intertribal | i'm the president. i'm the decider.

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politics

i'm the president. i'm the decider.

President H.W. Bush: "Now Junior, I mean Dubya here, he's the real Born-Again."

W. is a movie I think every American should see. It starts off and you're so amused by the "impersonations" by the actors of Bush and his cabinet that you think it's going to be an SNL skit, but what it becomes is cathartic experience.

First off, let me just confirm that Josh Brolin is one of my new favorite actors. Yes, all I've seen is this and No Country For Old Men, but, damn. He's a talented guy.

Does Bush come off as sympathetic? Yes, in a welcome-to-the-human-race kind of way (Perp: "You don't know what it's like." Goren: "What? To work so hard, and still be a nobody?" Perp: "Yes..." Goren: "Welcome to the human race."). Would Bush, as Stone I believe said, like this depiction of him? No. It's fair, and it's sympathetic, but it's not gentle. I seriously doubt any of his supporters would like this movie. Other people who come off similarly include Colin Powell, the rest of the Bush clan, and Laura Bush. Plenty of people come off as unsympathetic - Condoleeza Rice was a particularly grating sycophant, Rumsfeld and Cheney are brutal strategists who disappear when the "WMDs" in Iraq are similarly nowhere to be found, and Karl Rove is a peculiar Gollum-like creature who skulks in the shadows of the war room with binders filled with statistics who lives so vicariously through W. that at one point he calls George H. W. Bush "Poppy". But part of W.'s problem is that he is surrounded by people trying to put words in his mouth - Rove and Cheney in particular are the most egregious of the bunch - and he must every now and then remind these underlings that he is the President, he's leading the campaign, it starts and ends with him. As it turns out this is because he suffers from a chronic fear of not being in control of his own life, not living up to the Bush name, not being Texan enough, not "earning his spurs", as his father puts it.

What this movie drives home is something I very much agree with: that politicians are just people, just normal people with the same psychoses and neuroses the rest of us have - they've just got the power to act on their insanity. W.'s problem is essentially that he lives in fear of disappointing his father, who prefers his brother Jeb - when W. becomes governor of Texas but Jeb loses the same race in Florida, Bush Sr. mopes about how hard it is for feet-on-the-ground, head-screwed-on-straight Jeb, and W. says, "Why do you always have to be feel bad for Jeb? Why can't you feel good for me?" When Bush Sr. loses the presidential race in 1992 and breaks down crying, saying he thought the war would be enough, W. is flustered and infuriated - he shouts that this would never have happened if his father had charged onto Baghdad like W. told him to. While pacing outside as his mother consoles his father, W. tells Laura that he will never let that happen to him. And indeed: during the campaign for war in Iraq, he asks Ari Fleischer if the latter told the press that "I hate assholes who try to kill my dad".

At a disastrous press conference, Bush struggles to pick his worst mistake.

We have no idea, of course, if these conversations took place, but they may very well have. The thing is, I've realized recently that part of the reason I want to work in government is because I want to be there for the wank. People in government are crazy, snarky, bitter, tired people, and this movie captured that excellently. My favorite scene in the whole movie is probably when W. is leading his cabinet - in their suits and their middle-aged bodies - on this trek through some kind of military training ground that is essentially prairie. They're constantly batting at flies and trying not to groan because W. in his safari suit is so enthusiastic about this, laying out his vision for the war in Iraq and dismissing Colin Powell as a worrywart, cracking jokes that the rest of them are obligated to chuckle at. They seem to have lost the trail, but W. assures them the vehicles are just up ahead, another half a mile, "just follow me!" and they all head off into the wilderness.

A lot of people think that politicians are a different class of people. They're either super-intelligent hyper-Americans, revered as Gods, or soulless, evil robots (or soulless, evil puppets who can't tie their own shoelaces). This girl in my thesis class said the other day, "People in the State Department are all the same. They just re-program the new people that come in." And a lot of people follow this idea that Capitol Hill is all anonymous suits and ties, "yesmen", cronies working for Big Ideas. This is just bullshit, and that goes for both parties. Believe me. People in the State Department are most certainly not "all the same". I can tell stories. This is from my research:

"The fact that the USA tried to discredit Sukarno through attempting to make a pornographic movie about his romantic proclivities indicates the climate of the times."

