And the biggest problem is when thee don't support me.INFURIATING: anti-maskers accosting kids outside their elementary school.
— John Scott-Railton (@jsrailton) April 21, 2021
Vid: @SamBraslowpic.twitter.com/YHE1RM6gUG
“We’ve redefined what it means to be conservative,” he continued ruefully. “I could go through issue by issue, and I guarantee you I’d be more conservative than you on every single one of them. But that doesn’t matter anymore, right? It’s all about being angry and obnoxious and demonstrating how loyal you are to Donald Trump.”
Definitions are all about boundaries: inside and outside. Inside is the definition: it’s the figure in the painting, distinguished from the background which doesn’t really stand behind it or apart from it (it’s all in two dimensions). It’s in the negative space of the sculpture, creating the distinction of parts. It’s what the word is, and what it isn’t; how it is used, and how it is misused, and how it isn’t used at all. Outside is as important as inside. Words are part of a vocabulary, but also a universe of meaning peculiar to the culture, the time, the place, the speakers, the hearers. Words are not absolute and timeless, they are florid and mobile. We think of identities as something Peruvian to the individual; autonomous, individuated. But we are social creatures: we are who we are among others. The worst punishment we can imagine is solitary confinement, is separation from others. In that, we think, is the loss of self, because the self cannot survive separation from others. So we understand the self is social, even as we pride ourselves on being wholly contained, a monad. But we are who we are because of those who are around us.
What does it mean to be a “conservative”? In part, we need the definition: how else can we apply the label? ‘But it’s also about who is allowed “in,” and who must be kept “out.” And kept out is sometimes the most important part of definition, which is how it becomes the important part of identity. If my identity depends on who you are, then my monadic existence depends on you not challenging my boundaries. “No man is an island, separate unto himself;” aye, there’s the rub. If we are an island, then who is the sea? The sea defines the island, and the sea washes at the island, and as the sea changes the island, is the island still the same?
No, I don't mean the paradox of the ship of Theseus, but that's not inappropriate here, because that's how identity is seen. If I change, can I remain the same? And if the sea around me, i.e., society, changes, then who am I? And if society is expressed as what is normative, where is that normative value taught but in school, and to whom but school children? So I must be sure they agree with me, otherwise society is washing away at my boundaries, my shoreline, that point where land and sea are a realm that isn't wholly land or sea, where I am not wholly me or thee, and I am diminished.
And I can't stand that.
So people shout on cable TeeVee; or insist on their position on Twitter (once it was in comments on Blogger; before that, on comments on websites. Before that, in letters to the editor or to friends and family.). Or at children as they leave school, because identity must be defended against all comers and as a last resort you try to reach the chilren.
Which isn't evil; but it's really fucked up. And the opposite end of it is the French expression of admiration for someone "comfortable in his own skin." Which is the question of boundaries, and where you recognize them.
I like the analogy of the sea and the land, and if you will indulge me I will run with it for a moment. There was a wonderful book published decades ago called Alongshore by John Stilgoe. It's about this boundary between the sea and the land, and how it's much less defined and porous than we think. (What makes the book so interesting is he applies this metaphor to our understanding of the world) The book is packed away for the move (and also several states away from where I write), but if my imperfect memory serves, he called it the gloaming, this inbetween place. The shore is ill defined, changing shape as the tide moves in and out, and over time as tides, wind, and storms can radically change the shape. Our efforts to fight these changes are often fruitless against the power and persistence of wind and water, and sometimes even make it worse by accelerating the changes. Under the right conditions, such as a hurricane, what has always seemed solid land becomes the sea. Areas far from the shore are flood plains when the storm tide rises. In the 1938 hurricane that hit New England, farm houses in Vermont were rimed with salt. The gloaming is also a dangerous place, there is a reason mariners prefer to be out to sea, ships are more likely to founder on rocks and sandbars ashore. Even for the small boaters and swimmers, the tides and currents can be hidden but deadly.
ReplyDeleteThe analogy that comes to mind is the conservative that wants to draw the line with heterosexuals on their side, and the LGBTQ+ community on the other. Then comes the day that the coworker of 10 years on which they have depended and like, lets them know they are gay. Or even closer to home, the child they love admits to feeling they are not the gender they were raised as, or they are attracted to someone other than the opposite gender. That is the moment where the carefully drawn line is suddenly much less defined. The storm has driven the tide far inland, flooding the creeks and rivers, making what seemed so certain to be only the undefined gloaming. This is a good reminder for me of the risk of drawing lines, and that the line is often much fuzzier and uncertain than I think.
It's that "fuzziness" that upsets some and liberates others.
DeleteI was thinking of Donne's analogy to the island when I wrote that. "Identity" is not as personal as we like to think it is. It is a social construct, which is why it breaks down (or our literature says it does; I'm not a psychologist and have no experience with prisoners kept in solitary confinement) when we are alone too long. But the danger is that boundary is not rigid, and sometimes we want it to be.
This is not the fluidity of gender constructs (not to challenge your argument, just to distinguish what I'm saying from questions of gender identity or sexual preference), but the story of houses in Vermont salted by a hurricane is a good metaphor here. In the Gulf we are (finally!) learning that swamp and indeterminate spaces (even less land or water than shorelines) are valuable, especially when hurricanes come ashore. Swamps and bayous take the storm and starve it so it is less damaging ashore. But we've destroyed those areas in the name of "progress" and because swamps are "useless" or worse, and now we pay the price for our foolishness. Storms that once did little damage ashore now walk onto land with impunity.
In that case we identified our need with what nature had worked out, and decided nature had messed up (who wants swampland?). We hurt ourselves by thinking our identity is the only one, or the most important one. When I understand that my identity is in you, but not of you, perhaps I can start to understand you as "other," and not just an extension of me. (As I trim my toenails or cut my hair, or drop a bad habit, I can eliminate a swamp, too; right?) And then perhaps I can learn to let you be you, and to let me be me. Which, oddly enough, is the more important lesson. If I can let me be me without being upset that you are you, we can probably find more common than uncommon ground, between us.
It's a start.