"The mark of a moderate man is freedom from his own ideas." Tao Te Ching
The terror in Arizona has not ended. In fact, the real terror has just begun: the terror of opinion. The senseless deaths of six people, including a young child: this is horrific. The critical maiming of a US Congressman: this is equally senseless. The insane--read irrational--acts of a madman: this is incomprehensible. Those who make a living interpreting these things have had a field day. We have now learned that we need stricter gun control, that the incendiary rhetoric of the right motivates political assassination, that Sarah Palin is not only disingenuous but stupid, that community mental health has failed us [we obviously need to spend more money on public psychiatric facilities to keep up with all the new DSM classifications], and how deeply conflicted our national psyche really is.
I am not sure I buy any of this, as least as it is being peddled. Equally viable--and perhaps equally vacuous---arguments have been made for the absolute necessity of legally carrying a concealed firearm [one gutsy Safeway granny with a 5 shot J-frame Smith and Wesson might have decisively ended Mr. Loughner's high-capacity Glock rampage] and how the inflammatory sophistry of the populist right [Fox News] is parasitic on the opinionated incivility of the progressive left [MSNBC]. Yes, fires need gasoline. And folks like Rachel Maddow, Ed Schulz and Keith Olbermann know how to keep a fire going. Granted, it doesn't take much accelerant to spontaenously combust people like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly. A magnifying glass and a little intellectual kerosene do wonders. But why not leave them alone? In time they'll ignite, well, spontaneously. And burn all the brighter for it. Just look at Sarah Palin. But still I say: a pox on both your houses. In terms of common decency, there's not much difference between Keith Olbermann calling the Speaker of the House John Boehner "Tan Man" and Rush Limbaugh calling Obama "a racist". People who are not reasonable do not reflect, they argue ad hominem. They attack the person of their opponent because they lack the wisdom to weigh ideas. They don't care to reason; they'd rather spew. That's their job. These days it's what passes for broadcast journalism.
I probably agree about Sarah Palin's political--and cognitive--shortcomings. Something vital is obviously missing here. On the other hand, there's no law against electing stupid people to office. In fact, our entire system would fall apart if there were. Nonetheless, someone who doesn't know world geography should probably not be President. In my younger days, Groucho Marx was popular too; but no one ever imagined he'd run for President. Besides, many popular things have later turned out to be bad for us. From bygone days I remember ads for Kool cigarettes presenting a white-coated doctor, Kool in hand, exhaling pleasurably in his examining room. The tag read "More doctors smoke..." Populism, especially the "peasants with pitchforks" kind, belongs more to the final scene of Frankenstein than representative government.
Groucho: my kind of populist. And that's not a Kool.
Here they come! The anti-Frankenstein mob.
What I do see is masses of individuals recruited by "opinion-aters" [sic] who rely on the tendency of people to never examine or question anything in their lives. Events like the Arizona Massacre are the equivalent of 9/11 or Pearl Harbor for an armed forces recruiter. These events are so traumatic and outside the register of everyday experience that most people willingly cede "understanding" to someone who seems to have a handle on them. It is why many broadcast journalists these days prefer to cast themselves as "commentators". I applaud their honesty. Because the truth is: they don't report events, they interpret them. And the power to interpret is a frighteningly awesome power. Events like the Massacre in Tuscon show us very clearly what "the problem" is: and the problem is that we need someone else to tell us what the problem is. Or as the telemarketers are wont to say: "But wait--there's more!" Because , of course, we'll now be needing an opinion about how to solve the problem.
"But wait, there's more!"
And this is where the philosopher kicks in.
The Greek word for opinion is doxa. And doxa [or opinion] is what we affirm without thinking. It's the nature of opinion to be unthinking. You assent to it without thinking. John Stuart Mill once spoke of "The deep slumber of a decided opinion". So when I hear a commentator speak of so-called "public opinion", I know what he really means. He's talking about an opinion held by a large number of people who never bother to think anything through. Indeed, the Greeks viewed doxa as something we should strive ceaselessly to free ourselves from. The point was to give up opinions and uncover the truth. In other words, opinion is what you should not have--individually or publicly--if you are sincerely seeking truth. Ask Socrates what he thought about public opinion. It matters little what you call yourself politically: progressive, liberal, conservative, libertarian, populist, green... The chances are, whatever view you hold, it is not really your own.
I wonder how many people, if a microphone were thrust in their face and asked what their opinion was, would respond "Not only do I not have an opinion, I have no intention of forming one". But that's the problem with opinion: the more it is not your own, the more it seems like it is. That is one of the problems I have with the notion of a free marketplace of ideas. As someone who has spent 30 years in the investment business and is the possessor of a graduate degree in philosophy I can tell you there is no such thing as a free market. All markets are rigged. If they weren't, they wouldn't work. Someone will always have [or think they have] an advantage. And the same holds true for the so-called "marketplace of ideas". What you really have is one coin [doxa] with two sides: ortho-doxy [my opinion] and hetero-doxy. [your opinion].
And that is what I find so troubling about events in Arizona. It's not that I don't have an opinion, but it does seem to me that no one has raised the question of personal responsibility. The whole thing has gotten so ridiculously confusing that one of the shooting victims drove over to Mr Loughner's parent's house to--in his words--forgive them. Well, while he's at it, why not forgive Gaston Glock, the inventor of the Glock handgun? Or the Safeway granny who should have been packing her J-frame Smith and Wesson, but left it in the glove box. Make no mistake: the person responsible for this crime is Jared Loughner.
Mr. Loughner was clearly a madman. But he too had an opinion; in this case, a highfalutin' philosophical one. And one that was not his own. In other words, he was just another self-possessed Dostoyevskian madman with a philosophical axe to grind. "How do you know words mean anything?" and "What is government if words have no meaning?" These were Loughner's questions. But they are the same questions my freshman philosophy professor used to ask; the same questions philosophy professors everywhere ask students to consider. And as wacky as it sounds, for Mr. Loughner, the answer turned out to be a Glock 19. Which not only makes Mr Loughner clearly insane, but the first assassin I am aware of to be motivated by the philosophy of language. So perhaps forgiveness is in order for Noam Chomsky and Ludwig Wittgenstein as well.
Ludwig Wittgenstein--grammatical anarchist, analytic philosopher. Mugshot taken at Cambridge.
George Santayana once observed that "One who lives the life of the universe cannot be much concerned for his own." I mostly disagree, chiefly because I think this Universe is not all that bad a place to be; but I do see where he is coming from. The larger the group you identify with, the less likely you are to be one person who acts responsibly. And the more likely you are to have an opinion how everyone else should.
That's me in the lower left.
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