Remember when the Brooklyn artist tried to board a United Airlines flight with his beloved peacock, Dexter? Despite purchasing a seat and providing a medical certificate for his emotional support animal, United Airlines denied him boarding due to size and weight issues. This memorable incident, along with other airport incidents involving pit bulls, squirrels, and pigs, has led airlines to establish clear guidelines and differentiate between acceptable emotional support animals (ESAs) (kittens in baskets) and unacceptable emotional support animals (alligators, even on leashes). ESAs have now been downgraded to “pets.” What was once dismissed as odd is now calling for policy manuals to be updated.
Since the 1960s, however, the emphasis has been on “liberation” – personal, social, political and religious. Hannah Arendt predicted the irony: “The most radical revolutionary becomes a conservative the day after the revolution.” The movement for liberation and individual freedom has led to a proliferation of clear norms and codes of conduct that have almost surpassed the excesses of conservatives.
Language, proper names, pronouns, gender, sexual orientation, and sexual intimacy, including hand-holding, are regulated with rules, with the risk of being ostracized, dismissed, canceled, or simply ignored. Liberal fundamentalism competes with conservative fundamentalism, non-liberal democracy with liberal democracy, authoritarianism with freedom. The race to imitate is in full swing.
We can no longer rely on a higher foundation to guide our thinking. The gods of old promised a cosmic order and a sense of security, and other absolutes were seen as universal. When that order, with individual exceptions, effectively disappeared, its loss ripped cultural and social foundations from under people's feet. Rules became weather vanes, or, more respectfully, the subject of democratic debate.
Authoritarians are never more intolerant than when they are forced to tolerate a disruption of norms. So are liberals, with their unique talent for turning agreement into argument. Nostalgia for absolutism is nonpartisan. “Things break down, the centre cannot hold, and mere anarchy is unleashed on the world. The best are devoid of conviction, the worst are full of passion.” (Yeats)
Choice is suffocating. The center may not hold, but the edges can. As we see in the world's religions and justice movements, most change travels from the edges to the center. The death of God and the end of the world are easier to imagine than the complex paths that actually lead to what happens next.
Albert Hirschman, a well-known economist and political scientist, Bias in hope“For example, we don't have a detailed, proven blueprint for the truly large-scale social, economic and technological changes that would be needed to transition to a zero-carbon economy, or to any kind of post-capitalist transition.” These things can never be known in advance. The only way to figure them out is to try. We learn by going where we need to go.
In his concept of the “hidden hand,” Hirschman argues that inspiration and creativity come from working on important but unlikely projects, leading to the ingenuity to overcome unexpected obstacles. Waiting until you're sure is just an excuse to do nothing.
This concept is good advice, but it's not just positive psychology. It applies to global, international affairs, too. Hirschman asserts that “radical reformers will find it difficult to generate the extraordinary social energy necessary to achieve change unless they have an exhilarating sense that they are writing an entirely new chapter in human history.” The key word might be “exhilarating.”
Something that the devil fears more than justice may be happening. of Screwtape's LetterHe says: “Unfortunately, there is a type of laughter that does us no good. It is the laughter that comes from joy.”: It connects people more deeply with one another and with God. Darkness is the devil's domain. Joy has revolutionary potential.
Leaving before the story has fully begun means missing out on the excitement. Hamlet The first act is where the main conflict and motivation is revealed: we are told that the pearl we are looking for will only be found at the end of the story.
Notes and reading
Albert Hirschman (d. 2012) believed that most large-scale development projects of managerial fantasy were attractive but vulnerable, costly, and inefficient. target The more solid the plan, the more likely it is to have a domino effect. – Hirschman's interdisciplinary approach included insights from Kierkegaard, Durkheim, and Tocqueville. Intellectual Biography – Michelle Aracevic (2021).
“The only way we can be creative is by underestimating the difficulty of the task.”Hirschman, Observed development projects (2014), p. 182. “Radical reformers are unlikely to produce…” – The Essential Hirschman (2013), in ““Political Economy and Possibilism”
“Emotional support peacocking is banned…” – BBC News Channel Printed (January 31, 2018).
“What a wild beast…” W. B. Yeats, Collection of poems (1989), In “The Second Coming.”
“Most changes travel from the edges to the center…” – Evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson This view of life: the completion of the Darwinian revolution (2019).
“We learn by going where we have to go.” From Theodore Lawsky's poem “The Awakening.”
“Unfortunately, there is a type of laughter that is of no use to us. It is the laughter that comes from joy.” C.S. Lewis, The Devil's Letter – Letter IX.
and,
“Fragilistus” – “A group of people who mistake the unknown for something that doesn't exist.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb Antifragile: Benefiting from Disorder (2014), p. 9.
About 2 + 2 = 5: (revised) https://williamgreen.substack.com/about
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