IP: We need the courage to look beyond abstractions

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 16:57:31 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Andy Oram <andyo () oreilly com>
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: We need the courage to look beyond abstractions
>
>                                         13 September 2001
>
> The horror that began September 11 called upon each
> individual to make a statement. We all had to speak to
> ourselves, to our family members, or to anyone who would
> listen. I myself had to discuss with my children why my aunt
> by marriage died in a plane hitting the World Trade Center
> (answer: I don't know why). I have read many other excellent
> statements on politics and society before writing my own.
>
> We don't know the psychology of the people who destroyed the
> World Trade Center, but we know that they forged their plan
> around an abstraction. Whatever world view they possessed,
> the World Trade Center was just a symbol within it, and the
> presence of 50,000 people in that building was just a factor
> in its symbolic value. And we know this kind of sickness is
> nothing new; it has been criticized by thousands of authors
> before. The Jews were an abstraction in Hitler's plan,
> millions died in the Soviet Union to serve an abstract goal,
> and the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki became reduced
> to an abstraction during American calculations to end World
> War II.
>
> So I cannot sit here and write a grand sociological
> treatise; I will not paint abstractions of the world's
> political landscape. I hereby pledge to bring reality into
> every discussion in which I participate. So it is time for
> the U.S. to relinquish some destructive abstractions of its
> own.
>
> Our dominant abstraction is the rosy spectacles of
> neoliberal capitalism. In this view, international capital
> flows to countries that most closely follow the virtues laid
> out in glossy journals. The brilliant entrepreneur is
> rewarded in the mechanical turnings of a well-tuned market,
> while governments discreetly get out of the way. Although
> this entrepreneur is usually light-skinned, diversity
> thrives within institutions because an enlightened
> management recognizes the need for a global reach. Science
> ensures a plentiful supply of energy and food.
>
> What will happen if we all pledge to view reality instead of
> our pleasing abstraction?
>
> * When reformers reveal the cronyism and corruption that lie
>   behind major business deals, we will organize them into a
>   fighting force instead of talking up the healing power of
>   international financial flows (and refusing to say whom
>   Vice President Cheney met with the previous month).
>
> * When laborers complain that they need two or three jobs to
>   pay the rent, and millions cry out that they have to
>   struggle to get each meal, we will demand higher wages
>   instead of telling them to wait for a restructuring of the
>   regional economy.
>
> * We will no longer ignore the terror of disease that stalks
>   entire subcontinents, or the devastation of earth and
>   water, or the plight of those living by rising seas, and
>   we will provide some response besides, "Don't put barriers
>   in front of commercial development."
>
> I need say no more; the rest can be found in position papers
> in every language. What blinds us from action is the triumph
> of our abstraction. It has already claimed its share of
> victims. During the Cold War it left a trail of bodies from
> Guatemala to East Timor. Ironically, our government thought
> it would just be unbelievably clever to land a blow against
> the Soviet Union by supporting the Taliban and Osama bin
> Laden in Afghanistan. Thus, our government's last battle
> against the distorted remnants of the liberatory impulse
> behind the 1917 revolution led to grotesque casualties here
> at home.
>
> Perhaps the recognition of how firmly we have lived in the
> grip of this abstraction will help us to understand how
> other people could fall murderously under the sway of a
> different one.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Oram  O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.        email: andyo () oreilly com
> Editor     90 Sherman Street                     voice: (617) 499-7479
>            Cambridge, MA 02140-3233                fax: (617) 661-1116
>            USA                          http://www.oreilly.com/~andyo/
> Stories at Web site:
> The Bug in the Seven Modules     Code the Obscure     The Disconnected
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------



For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/