This is very good, and very adult, in that it is a piece about trying to abide in paradox/contradiction that also acknowledges the paradoxes and contradictions in trying to do that.
If you will forgive the intrusion of an old, Australian, tory lawyer ...
A thought provoking article indeed, and very well written. You are absolutely correct that the price that many people on the left pay for being totally immersed in politics is the loss of cultural understanding and the stunting of intellectual curioisty. Great stuff.
But then you say this:
"The left, at least such as it once existed in the United States of America, retains commitments to enlarging the space of freedom or providing for the greatest liberty of the greatest number, whereas the right narrows the liberty of others to protect the freedoms of the few."
Why would the left only want the greatest liberty for the greatest number of people? We on the right want greatest liberty for everyone.
Maybe it is better to say that the left is committed to providing freedom whilst the right is committed to allowing freedom, and freedom has a different meaning for both.
The right and left would agree that an individual should have the freedom to dress up as the opposite sex and claim to be trans. The left would go further and suggest that the trans person isn't free unless everyone in society is compelled to pretend that the trans person is the gender he or she wants to be. Hence, the left wants to provide freedom to the trans person never to face the idea that it isn't possible to change sex. To the right that isn't freedom, but a privilege.
I just stumbled upon this essay, which I find both amusing and confusing. N+1 was "saying the unsayable"? That's not how I remember it. You never criticized the literary-publishing system itself, for example, which was geared toward the upper classes of this society. As what remains of it still is. From my perspective, and the perspective of colleagues of mine in the Underground Literary Alliance (fairly prominent when n+1 started), your outfit struck us as very much OF the status quo. We never took the posturing seriously for half-a-minute, and events quickly proved our assessment correct, as a few of your founders scrambled to sign some hefty contracts with the Big 5 publishing conglomerates.
WHO represented any kind of societal Id? Certainly wasn't your bunch. More likely it was writers belched out from the industrial wreckage of this mad society, from destroyed-or-beaten-down places like Detroit, or Buffalo, or the coal country of Western Pennsylvania, and other such places from which our members sprung.
"Intellectual freedom"? Has that ever been extended to America's lower classes, at least since the era of the 1930's and 40's?
I take it that part of your take in this article is that n+1 somehow became too political, and halted that intellectual freedom that it wasn't really engaging in anyway. Or, engaging in it within a clubby sliver of American society, as still happens today. Intramural debates between the Ivy grads at Current Affairs and the Ivy grads at Compact Mag and Unherd, "left" and "right," all supported by billionaires, and maybe by the same billionaires, like a Punch and Judy Show where the puppets club each other but are controlled by the same puppetmaster, for entertainment purposes only.
Re Occupy: I can speak only about the Philly encampment-- never made it up to the NYC one. At the one I witnessed, there were two groups (not including a handful of libertarians): Anarchists, many of whom were homeless; Intellectual Leftists, who seemed to be on the make. In 2012 I wrote about what I saw, much fictionalized, in a little-read ebook novel called The Tower.
I hope my comment here doesn't come across as cynical. My actual reaction is, as I said, amusement. Have a great day.
This is very good, and very adult, in that it is a piece about trying to abide in paradox/contradiction that also acknowledges the paradoxes and contradictions in trying to do that.
If you will forgive the intrusion of an old, Australian, tory lawyer ...
A thought provoking article indeed, and very well written. You are absolutely correct that the price that many people on the left pay for being totally immersed in politics is the loss of cultural understanding and the stunting of intellectual curioisty. Great stuff.
But then you say this:
"The left, at least such as it once existed in the United States of America, retains commitments to enlarging the space of freedom or providing for the greatest liberty of the greatest number, whereas the right narrows the liberty of others to protect the freedoms of the few."
Why would the left only want the greatest liberty for the greatest number of people? We on the right want greatest liberty for everyone.
Maybe it is better to say that the left is committed to providing freedom whilst the right is committed to allowing freedom, and freedom has a different meaning for both.
The right and left would agree that an individual should have the freedom to dress up as the opposite sex and claim to be trans. The left would go further and suggest that the trans person isn't free unless everyone in society is compelled to pretend that the trans person is the gender he or she wants to be. Hence, the left wants to provide freedom to the trans person never to face the idea that it isn't possible to change sex. To the right that isn't freedom, but a privilege.
Good comment. I was also taken aback by the author's anachronism concerning the respective desires of the Left and Right for liberty.
I just stumbled upon this essay, which I find both amusing and confusing. N+1 was "saying the unsayable"? That's not how I remember it. You never criticized the literary-publishing system itself, for example, which was geared toward the upper classes of this society. As what remains of it still is. From my perspective, and the perspective of colleagues of mine in the Underground Literary Alliance (fairly prominent when n+1 started), your outfit struck us as very much OF the status quo. We never took the posturing seriously for half-a-minute, and events quickly proved our assessment correct, as a few of your founders scrambled to sign some hefty contracts with the Big 5 publishing conglomerates.
WHO represented any kind of societal Id? Certainly wasn't your bunch. More likely it was writers belched out from the industrial wreckage of this mad society, from destroyed-or-beaten-down places like Detroit, or Buffalo, or the coal country of Western Pennsylvania, and other such places from which our members sprung.
"Intellectual freedom"? Has that ever been extended to America's lower classes, at least since the era of the 1930's and 40's?
I take it that part of your take in this article is that n+1 somehow became too political, and halted that intellectual freedom that it wasn't really engaging in anyway. Or, engaging in it within a clubby sliver of American society, as still happens today. Intramural debates between the Ivy grads at Current Affairs and the Ivy grads at Compact Mag and Unherd, "left" and "right," all supported by billionaires, and maybe by the same billionaires, like a Punch and Judy Show where the puppets club each other but are controlled by the same puppetmaster, for entertainment purposes only.
Re Occupy: I can speak only about the Philly encampment-- never made it up to the NYC one. At the one I witnessed, there were two groups (not including a handful of libertarians): Anarchists, many of whom were homeless; Intellectual Leftists, who seemed to be on the make. In 2012 I wrote about what I saw, much fictionalized, in a little-read ebook novel called The Tower.
I hope my comment here doesn't come across as cynical. My actual reaction is, as I said, amusement. Have a great day.