Ideas: nasty little brutes, aren't they?

I've been thinking lately about ideas.  I'm not talking about specific ideas, such as how I'm going to swing free meals on Monday, Tuesday and Friday to compliment my current freeload on Wednesday and Thursday, or what it will take to even come close to meeting the 78 servings of veggies a day commanded by the Canada Food Guide (don't even get me started on that one).  No, I'm getting at the very idea of ideas in general: how people come up with them, communicate them, and judge them.  More specifically, I've recently been impressed by the incredible diversity of ideas that I hear every day.

I know what you're thinking: this post already reeks of the potential to put you to sleep faster than intravenous melatonin.  I fully understand and empathize, since I'm actually falling asleep as I type the bloody thing; however, I'd really appreciate it if you put in the effort to slog through it.  As well as offering my typically humble outlook on the world around us, I think this entry will give you a basis to more fully understand me as a writer, friend, and creepy-guy-who-hangs-around-at-your-house-all-the-time-for-no-apparent-reason (you know who you are).  

You see, while I've always loved hearing other people's ideas, I've always struggled with how to handle them in my mind.  There's just so damn many of them out there!  Whether consciously or subconsciously, in the past I've usually felt the need to gather them, label them as good or bad, and stuff them into some cognitive filing cabinet.  I'm sure that a big part of this desire can be attributed to the materialistic "quest for knowledge" that I seem to constantly be embarking on, hoping to eventually reach a destination of bliss, a paradise island of intellectual superiority in the middle of a vast sea of ambiguity.  As I've mentioned before in my blogs, I constantly seem to foolishly convince myself that fulfillment can be found in academic proficiency, or the mastery of the scope of ideas.

However, I think that's only part of it.  For although I may derive a certain amount of satisfaction from garnering as many different theories and concepts as I can (gathering quantity), I'm also interested in scrutinizing them (analyzing quality).  I know I'm not the only one that has this obsession with categorizing ideas; indeed, whether you step into a university political science lecture, sit down in a busy coffee shop, or turn on "The View", you'll hear people identifying them as leftist or rightist, shallow or deep, stupid or profound.  The inevitably different opinions people possess often embody themselves in arguments or debate, themselves types of interactions that have been around since time immemorial.  

Why are we so intent of categorizing ideas as right or wrong?  As I think about my own tendency to do so, I think it has to do with the security that comes with forming - and reaffirming - a certain worldview.  The modernist philosophical tradition, which emerged out of the Enlightenment epoch that started in the 17th century, states that scientific proofs must be used to determine what is true and what isn't.  In this time period - also sometimes referred to as the Age of Reason - it was increasingly thought that if something couldn't be proven as undoubtedly true, then it didn't constitute acceptable knowledge: that is, it would be considered a "bunk idea".  This ultimately translates into an "all-or-nothing" mindset when it comes to "bases of knowledge", which could also be referred to as "collections of ideas".  Only those ideas that can be rationally proven in a very explicit sense (from an individual's perspective) deserve admission into a base of knowledge.  Worldviews - which are essentially consolidations of knowledge, or convictions - that are based on this staunchly empirical class of idea are probably attractive to people because they're very easy to define and identify with, and thus derive identity from.  Unfortunately, they also hold alot of potential for conflict, and don't tend to leave any room for ideas that are controversial, or shrouded in ambiguity.

For the record: I think it is immensely important for individuals to form strong convictions (read: have explicitly categorized ideas) on certain issues.  Although the idea of "objective truth" is indeed elusive, I think it does exist somewhere in the universe, with important bits of it periodically being revealed to us.  Certain types of moral conduct is one aspect of it that I think we need to get a good handle on; for example, it's important that it's universally accepted that murdering someone is a very bad idea.  However, if we accept too many of are ideas as being "absolutely certain", we risk immersing ourselves in stubbornness, which makes it very hard to relate to others around us.  More importantly, when it becomes increasingly clear that certain ideas that we've historically clung to are clearly wrong - e.g. racial discrimination - it can be very hard to disconnect ourselves from them. 

With these thoughts in mind, I've started to reconsider how I process different ideas.  Whereas I may have been previously content to use a standard set of qualifiers to determine their legitimacy - whether it be empirical reason, feeling, or the Ten Commandments - I think I'm starting to learn that it's immature to judge them based on their face value, or their most salient characteristics.  What if we trained our minds to realize that there's something good to be found in just about every idea (although in some cases very little - fascism comes to mind), instead of immediately throwing them onto our standardized "truth template" to make sure that all of the dots connect?  

