aigantighe: Surfing the waves of existential contrariness

Trond (

aigantighe) wrote,
@ 2008-04-30 23:43:00

Entry tags:

thinking, writing

Surfing the waves of existential contrariness

I'm surfing a rather strange mood right now. I got home from gaming 20 minutes ago, feeling strangely bemused and disappointed with the world, largely for broad social and political reasons than for anything one particular thing.

I've been grappling a little of late with the troublesome conflict between ideas of social fairness and communal action versus libertarian ideas of avoiding coercion and maximizing freedom. Both sides offer attractions, but both have drawbacks - freedom and self-determination are desirable, but do they trump the Rawlsian desire for fairness and equality? Always? Never? Sometimes? Where do you draw the line?

Obviously, compromise between the extremes of these positions is necessary, and I know thinkers out there have formulated amalgamations that seem to offer a way forward. My concern is that society at large doesn't seem able to follow sophisticated hybrid policies, and tends to leap to extremes - we're either ignoring a problem, or flooding it with ill-considered, wasteful solutions. While the barely competent rule of the fickle crowd is perhaps measured and appropriate for some issues, it seems foolishly slow and indecisive for others.

However, this isn't all that's bugging me. Rather, it's a contributing and compounding factor in a mangled mass of disappointing trends I discern - the tragedy of the commons wrought large on global resources. What happens next?

It seems my attitude towards the future ranges from measured optimism to resigned pessimism. I guess this to be expected - we live in truly interesting times, and I really can't tell if that's good or bad.

Maybe I just shouldn't listen to essays about existential risk when I'm tired..

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aleph_naught
2008-05-01 12:28 am UTC (link)

I've been grappling with the same thing.

I would be inclined to suggest (or perhaps hope) that the desire for freedom and self-determination are inherent in the desire for fairness and equality. That is to say that one could not have a fair and equal society without also having a degree of freedom and self-determination.

I'm not sure if this is true, but I would certainly like it to be. Sometimes it seems to me that in political ideologies, it is not what is 'true' that matters, but what provides a useful value system for building policy around. That said, taking a utilitarian view of ideology/morality/philosophy can get you into some pretty strange territory.

I like social democracy, in that it does offer a compromise between extremes. It feels a bit ideologically empty though, doesn't it?

In theory, we should be able to have a universally applicable set of principles that we can use to run societies which will result in maximum happiness for the population. Marxism and Libertarianism, in their various forms, both attempt to provide these principles, but fail in practice (not that we've ever seen a truly libertarian society, but there are good reasons to be skeptical). Social democrats and others in the middle of the political spectrum take a wholly pragmatic approach which, relying on judgements made on a case-by-case basis, is inherently imperfect.

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aigantighe
2008-05-01 01:22 am UTC (link)

It's a lovely dream, and there's definitely compromise positions available that include both. The thing that distresses me the most is simply that I don't think that we (either as individuals, or collectively as social bodies at any scale) are able to achieve them. We're just not that altruistic, far-sighted, or consistent.

As mentioned, I'm not a great fan of either extreme, but rather of taking the good ideas from each. I'm not really concerned with ideological emptiness, either - unlike some people who abhor compromise, I think it's the only really valid option.

Anyway. This is mostly just idle musing and I have no particular argument to make. Maybe I should start / join a coffee club for sitting about and rambling about politics & philosophy..

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aleph_naught
2008-05-01 01:55 am UTC (link)

Practically speaking, I agree that pragmatism is the only valid option from the range of options currently available/known to us.

I guess what I'm expressing is a desire for a science of politics. I want laws of politics the same way that we have laws of physics or chemistry. This isn't fundamentally impossible; if we have certain stated goals (maximum happiness, increase GDP by %4 per annum, whatever) and we have a perfect knowledge of social sciences there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to do this.

In reality, of course, few can agree on what the goals of government should be, and our social sciences are limited and ridden with ideology.

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aigantighe
2008-05-01 02:10 am UTC (link)

I'm not convinced such a science is possible, at least not to the same extent as physics and chemistry. Here's a few reasons.

- Too many important considerations aren't quantitative
- Prioritisation of values vary from individual to individual
- Absurd levels of simplification are necessary
- There are moral objections to applying the scientific method to populations
- People are irrational (as economicists have found to the detriment of their theories).

That said, a reasoned approach utilizing some science-like practices is a good thing. Economics is an example of such a science, however, it fails to address non-utilitarian concerns, and does not cope well with human irrationality.

I'm ignoring the fact that we don't really have a clean way to determine who gets to choose the goals - that's an argument external to this (but still troubling - this is where libertarians try to claim the individual should decide these goals, and have the option to opt out if the community decides otherwise).

If you're interested in some of the economic thinking as applied to happiness and other 'unquantifiable' concerns, I'd strongly recommend following Will Wilkinson's blog.. It's heavy going in places, but there's a lot of good ideas.

I guess it's not a lack of ideas that bugs me, but a lack of faith in humanity's ability to do anything much with them.

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