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Ouija politics: Difference between revisions
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This I am making up from whole cloth: treat with due care. | This I am making up from whole cloth: treat with due care. | ||
Have you ever tried to Google and image for some sort of stock cultural artefact, and, despite refining your prompt, amongst of mounds of near misses and close matched, not found ''quite'' the image you had in mind? Nothing exactly fits your mental image? | |||
Ever thought it might be your mental image of thishomogenous archetype, and not Google’s database of images, that was wanting? | |||
Now every opinionated windbag knows the experience of trying in vain to dismantle a transparently fatuous “political” argument. | Now every opinionated windbag knows the experience of trying in vain to dismantle a transparently fatuous “political” argument. | ||
“Political” in the sense of being a generalised disposition attributable to a generalised class of people. These often ''are'' political dispositions, but need not be: “born-again Christians”, “conservatives” (with big or little “c”), socialists, [[bitcoin]] maximalists, Guardianistas, [[snowflake]]s, [[gammon]], libertarians — any kind of group to whom one might attribute a membership by reference to | “Political” in the sense of being a generalised disposition attributable to a generalised class of people. These often ''are'' political dispositions, but need not be: “born-again Christians”, “conservatives” (with big or little “c”), socialists, [[bitcoin]] maximalists, Guardianistas, [[snowflake]]s, [[gammon]], libertarians, football fans — any kind of group to whom one might attribute a membership by reference to generalised set of beliefs or values. | ||
Of course, any such group label is a [[narrative]] — a convenient shorthand for describing a general thrust without getting stuck [[in the weeds]] of peripheral. It is the impulse to say “Yeah, but ''you know what I mean''”. | |||
The same is true for the putative group’s agenda and its catalogue of values: unless someone has published manifesto, members of the group will not share identical beliefs. It may be that no single individual holds exactly the set of core beliefs you ascribed to the group. | |||
Given that most of us struggle to hold views that are internally consistent with our ''own'' values, let alone with those of other randoms in our in-group, this shouldn’t be a surprise. But it feels like a quibble: “yes, yes, I realise not all football fans are cultural Philistines, but ''you know what I mean''”. | |||
As with all narratives, we assign labels to help us filter out the [[noise]] so we can pick up a meaningful [[signal]] of germane commonality. | |||
The sixty-four thousand-dollar question: ''is one person’s signal another person’s noise?'' | |||
For the signal is often a phantom; the “average” a a spectre. A group of 1000 will necessarily have an average height, weight, hand-size, inside seam, waist ''and'' chest measurement — it is trivial to measure — but it is not necessarily try that any over will conform exactly to the average. The more dimensions you measure, the less likely that golden mean becomes.<ref>Hence [[A. P. Herbert]]’s magical essay on the [[reasonable man]] in {{casenote|Fardell|Potts}} refers.</ref> | |||
Hence your struggle to mount an intellectual assault: your argument deconstructs the general average of a group to which no single member necessarily subscribes. Worse, you will typically attribute auxiliary qualities to your received group than are actually possessed by any actual members of the group. Your intricate syllogisms resonate in the abstract; in the particular they snatch at thin air. | |||
The converse is also true. What each of us thinks of our common labels — our respective articulations of the necessary and sufficient conditions for group membership — ''differ''. We think each other know what we mean, ''but we don’t''. | |||
Hence, atheists and Christians shout themselves hoarse, rather enjoying the experience, making perfect sense to themselves and none at all to each other. | Hence, atheists and Christians shout themselves hoarse, rather enjoying the experience, making perfect sense to themselves and none at all to each other. | ||
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{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||
*[[Middle management ouija board]] | *[[Middle management ouija board]] | ||
*[[Office politics]] | |||
{{ref}} | {{ref}} | ||