In the small and cosmic bubble that is my life, I edge closer to a post-ideological, post-argument world. In fact, I live there. That means in my head, I live beyond ideology and argument, a reality that is both liberating and, at times, isolating.
I read one political scientist who said the true significance of the recent election is that it has inaugurated an era he calls post-ideological, that is the beginning of the end of the suffocatingly narrow and paralyzing dogmas of the left and the right. Both – spectacular failures, each in their own way – are beginning their very messy unraveling. I think of Godzilla and the crumbling buildings and all of those disaster movies.
Good riddance to the left and the right.
They have failed to inspire, heal, govern or guide us.
Increasingly it is no longer clear where the right begins and the left ends, and the eternal arguments that close our minds and shut down dialogue are losing meaning, at least for me, and the people I respect and admire.
You cannot live for long in a world with two such corrupt and fixed ideologies. Our leaders right now are lobbyists and CEO’s. Not only is conflict embedded in our minds and processes, it leaves a world so polarized it cannot accomplish a thing, the poor have little reason to hope, and thus we have no pride or peace of mind or sense of purpose. The system just makes money. The rich screw the poor.
That is no one’s permanent solution.
I wrote yesterday about the idea of truth, and the struggle truth is having to rise about argument and artifice, and how many Americans are losing the will or ability to separate truth from fantasy or fact from suspicion. A waitress I know burst into tears a few weeks ago and told me Barack Obama was a Muslim building militias in Kenya, plotting to come and kill as many of us as he can. She swore it was true, she heard it on the news. She was crying.
Truth is bleeding, truth is now a revolutionary act.
On my Facebook Page, of course, where my piece about truth was posted, this comment instantly appeared from a man who calls himself William Tribe: “The media has a self-serving agenda. Trump will never be understood by those to whom the truth is a stranger.”
It was a curious, almost Victorian kind of statement, and I puzzled over it. My post was not about Mr. Trump or the media at all, I’m not into Trump bashing. It was about the importance of truth and my own commitment to trying to root it out. I am a former journalist, and I recall truth and facts being of some importance.
Mr. Tribe was in his own head, of course, he couldn’t respond to what I wrote, only to the pre-approved script in his head, and he slipped quickly into The Argument, from which there can be no dialogue or resolution or understanding. He alone has the key to the box where truth sleeps. In the world of the Argument, dialogue is forbidden, only declaration. The left and the right are not distinguishable from one another in this way.
I am always amused by the idea of a left-wing media conspiracy in America, CNN and Fox News or the New York Times, for that matter, are to the left what Dr. Seuss is to Mad Max. CNN and Fox News are both on track to make more than a billion dollars this year, and there is not a person working at either one who has any illusions that their agenda is political or ideological. They are both part of vast corporate conglomerates committed quite openly to one thing: profit.
The New York Times is far from radical. Their online readership is up tenfold from last year.
They are all both having a good and profitable time inflaming the nation and distorting the truth.
Anyone who has worked in the media knows that the real righties and the true lefties – the real revolutionaries – do not make billions of dollars, travel in big jets, have gold-plated faucets in the shower, appear on cable news shows. The true revolutionaries are pushed to the edge of public dialogue and consciousness and are rarely seen or heard. They are, by definition, broke and marginal, you will never see a one of them on cable news arguing with the panelists.
Mr. Tribe sounds to me like he is parroting blog dogma, it is recognizably heavy and hoary. And pompous.
Of course the media has a self-serving agenda. So do I. So does he. So does every human or corporate entity, that is the very definition of any living thing, people or animal, the heart of a democratic culture: lots of self-serving agendas, one eventually dominating the others.
The real left and the right might argue with one another, but they share a common purpose – they want to take the system down, and pull it apart.
The corporate media and the political parties and the ruling entities want no such thing. There is way too much money in staying polarized, in fooling us into thinking we have choices to make. We do not have choices to make. Truth is a stranger to so many of us, I am not surely not one of those who will stand up and say I have learned truth, and it is beyond the reach of any other person.
That is way too arrogant for me.
Is there such a thing as a selfless agenda, or a self-destructive agenda, or a human being with an agenda that is not in his or her interests or beliefs? Is Mr. Tribe such a person? If so, he is a saint.
I am not meaning to be gloomy, I am finding myself in all of this.
My world is the world of Beavis & Butthead, early inspirations. Because I am stupid, I am free. Because I don’t know what to think, I can sometimes think. Keep your labels, please.
I think the professor is right. It could very well be – way too soon to know – that we are in a post-ideological period, the castles of the left and the right are in disarray, their prophets scrambling to find a purpose for themselves in a world-changing too rapidly for them to grasp.
On the farm, there is only the ideology of nature, life and death, the cycles of love and connection. I guess that is my ideology, my truth. The chores, the rituals, the specter of death and surprise, of life and rebirth, all mixed together. The farm is life and death, in a way, it is my mother.
The animals are resolute in their wisdom, and in their love and fairness. They have no time for the madness of human beings.
Speaking for myself, I don’t want an ideology, I love to pick and choose my ideas from different places, there is no single label I find noble or admirable, or that fits me, or that I am willing to accept for myself. Labels are the closing of the mind. I am definitely in a post-argument period, living in a post-argument place. There is much disagreement here, but almost never any argument. It feels unhealthy and poisonous to me.
I wish Mr. Tribe well, but I have no desire to live in a world where people sit on the idea of Truth as if it were their own private egg, and hatch it beyond the comprehension understanding of others. If he is correct, and his revolution is beyond my understanding or the understanding of others, then it is doomed to fail.
I wish him luck. I can’t wait to meet the new refugees and help show them the shining light that is America.
My truth is really not of much value if it is beyond the reach of others, if everyone who feels differently to me is a stranger to it. That is how ideas die.
My belief is odd perhaps, but I am not completely alone. Nor am I depressed or pessimistic. I am eager to grow, learn and see.
I think we are moving towards a post-argument world, beyond the hoary and tired raging back and forth, the paralyzing ideas and positions, the failure of empathy and compassion. I’m afraid the left and the right have to die before the new world can come. That may have already happened.
I feel a new kind of space coming, a new kind of age. It is flirting with us, dancing in front of us, but has not yet revealed itself to me. I will know it when I see it. I hope Mr. Tribe opens up and is not left behind.
I might be the most naive and short-sighted person in the world, or maybe one who is prescient and grazed by the mysticism of life. I can’t wait to find out, I am so very much alive.
As always, crisis and mystery are just around the corner.