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sociopolitical musings
May. 21st, 2025 11:52 amI've found myself thinking about this, off and on, over the past year or so, and today my shower thoughts put it to me this way:
The political divide of our current culture can be boiled down to two opposing beliefs:
To no one's surprise, I lean toward 1. Setting aside the fact that I find 2. morally repugnant, here's why I also find it untenable:
No one gets by on their own. No newborn human can survive without outside intervention.
To which I expect some Two-Believers to say Well Yes Of Course But®. It can be argued that there are other creatures that need to be nurtured at first, but once they are able to leave the nest, then they get by on their own. Only natural.
But humans are social creatures, which by their very nature continue to function within their society for their entire lives. And the fact that human society is so exceedingly complex compared to other creatures, seems to suggest that humans the most inherently and deeply social of all creatures on earth. We aren't really built to leave the nest. So, to argue that at some point in our lives, we are suddenly able to function completely independently... well, that strikes me as not just completely arbitrary, but also naive.
[At which point we could go on to argue about what kinds of social help, and how much, are Right® and which are Wrong®.... which is also arbitrary. And hair-splitty.]
The political divide of our current culture can be boiled down to two opposing beliefs:
- If people need help to get by, then they ought to get that help.
- If people can't get by on their own, then they don't deserve to get by, and they should fail [and possibly die].
To no one's surprise, I lean toward 1. Setting aside the fact that I find 2. morally repugnant, here's why I also find it untenable:
No one gets by on their own. No newborn human can survive without outside intervention.
To which I expect some Two-Believers to say Well Yes Of Course But®. It can be argued that there are other creatures that need to be nurtured at first, but once they are able to leave the nest, then they get by on their own. Only natural.
But humans are social creatures, which by their very nature continue to function within their society for their entire lives. And the fact that human society is so exceedingly complex compared to other creatures, seems to suggest that humans the most inherently and deeply social of all creatures on earth. We aren't really built to leave the nest. So, to argue that at some point in our lives, we are suddenly able to function completely independently... well, that strikes me as not just completely arbitrary, but also naive.
[At which point we could go on to argue about what kinds of social help, and how much, are Right® and which are Wrong®.... which is also arbitrary. And hair-splitty.]
