Part 1 in an Occasional Series
May. 17th, 2015 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tetsab(Based on my track record, possibly over the next 5 years). Buuuut before I get to that a little update on the marker I set last post, which I'm going to peg a little ribbon to which reads: having felt like I'd managed to get away with that lay-off news without being left knocked on my ass I then woke up (or rather, in 2 cases, was woken up by The Furry Menace) 3 times over the course of the night, each time being stuck awake thinking about Truth, Justice, Naïvety, Loyalty and Being A Bleeding Heart among sharks for a good half hour or so. This works well for Part 1 in an Occasional Series since the focus of this part is, from my 'This Changes Everything' quote skeleton:
""If conservatives are inherent system justifiers, and therefore bridle before facts that call the dominant economic system into question, then most leftists are inherent system questioners, and therefore prone to skepticism about facts that come from corporations and government" pg. 45
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If this goes the way I want it to go they'll be 5 parts in this Occasional Series, one for each chunk of the quote skeleton set off by those dashes.
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In order to do this I'm going to outright describe myself something I'm pretty sure I've never described myself in public as anything other than a joke (i.e. when I put my location on a gaming site as Soviet Canuckistan... but even there who's to say what I mean by that!). So, yes, when it comes right down to it I'm pretty epically Left. I'm actually as left and as you get according to the Toronto Star (lol) with the smallest number of fellow brethren about of any of the 8 groups at only 2% of the population (who'll give even the slightest time of day to the Star). Ha.
This is, pretty accurate (and seemingly I feel better about it than Gord Perks does, which is pretty funny. I've got a general disquiet over the terminology to stop me; I dunno if he does too or if he also has a political one. It's tough to be in politics). ;)
The source of my disquiet is only somewhat related to what the laissez-faire punk and David Peterson also have to say in that profile article RE: We Contain Multitudes, which is true (other than the part that for most issues folks peg as "left" I don't contain many multitudes: I shake out pretty darn Left). No, my Disquiet has rather more to do with the part where there are "issues" that people tend to see as "left" (for me to then be shaken into, apparently) and, even more, that I almost never see a use for a term like "left" that isn't aimed at highlighting difference and division (also making Karen Stintz's comments in that profile article interesting enough to read) and, worst of all, shorthanding complex things into non-existence.
The last, and to me most important reason, I don't tend to be inclined to use left as a self-identifier is that while I tend to have very clear positions on things that get called left I am painfully aware that my positions on these things are quite shallowly thought out when you get right down to it. This is defensible since on most such issues most people who hold an opinion on them are not going to be well-versed in all or even most of them because you actually can't be: there's only so much room in the world for expertise and then you are, in significant part, left trusting that expertise.
But this creates an interesting complication in terms of that quote and the tendency toward being a system-questioner. I absolutely recognize myself in that sort of characterization but then I naturally tend to take it and find I have a strong inclination to be skeptical about all 'facts' period unless I take the (fundamentally impossible in the long-run) time to investigate them carefully and directly myself (and even then I can then start enumerating all the reasons to be skeptical of my own understanding). So in order to function, shallow understanding it pretty much needs to be, which sometimes feels like feeling things out, which returns me both to the bleeding heart and to truth.
Truth in climate change is hard to wrangle with (the depth of complexity in this issue is staggering). When it comes up so does the note about Scientific Consensus (but every time this 'consensus' is invoked I wonder who exactly is considered to be populating it, why, and how) which tends to be used as the justifier. This is something I would be interested in looking at more closely (I consistently wonder about it... so why not look into it?) but it's not something that I'm going to do now and it's not something that I expect will change much of my general 'feeling' around this issue which can be pretty neatly summed up by the often-invoked cartoon:
(One thing should never change with me: I'll never stop appreciating cartoons as a medium -- no wishy-washy there).
I work for an organization that "believes" in climate change (there's that skepticism, that doubt, that... contempt that so easily floats around this issue again) and so I'm more exposed to the reasons behind that "belief" than many and it matters to me that I not just work there on a largely This Feels Right (and here are all the Reasons it 'feels right' I happen to already know... as well as my offer to look more closely if you think I should) basis. So I pay attention to what we produce and I read books like this. I was both very eager to read this book (the title "felt" right :P ) and skeptical (again, ever, always) that it would have anything much new or perspective-changing to offer. The latter 'feeling' produced a doubt so strong I opted to read it from the library (it *just* edged out my desire to read it ASAP) rather than own it because I felt like I probably wasn't going to be referring to it in the future and beyond what I've already quoted from it I largely won't. This doesn't mean it's a book to be dismissed and part of the reason it isn't is because, in my estimation, it is truly trying to understand and even if it can't quite make it I appreciate it as a real, hard try (truth sits there -- it is truly trying its best).
I also appreciate the attempt to take on something like the attending to those so-called left/right tendencies (even if this doesn't seem to be followed too far in its depth of implication of the left: an implication some more hostile reviewers are willing to pick up as they [unfairly but predictably] dismiss it all as left-lefty-squoosh).
Too much of all of this seems to keep coming down to "belief" and "orientation" over "facts" (even as the facts are poured over and detailed out in multiple accessible quarters [do I need to say outright, given what much of what I've just written will point at, that I also hate the word "facts"?]). Maybe it's because this is a large enough thing that everyone feels like they should have something to say about it when almost all of everyone is then going to be hit by that issue of shallow knowledge (not just because of the inclination toward shallow knowledge generally but because this as an issue is one that it is exceptionally large).
