Hiding in Plain Sight

One challenge to fixed abstract conceptions of politics and government

I made a promise in my last blog and I’m not sure I can follow through.  I outlined a standard approach to the social and economic interests that constitute US government today and stated that it is “wrong,” really I suppose “misleading.”  Too general and perhaps self-serving.  A strawman to attack or defend. 

To support my position, I need to both explain why large generalizations obscure as much if not more than they reveal, as well as offer a different way of seeing. 

As to the first point.  I leave it with the simple observation that “isn’t it just obvious.”  It’s a construction, like a picture or work of draftsmanship.  And for the latter point, I suggest we don’t just substitute frameworks for frameworks, i.e. that instead we highlight the many threads that weave the entanglement that we call politics and society.

Today I want to celebrate the extraordinary diversity and relative independence of writing and thinking, thinking and then writing, about every topic under the sun, the reality of which is hidden in plain view.

Even if you contend that the intellectual life of the commonwealth is only a part of a much larger smog of untamed rhetoric and self-assertion, it is still very wide, deep and perceptive.  The very affluence we enjoy, that many question, allows almost limitless resources for individual study, research and debate.

The world is alive with ideas.  They whip-lash.  They console.  They entertain.  They challenge.  And they exist, as I’ve said, in plain sight.

This is a Gutenberg moment.   And unlike the early days of printing, world literacy, that is the capability of the many to read and understand, is many times greater. 

If knowledge is light (Yale’s motto is “Lux et Veritas”), then there is no darkening in our present world. 

Back to the point.  You cannot “explain” our political time without recognizing the power of ideas.  If anything, they may be even more powerful than we realize.  They tear down as well as build up.  They are the “wild card” in everyone’s hand. 

 "A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind." - Antoine St. Exupery