J)
The integral politics promoted by Ken Wilber, etc. merely uses the fourfold existential chart to describe the usual things which are said about Liberal and Conservatives. As such it preserves popular bias about determination, the accumulated results of slander about and deception from politicized groups.
Before charting one must be sure to remove your best guess concerning the facets of the political entity which are extensions of its basic theory (normatized by you!, but that's fine...), structurally, behaviourally groupable,
I)
Ideological critique is almost another way of saying, "There is no such things as mentality." To say, "The problem is the mentality of Capital Hill, etc."ascribes to a mysterious entity that cannot be located and is presumably the byproduct of innumerable individual attitudes is a quick sidestep of the structural and procedural patterns which generate the status quo.
H)
Party politics, if it is found to an effective use of political energy, would need to think out PROTOCOLS & POLICIES.
Here are some hypothetical policies -- default employment (i.e. welfare is a job requiring some duty to the state, say -- garbage sorting), a target (no need to actually attain it) of zero waste, distributed water purification and electrical generation, incorporate the commons, ...
Here are some hypothetical protocols -- use the best available data on collective intelligence to determine group decisions and extra-parliamentary voting, decide on acceptance of slander (i.e. superiority to media), make polarizing claims, fuse left and right attitudes into hybrid positions, maximize electric swarming technologies, astonish the public, practice simplified communication (i.e. Reaganism), reincorporate virtue, religion and patriotism into the 'left', put everyone and all segments of the population to work, set systems against each other (e.g. deng xioping's chinese capitalist cities, public option insurance, etc. "opt" able systems
A certain slice of the population is orientated more strongly than others toward the issue of titular control. When the international workers, in the quasi-Marxist sense, side with the barons and structures of their own system against the interests of workers from other nations and races -- what do we find? We discover a proletariat that is invested in borders, boundaries, "official zones" and "proprietorial signatories." Regardless of their own interests they side in favor of titular control. This can be seen as the result of deliberate or system propaganda effects, ideology, etc., but these interpretations gloss over the common sentiment and neuro-psychology shared between the "lords and serfs" in the feudal model.
If we call this slice of the population, regardless of socio-economic status, the Right then we face this split between their fierce dedication to semantics (ownership, signature, codes, territories, flags, etc.) and their apparent disregard for semantics (condescension to facts, distrust of ideals, fervent use of variable positions in arguments). Either we have a contradiction or else both can be reduced to a single phenomenon. I posit that disregard for semantics manifests as a willingness to weapons any standard (reliable) terminology, to defend existing terms against changes (which require increased linguistic engagement), and to promote biological and emotional responses that function prior to reason as reasonable -- this is the essence of unreason.
So the advocacy of titular control is actually a promotion of non-linguistic emotional responses. The use of a semantic boundary by those who do not significantly relate to semantic boundaries is a prop meant to indicate a spot at which biological reaction extremes are indicated. "Challenge my god, border, nationality, etc. and I will freak out, argue passionately, go rogue, radicalize, etc."
F)
How can the Right be both cynical & conformist?
Is it that linguistic terms are constantly unfolding and that "liberal" fidelity to speech requires a minimum of progress?
Is it that conformity is only tactical -- the weaponization of terms made possible by their social familiarity?
Is it that conformity is allowed by a "might as well" attitude which indicates no particular trust in the social forms? The conformist attitude does not distinguish between egalitarianism and authoritarianism -- and thus makes no particular socio-ethical preference in keeping with the cynical distance from Language?
E)
If Sarah Palin is against racism -- should you be?
The question is not merely a trite play on the liberal populist demonization of the minor Alaskan governor. It raises the very basic question of how the Left can articulate itself in the current age -- an age in which the terminology of rights has become standarized and therefore a tool for the anti-progressive elements of the society.
Those individuals who were formerly weak on racism not display the same efforts under the banner of tolerance. The language and values of the old Left are readily co-opted by the contemporary Right. This tends to neutralize the effects of calls for justice and emancipation.
It is not a matter, however, of making the crazy wager to embrace racial prejudice in order to spite the New Right. Rather it is the acknowledgement that the defining points of Left and Right are always in flux -- always forming themselves anew at junctions which previously divided them. So the formation of populist "Tea Parties" is a New Right phenomenon which describes itself as non-partisan. The oppositional orientation is not to say, "Hey! We're the truly non-partisan!"
