these higher goals after the demystification of Religion by the Enlighteners—to preserve something like Religion without having to resort to superstition and myth; it was an attempt to give Morality and Art a place in the Modern World, in order to preserve the “Dignity of Man.” This new Liberal mode of Politics, with its Universalistic view of Man as Man—as opposed to the man of a particular time and place—ended up not being as attractive as was first thought, and the Culture Movement—which continues, although in a deformed manner, to persist to this very day—was created as a proposed corrective to Liberal Society or as a radical rejection of its new mercenary Morals and indifference to Art and Politics.

Plato, almost 2,500 years ago, in The Republic, gave an allegorical account of what it means to be part of a Culture—although he never actually used the word and there is no Ancient Greek word that can even be translated as “Culture.” He said, more or less, that the particular Cultures/Communities of the world are caves into which we are all born and are chained with our heads restrained forcing us to look only forward. We all stare at a wall in front of us, upon which shadows are projected that constitute the gods and heroes that are particular to our time and place that the Culture’s ideas of the good and justice are based.

There is, however, a steep incline that leads out of the cave through which the bright light of the sun shines blindingly through. “Philosophers” are people who have broken free from the chains, have exited the cave and can see the situation for what it truly is. And, for Plato, it is their responsibility to the Common Good to come back into the cave and to try and influence the politicians to rule more reasonably. But this does not mean the execution of the gods; it does not mean the empowerment of the People; it does not mean the multitudes be made capable of philosophizing. Only the Leaders—and the Philosophers who inform them—know the truth of what’s outside the cave but the masses, in the end, can at least profit from the insights of this blinding Truth. However, they are never to be told the Truth because they “can’t handle the Truth.”

Modernity changed all that. The Enlightenment philosophers didn’t necessarily think that the Masses could be made into Philosophers, but they did recognize a certain level of reasonableness of the People. If Man’s deepest motivating passion is Self-Preservation, it would be logical to conclude that Man could make rational decisions about what will help preserve himself the best—especially the type of Regime that would preserve him the best. Thus a conspiracy was born to shine the Light of Being into the caves—permanently dimming the images on the wall. The task was to rationalize all the old legitimizations of power—strength, wealth, religion, tradition, birth, age—to show that they were all simply Man-made, and hence not morally binding. Revolution became Man’s greatest and most celebrated act. The new Societies that would be created no longer would put a Socrates to death because his usefulness to Society could be made evident: Science can aide in Man’s pursuit of Self-Preservation.

But as I have said previously, at the very moment of its triumph a very large wrench was thrown into the gears of this modern machine. Rousseau’s critique of these new types of Societies was undeniable and it did not paint a very pretty picture for the future of Humanity. From this new outlook, the Culture Movement was born. For some, such as Rousseau and Kant, the goal was still the universal justice of Freedom and Equality implicit in the Enlightenment project, but the character of it was in need of some slight adjustment. The bland uniformity and universal homogenization that were to be the result of this overly rational, overly calculating mode of politics was rejected because it turned out to be only an easy fix for a very difficult problem and didn’t seem to take into account the full range of the human condition. It just wasn’t capable of accounting for the creative, artistic, or “Free” aspects of Man’s Nature and its deficiencies caused a backlash that continues to persist.

Today, in America, there are two different uses for the word Culture: 1) is as a description of a People or Nation—American Culture, Japanese Culture, Iranian Culture, Jewish Culture, etc; and 2) is everything that is created that’s opposed to Commerce—Art, Music, Literature, PBS: creations that aren’t merely dictated by the amoral demands of the Market. These two conceptions are linked in that 2 is what makes up the content of 1. The Art, Music and Literature shape the world-view of the American, Japanese, Iranian and Jew and are expressed through the customs, styles, tastes, festivals, rituals and gods that unite the separate Individuals into a community with shared roots and common goals. The Individual is sublimated into the collective, which allows a People to think and will generally for their Common Good.

“Culture” was originally conceived by Kant as the goal of our highest human aspirations—an attempt to synthesize our low brutish, animal nature with our noblest Human longings; to restore, on an even higher level, some sort of wholeness that was lost after the initial Social Contract that destroyed the perfect unity of our being that we had in the State of Nature. It was on a higher level because this new wholeness now included all of Man’s faculties and capabilities and attempted to aim them toward Man’s greatest ambitions in all the creative fields we have acquired in Civil Society.

But it soon came to simply retroactively describe the various and varied Human phenomenon that had resulted during Man’s journey from the State of Nature to Civil Society. It was transformed from Culture to Cultures, and it now has become Politically Incorrect to judge the content of the these manifestations despite these old “Cultures,” as Nietzsche put it, being nothing but “superstitious custom that originated on the basis of some misinterpreted accident.”

