Cause

Infinite Thought adds the following to her summary of current British television programming:

It's a beautiful example of our current preoccupations: intensely sober young people willing to die for a cause; intensely drunk young people willing to die (if only of shame) to be on TV; and in the wings, comedic reminders of how we like to watch our celebrity countrymen die horribly and publicly of alcohol-related diseases, followed by a Koranic slanging match.

The Aufklärung is so an unfinished project!

Isn't it striking how difficult it is actually to manifest political conviction and resolve in the US? Academics have to qualify, recognize contingency and alternatives. Leftists have to be careful not already to have excluded someone or to be totalizing some position or speaking for someone. Nearly everything has to be said citationally, referentially. To speak without scare quotes seems the privilege of the religious right.

Why can't there be leftist fundamentalist commitment? Or what is the hesitance that makes it hard to formulate seriously? (Sometimes I wonder if it has something to do with hair--fundamentalist radicals seem to forbid folks to shave or cut their hair; hippies, ZZ-top, Taliban, have a similar hair thing going on.) In the US, causes that seem uniformally embraced are weight loss, home improvement, quality time with children, getting more exercise, insuring one's sexual vitality. Spirituality is supposed to be limited (not too much of an impact on the day job). The only commitments that seem to matter, then, are those that don't matter much beyond the immediacy of an individual's everyday orientation to world she or he accepts as is. Changing the world--that's left to the fanatics.

Comments

[Alain]

Jodi

I think you are absolutely correct that the Taliban/ZZ Top connection has been ignored for far too long!

Seriously, conviction and devotion are difficult to muster for (post)secular humanists because of a general agnosticism. One cannot be sure what is true - it is better to be skeptical than to be wrong, or appear to be naive. This is one reason why I have been recently drawn to the revolution that almost took place in May 68. Large groups of people passionately rejected everything about Bourgious society, took a stand, and said we can do better. What really interests me is why we can not do this today, why it seems rediculous to even propose dreaming of such a project.

[Jodi]

Alain, great point. I watched the movie on Mohammed Ali with Will Smith last night. What was so striking was the enormous sense of black power, of pan-Africanism and the potentially revolutionary force of black people in struggle. The US govt was scared and threated, various factions seem worried about things getting out of hand, running amok. There is just such an incredible sense of change and possibility.

This, I guess, is why they killed Martin and Malcolm.

Also, I should add the element of corruption also sucking at the revolutionary teat of power (what a horrid metaphor!)--Don king and Elijah Mohammed trying to get their share, etc.