Re: Hind Swaraj

It seems as though many people have voiced criticisms of Hind Swaraj, and I'm sure there will be more to come. In many ways, Gandhi's tract makes an easy target for

dismantling. Railroads are evil, you say? It's little

wonder Gokhale laughed

the whole thing off, expecting Gandhi to change his views after seeing India.

Yet Gandhi stuck by everything he wrote, and I think for good reason. In my opinion, what he has said is correct, yet that does not mean I agree with his ultimate goal. I believe he has put forth a collection of accurate critiques of modern civilization. I think we can all agree, however, that his solution of eschewing modernity altogether is impossible, now more than ever.

I think the truths of Hind Swaraj become more apparent if you consider Gandhi critiques in a contemporary context. Looking at the main problems Gandhi outlines--lawyers, doctors, parliamentary government, and machinery--are these not all still broken systems in some way? (No disrespect intended to any doctors, lawyers, MPs, or machines present.)

The entire globe is becoming more litigious, yet the problems that plague our justice systems comprise a lengthy list.

Modern medicine is reaching more corners of the globe than ever before, yet the pharmaceutical industry has wrecked havoc on the dispensation of medicine, and even medical advice. Pills all around! And some more pills for the side-effects that those pills gave you.

Is not our own parliamentary-esque political system too often paralyzed by the same sort of bipartisan dithering and inconsistency that Gandhi identifies with British government?

And finally, for all the wonders that machines have brought, if their use is unchecked, they will certainly bring about the end of our species, most likely through the destruction of our habitat.

So was Gandhi all that wrong? I think the only area in which Hind Swaraj fails to hold water is in his solution to these problems. The sort of pre-modern Eden Gandhi may have dreamt of is not achievable, nor is it necessarily a good idea. If we disposed of all machinery now, billions would perish from starvation and disease--certainly something that would not ring true with ahimsa. My general view is that our homo-sapien brains and machines got us into this mess, so they'll have to get us out in the end. The solutions remain inchoate. The problems are very real, and have been since Mahatmas walked the earth.

Political Correctness

Thank goodness for sports. If it weren't for them, nationalism would be a much messier affair than it is these days. Have you noticed that there is not one really competent soccer team in the Middle East? Food for thought.

Anyway, I bring this up because Yahoo Sports columnist Mike Silver recently stepped into the "rename the Redskins" hornet's nest, and received the predictable backlash. I essentially agree with him, but I want to take a closer look at the oft-used pejorative "politically correct." For one thing, the history of the term is fascinating: it was mainly used as a term of self-deprecation among Leftists until the 90s, when it was seized by conservatives in order to... deprecate the Left. Charming, no?

What is accused in the label of "politically correct" is that the speaker is either too timid to risk giving offense (conversely, that someone using the term is being more forthright), or is deliberately attempting to undermine cultural (American, usually) values. The criticism directed at Silver hits both points, but since he obviously expected the topic to be controversial, the second criteria is more interesting. The problem is one of language. Among Redskins fans, the word "redskin" has quite positive connotations. They want Redskins to succeed and are proud to be associated with the word. Among Native Americans, and, frankly, most everyone else in the country, it's understood to be a racial slur directed at a historically-abused minority. Most moral failures have at their root failures of imagination. Although it must be said that what we've got here is failure to communicate.

Of course, there's a reason the name has stuck around for this long. We go to sports to sublimate our nationalism, after all. Sports and teams are deeply mythological and rely heavily on tradition, and most people are fans from a young age. Hence, the symbols involved are quite intransigent. People don't like to change what they see as their identity, no matter how outwardly nonsensical it may be. But then, why can't we all just accept that when they say "redskin," they mean something completely different? Well, we could, in theory, but the Redskins are a nationally visible team. The use of the term is not really private to Redskins fans. And all told, even the most fervent Redskin fan is probably not as culturally attached to it as Native Americans are to their ancestry.