What is the language of the New Left? Should it balance the New Right by recapturing the terminology of Nation, Patriotism and Religion? Probably, yes. It must also play to its strengths -- eliciting a split in the now common vocabulary, designating a intellectual, egalitarian, pro-proletarian, progressive understanding of anti-racism in juxtaposition to a cynical, conformist, regressive understanding of anti-racism.
The New Left must lead away from the superficial populist reactions that call forth distorted behavior from the technocratic edifice of the state over linguistic hysteria. The insolent joke, the distinguishing terminology, the charged phrase -- these are tools of the New Left.
e.g. RACISM is fine, good even as a vital, emotional, historical acknowledgement of normalized structural and behavioral variations between different racial lineages and cultural pools. The inscription of the unfair, destructive race-based prejudice in social enactments is intolerable. The hot 'charge' conveyed by the explosive word must be treated as amenable to the cool attitude of the progressive mind. The New Right will use tolerance-terminology as a part of their word arsenal. The New Left has no choice but to treat 'hot words' as meaningless, merely descriptive, non-charged, etc.
It is obvious that Racism among the working classes perpetuates the existing State by treating loyalty vertically to the local barons, or agents of barons, rather than to a global class. Proletarian racism is assisted in its perpetuity by Liberal reactionary sentiments which suppress, evade or dissociate the vital language of racial difference.
Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former priest, was perceived as a threat -- i.e. a target or tool to be wielded by the Right against Mr. Obama. His racially charged form of enthusiastic self-expression was seen by Liberals as a dangerous fire... making them available to Conservative attack. What does this mean? It means that the anti-racist charge is a Right Wing weapon and that Liberals are fools not to cut off this vulnerability by embracing the terminology of difference and evaluation. The fear of charged, un-PC terms is not progressive but smacks of fidelity to the gossip-mind, the peasant consciousness. It is the Conservative who traditionally must trot out his wife and family in order to apologize and resign after a minor sexual incident. Conciliation and repentance and taboo terminology are part of the right-wing order to which the Left exposes itself at its peril. The right-wing's desire to seize upon terminology in order to 'go wild' is not something which can be pacified by negotiation.
The New Left must strive to be unslanderable, happy to admit -- what if Bill Clinton had merely admitted it?
New Right make seize upon obscenity in its self-presentation, the "damn right I do!" -- to counter this the Left needs, NEEDS, to treat slander as nothing. Meaningless. Human and intellectual obviousness is great tool. Emancipatory life is promoted by the demonstration of the no-special-significance of the things which are to be tolerated.
So to is a radical nuanced and ambiguous use of concepts which isolate the conservative instinct -- but this must be used sparingly since it isolates also the proletariat, per se.
A)
PRIMITIVE POLITICAL VARIANCE
To discern the truth -- a truth, possibly even a new truth -- of the human political polarization into Left/Right "wings" of the Society, we need to subtract this dichotomy from its simplistic historical instances. The apparent content of classical left-wing & right-wing issues is auxiliary and transitory. The sign that these general political orientations are ambivalent toward particular social issues is found in the sum total of their mutual condemnations. The Left is accused by the Right of being "flaccid flip-floppers," while the Right continually stuns the Left with its blatant disregard for facts, rational interpretations and consistency. Both are observing and commenting upon the extra-positional status of their shared split.
This fluid, extra-positionality is demonstrated also in the historical record of their transformations. The 18th century tennis French tennis court from which we derive the names "Left" and "Right" was arguing the merits of Aristocratic Monarchy vs. Republic. One side was apparently progressive, intellectually aware of the possibility of devising a more effective social system in which fairness would be extended to the maximum number of citizens. Their adversaries were apparently conservative, desiring to preserve the ancient results of Feudal society. While the Right Wing does maintain many attributes of the Baron/Serf psychology of the Middle Ages it has nonetheless retooled itself as Fascism vs. Socialism, Democracy vs. Communism, Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice. The content of these social positions of reasonably fluid.
So we need to investigate prior to these contents in order to familiarize ourselves with the basis of the apparently pandemic status of instinctive mass political dualism.