"While some of Sukarno’s American critics considered his recent outburst egregious but not inconsistent with previous antics, the CIA detected a deeper significance. Agency analysts began to suspect that Sukarno was becoming mentally unhinged… One of Sukarno’s wives, his fourth, seemed to be the source of most of the problems; the CIA’s contacts reported that some of Sukarno’s associates were plotting to kill her."

"The undersecretary of state [Ball] discounted what he considered wishful thinking by Jones; the ambassador, whose retirement was at hand, seemed to be showing the strain of seven years at a difficult post. An extraordinary request by Jones a few days earlier that Johnson personally assure Sukarno that the CIA was not trying to assassinate him did not improve Ball’s estimate of the ambassador’s judgment."

I'm sorry, but this is stuff I find positively hilarious. And it's all true, and it all had real consequences. Politics is about a lot of things, but politicians are not sterile 'droids. They're not all-bad or all-good, like so many people would like to believe. They don't behave in a way a realist political scientist would describe to be "rational". But then again, who does. People are not perfect calculators of gain/loss margins.

W. and his reverend pray after he announces that he has heard the call:
"God wants me to run for president."
The reverend's doubt-filled reaction: "... truly?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I try to be tolerant and when my patience runs out it comes out as passive-aggressive. I shouldn't have been that way but it's always what happens when I get angry.

Well, I definitely get that you don't think my discipline is as good as yours. If you don't agree with me on anything, and you're so stubborn about your own beliefs, I wonder what is really the point. There is literally nothing that you have agreed with me on lately. It actually seems like sometimes you want to find things to disagree with me on. And I don't see how you could possibly respect me if you disagree with me on everything, and I don't want to be friends with someone who does not respect me.

I don't think your discipline is worse than mine. that doesn't mean i think it's good. i think they're probably both shitty in a lot of ways, but that doesn't mean they have nothing to offer, either. if i believed in disciplines, i'd believe in making a career out of academia, and i think that's contrary to the goals of enlightenment.

so what if we haven't agreed on things lately? good, at least we're talking about them. i hate that no one nowadays seems to want to even discuss hard issues, to risk changing their mind! or maybe it's people of all times, i don't know. not the point.

Of course i still respect you. i admit, when i argue about these things, it gets tough, and personal. jason's made me cry with things he's said about the worthlessness of anthropology. so what? i think it's important, when thinking about what you're going to do with the rest of your life, to consider what it is about it that you love, why you want to do it, what it, and you, could possibly have to contribute to society. and in a lot of ways, what you want to do is much more obviously beneficial. maybe that's why i've thought about what i'm doing so much, and hold such strong beliefs--I don't know.

And you know, I could just as easily say, "If you don't agree with me on anything, and you're so stubborn about your own beliefs, I wonder what is really the point," to you, but I don't, because I still care about you and respect what you have to say.

I find things to disagree on because I think it's interesting, because I think it's what's worth discussing. I'm sorry it offends you. That really wasn't my intention.

I feel like if you want to have knock-down drag-out fights, it needs to be with someone who's equally as committed to kniving other people as you are, like Jason. I'm just not. I don't think it's worth it.

One of the conclusions I've come to in the last couple years, while I was working out the conclusion to Ilium, is that big ideas aren't worth blood. I know to you that must sound awful, and I feel like I can't put it into words articulately - all I can say is read "The Quiet American", which has the same conclusion. My mom basically gave up on living for big ideas and she's lived a relatively calm, healthy life. My dad was obsessed with big ideas and committed his whole self to them, and died from the stress and frustration. And yes, "The Quiet American" is about the Vietnam War and the blood there is real. But I think it's why I don't like getting nasty over ideas. As the asofterworld on my profile page says, "Truth and Beauty are wonderful words, but schrapnel is schrapnel, and at the end of the day I am alone with the things I have done." I don't like attacking other people's beliefs, even when I'm mad at them. And what's ironic is that this is actually good for being in the Foreign Service.

And yes, I do have opinions about things. I love my thesis. And I dislike it when poli sci majors don't have any actual opinions on realism and constructivism, but they're just doing poli sci to get into law school. But even though I hate realism I won't attack someone for believing in it. I mean, I respect Juliya even though she's a hardcore realist and thinks constructivism is just magical thinking, because she's smart, she's a good student and at least she has an opinion.

That doesn't mean I don't consider what it is about what I'm going to do with my life that I love - not that I really know what I'm going to do with my life besides the career that I want to go into, and I know exactly what it is about the Foreign Service that I love.

