2021-02-26 12:29:01
It's commonly said of neoliberalism that it attempts to 'remove politics' from governance and economics. Long history, there; and the original neoliberal theorists were many of them responding to the horrors they'd witnessed in their time that were perpetrated by authoritarian-right and -left political movements. The dream was therefore to develop a set of invisible, agnostic, 'fair' rules that everyone would be governed by -- a global economic system -- within which people could arrange their affairs. By making this about economics transactions and the 'free market', it was felt that this would avoid the worst aspects of politics.
Now, many on the left see this project as at best naive, and at worst a sort of nefarious, invisible power grab that simultaneous concentrates political power in the hands of a few while brainwashing everyone else into thinking that they 'deserve what they get, because it was freely chosen / is what they deserve.
So, there's a push on the left to resurface this submerged politics; to question the technocratic, 'apolitical' stance adopted by mainstream politicians today; in short, to bring political critique and perspective back into everyday affairs.
It is therefore interesting now to read the reflections of organizers in the 60s who, while in position of a very clear and urgent political agenda, were wondering how 'political' to be in their 'propaganda efforts'. Anarchists whose aim was a fundamental transformation of how we live, work, and interact were often telling one another that their best hope for achieving their goals was, in fact, to avoid talk of 'politics' with people on the street, and simply to start enacting the structures they wanted to see built -- alternative schools, alternative housing, urban gardens, small workshops.
How to reconcile all of this?
2021-02-28 07:32:30
capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason
The concept of 'negative capability' arose for Keats as a sort of defense of the poet's expansive, creative method and mentality against the contradiction to the acidic, skeptical minimalism of Science. It was later expanded to include the valorization, even for scientists, to find a way to operate despite contradictory evidence, or a lack of evidence.
Aside: one wonders whether Bayesian reasoning, as it relates to frequentist reasoning, and a vulgar positivist notion of the scientific method, has begun to offer some guidance in this realm: the ability to assign 'degrees of confidence' in any set of beliefs, and to begin by assigning degrees of belief in 'priors' (assumptions) that aren't necessarily based on any evaluation of evidence ...
Here, I'd like to explore further extending this notion of negative capability as a defense not only against too-restrictive notions of logical consistency, but also against apathy.
Keats' initial project was to find a way to preserve the value of beauty, and the role of inspiration, and faith, in a world that he felt was increasingly concerned with 'practical' projects.
The feeling I have for the mileu of Keat's project is of a passionate debate between differing strategies for creating a better world; a shared sense of grand possibility, potential for progress, and capability, within which competing ideas around what to bring about, with which set of methods and convictions.
Further, one feels that this debate took place within a somewhat constrained social and philosphical mileu, which otherwise shared many assumptions about the lay of the world, its people, its traditions.
Aside: I'm quite sure that any fixed notion of what that era was like is likely a vast over-simplification; but might still function as a useful construct for developing this sketch of ideas ...
In contrast, today: fractures, splintering, discontinuities; few shared assumptions or strong convictions; a sense that nearly everything is in flux, is evolving due to forces beyond our control; a sense of the impending 'end', an accelerating process of unraveling.
From the perspective of today, a passionate debate between the Poet and the Scientist about the best way to bring about Utopia feels almost offensively naive, in addition to being presumptious.
Before I continue on, I'd like to register some 'tropes' ... by which I mean, here: some recurring constructions that seem to be deployed often enough that they're worth reflecting on ...
I think these tropes are commonplace because a skeptical, nearly cynical epistemological stance is also now commonplace: most people think that it is hubris to claim that anything is true, or to propose a new analysis.
Given this widespread skepticism, arguing for an optimistic perspective on the future will be viewed as immediately suspect, 'utopian'.
So I might in fact employ the skeptical mode of reasoning when trying to dismantle cynicism itself ...
(... this, by the way is another trope I find in philosophical discussions of a strong skepticism; and it seems to be to be an under-appreciated, under-employed argument. The idea being that one can become only so skeptical in one's standpoint before one has eroded the very basis for one's skepticism; it is a self-defeating standpoint.)