"If we consider, for instance, two individuals who are disputing about, say, the possession of some property, we can see that this potentially dangerous situation is transformed by the intervention of a third party, the judge. A tryadic relation is substituted for the potentially dangerous dyadic relation...."
A History of Philosophy
Volume VIII: A History of Philosophy: Bentham to Russell
by Fr. Frederick Copleston
pages 282-283
(Talkin' 'bout Josiah Royce, BTW.)
Read that bit yesterday and marked it to think about.
Thought about it.
Occurred to me that this thought applied to the current political climate, wherein in order to be a Democrat you have to NOT be a Republican, so polarization seems to be a natural consequence of the two-party system. Certainly would allow a little more nuance if there was another voice in the mix, wouldn't it?
And then today Jacqueline and Joe and I were watching the most excellent Moby Dick opera (music by Jake Heggie and libretto by Gene Scheer), and there was a scene wherein "Greenhorn" (soon to be Ishmael) sees a sleeping Captain Ahab and thinks about killing him, and then he says,
Now all of us are Ahabs.
Not just some of us. All of us.
All of us.
And the meaning of the polarization I'd hypothesized as the result of the dyadic political relation really hit me.
It's so easy to look at The Right and see them as monsters who want to separate kids from their moms, applaud anti-Semitism and racist agendas and strip the poor of healthcare and....
I have to confess that it's hard for me NOT to see that when I look at The Right.
And I've been uncomfortable with some of the bullshit that The Left have been putting out of late, as it seemed pretty unfair...and I have caught myself wondering if maybe there wasn't more to the story than MSNBC was telling me on occasion...but to be honest, I never really wavered from my belief that I was On The Left, and that The Left was where lay righteousness.
But now all of us are Ahabs.
And Ahab can't see his own obsession. All he sees is an evil whale which MUST be destroyed.
I'm still going to do what I can do to elect Democratic people next week and for the next two years. I won't even begin to be a little bit happy until Trump is out of office. And Mitch McConnell with him.
But I am also going to start listening more to what The Right / The Other Side has to say, and instead of just dismissing it as crazy shit, I'm going to try to find out what's at the root of it...and see if there's any truth in it. And I'm going to see what I can do to help make a viable third party join the dance.
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?
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