I feel like I'm not that stubborn about my beliefs, and it's not that I disagree with you - I feel like you do the disagreeing, and I get defensive and confused because I don't even know what happened.

Um...I'm basically a pacifist. But I believe in the value of discussion and argument, conflicting beliefs, exchange of ideas. I don't think they're contradictory. Arguing doesn't make me want to hurt anyone. I think if I saw that I did that in actual, real-time, physically-present argument, I would immediately stop. But...it goes for both sides, sometimes. I feel like some people (not you) get upset just by the fact that someone else thinks they're wrong, can't have someone stand up for an opposing viewpoint or else they just cower and sulk. And I think that's mostly their fault, even though they're only hurting themselves.

Jason's not committed to kniving people, and I kind of resent the term being applied to me as well. Tara, however, might well be...I still haven't figured out how to argue with her. She treats it like a competition, will say whatever it takes to win, and fast. I can't keep up with her--only in writing. Jason...well, he demands that people are stubborn about their beliefs. Anyway, we are capable of having less animated discussion, though. I don't think we've argued like that in awhile. A few brief tiffs, but nothing major.

I don't like just straight up attacking people's beliefs, but I do like questioning them. Like with pro-life second Steve, about abortion. I feel like I learned something about my own beliefs from that discussion, even if i didn't convince him of anything. Maybe I (mistakenly) think that with my friends, mutual like and respect is more assumed.

Of course you have opinions about things, and I'm glad you do. Exactly, what's most important to me is that people actually care about these issues. It's what I like best in profs, in fellow students, and in my friends. Like Jon and Steve totally disagree about anthro, but they both think that it's really important and worth teaching, and I appreciate that. I think it makes them better teachers.

Didn't you just say that you were more stubborn about your beliefs than most of your friends?

I'm sorry. It's true, I think, that we don't disagree on that many things...

That's because most of my friends have no beliefs, usually because they're too busy worrying about who they are in much more psychological/personal terms than any greater overarching theme.

The knife is not real, it's a metaphor. I mean, arguing like this doesn't invigorate me. It doesn't make me think. If anything it makes me think less, because it makes me stressed, and it disables me from doing my work or my writing. It makes me feel sort of ill/nauseated. And I think it's at least in part because you determine the things we "discuss", and they're not the things I would discuss and thereby have strong opinions on, they're sort of incidental things that I don't have any strong opinion on. And to me it all just becomes such bullshit, very fast.

Like just now. I'm trying to make a real point about why I have a hard time dealing with foundations of life and such - and further that I'm trying to tell you about myself and how I came to be who I am now, which I think is a very important sort of realization - and you completely skip over it. I know that's natural, but I feel like it's been happening a lot lately, and most of the things I'm thinking about lately relate to this, relate to my past and how that relates to my future, and they're not necessarily theoretical building blocks or anything, but they are important to me. They're not even opinions, they're just observations/realizations about myself. But it's like if it doesn't have to do with what you care about, with these big ideas that I am so afraid of, it just gets passed over and is never spoken about. And to me that is like skipping over my life. It is like skipping over what makes my life important and worth living, and what makes it worse for me is that I'm skipping over this in order to have an argument about something I don't even have an opinion on or care about. And I feel like this is what I'm always doing these days, bypassing my own interests for someone else's.

And this is really, really upsetting to me.

I mean, arguing like this doesn't invigorate me. It doesn't make me think. If anything it makes me think less

Hm, well that's certainly not good. I'm sorry to be part of that.

it makes me stressed, and it disables me from doing my work or my writing. It makes me feel sort of ill/nauseated.

I know what you mean, but don't you see that it makes me feel that way too when you disagree with what I'm putting forward as important beliefs? I think that's what being challenged in my beliefs just feels like, for me. I think beliefs are comforting, and if you can have a totally bland, comforting, discussion, you aren't really dealing with something in a way that can change what people think. Not that you will otherwise, but it's the potential, the stress involved, the doubt.

And I think it's at least in part because you determine the things we "discuss", and they're not the things I would discuss and thereby have strong opinions on, they're sort of incidental things that I don't have any strong opinion on. And to me it all just becomes such bullshit, very fast.

Well, aside from what's important to me just being called "incidental things", what would you discuss? I mean, I know you have strong opinions on other things, but very often they are things where all I can say is, "I agree", or "That seems right," or "I'm glad you had that experience," or whatever. I really don't know what else to say. By all means, though, change the topic if you're bored with what I ramble about. Ask me questions, or demand response to something. I'll do my best.

