posted
I've always had a problem with looking at historical models for answers to the questions concerning the present or the future. There is something inadequate about comparing America to Rome or this or that movement to this or that historical movement because the agents have changed, and the degree in which the agents are different is not negligible. Iraq wasn't pre-WWII Germany, if for no other reason than the world in 1940 isn't the same as the world now, and shouldn't be treated like it was. Children today aren't even the same as children fifteen or thirty years ago.
The problem is that without historical analysis, we are left to eternal principles,e.g., the golden rule, uniquely applied to individual problems, and it's not immediately transparent how to best apply these eternal principles in every situation because our values and our purposes are controlled by the historical forces that have shaped us.
I think that's why the landmark threads are so terribly relevant. People pick a handful of historical events that have dominated their life and contributed, for better or for ill, to shaping who they are.
Most of these events have a flip-side. An, "If I were in the same position, I do it this way instead of this way," side, or a "Geez, I'm lucky I did it this way because 40 percent of my good characteristics are derived from that one lucky decision."
Now I'm thinking about laws, and the way we teach them in school. I write a post on education every few months so here it is: I think we do a good job studying models in history. We know enough about any one dominant paradigm to hold a discussion, but I don't know how we are at tracing the historical trajectory of ideas through to the present, and where we should go into the future.
I think that's where the lawless youth comes from. Even if the pedigree for some of our laws isn't exactly something that we are proud of, I think schools could do better about tracing the political trajectory of our public morals, even if they run through God or secularism, this isn't something we should run away from. To the extent the Bible affects our law books, it should acknowledged and explored in the school system. That goes will all of the material has an incredible effect on our political mores.
It will facilitate a deeper understanding ofwhere we are, why we do the things we do, and what's next, especially considering that our political institutions are delayed and rebooting to catch up with our interactions and interelations. As nimble as the American government is, it's going to take a while for Congress to make sense of electronic communication, International Trade, terrorist attacks, and by the time congress does, our interactions could very well change into a different medium.
There are just an incredible amount of reasons I could go to jail, and I don't know why. I think I can only trace a handful of the bill of rights through to their orignial intent. I don't know anything about drug laws, and I've read enough of Locke to know and inkling of property law, but I haven't studied enough of how it's been filtered through the last two hundred years worth of minds to understand why tagging is bad. I, personally, don't like tagging for a myriad of reasons, but only a few of them are substantive. Taxes baffle me. I don't know even know the guiding principles of taxation beyond that I like clean roads and good schools more than I like money in my pockets. But you know what. The more I think about it, I think I like good schools because folks with poor educations hurt black people. (This includes black people with poor educations.) Talk about the historical effects on the lives of individuals. I'm waiting for a time for my word to be unimpeachable to make my landmark post, because I don't know how nice it's going to be. But I digress.
To make a literal analogy, I think that our education is flawed because we put an emphasis on dictionary definitions instead of the etymology, so we, children and adults, don't know what rules to break and why, and as a result, we have a dangerously superficial, though seemingly accurate, view of the world and our manners and social structure are made of matchsticks instead of stuff more stable, leading to the Enrons and the Columbines. This only leads to more uncertainty and want of purpose. Our political institutions will always be changing and nebulous because we are temporal(live and die), plentiful(the growing population), only have a partial knowledge of the totality of human interactions and relations. There is nothing wrong with admitting that we are constantly in an uncertain position, the problem is the idea that the institutions should be static.
I think we would do well trace and make known the historical, political, and philsophical trajectory of all of our most pertinent social mores, not so that we can stay true to the past, rather, so that we can make informed decisions about whether they are still relevant to the present and the future, in lieu of our changing communication and interrelations.
This isn't calling for nostalgia of the past, it's actually quite the opposite, it's calling for knowledge of the past in order grapple with the more pressing issues that are in the present. It's about understanding about how our interractions have outpaced our political institutions to an alarming degree, which may be a call not only to change the institutions into something that they were not designed for, but even to abolish and create new institutions to deal with our changing interactions. It's about addressing the concerns about the uncertainty about what it politics, where does it factor in my life, and where are we going in the future.
I'm not just talking about government, though at present, we have conceived of government as the politicial institution that has the power to hurt and help us the most. I'm talking about all of the political institutions, this board being one of them, which are involved in making sure that our interactions and interrelations don't spin out of control.
Edit:
Thirty-five percent of percent of registered voters cast a ballot for the 2000 election, and just under half of them cast it for Bush. By the numbers, 17 percent of the registered voters chose the president in our democracy. Isn't that a little disheartening. I think we know that it is, but don't know if that's how it should be and feel powerless to affect it either way.
Not to mention that with all of the elections being so close, doesn't that make you wonder if we are so uncertain about our institutions that maybe people are just voting at random. I mean, if they were, would we be able to tell by the results?
posted
I think that Locke's (and Smith, Rousseau, Capitalist Gods et al) view on property, while preferable to previous views, is inherently flawed and leads directly to the flaws in the judicial, education etc systems.
If we place property as a cardinal right along with life and liberty then we deify "things" in such a way as to enable our present consumer society. Everyone always has to get more stuff, and stuff has become the chief pursuit of pretty much all Americans to a greater or lesser extent. Americans tend to define themselves by their occupation, but not in terms of pride in handiwork, rather in terms of earning power which is directly related to social status.
