There may come a time in the life of a thinker, and I think I am one of those, the life examined, introspection coupled with curiosity and all that jazz, where there is a realisation that the thoughts and conclusions we have are not isolated, unique, nor original. I spend a lot of time listening, though if you have observed me in dialogue you might imagine this impossible as I am often waiting to break in with my opinions. Note to self, stop that.
My dad often responds to things I say as if he has already chewed the issue I am currently thinking about, something I may want to blog about or maybe just continue to form a few thoughts on for no good reason, and it reminds me that every possible scenario may have already been experienced in some similar fashion by a previous generation. It’s important to keep this in mind I suppose, that we have been on the brink of disaster many times before, that we have known hardship and inequality, that we have been ruled by capricious kings and manipulated by false passions given to us by motivated charlatans, and yet here we are still believing in human kindness, the possibility of a destination that looks like emancipation, and that human endeavour and progress will solve any problem we encounter.
I too am hopeful, yet I deliberately take a negative approach to everything I do and say because I see zero value, and no hope of progress, in acceptance of anything that is current. It is always my position that things could, and should, be more optimal. To sit back and say something as simple as “it is better to have a toothache in 1986 than it was to have one in 1664” may be a perfectly legitimate conjecture which indicates improvement in human conditions, but it gives us no motivation to strive for the future. Whereas to say that something is “Shit” may be to merely suggest that it can be improved.
Somewhere within a good dollop of negativity is a compelling force for change, this is lacking in its opposite position. Taking my perspective, the great criticisms from the greatest of critics are actually the most beneficial body of work one could absorb. Nietzsche, Orwell, Schopenhauer, Marx, Zizen et al, lead us toward positive outcomes, possibility, and hope, rather than acceptance and dogmatism, revolution rather than slavery. I welcome the anarchist and his brave writings even if I see danger in the change. Change is always dangerous, and a lot of us are not welcoming of it.
One of my great inspirations was Christopher Hitchens, he encouraged us to be critical and pursue disputation for its own sake, and I like that idea. I suspect he was Hegelian, a seeker of answers through challenge and discourse, not the belligerent contrarian he was made out to be mostly by those that couldn’t find an argument against what he actually said. Attack the style of the speaker/writer, a sort of Ad Hominem approach. During a recent conversation with my dad I stated my opinion of my late brother Peter, where I observed that his form of contrarianism, which manifested as a sort of awkwardness in dealing with him, was more based, in my estimation, on being radically individualistic. Sort of how when I state “if everyone is going to the beach it is the last place I want to be”.
I think my brother expressed this attitude also, but in a more forceful and less flexible manner than I can. His particular love of unpopular things often seemed based on somewhat of a personal crusade for the underdog, at least that’s how I saw it. He loved the Renault 12 (a car), very heavy metal music, front wheel drive cars with steel wheels, he sported profuse nostril hair, wore a baseball cap and dark glasses while indoors, heavy boots and black jeans on a hot summer day, he didn’t like chips, and if you thought something was great he just couldn’t wait to put a dent in it. He bought the first Guns N Roses album and liked it right up until other people started to, he liked the middle Iron Maiden singer that hardly anyone else did or even remembers. He often favoured opposition for opposition’s sake.
Another trait of Peter, one of many personality quirks one might contend, was an obvious impatience with your point. I share that personality disorder, some might call it rudeness. It’s not that I do not think you a valid person, nor do I suspect that you have an insincerity concerning what you are saying, or about to say, it’s just that usually I have mentally processed the very point you are starting to make, and I already have an answer that I feel you should hear right now before your foolish and limited perspective leaks out of your brain via your mouth. Call me an asshole for that, I likely am. Like my brother was, I can be very quick to form an argument against any position if I have had thoughts on the subject already, but unlike him I struggle to contend with rank stupidity. I suspect he liked the argument regardless of the arguer, or the triviality of the subject seldom deterred. I prefer the big stuff, shit that matters, and not the sports team or various other unimportant-to-life adversarial conversations he maybe would have pursued. I think I just don’t have the energy for them, or I am more tactful maybe.
I’ve spoken of tribes in many of my blogs, likening people to followers of something who form a collective that just about always fails to examine the central tenet of their collectivised perspective. Some people would say the phrase “sheeple” others “gammon”, but what is in common is an acceptance of the necessity to assimilate the offered information, not truth, without examination, that is required to be in the club or tribe or cult. I find myself at odds with people who buy-in wholeheartedly to any ideology. The idea is that if something is popular then some people made it that way, deliberately and as part of an Edward Bernays style hive-mind manipulation. Of course I’ll admit that social forces sometimes create trends, but in modernity I think these are very quickly captured.
Now it might seem strange to anyone that has heard me describe myself as “on the left of politics” to hear that I don’t adhere to an ideology, and I should explain why my politics do not make me a hypocrite… I am on the left predominantly yes, yet I have never met someone, anyone, that I align with truly, because my leftism is not categorizable under the banner of any ideological flavour that is codified. I favour some policies that could be said to be opposed to most left wing learners, for example I do not believe in tolerance of perspective, or natural validity. I am on the side of universality in certain respects, such as rights and entitlements that derive from being a citizen in a state, but I am not such a fan of democracy in all things, or universal validity of all persons simply because they exist and they have something to say. I do believe that you can, by your perspective and your actions, invalidate yourself and that should cause your exclusion from certain objects of power such as casting a vote.
Someone recently accused me of not crediting many people with intelligence, and I have to admit I am often guilty as charged. It’s not that I do not think people are genuinely convinced that what they are saying is valid, it’s just that I think they are often adopters of other people’s perspective because it suits them to be. Won over by the person and not the argument maybe? We are back in the realm of sheeple again. Oscar Wilde said that most people are just living everyone else’s life, and I take him to mean that most people latch on to popular things because they are too lazy to introspect, they seek the pleasures they have learned as pleasures because they have been conditioned to feel that way by a capitalist structure that promotes that perspective, never stopping to examine what they personally desire. Freud alluded to this also when he described the unconscious as a captured garrison and society as the hoard that was overrunning the city. What he meant was that society is psychoanalysis in reverse, where the needs of the worlds of commerce, markets, and religions all attempt to act as a sedative to the complex and unexplainable psychological self contained within the 3.5lbs of meat between your ears.
People so often need to do the things that other people do, like going to the beach, gambling, drinking, taking selfies, buying computer games, watching football, going to concerts, and I mean need in a validity sense, not in a pleasure principle sense. I like to sit in the garden drinking a cup of tea and smoking a cigarette while I run though what I think in an internal dialogue where maybe I postulate and then argue with myself, and there’s nothing exciting about that pursuit or commercialisable, but for me it is my time alone that makes my time with people tolerable.
Normalisation was not for my brother, and I have to say that it took me many years to see that. I admired his belligerent approach to conventions such as being on time or even turning up on the day he said he would. Something in his childhood or youth made him this way, someone influenced him to be unreliable and fleeting. I’d love to know what the trigger point was, and if he were still around I’d likely ask him. Isn’t it funny how we once had so much time and foolishly assumed we always would? Anyways, I am glad he was not one of them, I am not one of them, and my dad is not one of them. Who they are is the herd, the sheeple, the gammon. Imagine, even though it is often difficult, what actual luck we have had…
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