|
let me put it this way, then, repeating at another level what already repeated above...i think there is little moderation because the existing political frameworks, all of which were linked to the history of the nation-state, are coming apart. folk act like there is some middle to be represented, but what is the middle? what is the middle a middle of? the previous spirits of compromise (a very hegel turn of phrase, that) operated in very different socio-economic contexts--for example, in late 1960s america, there was a significant political crisis sparked by a pile-up of factors that nonetheless unfolded at the end-phase of the fordist period, which was built around the nation-state--and so the political frameworks--right, moderate, left--all still made sense--but that period is over and has been for quite some time--the period of the domination of nation-states is coming undone and politics has not caught up yet. in the states, this is no surprise--it seems that the slowest to adapt sector in the states is the educational system and that system in the broadest sense is still ideologically mired in the fordist era, still socializes students in wholly outmoded categories and wholly outmoded ways of thinking--it does not, in short, provide people with the conceptual toolbox (which is what deleuze---who i normally would not reference--used to define philosophy) that would enable them to cope with fundamental change.
i think we are in a phase of collapsing frameworks.
my more optimistic side keeps telling me that new ways of thinking and functioning could come out of such a phase---my less optimistic side thinks that while this would certainly be desirable, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that anything like this result will unfold and we cold find ourselves tanking in a serious, protracted and potentially very ugly way.
and i do not think anyone--at all--stand outside of this situation.
everyone, one way or another, is caught up in it, peforms it, reacts to it or against it.
i certainly am not outside it. i find it hard to generate descriptions even. that is maybe why my posts read as they do.
so compromise, the spirit of....well, folk need to work outside of the existing frameworks and experiment with other ways of thinking. people need to make new stuff. new social logics are not handed to us by any god, who, if she exists, probably has other, more pressing things to tend to in this vast system of systems we call the universe.
meanwhile, there is a social system that requires very significant adjustment and i do not know if that system really can afford to wait around until groups of people nobody yet knows about begins to develop the germ of a different type of political thinking, which may then be elaborated practically by others into a viable post-nation-state type of political action.
so i don't know....
as for civility, it is a nice thing.
it reminds me of a joke i heard last night while watching a bill brown short on dvd:
canadians could probably take over the world, but they are just too polite to start.
maybe that's equally true of all of us.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|