Societies evolve, and with that evolution comes painful losses with the important gains. Every society, including ours, must learn the trick of what to hold onto and what to let go of. It's not easy. The extreme cultural right is the party of hanging on no matter what; the extreme cultural left is the party of letting go no matter what. Most people live mostly unconsciously in the conflict between the two tendencies, sometimes leaning one way, sometimes the other. Sane people in the middle have to find a way to consciously, artfully synthesize the two tendencies. That's what it means to me to be a centrist--the center is defined by this integrationist project, which is very different from just splitting the difference between the extremes. Integration in this sense is a spiritual activity, but that's a subject for another time.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Another blog for you
Jack @ After The Future:
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1 comment:
Some of the losses seem to be
relegated to a purgatory of sorts:
Not really gone, but un-revisited,
we gloss over good ideas with the bad. Sometimes, the bad are hauled
back from the precipice, while the
good are sent swirling over the edge. The notion that one extreme
or the other is an adequate substitute for common sense still
escapes me.
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