sophiaserpentia (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophiaserpentia) wrote2008-02-21 05:07 pm
sophiaserpentia) wrote2008-02-21 05:07 pm
meta-neo-inquiry, part one
The goal of meta-neo-inquiry is to answer, as well as possible, the question: "What is going on here, and what is the most just way to respond?"
Response is an indispensable element because meta-neo- ethics demands more emphasis on right action than on right words or right belief. It's not what you say or feel, it's what you do that matters. I can forgive errant words if your actions put you on the side of conscience.
A lot of the time the answer is pretty straightforward. Someone is beating up someone else; the most just way to respond is to stop the fight and find out why it started. Someone stole someone else's car; the most just way to respond is to recover the car and return it to its owner.
Sometimes though the answer is not straightforward at all, often because the truth has been occluded.
Discourse tends to be dominated by those in power; and so where conscience leads us into opposition with the power paradigm (on those fronts where the people in power are committing injustices and warping the cultural discourse to legitimize or cover it up), discourse itself becomes territory to be fought over.
Dissidents are kept off-balance by having even their very language pulled out from under them like a rug. One generation of dissidents comes up with a way to vocalize what is happening to them and what is wrong with their condition; it's an organic process which starts with art and fashion, or other kinds of consciousness raising. Political changes are demanded, and a few concessions are made. But by the time the next generation comes along, when it comes time to pass on this knowledge, all of the groovy terms and images they came up with to communicate their dissent have been misappropriated and commodified by the power paradigm. They've been rendered useless; their meaning has decayed.
It is fair to ask, of every text you encounter, what is the author's agenda? As time passes it becomes harder and harder to answer this question, because one's agenda in writing a text is a response to the culture to which she belongs. Cultures change but texts tend not to. So any text older than, say, 40 or 50 years, can easily be subverted by the power paradigm and people can be educated to read it a certain way; afterwards, one requires a specialized awareness of historical context to have any hope of recreating the original agenda of any text, especially if the text had any degree of subversiveness to it.
My contention is that this line of inquiry will demonstrate that many spontaneous movements over the centuries -- whether political, religious, philosophical, or artistic -- can be demonstrated to have their origin in subversion against the injustice of the power paradigm. The products of a "culture industry" established by the power paradigm itself tend not to endure because they carry remarkably little meaning to begin with, and most of us carry an innate recognition of that even if our consciousness has not been raised.
Response is an indispensable element because meta-neo- ethics demands more emphasis on right action than on right words or right belief. It's not what you say or feel, it's what you do that matters. I can forgive errant words if your actions put you on the side of conscience.
A lot of the time the answer is pretty straightforward. Someone is beating up someone else; the most just way to respond is to stop the fight and find out why it started. Someone stole someone else's car; the most just way to respond is to recover the car and return it to its owner.
Sometimes though the answer is not straightforward at all, often because the truth has been occluded.
Discourse tends to be dominated by those in power; and so where conscience leads us into opposition with the power paradigm (on those fronts where the people in power are committing injustices and warping the cultural discourse to legitimize or cover it up), discourse itself becomes territory to be fought over.
Dissidents are kept off-balance by having even their very language pulled out from under them like a rug. One generation of dissidents comes up with a way to vocalize what is happening to them and what is wrong with their condition; it's an organic process which starts with art and fashion, or other kinds of consciousness raising. Political changes are demanded, and a few concessions are made. But by the time the next generation comes along, when it comes time to pass on this knowledge, all of the groovy terms and images they came up with to communicate their dissent have been misappropriated and commodified by the power paradigm. They've been rendered useless; their meaning has decayed.
It is fair to ask, of every text you encounter, what is the author's agenda? As time passes it becomes harder and harder to answer this question, because one's agenda in writing a text is a response to the culture to which she belongs. Cultures change but texts tend not to. So any text older than, say, 40 or 50 years, can easily be subverted by the power paradigm and people can be educated to read it a certain way; afterwards, one requires a specialized awareness of historical context to have any hope of recreating the original agenda of any text, especially if the text had any degree of subversiveness to it.
My contention is that this line of inquiry will demonstrate that many spontaneous movements over the centuries -- whether political, religious, philosophical, or artistic -- can be demonstrated to have their origin in subversion against the injustice of the power paradigm. The products of a "culture industry" established by the power paradigm itself tend not to endure because they carry remarkably little meaning to begin with, and most of us carry an innate recognition of that even if our consciousness has not been raised.