The Space of Suspension of Disbelief

How is truth possible when everything in the culture is an advertisement? Has it actually come to the point where we have to continually promote, spin, and downright lie simply because we are incapable of the truth?

Everybody knows they have been lied to – by the boss, the advertisements, the nightly news, the politicians, even by our friends. They also know something is deeply fucked with "the system," and that they cannot do all that much to make it better. Sure, when they have to, they usually do a great job at hiding their contempt for it all. But they also actually come to accept an alarming degree of danger and neglect in their lives as, well you know, the inevitable routine of everyday life, or even as professional protocol – provided, of course, they “know” its bullshit, and are themselves somehow immune or sufficiently detached from its pernicious influences. This is the game we play with ourselves; to cling to that space and go about our lives just as everything makes us complacent as well as deeply cynical. And so, "just leave us alone."

Well I'm not going to leave you alone! Because the really interesting thing is that we all seem to continually suspend disbelief about how bad things really are in the world by continually looking for some glimpse into some truth that we want to believe in – either in some revealing casual gesture, some slip of the tongue, some demographic signifier, some subtext. There will always be a subtext because that’s our entitlement, as well as our entertainment, whether it be as viewers, consumers - as citizens even - no matter how many lies we believe we are being told, no matter how much bullshit gets thrown at us, no matter how much hope we have lost. In effect, we need to watch, we need to look, if only because we need to believe in something. We need a little of what Coleridge referred to as “poetic faith” in order to get on with living.

The problem is that this suspension of disbelief also makes us credulous and incredibly vulnerable. We tend to get lost in our beliefs, fantasies, and dreams not only because people are lying to us but because we are lying to ourselves. Fantasy is fun and great; but it also presumes we are actually capable of making the distinction between what is truly fake and what is truly real, and this is how we delude ourselves. Negotiating these boundaries surely enables us to construct for ourselves meaningful narratives as to what is, as well as to entertain ourselves. And fiction and great art pander to us that way...by making us privileged voyeurs with an "insight" to make. After all, our opinion counts, does it not?

Sheldon Wolin 101

Ever wonder about privately-owned-public-space?

Notes taken from a recent reading of Sheldon S. Wolin's Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought. Expanded Edition, (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004).

Both Plato and Aristotle addressed how various institutions and constituencies of Athenian life, (elected office, trade, education, ethics, war, and the militia,) were interrelated in a uniquely political way. How citizens were to be raised and educated, how and for what purpose resources were to be used, what and who posed a threat to the Athenian order, what the collective priorities were to be, etc., were all questions pertaining to the well being of the polis. Politics also entailed active participation in the important legislative and judicial deliberations of the day. In fact, for Aristotle, the noblest activity of all was to do politics. Citizenship was not only distinct from other human activities, such as physical labor, commercial trade, and the taking care of the household; it was actually bound to the “nature” of men. “Man is by nature an animal intended to live in the polis.” It connoted the right of an individual to live in the only form of association that allowed, and even encouraged, the development of Man’s “natural” capacities to the fullest. Politics “existed for the sake of a good life.”

Over the centuries and from a variety of sources, this classical rendering of “the political” gradually became fragmented and thinned out by a whole array of historical developments, religious concerns, economics, and what Hannah Arendt eventually referred to as “the social.” For centuries efforts to depoliticize were most obvious in the typical narrowing of “the political” into mere matters of “government”. Here the classical economists and Utilitarians took their inspiration and cues largely from Adam Smith and John Locke who laid the foundation not only for keeping economic arrangements distinct from political questions but for also fashioning bodies of specialized knowledge in market economics and ethics to address issues with minimal reference politics.

And so by the early decades of the nineteenth century economic theory had begun to demand for itself the task of shouldering the burden of providing what was good for the whole of society. Similar attacks upon “the political” were initiated by sociologists, like Comte and Durkheim as well as Socialists such as Saint-Simon and Proudon. Even Karl Marx rejected “the political” as a bourgeois distraction. These trends were only intensified later by the early industrial managerial strategists, as well as the scientists and psychologists. To reject the state meant denying the central referent of the political – citizenship, obligation, general authority – without pausing to consider that the strategy of withdrawal might further enhance state power. Political theories that were retained by classic liberalism and modern scientific thought consistently worked to destroy the idea that society ought properly to be considered as an interconnected whole, and that its general life was best expressed through political forms. In this way, the political order has come to occupy the status of residuary legatee, shouldering those tasks which other groups or organizations are unwilling or unable to perform. The hope was to steadily reduce the number of political functions, and always the attempt to add one more political function to the “interest group.”