Like just now. I'm trying to make a real point about why I have a hard time dealing with foundations of life and such - and further that I'm trying to tell you about myself and how I came to be who I am now, which I think is a very important sort of realization - and you completely skip over it.

I really didn't skip over it. I read every word, and responded, in my way. Perhaps I responded less than I could have because I didn't want to emphasize disagreement here, in this discussion. I don't think big ideas are worth blood, but I do think they're worth honesty. Why not live for them? Why want a calm, healthy life? I would choke on a calm, healthy life. I would get tired, and sleep all the time, and never be motivated. It would end up the opposite of healthy. And so I don't know what to do with your experience. I don't see why ideas should make shrapnel. I don't think we have to get "nasty over ideas", but I do think people should be able to deal with them, and maturely, and that that's a lot less likely to create real shrapnel than ignoring them and letting things lie calm. But I don't think, as I said, that that means I need to "attack" others' beliefs. But question, always question. I'm sure it's good for the Foreign Service, that makes a lot of sense, it's the essence of being diplomatic. If I were trying to be diplomatic, certainly, I would take other approaches, but I take a lot of things as part of a struggle to find the truth. As for "The Quiet American", I've seen the movie but not read the book. My dad took me because he likes Michael Caine. But I've forgotten most of it, except being disturbed by some aspect of sex/romance in the movie. So, perhaps I should read it.

My father chose his big ideas over me and my mother. And the thing is, my dad was always fucked over by big ideas. It's what got him taking part in genocide, and then he went in the complete opposite direction and became Marxist to make up for it, and then when things got bad he ultimately chose to detach from us because he could not stop worrying about the direction of the country.

And this is not to say that I don't like ideas. I do. But in healthy doses, and with a more tolerant attitude. I see parts of my father in myself and it frightens me, especially when I see one of his good friends, who always had political discussions with my dad but was able to take things in stride and able to have a life outside of ideas - and he's still doing fine now, and my dad is in the fucking ground. You know? That's my experience.

And the other thing is, the way I work through ideas is by writing fiction. A lot of what I write is extremely idea-centric. For me that's a more holistic way of expressing myself than I could ever put down in a written discussion like this.

Part of my career goal is to be diplomatic. I don't look for truth and I actually don't even try to figure out how to make the best democratic society. My goal is to just keep things together, mend the stitches. Other people are free to search for truth and debate about democracy. But my life if I join the Foreign Service won't be happy and calm in the sense where I could sleep all the time, it would be filled with action, as cliched as that sounds. And I would be discussing things that matter to the post, but it would be on a much less meta scale than discussions we've been having. And I would be writing. And honestly, I would be plenty happy with that.

Are you saying ideas killed your father?

My experience, I suppose, is of people who don't care about ideas making stupid decisions because of it, not reflecting on their marriage until they'd been married 10-15 years and had a child, not thinking about where they stand in society but only wanting 'what they deserve', caring more about their financial status than the friends around them, and in the end, being naggingly unhappy and alone. That's one experience. Another is of myself not engaging with school and freaking out instead, and people like Steve telling me that if I just let myself be excited about ideas, if i let that show in class and in my assignments and other aspects of my life, then I would achieve academic success as well, without ever having to try for something as material as good grades. People like Steve trying so hard to be a good teacher and so invested in it because they feel that a liberal education, that trying to help people reach a critical understanding of the world around them, is a real difference they can make in the world, a good thing. And then the things I study, where ignorance of social forces only contributes to people letting themselves be ruled by them, to discrimination and psychological pain and violence, and I long to see people be more independent than that. And it seems like there are very few ways to be more independent, and one of them is related to education, to learning to stop and think critically about these things. That's why I care. And I'm not saying that everyone has to, or even that you have to, but it's why I have to care.

I know you do think about ideas in different ways, and if you're happy with the Foreign Service, I wouldn't tell you not to do what makes you happy.

I am kind of saying that ideas killed my father. Not ideas themselves, but how he handled those ideas. Obviously it all comes down to how you wield ideas.

It's clearly better to care and be engaged with life in general no matter how. I guess I just don't like feeling judged and looked down upon.

Caring about ideas and seeking truth are not one and the same thing. As for your father, I don't know, obviously.

