Extremism

Considering the revisionist tendencies of conquerors, how will historical truth ever surface? It's amazing that we have any racial memory at all. FrontPageMag.com talks about how the Pilgrims got themselves mostly to thank for their bountiful harvest in their version of Thanksgiving history. Of course, expect the left to vehemently react in the comments section with their own narrowly biased version. According to popular politics, there's always a good guy and a bad guy, never the twain shall meet in a single person.

All this makes the quest for absolute truth all the more complicated and seemingly impossible. All this highlights the contingency of every perspective and thought on previous experiences and concepts. I would like to say, "Distrust either side of a debate when the sides are extreme and unrelenting," but what about cases where a pretty well substantiated position is attacked by a lone contrarian? Does the existence of controversy have to completely erase the validity of a position?

The Middle Way is threatened by extremists who stand to skew the middle by their sheer extremism. It's like how the mean income of a bar with Bill Gates in it is in the billions, even if the rest of patrons are trailer trash. It's not enough to average out the extreme biases to form a moderate opinion, yet that's how our politics seem to work. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Since the opposing side knows this, it squeaks its own wheels even louder, resulting in a cacophony of diatribes expressing more anger and less content.

I believe the first step in reestablishing a functional democracy is to cut down the anger. Emotions are okay, but not to the point where they turn the debate into an elementary school brawl. Next, we need to allow ourselves to make mistakes and learn from them. Unfortunately, these two steps are harder than coming to a stance in the first place.

Broken families broken understanding

After sleeping over at two different houses with two different families, I don't feel so dysfunctional in my family any more. On the outside, they look so ideal. After a couple long conversations or even short ones interrupted by angry words thrown about in the house (not at me of course!), I've come to the banal conclusion that most families are messed up no matter how peaceable they initially appear.

My approach to my own family issues may look passive-aggressive, but, hell, it seems to work. I avoid confrontation. If I disagree, I keep quiet. Stay out of their way, they stay out of mine. I don't think I harbor as much resentment as the term passive-aggressive suggests though. I understand that they've got their issues just as I have mine, so I'm not any more "right" than they are.

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In fact, I'm tired of appearing to be right. I work up a storm of words to convince others that what I say is valid, but I don't even know for sure myself if it is. Of course I often admit my ignorance, but sugar coat it to the point where it seems like I'm not. I'm embarrassed at how many people look up to me for wisdom. I'm a scammer. But can I really live being wrong, I mean really know that I'm wrong, insufficiently informed, ignorant, stupidly reactionary? I can think about it in the private comfort of my bedroom, but can I bring it out into the world, into my conversations with friends and family?

I want to be stupid. No, I want to embrace my stupidity without judging myself poorly nor encouraging the stupidity. An acceptance of limitation.

Non-evil Economists

BusinessWeek surprised me tonight. I found a reference to an author who wasn't 100% pro-IMF/Globalization: Benjamin M. Friedman. Upon Googling up his new book The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, I discovered another economist Joseph E. Stiglitz who wrote Globalization and Its Discontents (clever allusion, eh?). I'm delightfully astonished that economics schools don't just churn out cookie-cutter priests of uber-capitalism but also freethinking researchers.

Stiglitz argues that the IMF really screwed up the third world with "recommendations" that favor creditors and ignore the poor. IMF members visit with rich leaders, not peasants, so it's not a long stretch to say they're not considering the poor's plight. There are plenty of other arguments, but I forgot them all because it's late and/or I'm lazy. Read about him here: http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/bwi-wto/wbank/stigindx.htm Hooray for smart people to tell us what to think!

I'll have to find these books sometime and regain my confidence in economics and perhaps the economy. I'm sick of feeling completely ineffectual. I want to be part of the economy to improve it, but I often feel like any contribution I make to it furthers greed and poverty.