TA such an absolutist argument cannot in any effective manner encompass such a complex system. And it reflects a general catch-22 that defines the current right-wing strategy: for if they aren’t perfect liberals then they’re clearly phonies, yet if they’re genuinely liberal / progressive at all then they’re absolutely wrong by default.
Or from another direction, you’ve effectively represented a condition that the only way we can believe anything from someone near the top of the system, is if they foreswear all the privilege and trappings of the system. But we also have plenty of individuals like that, and most people don’t want to listen to them, they’re just seen as a kook, and generally disdained so…
I’ve never particularly cared for Al Gore - much less his wife - as he’s definitely not much of a liberal. But even as I may believe his motive is 99% Ego and maybe 1% something that could be called altruism, I can still believe he fundamentally believes in the thing itself. And even if his soapbox is diesel, coal, and nuclear powered - and pumping out tons of toxic gasses every year in it’s efforts to lift his extra bulk above the crowd - it’s a soapbox he has, that most people don’t. And so I can be damn well appreciative that he has chosen to get on it for this issue.
I remember a year or two ago, seeing something from Fox News or other trash media, where they were trying to trump up Gore’s own investments in renewable energy projects, as some nebulous conflict of interest framing. And it struck me as an acute example of the spirit of obfuscation and outright underhandedness that defines all of these dialogs. Because of course if, as someone with significant capital to invest, he did not invest in any of those interests, then they would just as quickly say he wasn’t putting his money where his mouth is.
And there’s a more insidious level, for in the greater pattern of propaganda, the left - and Al Gore even particularly, because of this very issue - is continually being portrayed as “anti-business”. Those commie-lefties are trying to dismantle capitalism and force us all to worship the sun and eat nothing but soybeans and wheat-grass! Yet even in being such a scrupulously honorable capitalist, they’ll still say anything they can possibly think of to turn it back on him?
And that is the most fundamental dishonor and dysfunction of our seeming status quo of debate. The presumed condition of victory is making the opposition look worse than yourself, rather than honestly comparing relative virtues of perspective. I think it’s another alias of dogma in the end; it is a very natural impulse to resist believing ourselves wrong, about anything. So when confronted with any challenge, the first natural impulse is not to asses the strength of the challenge, but the possible (and relative) weakness of the challenger. Before all else, seek a way to maintain belief in our current (often already hard won) right and rightness.
And it is valid, it is natural, but it also makes a sham of the edifice and conceit of civilization as we maintain it. For civilization is NOT natural, and we seem to pride ourselves on the fact we are no longer mere pawns in that natural order. We abandoned the only form of perfection in this world, for the grace and privilege of free will. Yet we still try to claim the right of manifest perfection, but always through trickery and delusion.
We form artificial institutions and embodiments, for the express purpose of providing reassurance of that conceit. As long as there is something out there with an authority above our own, that will tell us we are in the right… then it’s much easier to get on with the business of living, or exploiting, or cavorting, or even dying.
Just try to be clear about the strictures you’re actually creating, by demanding such impeccability before you’ll be swayed. While I can agree with the principle of your parallel examples, I cannot hold the principle as an absolute, and far less for this subject. I myself am indoctrinated into a very “healthy” regard for progressive nutrition theory, and a general disdain for the mainstream / status quo model of unhealth-maintenance. But I’m also far from a paragon of the archetype, I don’t dogmatically avoid non-organic foods, I’ll indulge in some of the worst empty calorie snacks around often enough, I drink… does that mean I can’t also believe these things are less than optimally healthy for me? Does it make me a hypocrite?
For some people it may well, but that’s their damage. I’m just trying to exist in this world, for the all too short time given to me, with at least enough integrity, joy, pleasure and balance; to avoid deciding my time should be even shorter.
But some others are in a position of much greater privilege, and many of them appear to have no sense of greater responsibility. Or even ANY sense of responsibility. Unlike quitting smoking or even becoming a vegetarian, there is literally no obvious gain for Cameron (or whoever) to forsake his vacations, he has that privilege, and he has the means, according to the rules of the system. Yet he has also chosen to stump for certain reforms of that same system. He has chosen to leverage some portion of his privilege to (ostensibly) improve the system as a whole, and does so from a position of greater influence and power than most ever could.
No one is perfect, whether they’re at the very top of the system of entirely outside it. So if the only way you’re willing to give ANY credence to someone who is trying to reform from within the system is if they’re ideologically pristine, then you may as well just state that the system itself cannot ever change or improve. Or basically admit that you’re either a platform - scorched earth -revolutionary; or you just plain don’t care.
But it’s fundamentally in that part of Tragedy of the Commons I already quoted. The status quo is by it’s very nature a dogma, and the nature of dogma is intractability. We first maintain belief in our own rightness, and from that starting outlook, the only thing that will ever be needed to defeat any challenge, is a shadow of doubt as to the perfection of said challenge.
As usual, I began this with lots of other possible material, but things get out of hand… and my need for less depressing distraction is greater than usual. Till next time. :anjou_embarassed:
