A Diatribe, Some Lost Thoughts, Etc.
Well, this was going to turn into some ingenious post, cannibalizing my own pursuit of life and everyone else around me. But the slightly intoxicated diatribe turned into a slightly uninspired loss for words. So I’ll save you from my inability to reestablish my point of view with a little prose:
I was once you, I am you, I will be you: I regret every moment and I despise every second. I was the idealist youth, I am now the young, I will soon lose the ability to distinguish fact from fiction, and I will consequently act on my flawed logic for the rest of my existence. Welcome to your homogenized, desparate American life. You have as much to look forward to as I do.
Moving on, I never wrapped up some thoughts on a noteworthy event. Some lost thoughts by Jeffrey Stottlemyer about a Levy/Kristol/Fukuyama event:
This evening I attended an event at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Service, downtown, a dialogue between Henri-Bernard Levy and William Kristol, with Francis Fukuyama moderating. Three influential thinkers, for sure. Warned even by my father of Kristol’s extremism, he came off intelligent and, indeed, eloquent (though squarely in the conservative camp). It was refreshing to listen to a rational, informed commentary on conservatism, even if I strongly disagreed. Be made some admittedly astute comments. At one point, he stated that Lenin was analytically superior to Marx, as he, correctly, believed proletarian revolution would occur wherever there was sufficient political will. The culmination of capitalistic society, seen at the turn of the century in the fully industrialized nations of Western Europe, was not the breeding ground Marx believed it would be. Rather, the agrarian backwater of Russia proved the catalyst. A debatable statement (the bit about analytical superiority), but one I am inclined to agree with.
However, admitting Kristol’s eloquence and coherence, I came away in Levy’s camp. Though Levy was sometimes hard to follow, his discussion of the role and duty of an intellectual seemed particularly insightful. He stated that an intellectual’s role is to submit unceasing critique, the classical gadfly. At first Levy left his statement in very general terms. He was helped, however, by Kristol’s rebuttal, after which Levy expounded on his original statement with greater lucidity. Kristol said “intellectuals” (in quotes even in his talk, a symptom of typical conservative distrust of the label…a distrust at times well founded, but abused by most current proponents), and the habits of objective criticism and prophecy, are at times (grudgingly) necessary, but that when it comes to policy making, one must take ones head from the clouds and make some real life decisions.
This argument plays well with a large demographic, but I believe, and Levy said something similar, that the two functions (hypothetic pondering and objective criticism versus decision making, policy creation) should not, indeed cannot, be separated. To claim that there is a demarcation between reality and philosophy, to me, is dangerous business. Concepts like collateral damage and real politick infused definitions of national interest (see: Reagan’s Latin American freedom fighters) are close behind such a realist assertion. The results are philosophically unacceptable, and thus, in my opinion (and Levy’s), cannot be viable.
In short, Kristol eloquently defended falsely utilitarian policies that beget disenfranchisement for those on the bottom, self-aggrandizement by those in control, and an avoidance of any policy implications, often intangible and far away (physical or socioeconomic) and thus easily ignored. Levy spoke on behalf of rational liberalism, humane and humanitarian. He spoke of the true duties of a state, as opposed to the false precept of government on as local a level as possible and with little interference by meddling national or international behemoths. Such a precept is no longer tenable, and though Kristol, I feel, truly believed in what he said, he is wrong.
Levy’ discussion of poverty summed up the difficulties of his worldview, but reinforced its necessity. Asked if poverty was the new irreconcilable force in international politics, taking the place of the Cold War’s ideological divide, he answered a qualified yes and no. Acknowledging the fact that poverty had always existed, and that man will likely, almost certainly, never eradicate it, he emphasized the necessity of fighting it, of trying. This is the catch. There are no certainties, other than, perhaps, failure. There are no defined endings. However, we must try; we must fight for what we know is good in the midst of the absurd. That is the duty of the intellectual, and it is our collective duty as well. It is the only tenable path.
