On the Dangers of Liberal Society, part III
Previous posts:
On the Dangers of Liberal Society, part II
On the Dangers of Liberal Society, part I
In my previous post I asked the question: What does it mean to long for an end of liberalism and its desensitizing sense of freedom that traps our ability to live and, perhaps, to love at the height of our powers? In this post I would like to clarify what I mean in that question. At some point, I suppose, I will get around to answering it. But I’m in no rush.
Let me be as clear as I can about my project and this question: It is a cowardly and rather self-indulgent thing, to be sure. I mean, I have no real intentions or courage to actually “desire” for an end of liberalism. Instead, I am, in one sense, just testing the limits of possibility for myself thinking this way about things.
At the same time, I think there is something else going on here. (Pretending that it is the only thing going on will fuel my own self-righteousness on the matter.) You see, the actual point of the matter is simply a question of meaning. In other words, I am not theorizing, hypothesizing, or, much less, making empirical claims about the world. All this question should do is to ask what it means to imagine that things are not as they seem.
Now, that is all a bit trite and makes this sound very esoteric, but, at least for me, it is not. All this question should do is the very same thing we tend to do when we encounter genuine novelty. There is nothing so novel to me as a new idea. When I come across one (usually in a book) I can’t ask much else other than, “What does that mean?” or “What could that possibly be like?”
But, ideas are never really that new, they are merely new-to-me or new-to-us. So, we can glean intelligibility out of the meaning of a novel thing and toy around with whatever meaning we have, or think we have, and that’s what its all about. One big game of hokey poky.
So, we need to know what is really grinding the axe of this question and this general notion of defending fascism and cautioning against liberalism. Here it is, as I see it. It is a myth that when given the opportunity people will live with less instead of more. “Plenty” seems to be a rather normative human desire elevated to the level of virtue. We desire to be full, not hungry. Yet, hunger (metaphorically speaking) keeps us, well… hungry. Restless. In love.
What I mean to say is that the political question at hand is more fundamentally a question of how to deal with what seems to be a reoccurring thing in human experience: cycles of oppression, revolution, and oppression. The second oppressor is usually dressed in the garments of a liberator, a populist, democracy, ourselves or people like us, and so on. And, for that very reason, she is very hard to distinguish from the Gandhi’s of the world. The first oppressor, however, is clearly who she really is and, while we may have good reason to fear her, at least we know when she is around.
Here is the virtue of fascism: honesty. That is not to say that fascists do not lie, indeed they do. But their lies are lies. In a liberal society it is hard work–and counterintutive work–to spot lies because they come on silver spoon covered with honey.
But, as I said in my first post: You get more bees… To continue my reliance on “as the saying goes” to make my argument, I am asking what it means to say: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Even if it means that we are required to take up Zarathustra’s advice to love our enemies and hate our friends.
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Liberal societies are better than illiberal ones.
Yeah, we should be aware that no society is perfect. We should be aware and act against the dangers in a liberal society.
Let’s do that, and not try to defend fascism.
There are two people in front of me, and I get to hang out with one. The first guy says, “Hey, I won’t kill you.” The second guy says, “I’m definitely going to murder you while we hang out.”
Should I spend my time with guy two, just because he’s being honest?
Sam, this line of thinking is a dead end. It ignores what is important about liberal and illiberal societies.
I recognize in the re-posting comment in the first entry you say you are ambivalent about these pieces. What kind of hubris would spur you on to think this illogical and fallacious drivel should be re-posted?! Really, it is a waste of space and makes no claim other than to say in a persecuted society human potential is increased. No one has ever said that “Liberal” society is the panacea to the world’s evils…but the alternatives are worse.
This is like saying the poor should stay poor because they are happier that way.
How about the last parts of this just stay on your hard drive, or better yet the deleted bim.
This is odd to me. I mean, why wasn’t the previous post—the one that made the argument—the one that got disputed? In this post, I actually contextualize what it means to do such a thing (defend facism).
Now, it may not—indeed it should not—be a comfortable thing to face, but the argument itself seems sound enough. Now the effects, or desired effects, are what come next.
If you think that those effects are to be political, then, sadly, you missed this part of my post:
“Let me be as clear as I can about my project and this question: It is a cowardly and rather self-indulgent thing, to be sure. I mean, I have no real intentions or courage to actually “desire” for an end of liberalism. Instead, I am, in one sense, just testing the limits of possibility for myself thinking this way about things.
At the same time, I think there is something else going on here. (Pretending that it is the only thing going on will fuel my own self-righteousness on the matter.) You see, the actual point of the matter is simply a question of meaning. In other words, I am not theorizing, hypothesizing, or, much less, making empirical claims about the world. All this question should do is to ask what it means to imagine that things are not as they seem.”
What this means, which why I point to Nietzsche at the end, is that we ought to try to think in ways that make us look into other sides of things that might force out moments of meaning that are all too scarce elsewhere.
What I am glad about is that the post provoked such strong reactions, those will serve to write the next piece int he series…
Peace.
Sure go ahead, I am not sure you can work yourself out of a ridiculous argument.
Here is the common problem: Sound logic does not produce a just or right conclusion. For some around here it seems that good reasoning is enough to arrive at the truth. But reason alone does not produce a godly result.
The crusades were argued with good logic….wrong conclusion.
Josh: I am very sympathetic to that. Reason and logic do not take the day. My point here is not to try to wrestle down some bit of logic, but to challenge certain intuitions about the meaning of politics. I hope you find that project worthwhile, to some extent.
Politics is the process of deciding who gets to decide who gets what resources.
The end.