Let the record show that I intend no disrespect to the wonderful book shown above, which I loved when I was a kid and was delighted to find still in print, with the same illustrations, when I was buying books to read to my own kids.
But neither my kids nor I were ever able to take in the message. We're more negative thinkers. And pace the Little Blue Engine, there's something to be said for negative thinking.
Sometimes the great discoveries are negative -- it turns out that what seemed self-evidently true, isn't. Which can be hugely liberating. And sometimes the great historical task is simply to destroy something -- like, say, the American empire -- without worrying too much about what comes next.
I was trying to explain this the other day to an old friend and co-conspirator of mine -- let's call him Kodaly. Kodaly got it, and laughed that delighted laugh you hear from people when you've put into words some lurking semi-conscious thought they already had. Kodaly is not by any means as negative as I am, but he definitely has a foot in my camp.
He was so delighted, in fact, that his usual tact slipped a bit and he blurted out, "That's why Jocasta doesn't like you!"
Jocasta is Kodaly's wife.
Let me tell you a little about Jocasta. She's an incredibly energetic, competent, committed woman, and I bet she's well-liked in her yoga class and her women's group. She probably sleeps about an hour and a half every night. Her kids get fed fresh super-healthy food every day of the year. Once when my wife and I were at a party with her, she disdainfully referred to some other parents in her kids' preschool who sent their offspring off to this credentialling feedlot wearing "mismatched socks".
No shit, "mismatched socks."
Now I'm sure Jocasta has never worn mismatched socks, and I would bet my left testicle that she has never sent one of her kids out the door with mismatched socks. But my wife and I exchanged a guilty sidelong look when we heard this mild little sneerlet. Madame is less of a fuckup than I am, but even she has sent kids off to school with mismatched socks -- more often than not, in fact.
After my pal K. let slip his observation about Jocasta not liking me, he was of course horribly embarrassed. But I wasn't offended. I already knew she didn't like me; guys know when their pals' GFs and wives don't like 'em. K understood all that, so after he bounced back from his initial mortification, he was willing to keep the ball rolling, to represent Jocasta and articulate her objection; which was all the more easy for him to do, since he has the other foot in her camp.
What the objection boils down to is that I never have any "positive alternative" to propose. You've all heard this a million times, right? "So what's your alternative, Mr Smart Guy?"
There are lots of possible responses to this, but here's the one I like:
Many people, from Thomas More to Rousseau to Trotsky, have proposed "positive alternatives". The menu is full of 'em; take your pick. Why should anybody try to enter that already rather crowded market?
Jocasta would. She's really good at matching socks, and no doubt quite good at her job. She could easily design, on her lunch break, a blueprint for future society that would be a huge improvement on what we've got. And no doubt an improvement on anything I could come up with, and she might even give Rousseau a run for his money.
And having done that -- having come up with the plan -- it's over to you, groundlings. Execute! A very managerial, white-collar mentality: I've done my job. You have the blueprint.
The problem of course is that before Jocasta's plan, or Rousseau's, stand any chance of implementation, there are some obstacles that need to be dealt with: like, oh, Wall Street, and the Republican and Democratic parties, and Harvard and Yale and the Educational Testing Service, and the Pentagon, and the cops.
Now I may be a negative kind of guy, but not negative enough to believe that these obstacles can't and won't be dealt with. Maybe not in my time; but sooner or later people will find a way.
Here's the crux, though: the people who deal with the obstacles will be the people who decide what comes next. And there's no reason to suppose that they will consider Jocasta's plan, or Rousseau's, or mine, to be authoritative. In fact, they will make their own plans, and more power to 'em.
So it seems to me that for Jocasta and me to tell the people who win the war how to conduct the peace, is, well, presumptuous. At least.
And in fact, actually, it's worse than that. Demanding the "positive alternative" is in effect a defense-attorney strategy for the status quo. It turns the critique away from what is, and onto your sadly naive constitution for Shangri-La: this won't work, that won't work. Your "positive alternative" has to sell itself -- a burden which the status quo does not bear.