We are now told we must respect Others' Cultures and that we are not allowed to judge the Values of them; that we must worship and promote Diversity and Multiculturalism; that what separates us (Culture) is more important than what unites us (Nature). But there is this vast contradiction of internal logic that no one seems to recognize here. Liberal Tolerance—Classical and Modern—is completely debilitating to Culture—which was first created as a response against Liberalism. Although, we currently use it as a means of building a dam against the torrents of Capitalism and “Eurocentrism,” in the end, it will completely subsume them.

Liberalism has no respect for Cultures because it is based on Reason and Science, whereas the old Cultures are all based on the dictates of a god and the attendant superstition and myth. Liberalism is based on Individual Freedom and the Right of the Individual to decide what is right for himself; it separates us by allowing our subjectivity to take preeminence over the collective expressions of our Peoples’ particularistic historical journeys. If an old value—say, the status of Women’s Equality in a particular Culture—does not coincide with Liberalism, then the Liberal denounces it because they believe in the intrinsic Equality of all. But how do we determine which Values can and cannot be judged?

Once you take that first step and decry that even one single Value that a Culture holds is unethical, or unreasonable, or indefensible, then you open up the floodgates of the dam and eventually drown the entire village. Everything is then open for critique and nothing is safe from the cold, clear lens of rational inquiry.

We may wish all we want to protect other Peoples from the ravages of the Capitalistic machine and so-called “American Culture,” but, unless we can have an honest conversation about the history that has resulted in the present, then all we are going to have are incoherent, whitewashed, ineffectual attempts to do so—such as the new “Cult of Diversity Worship” that is the intellectual rage in all the major universities of America today.

If you open yourself up to other Cultures and look into their cultural practices, what you will find there is, in fact, closedness because Cultures are, by definition, insular. They have to be; that is how they create and sustain their distinctiveness and inner-connectedness, which is what makes the world diverse. All Cultures think that their way of doing things is the best, except currently for the West. There are a multitude of reasons for this—mainly, I would say, due to so-called "Liberal Guilt" for Imperialism, Slavery and Racism—but we must realize that our current incoherent Liberal Ideology is going to result in either a) an extreme Right-Wing Nationalistic/Race-based reactionary force, who will not stand for the destruction of their Culture, or b) in the destruction of all distinct Cultures into one Universal Homogenous Culture.

Is there a way to reconcile Tolerance and Culture, or are these mutually exclusive world-views; does Tolerance necessarily require a relativism that goes to the depths of our very souls?

iRobot

Individualism 2.0

Although we are still too close to the event—making it, unfortunately, still too early to tell—that hasn't seemed to stop people from making all sorts of projections, predictions, commendations and denouncements about what the Internet will mean for our "democracy" and for the world in general. Here's an interesting article about Facebook and other Web 2.0 interfaces and their implications for our Individuality and our future collective enterprises.

Also, below is a link for a book mentioned in the article about the impact of the Internet on Individuality and Society.

You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto
by Jaron Lanier

The Politics of Resignation

So, I keep seeing this commercial every time I watch an episode of The Daily Show on its website and I just don't get it. I mean, "I get it"—like I understand that she is suppose to be an Alt/Hip/Bobo 20-something (a typical Daily Show viewer)—but I don’t get the message Microsoft is trying to get across about their product.

From the girl’s reaction—to me—it seems as though she is completely under-whelmed by The Cloud, or, at least, the product really doesn’t impress her very much. I know she is not “allowed” to emote real feelings because a) the plastic world with which we are daily confronted is nothing but Simulacra and Simulations; b) all Corporate branded products must be approached with an indefatigable layer of Irony; c) feelings are passé—but I don’t see how this is suppose to make anyone want to buy this product.

And then there is the “joke” about what she chooses to watch: Celebrity Probation: Season Premier. Is this suppose to be a dig at modern American culture, or is it just suppose to be reflective of it? Is her under-whelmed reaction to the product or to the show? In an age where all recorded media from the last 100 years is available instantly, why would you chose to watch something that you are obviously not very excited about?

All Youth Culture is becoming based around this Self-satisfied language of perpetual winks: “I know, that you know, that we know, that you know.” It is this cooly ironic, self-mocking, phoniness exposé that if you are not hip to, then you may be rightfully looked down upon. It is The Simpsons multiplied and divided and blanketed across our entire cultural landscape, till all real sentiments and commitments and connections and feelings are exposed as the bald-faced lies that they truly are. But it is a tiresome pose, with little to no social rewards; it is a Self-defense mechanism, that treats the entire world as one’s enemy; it is a fulltime job, whose workload is infinite and whose payoff is lean.

