Posted 3 years, 11 months ago late at night by oso
… is progressivism. Call this an aboslutism versus relativism redux. I didn’t intend to get into this mess again. I didn’t intend to post my thoughts on the movie Los Diarios Motocicletas. I didn’t intend to talk about utopias or ideals or equality or nihilism. That’s Abogado’s department.
But in the end I lost. The impetus for this post comes from several corners. First, as I said, there’s that new movie about Che. Then there’s last week’s issue of Time and this month’s National Geographic about Darwinism. And the Harvard Design Review laying on my uncle’s table in Seattle. And, of course, Abogado’s post as well as an IM conversation we had. And finally a draft that we of the Progressive Bloggers Alliance are working on to define Progressivism.
Given all those influences and their far reaching claims, you can expect this to get a little messy. Call it sophomoric sex for your head … don’t worry, I’ll wash the sheets.
Note: I wrote this in my journal at the La Jolla Pannikin on Wed. October 20th at 8:30 a.m.
Last night I watched Los Diarios Motocicletas - based loosely on Che’s own Motorcycle Diaries - with Dave and my sister. What it reminded me of and reaffirmed in my heart is that a life striving towards idealism is the most honest/noble life to live and that any action which veers from such idealism is a failure of will, not some arbitrary support of nihilism.
Now this is a change from what I once believed. It used to be that I was completely relativist, that my world view was founded on the certainty of the sun one day exploding. But if that’s true, where does such a strong and shared sense of moral conviction come from? Where does spiritual sensation (a feeling of holistic unity with beings and nature) come from? Why is music so god damned orgasmic? And where could one possibly find a sense of purpose?
We’ve talked about this before and it seems like there was a consensus that ethics are relative and utilitarian. That they formed throughout the history of humankind as a way to co-exist peacefully.
Che rejected that idea. You see it (or read it) in his formative motorcycle diaries where he feels the injustice of inequality throughout his trip around South America. But it’s important to note that he feels the injustice and does note rationalize it.
You can’t rationalize it because there’s no logical basis to equality. Which is why Fascism was such an appealing ideology - ignoring morality, it very well could be the best form of governance (which it was for millennia). But most of us cannot ignore our own moral conviction; which is why WWII is so often called "The Good War."
All of our so called heroes have on thing in common. From Abraham Lincoln to Susan B. Anthony to Gandhi to Simon Bolivar, Emiliano Zapata, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, and Che himself. They all believed in and fought for (to a lesser or greater degree) justice and equality.
I don’t know of anyone who fought stronger, with more integrity than Ernesto Che Guevara. And its his integrity towards the ideal that has made Che the struggle’s iconic embodiment. (that and a cool hat) But in order to break status quo in his search for equality Che realized that he needed to take arms, he needed to incite violent revolution, he needed to execute those who obstructed equality.
For this "reliance on violence" he is often demonized (most recently by GNN’s Anthony Lappé and Slate). But for Che it was a temporary moral sacrifice to ensure a greater moral ideal.
I ask this of all of you who insisted on moral relativism: was Che wrong to upset the more peaceful system of inequality in his violent persistence of equality? And if so, then why?
I meant to post that on Friday night when we got in to Seattle, but it turned out to be a busy and quick four day trip full of catching up with relatives that I see so rarely. So then I decided not to post it at all. Friday through Sunday my sister and I stayed with our uncle atop Cougar Mountain just south of Issaquah. My uncle is an artist turned developer who went from studying social sciences at Friends’ World to Photography at Evergreen State College to photography at Central Washington to sculpture at Stanford to Environmental designt at University of Washington to Design at Harvard. It’s because of the latter that he now subscribes to the $20 an issue Harvard Design Review which I read each morning while drinking my coffee.
The latest issue deals with Utopianism in design. That is, designs that meet an aesthetic ideal (assuming one exists) and encourage a utopia to form for its inhabitants. In Utopia and the Hazards of Perfection Now and In the Renaissance by Nicolas Adams the author made a case against Utopianism in design arguing that today’s designers (architects, planners, landscape designers) have to negotiate ideals with realities and that insisting upon perfection is usually detrimental to the outcome of the project. He did not, however, once question the idea of a utopia.
And this is really what I’m getting at. Are utopias (imagined perfect spaces, societies, cities, worlds) - or at least their fundamentals - static or do our definitions change across time and across cultures? Is it possible for every single person in the world to come to a consensus about what an objective, perfect world would be like? What would be the pillars, the most important aspects, defining that utopia?
There’s so much more I want to tie this into - so many thoughts shooting this way and that in my little head, but the liquor store closes in 15 minutes and I need my nightly bag of sunchips. More to come …
let’s talk more...
An old friend of mine can answer your question regarding utopias:
http://pba.thudfactor.com/board/viewtopic.php?p=261#261
“I ask this of all of you who insisted on moral relativism: was Che wrong to upset the more peaceful system of inequality in his violent persistence of equality? And if so, then why?”