Thinking that socio-political dimension require linguistic mediation -- we become a human social self through our awakening to complex power of symbolic communication -- we can narrow in on the mythic moment at which the bodies of of hominid primates became capable and willing to identify themselves as the speakers and contents of language. The moment when bodies allowed themselves to be "I"s. This is a bio-linguistic interface, or what I call a docking.
As a result of this docking moment, stretched over millenniums, what kinds of new and most primitive socio-politics options become available? Most basically there is the possibility for variation in the bodily and emotional attitude borne towards the emerging symbolic order itself.
Does language really describe the world?
Should I treat the "I"-word as if it were my body or my heart?
The epitome of the two available social positions is essentially one of "using signs without physically trusting them" and "using signs as if convinced of their efficacy." A conscience, for good or ill, directed toward Language as it emerges from bodies.
Here are the primitive Conservative and Liberal.
Refusing symbols more stridently is the Right Wing position. It presupposes a certain cynical distance from accurate communication, consensus facts, social ideals, etc. Eager to prove the situation subordinate to hidden animal drives they are often perversely excited and almost gleefully willing to say any authoritative nonsense at all. Of course they would be horrified to think they were being governed by weak-willed "suckers" who naively believe in the terms of collective discourse. At times their independence from symbols seems like an overwhelming liberation and temptation for them. Their pleasures, madness and religion all perversely invoke a state that lies in or beyond the non-sensicality of speech.
"I go with my physical gut response more than by all that stuff THEY say."
A well-behaved acceptance of Symbols is the Left-Wing position. Here is a demand for coherence between symbol and life, policy and fact, science and ritual, claim and capacity. They try to tolerate many categories of thought. They adapt to the popular concepts. They promote the development of new instincts that will "progress" the human animal according the formed available through both body AND language.
"I try to identify with and live up to facts, systems, new ideas & high ideals."
B) THE RADICAL LEFT IS THE TRUE CENTER
If it is possible in contemporary political life to identify the Left with the progressive, intellectual and ethical life of Systems, and to identify the Right with an anti-State radicalized populism then have not we situated -- at the center -- that force which was formerly called the Radical Left?
The position which partakes generously in both radical populism and progressive intellectualism, which inhabits both a libertarian revolution-spirit and a collectivist, economically-transformative agenda is more aligned with Communism than Socialism. It is habitual to put the apparently milder positions in the center but this avoid the more difficult figure which combines the creative intensity of both ends.
Is there a comparable Right Wing position?
No.
The Right Wing in this case stands for the conservative preservation of the "God given" spectrum between Right and Left. You dig (sic)? In the matter of the standard political polarization, the Right more accurately designates the perpetuation of this order, two separate ends and a conciliatory-undecided, middleground. The Left designates the pressure to combine the two ends.
C)
GAYS
Homosexuality is a fascinating issue. It is practiced both in animal nature and among reactionary homophobes as a variable percentage of all populations.
The Ring Wing argument IS NOT that homosexuality is un-natural, against God, forbidden in a Magic book, disgusting, apocalyptic, a medical or psychiatric illness, etc. There is no shortage of homosexuality among such people -- but they are steadfastly committed to a symbolic rupture which forcefully separates this form of biological interaction from the civic space of the socio-linguistic order.
The true argument is two-fold. Firstly that all impulses should be responded to with animal effort -- either to fulfill them as authoritative obligations or to resist them (as a matter of choice). Secondly, that all non-standard pleasures must be conducted in secret spaces or during debauches only.
The Left Wing impulse is more tolerable, less inclined to "push" or "block." They move to occupy the center and propose a civic space in which the differentiation between standard and non-standard pleasures, and types, is relaxed.
D)
Is value/price distinction the hidden impasse within the Free Market?
In a way Marx precedes this conversation by showing how the private owner of the means of production benefits from the employer-employee relation. One dollar's worth of work-time traded to the employer for one dollar is a net benefit of zero to the employee and a product or service to the employer. Why take this deal? Because the increased trade-flexibility of one-dollar over one-hour. So it is the not the value received which entices the worker but the greater valuation potential of the value. This is an image of a discrepancy relative to the simple price of labor.
If, as it has famously been said, a four-dollar hamburger actually corresponds to a two-hundred dollar set of effort and resource effects then we have an even more direct discrepancy with simple price. The Market's communications are false -- how can it operate then with ideological credibility? Would the production of this variation into civic space produce an instability which leads to a turn-over of one system into its emergent?
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