Noah
Posts: 1660
Joined: 7/5/2005 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ThatDamnedPanda quote:
The Question is what Fuels the Passion? Each of us has a vision of how an ideal world ought to be designed, and it is this vision that forms the basis of our sociopolitical ideology. For each of us, our unique vision of this ideal world is shaped by the peculiarities of our own individual personalities - our sense of altruism, our desire for personal financial security, our concern for the safety of our children, our concern for the well-being of the children of total strangers, our desire to see justice visited upon transgressors, our sense of practicality and pragmatism, our own individual willingness to make personal sacrifices for what we perceive to be the common good, and a hundred other things all go into how we define a Perfect World. ... But I don't. I don't have anything like a vision of how an ideal world ought to be designed. Despite having spent a bunch of time with utopian fiction, I don't recall ever having seriously spent any time trying to conceive of an ideal world (nor spent time considering some ideal world vision which had cropped up as if spontaneously.) To write--or read--utopian fiction is for me just a potentially clever way of reflecting on the a-topian world I occupy. What comes to mind as I try to conceive of conceiving of such a thing is this: the image of a child trimming and trimming and trimming her bangs until she ends up with a crooked little bit of almost nothing with which to frame the gap-toothed grimace she will probably soon be showing to her mom. Shifting gears here: can we look at the notion of Ideal World from the following angle for a moment? Can we agree that any world which can exist only in one's imagination is less ideal than any world in which people can actually walk around and interact? [Apologies to Anselm] I want to highlight this because while it may be that an occaisional tyke might manage to get her bangs right, there is overwhelming evidence that every single effort to forge an ideal worl, by absolutely anyone or any group, throughout all of time, has failed. My suggestion being that your imaginary ideal world--as well as any one I might come up with--is, according to all available empirical evidence, incapable of existence Unless of course, the world we're in, with all its tribulations, is The Ideal World. [apologies to Leibniz, I suppose] Those other ancient philosophers, Becker and Fagen, offered: "Any world that I'm welcome to is better than the one I come from," which is a fine line of poetry. It depicts an emotional place in which we very well may find ourselves. I just don't think its usefulness extends to, say, inspiring the design of a new, ideal world. The song may even allude to this with its reference near the end to a "vision of a child returning". This world, as near as I can tell, is the only one I'm welcome to. It is mutable, but only so much. It is not a ball of clay I can mold. I can't redesign physics, biology or human nature. What I can do, if fallibly, is to mold, over time, my responses to that which The One World presents me with. I do spend some time thinking about and working toward what might be ideal in that regard. But as for visions of How The Ideal World Ought To Be Designed, well, something else altogether must form the basis of my socioplolitical ideology. That is, if I have a sociopolitical ideology, which I kind of also doubt.. So, Panda. Do you think that A.) I'm the exception who proves your rule? Or do you think that B.) your rule, or anyway proclamation (see snipped paragraph atop this post) might need some revising? If neither then I'd be pleased to read about choice C.) of your own design. Thanks
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