- That is an absurd question to any relativist. Of course he was not wrong (in any fundamental sense) to take action for what he felt was right. The entire point is that to answer that question requires value judgment calculations that necessitate subjectivity. I’m not calling in to question whether people should act when they see injutice.
It used to be hard to argue with the fact that the world was better off for having been rid of Saddam, but then when a study from Johns Hopkins finds that 100,000 Iraqis (mostly women and children killed by errant bombs)had to die for this to happen, you have to start weighing values. What you end up with is a scale with lives on one side and “democracy” or “freedom” on the other. I am not competent, nor willing, to make such judgments. Same applies with Che, Castro, Stalin, Mao et al. (not to say those people in any way agreed on anything). You can’t put a price on a life and you can’t put a price on freedom and “equality”. Of course the real problem is that you can even define freedom and equality. Equality is incredibly subjective and relative and can be defined in so many (contradictory) ways as to make it meaningless. Like when Bush repeats catch phrases over and over again they become stripped of any linguistic or political meaning.
If you would define what you mean by “equality” then we could debate whether or not it is a good thing (I don’t think it is per se). The difference is that I will not be making moralistic arguments, I would try to show that using the premises defined that there is no such thing as equality in any meaningful sense.
Further, I can almost guarantee that I would not want to live in any society called a utopia by any large segment of the population.
I agree that we should strive for justice; I agree that we should strive for equality in some sense; I agree that we should strive for freedom. I also believe that when these ideals collide (and they very much will) then you have to make value judgments. This is the major theoretical contradiction in Liberalism and the left in general. How can you support freedom and maintain equality? Where do you draw the line when liberty and equality inevitably clash? Can you draw this line on any moralistic assumptions or are you just making a policy choice?
I just wrote a long comment and it wasn’t posted. I’ll summarize:
“I ask this of all of you who insisted on moral relativism: was Che wrong to upset the more peaceful system of inequality in his violent persistence of equality? And if so, then why?”
This is an absurd question to any relativist. The whole point is that to answer such quetions you ahve to start making value judgments that are going to be inherently subjective.
It used to be hard to argue that getting rid of Saddam was a bad thing. Then Johns Hopkins finds that as many as 100,000 Iraqis died (mostly women and children killed by errant bombs) for this to happen, you have to start weighing values. Lives on one scale and “freedom” “democracy” etc. on the other. I am not competent, nor willing, to do such balancing.
You say you want equality. I say coerced equality is as bad as any other despotic rule, if not worse because it is done under the auspices of justice. I don’t want it, so you would have to impose it on me. My main contention though is that I dont think you can define equality in any meaningful sense. In fact, if you were to argue for equality I would try to show that any premises you use are inherently contradictory and defeat either the means or the end. “Everybody should be equal” is just like the statement “we should have a free market” in that you could be absolutely consistent with those premises and come to two exactly contradictory conclusions. A market example: should we allow predatory pricing? Being consistent with the free market ideal you could make perfectly rational arguments for either yes or no, so you would need to base any conclusions on external (to the argument) values. In other words, the premise “the market should be free” is meaningless and absurd. Same with the premise “Everybody should be equal”
I guess you’ll just hear from me twice then!
Good points. That was actually the first time I had read Orwell’s Why Socialists Don’t Believe in Fun
This is probably the hardest that little hamster in my head has worked for quite a while. It’s funny, just last week I argued that we needed to have a broad discussion on political philosophy before registering with any party. Now that discussion is taking place and I feel like my head is spinning. I’m having to go back to all the basics … things that I had thought I worked out a long time ago.
I should make it clear that over the past four days I have managed to - at various points - both thoroughly convince myself of relativism and an absolute ideal. And ironcally, I equally (in my own scattered head) justified my politics (left-liberal) according to each view. This post is me trying to convince myself of idealism and I appreciate all efforts to prove me wrong.
Nick, what you’re doing at PBA is chingón.
[...] piece about religion in her life. Mari’s boyfriend (who knew!) was able to say what I tried to and failed to in his post about conservatives, liberals, rational [...]
Hello,
I just watched the movie Los Diarios Motocicletas here in an small movie cafe in Cuzco, Peru. I have a total of five years of my life in South America. Have done much more than this trip, am also wondering how he got from Leticia to Caracas so quick…? Skipped Iquitos also…
But Che is the fashion of the day, and idealism is good, fashion is more of what I see with Che T-shirt, trendy way of showing you have middle class guilt for being one of the rich enough to visit these countries.
Rich boys from Argentina wishing to be famous.
I am not sure, revolution is not the answer here, there is a basic pirate mentality that is difficult to stop. The conquistadors were land pirates, and the people of South America are the children.
Che failed and the killed him in Bolivia, he is not popular with the South American or Central American people, but the ones that have nothing to do with this.. he is…
Injustice is a strange bird, when the small guy gets to the top, he becomes the same as the guy he replaced.
You people have some complicated lofty sentences…
Travel the world and you wil love your home.
Andy 8 years on the road.
Andy of HoboTraveler.com in Cuzco, Peru