Heidegger

In a message dated 7/28/2007 9:43:36 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
tgeorgescu at home.nl writes:

> Tudor;
> Your statement makes you very much a part of politics.
> Sincerely,
> Bernard

It took me some time to find the answer to this objection.

Naisbitt (in Megatrends or Megatrends 2000) said that “we have leadership,
but there is no followership”. I have to say that in the Western world there
is an inflation of leadership. Too much activism. Too many grassroots
movements which try to change the world for the better. Too many conflicting
and confusing issues.
Bernard:We cannot axiomatically equate activism with leadership Running wild
in the streets is the antithesis to leadership..

So, my answer would be a refusal to engage in political activism. Someone
who does not believe that his/her political issue is (eventually) worth the
death of a million persons, he/she is not fit to be a politician. So, the
people who don’t want blood on their hands, they should abstain from
politics.
Bernard: You may just as well have blood on your hands as the leaderless mob.
Million were killed in India when the British withdrew in the conflict
between Hindues and Muslims.

But, is this a complete rejection of political thinking? Do I posit the end
of polis? No, I simply say that one has (in liberal democracies) the right
to engage in political reflection and commentary, but if he/she values human
life as an end in itself, then he/she should take no part in active
politics. Because that, sooner or later, would mean that at least some lives
have to be sacrificed for the sake of politics. It does not happen to every
politician, but it happens often enough, at the most unexpected moments,
because political circumstances are not predictible. In such cases a
politician has to contemplate either complete failure of his/her political
ideal or loss of human lives. And, I am realistic enough to think that a
true politician would never accept the complete failure of his/her political
strife.
Bernard: Unless you can prognosticate the future there is no way of knowing
this. Whether one’s political action is active or passive the worst may still
occur insofar as we are dealing with a collective response which is deaf to an
individual morality..

I think the answer lies in Taoism, in the doctrine of action by inaction. I
read Lao Tse’s Tao Te King, and he says that the best leadership is
performed by a leader who never undertakes any action; a leader who
undertakes action is by definition inferior. So, we should try this,
political action through political inaction.

Bernard: Public safety is the responsibility of a leader. Inaction after
Pearl Harbor or 9/11 would have resulted in a greater catastrophe as was the case
when Germany invaded the Sudetenland.

One has to keep an open mind and a critical and reflective attitude towards
politics. But one should avoid becoming a politician, because (at least in
potential) this makes him/her a murderer.

Bernard: Oner should avoid becoming a parent or risk the possibility of child
abuse.

The tragedy of people like Marx and Strauss lies not in their lofty
theories. It lies in the practice made possible by their theories. So,
insofar they advocate political action, they would have done better to
simply keep reflecting upon the perennial political problems of the
humankind, instead of offering solutions to the political problems.

Bernard: Marx saw th inequity of so called “capitalism” and thus sought a
remedy. That is what human beings do. Unfortunately he did not fall back on his
own logic but the Hegelian dialectic as a mode of predicting a histonical
destiny.

But, I guess, politics is like magic: it lures people and then it tends to
corrupt them. E.g., I had an experience when talking with a friend of mine.
He seems like a person who would never harm another human being. But, in a
discussion wherein I touched the issue of communist history, the words he
said were no longer his own. I felt I was talking to the communist party
itself. The aura of infallibility and of lack of compromise became evident
in his voice. He was no longer himself, he acted like he was possessed by
the party. This is what ideology does to people.

Bernard: Yes, that is just my point. The collective cannot think for itself
because it is neither human or possessed of a brain. This is not what ideology
does to people but what people do with an ideology as a pre-packaged panacea
serving as a carrot on a stick.
Sincerely;
Bernard

Greetings,
Tudor

Posted on Sunday, July 29th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
comment | rss 2.0 | trackback