Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; ― Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
I am a seeker of a better world. My vision of a better world I can summarize:
- Do no harm
- Provide help for pain
I am left-wing because I believe the world will only change when common people work together for the common good. I call myself a progressive, rather than a revolutionary, because I still hope this better world can develop gradually, in stages, step by step, through trial and error and without the violence, destruction and uncertain outcome of revolution.
Today I find myself in strong disagreement with the majority of those who call themselves progressive. This was my jumping off point: Progressives have not created any significant progress for 50 years, but seem never to wonder, “What are we doing wrong?” How is it that, for 50 years the only form of progressive action has been the public demonstration: marching, demanding something, and demanding it now? Their protests are like an angry letter to Santa Claus, demanding a pony. This action creates no change. The protestors know this, have no expectation that it ever will create change, yet they continue demanding things now, and doing little else. How is it, that people so insistent on change, cannot change themselves? I no longer have a sensible way of talking with these progressives. Once I breach the defenses of their ineffective action and their single-factor, moralistic approach, they stop hearing me, and throw at me an incoherent stream of angry offensiveness.
With this lack of self-examination and unconcern for progress, problems go on for generations without change, sometimes creating the sort of violence recently dished out on my neighborhood of South Minneapolis. In one night, in a riot of toxic virtue, I lost my bank, my post office, my gas station, my drug store, my grocery store, and my department store, and my auto parts store. There are piles of rubble everywhere. I discover a new one every day. I have no idea of once what stood on these sad piles of rubble.
People came from everywhere to burn down my city. They left, fully intact. They gave up nothing, helped no one. Amid the rubble, those that survived put up displays praising those who burned them down. They put up signs pleading for mercy. We are Black. We are women. We are immigrants. We live here. Don’t kill us.
I have decided to drop this discussion from the short-form social media platforms and move it to here in long-form. My writing here is based on notes I have kept for many years. I have decided that the place to start this is not with a presentation of each of my opinions. I will begin with a description of who I am and what in my life has made me this way; what in has changed me and created my sense of how I think life works? Although my sense-of-life has developed throughout my whole life, each aspect also seems to be rooted in a specific time or event. I have tentatively broken them down into this sequence:
- Death – 1954
- The God Monster – 1957
- War and Patriotism – 1959
- Wir haben spaß in der schule! – 1961
- Sputnik and anti-communism – 1963
- Vietnam and the Bomb- 1968
- Systems and Complexity – 1978
- Marx and Mao – 1979
- The Philosophies of India – 1989
- The Films of Michael Haneke – 2002
- China – 2009
- Facts and Truth – 2019
After that I will go forward with my views of current things, always relating them back to these life lessons.
So, why do I do this? For one, I am 66 years old, a perfectly legitimate memoir age. But, more than that, I want to point to a different path for collective progress. Left-wing moralism has failed. It is reactive, atomized, ineffective, ignorant, ahistorical, unorganized, dogmatic, judgmental and without community connections. It plans nothing. It learns nothing from experience. It routinely makes enemies out of friends, casting its greatest scorn on its closest potential allies. It changes nothing. It is time for pragmatic progressivism.
Pragmatic progressivism seeks truth from facts and data rather than social relationships. It is morally humble, practices simple human-heartedness, and forgiveness. It seeks common ground. It rejects moral judgement. Its actions include organizational development, experimentation with methods, making long term plans, measuring progress, and revising methods based on organizational experience. It builds extensive connections with all potential allies.
A better world is in birth, so the song goes, but it cannot be picked, ready-to-wear, off the shelf in an election. We cannot demand a better world from Power, nor can we bully it into being chanting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” We must create it ourselves, working with many others, gradually, in stages, step by step, through trial and error, over a long, long time.