I think that all of this is directly relevant to Irami's point in that a deeper understanding of how we got to this point (the accepted philosophical underpinnings of gov't and economy as well the alternatives) can inform us as to where we should go from here.
I think that a rival philosophy to the current dominant Adam Smith world of entitlement and selfishness must necessarily include strong leanings toward personal responsibility.
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
Thanks Han. I'll hunt down where I got the 35% number. That could be 51.3 number minus the number of people who didn't vote for the presidential race(the chart does allow 2 percent for those), minus the people whose voting rights were taken away for felony convictions.(But I think that's only about 4,000,000 and wouldn't skew the numbers considerably.) But still the disparity between 35 percent and 51.3% is too great to just leave to chance.
By the FEC, 25% percent of the voting members chose the president. Which isn't that bad percentage, depending on who you talk to, and much more flattering than the 17 percent. Thanks again for the info, I'll check it out.
Edit:
You are right.
Bush received 50,456,169 out of a 205,815,000 registered. That's about a quarter any way you slice it. I'm going to write an angry letter to the source that gave me a lower VAP.
posted
About education, we are limited by one thing: how much we can give each child. This isn't a social spending limit, but the very fact that there is simply too much to learn. There is too much to teach.
People have to choose what to teach very young ones, and then the young grow up and start deciding themselves what they want to learn. But no one can know everything that can be taught. I guarantee you that what you propose isn't actually necessary for people to live happy, productive lives. It could help us to have a more representative democracy, but I'm not even sure if THAT is necessary.
The people who don't vote don't vote don't care enough. Even an ingrained compulsion to vote won't really change how much they care. And by and large, I think that we have a large enough sample to reasonably say that if everyone voted, the results would be the same.
Posts: 3495 | Registered: Feb 2000
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The cat who made the statement was talking about all US citizens, and not just those over 18. I'm a little miffed about being mislead, but I do think the need for a voting age should be reexamined, or at least for me, closely examined for the first time. Why is it the case that I can vote at 18 but not become president until I'm 40?
I know you aren't tried as an adult until you are 18, but you are still subject to laws when you are 13 and 14. Two years ago, I would have argued for a test, in fact, I think I did, now I'm seriously considering just lowering the age to twelve. That will sure give an immediacy to elementary education. ____________________________________
Amka,
To those who don't want to vote, I'm not so sure it's their fault that they don't want to. Admittedly, I think that many people don't vote because they lack the imagination to comprehend something as vast as the United States and their role in it, but in some ways, maybe the institution has failed the citizens.
1) Massive size 2) The remoteness of the individual from the institution the which is supposed to serve him/her 3) The beaurocratic nature of government so that it only becomes clear to professionals. 4) The overall professionalization of politics 5) This idea of government as politics.
Government is government, but politics is just the an ordering or care of the people which may only be tangentially related to government or election cycles. For example, if someone writes a wonderful play that affects lives on an NEA grant. The writer is the politician, and government has only a secondary relation.
There is an incredible amount to learn, and I'm all for streamlining education. I have some ideas on what classes to cut, or at least refocus. English and History could go for a sound refocusing. I learned how a bill became a law in my Civics class and that's about it, and I'm pretty sure I learned that a few times before. Now it wasn't honors, and that's where they put the football coach, but geez, we are talking about teaching virtue to the kids who need it the most, this is where you start.
To be honest, math and sciences need to be looked at. Now I said looked at, not cut, don't go ahead and say that I argued that they should be cut, it's just that I know more people who were thrown in jail or otherwise hampered because they didn't understand the spirit of the laws rather than because they couldn't tell you how many electrons were on the fifth level of an electron shell. And why the hell do I know that but I can't tell you what the sixth amendment is and why it's there?
Amka, there is a lot to learn and a lot to teach, and I think that there is a something to be said for going about the business of seperating the wheat from the chaff, instead of hoping that the media will do that work for us or throwing our hands up and giving up. It's a huge responsibility, but I'm pretty sure that it can be made less huge if we thought about a systematic way of teaching it.
posted
Just a short comment as your yoîc seems well ventilated already - you seem to have left aside the idea of Power. What it is and how it is manifested in things like History(ies)/Present(s) and Future(s) or in the lack therin of...Also the dulling effects of Power on the powerless (why fewer people vote) and the 'choices' (Is communism, for example, a 'choice for Americans or is Islamic fundamentalism a choice for Iraq etc. - if not, why not etc.)
Trajectories (your metaphor) certainly imply power (in the physical sense - that is what set the thing on it's course such that we may describe/analyze a trajectory) - Well ? what keeps things moving ?
Posts: 575 | Registered: Jan 2002
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quote:Trajectories (your metaphor) certainly imply power (in the physical sense - that is what set the thing on it's course such that we may describe/analyze a trajectory) - Well ? what keeps things moving ?
Us. Society came in the existence that we all may live, but it remains so that we all may live well. We are the fuel and the product. Right now we are on defense, stop WWIII, get kids out of jail, clean up the water, and eat well. Anne Kate's is planning to help out in a big way, and all of the Hatrack parents are suiting up for the game everytime they wake up in the morning.
How we do this changes as our communications and relations change. I have a lot of hair, and every now and then, I have to shape up my afro, politics is kind of like that, except instead of hair care, it's care for the totality of human relations.
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