I'm sorry you feel that way. I clearly crossed a line between expressing that I disagree w/ what you're saying and seeming to look down on you as a person. I still don't think I do the latter. Maybe (an insane?) part of me feels like you deserve better, because I expect more out of life. But that's not the same as looking down on you.

I don't know either, not completely, and I never can. And in a lot of ways finding out more has made me more anxious than not knowing anything (and being free to invent my own preferred narrative for his life/person).

Well... it is looking down on me, because I believe in freedom of choice, and it's looking down on my decisions. That's actually more what I mean actually, like you think I can do better and that I'm wasting my brain being in the Foreign Service or something. I really don't think I am, because I think (arrogantly) that I would be useful to people in the Foreign Service, and I feel like I could actually make a difference to US policy there. I don't really have any ambition of being an Ambassador or whatev, I just want to be a great Pol/Econ officer in hardship posts and I want to campaign for aid and send people to study in America and advise the government on how not to fuck things up even more.

My point was that beliefs are the sort of ideas you're talking about, that can be more or less informed, and the belief I'm talking about is in the importance of Enlightenment itself.

I believe in freedom of choice too, and it's not even you wanting to be in the Foreign Service that bothers me. That seems good, precisely because you "could actually make a difference to US policy there," and I think you have every right to be arrogant about thinking you could be useful there. It's that somehow you seem to be saying that in order to do this you should give up caring about "big ideas" and so on. I don't see why you want to do that. And I know you keep saying it relates to your father, but I can't help thinking that we're talking about different things.

"My point was that beliefs are the sort of ideas you're talking about, that can be more or less informed, and the belief I'm talking about is in the importance of Enlightenment itself."

Yeah, I know. I know they're not the same. I guess I think they're more similar than you do? I don't know what my dad thought about Enlightenment.

It's not like I'm not interested in Enlightenment, or whatever you want to call it. Or Big Ideas. But for me it's a more personal matter. I am highly interested in seeking my own personal Enlightenment, and I believe I will be able to do that through living life. I don't think it's something I'll find through discussion; but I think we have very different ideas on what Enlightenment is, that's part of the problem.

I don't think that the Foreign Service necessitates I give up thinking about big ideas, in any case.

Beliefs are all of the same nature, I think, but the difference between the two sorts we're talking about is that they're of different orders. One is a belief about the best way to decide one's beliefs, and the others are simply beliefs about matters--that's all I mean.

I think it's something you get through living life as well as discussing...it's something you reach through being shown--by personal experience, others' experience, scientific experiments, literature, history, whatever it takes, whatever is capable of showing the consequences of a certain thing--enough that you might change your understanding and beliefs.

In the older descriptions of Enlightenment, it's also related (and I would agree) to not just taking someone else's word for it, and figuring things out for yourself:

"Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. Such tutelage is self-imposed if its cause is not lack of intelligence, but rather a lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another."
-Kant

"The floating of other men's opinions in our brains, makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true."
-Locke

And yeah, I agree that the Foreign Service doesn't necessitate giving up thinking (about big ideas or anything else, as far as i know).

and if disagreeing with someone's decisions is the same as looking down on them as a person, then i think we're all arrogant fucks, because i don't really see how you can go through life agreeing with everyone's decisions.

hmm... I guess I don't necessarily agree with everyone's decisions, or even approve of them, but I don't openly regard these decisions with disdain. I usually think, "that's fine for you". But I'm more into "live and let live", in general.

(no subject)

royinpink.livejournal.com - 2008-11-02 10:28 (UTC) - Expand

I know that's natural, but I feel like it's been happening a lot lately, and most of the things I'm thinking about lately relate to this, relate to my past and how that relates to my future, and they're not necessarily theoretical building blocks or anything, but they are important to me.

Maybe I'm missing the point, or maybe I don't know how to respond...I don't know what to say.

They're not even opinions, they're just observations/realizations about myself.

But they seem to contain opinions, and a much more stable, unchanging view of your identity... But if I take them as non-opinions, I don't know what I can say. Congratulations?

But it's like if it doesn't have to do with what you care about, with these big ideas that I am so afraid of, it just gets passed over and is never spoken about. And to me that is like skipping over my life. It is like skipping over what makes my life important and worth living

How? Why? Maybe I just don't get your life, or what you think is important, but, well, I'm confused as to how this seems to you to be what I'm doing. Confused as fuck.

and what makes it worse for me is that I'm skipping over this in order to have an argument about something I don't even have an opinion on or care about.

