Earlier in the year I began re-engaging on xTwitter again, and it quickly brought back to mind a couple of the frustrations I had with xTwitter from the start. Of course a big frustration for me being a blogger in the xTwitterverse, is limiting my comments and replies to 264 characters, or even a thread, or two, or three of them. I initially had some sympathy for those I was commenting back & forth with - honest, anonymous, and troll - who were trying to find a label to fit what I was saying, into a political & economic framework they'd recognize (I've had the same problem for decades). But then it became apparent that the issue had less to do with my squeezing an accurate description into a limited number of characters, than with something more fundamental to the economic positions that most people see their world through.
But their problem, is only with who or what can take the shiny surface objects that command their attention (GDP, Inflation, Interest Rates... etc.,), and juggle them as needed to make their economic numbers add up. In their minds, those are just givens that require no depth or visible means of support to be explained, or consequences to be concerned with - so long as what or who they support can make them 'add up', they're satisfied that the 'common good' is being served.
Part of what makes this situation possible, is that the standard labels we have, of Liberal, Leftist, Conservative, Neo-Liberal, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Progressive, have all lost whatever meaning they may once have had, and serve mostly as a convenient means of associating an assortment of hot-button positions, under the handy heading of a recognized label (or two).
The problem isn't just that the standard labels simply don't fit - though they don't - but that because they revolve around positions, rather than the reasons for having them, these labels that people accept, serve less to inform, than to subtract from what others are able to know about each other, and their world. So when someone adopts one of these labels which communicate little more than a list of positions associated with them, it's like taping a 'kick me' note to their back, and then they're surprised as people begin kicking them for wearing that label, even as everyone else, is kicking everyone else, as we all make our way kicking & screaming down the halls of social media.
Many of these label people know extensive details about how the pieces and parts of these economic systems fit together. But what I find with just a little questioning, is that it seems that what it is that they know of their systems, is known to them in the way that a student knows the info they've spent the weekend cramming to pass a test on - they know the answers to the questions they expect, and neither know nor care about any deeper implications that actions taken on what 'they know' might have - and it's irrelevant to them. If pressed on such concerns, they'll sidestep and reference other positions and labels, which they ultimately expect the artful use of force and power will fix, in ways that a thought for those depths they ignore, would have taught them that force and power cannot accomplish.
One tell-tale sign that you're dealing with a label person in a discussion over what they associate with labels like 'Leftist', 'Libertarian', or 'Conservative', is that they become frustrated if the discussion leads to your pointing out how their position involves what they associate with other labels, and then they blame you for being 'inconsistent' and confusing how they expect their labels to fit together. And rather than reconsidering their premises to resolve that inconsistency, they typically resort to appealing to authorities & their lofty ends, to nudge their numbers and answers back into place, by explaining away what cause it is that they presume to be orbiting around which effects.
Sorry, but when you've adopted labels which have the reasons you give for them, orbiting around the positions that leads to them, inconsistency is what you'll experience, and when that's the case, getting your numbers to agree, isn't going to make anything meaningfully add up.
What the labelers are involved in doing, though far less innocently, is what the old astronomer Ptolemy found the need to resort to from time to time, which was to fabricate an epicycle (a fudge factor) to toss into his calculations, so as to explain Mars' path through the night sky as it orbited around the earth (or so he thought). Of course you can do that if you'd like, but you should understand that your pointing out how 'accurately' your numbers track your favorite shiny objects (GDP, Inflation, etc.,), isn't something that's going to persuade me to believe that your positions are correct, any more than the 'accuracy' of Ptolemy's numbers could persuade me into believing that Mars, let alone the Sun, are revolving around the earth. It's not me who's being inconsistent here, it's you.
At some point we all reach a point where our prized positions don't actually fit with the reality they attempt to explain - that's a normal part of learning. The real lesson to be learned, is whether you're going to be the kind of person who then pauses to reconsider and ask other questions, or who doubles down on asserting still more answers to kill off any questions that threaten your positions.
Consistency requires acknowledging both that John Locke & Adam Smith were admirable pioneers in the understanding of liberty, and not hesitating to acknowledge that both also had flaws & errors in their theories. John Locke expressed truly revolutionary ideas on individual rights in a polity, and yet his sometimes nominalist notions of human understanding and education, helped set the stage for disastrous 'advances' in skepticism and idealism. Adam Smith was a true pioneer in political economy (he didn't use the term 'Economics' as is done today, or 'Capitalism'), and while I very much appreciate his idea of 'Natural Liberty' as being the true 'Wealth of Nations', whose fruits increase as the state refrains from interfering in their people's efforts to earn a living, that shouldn't keep anyone from pointing out what he got wrong, not least of which was his advising Lord North that the best way to fix Britain's finances, would be to impose taxes on the colonies (Whoops!).
When they turn their labelmaker on you, the question you should ask is do you really want to engage in a manner of thinking that gets triggered by daring to notice that it's possible to have the right answers for the wrong reasons, and vice versa? Giving credit where credit is due, and pointing out where it isn't, is what advances our understanding of the world and our place in it; doing so is admirable; chiding & rebuking what has been misidentified, made misleading and/or corrupting to our ability to gain that understanding, is warranted, and failing to do either, fails your discussion, and who and what is being discussed.
The larger issue to be developed in this post - which I'm making into a single extended post, instead of a series of separate posts - is that this narrative habit of putting positions over reasons, and adopting labels in place of actual understanding, isn't simply a flaw, it's the visible feature, of a deliberate strategy, for using an answer to kill off uncomfortable questions.