As Americans (I presume), we basically all speak English. Or rather, the American dialect of English. Or a New York or Chicago or Tennessee dialect of English. Or New York Jewish English or New York Dominican English. And, let's face it, the finer connotations of words are going to vary from person to person. Hence, the goal of most "politically correct" language is to be publically correct -- to have a meaning which is roughly coherent across most possible listeners. There is an essential guiding principle in this case, which I recall from my college RA:

"In public, people can see and hear you."
-Jakob van Santen

Specifically, public speech is targeted to the widest possible audience, and in a culturally diverse setting there may be a very restrictive subset of the language that is useful. Language may be further constrained by the expected attitude of the listener. Laws and regulations must be worded with the utmost care, on the assumption that someone may try to distort or negate the intention of the law. And again, it must apply equally in all jurisdictions and even time periods. Laws often define their own terms for this reason. In this respect, the Bill of Rights contains our most poorly written laws. Going even further, our communication with computers, who as yet have no culture whatsoever, must ultimately be extremely precise. In the case where the listener assumes a hostile intent in every statement (for example, Slashdot commentators), constructive communication is basically impossible.

This is all well and good. The problem with "politically correct" as we know it, is when speakers try to apply this to real cultural incompatibilities -- gay marriage, let's say. When the concept itself has opposite connotations to two groups, there is no proper neutral term. Attempts to create one will dissolve into nonsense. Or I would say so, although the persistence of civil unions as the "let's do it but say we didn't" option would seem to belie this.

This is problematic, but it seems to me that certain critics aren't really against politically correct language so much as the lack of cultural unity that makes it necessary. The solution on the Right in recent decades has been an attempt to force a common culture legislatively (Paul Krugman corroborates). Of course, this actually serves only to drive the subcultures involved further apart, a destroy lines of communication. In the long term, this is poisonous to democratic governance (cf. Yugoslavia). To be fair though, this blind spot to subjectivity in language is not unknown on the Left either; it just hasn't been organized to the same extent.

Of course, my solution is that we should all think twice before assuming the worst of people. Bonkers, I know.

Authoritarian Morals

From The Concept of the Political, by Carl Schmitt, which (full disclosure) I have yet to finish:

The numerous modifications and variations of this anthropological distinction of good and evil are not reviewed here in detail. Evil may appear as corruption, weakness, cowardice, stupidity, or also as brutality, sensuality, vitality, irrationality, and so on. Goodness may appear in corresponding variations as reasonableness, perfectibility, the capacity of being manipulated, of being taught, peaceful, and so forth.

Italics mine. This quote is somewhat tangential to Schmitt's argument about "the political" as a sphere apart from morals, economics, etc., but some of these concepts seem to be under the wrong heading. Having weakness and vitality together seems fully incoherent, and perhaps Schmitt means to challenge the universality of morals. Nonetheless, given an authoritarian perspective, these make more sense; that "the capacity of being manipulated" is certainly desirable from the perspective of the powerful, and would make the existence of the unified state that Schmitt speaks of much easier.

Not surprisingly, Schmitt speaks of Nietzsche and Hobbes together as philosophers who believe men are "basically evil", despite the fact that their definitions of "good" and "evil" are not very compatible. Of course, Nietzsche speaks repeatedly of ranking and ordering and command. Having last read Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche becomes especially problematic, but The Genealogy of Morals, if I recall, provides better justification.

But while the varieties of "evil" offered are contradictory, the varieties of "good" all seem to deal with malleability or lack of power. Goodness and harmlessness are essentially the same thing, from Schmitt's perspective. I argue that this can only speak to a philosophy of living in terror of others. Essentially this is a more comprehensive way of saying that humanity is basically evil -- that anyone capable of doing harm will do so.

By my thinking, if evil exists, the good are obliged to be dangerous. Evil/selfishness/sociopathy are characteristics which intend the accumulation of power without regard for the means, and naturally must impose themselves on others through force and manipulation. Hence, the good are compelled to be capable of resistance on behalf of themselves and others. Said resistance may take organized form, depending on the nature of the threat, but to do so in a compulsory, authoritarian fashion is extremely problematic, if we take human life, freedom, and happiness as paramount. "Reasonability" here is a good because it allows for cooperation among peers and the recognition of a common threat -- rational thinking as a kind of lingua franca, not as purely self-interested "economic rationalism."