On Jan 20, 10:04 am, Lee <[email protected]> wrote: > For the sake of our esteemed new members. I myself am largely > Socialist with Anarchistic and Liberal leanings. Which in real terms > means that I 'belive' it is the job of goverment to look after the > less able members of society, whilst keeping largley out of our > bussiness
As a steamed new member, I own up to being a confused old-fashioned liberal (with a small 'l'), rather like that woman in Malcolm Bradbury's /The History Man/, if I remember correctly. > Given my lifes experiance, coming from a massive, poor, largley badly > educated, working class family, how much choice have I really about my > political view? A vast amount of choice. I come from Protestant Northern Ireland. As far as I can tell, my entire family are right-wing, many of them having at some time expressed support for Ian Paisley. My mother, still living in N.I., once sent me the front page of a newspaper, from which there looked up at me the faces and names of several of my classmates at primary school (close to the extremist Loyalist stronghold of Larne), all of whom had been convicted and jailed for terrorist offences (perhaps just for belonging to a paramilitary organisation - my memory is not clear on that point, and I haven't seen that newspaper for a long time). My sister told me recently that when she was visiting our mother at Christmas, and the news about Iris Robinson started to break, that woman's famous statement about homosexuality being worse than child abuse was mentioned, and my mother muttered, "Hear, hear!" Well, she should know about child abuse! That's another story, of course, but it is worth mentioning, if only as an admission that there are more personally immediate 'causes' of one's beliefs to be taken into account than the coarse classifications of social class, wealth, race, sex, and so on, so the case or free will is not clear, and it can appear rather like "the god of the gaps". I do believe in free will, but would not know how to go about arguing the case philosophically. I think there is perhaps some kind of argument, mingling philosophy, psychology and sociology, to the effect that each individual mind has (at least) two warring parts, one of which is free, and one of which isn't. I'm certainly aware of a part of my mind which implicitly believes all the rubbish I have ever been taught or ever had beaten into me, including all the contradictions and absurdities. That part of my mind is not free; but I am more than that. > When you also factor in that I earn a bloody good > wage, have a great job, eat good food and enjoy the luxuries that I > want and my wage accords me, and yet my politics have not changed to a > view that may make me personaly even better off, it seems almost self > explanitry that such 'belifes' are manifestations of experiance, or as > Pat would have it causality and thus no real choice at all. It is far from self-evident to me. I pretty much share your beliefs, but I do not share your beliefs about your beliefs! > Ahhh but if I was to 'belive' that one and yet leave it unexamined > (yet another belife of mine) I'm sure that I would do myself a great > disservice. I believe you. :-)
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/minds-eye?hl=en.