The narrowing and neutering of political life that was brought about by the emergence of homo economicus not only led to the blurring of the “public/private” distinction but the eventual encroachment into and takeover of political space altogether. Today, as Ralph Nader has put it ad infinitum, political arenas have indeed become “corporate occupied territory” dominated by powerful “private” institutions which either make public actors fend largely for themselves or, even sadder, make them utterly dependent on these interests. All the important functions and responsibilities which would be relegated as public responsibilities are thus “outsourced” through “government contracts” to “private” agencies and actors with little, if any, public scrutiny. Yet despite this institutional and “ideological” takeover, it is very important to at least theoretically recognize roles such as infrastructure, the military, taxes, law, education, the IRS, the courts, voting machines, the EPA, Social Security, endowments, funding, the police, state investments, etc., as uniquely political priorities and public goods even if the realpolitik to facilitate them does not exist at this time.

“Public” space today may certainly be “social” space for people to inhabit but it is not space for active citizenship – for free gathering, free assembly, free petition, and free speech. It is used instead mostly for commercial activity with surveillance cameras and, when necessary, the police because it has been greatly severed from political experience. As avenues for political action and public debate become less and less, are we to just keep our mouths shut and hide our heads in the sand, and hope our corporate masters take care of us? In these ways, it can be said that political theorists try to call attention to the politicalness of phenomena by bringing together the truly public inter-connectedness between various institutions and realms, and designate public what otherwise is ordinarily deemed either private, disconnected, or in fact, broken. What is public is not simply “social” or “economic” nor specifically confined to state institutions but a whole range of social networks and discourses which make a political life - especially state power and all that it legitimizes, promotes, defends, invests in, as well as censures – possible.

Ralph Nader @ Cooper Union, NYC 5/31/08

So why hate Ralph Nader when there's soooo much blame to go around? Nader typically gets heaps and mounds of hatred and resentment thrown at him by disgruntled snide Democrats. He is always put on the spot by having to respond to the same old tired questions about 2000 spun out by the likes of Wolf Blitzer, Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, and other mainstream hacks. But given the nearly infinite array of variables to explain away 2000 – like all the Democrats who voted for Bush in Florida and New Hampshire, Al Gore not winning his home state of Tennessee nor Bill Clinton’s Arkansas, other small parties "taking votes from" Gore and Bush, Kathryn Harris, the Supreme Court – there is clearly something else going on. Why expend so much energy smearing old Nader?

You see: Nader puts issues on the agenda that the Dems have been running from for years. I mean can you really expect a life-long crusader for consumer protection, labor, the environment, anti-war, fighting corporate power, to actually “steal” votes from a spineless party that has been pro-war, pro-NAFTA, pro-WTO, drenched in big money, and downright complicit to Bush & Co? What all the cry-baby Eric Altermans deny is not just the big money-corporate elephant in the room but also the nearly unbridgeable gaps between Nader and the two Party structure itself. And what part of that did you not understand? Where are the Dems on withdrawal from Iraq? On universal single-payer health-care? On the impeachment of Bush & Co? Consumer protection? Labor? Poverty? Corporate power? Cutting the bloated military budget? The reality is Nader calls the Dems out on their hypocrisy, and for being pulled to the right even before Bill Clinton in the 90s. How could Nader run as a Democrat?

No wonder Stephanopolous and the gang have to run with flag-pins, "electibility," and gotcha innuendos . With such little difference between the two major candidates in terms of policy, political discussion inevitably becomes an insipid exchange. When there is nothing substantial to talk about, better stick to gossip, gaffes, and insinuations. And who could resist the attention, gosh, with ratings and all? Will the Democrats stay on their heels as they take another latte libel in the face? Will they keep trying to out-Republican the Republicans? Will they keep taking the Left for granted?