The things we say (or, This is how we whistle in the dark)

e_moon60 posts here on Purity Politics, and says, offhandedly, quite near the beginning of her post, "No single human individual is entirely right..."

This is quite palpably not a provable fact, not without the mother and father of all door-to-door surveys. Indeed, it's a statistical probability (though, again, hard to measure) that one or more human individuals might be entirely right, just as it is that one human individual might win an honest lottery, and this in fact happens. If you narrow the field of "things to be right about" to a finite one, such as human geopolitics, the probability becomes higher. Indeed, it's a goal worthy of aspiration, and to rule it out of court this way is a little discouraging; if no human individual can ever be entirely right about politics, and a mass of human individuals can be as egregiously wrong as we have known them to be, then what's the point of soliciting our opinions in the first place? Why not just pick a political system out of a hat?

If you narrow the field still further, to a single issue, then the probability approaches unity. It's perfectly possible to be right about racism (it's wrong and always has been), about sexism (ditto), about the environment (it must be prevented from becoming inimical to human life). Since the number of issues of this sort that bear on human politics is finite, I don't see how it can not be possible for one or more human individuals to be entirely right about them.

The truth on this, I think, is that "No single human individual is entirely right..." is one of those things that those of us who possess modesty say, and understood is the subtext "at least I don't think I can be, and yet the alternatives to my view of politics seem all to be worse than mine (otherwise mine wouldn't be mine, because I believe I am at least not insane), so I hope nobody else is right either." It is indeed whistling in the dark, and also a counsel of despair, if the two aren't mutually contradictory.

Modesty is a very becoming virtue, of course, and should be encouraged. The post goes on to talk about the ossifying effects of the conviction of rightness, and (of course) drags in religion as an example of this, mentioning "fear of outside ideas." Now those two things are mutually contradictory: if you have a firm conviction that you are right, the last thing you fear is a wrong idea. I am firm in my conviction that racism and sexism are wrong, and the last thing I fear is that they may be right. (Thus I can read old books, like those of Sapper, Sax Rohmer and Dornford Yates, and enjoy them on their own terms as adventure stories without fear of unconsciously taking on their authors' toxic ideologies.)

It is (I've said this before and been disagreed with, but I'm as sure of it as I am of anything) it is doubt, it is insecurity, that engenders fear of other ideas. It is doubt and insecurity that leads one to close the eyes, the ears, the mind, lest some alien thought penetrate like a virus and begin to unravel one's painstakingly erected mental structures. It is, in a very real sense, in that doubt and insecurity that the danger lies. Scratch a demagogue, a zealot, a fanatic, and underneath, in almost all cases, I believe you will find someone desperately trying to avoid, to deny, to erase, what Chesterton called "the frantic and blasphemous statement that [they] may be wrong."

(Too many triads in that last paragraph. Sorry. Getting worked up.)

The post also mentions "the inevitable change that comes to us all," and warns that someone who is convinced of their rightness will believe that "change can only be met with rigid resistance or active conflict." Some things, indeed, change. Hemlines go up and down, soft drinks come out in new flavours (or colours), and computers allegedly get faster. But there has, I think, never been a time when it was right to be racist or sexist, or when the benignity of the biosphere was not important. There has never been a time when cruelty was morally superior to kindness, or when slavery was just, or when rape was defensible, and I will go so far as to say there never will be. And my response to any suggestion otherwise will, I fear, be "rigid resistance or active conflict." Well, active conflict on my terms (you're looking at it).

But it is not true that being "entirely right" necessarily involves being resistant to change. Indeed, to be "entirely right" must of force mean being aware of those things that do change, alive to their implications, and open to new information. And here we do run up, at last, against the limits of the organism, because some things, as I said, do change, very fast and on a global scale, and keeping up with it all is beyond the powers of any individual. It is true, indeed, that no human individual can, on every issue, globally, and at every moment, be entirely possessed of all the facts; and if that's what you mean by "rightness" then the statement in the post is indeed true, for those values.

But nobody has to be that well-informed. There are ways round these limitations. Smaller governmental units. Clear and efficient communication. Frequent, open and transparent consultation. And none of this takes away from the fact that there are certain core issues, some of which I have enumerated, on which there are very clear right and wrong answers, and which, once the right answer is chosen to each, can form the basis of a political ideology which is sound, humane, and flexible enough to cope with those things that do change. And a human individual who adopted that ideology would be, in the field of human geopolitics, entirely right.

Except that they would probably be too modest to say so, and then the demagogues and zealots would win again.

Gods, politics is depressing. Let's talk about something else. What music have you all been listening to?