Marcus -
Perhaps knowing a bit more about Glen's personality than other people
here might, I can imagine Glen having a matter-of-fact conversation
with a homeless not-all-who-wonder-are-lost sort of person.
I suspect that is why he talks with me from time to time (not all who
wonder/wander).
I have also had interesting, enriching conversations with people who I
think may be teetering toward mental illness for understandable
environment reasons (but otherwise seem fine), or at least are way out
of the norm in the topics they talk about or the expectations they
have from other people. I find that engaging from time to time.
Raw. Low order. Isolated.
Absolutely. That is part of my point... It is hard for me (who am
somewhat motivated, and practiced in the art) to actually *help* or more
to the point *engage* with someone that far from my personal
circumstance and experience. But I have watched the *more* capable
among that strata help the *less* capable from time to time. I suspect
that the better social workers are folks who either raised themselves up
from near-desperate circumstances or at least had it kiss them or theirs
at some point in life. Sure there are likely some amazingly intuitive,
empathic, trust-funders who do this work and do it well...
I want to suppose these people are independent agents that I don't
understand and have no obligation to.
In the realm of enlightened self interest, there are no "obligations"
except to oneself. If you want these people to not impinge on your
reality overmuch, you can move into a gated community, hire a driver
(with concealed carry permits) and shuttle from your air conditioned
garage to a complementary one at your workplace and under Whole Foods
(you do have a pass to that parking lot, right?). Or you can establish
a relationship with them directly (the scenario described above). Or
you can participate in a continuously stratified society which seeks to
reduce the ??? of the tensor describing the sheer stresses throughout
the system.
The suspicion of the park project comes from a suspicion that you
don't know what "improving" (above) really means even though you
advocate some sort of mass action. There's no one direction to go in.
Someone else would probably have torn out a park and put in a parking
lot... and as far as I'm concerned... if that was an emergent,
collective decision by those living there, that would be fine too.
All of these people making the world a better place could easily
cancel each other out. That value system (if there is _one_ and it
isn't just a vague recommendation) is yours and if you don't
disentangle your "enlightened self interest" from what the needs in
that community are in an detached empirical way, you may be deluding
yourself.
I have lived a life of detached empiricism with short bouts and/or thin
veins through certain aspects of my life of much more intuitive or even
mystical modes of apprehending what I was doing of the word. I'm less
proud of the things I had "empirical detachment" around. But that is
just me... others may be nostalgic (or intentional) about not having
been more rigorous in their decisions about life, love, and the
mysteries of a vocation.
I prefer the sort of coercive liberal agendas like I advocate, because
I think I make it clear when I have an axe to grind. I'm not sure
about the meta self-knowledge of these local community organizers. I
am suspicious they may be bullies in disguise, but just so impotent
that all they can pull off are small local renovation projects. It is
a proxy for the impact they wish they had.
I'm not unaware of the bullying of do-gooders. The original organizers
who brought this park into being may have been wicked-radical bullies...
by the time I arrived on the scene it had all settled out nicely. But
by the grace of one of the non-caucasian goddesses, the bullying do
gooders around civil and women's rights during my formative years,
would have turned me into a whining wingnut focused on "reverse
discrimination". That is partly what kept me wanting to like the
Republicans well into my 30's... *they* had all sorts of coercive
ideological agendas with what seemed like transparency into their axes
of grindage, which had it's charms... in contrast to the less
transparent version, full of it's own oats self-righteousness, backed up
by (mostly) the recent wins against the Nixon/Kissinger debacles.
The "PC" , "knee jerking" of the 70's, 80's turned me off and burned me
out, but I never lost and fortunately regained a sense of hopefulness
about the human spirit. We *can* (and often do) defer to
"professionals" to decide for us the greater good, and then implement it
for us... and I believe that such can work out well for modest periods
of time under various circumstances... I just have to ask why
My anecdote was a singular (counter) example which gave *me* hope
against the myriad "neighborhood associations" and god knows what all,
we create when first we practice to run other people's lives.
Berkeley, the center of uber-liberalism, has become, in it's collective
character and in it's specific approach to governing, quite fascist...
despite applying it to a very liberal agenda.
I can tell that I've miscommunicated significantly in this (and this
thread only?) thread... I do appreciate the engagement however, as I
think it brought out some interesting and important discussion...
- Steve
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