A Mind Is A Terrible Thing

New at Reason: To the long list of dueling personality-type categories—dog people vs. cat people, bus people vs. train, brown liquor vs. clear, Clay vs. Ruben—let me propose another: There are people who want every person, place and thing in their lives to be explicable by ideology, and people who don't. While the famously broad-minded readers of Reason would never subscribe to the former group, that school of thought is, well, healthily represented out there in the wide world. Today, Reason has two articles representing the other way of thinking. Chuck Freund surveys the way Arabic music "clips" confound or delight viewers precisely because they represent nothing more than entertainers' own styles. Michael Young speculates that the endless dispute over Salam Pax's background and identity really hinged on whether you're willing to believe there's an Iraqi who doesn't fit into any bracket we've got a word for.

Comments

[Joshua]

I completely agree. Though I think it happens far more often on the Left given their emphasis on group identity, it does tend to happen sometimes on the right as well. I think it's a natural cognitive reaction - always try to sort everything into groups, to organize it so that we can wrap our brains around it easier. Doing it for people is an extension of that. Does that make it right? Nope, but lots of things that come "naturally" to us aren't right either.

[Lonewacko]

I don't give a fsck about Salam Pax, and I've only glanced at his blog. It's not because I need to sort things into categories, it's because a) I'm skeptical of bright young things, b) I'm skeptical about his motivations, associates, etc. as I am of most other peoples', and c) I look at his supporters and what else they support (or choose to ignore). There's probably a d), and e), and an f) or two, but I don't think any of it is because I can't believe that someone like him (or his promoted persona) would exist.

[Anonymous]

i was just talking about that with someone today, instead of ideology i was thinking of "conceptuality" as a more workable replacement:

http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/05/LeftandRight.shtml
http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/10/OnLaw.shtml

---
Since the 21st Amendment was passed repealing Prohibition, you see a progressive shift in the philosophy of lawmaking in the US away from ethical interventionism, the use of law to force people to live a good life, towards what I think law should become.

Consider traffic law. The purpose of traffic law is to lay out a standard for how vehicles should drive on the road which maximizes traffic flow and reduces accidents as much as possible. There isn't any kind of morality involved in traffic law; it's entirely about trying to keep the roads safe and make traffic flow as well as possible for the collective benefit of us all. There's a lot of traffic law concerning how cars at intersections should behave, and the point of them all is to try to minimize the chance that two cars will try to drive through the intersection at the same time on intersecting (ahem) paths, leading to a collision.

In a larger sense, I think that all law should have that same kind of utilitarian goal. It's not about enforcing norms of behavior on people based on judgments of good and evil, it's simply about setting up patterns of behavior which keep us safe and free and permit us to function in our everyday lives in the fashion which permits us to exercise our liberty. In a sense, that's the basic philosophy for government laid out in the preamble to the Constitution. It is a statement of philosophy rather than an actual Constitutional mandate, but it still shows this basic idea.

[cinquo]

yeah but what's interesting about traffic law though is that it isn't really created law, it just a way of enforcing customs that evolved thousands of years. it isn't even "law" as much as it is a contract between the driver and the road authority. e.g. a common speeding ticket is not a crime, it is a citation, an infraction of a contract.

[Anonymous]

http://palaceofreason.com/Miscellany/conservative_libertarian_schism.html

[Anonymous]

http://palaceofreason.com/Miscellany/conservative_libertarian_schism.html

[Lefty]

Funny about laws. I heard about a woman arrested for breast feeding another woman's baby - who didn't find out about it til months later. I can't even remember the inane language of the law she was arrested for but somehow they made something fit.

Wet nursing has been around as long as prostitution. And just as illegal, I guess.

[Anonymous]

Calm down, Slippery, it's only words on your screen. Go have some fun this weekend.

[Jefferson]

Regarding how we should (rationally) interact with one another, anonymous at June 5, 2003 04:40 PM (five posts up, including the hiccup) articulated it very well. The post deserves at least a nom de plume, anon!

And thanks for the links to Steve DebBeste's blogs, but is no one at that site aware of THIS one? http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html

[Jefferson]

Sorry, hiccup -- I just now went to YOUR link as well, but only after congratulating "anonymous" above you.

So let me go back to your link now and continue reading. (Looks interesting.)

[Jefferson]

(30 minutes later)

OK, hiccup, I'm back.

And to take issue with the curmudgeon on your link, here are my (brief) responses:

(Please excuse the caps, but since I don?t know how to do bold or italics in H&R, I didn?t know how else to distinguish curmudgeon?s words from mine.)

HUMANS ARE NOT ATOMS. BY THEIR NATURE, INDIVIDUALS REMAIN SEPARATE, DISTINCT HUMAN ENTITIES, EVEN THOUGH SOME OF THEM WOULD WISH TO ACT IN GROUPS ("collectivities," AS HE PUT IT.)

"Where the individual is incapable, either from innate incapacity or from injury, of understanding rights and responsibilities."

THE ADVOCATES COVER THAT.

"Where rights clash in an absolute and irreconcilable way."

(DEFINE "RIGHTS") STILL, THE ADVOCATES COVER THAT AS WELL.)

BUT IT WAS ENTERTAINING. THANKS.

[Peter Hamil]

Finally! I'm no longer politically homeless. I believe I've found a good home at:

http://www.self-gov.org/

Thanks, guys!

[Slippery Pete]

Man oh man oh man oh man. Hit & Run is Ground Zero for ideological purists and zealots.

I love this place, but Tim, have you read what people write in here? All the frigging anarchists, the people who can't distinguish between George Bush and Robert Mugabe, the people who think the gravest threat to civilization and humanity is copyright law? Christ almighty.