That is why it is dispiriting to see > a smart kid write "liberal" off as "communist." And > "write off" is the right term: "communist" means (for > my daughter) unworkable, utopian, tired, stupid, > disproven, losing, hopeless.
I don't feel any different from your daughter in many ways, except that I have learnt to distinguish between a real practice, the interpretation of that practice, and the mystification of the practice by the perversion of the meaning of words. But that's no problem, I can find quotes in Hayek to attack branches of the burgeoning US government bureaucracy with, from a libertarian socialist perspective (the Bush administration has actually done very little to combat "big government", just the opposite). A Marxist would have to say that linguistic sophistry, and the attempt to make things look different from what they are, breaks down, when practice contradicts the language used. Indeed, that would be the most important criticism I have had, in recent years, the fact that I mooted an idea publicly, but did not live or act according to the idea according to someone else's idea of consistency - the concept that you can communicate anything not immediately relevant to practical concerns, such as a scholar might, is often a source of puzzlement and irritation (not to say theft) these days. This is particularly true when a community lacks clear rules for communicative consistency, when these rules are being contested. The manipulation of meaning using modern information technology is potentially so great, that in order to establish definitely what is objectively happening a person might have to be observed continuously for a very long time. > I love how everyone has bright ideas about how to > raise my daughter. These are suggestions by people who > do not have teenagers, I take it. A word to the wise: > you can't tell them ANYTHING. Or even ask them > anything in a suggestive way. Until they are forced to ask YOU for something... for example because you create an obstacle to their propensity for taking you for granted, or attach a consequence to their "free" behaviour. I have no intention to tell you how to do your parenting, just suggesting there is no cause for despair or despondency. I have had plenty of that myself, so I know what I am talking about there. Quick anecdote: a week ago or so, I was chatting with a group of neighbourhood kids from immigrant families. As it happened, they started to challenge me, engaged in rude behaviour, and spat, a bit like some discussions on Marxmail. I said something like, "how come you start spitting, even although you want to criticise my behaviour" and then they started off rattling in foreign languages I do not know. I said to them something like, "well, I would not have you in my class, if you are so rude." They started asking me if I was a teacher, and I said I had been, repeated my attitude, and walked away. Peculiarly, the spitters and insulters started walking after me, and continued to walk after me, even after I took a left around the corner, heading to the park. At a certain point I stopped, and said "Isn't it funny how you want to give me all this abuse, and yet now you are all following me; doesn't that suggest that I won the argument ? Because I sure ain't following you guys, you are following me". They didn't have a reply to that, and, as I walked off into the park, they lost enthusiasm. The kids here are very smart and sensitive, usually good natured, but that doesn't mean you can let them run all over you. > Which means what? Pragmatism is just _thinking_. If it's true, you dont have to believe it. Well I was referring to NLP techniques which suggest models for success, and the promotors of NLP (such as NLP guru Anthony Robbins) claim that NLP is a pragmatic discipline, not tied to any particular ideology or scheme of values, it can be applied by anyone. For a bona fide philosopher, the statement "If it's true, you dont have to believe it" cannot be sustained, unless the truth is manifest or self-evident, but on closer inspection, the truth is not manifest or self-evident, at best we are practically forced to accept it as such as a rule for abstraction. Hence Marx writes, "if the appearance and essence of phenomena coincided, there would be no need for science". If a woman really is what she looks like, I might as well go and visit a prostitute as a pragmatic measure - saving time, money and hassles, if I want sex right now. But a woman is usually more than what she looks like, and what she looks like may not even be the way she really is. It may indeed mean that she has a distorted perception of herself, or that others may have a distorted perception of her. A more challenging procedure would then be to actually make a genuine attempt to relate to that discrepancy, in order to discover the underlying reality, beneath a surface truth. What what could motivate me in that regard ? A belief. In order to engage with the real woman, I might need to act on a belief which contradicts my unreflected experience of the woman. This is merely another way of saying that we have beliefs, which have the status of a convention in social interaction, and hence are accepted as self-evident truths, even though their "truth" consists only in their functionality as widely accepted rules or operations. Their truth content does not inhere in their intrinsic merit, but in their wide acceptance, which confers the status of an objective fact which it is useless to criticise or question. A pragmatist evaluates beliefs in terms of practical merit. But when and in what context is a belief practical ? If I believe something today which I cannot implement today, but only in a few years time, when I believe it will be practical, a pragmatist would be likely to say that my current belief is not valid or operative, because it does not corresponde or cohere with practice. But using a bit of European reasoning, I can hammer that pragmatic argument into a flat tautology, which says that it's impractical because it's impractical... because it's impractical. In order to evaluate (or measure) practicality, you need a criterion which is external to practicality and against which it is evaluated. When Marx affirms that "All social life is essentially practical" he adds not only that "All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice" but also the rider "and in the comprehension of this practice". There must therefore be a non-mystical comprehension of practice which is not reducible to practice, because practice cannot substitute for it, if it is to be self-reflectively understood. I worked as a statistician for four years or so. Confronted with ten different ways of telling "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" from the same statistical data set, I have to utilise beliefs, in order to select out a story which I believe correctly represents the meaning of that data set. These beliefs guide me in considering different frames of reference, and connect the significance of a set of observations, codified as data, to criteria of practical utility and ethical norms. A pragmatist just wipes this whole issue under the carpet, in the name of "self-evident practicality" and "self-evident truth", but is thereby unable to conceive of anything beyond the perception or judgement of practicality, or permit a different meaning of what practicality might consist in, other than in terms of practical interests at stake. On that basis, I might as well throw the whole data set out, because a data set which can be interpreted in many different ways is not practical for the purpose of an objective assessment of the phenomena to which it refers. Pragmatism looks like an open philosophy, but it really isn't, because either it does not logically permit anything other than pragmatic reflections on pragmatism, or it becomes inconsistent because it adduces premises which pragmatism does not allow if consistently followed. Praxis by contrast implies a genuine dialectical fusion of theory and practice, but as this is admittedly difficulty to do, it is easy to lapse into pragmatism. The problem is not solved thereby, however. > I like Johnny Mercer, though I a more oa Cole Porter > guy. However, the lyric that seems appropriate right > now is Dylan: > > There are many here among us > Who feel that life is but a joke > But you and I we've been through that > And that is not out fate > Let us not talk falsely now > The hour getting late. Yes, indeed, "talking falsely" is an issue, but to which truth criterion does this refer, if, pragmatically, I may tell a lie by means of a metaphor, in order to convey the truth, or tell the truth, even though by telling it I am lying, because the truth I am telling is displaced from the context on which its truth-content depends, and because conflicting correspondence and coherence criteria of lying are being applied ? Personally, I always find Judo philosophy helpful in correcting my mistakes. "I may venture to say, loosely, that in Judo there is a sort of counter for every twist, wrench, pull, push or bend. Only the Judo expert does not oppose such movements at all. No, he yields to them. But he does much more than yield to them. He aids them with a wicked sleight that causes the assailant to put out his own shoulder, to fracture his own arm, or in a desperate case, even to break his own neck or back." - Lafcadio Hearn, Judoka All the best, Jurriaan
