"Whereas morals are for ever, politics is just one damn thing after another, says Glen Newey (LRB 9 Jul 09). I used to think politics was a dirty word.
Growing up, we could say "shit," we could say "ass." We could say anything we wanted. We couldn't say "politics." Politics was what was wrong with everything -- with our country, with where my dad worked, with our building, our playground, the beach, even.
Newey explains my family dynamic: "The idea seems to be that morality is grander than politics, because it is more amenable to reason, for example, or has a longer use-by date."
Growing up, I've come to think of politics as fun. It started with the Greeks, for whom politics is the way of the city. In Greek, city is "polis" and the way of the city is "politikay." Reading Greek showed me that my love of the city is politics in its original sense.
Despite being born into the New York City of Deathwish, I've always thought cities are the greatest human invention.
Working in the city and for the city, I started to see that how interesting the political questions are. In Newey's review of Raymond Geuss, the second political question is fascinating: "What is the thing to do here and now?"
When you read philosophy and you read history, you learn a lot of interesting ways of looking at things. When you practice politics, you get to apply them. Applying the theories makes them fun: given everything you know to be right, how do you make it work?
While it's nice to read about them, the other questions don't strike me as interesting: "Geuss isolates three kinds of question that are distinctive of thinking about politics. Lenin’s celebrated query – kto kovo?, or ‘Who whom?’ – is, in Geuss’s view, the primordial political question. Second, ‘What is the thing to do here and now?’, which is very different from asking what it would be best to do from an imaginary eternal or universal standpoint. Third, there is a question about legitimacy, derived from Max Weber, but which has also bulked large in Skinner’s analyses of historical texts. What forms of legitimation are available to political actors?"
The first question seems like more of a national politics question. In a city, it should be -- and often is -- "us us." But some people feel perpetually left out. I suppose for them the "who whom" question is more meaningful. I always find these questions of "voice" frustrating. Given my history and Aristotle's maxim, this will likely be my main focus in a few months.
"There are no moral skyhooks from which politics can be hung. It is quite hard to understand, except perhaps as a relic of state-of-nature theory, why anyone should think that morality is given, while politics remains to be constructed."
I don't know. The eternal truths still seem more valuable. As to do the artistic achievements. Monumentum aera perennius.
"In the old days theologians had the task of explaining how God could permit evil to happen, to which the least bad answer was that He had to lump it, as the price of human freedom. No human agency, including the state, can do a remotely plausible impersonation of the Almighty. By keeping that in mind, we might even come to see politics, and its forlorn theodicy, not with despair, but muted celebration."
Hip hip hooray?
27 May 2012
Who am I when I'm all alone?
"Neither intimacy nor solitude is quite what it used to be" writes Lidija Haas (LRB 23 Feb 12). I go through withdrawal when my cellphone is far away. When it's near, I can't concentrate for long. If I'm reading the Iliad, even this edited version by Mitchell, I wonder when the next email or text is coming, or if I should look up more about Deiphobus or Idomeneus.
Haas explains, "The network we now carry around with us saves time yet uses up much more of it. It makes us so available to each other that sometimes we need to withdraw, but the result is that neither intimacy nor solitude is quite what it used to be."
Her essay recalls for me the times I could spend hours with lego or crayons learning who I am:
"With a doll, even the most imaginative child knows that he or she is playing alone. The prototype for My Real Baby was designed to cry out in pain when handled roughly, but when Hasbro put it into mass production they decided that it should instead shut down in such situations, so as not to 'enable' sadistic behaviour. Nobody would want 'to see their children tormenting a screaming baby,' but what might they learn from one that doesn’t react to torture?"
Our toys, our phones, our gadgets, they're all so "thoughtful" on their own, what are really our own thoughts. Just as Google knows what you're thinking as you're typing a search, and as a result, you don't know what you really wanted, just so the doll that cries, or the coloring book that has a drawing premade, or phone that interrupts your thoughts every few minutes -- who knows who I am when I'm all alone?
Haas explains, "The network we now carry around with us saves time yet uses up much more of it. It makes us so available to each other that sometimes we need to withdraw, but the result is that neither intimacy nor solitude is quite what it used to be."
Her essay recalls for me the times I could spend hours with lego or crayons learning who I am:
"With a doll, even the most imaginative child knows that he or she is playing alone. The prototype for My Real Baby was designed to cry out in pain when handled roughly, but when Hasbro put it into mass production they decided that it should instead shut down in such situations, so as not to 'enable' sadistic behaviour. Nobody would want 'to see their children tormenting a screaming baby,' but what might they learn from one that doesn’t react to torture?"
Our toys, our phones, our gadgets, they're all so "thoughtful" on their own, what are really our own thoughts. Just as Google knows what you're thinking as you're typing a search, and as a result, you don't know what you really wanted, just so the doll that cries, or the coloring book that has a drawing premade, or phone that interrupts your thoughts every few minutes -- who knows who I am when I'm all alone?
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