On a weekly basis, it is my goal to create one carefully written work, of substantive length, that will tackle an issue, look at its many facets with as little prejudice as I can, and try to sythesize it in such a way that ideology will not cloud.
This will not be easy, as I am not immune to ideology. One of the reasons that I stopped writing The Notion was that ideology was taking over the writing. I was reading the same sites, making essentially the same arguments, over and over again. Doubtless this was partly due to the monomania that afflicts anyone serious about politics during a campaign season. But it also had to do with a general feeling of redundancy. Every day, I was supposed to write: what? A defense of the war? A slash against Micheal Moore? An interpretation of a story gleaned from Instapundit that varied by nothing more than connotation from Glenn Reynold's take? Who wanted to read this, other than those that knew me, or agreed with me? I saw no need for it.
So, I start fresh. And I start with something the Notion never had: a set purpose, and a set method. This last is a rhetorical device I used in my very first online column, with a website that died before I could get my work off of it (ah, the fly-by-night start-ups of the Roaring 90's...). I call it The Reality Principle, and I define this principle as follows:
1. Everything which exists, has a reason to exist. It fills a need.
2. That reason exists independently of the thing it causes to exist.
3. A thing (phenomenon) may have many reasons to exist, and usually does.
4. To address a phenomenon without addressing the reason(s) that have caused it to exist is unproductive, if not counterproductive.
5. A reason is usually far deeper than one would like to admit. Assume no evil without exhausting other possibilities, and when assuming evil, avoid snideness.
There is nothing earth-shattering in any of this. Much of it is quite ordinary, even obvious. Yet consider how little of it makes it's way into our public discourse. Consider how rarely a liberal asks whether a conservative has any reasons but perversity for believing as he does, and vice versa. Consider how often we seek for the One Reason to Rule Them All, rather than the myriad of needs a phenomenon fills.
To use an extreme example, think about rape. Without doubt, rape is a crime of violence, rooted in the need to assert power. It is also a crime of sex, committed by those who, at the moment of truth, fail to or see no reason to restrain their sex drive. Neither of these reasons excludes the other. Why therefore, do people insist on seeing, and combatting, only one?
I could chalk this up to perversity, but that would run counter to my entire point. Why do feminists insist on defining rape as a crime of violence only? Because they wish to emphasize the violence that goes with the act, to de-privatize it, to utterly deny the notion that it "goes on between a man and a woman," that it bears any but a superficial resemblance to a natural act. While I believe they overstate their case, to the point of ignoring another equally valid truth, I cannot fault this goal, nor fail to acknowledge their point.
Acknowleging the points of those with whom I do not agree is part-and-parcel of the Reality Principle. This is no mere debating trick, but the acceptance of the fact that those who argue against me are by-and-large not fools or monsters, but motivated by good goals and honest appraisals. Where I find this not to be the case, of course, I shall say so. The Reality Principle does not require me never to denounce fools and monsters, only to place such denouncing in the rank of arguments where it belongs: dead last.
By definition, this will often avoid the kind of rhetorical romanticism, the "we want the world, and we want it now" attitude that fuels much of the ideological left. But it will also avoid the unthinking labelling that so many on the right use in place of argument (I am fully aware that there is much rosie-eyed dreaming on the right, and much vicious name-calling on the left. I suspect that these two phenomena dovetail). I seek not easy answers, but broad descriptions, not false freindliness, but honesty, not enemies, but truth. At its heart, the Reality Principle is the awareness that reality is not divisible into "my" and "your," but IS reality, larger than any of us, larger than any of our wits, our dreams, or our hatreds.
I'll also be doing the occasional daily snipe, but overall this will have less emphasis, and will be in any case brief. I don't have the time for more, quite frankly, and will leave it to those that do.
Thank you, drive through...
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