When it becomes difficult for someone to admit that someone else got something wrong, there's a good chance that they're more involved in contriving new epicycles of their own to throw upon your discussion, and not to increase its accuracy and value, but to further whatever narrative it is that they've associated with that particular label. Worse still, failing to pay equal attention to both the good and bad deeds of notable figures, too easily leads us into the fallacies of arguing either from authority, or ad hominem, or both, and leads us progressively away from an objectively valuable understanding of the issues at hand.
Difficult questions get you further than easy answers
Seeking after easy answers, rather than giving due consideration to difficult questions, is a strategy that's has been made into a habit of thinking (for instance, by such means as training students for 12+ years to anxiously scan textbooks & worksheets for answers to be memorized for getting 'good grades'), which routinely results in our reducing what meaning another person's comment might have, to a static, inert, material 'answer' that, just as an epicycle, is sure to suppress worthwhile questions, and raise distracting reactions that help divert our conversations into the thoughtless flowcharted paths of ideological thinking (AKA: 'Critical Thinking', but that'll have to wait for my next series of posts).
What I hope to do here, is help people to kick the habit of looking no further than the labels that've been assigned to issues or persons - or you - which I think is best begun by peeling up the edges of those positions they favor, with a few well placed questions. Of course, as doing so begins revealing those reasons that underlie the positions they're promoting, that's when the 'people of the label' begin cranking up their label-makers, as did my x-Twitterer friends, as they began verbally taping their 'not humble', 'passive aggressive', 'ignorant', 'arrogant', labels to my back. The labels themselves aren't the issue - they tend to fall off fairly quickly - it's the habit of labeling itself, whether in accepting or assigning them, which encourages a pattern of thinking that reflects something other than reality, it misleads people into ideas that jeopardize themselves and the world we inhabit together, which is a habit that's worth breaking.
It's important to see that having answers without questioning your way to them, is useless.
It takes a few well-placed questions - the kinds that a zinger of a label is meant to kill - to get someone to look further than the ready answers they have at hand. Calling me arrogant back when I definitely was arrogant, isn't what got me to recognize that I was arrogant (and oh, yes indeedy I was). What worked on me, was when the questions a friend asked me about the statements of knowledgeable authorities that I'd been repeating & defending as if they were unquestionably true, led me to recognize that... they just weren't so. And worse for those labels that I'd taken pride in wearing, once I began following those questions that he'd raised, it didn't take long to realize that those authorities I was turning to next, for help in defending the first ones with, weren't any better.
xTwitter'rs tell me:
"...You're not humble- based on a previous conversation my understanding of the nature of reality exceeds your own....",
"... You describe your opinion as humble and display passive-aggressive behaviour...."
That unpleasant experience of discovering that it was possible that 'what I know just isn't so', was acutely embarrassing, and yes humbling too. But discovering that an uncomfortably well-placed question can lead you into gaining a better understanding of what is real and true - and what isn't - which no amount of memorizing the most authoritative 'answers' ever could, was incredibly valuable to me, and is what led me, decades ago now, to become a 'Blogodidact'. That experience prodded me to go back to Homer and begin reading my way forward in time through the original sources myself, pointedly questioning (not doubting, mind you, questioning) what had been said and done by those who had actually said and done it, and then asking the same questions of my own conclusions and reasons for thinking them, so that 'I' wouldn't again become the biggest barrier to my gaining a better understanding of what is real and true.
"...You're not humble- based on a previous conversation my understanding of the nature of reality exceeds your own....",
"... You describe your opinion as humble and display passive-aggressive behaviour...."
I don't claim that experience made me humble, but it absolutely seared an unpleasant awareness into me of the dangers of arrogantly assuming that any position of mine is unquestionable - and that answers that go unquestioned are more likely to be meaningless, than meaningful - and since that unpleasant moment I've welcomed any questions that I may not have considered - that, IMHO, is 'The Way'.
Granted, when I state 'In My Humble Opinion' (IMHO), I'm keenly aware that it's not exactly a sign of humility to offer someone a conflicting assessment of what they think is real & true. But it is a continuation of that process of actively questioning answers - theirs and mine - which is what I committed myself to way back when, in hopes of being shown a perspective I hadn't considered a matter from, and raising questions I might not have thought to ask. That's gold.
That's also why I don't enter into 'comment battles' with either label guns blazing, or by being either passive aggressive (or aggressively passive), but by asking questions. It's only after the other person demonstrates that they're being deliberately obtuse, evasive, and/or deceptive in their answers, that my slow boil (mistake that for passivity if you like) will give way to whatever cheerfully aggressive barbs or dismissals seems to me to be warranted within the context of the discussion [see the message above my blog's comment box]. I don't do so because I believe I have the 'right answer!', but because they've shown me that their answers have little or no connection with the questions that we should both be asking.
Since for the labeler, the point of 'the label' is to be 'an answer that kills the question' in you, when you realize that you're being given an answer that you're not meant to understand, you need to remember to ask those questions that lead to understanding:
, which are the very things that such 'answers' are typically asserted to distract you from considering.
- What is it (Metaphysics),
- How do you know it (an epistemology of Causality and Logic),
- Is it appropriate (Ethics)
What I hope you'll come to see from peeling back these labels, is that they serve more to obscure, than to clarify your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The issues we'll find with such labels, both the narrow personal ones my xTweeting friends were taping to my back, and with the larger and 'more inclusive' labels such as 'neo-liberal' and 'libertarian' (egads!), is not just that they don't apply to me, but that the reasoning for them are so wide of the mark, that they pass beyond honest ignorance, and into the contrived pretenses & pretexts for positions which no legitimate reasoning can support.
Once you see that, I think you'll agree that the political and economic labeling process not only shouldn't be applied to you, me, or anyone else, but that its real purpose has less to do with simply winning arguments, than with capturing minds on both sides of the supposed argument, and that's something that's worth seeing and being able to recognize.
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