To believe that nothing will change because of human nature....except temporarily due to catastrophes, is a comfortable enough creed given your situation in life.
I have a temporary roommate, a medical student doing a surgery rotation at the local hospital. The hospital is squarely situated in the Oakland hood and is famed for its trauma center. The other night she came home and I asked her how her day had been. "Great," she replied, "some really good gunshot wounds." Then she realized hers might have been a partial view of the day's happenings.
It looks to me like this culture is due for a big implosion, triggered by the arrogance, the greed, the self-righteousness, and the sleep from which no one wants to wake.
Joanna
Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>Doug quoted:
>
>
>>Times (London) - October 16, 2004
>>
>>After the Third Way, where next?
>>Anthony Browne in Budapest.
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>So here is the agenda of the new, progressive equality-of-choice
>>Left: in favour of globalisation, free trade, lower taxes, private
>>providers in the public sector, and education vouchers; against state
>>monopolies and newly concerned about mass immigration.
>>
>>Perhaps there is no need for the world's conservative leaders to hold
>>conferences to set a right-wing agenda. The Left seems to be doing it
>>for them.
>>
>>
>
>
>He raises a very interesting point, namely that the traditional "left" and
>"right" lost much of their empirical meaning. Much of the Euro-left is like
>radishes - red outside, white inside - at least when the "line items" are
>concerned. That is to say, specific policies pursued by the so called left
>do not differ that much from those pursued by the so-called "right."
>
>In one way, this convergence of "left" and "right" policies should not be
>surprising. One of the chief reasons is the professionalization of public
>policy. Since the 1930s, policies are crafted mainly by technical experts
>who tend to follow certain widely accepted professional standards and
>practices. This leads to the proliferation of sameness (cf. literature on
>organizational isomorphism) similar to other engineered products.
>Policies, like cars, may differ in their appearances, sex appeal and
>technical minutiae - but their essential structure is basically the same,
>and dictated mainly be technical efficiency and expediency.
>
>This is not to say that there is no politics in technical designs.
>Certainly, politics affects how cost and benefits of technology are
>distributed and determine who wins and who looses - a nontrivial influence
>indeed. But any policy proposal must pass the "global test" of
>plausibility, soundness and efficiency - and these are determined largely by
>the experts.
>
>So the bottom line is that policy proposals, crafted mainly by experts and
>thus showing a considerable degree of isomorphism must be marketed to the
>public and appeal to very divergent tastes, preferences, expectations and
>value systems. In the commodity markets, this is resolved by adapting a
>product to various market niches - old, young, men, women, urban
>professional, suburban, countercultural etc. - by changing it appearance and
>appeal, but not essential fundamental features. A car can be a
>hippiemobile, a yuppiemobile, a redneckmobile, a suburbansoccermommobile and
>so on - but in all its cultural incarnations its essentially an automobile
>bult by same engineering principles. Ditto for public policies.
>
>One paradox of that situation is that while the policies converge in their
>essential features, the culture wars surrounding them intensify. It is so,
>because cultural appearances appeal to different cognitive styles, and these
>styles - not "practical" or "rational" considerations determine political
>preferences. As I previously argued on this forum, there essentially two
>cognitive styles, one based on rigid boundaries, conventional norms, and
>strict adherence to those boundaries and norms, and the other one based on
>general principles and flexible interpretation and implementation of these
>principles in every day life.
>
>The same policy -i.e. banning a certain commodity - is almost always
>accepted or rejected based on their appeal to these cognitive styles. Guns
>symbolically represent strictness and power - so ban on guns is detested by
>the rigid-boundary types and favored by the flexible interpretation of
>principles types. Marijuana symbolically represents fuzziness,
>free-wheeling, and permissiveness - so the ban on weed is detested by the
>flexible types and favored by the rigid types. Same holds for most, if not
>all, political preferences and choices.
>
>If I were to make a prediction, I would say that politics will follow the
>footsteps of commodity marketing. The differences in the basic product
>designs will keep diminishing and what used be the conventional "left"
>socialist and "right" capitalist designs will be vastly reduced, if not
>eliminated altogether. At the same time, this homogenized policy product
>will be marketed to different niches. That will result in changing the
>superficial appearances of that homogenized policy product to meet various
>tastes and preferences. That will result in substantial "mélange-ing" or
>compartmentalization of the political spectrum.
>
>That means two things:
>
>1. The mass-mobilization politics in the traditional left sense is over -
>the material and cultural conditions (e.g. occupational and residential
>patterns, cultural homogeneity) that made such mobilization possible are no
>more - and mass mobilization will not occur, save for cataclysmic events (in
>which the right can usually mobilize more effective than the left).
>
>2. The culture wars over policy issues will intensify, and the key deciding
>factor in deciding which side people will take in those wars is the appeal
>of these policy products to their cognitive styles. That is to say,
>psychology and marketing, not material interests and reasons will become
>more and more important in making political choices.
>
>That means more spin, less reason. Terrible - but then the worst enemy of
>the humankind is the human nature itself. Only a disaster of epic
>proportion can put a halt on this madness, but only temporarily.
>
>Wojtek
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