Everyone might know that marketing is nothing but BS, but that doesn’t seem to help us figure out how to constructively deal with it, nor does it give us any alternative to it. This new Ironic Pose doesn’t just stop at advertising and has now come to take over our every interaction. The entire world has been unveiled and deconstructed, and our ability to have any sort of meaningful interaction with a person, place or thing has lost its grounding.

I would just like to take this moment to say, “It is not your fault.” You did not create the world that you were born into. You cannot necessarily be held culpable for resorting to what seems like the only way we have left to deal with it. However, we do create the world of the future and we can—and we will be—held responsible for the world we pass on to the next generation. This disconnected disillusionment may help you on an Individual basis to survive the day to day, but please try to remember that we are all part of a great continuum that, god-willing, will stretch on for eternity. Do we really want this to be our legacy?

The Tea Party to Restore Sanity

Over the weekend, I made my way down to our nation’s capital to attend The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear hosted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The rally was an attempt to move beyond the “animus” that is dividing our country into the Two Americas—Red and Blue, Conservative and Liberal, Christian and…Atheist, Secular Progressive, Agnostic, “Enlightened,” Apathetic, etc. The message was not so much that we have nothing to be mad about and that it is irrational to be so, but, rather, that it is counter-productive to be so to the degree that we have been seeing recently; and that it is not so much the American citizens themselves who are being unreasonable, but the ones that supposedly represent us—in Washington and on the Cable News channels, the ones responsible for defining the national conversation.

I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time reviewing the show itself—because, to be perfectly honest, it kind of sucked: the jokes fell flat and the interplay of the various personalities was kind of boring and forced—but, rather, the message behind the show, which I thought Jon did an excellent job of conveying during his last monologue. I think, more than anyone else on television right now, that Jon Stewart is one of the clearest and most reasonable voices that we have, and it is a shame/pathetic that the only voice of Reason is coming from a comedian, with a negligible sized viewership, that is more than reluctant to play the role that he has created for himself. Although Jon is obviously a committed Lefty, he never shies away from calling out the Democrats/MSNBC on their lies, anymore than the Republicans/Fox News and performs a valuable function that I wish the mainstream media would take more notice of and imitate.

Over the last couple months, I have attended various rallies/protests from a variety of different groups and have tried to talk to the attendees to find out what exactly their concerns are and the reasons they felt it necessary to come out and make their voices heard. I’ve been to a Tea Party event featuring Sarah Palin, a self-proclaimed Socialist march, an anti-BP protest, and now, I guess what you could consider, a more Centrist (ok, slightly left of Center) type of event and have been able to make some comparisons and contrasts that I would like to share with you.

First off, at each one of these events, the majority of people that I have talked to have been calm, rational people, with legitimate gripes and justified reasons for their discontent. This is, of course, not how they are portrayed by their political opponents, who only focus on the fringe radicals—the Racists and Homophobes, and the Anarchists and “Peace-niks.” The meek voice of compromise always seems to be drowned out by the angry shouts of Commitment and Moral Indignation because Passion speaks louder thanReason—and has an actual agenda and game-plan for implementing its goals. Most Americans don’t really know what to do about the Financial Crisis, or Healthcare, or Social Security, or Immigration, or the two wars, or a Living Constitution versus a Fixed one, and so on; but, they do know that they are unhappy with those in power and feel betrayed by the apparent lack of competency and moral fortitude to meet the demands with which we are now faced.

And that was the ultimate message of the rally this weekend: how can we make this voice of Reason heard over the din and dint of our "country's 24 Hour/politico/pundit/perpetual/panic conflictonator" who make a living by purposefully dividing us? Jon used the metaphor of Americans driving down the highway, on their way to work, merging from an eight-lane toll plaza into a two-lane tunnel. “You go, then I’ll go, you go, then I’ll go.” A common purpose and goal enabled compromise and, despite a driver’s possible distaste for the “Values and Principles” of their fellow drivers, they were still able to civilly proceed to allow everyone to arrive at the necessary destination.

This is a nice metaphor; a working model of civility and rationality in action, but, unfortunately, an extreme over-simplification of America’s problems. Whereas, it is not in our Self-Interest to run someone off the road and pick a fight with them just because we happen to disagree with their politically charged bumper-sticker, the real-world political realm allows for a bit less room for compromise with those of opposing Principles. Although we do need some sort of compromise between the two opposing Ideologies doing battle right now in America if we are going to be able to move forward as a country, we can’t really do that until we understand where the other one is coming from. And right now, the two sides are at such polar opposites that to think that we could achieve such a compromise is chimerical, wishful thinking.

What we have right now doing battle are two completely opposing world-views and views of Man and his Nature. There is no room for compromise on any issue because they are built upon two completely different foundations. How can you compromise on the extent and purpose of a law, if you are not even talking about the same type of person for which it is meant to control? How can you find a reasonable middle-ground, if you are not even talking about the same world, let alone country? This divide goes back to the modern dichotomy of Locke vs. Rousseau, that I have mentioned before, although the way that these opposing world-views has been divided up in the American mind is quite an odd combination and may account for much of the dissonance of our current debates.

Politically and economically Conservatives would be considered to be Lockeans: Limited Government, Separation of Powers, Checks and Balances, and a Free Market; Liberals, in this realm, are much more Rousseauean: Government should help to restrain Inequality—especially of wealth—and play an active role in limiting and regulating the Economy. But, in an odd turn of events—and the link that connects Classical Liberalism with today’s brand of it—when it comes to the Cultural realm, the roles are reversed and the Liberals become Lockean and the Conservatives side with Rousseau.

The very word “Liberalism,” of course, is derived from the root word “Liberty” or “Freedom.” In the tradition of the Enlightenment, Liberals today believe that everyone has the Right to say, think or do whatever they want—of course restrained from doing any sort of physical or mental harm to an Individual—unbound by any religious or “natural” restraint upon behavior, speech or attitude. It is still the idea of Reciprocation of Rights, or some sort of idea of Enlightened Self-Interest, that they believe in, but you would be hard pressed to find a Liberal today who would claim any sort of Classical Liberal defense for their Right to do so.

And this is where you see the Rousseau-side of Modern Liberalism begin to creep in. Classical Liberalism may have made a whole lot of sense on paper, but it was not nearly doctrinaire enough to compensate for the historical reality of Inequality that had proceeded it. It may have allowed for some people to move up the ladder—The American Dream—but it usually did so at the expense of Others and in general would result in the extreme Inequalities in wealth and opportunity that we have today. Therefore, they say, the government needs to take a more active role in the maintenance and distribution of wealth and power and even regulate access to certain products it deems bad for us.

The Conservatives are an even stranger and even more confusing combination of tendencies and doctrines that, as we can see, have resulted in an equal amount of dissonance in their theory and practice. Although they ostensibly follow in the Enlightenment tradition and the beliefs of our Founding Fathers—annunciated in the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights—they do not believe that these ideas can be divorced from our religious tradition (i.e. Christianity) and that the lack of government—or limitation of government within a narrowly defined sphere—can be and must be made up for in the Civic realm by shared Cultural Values and Beliefs. This is where the Rousseau-side of their thought comes in: Freedom constrained within a homogeneous and binding set of Cultural constraints that provides continuity and unity within a State.

But for some reason, Conservatives are unwilling to admit—or are simply blind to the fact—that this continuity and unity is completely undermined by their unequivocal support of Free Market, Globalized Capitalism. This may provide a high level of prosperity for our country, but I can’t think of any force more destructive to any sort of national unity or possibility of real Culture. A merchant has no loyalty beyond the ground upon which he stands, and to think differently is a naive folly. Why else would Fox rail against the Left—its anti-family Values and lack of restraint and morality—and then have a Sunday night line-up of The Simpsons,The Cleveland Show, Family Guy, and American Dad: all of which are unapologetic about their ridicule and distaste for the very Values that the Fox News Channel promotes?



When it comes right down to it, though, I would say that the biggest delineating factor between Cons and Libs is what you value more: Freedom or Equality—which always seem to be at an uneasy tension with one another.

The Cons, obviously, value Freedom more, especially Freedom from government or, at least, more Freedom to participate in the government, which serves as the present basis for their discontent—especially for the Tea Party. Because, the more that things are getting done in Washington, rather than in the State legislature, the more removed the average citizen is from the political process and the less say they have in the decision-making process. Freedom of choice and diversity of choice are reduced and you become stuck with one monolithic, federal bureaucracy in which you have no say and no other option. Although, for some reason, they fail to see, or don’t care to see, how the same thing can be said about overgrown Corporations and the enormous power and influence they exert over the political process, take for example the recent court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

The Libs tend to take the side of Equality more, which is the reason that they feel it necessary to expand Federal power and its ability to interfere in the daily lives of citizens. Despite our so-called “Civil Religion” annunciated in the Declaration of Independence—as has been the case for Humans with every other religious doctrine—we have failed to live up to the ideals embodied in it. This Liberals or “Progressives” feel justifies and warrants the expansion of Federal power—in order to make up for the disparity between our stated goals and the reality that has followed them. Plus, the only body powerful enough to counteract the influence of corporations is the government, so the more corporations grow and expand their sphere of influence, the more the government is forced to grow to try and counter-balance it (although this is a bit of a chicken and an egg type scenario and I have had discussions with Cons where they claim it to be the other way around, but I completely disagree with that).

