Your last few pieces have had a concern with "left" and "right", and I love how you have been putting them in quotation marks, I think that is very appropriate. At one point I would have said that I was on the "left", though not in as principled a way as you, because I'm not very familiar with "theory" and all of the "ism"s, etc. But I just don't use it anymore because I don't find it very meaningful. It confuses more than it elucidates.
The "left-right" framework is literally one-dimensional. But life is three-dimensional at least, so any one-dimensional framework will always be missing many many possibilities.
Dec 16, 2023·edited Dec 16, 2023Liked by Rhyd Wildermuth
So strange, the left was once all about protecting the working class from the machinations of big business and government, now the new version is all about protecting big business and government from the working class! An example would be the response to the Canadian trucker movement.
The loss of homeliness and the common touch as in the Poem “Bread and Roses”, a symptom is that the once democratic West Virginia is firmly republican and went for Trump twice. Much of the left wants to elect another people. At this point for me it’s “ a plague on both your houses” as regards the two US political parties. I am for an ecological based Distributism.
Thank you for this. It gets to the heart of the matter - the left and right being mirrors and shadows of each other. ‘Enantiodromia’ is a term I came across recently and it struck me as so accurate - a term coined by C. Jung that means, in simple terms “When things get to their extreme, they turn into their opposite”. And once two very polarized groups start to ‘turn’ into their opposite, it’s like galaxies colliding - they change each other. Often - it would seem - taking on each others darker aspects. But it’s unconscious. I see leftists become more fascistic than any right-leaning person I’ve ever personally known. I don’t know what people on the right are seeing in terms of ‘code switch’ toward the behaviour they have most railed against on the left (historically) because I don’t live over there, but I’m curious. There’s a strange and ubiquitous mixing occurring. Nothing is as it seems. Most important to me is the loss of opportunity to talk and discuss difficult topics and differences, as there is that ‘gnostic’ trap presented by all my leftist friends that says “You don’t know what we know and that’s why you don’t agree with us. Once you do your work and educate yourself, you will be on our side”. The assumption from the start is of MY ignorance (which is equated to intentional bigotry in these times) rather than them having to acquiesce to the reality that someone they (at least until five minutes ago) love and respect has a different viewpoint. Rather than getting curious, they get self righteous. All my rational apologetics become a nail, and their fixed position is a hammer. I’ve never been as lonely as I am these days because of the severity of discord that now exists between my leftist friends/family and my politically-new-homebuilding self (I refuse to say homeless as that is not the case!)
Yes, the home, the aim should be good homes for all, in healthy communities, embedded in healthy ecosystems, with healthy systems meeting people’s material needs and social needs. Somehow Amazon, Big Pharma, other corporate giants, smart phones, the varieties of social medias, big impersonal government can’t be that life giving matrix. This brobdingnagian system will fade over the next hundred years as its life blood - fossil fuels are used up. I don’t think fusion, nuclear, solar, wind are capable of being substitutes. A forced return to local community?
Dec 16, 2023·edited Dec 16, 2023Liked by Rhyd Wildermuth
> taken “red pills” a la The Matrix, tumbled down rabbit holes in the Wonderland sense
I love that the author has so little faith in her own remaining readership that she thinks she needs to explain her references here. Maybe take a step back from 'splaining everything in exhaustive detail and try understanding something for once.
Oh, mate, absolutely. There's no joy to be had in any of this stuff.
Your last few pieces have had a concern with "left" and "right", and I love how you have been putting them in quotation marks, I think that is very appropriate. At one point I would have said that I was on the "left", though not in as principled a way as you, because I'm not very familiar with "theory" and all of the "ism"s, etc. But I just don't use it anymore because I don't find it very meaningful. It confuses more than it elucidates.
The "left-right" framework is literally one-dimensional. But life is three-dimensional at least, so any one-dimensional framework will always be missing many many possibilities.
So strange, the left was once all about protecting the working class from the machinations of big business and government, now the new version is all about protecting big business and government from the working class! An example would be the response to the Canadian trucker movement.
crazy, yes.
The loss of homeliness and the common touch as in the Poem “Bread and Roses”, a symptom is that the once democratic West Virginia is firmly republican and went for Trump twice. Much of the left wants to elect another people. At this point for me it’s “ a plague on both your houses” as regards the two US political parties. I am for an ecological based Distributism.
Thank you for this. It gets to the heart of the matter - the left and right being mirrors and shadows of each other. ‘Enantiodromia’ is a term I came across recently and it struck me as so accurate - a term coined by C. Jung that means, in simple terms “When things get to their extreme, they turn into their opposite”. And once two very polarized groups start to ‘turn’ into their opposite, it’s like galaxies colliding - they change each other. Often - it would seem - taking on each others darker aspects. But it’s unconscious. I see leftists become more fascistic than any right-leaning person I’ve ever personally known. I don’t know what people on the right are seeing in terms of ‘code switch’ toward the behaviour they have most railed against on the left (historically) because I don’t live over there, but I’m curious. There’s a strange and ubiquitous mixing occurring. Nothing is as it seems. Most important to me is the loss of opportunity to talk and discuss difficult topics and differences, as there is that ‘gnostic’ trap presented by all my leftist friends that says “You don’t know what we know and that’s why you don’t agree with us. Once you do your work and educate yourself, you will be on our side”. The assumption from the start is of MY ignorance (which is equated to intentional bigotry in these times) rather than them having to acquiesce to the reality that someone they (at least until five minutes ago) love and respect has a different viewpoint. Rather than getting curious, they get self righteous. All my rational apologetics become a nail, and their fixed position is a hammer. I’ve never been as lonely as I am these days because of the severity of discord that now exists between my leftist friends/family and my politically-new-homebuilding self (I refuse to say homeless as that is not the case!)
Yes, the home, the aim should be good homes for all, in healthy communities, embedded in healthy ecosystems, with healthy systems meeting people’s material needs and social needs. Somehow Amazon, Big Pharma, other corporate giants, smart phones, the varieties of social medias, big impersonal government can’t be that life giving matrix. This brobdingnagian system will fade over the next hundred years as its life blood - fossil fuels are used up. I don’t think fusion, nuclear, solar, wind are capable of being substitutes. A forced return to local community?
> taken “red pills” a la The Matrix, tumbled down rabbit holes in the Wonderland sense
I love that the author has so little faith in her own remaining readership that she thinks she needs to explain her references here. Maybe take a step back from 'splaining everything in exhaustive detail and try understanding something for once.