The common cry of "let's meet in the middle" has left muddled thinking, a lack of responsibility and a dearth of answers. The left, right and centre are all out of answers.
The centre cannot hold. Ever since time culture war of tje late 60s, Western politics invariably followed the same unimaginative and ineffective formula of meeting between the opinion of left-wing TV producers and slightly less left wing newspaper editors. And it has been an utter disaster.
We have lost grounding, resilience and a sense of belonging.
Those same TV producers and newspaper editors very quickly buddy up with the super rich producing the modern kind of BBC news mentality where soulless profiteering and current year progressivism are the only two approaches to anything.
The issue with a sense of belonging is it's hard to re-model and market; lots of modern social phenomena can be seen as a way of creating various identities as something you can purchase or literally subscribe to. Another unholy combination of identity politics and shareholder capitalism.
Yes, living in a village where most people know you and your family is hard for anyone to sell to you as a product. So is not having to negotiate the rules of coexistence anew every day.
That is exactly the reason why a change of course is necessary. The centre sucks.
The "centre" means the consensus of the spectrum of "respectable" opinion in a liberal democratic society. Whatever the mainstream right and the mainstream left agree upon is undoubtedly bad.
You say "Fundamentally though, the popular sense of right and left both come down to materialist world views."
I think there's a bit more to it than that. I've argued for years that there's a fundamental polarity in the functions of government, and it's the winner-takes-all nature of politics that causes the problems. Ideally, to my mind, we'd be able to elect one set of representatives to oversee the conservative functions of government, and a different set to oversee the progressive functions. As you say, "A better blend; say the right's defence of personal liberty and the small state with the left's focus on improving living conditions for ordinary people, would make more sense".
Maybe so, but that seems to be electoral politics and modern economics all over. What's the saying? Robbing Peter to pay Paul is always pretty popular with Paul.
One would hope that centrist needn't mean milquetoast, but a dynamic flux between the best ideas and thinkers of different persuasions. I was a policy major in college, for instance, and people who believe in expansive redistributive government might be able to build much more effective policies if they listened to what more cynical skeptics have to say about regulatory capture and so forth. Given the polarization and mutual hatred of the people actually paying attention, though, and the distraction and/or despair of everyone else, it's hard to be hugely optimistic.
Your next step is living on a permaculture commune. And opting out of the whole thing.
I was just at one where they have a whole room of clothes and you just go and wear what you want each day and put it back. Instead of owning and having, people do things and communicate. I like your non materialistic ideas!
Permaculture has a lot going for it, but communes and the end of ownership aren't really my thing. I think ownership and hierarchies are pretty natural ideas. Hierarchies still need to be made beneficial and small or local in scale, and with people whose status is totally tied to the locality they're in. Abolishing ownership, or communal ownership, has resulted in everybody's problem becoming nobody's responsibility in every case I've ever personally seen.
I doubt opting out will be allowed in any great numbers, it's one of the issues I have with the Benedict Option. Relying on the tolerance of the mainstream world always seems a little optimistic - history is littered with the ashes of places where people who just wanted to be left alone to do their own thing were not allowed to.
The centre cannot hold. Ever since time culture war of tje late 60s, Western politics invariably followed the same unimaginative and ineffective formula of meeting between the opinion of left-wing TV producers and slightly less left wing newspaper editors. And it has been an utter disaster.
We have lost grounding, resilience and a sense of belonging.
Let's not meet in the middle anymore.
Those same TV producers and newspaper editors very quickly buddy up with the super rich producing the modern kind of BBC news mentality where soulless profiteering and current year progressivism are the only two approaches to anything.
The issue with a sense of belonging is it's hard to re-model and market; lots of modern social phenomena can be seen as a way of creating various identities as something you can purchase or literally subscribe to. Another unholy combination of identity politics and shareholder capitalism.
Yes, living in a village where most people know you and your family is hard for anyone to sell to you as a product. So is not having to negotiate the rules of coexistence anew every day.
That is exactly the reason why a change of course is necessary. The centre sucks.
The "centre" means the consensus of the spectrum of "respectable" opinion in a liberal democratic society. Whatever the mainstream right and the mainstream left agree upon is undoubtedly bad.
That's an interesting way of looking at it, and probably very true.
You say "Fundamentally though, the popular sense of right and left both come down to materialist world views."
I think there's a bit more to it than that. I've argued for years that there's a fundamental polarity in the functions of government, and it's the winner-takes-all nature of politics that causes the problems. Ideally, to my mind, we'd be able to elect one set of representatives to oversee the conservative functions of government, and a different set to oversee the progressive functions. As you say, "A better blend; say the right's defence of personal liberty and the small state with the left's focus on improving living conditions for ordinary people, would make more sense".
The devil is in the detail of course but, if you're interested in how that might be achieved, I've written about it here: https://malcolmr.substack.com/p/hemispheres-of-governance
Also, I observed that many centrist positions boil down to wanting the have the cake without paying for it.
Maybe so, but that seems to be electoral politics and modern economics all over. What's the saying? Robbing Peter to pay Paul is always pretty popular with Paul.
At least the extremists are willing to admit they're robbing Peter, generally followed by a long rant about why Peter had it coming.
One would hope that centrist needn't mean milquetoast, but a dynamic flux between the best ideas and thinkers of different persuasions. I was a policy major in college, for instance, and people who believe in expansive redistributive government might be able to build much more effective policies if they listened to what more cynical skeptics have to say about regulatory capture and so forth. Given the polarization and mutual hatred of the people actually paying attention, though, and the distraction and/or despair of everyone else, it's hard to be hugely optimistic.
Your next step is living on a permaculture commune. And opting out of the whole thing.
I was just at one where they have a whole room of clothes and you just go and wear what you want each day and put it back. Instead of owning and having, people do things and communicate. I like your non materialistic ideas!
Permaculture has a lot going for it, but communes and the end of ownership aren't really my thing. I think ownership and hierarchies are pretty natural ideas. Hierarchies still need to be made beneficial and small or local in scale, and with people whose status is totally tied to the locality they're in. Abolishing ownership, or communal ownership, has resulted in everybody's problem becoming nobody's responsibility in every case I've ever personally seen.
I doubt opting out will be allowed in any great numbers, it's one of the issues I have with the Benedict Option. Relying on the tolerance of the mainstream world always seems a little optimistic - history is littered with the ashes of places where people who just wanted to be left alone to do their own thing were not allowed to.
There's truth in that.