Philosopher Richard Rorty believes that there is hope for America, but that today’s Left is not meeting the challenge. He contrasts the cultural, academic Left’s focus on our heritage of shame (which, he admits, has to the extent that it makes hatred intolerable had the positive effect of making America a more civil society) with the politically engaged reformist Left of the early part of this century. “The distinction between the old strategy and the new is important,” he writes. “The choice between them makes the difference between what Todd Gitlin calls common dreams and what Arthur Schlesinger calls disuniting Americans. To take pride in being black or gay is an entirely reasonable response to the sadistic humiliation to which one has been subjected. But insofar as this pride prevents someone from also taking pride in being an American citizen, from thinking of his or her country as capable of reform, or from being able to join with straights or whites in reformist initiatives, it is a political disaster.”

…Rorty claims that the Old Left was stubbornly reformist, whereas the New Left collaborates with and thereby empowers the Right by supplanting real politics with cultural issues. He urges the New Left to understand that our national character has not been settled but is still being formed.

History is not over. (Yea, I know, “duh.”)

This jives a little with something else I’ve been thinking about lately. Part of it has to do with feeling tired of activism and issues and movements. Part of it has to do with the tribalism of every day life (sci-fi geeks, music geeks, food geeks, business geeks) and how I have always felt tribeless, detached from the general culture fray and all its little cultural pockets. (Perhaps why Data was always my favorite Star Trek character and Anthropology was, in the end, truly the best major for me).

I’m tired of it all and starting to feel the best thing for me to do is to embrace my tribelessness and just live my little thread of life. To meet and interact with other people on equal, human terms. To always work to be aware of and whittle away at untempered consumerism, kyriarchy, rape culture, sexism, racism, etc. In my daily life.

I’m tired of ambition and politics and issues. I want to just live, be human, and treat others well. To absorb and share knowledge. Doesn’t anyone else want to do that anymore?

I want to escape culture and start from scratch. Oh well.