Our flawed political assumptions (March 4th) - continued

Let’s give this a whirl to get us out of our comfort zones – particularly interesting for those of us who go through life with an agenda as to what’s wrong with this or other aspect of modern life and how we could do away with it by means of some activist motion or other; or better still whose fault it is and who ought to be blamed for it, etc.

The original brief may be useful in reviewing our own assumptions (which I believe are just that, i.e. assumptions ! Although we often go about thinking about these as if they were our very own heuristically arrived truths and therefore ought to be self-evident – and so they are ! …. but only until somebody questions us about their logic – at that point we go into a frenzied sequence of emotional justifications, etc all of which amount to …. ah well, you know what I mean - assumptions and opinions being the cheapest commodity around).

The purpose here is not so much to deny the fact that there are many areas of life that could do with some improvement (as this obviously has always been the case) but to clarify that most institutions or paradigms come out of a context of societal modalities that had their origin in something else and simply became part and parcel of society’s protective engagement with the vagaries of life (i.e. mostly fear based protection against the unknown).

And this of course brings us to Henry Higgins’ exclamation in “My Fair Lady” when he says “Why is thinking never even tried …..” (although this was said jestingly with reference to the so-called “weaker” sex , it would equally apply to just about everyone).

This modern struggle where everyone becomes their own Don Quixote fighting windmills (with or without the benefit of one’s own Sancho Panza to take up some of the burden) is destiny's consequence of having engaged in rebellion and for which we now have to pay the price in the school of psychological hard knocks – that’s the positive benefit of a negative action. (Or as it has ever been philosophically paraphrased “out of bad comes good”, e.g. when the Mafia’s off-springs turn their inherited structures into sociologically legitimate businesses, similar in fact to the off-springs of the robber barons of old who became the later governing aristocracy, etc).

Of course collectively that’s the only way a society will ever proceed, however, the painful part is having to observe the process in individuals, knowing that it is at least potentially possible to surrender one’s rebellion in exchange for the acquisition of guided instruction from a philosophical formula - that’s why the oracle of ancient Greece had declared Socrates the wisest of men – and why ? Only because he always maintained (or most likely feigned) his ignorance in the face of everyone else having “an opinion” (see here our above “assumptions”).