Sunday, Nov. 07, 2004 - 9:53 p.m.

What do the simple folk do?

Alektra commented in my guestbook:

Thank you for the clarification. It does help, but what I am really trying to say is that you've been raised in an area that was above average for America, been on one coast or another to live, except in a commune, and that most people don't pay attention to politics all the time the way you have your entire life. If you were to, say, work a true blue-collar job with people who were quite a bit older and not college educated, do you think their views on life would change the way you think most of America feels about the world around them? Or if you spent time with middle class midwestern housewives? My view of the people on this continent in general is that survival and their own clans are so much more important to them than actual government that they see as almost a demi-god, doing what it will, that they just ignore it for the most part. Does this differ from what you think? How so? (As you can tell, I am very interested in your point of view and like hearing what you have to say. Please don't take any of this in a bad light, as I wouldn't want to insult you.)

No offense taken. I share your view of what motivates the mainstream. On one hand, I admire their focus on their real lives, since most of what goes on in politics is abstraction and distraction. I say better to try to survive and improve your life and the lives of those you know and care about than to fancy yourself an active citizen of a nation trying to lobby for policy changes, because in the former, you're in direct control of the means. On the other hand, their ignorance also renders them into easily manipulatible sheeple. I have written off the mainstream as a lost cause. Since I abandoned leftism, I no longer seek to win over the masses, which I think is healthier for me and for them as well. However, I see now that I have written off the mainstream so completely that, as evidenced by my post where I said most people think Bush is an idiot, that I have unconsciously written off the mainstream as human beings worthy of consideration in my worldview.

I also wish to note that I do not favor any extant subculture over the mainstream.

I think this is because I put such a high value on political theory. I think that having a good analysis is as vital to someone trying to change society as having a working understanding of physics must be to an engineer. One's good intentions are insufficient to produce one's desired results. I understand that the majority of the population will never be theorists. However, everyone, of all proclivities and intelligence levels, embodies and reproduces the dominant paradigms of the culture they're in. Thus, the strategy I currently favor is to find some like-minded people with which to collectively develop our theory, try to live it, and articulate it in a variety of ways, especially in terms of myth, the kind of fundamental myths on which cultural paradigms rest. I seek to build this network into a subculture, which could be the seed of bigger things. Maybe these ideas could trickle into the mainstream, until they seem as common-sense as "Support Our Troops" seems nowadays. I want it to be a kind of culture that works well for the people in it and works well for the biological systems in which the people are enmeshed, a culture that cares whether people are satisfied and thriving. I hope this subculture could work in such a way to benifit those who participate in it, even if it never gains hegemony.

I don't know how to communicate with "normal" people. Partly, this is because I had to make a great number of leaps to get to the analysis I have today. Thus there's usually no way I can respond in a few sentences to anything a mainstream person says if I want them to understand where I'm coming from, theory-wise. Which is one reason I like Nonviolent Communication, cause it gives me a way to connect to another person on the level of just being human. NVC still does not help much in terms of trying to communicate a worldview. This is why I don't even give any thought to the mainstream or middle America. I can only get through to others who have made at least some of the leaps I have.

I tried working true blue-collar jobs three different times, and got fired each time for working too slow. I'm not likely to get to know any midwestern housewives unless I'm stuck in a broken elevator with some. I eat at McDonald's once in a while, but I understand it to be wrong on so many levels. I'm taking a class right now along with some people who watch TV and care about sports and go to church. We get along fine because I never mention what I really think about things.

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