| | Nice essay.
The political myth of 'OnePie/Cake World' is very firmly entrenched. How does that effectively get unseated?
The whole 'one' business -- an intellectual manufacturing of singularities out of pluralities -- seems to be deeply entrenched. Maybe, our atavistic wiring encourages us to make singularities out of pluralities, to attempt to make complex concepts more tractable. Our minds have difficulties wrapping themselves around complex pluralities.
We make 'The Economy' out of the economies. That is one of my favorites. It isn't even questioned. We think 'it' actually means something singular. Well, OK, then so does 'the weather' in the USA. What is 'the' temperature? Is 'it' raining? Absurd, and yet, we just let an election get determined by a theory about 'THE ECONOMY' and the brilliant need, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, to build our own centrally planned command 'THE ECONOMY'...
We make 'S'ociety out of our societies(even as, a firm grasp of the latin root 'socius' would not readily permit that, unless the case can be made that 'everyone' is jarringly our known friend, ally and 'associate.')
We make 'The Cake' out of the cakes, or as sometimes modeled, 'The Pie' out of the pies.
And worse. We watch with little comment while 'economics' becomes 'political economics,' devoted exclusively at our universities to the political task of selling the concept of ever greater singularity out of our many pluralities. 'Economics' has slowly devolved from 'the miserable science' to 'barely a soft science' to what it was all along, 'political science.'
There is so much black is white, up is down, left is right deconstructivism going on that at the same time we claim to be 'celebrating diversity', we are politically courting singularity.
It's not that there aren't plenty of folks strenuously and clearly and forcefully suggesting otherwise. The arguments are falling on mostly deaf ears. The reality is, the tribe, by and large, wants its tribalness. The herd wants its ... herd-ness.
I think that wanting is deep seated, almost atavistic wiring, so much so that legions of otherwise intelligent, capable proponents have focused their campaigns in our schools and universities to reinforce the belief.
It is taking longer than some might hope to leave the Jungle behind.
In the context of our nation, it used to be "United we stand, divided we fall." And, true enough, but it is fast becoming "United it stands, divided it falls." We are losing our grasp of the pluralities that make us strong, and we are tolerating the building of a centralized monopoly with guns, not just unchecked, but actively courted in the latest madness of crowds run amok.
I don't understand what 'mixed' economies are, if not vigilant of monopolistic centralized concentrated power, and yet, that is exactly what our current tribal political free-for-some is sprinting headlong towards.
Duck.
regards,
Frediano
(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 1/21, 9:40am)
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