The Invisible Hand

The Way the World Works

Inexplicably, The Guardian has included me on their list of blogs they like. It notes that The Invisible Hand sometimes deals with politics and the Middle East.

For those of you joining us from the UK let me explain that, as does The Guardian, this blog has a point of view.

Regarding the Middle East my point of view it is this: Israel not only has a right to exist but it has thus far defended that right with the sort of restraint not often found in that region of the world.

The Palestinians, regardless of their grievance, have delegitimized themselves by allowing extremists to use murder to further their political aims. Those aims are not the establishment of a sovereign state but the ethnic cleansing of the existing sovereign state of Israel.

I also reject the labels "Liberal" and “Conservative.” They no longer describe coherent political perspective . . . and in the case of the Europe and the United States, they have taken on entirely contradictory meanings.

If I were to divide the world into two opposing political perceptions I would describe one as being made up of people who see human society as governed by natural laws of human behavior. Human beings quite naturally seek advantage for themselves. This urge to improve is neither good nor bad. Like gravity, it simply is. People in this category don't try to change human nature; they act upon it. They understand that everyone else is seeking their own advantage and the resources of intelligence, creativity and skill are not evenly distributed. This makes life an exhilarating experience in which individual combinations of talent can result in infinitely varied outcomes. As people seek to fulfill their potential they unintentionally create new opportunities for others to fulfill their own entirely different promise. The people with this outlook see life's awesome opportunities and are stirred.

The other political perspective is more pessimistic. These are people who believe the world is dominated by a permanent hierarchy of “others.” These "others" are unassailably powerful. They seek only their own interests and view the strivings of common people as a threat to their advantageous position. The primary concern of the "others" is to keep everyone else out of the ruling cabal. If the "others" can ever be dislodged it would be through violence and even then there would be no guarantee of success. The people holding this outlook live in a state of permanent opposition. They believe power rests with an unelected elite and they aspire to be unelected elitists. They never need to demonstrate progress toward their goal of a more just world because . . . well, the fix is in anyway, so failure is the only realistic expectation. Building a better world is out of the question at least not until the existing one is destroyed. These people look out on the vastness of life and are shaken by its bleakness.

So here are my two political categories. Those who are stirred and those who are shaken. What is useful about these categories is that they transcend all the various iterations of liberal and conservative.

In fact, individual political movements can evolve from stirred to shaken over time.

For example, the civil rights movement in the United States began as a movement of the stirred. With racism written into the laws of the government Martin Luther King challenged the status quo eloquently and nonviolently and succeeded in changing those laws. When he was murdered, the movement changed. The goal became segregation rather than integration. Its leaders spoke of the struggle against institutionalized racism even though the fix which had truly been "in" statutorily for so long had just recently been removed.

The movements toward social justice almost always started off stirred and end up shaken. This happens not because their leaders come to believe that progress is futile, but because inertia is far less challenging than progress and a shaken movement is more accepting of inertia than is a stirred movement.

Because this is a blog I will now attempt to simplify this construct to a childishly unsophisticated level.

Stirred.................................................Shaken
John Kennedy............................................Richard Nixon
Margaret Thatcher......................................John Major
Ronald Reagan..........................................Walter Mondale
Martin Luther King.....................................Jesse Jackson
Malcolm X.................................................Louis Farrakan
Judaism....................................................Islam
Virgin Atlantic............................................Swissair
Thomas the Tank Engine............................Teletubbies
Rolling Stones...........................................Beatles
Linux........................................................Windows
Britain.......................................................Europe
The Jackson 5...........................................Michael Jackson
Lesley Gore...............................................Gore Vidal
The Blogesphere........................................The Guardian

I hope that the editors of The Guardian will understand that I make no judgement about the merits of being either shaken or stirred.

That they have chosen my blog for special mention on Guardian Unlimited demonstrates their wisdom and insight . . . but it also could mean they believe resistance is useless.

Either way, thanks for the link.