{"id":708,"date":"2008-02-01T11:38:01","date_gmt":"2008-02-01T11:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=708"},"modified":"2008-02-01T11:38:01","modified_gmt":"2008-02-01T11:38:01","slug":"big-picture-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=708","title":{"rendered":"Big Picture Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

We just aren’t very good at it, are we? Humans, I mean. As Karen put it in comments to the previous post, we “like simple solutions. and simple solutions don’t exist in complex systems.”
\nStuff’s “Have your say” on John key’s boot camp proposal<\/a> is instructive. It is full of just what you’d expect, but nestled among the nonsense is this revealing comment by a “Dave Smith”: “This hippie flower-power Nanny State the Labour and Greens have produced just does not work – We have given it a try for long enough.”
\nAnd this from “Amanda”: “the next few years we will start to see the effects of the disrespectful, mouthy, selfish little savages bleating about “rights” that the Labour government has created!”
\nLabour came into (coalition) government at the end of 1999. That’s eight years of labour governance so far. Is eight years really enough for society to be changed so utterly? Especially following the neo-liberal economic changes pursued in an unbroken chain from 1984 through to the end of 1999? We are still, as a nation, discovering the effect of those changes (which are in some ways perpetuated by the current government).
\nI have a notion that politics – left and right, conservative and liberal, however you choose to frame it – are not really about different kinds of governance. I think they are about different perceptions of people, and different perceptions of how systems work.
\nMany rightish ideologies (and particularly the libertarian strain) at their core view people as fully capable of being masters of their own destinies, and somehow immune to context and systemic influence or pressure.
\nMany leftish ideologies at their core view people as structured by the systems in which they inhabit. Behaviour can be explained, and some would say excused, by systemic pressures. Also, cleverly designed systems can encourage socially beneficial behaviours.
\nSo, the kinds of political views that make sense to you emerge from your understanding of human behaviour.
\nThese are of course very rough sketches. (They’re not even necessarily contradictory views, if you’re willing to interpret them both just so.) In a sense, these are folk-politics that exist in the community in relationship with politics-as-she-is-done in the big house of government. (Lakoff enthusiasts can compare his family-metaphors to the above – I think Lakoff’s right, but I think that his level of explanation is wrong – his metaphors emerge from these ideas.)
\nHere’s the kick, though: I think they’re unequal. Rightish ideologies are just simpler at their core than leftish ones. More than that: rightish ideologies, at their core, are just wrong<\/em>. They’re wrong about us and about society and they’re wrong about themselves. They don’t understand what it is to be human.<\/em> (Libertarianism, I’m pointing at you for the most explicit incidence of this.)
\nSystems are complex. Change takes time. The picture is always bigger than you think. Leftish ideologies, for all their many flaws and weaknesses, tend to have a much better grasp on that than rightish ones; and that in itself makes them vulnerable.
\n—
\nIt is left as an exercise for the reader* how my notion above is not undermined by the fact that capitalism, a system founded on profoundly rightish notions of how humans and systems act, works so much more effectively than any form of socialism I’ve heard of.
\n* i.e. I’m not sure myself<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We just aren’t very good at it, are we? Humans, I mean. As Karen put it in comments to the previous post, we “like simple solutions. and simple solutions don’t exist in complex systems.” Stuff’s “Have your say” on John key’s boot camp proposal is instructive. It is full of just what you’d expect, but … Continue reading Big Picture Thinking<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything-political"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-bq","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}