OK

by mot-juste

Posted to Poetry and Politics on 2004-07-15 18:44:00

Parent message is 679851
>You seem to be saying that liberal viewpoints are
>necessarily academic,

No, we (tfire and me) happen to be saying the opposite: that academics tend to be liberal. This is formally different, and practically — may be different.

> If so, then what is it about the “real world” that these
>”intellectuals” are missing?
The overall complexity of it, I think. The difficulty of actully doing just about anything (things look easier in abstract.) The very taste of dealing with people, problems, etc.

>What about liberals outside of the academic environment?
>Are they also not in the “real world”? If such opposing
>perceptions exist, then what validates reality?
These are, imo, different. These have plenty of experience with reality, but no theory. They’re liberals accidentally. By themselves they don’t know who they are; they only know they’re dissatisfied. They become liberal because the intellectuals provide an articulated platform for them to grab onto. W/o the intellectuals you wouldn’t know of them; they’d be either very quiet, or engaged in some kind of disorganized hooliganism devoid of ideological pretense. They could also be fascist, nationalist, anti-UFO, whatever. Muslim. And they are! It’s not only liberals on that level. Hitler, if memory serves, used to say that communists make outstaning nazies. That’s coz the psychological basis, motivation is the same — only the articulation/interpretation changes. These communists were communists accidentally; they could then be “reshaped” as nazies.

>>Perhaps this might be illustrative: In your 7/11 scenario,
>>what specific viewpoints would you expect a person to
>>derive from these circumstances?
Well, they’ll deal with real people (with all their attendant foibles), deliveries, and so on. They’ll get a taste how complex things are in real life; their abstract theories will deflate — they’ll be humbled, that is; a sheer implausibility of a lot of stuff that may seem doable theoretically under imperfect conditions of the world where people are irrational, trucks come late, money doesn’t grow on trees, and equipment breaks down; where there’s never “no friction”, lines always have thickness, and points — volume, orientation, and size.