We are Dogs Chasing our Tails
Watching Super Bowl commercials or opinion-based news channels
I find this statement from John Ryder very insightful.
“A system of ready-made answers to questions of how to live our lives, for which I use the term “ideology,” short circuits one of the most experientially enriching features of our lives, which is our ability, more or less refined, to engage our problems carefully and to resolve them successfully, whether the problems are practical or theoretical, [small or large.]”
I was more certain about the commercials during the Super Bowls than the outcome of the game. The products and services recommended by those willing to spend large amounts of money to get our attention, will be “ready-made” solutions to what we will be told are our “problems.”
In a sense we are being offered ready-made problems and, rather costly, ready-made solutions.
So, it would seem, in the political world. I do believe, with John, that we have the ability to “engage” our problems, to interrogate them, to explore trial and error approaches to what we fear and desire and need.
I also think that being given the problems to solve, like boxed puzzles, is as dehumanizing as being given the “boxed” answers.
Not surprisingly, political leaders will always tend to start with their solutions (their expertise) and then look for the matching problems.
It makes us, the voter, dogs chasing our tails. Catching the tail, the problem; running after it faster, the solution. And presumably our leaders, in industry or government, have plans for making us move faster. I.e. declaring “the war on” practically everything.
If there are to be intelligent citizens in the future, if, that is, our education system will understand its mission, they will be capable of exploring their lives, the lives of others, the interrelated eco-systems of this planet and see for themselves the burdens, risks and possibilities that are the “problems” before us, and then begin the daunting task of “resolving them successfully.”
As an example of the problem of problem identification see Ezra Klein’s opinion in the New York Times
Can Democrats See What’s Coming?
Feb. 12, 2022