You don't care about what would best make a democratic society? Because that's what I was trying to talk about. Obviously badly.

And I feel like this is what I'm always doing these days, bypassing my own interests for someone else's.

I'm sorry. I don't expect you to do that for me. But what are your interests?

And this is really, really upsetting to me.

Again, I'm sorry.

We do care about similar things if you frame it that way. I would never, ever, ever describe any of our conversations as "what would best make a democratic society" because what you talk about sounds much more overarching than that. When I think of what would best make a democratic society I don't think of what you think of. I think of pluralism and freedom of press and fair elections and civil society and rule of law. And I know, believe me, that a lot more ties in - but if I try to think about what you think about, it would break my head, because I already think in too much detail about things like civil society and because my brain is always half-taken up by stories I'm trying to write and characters in my head.

I think that I tend to think horizontally instead of vertically. So say I'm talking about, I don't know, masculinity in the military. What I like to do is make that discussion richer rather than immediately jumping up a level to the frames our society uses and ceasing to talk about concrete things. And I think that is because I write, so I think in terms of details and images and emotion and texture - instead of, say, truth, or philosophy, which I would call more vertical.

And when I'm forced to think vertically I can't even form a cogent argument, because it's too vague for me. That's why it becomes bullshit. But this ties back into the pursuit of truth and relativism. And then I start feeling like my own interests are getting pushed aside. A better way of putting it is that the argument is never defined the way I would define it. It's always on a different, bigger scale, where I can't make sense of things, because it seems like the factors are mind-bogglingly infinite. And that's fine if you think that way. But you can't expect me to. We're not the same person.

I mean, all I wanted to say in this post is that I find the quirks of politicians interesting, and I find their neurosis interesting. I've always liked the idea of a link between insanity and politics. I have nothing really to back me up on that but I like thinking about it. And I don't want to just immediately step into frames and society and how it's all part of a big system. And I'm a constructivist, you know, I like systems, but part of the reason I'm a constructivist is actually because it's the only perspective that allows for things like irrationality. And I wanted to dwell on that level. I'm sure that if I wrote about insanity and politics you would be able to dismiss it as something very insignificant in the large scheme of things (or that it has nothing to do with insanity because it's all been carefully sculpted by the system, or something else that completely dismisses it as unimportant to talk about) and maybe it is insignificant in the history of humankind. But see, in my lifetime, in my career, I'm likely to encounter insane people in politics. And it doesn't matter a whole lot to future-me how society in the long-run shaped them to be that way, and why no one likes to be objectified, and how we're all part of a group that's been stereotyped - I just need to be able to deal with them in the immediate timeframe, and quite frankly, to be amused about it. And I'm sure that sounds like a very small life to you but I'm okay with it. Honest.

I don't think 'it's too complicated' is really a valid excuse for not thinking about something. But I think things are more complicated than I understand, too. I haven't thought about as many of the things that you think about as a poli sci major, or that you mention here. I wish I understood those things better. I feel like saying that thinking about something "would break your head" is more condescending to yourself than anything I would say.

But thinking only about concrete things means you end up reaching wrong conclusions. You have to use 'horizontal' and 'vertical' thinking together to reach anything more true...

I don't expect you to do anything, and I know we're not the same person, but I guess I didn't realize that you thought you "can't make sense" of things on the "bigger scale". I mean, by all means, define the argument on your own terms, but they sound like terms that I think are unproductive, because my interest is in reaching something more true, and so I can't participate other than to disagree, and then I piss you off. And so I don't know what else to say. I can't argue on your terms. I could try, and it's not even that I think I'm incapable of thinking that way, or that it's somehow ingrained in my personality not to, although it would be difficult because I'm not in the habit of doing it, but I simply have no desire to, because I have yet to see the value in not talking about the "big ideas", if that's what you're suggesting.

Oh, I think politicians are probably a bit crazy too, but then, I think insanity is culturally defined as what's "abnormal" or "deviant" in mental behavior. And then I'd want to find the pattern that would drive people of certain mental persuasions to politics. Habits are irrational, and it's a large part of how people function...even habits of thought. I'm not saying I see insanity as insignificant. But my drive would be to explain it. Which doesn't mean I can't also find it amusing.

Anyway, it's your life, do what you will.