So the disquiet remains and the feelings and the orientations and the "facts" that focus on those feelings and orientations rather than the issue then get trotted out in articles like this one further knocking things out of joint and producing something of a racket out of the disquiet.
No good conclusions for anything today -- just that damnably loud disquiet.
""If conservatives are inherent system justifiers, and therefore bridle before facts that call the dominant economic system into question, then most leftists are inherent system questioners, and therefore prone to skepticism about facts that come from corporations and government" pg. 45
---
If this goes the way I want it to go they'll be 5 parts in this Occasional Series, one for each chunk of the quote skeleton set off by those dashes.
---
In order to do this I'm going to outright describe myself something I'm pretty sure I've never described myself in public as anything other than a joke (i.e. when I put my location on a gaming site as Soviet Canuckistan... but even there who's to say what I mean by that!). So, yes, when it comes right down to it I'm pretty epically Left. I'm actually as left and as you get according to the Toronto Star (lol) with the smallest number of fellow brethren about of any of the 8 groups at only 2% of the population (who'll give even the slightest time of day to the Star). Ha.
This is, pretty accurate (and seemingly I feel better about it than Gord Perks does, which is pretty funny. I've got a general disquiet over the terminology to stop me; I dunno if he does too or if he also has a political one. It's tough to be in politics). ;)
The source of my disquiet is only somewhat related to what the laissez-faire punk and David Peterson also have to say in that profile article RE: We Contain Multitudes, which is true (other than the part that for most issues folks peg as "left" I don't contain many multitudes: I shake out pretty darn Left). No, my Disquiet has rather more to do with the part where there are "issues" that people tend to see as "left" (for me to then be shaken into, apparently) and, even more, that I almost never see a use for a term like "left" that isn't aimed at highlighting difference and division (also making Karen Stintz's comments in that profile article interesting enough to read) and, worst of all, shorthanding complex things into non-existence.
The last, and to me most important reason, I don't tend to be inclined to use left as a self-identifier is that while I tend to have very clear positions on things that get called left I am painfully aware that my positions on these things are quite shallowly thought out when you get right down to it. This is defensible since on most such issues most people who hold an opinion on them are not going to be well-versed in all or even most of them because you actually can't be: there's only so much room in the world for expertise and then you are, in significant part, left trusting that expertise.
But this creates an interesting complication in terms of that quote and the tendency toward being a system-questioner. I absolutely recognize myself in that sort of characterization but then I naturally tend to take it and find I have a strong inclination to be skeptical about all 'facts' period unless I take the (fundamentally impossible in the long-run) time to investigate them carefully and directly myself (and even then I can then start enumerating all the reasons to be skeptical of my own understanding). So in order to function, shallow understanding it pretty much needs to be, which sometimes feels like feeling things out, which returns me both to the bleeding heart and to truth.
Truth in climate change is hard to wrangle with (the depth of complexity in this issue is staggering). When it comes up so does the note about Scientific Consensus (but every time this 'consensus' is invoked I wonder who exactly is considered to be populating it, why, and how) which tends to be used as the justifier. This is something I would be interested in looking at more closely (I consistently wonder about it... so why not look into it?) but it's not something that I'm going to do now and it's not something that I expect will change much of my general 'feeling' around this issue which can be pretty neatly summed up by the often-invoked cartoon:
(One thing should never change with me: I'll never stop appreciating cartoons as a medium -- no wishy-washy there).
I work for an organization that "believes" in climate change (there's that skepticism, that doubt, that... contempt that so easily floats around this issue again) and so I'm more exposed to the reasons behind that "belief" than many and it matters to me that I not just work there on a largely This Feels Right (and here are all the Reasons it 'feels right' I happen to already know... as well as my offer to look more closely if you think I should) basis. So I pay attention to what we produce and I read books like this. I was both very eager to read this book (the title "felt" right :P ) and skeptical (again, ever, always) that it would have anything much new or perspective-changing to offer. The latter 'feeling' produced a doubt so strong I opted to read it from the library (it *just* edged out my desire to read it ASAP) rather than own it because I felt like I probably wasn't going to be referring to it in the future and beyond what I've already quoted from it I largely won't. This doesn't mean it's a book to be dismissed and part of the reason it isn't is because, in my estimation, it is truly trying to understand and even if it can't quite make it I appreciate it as a real, hard try (truth sits there -- it is truly trying its best).
I also appreciate the attempt to take on something like the attending to those so-called left/right tendencies (even if this doesn't seem to be followed too far in its depth of implication of the left: an implication some more hostile reviewers are willing to pick up as they [unfairly but predictably] dismiss it all as left-lefty-squoosh).
Too much of all of this seems to keep coming down to "belief" and "orientation" over "facts" (even as the facts are poured over and detailed out in multiple accessible quarters [do I need to say outright, given what much of what I've just written will point at, that I also hate the word "facts"?]). Maybe it's because this is a large enough thing that everyone feels like they should have something to say about it when almost all of everyone is then going to be hit by that issue of shallow knowledge (not just because of the inclination toward shallow knowledge generally but because this as an issue is one that it is exceptionally large).
So the disquiet remains and the feelings and the orientations and the "facts" that focus on those feelings and orientations rather than the issue then get trotted out in articles like this one further knocking things out of joint and producing something of a racket out of the disquiet.
No good conclusions for anything today -- just that damnably loud disquiet.