My only political entry?

I have to admit, I got pretty burnt out on politics several years ago, but here it is.

Basically I think that an insistence on an elusively defined ideal of fairness is one of the biggest timbers in the eyes of the left when attempting to present a coherent politico economic philosophy. And then history keeps showing us that the most well intentioned master plans built around some typically liberal group’s idea of fairness always seem to end up needing a violent revolution to begin with and/or be enforced, top-down at gunpoint. Shouldn’t that be the first clue something is wrong? Anarchism, individualism, libertarianism, laissez faire … these approaches more accurately mirror the reality of life and are more in the spirit of Taoism. A forest does not need a centralized committee to redistribute resources “fairly”. Mice do not need a political correctness board to protect them from the insulting howls of wolves. Order emerges from chaos most naturally when we get out of the way and stop trying to control things. Like Campbell says, follow your bliss. If it makes you happy and your life more meaningful to lend a hand to people that need it, do it! You don’t need to read a book to prove the value of so-called altruism. Give your Mom a call or your girlfriend a massage or a man on the street ten bucks and feel into the oneness of your hearts. These things can objectively feel good. Not for everyone, but then can this be changed by force?

I imagine the 60’s and 70’s were some amazing times. But in a way I think this generation was the most selfish in recently recorded history. Think about it, three quarters of a generation of youth decided they didn’t feel like supporting their country anymore, didn’t care what their families thought, didn’t care about working to contribute to society, basically just dropped out to become active in intellectual political ideologies (some of which turned out to be essentially totalitarian), experiment with psychoactive drugs, open sexuality, new forms of music. Sure there was sacrifices but their hearts were on fire! Real sacrifice was the previous generation of men, grinding away in mind numbing jobs without any sense of entitlement to self-actualization, artistic expression or even happiness, all just to support their family and die with stomach ulcers … and the previous generation of women, who swallowed any concept of personal autonomy to wither in joyless, sexless marriages, again just to keep their families together. THAT is sacrifice. Real sacrifice is doing what you don’t want, what is not even that helpful and then having nothing to show for it, and no applause. Growing your hair out, playing the drums and holding up anti-war posters is not. Sorry. Honestly I think I would probably have been right there with the hippies. I would have done the same shit. But I think their cause went downhill when the self-righteousness came to a boil. The reality that the real paradigm shift was follow your bliss, not “we are heroes saving the rest of the corrupt selfish world” got lost and turned bitter.

Materialism, in the sense of a flatland, one-dimensional vision of reality, is at the heart of so much evil. But ironically it’s the left now that are the loudest proponents of secular materialism, insisting spiritual values are backwards, can not be taught publicly and should have nothing to do with how a country is governed. I understand why. The left is trying to respond to a fundamentalist, religious right. But the left has completely lost it’s own positive vision. It just nitpicks and deconstructs the conservative vision into an incoherent patchwork.

I won’t even get started on the right!