Tonight I wrote a song about the horrors of the Protestant work ethic, inspired in part by my last blog post. Such is my lack of faith in the value of any opinion, and my chronic inability to take anything seriously, I have given it the catchy title "Naïvely Idealistic Anarchist Polemic". It's a relatively jolly song, and will probably appear on MySpace soon enough.
In an email to a friend tonight I described myself as a model of walking cognitive dissonance. The conflicting opinions I hold, inspired by diverse fragments of learning I have collected throughout life, have started to worry me more and more. My political leanings tag on Facebook, for example, simply says "Conflicted Radio 4 Anarchist". It's rather vague and unhelpful, not that anyone but me truly cares. But unlike many I do like to assign labels to myself, to seek a little box to fit myself in. How else can I tailor my searches for inspiration and insight? Being given the label "bipolar" was probably the most liberating thing ever to have happened to me. I now know the problem, and can look for solutions, and manage the extremes of my condition. Ish.
So I am constantly worried about my inability to reconcile the conflicting views I have on life's big questions. I've made some progress of late with politics, philosophy and religion, all of which have occupied a not inconsiderable chunk of my musing time. I'm making a start on morality (some, including myself, would say this is too little too late!), and this is inevitably going to be one of the harder topics. For about three years my philosophical readings have also heavily influenced my approach to art and critiques of other humanities topics.
This may all seem like a bit of an introspective waste of time; the foolish errand of a boy with too much time on his hands, but it does have an application. If I want to be a novelist, if I ever want to say something to the world, I have to make sure it's not all totally conflicting. It has to add up. I would never be so crass as to insert plain polemic into a work of fiction, but I do feel that this sort of consistency of voice is an important part of narration. Seen in that light, it becomes less of an academic distraction, and more of a relevant honing of my skill set, or whatever ghastly human resources term the modern world demands. I also simply like the idea of actually having a point of view on a given topic, rather than a discordant mess.
I thought that I would give a brief summary of my progress so far, mainly because it helps me to see it in plain type, and partially because it'll be bound to annoy or provoke anybody silly enough to read it.
Politics
This should be the easy one, but it's actually one of the most complicated. I don't agree with or remotely like our socio-economic model. It kills. It maims. It destroys all in its path. It is based on invisible daemons. It is unjust. It's also silly to say that it's the best we've got, since we actually used to have something much gentler. The Whiggish version of history is hokum. And before anyone dangles modern medicine or communications in my direction with a smug grin, there's no possible reason for thinking that these things couldn't exist without the system we're in.
Unlike a communist, or indeed the neo-liberals who run the Western world, I'm not arrogant enough to want to impose my anarchist utopia on everyone. I think we have a relatively robust and healthy political system, with many plus points. It's not something to be discarded lightly. It just needs a little revision. What I would adore is for a Government of Britain to leave its citizens to chose how they wish to live their lives; whether it's in venture capital or permaculture. This, rather painfully, aligns me with the libertarian wing of the Tory party. It's probably even why I like Boris.
And yet, oh and yet! I believe in safety nets. I believe in equality, and fairness, and all the hollow words that ricochet through the corridors of power. Labour, it seems, doesn't actually believe in many of these things any more. The dole, as is the fashion, is a grudging gift to the unfortunate few, with its many strings and social stigmas attached. In my anarchist utopia, as in the medieval village, the fields provide ale, bread and cheese aplenty, and the community will always provide. Because that's what humans do for each-other. With statism, however, every penny of taxation spent is a sin against "hard-working families", whoever they may be.
Alas there is a vast chasm left unfilled here. Not everyone will want my utopia, but people will still need support, so while my pragmatic head yearns for light-touch Toryism at a national level that allows my local idyll to flourish undisturbed, my heart bleeds for those who would suffer the privations in the outside world. If the safety net somehow survived, and they still left my bubble alone, that would be a perfect scenario. But I know you can't have them both, and it breaks my heart.
Religion
I had my fingers burnt on this one, falling for someone who loved Jesus and wouldn't love me unless I embraced him and his message. I hear this is how these evangelists spread, like a canker. Jesus was a pretty cool dude, and I think we would've got on. But then he was Jesus, so that's essentially a tautology. Remember, he loves you, even if you don't want him to. Scary stalker Jesus.
God seems almost entirely a myth one tells to children to keep them from misbehaving. Heaven and hell are just a grand orchestrated incidence of classical conditioning (a la Pavlov's Dog). Bloody useful if you're a tribal society in an arid wasteland, but completely irrelevant in a complicated modern society. Religion has been very useful in many ways, giving us the birth of science, handy codes for treating each-other nicely, but I'm sure even the Druids were pretty useful for various things in their time. Everything passes.
As far as deities go, I simply cannot believe in an Almighty. Gods didn't exist until we came along with minds to dream them up, and in a sense science is the natural successor to theology. The human mind will always observe the world and invent hypotheses for creation and man's own place in it. As our understanding of the natural world increased, it was inevitable that we would start to question religions. It's what our minds seem particularly well-adapted to do. I don't believe that religion is necessarily a bad thing, and think people like Dawkins are as bad as any religious zealot, but such strict divides have broken my heart and those of billions of others. It is this blind, unquestioning faith in anything that is harmful.
Philosophy
Life is absurd. I think this entire "essay" rather conflicts with this simplistic tenet. If life is so very absurd, why should I worry over it so often? The answer is actually a relatively easy one: an absurd world, real of just perceived, is vexing and destructive. I'm not driven towards the depressive forces of nihilism, where perhaps I once was, but more towards Camus. The universe has no intrinsic meaning save for the meaning you imbue it with. I find this an incredibly satisfying solution to the problem of a cruel world. I have my own esoteric values and measurements of worth, and I enjoy living by them. I have things in my life which give me pleasure. This distracts me from the vulgar horrors of modern life. It's a relatively simple perspective, but one that may have kept me alive. So long as I avoid that which I can't cope with, I'm safe.
Morality
Let's just say this section is under construction. I've been pretty bad in this area, and the weight of my guilt has only just caught up with me. I've done a lot of running.
And there we go. It's a difficult process, and there's an awful lot of mind-broadening reading involved, but I find it satisfying. It is one of those little things I imbue with meaning and value.
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