It’s fashionable in some circles to sneer at optimism. It’s a too-cool-for-school teen affliction; and, in political circles, it’s a way to try to get one up on Obama who used notions like Hope and Change for political gain. Sure, his use of those abstractions was calculated, and certainly the Obama administration’s governing has fallen well short of the rhetoric. But, it must be said, governing is harder than talking. And, there is certainly the suspicion that President Obama wouldn’t make good on some of his rhetoric even if he had unilateral control of the government. But Palinesque “hopey changey” mean girl venom disturbs me. It reminds me of a passage from a SubGenius rant from long ago, Nenslo’s “Hateword.”
The scariest part of the Con’s lulling lies is that they are all true. Not the ones about the products and how bad you need them, I mean the ones about how life can be beautiful, it’s easier to go with the flow, things are better than they’ve ever been. They know how True they are, so they do anything they can to make those True truths look stupid and childish. They make “don’t worry, be happy” into an insulting song, ugly t-shirts, plastic hats, moronic coffee mugs so when someone says it to you it makes you want to smash them in the face, but you can’t, so you go buy a three dollar shot of Bar Gin instead. And worry miserably.
They make you want to KILL “Have a Nice Day,” and then sell you the T-Shirt with a shot and bleeding smiley-face on it. They make you HATE LOVE and LOVE HATE, mock sincerity and honesty, and sneer at genuine emotion. Then they sell you two-hundred-dollar leather jacket so you can prove you “aren’t a Conspiracy Zombie” like all those poor schmucks who don’t have skulls on their t-shirts.
In some respects, I think America has gotten too smart for its own good. (While, in other respects, of course, we can be a nation of mouth breathing morons.) I think we’ve lost a certain naive optimism of the kind that often results in prosperity for hard workers who are too dumb to fail. And, we sneer at genuine emotion.
Really? This post from the same guy who quotes freely from Jon Stewart?
If you raise your horizons from the US to the world, you would be hard pressed not to be optimistic. Globalization may not be good for low skilled Americans, but it has been amazing for the third world, and not just China and India. Even Africa is making progress.
What should make us very optimistic is that, as long as the third world goes along with capitalism and globalization (i.e don’t be Venezuala), progress is clear. Nobody there needs to reinvent the wheel. They can implement policies and technologies that already exist elsewhere.
Makes me think of a question posed in a philosophy class at one time or another about the moral duty to, say, feed the starving in Somalia or wherever was hardest pressed at the time. Is it morally acceptable live so well without lifting a finger to help a starving child? That kind of thing.
I can’t recall the exact terminology, but a good way of answering that, I thought at the time had to do with social distance. (And, maybe it’s not a real moral justification but just a way to feel better about what I want to do anyway.) But, the premise is that you have stronger obligations the closer the person is to you socially (or maybe some other name for the metric was used.) Your kids, family, and neighbors take priority. In this context, I probably have a greater responsibility to my dog than to a starving human half way across the world.
It used to be plausible to disclaim responsibility for the person half way around the world based on impossibility – you just couldn’t realistically render any type of assistance due to the distance. But, now, that justification no longer holds. Nevertheless, I’m still a lot more parochial in my concerns. And, so it is with economic prosperity. If (the other) half the world gets better at the expense of my neighborhood getting worse, I’m not sure I’m happy about it. As I type that, I realize it is at odds with my normal tendency toward utilitarianism, so I probably have to give these things some more thought.