Oops, I've gotten enmeshed in a thought stream about politics. I posted to a friend's Facebook page my argument about reading original texts, specifically Speaker Pelosi's press release about transparency regarding the funding for the proposed Islamic center at Park 51 and about the funding of those who so vocally oppose its construction. In response, a friend of my friend posted, "Hey Jeff, which side are you on? I don't want a mosque at ground zero. Do you?" Now, reading this response, two things come to mind: sides and wants.
First, about the sides. Clearly the poster sees the building in question to be a dividing characteristic between two "sides," with one being in favor of the building's construction and the other being against its construction. I don't know what sides the person is talking about, but I assume the poster is referencing a classic Republican/Democrat split. But why use the word "sides"?
Ethoi create boundaries. Strong ethoi have strong boundaries. When one crosses a strong boundary of an ethos, one knows it: one's feelings get engaged, one feels strongly affirmative about the ethos' tenets, one feels a strong sense of belonging, one feels a group mind about issues. A strong boundary is necessary for a group to be cohesive and aggressive, both good qualities in groups. But ethoi are not neutral entities: there's always something at stake, something that requires a person's commitment of at least some time and, usually, money (even such a weak commitment as commenting on someone's Facebook post requires the money and time to have an internet connection and to check it regularly).
I guess the bothersome aspect is the notion of two groups faced off against each other as if the other were an enemy, when in fact, in this situation, the two sides are all citizens of this great commonwealth. And this is where our current politics have taken us: to persist, the two major parties have to draw lines in the sand and each get firm commitment from the twenty to twenty-five percent of the total voting population that will adopt their ethoi and vote accordingly (the forty-five to fifty percent of the population eligible to vote but don't show how these two ethoi certainly do not engage even the majority of us). And voting, let's be clear, involves in our capitalist society the allocation of dollars: dollars to this state's program, that special interest and, as is clear, into our congresspersons' pockets. So a great deal of power is wrapped up in the production and maintenance of these ethoi, on both sides of the aisle.
Now to the second issue: wants. I find it interesting that the poster posted, "I don't want a mosque at Ground Zero." I doubt this poster lives in New York or spends any time down around Ground Zero, but apparently we all are being asked what we want in regard to this issue. Wants are feelings: I want to smoke, for instance, is a complicated feeling that includes desire for nicotine, for orality (the doctor says I'm oral), for self-image (I'm a pipe smoker), all of which point to my persona, at least when I'm alone or with other smokers. Remember, "reading" is a matter of feelings and their interpretation. So the poster, reacting apparently without much reflection, hits the nail on the head: I don't want.
So often, our personas get engaged with ethoi - we experience feelings - without thinking about what we're feeling and where our feelings come from. Ethoi are persuasive for that very reason: they impel us to respond from our feeling selves and rarely ask us to engage our thinking selves, and this goes for both sides of the aisle. Now, I'm not trying to elevate thinking over feeling, even though our feeling selves are our less evolved selves, whereas our thinking selves, at least in terms of our species' advanced cognitive skills, are more recently evolved. We need both feeling and thinking (indeed, both come from our brains) to prosper as people and as a species. Yet politics, it seems to me, should depend more on thinking than feeling, at the very least because thinking critically helps insulate and preserve us from demagogues, charlatans and the like.
So reading, as I'm advocating for it here, entails feeling one's way through different and often conflicting ethoi, sensing where our personas become engaged or enraged. But reading also entails thinking about what we're feeling, probing the issues to make explicit the often hidden nuances of competing ethoi, thus becoming erudite about the power that pervades all ethoi. My argument about reading original texts derives from my disappointment with the current state of our various media: our media, probably for financial reasons, have become reduced to pinging on ethoi rather than delving into them deeply and critically. And, actually, this is mostly our fault: when we refuse to read, when we simply feel our responses to different ethoi and react by subscribing to them and their sponsors' products, we encourage our media to do exactly as they are doing.
Read original texts. Point out where our media are getting away with slipshod feeling-mongering. Be aware of our feelings and our thoughts. Don't let vested interests divide us and make us take sides. Feelings and wants, ultimately, form a very unsound basis for any political process. Thank you for reading.
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