Letters to the Editor
-
Be careful what you pretend to be...
Reminds me of a quote from Kurt Vonnegut, "Be careful what you pretend to be, because you are what you pretend to be," which I discovered here -- http://www.syntheticzero.com/politics.oct2001.php -- and the post makes a similar argument about politics:
"I don't expect that much from our government. I don't expect it to generate a utopian society, or to avoid grabbing for power or monetary influence, or to stop pandering to corporate interests. What I expect is that these activities will be moderated, or limited, or constrained, to a certain degree. So, to me, the question is not whether there are ulterior motives for our actions (there _always_ are), but to what extent are these ulterior motives being constrained, and why?
"To me, politics is not about achieving ideological purity, but it has to do with memes that get circulated within what is essentially a complex system. I do not believe in 'the' reason we're doing things --- I don't think there is ever a single reason, or an underlying 'real' truth. Every story about what we're doing is both right and wrong. However, there is something important about the official reasoning, especially in a society with some degree of voter feedback, and that is that whatever we do has to in the end roughly be constrained to what is acceptable to the official reasoning.
"In other words, in a society with some voting feedback (I will avoid the word 'democracy' since this implies a level of control by the people that is, of course, only a fantasy), the government does not have to be good, but it has to avoid violating the norms of our society to the point that it becomes obvious that the official story (for example, the story that we're a 'free' country) is a sham. In other words, our leaders do not have to really be fighting for justice and freedom, they just have to appear to be doing so..."
By the way, I also recently came across another quote -- http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/25/AR2008012502780.html :P
"Be what you would seem to be -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise." -- The Duchess in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"
Cheers!