I have a proposition.  All of you staunch atheists out there: what if, instead of writing off evangelical Christians as shallow wackos, you took the time to read the book of Matthew?  And all of you evangelical Christians: instead of writing off postmodernism as "morally relativist" or "pluralist", why don't you actually dig into the culture a little - after all, it surrounds us!  And instead of avoiding existentialism like a 19th century hymnal, why not try to swallow a bit of Kierkegaard?  Instead of being totally put off, you might actually find yourself constructively challenged about your current mindset - who knows?

Honestly, I really have no idea if what I've said here makes any sense at all.  Specifically, the paragraph in which I outline the historical emergence of modernism may be way off wack - it was closing in on 2AM when I finished it.  Hopefully, despite the inevitable inconsistencies in this posting, I've provided some food for thought and meaningful discussion regarding how we treat those troublemaking little things we call ideas.  As usual, commentary/scrutiny is welcome.

Cheers,

Tom

"On Our Watch": A documentary on Darfur presented by PBS Frontline

Hi all,

Check out this awesome PBS feature on Darfur.  Go grab a coffee, and give yourselves an hour - it's well worth it.

I found this feature - produced by the CBC for PBS's "Frontline" documentary series - to be a well produced, context-filled analysis of a crisis I've heard alot about, but I realize I don't really know alot about.  Like so many other conflicts on the African continent, Darfur's plight is a microcosm of some pretty big dilemmas in global politics.  Although I got way too much out of this piece to write in one blog (that should scare you faithful readers of this web-novel!), I'd like to share a few key ideas that I pulled out of it.  I'm going to kind of list them from most discouraging to (mildly) encouraging, so if you're initially thrown into a pit of blog-pression, just keep both hands on the wheel!

I think one of the predominant themes that the documentary drives home the need for UN reform, specifically in the structure and operation of the Security Council (SC).  Although Darfur may not go down in history as the biggest interventionist-failure of the UN - the eventual deployment of 20 000+ troops, coupled with the unspeakable failure in Rwanda, may save it from this title - it has magnified the current limits on the body of dealing with human-rights atrocities.  In particular, it is mind-boggling how the SC manages to not react to circumstances that are, to everyone outside of their glorified think-tank, inarguably unacceptable.  Instead, the SC structure allows permanent-members (in this case, Russia and China) to individually "filibuster" - if not outwardly reject - motions that everyone else in the body may support.  I understand that when the SC was initially devised, this "veto" function was granted to atomic powers to prevent one of them from being pushed into a corner, ostensibly threatening nuclear war.  However, this logic largely crumbled alongside the Berlin Wall, and I feel like that the UN needs to put the nail in the veto's coffin by getting rid of it altogether.  "Easier said than done" doesn't take away from the fact that it needs to be done.

The second, and slightly more encouraging, observation that I took away from the feature is the fact that the US played a leading role in calling for action.  This fact - which was largely overshadowed on editorial pages by berating over Dubya's royal screw-up in Iraq - should be encouraging for every sensible person that acknowledges that stuff on this scale needs an American kiss of approval.  It's a sign that despite the legacy of waging proxy wars, petrol wars, and generally poopy wars throughout the 20th century, the US might be emerging as a kind of leader in a new universal human rights order.  I'm not sure if I actually believe this myself, but it's something to think about regardless.

I think my final point is the most important one.  The most influential countries in the world are - thank God - liberal democracies, meaning that their citizens have the power (theoretically, and I think in some cases more than others in fact) to shape the decisions that their leaders make on the global scale.  There are different ways that individuals can go about doing this, including, obviously, voting in elections.  Towards the end of the documentary, acknowledgement was made to people practicing another means of their entitled influence: free speech in the form of activism.  Now, many people - myself included - have often written off the effectiveness of protests and rallies such as the ones depicted in Washington in this feature, claiming that they're populated by "clueless, pot-smoking dreadhead hippies".  However, "On Our Watch" did the viewer a good service by explicitly outlining the positive effect that popular  protests, ranging from rallies to the "Genocide Olympics" rhetoric, had on influencing the high-level decisions that finally lead to intervention in Darfur. That should be an encouragement to all of us "average Joes" who don't have the key to the General Assembly chamber.

Alright, so I just made the decision that that wasn't my final point.  In writing all of this, I realized that I have foolishly overlooked the real importance of the documentary, which was to depict the violence and suffering experienced by the people of Darfur, who don't have a cozy home to lock themselves into, or a 911 number to call.  It's kind of silly that I can watch an hour long documentary with my heart slumping and my guilt swelling the whole time, and afterwards not immediately mention feelings of sorrow and despair as my initial reaction (which they were).  I suppose the academic "drive to analyze" sometimes has a way of crowding out true concern and empathy; characteristics which, undoubtedly, must be core motivators for action.

Hopefully, we'll see increased efforts made to save the people of Darfur in the days to come.  Until then, all we can do is pray, and encourage our neighbors to take off their shoes and imagine themselves shuffling through the sands of the eastern Sahara.