“And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, or the matter, forme, and power of a commonwealth, ecclesiasticall and civill, 1651.
We’re all a collection of experiences over a time line and while the individual micro-experiences are probably rarely unique, their arrangement over a length of time IS probably unique.
None of us are one dimensional.
None of our problems, collective or individual, are one dimensional.
But we want to simplify for the sake of our instant gratification: we like icons such as Important People, Important Dates, and the like to the point that we all seem to think a President is leading a country, ignoring the fact that a President is a figurehead of a vast organization. We pay lip service to the notion that the vast organization represents “everybody” in a larger sense.
Nothing is just “conservative” or “liberal” (and I would like to add “radical”). Those labels are created for the purpose of simplifying because we need to instantly understand, make a decision, and get on with our next problem.
Nothing is decided by one guy, not even things you decide about yourself. We don’t know anything when we get here and much of what we learn is what other people tell us.
How do we know what to believe once we discover that not everything we’ve been told is true, and worse, MUCH of what we’ve been told is not true? That answer lies somewhere among those micro-experiences along that time line. If people can’t or don’t share experience they become those blind men examining an elephant. Yes, we’re all unique (and not one dimensional) because those dots are arranged differently along lines which vary in length, but we have dozens of matching dots with even strangers we’ve just met and many more with people we actually know.
If we are so busy labeling each other so that we can go onto our next instant gratification, we can’t define our mutual problems, much less begin to solve them.
IF we are inclined to solve them. The guy who tosses out the names and negative personal stuff doesn’t want to solve anything. He is telling you that he doesn’t even know how to communicate.
And life becomes nasty, brutish, and short.
