In a society where page views and sound bites count more than results, having any political viewpoint is difficult. No matter which political angle, someone in the crowd will dislike you for it.
People try to avoid this question by saying something like, “There’s no real difference between the Republicans and Democrats, because they work for the same people.” This is an apolitical view, because it endorses a lack of action.
Conveniently, that lack of action — which we might call pluralism — is the foundation of liberalism. All are equal; tolerate everything; since that in turn creates new problems, we need a strong centralized political (not cultural or social) force to Nanny State us into accepting it.
In other words, by not making a choice, you made a choice.
While being apolitical seems like a good plan when expounded upon at your favorite bar, it will destroy your spirit. It convinces you to stop working toward a goal, and instead to chase after false targets while ignoring the one convenient avenue for change, which is using democratic means.
Like saying, “I hate/love everyone equally,” this statement amounts to blaming your lack of choice on something a small group of others have done. You have said that they are both the problem, and that which prevents a solution.
This is parallel to what neo-Nazis do when they claim Jews control the earth and the only way to fix our problems is to wage war against the Jew, or what liberals do when they claim “the rich” or “the banksters” control our civilization. You have placed control of your future in the hands of your enemies.
A more intelligent way of handling this is to pick a direct solution. Your enemy is not the solution, nor is smiting your enemy the solution. Your enemy is the opposition because she stands in the way of what you want to achieve, which is your goal. Go for the goal instead.
This process is separate from diagnosis. When we say that liberalism is a mental delusion that destroys civilizations, our message is clear: avoid liberalism, and do find another way to rule ourselves. We are not saying that liberalism controls the earth. We are saying we need another option besides liberalism.
When people declare that both parties are the same, they tend to advocate two types of giving up. The first is to shrug and be “apolitical,” giving up any say in how we are ruled. The second type of giving up is to set an impossible goal, like inventing some third party that magically unites left and right.
As with most useless things, these apolitical options are popular because they let individuals off the hook. With a single statement, you have explained your lack of concern for politics, so it’s back to buying products, producing personal drama, and other activities of as much importance as a squirrel preening itself. Apoliticism is an excuse, not a goal or a diagnosis.
Instead of going down this path to hopelessness, realize that change is in your hands. If even a relatively small percentage of the population agrees on a political idea, it happens. When even 2% of the country form a political movement, they get results.
The real reason nothing happens is that very few people agree on much of anything, and so they make the polite/sociable decision to agree to disagree, which means that nothing happens. The result is that the status quo keeps on trucking, adding more government control and more commercial corruption to our society.
Our Republican party in this country is blighted. Most of the people there are essentially liberals. This makes them very close to Democrats.
However, they’re only in control because no one else has stepped forward to volunteer or seek employment in politics. If those people did, they would replace the liberal conservatives with actual conservatives and the party would take a different direction.
It’s tempting to throw up our hands and give up. But that is exactly what those who would destroy our society want you to do, and they’ll hide that end result in many forms in order to trick you into buying into it.
“This process is separate from diagnosis. When we say that liberalism is a mental delusion that destroys civilizations, our message is clear: avoid liberalism, and do find another way to rule ourselves.”
I am not quite clear what your definition of civilisation is, in this context. Derrick Jensen defines civilisation as “a way of life characterized by the growth of cities”; where a city is defined as “a collection of people living in large enough numbers that require the importation of resources”.
Jensen’s view is that ‘civilisation’ as defined above is unsustainable.
If we follow Jensens definition, it is not liberalism that destroys civilisation, but civilisation that destroys itself due to its refusal to live in harmony with its carrying capacity.
How do you define civilisation, or what does civilisation mean to you?
Civilization is the outward expression of culture. Jensen’s definition is sadly tainted by modernity.
“Civilization is the outward expression of culture.”
Is that your definition Brett? Never heard it, but very interesting. What do you mean by ‘outward expression of culture’? I guess it also depends on how you define culture. Would that not mean that every culture’s outward expression can be considered civilisation? Also you would consider hunter gatherer or village agrarian cultures that existed prior to cities, to have been ‘civilisations’?
According to Jensen the word civilisation is based on the latin word for city.
Brett pretty much said it. Though a more accessible explanation would be to say that a civilization is the outward form that a transcendent idea of a people takes. An idea expressed in the form of government, warrior ethics, music, architecture, so on.
Jensen’s definition is typical of modernity because it considers only the outward creations, not being able to see anything behind them, that gave birth to them.
We can say that the modern mentality created an antithesis to civilization in that it is all about forms, devoid of any essence, or transcendental idea – just forms created for their own sake.
I can give a definition of a couple of civilizations: the French one before 1789 was “Un roi, une loi, une foi.” (one king, one law, one faith.) and Virgil proudly defined the Romans as: “Gens togata” (the people/nation/volk that wears the toga) which actually implied a lot more than just that and you had to be either French or Roman to fully understand its meaning. A civilization is the ongoing conversation of generations about what constitutes the good life. And this is made obvious in their literature, for example, in their classics. The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges said (here I’m quoting by heart and translating at the same time so his actual words were probably much better) “A classic is not a book that necessarily possesses these or those qualities; it’s a book that generations of men urged by diverse reasons read with previous fervor and a mysterious loyalty.” In that mysterious loyalty we can glimpse what constitutes the soul of a civilization.
Jensen’s definition, in contrast, reduces this mysterious confabulation of clusters of bloodlines to stubbornly prefer one way of doing things to others throughout the generations; to the mere logistics of importing resources.
Perhaps I should have said “anticipated zeal” instead “previous fervor”, when we read Shakespeare today we can never be emotionally neutral as his contemporaries would have been. Generations of men between him and us predispose us to see him as a genius and perhaps that is even more important than the objective merits of what he wrote. This is even more so with oral traditions. Homer or the Norse sagas are the result of generations telling the same stories, refining a word here, a sentence there; like drops of water carve the stone. That ongoing narrative is civilization.
Some of the logic in this article seems faulty.
Does not follow.
Nor does this:
Recognizing that the Republicans and Democrats serve the same masters does not necessarily entail inactivity. Nor does it entail embracing liberal pluralism.
Similarly, refusing to vote for the R’s or D’s isn’t the same thing as being apolitical. Someone who votes for only for a third party is not apolitical. To be truly apolitical means to refuse to vote at all (usually on the grounds that it’s ineffective, or that it amounts to supporting a hopelessly corrupt system.)
But being apolitical isn’t the same thing as being passively inactive. Voting isn’t the only way to effect social change, and someone who is apolitical might be very actively pursuing these other solutions.
Finally, even if one does resign himself to inactivity and despair, he does not thereby embrace liberal notions of equality and pluralism. Rather, he still sees his enemies quite clearly as enemies rather than equals. But although he laments the situation which sees his enemies triumphant everywhere, he sees no way to restore what has been lost. His inactivity does not mean he is indifferent to that loss. He feels it keenly.