Delusions of Values
I just started reading "What's the Matter With Kansas?" by Thomas Frank, and I'm already impressed and shocked by a couple of sentences on pages 6 and 7 ... he's talking about the overwhelming success of conservative politicians as a "backlash" against the "radicalism" and liberalism of the 1960s:

"The leaders of the backlash may talk Christ, but they walk corporate. Values may 'matter most' to voters, but they always take a back seat to the needs of money once the elections are won."

and

"Thus the primary contradiction of the backlash: it is a working-class movement that has done incalculable, historic harm to working-class people."

and

"Here is a movement whose response to the power structure is to make the rich even richer; whose answer to the inexorable degradation of working-class life is to lash out angrily at labor unions and liberal workplace-safety programs; whose solution to the rise of ignorance in America is to pull the rug out from under public education."

whew! If the rest of the book follows this pattern, I think I may have found some of the answers to my questions of yesterday. :-)
- posted by Chris @ 9:46 AM

 
Fundamental assumption
I wish I could clearly say what mine is.

I know that I value individual effort, but I also appreciate that no person is an island.

I think that if you derive great benefit from the circumstance of living in the United States of America, you should pay your taxes and stop bitching (or trying to find loopholes). But I also understand that greed and sloth are fundamental to human nature, and we tend to take advantage of each other when it seems like the easiest way to get from point A to bank account B.

I think we're all born with the ability to be our best selves, but a lot of us get sidetracked, and end up trying to be someone else ... anyone else. And therapy gets costly.

I think that appealing to faith as the final arbiter of what is important doesn't answer the question of "why?"

I think that if more people were interested in questions, instead of answers, I'd have better job prospects.

Isn't there some kind of test i can take that will spit out an answer to my question: what do I believe?
- posted by Chris @ 3:09 PM

 
True .... sigh.
Time makes more converts than reason. -- Thomas Paine
- posted by Chris @ 2:32 PM

 
And then the alternative:
And then, back in the saddle at work, I read this in CJR, by Douglas McCollam:

"Reporters often seem perplexed by the venomous attacks directed at them. They have a hard time seeing that it is not so much the idea of bias that infuriates their critics as the refusal to admit any bias at all. That line is getting increasingly hard to toe, so I'll suggest an alternative that most reporters, of whatever political camp, might find acceptable: go ahead and admit an obvious bias -- a bias against power. ... I am advocating admitting to an active suspicion of concentrated financial and political influence and those who stand to benefit from it, not the promotion of any particular ideology, cause, or agenda."

Right on!
- posted by Chris @ 9:39 AM

 
Just skip the parts you don't want to hear?
I confess that, while I love technology, I refuse to turn my home into tech central. I don't get cable, I don't want a satellite, I just want a TV that works and something to play movies on.

Last week I was visiting family in Colorado, and all of them are loaded to some extent with the accoutrement of our modern culture, including the ComCast version of TiVo. When the news came on, my two sisters (both conservatives, both vote Republican, both watching Fox News, then, of course) talked between themselves and at the TV about the news of the day. But several times my older sister fast-forwarded through something ... only once did I catch what was being skipped: an interview with an "opposing" (liberal) viewpoint. At that point, I said, "So, you only watch what you agree with?" and she shot back, "When I'm watching it by myself, I watch the whole thing." So she was sparing our younger sister the shock of a different opinion? The sister is four months pregnant, with two toddlers, and a very busy schedule, but she can't handle listening to even the Fox version of balanced coverage?

I confess that I couldn't get into any serious discussions with any of the fambly. I don't think I'm at the liberal extreme, but I can't stand that these middle-class, educated people with a high level of native intelligence don't read or listen to viewpoints outside a narrow range. They make great arguments for their cause, too, which I'm often at a loss to dispute, because I just don't start from the same assumptions about human nature, capitalism, technology and the role of government.

Sigh.
- posted by Chris @ 9:17 AM