Jon Stewart very clearly, yet inadvertently, summed up the basis for the division in our country in a recent interview on his show with Senator Ted Kaufman, when he closed the interview with the insight: “So if I may sum up: the system is corrupt and broken, exactly how it was designed to be.” To which Kaufman, the Democratic Senator from Delaware, replied, “Exactly.” Whereas, Cons are fundamentally distrustful of, not only, Human Nature, but of concentrated power in the hands of any Individual, or a small cabal of Individuals (regardless of their stated aim), Libs/Progressives believe in the ability to use Instrumental Reason to overcome our problems and the ability of a small group of “Experts” to scientifically come up with solutions to conquer the Human Condition, or of some sort of Human Perfectibility.

This is a huge, huge, huge topic, and this post is all ready much longer than I would like it to be, so let me kind of cut it off and sum up what I see as a basic solution to our problem. The first and foremost factor destroying the ability of our political system to function is the fact that it is designed as a means for running a Republic, and, over the last century, we have grown from our humble beginnings into a mighty Empire. Hence, the rules and regulations set up by the Founders are no longer workable on this massive of a scale, therefore, Jon is right to complain about the inefficiency and inability of our Federal government to pass meaningful and timely legislation—it is purposefully designed to do just that. But, I would say that there is not a Liberal alive today—in theory, at least—who does not see the American Empire as a bad thing, especially not Stewart, so I think that his criticism is uninformed and miss placed. And this is really the crux of the whole thing. The general setup is just fine—with the exception of some fine-tuning here or there—it is just being misapplied and is causing massive frustration.

Most Americans agree on exactly what the problems are, but our world-views and the justifications for our beliefs dictate such differing solutions that it is hard to create a national consensus and the means of implementing them against the wishes of the minority out of power amounts to Tyranny (hence the Tea Party position). The Constitution, however, provides a very easy compromise to this problem. The reason it is so hard to pass Federal legislation is because America is built on the idea of Self-governance, the Right of a People to decide what is right for them. The Founding of America was completely un-Ideological; there were no ideas of Positive Right that were dogmatically unquestionable (as in Communism or Fascism), simply Negative Rights that the Federal Government was meant to protect. The States then had the legislative power to experiment with the enacting of any sort of Bill of Positive Rights that they thought necessary and sustainable, thus giving the citizen 50 different options for what type of government they wished to live under.

Today, whereas, the Liberal position may be morally justifiable as far as Human Rights go, it unwittingly leads to voter apathy, the Individual’s feeling of a disconnect from the political process, the shrinking of the Individual inside the selfishness of their own heart, and—as of now, the still distant possibility—of Universal Tyranny (not necessarily because of its ends, but because of its means). If we—the average citizens—want to once again feel like we have a say in our government and the decisions that most effect our daily lives, then our goal should be the reduction of the Federal Government within the smallest sphere possible—which could be the source of compromise that Stewart is looking for—and the reduction of US interests—economic and political—throughout the world. I realize that this is not an immediate possibility and a lot of work would be required to enable this, but we are obviously by-partisanly dissatisfied with our current situation. And, if we do not want to see this “experiment in self-government” be dissolved, then it is our obligation as Citizens to stand up and make the necessary changes to once again take control over our lives.

Even at Our Worst, We're Still Better Than Most

In the grand scheme of things, there is not a whole lot that the Individual can do to make change. Only the ambitious ever make it into positions of real power that can affect on a large scale, meaningful way the lives of a significant number of people. This, however, does not mean that an Individual's actions are meaningless and that the day-to-day choices one makes have no consequences beyond the narrow sphere in which one's daily life is centered. You're choices make a difference on a material level: the amount of resources used and the waste management required after they are consumed; and they also make a difference on a psychic level: the example you set for those that surround you and possibly look up to you. This is why I don't think one should ever simply write themselves off as powerless. Collective action is simply the result of an aggregate of Individuals acting or thinking in a certain way, which can eventually add up to a significant majority.

Below is an interesting article about the International Drug Trade and the Individual's culpability in the destruction and death that is the result of a seemingly meaningless, selfish choice that, on the surface appears to be nothing but a Self-destructive decision, but, when aggregated, grows to have world wide implications. I'm not trying to be preachy, just presenting the facts.

The Boycott We Need: Walter Russell Mead