I'm not as smart as you think I am. I also devote, as I've said, a lot of my energy to writing, and that's actually where a lot of my opinion on "big ideas" comes out. In my schoolwork and stuff, ideas tend to be of a smaller scale. And the only way that I feel "big ideas" work is when you balance it out with fiction. Otherwise, like in a paper or something, it is bullshit to me. I would just not be able to take myself seriously. But see, I really can't take any philosophy seriously.

I really don't understand why only looking at concrete things leads you to the wrong conclusions. I mean, the whole world is concrete things. Maybe we're defining concrete and abstract in different ways.

But see, with your style of argument you see how I can't argue either. So I don't know what to do in all honesty. Probably just the same as always, except with more consideration towards the other side? But the thing is I feel like I can give you consideration whereas you can't give me consideration because you are much more stubborn than I am.

I totally agree that you need to be horizontal and vertical to achieve something more true. But I guess I'm more vertical in my fiction, because it feels more holistic there, and not in daily conversation. And as you know I'm not seeking truth. I think there's definitely value in not talking about the "big ideas", but partly because I like to think in microcosms and metaphors, because I think without doing things horizontally you're not going to reach the right conclusions either - there's too much variance in the world. And I mean, yeah - insanity is culturally defined, but this is a very vague statement, and vagueness does nothing to me. That's why I like to think more in metaphors and microcosms, because it keeps me interested in the conversation. I think it's useful to think of various instances of political insanity across various cultures. It's just more interesting to me. I think you can reach more vertical conclusions that way, when you see similarities. But I mean, I'm also into looking at the individual (probably more so than you are). As someone who's not looking for truth it doesn't seem pointless to me, because I just like sort of relishing the richness of the world.

I don't mean that I think people ought to live in a bubble and just think a lot and that this will get them any closer to 'truth'. I mean, of course it won't. I don't know if fiction balances it out, but then, I can't write fiction.

It's been said that there are three logical ways of drawing conclusions--induction, deduction, and abduction. As far as I understand them (again, not a philosopher), induction is when you have a lot of 'concrete' things, you have instances as your logical premises, and you conclude from those instances some general regularity. It requires perception to be true. Deduction is when you have some general law/regularity as part of your premises, and you can derive from it something that must be true if the premises are true, possibly about individual instances. Deduction depends on true premises and the validity of the logical form, rather than perception. Anyway, abduction is the 'logic of hypothesis'. It comes from seeing similarities in things and concluding that it's possible that they might have some other relation. That's sorta vague, you ought to get it from someone other than me if you actually care, but yeah.

The point is that all three are necessary for good scientific process, and abduction is the most similar of all of them to the way art works. It has the greatest potential for error, yet it's the only way of reaching something better than generalizations about the data, of getting at explanatory principles. It's still subject to test, to falsification, but it's the most capable of getting beyond the data, which are interpretable in oh-so-many ways. Peirce and Bateson both demand this sort of thinking of science, which is why I really admire them.

"I am quite sure that a young man who spends his time exclusively in the laboratory of physics or chemistry or biology, is in danger of profiting but little more from his work than if he were an apprentice in a machine shop."
-Peirce

Bateson has explicitly said that inductive thinking and the value placed on prediction has hindered the social sciences in figuring out any fundamental principles. And so that's all I mean about thinking only about concrete things. They're there, they need to be accounted for, theory is bullshit if it isn't tied to them, but scientific investigation needs more than that to progress.

I wasn't trying to explain insanity in politicians. I was just saying how I would define insanity, which is something like, 'that which doesn't follow cultural logic/knowledge/habit and offers no other explanation for itself but mental defect.' Of course to look at its actual relevance to politics, you'd have to look across cultures or whatever else might be helpful. I was trying to avoid actually making a hypothesis.

well, I don't disagree with any of that.

well, that's why i wrote, "I don't think we disagree as much about "certain terms" as you think we do...and I was excited about that and going to respond to your other comments."

I just want to say...I think things have gotten mangled, and a lot of that is my fault, but I think some of what I wanted to do was to respond to your life, because i do care, and i feel like i don't understand where you are right now, and it troubles me.

maybe it just comes out stupid, because i try to come up with LJ comments instead of just talking to you, or because i'm too "logical and unemotional" lately (jason just accused me of this, hah), or i don't know what. and i feel like everything i've really felt in response to what you say has come out all wrong in what i've written to you. sigh.

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