Time out for reflection...

A friend wrote to me yesterday that he agreed with the claim that 'our political "views" are almost entirely dictated by our background and circumstances, not by us reasoning our way through to them.  The evidence for that view is, I think, overwhelming. Which suggests that blogging -- and any other kind of political writing -- can rally and inform the already convinced but persuade nobody (not counting those persons who take the rest of us for fools and claim to be of one persuasion when they are of another in the vain hope that their pathetic ruse will lend weight to their view: "I'm a lifelong Democrat but I'm supporting McCain").'

I adore and value my friend, but my own experience this year as a writer of this blog, reader of others, and reader of much other political writing runs completely counter to the view endorsed by my friend. My own experience as a political writer has been transformative: the regular discipline of thinking through my positions in order to articulate them has led me to take positions that cut against the entire grain of my background and circumstances. I was raised a dyed-in-the-blue Democrat; my nearest living relatives while still displaying strong love for me are shocked and unhappy with my resistance to lending my vote or approval to Senator Obama's candidacy; and as an academic my circumstances are such that every colleague with whom I have discussed politics this year has disagreed with this resistance. Because I have had the good fortune to attract a fairly wide response to what I have written I have been exposed to people from very different backgrounds from my own; as well as some with similar ones. Some with different backgrounds express what seems to be sincere agreement with me; some express criticism. Those with similar backgrounds tend to be harshest in their criticisms, somehow seeming to take my disagreement with them as a sort of traitorous act; although others with similar backgrounds and circumstances write in support of what I have written. Many people who have commented or written to me have made me think harder and reflect more about why I take the stands I take.

Those who write regularly for RiverDaughter's blog The Confluence or regularly comment there seem to have had a similar experience. Likewise for Murphy at Puma Pac. Or Shtuey at Oh My Valve or Dakinkat at Skydancing in a Man's World or democraticjack at ISO steady ground (There are plenty of other examples, but these are representative stand-outs.) I do not agree with everything each of these writers or their regular commenters say but I have literally observed the writers at these blogs think their way through to the positions and stands they adopt.

Maybe what makes my own experience this election year so different from the one my friend describes is that this is the first year in which I have a taken a series of highly public stands; and when I take a public stand I am doing something other than just maintaining "views". For me, taking a public political stand differs from holding a view in that taking a stand means being prepared to explain and defend that stand, even against - especially against - those who one deeply respects but with whom one disagrees. I realize that other public speakers may have a more shallow approach and rather than take stands, they adopt postures without feeling compunction to explain or justify these stances. But if one believes, as I do, that the ethics of communication include an obligation to self-criticize and to weigh seriously any reasonably articulated criticism of one's ideas, then the very practice of systematically presenting one's ideas in public tends to force one into reasoning one's way to the positions one ends up sticking with.

My friend's comment did make me realize something about why this election cycle has been so deeply wrenching and painful at times. The bit of truth I see in what he wrote is that in other years I have held political "views" and when doing that I probably did not do the hard, tiring working of reasoning my way to stands I was I willing to publicly take and defend. And reasoning one's way to stands sometimes put you in places other people, especially friends, did not expect to see you in, causing them shock and dismay that you have not come out where they have. Dissension among friends hurts. It is tiring. It is hard. But if my friends or my colleagues were always in agreement with me then the claim my friend advanced would seem more evidently correct to me.

I am not claiming that sentiment, passion, and intuition play no role in the evolution of my political stands. But that is because I think that sentiment, passion, and intuition play an important role in reasoning, providing clues and guideposts, just as the more cerebral activities of analysis and study reshape one's sentiments, passions, and intuitions. That is a topic to which I have devoted scholarly attention and will not delve into here. My point is that  the act of political writing or political reading can indeed persuade somebody rather than merely rally them or provide information to reinforce a position she or he would have adopted anyway.

The irony of this post is that the friend who sent me the comment which provoked this post is a person whose political and social views are not, based on my knowledge of his background and circumstances, "almost entirely dictated" by them. I do not know whether he believes he has arrived at via reason at the positions he defends that run most counter to his background and circumstances. His understanding of reason is more purely cerebral than my own, so he might say that his positions are a product of his experiences not a result of reasoning. But one can have a knee-jerk reaction to one's experiences or a reflective one. I have found my friend to be reflective about his experiences (sometimes when he would rather not be, because, as I said before honest self-reflection is hard and tiring). I  know I am about my own. So whether we would agree that we reach the positions we hold that run counter to our background and circumstances via reasoning or via experience, I believe my friend and I both have found ourselves at odds with the views that would be dictated by our background and our circumstances.

Comments

[democraticjack]

I am living proof of your words. Without long thoughtful analysis, I find a decision becomes not a decision, but an urge.
Your are a model for rationality and I applaud you more often than not. We may not always agree, but at the very least we understand why we don't. Thanks, Heidi.