Many of you may wonder why I have been so dogged with my “Quotes for Discussion” posts over the last year. I usually offer them up without context or commentary, and they are tangential to the point of the sites where I post them at best. Further, few people, including few of you, bother to read them or discuss them. And even more, sometimes the quotes, and my purpose in posting them, is very hard to gather. So, I’ll tell you why.
It is my belief that most political programs and ideas fail because they are not conceived or implemented with people in mind. Take, for example, Marxism. Marx knew a lot about economics, about philosophy, and about politics. But every single society based on Marxism, from the Soviet Union to each commune and kibbutz has eventually failed, and failed badly. The reason for that is simple: Marx understood people, individual people, very poorly.
This is the root of my politics: that it has to be about people, and how they really live. I don’t support legalization of heroin and marijuana, prostitution and gambling, property rights and gun rights, because I think any of those things are so great in and of themselves. People will abuse drugs beyond their capacity to manage, cheat on their spouses and lose their paychecks, believe in the ownership of their property and seek to defend themselves with violence, whether I condone it or not. Policies meant to attack these things will inevitably fail and cause great injustice.
Yet why do so many societies, particularly democratic ones, attempt to inact policies such as these and many more, despite the fact that they will be self-defeating? My belief is that few people, particularly in politics, consider people as they truly are. People, in all their intelligence and stupidity, vapidity and depth, avarice and generosity, are the object of all of our political policies. Far too often, we forget that. We speak of politics as if we seek to have them conducted by the philosopher-kings of Plato’s Republic, forgetting ourselves in Plato’s appeal and ignorance.
I post those quotes to remind us about people, and to try to get people to think about them, often in a different way than usual for politics. Because it is easy to speak of political policy and strategy without thinking about these things, about the crucial role that people will have in them. And people usually care about much different things than laws and taxes, or who wins elections. There is a reason why for every song protesting a war there are several thousand about love and good times with friends. There is a reason why action stories and detective novels outsell political polemics. There is a reason why the rap of braggary outsells that of positive messages and social critique.
Most people aren’t like us. Most of them don’t think much about the policies and strategems which we debate so ruthlessly and will effect them all so tremendously. So, I post these quotes in the hope that you will take a moment out of your political blogging time and think about something different. And when you come back to our usual fare, perhaps you don’t even know it, but you are somewhat changed. A part of you is still thinking about human beings, in all their frailty and imperfection.
Did you ever think much about jobs? I mean, some of the jobs people land in? You see a guy giving haircuts to dogs, or maybe going along the curb with a shovel, scooping up horse manure. And you think, now why is that silly bastard doing that? He looks fairly bright, about as bright as anyone else. Why the hell does he do that for a living?
You kind of grin and look down your nose at him. You think he’s nuts, know what I mean, or he doesn’t have any ambition. And then you take a good look at yourself, and you stop wondering about the other guy.
…You’ve got all your hands and feet. Your health is okay, and you make a nice appearance, and ambition – man! You’ve got it. You’re young, I guess you’d call thirty young, and you’re strong. You don’t have much education, but you’ve got more than plenty of other people who go to the top. And yet with all that – with all you’ve had to do with – this is as far as you’ve got. And something tells you, you’re not going much farther if any.
And there’s nothing to be done about it now, of course, but you can’t stop hoping. You can’t stop wondering…
All you can do is go on like those other guys go on. The guy giving haircuts to dogs, and the guy sweeping up horse manure. Hating it. Hating yourself.
And hoping.
~Jim Thompson, A Hell of a Woman
Thank you very much for reading. We now return you to your regularly scheduled political blogging site.
19 comments
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let me poll it, consult my consultants, and find out which lobbies will give me how much money to represent their various opinions, and then i’ll get back to you.
…is surely, I think, a lot about the background music, the stories told before and after.
But I do think that other people are just like us, but with different forms of preoccupation. And all the preoccupied need a good swift aesthetic kick in the butt. On the other hand, you’re writing great essays and I’m posting ren and stimpy cartoons in pony parties…
the tie from the heart to the mind gets choked off as people focus solely on analysis and debate. It’s strange but somehow we eventually make it through it on the issues that we must, here’s hoping that someday we get better at it. And beautiful essay, I haven’t been ignoring them, just short on time lately and feeding the brain more than the heart……ummmmmm……….
quite simply, brilliant Jay. have to say, you’re growing on me as a writer and as i get the rhythm of it. impressed.
you give analysis, but it’s framed emotionally. that’s what we respond to.
as far as politics…
it is why getting gov’t OUT of people’s bedrooms and doctor’s offices, for example, is such a bedrock to better gov’t
and why gov’t needs to regulate industry… because those guys, like the devil, play to and exploit people’s weaknesses… people who aren’t like us and, as we’ve found, people just like us, all of us vunerable to being overtaken
about this:
My belief is that few people, particularly in politics, consider people as they truly are.
As they truly are? How are they?
This raises the question, is the nature of humanity somehow fixed, as you seem to imply, or are we in some measure the product of our culture, including our politics?
If the latter is true than we can create a political culture which brings out the very best in people… and then really fuck things up!
the vast influence of both hypocrisy and inertia. Those sin policies get made because people at all levels – politicians and the citizens who vote for them – feel they have to be seen to support these things whether they actually want them or not. It’s a matter of conventionality, of acceding to the unquestioned pieties of the culture, of refusing to challenge the givens. It’s at heart simply a conformist impulse. Those who do challenge are a threat not just to the established order but to those who have not challenged and can’t go back on the path because they’ve invested in it, through ego, through ethics, through the practical sacrifices they’ve made to follow that day to day life. Pull that thread and you might unravel the whole stinking edifice. The stronger the reaction against pulling the thread, the deeper the fear that it all really is subject to unraveling. Moments of truth like in your excerpt are very dangerous, very subversive to the status quo.
via religions or laws or isms, control people, declare their pursuits of happiness or pain unlawful,and fill them full of fear of each other and their own natures they would have no reason to exist, no power. It’s the illusion of danger that allows them to govern with consent. Be it your soul or your mind or body Uncle Sam wants you. Zero tolerance is absurd and seems to have become our mantra. Disorderly conduct is now a major infraction.
But, people will also fight, steal, cheat others out of money, discriminate based on race, drug their dates, abuse their family, sometimes even shoot up the high-school. Does that mean we should not have laws and policies to pressure against such things?
Or how do you determine what acts of humans are inevitable and should be left alone, while others are worthy of official disdain and punishment?
Or is the point that laws and policies about ALL these topics and types of conduct are possible, so long as they are grounded in the reality of “people as they truly are”?