SA wrote:
>
> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > Perhaps. But does coincidence even provisionally "explain" anything in
> > and of itself. I can't remember which essay it wasm byt Stephen Jay
> > Gould once pointed out that the price of gasoline and some astronomical
> > phenomenon perfectly tracked each other. In fact I think the number of
> > striking but utterly insignifican correspondences of this kind is near
> > to countless.
> >
>
> So then how do you know that the coincidence of Southern violence and
> white unity explains anything?
I don't know. I probably expressed myself too strongly. I am fairly certain however that _origins_ explain _nothing_. No tradition is ever accepted or adopted unless it responds to some need in the present. It is that present cause that needs to be identified.
Actually, this became clear to me before I ever got involved in politics. Literary influence doesn't explain a fucking thing. If a writer shows strong influence of a past writer, it is because he/she finds a current need that is fulfilled by his/her 'acceptance' of that "influence." Pope and Wordsworth both practically knew the works of Milton by heart, and both show strong Miltonic influences, but obviously in both cases the influence is only operative because it satisfies their purposes independently of the influence.
Carrol