The world according to Ien

I have been experiencing somewhat of  a political identity crisis. 

Increasingly I find myself cheering in favour of certain thinkers who identify as conservative. I can watch Douglas Murray videos for hours. 

Yet I believe in a strong social safety net. I don’t mind paying taxes for that. 

I believe in public institutions that create as much equality of opportunity as possible. Schools, libraries, museums, parks....

There are many other differences and I cannot imagine myself ever voting  conservative. 

It turns out that I am not alone. Youtube is crawling with channels by thoughtful people who have always considered themselves leftwing BUT.

Like myself, they are fed up with the excesses of identity politics and what has become known as the cancel culture.

The so called right is cheerfully gloating over this phenomenon and who can blame them.

Well, I am tired of trying to define myself by labels, especially since terms keep shifting in meaning.

I will never agree to seeing the noble word ‘liberal’ used as a pejorative. 

As stated before, I am aware that my life has been made easier by many privileges, but I refuse to accept the expanded definition of ‘racist’ as per the gospel according to Robin DiAngelo. 

As previous blogs attest, I have been mulling over this phenomenon for some time.

A while ago I ‘came out’ on Facebook and now self identify as Independent. If that were not an oxymoron I would call myself a fundamentalist eclectic.  Like Michel de Montaigne, I shall continue to take my good where I find it without necessarily buying into the entire world view of any thinker, left or right. 

In the case of Douglas Murray for instance I feel like standing on a street corner  handing out copies of The Madness of Crowds, yet I cringe when

I hear him praise Ronald Reagan’s breaking of the Air Traffic Controllers union.

In the case of Marx, I love the criticism of unopposed capitalism and the concept  “From each according to ability, to each according to need.” However I have no more desire to live under the dictatorship of the proletariat than under any other.

So here goes, an attempt at clarifying my own philosophy and what I would like to see.

Credo, the political section, and labels be damned. 

This has to be worked out in more detail, which is of course where the devil lives. There will be other posts on individual topics , but here is the gist.

To start with, no one gets to mess up or alienate the Commons. 

Earth, Air, Water are sacred, belong to all including  our non human fellow creatures  and are not to be messed with. 

No more externalising of costs. Polluter pays, from cradle to grave of the product. Yes, consumer items will cost more. We have too much stuff anyway. 

Humanity has to figure out its limits and play within them. 

This may require cooperation on a worldwide scale. It will not be easy.

It may well be too late. Nature has Her ways of dealing with species who overgrow their habitat. They are not pretty. 

But let’s pretend that we have some time before the great cull.

Inside the human sphere we install a floor and a ceiling.

The floor: Universal Basic Income.

Doing away with all the current bureaucracies that distribute and police existing programs would alone save a ton of money. Rutger Bregman makes a great case for this in his book Utopia for Realists.

The ceiling: A maximum income.

It can be quite high, we are not aiming for enforced equality of outcome here. But at some point enough is enough. At some point money morphs into excess power over others. Let’s call the number on the ceiling Bazinga.

Once a person’s fortune reaches Bazinga, it is time for a ceremonial GiveAway. 

I had a blog brewing titled “Why we need a Potlatch economy”,  but that

is probably a no-no what with cultural appropriation. I do want to honour the 

origin of the concept.

Anyway, for those addicted to the sport of amassing wealth and power, further status can be achieved by aiming for the maximum number of GiveAways in a lifetime.

In between the floor and the ceiling: Turn It Loose, as much as possible.

There are many discussions to be had about which functions of government 

are best performed at which level. I do not believe in full on anarchism, 

but I also like to be able to build a chicken coop without having to check a bylaw. Checking with the neighbours is another matter.

Some rules, such as those concerning the wellbeing of our shared planet, require global agreements. Others, such as the style of buildings, should be left to neighborhood level. 

Allow people to make mistakes and live with the consequences. 

Sh#t will happen. Humans are a fallible and ornery bunch. The human condition allows for the pursuit of happiness only, not its attainment. 

Happiness is more likely to occur as a byproduct anyway, but that is another topic.

 

Remember that getting it 100% right is not an option. 

The wisest law will run into cases where its application causes injustice.

What we do get is the freedom to choose in which direction to make our mistakes.

I choose to make mine in the directions of compassion and freedom.