Owen knows from of old my love of extravagant analogies. Allow me to indulge myself.
Imagine that Jocasta and I have both gone to Hell, and our punishment is to make dinner together. We look in the pantry and there's a Tupperware container (what else? This is Hell) with some stew in it. We open the container and there rises from it a suffocating fetid stench, with top notes of dead polecat and a long finish of junior-high locker room.
"Yeccchh!" I say. "Let's toss this vile mess!"
"Not so fast, Kemo Sabe," says Jocasta. "What's your alternative?"
Comments (16)
Progress will out? That sounds alarmingly positive.
Posted by Jonathan Lundell | January 13, 2010 1:08 AM
Posted on January 13, 2010 01:08
Bless you, MJS, for this new post, which belies your claim to total minusness. Thank you banishing Carly, and for the thoughts.
I know you are a C. Wright Mills admirer, right? Relentless negativeness is a form of optimism, under these conditions. They study diseases in med school, right?
Onward, tearer-downers!
Posted by Michael Dawson | January 13, 2010 1:10 AM
Posted on January 13, 2010 01:10
yikes
to find jon l
hanging upside down
from the very first comment cage
like odin's icicle
on this indifferent wintry morning .....
what draws his pen here
never fails to spook me
is he always ...watching ???
btw his remorseless
and our own father S
played baton passing
student gub regents
at the infamous clown college
we few three
attended
on florida's senile sun coast
way back
when country wasn't kool
and shiva
could be found sleeping inside
a colorful tablet
Posted by op | January 13, 2010 9:04 AM
Posted on January 13, 2010 09:04
"I know you are a C. Wright Mills admirer"
so true
here's his eminence as the stepen-wolf
of ruskin county
http://learn.bowdoin.edu/sociology/soc101/wp-content/uploads/CWrightMills488.jpg
he'd just had his beard shaved off by the county sheriff's office
but aha
there was no stopping that wondervogel back then
of course
the sudden and ghastly
on set
of
smiff in love
turned out to be quite another matter
samson hath no greater beef
Posted by op | January 13, 2010 9:10 AM
Posted on January 13, 2010 09:10
JL, "progress" is a word that never passes my lips without quotation marks. But I also don't think that history is over, or that any institution can endure forever.
Posted by MJS | January 13, 2010 11:31 AM
Posted on January 13, 2010 11:31
Bueno, Mr Smith.
Posted by C F Oxtrot | January 13, 2010 12:29 PM
Posted on January 13, 2010 12:29
No, history will no doubt plod along. But it seems to me that the not-yet-acien régime has matters well in hand [that's an equestrian, or perhaps driving, metaphor, isn't it? I had never noticed] and is only getting better at having its way, and no doubt Boney is waiting in the wings.
[I'm a Wilbur Mills man myself.]
Posted by Jonathan Lundell | January 13, 2010 7:34 PM
Posted on January 13, 2010 19:34
Your friend's wife reminds me all too much of my own DW who, as I once mentioned, called me a "subversive" for supporting Nader over Kerry in '04, and who's more than once called me an anarchist as if it were an insult -- conveniently ignoring people like Sacco&Vanzetti, Thoreau, and Emma Goldman, who she ironically lists among her heroes.
She often likes to complain that if "people like me" had their way, there'd be dead and dying people lying in streets running with blood, shooting and bombing, society collapsing, and the country going up in flames -- to which my usual unspoken (but desperate to be spoken) reply is "and, your problem with that is...?" Then, of course, like many of her ilk, she immediately follows with the standard-issue followup, "well, do you have any positive solutions?" -- which, of course, to me, is code-talk for "I'm too goddamn' frightened and lazy to agitate for any kind of change at all." ...and this, from a woman who helped organize sit-ins at the State Department during the Vietnam War.
Of course, she's great at things like making sure the proper silverware is set in the proper places for dinner parties -- and at matching socks. But then, she does have a PoliSci degree from GWU.
Posted by Mike Flugennock | January 13, 2010 9:49 PM
Posted on January 13, 2010 21:49
JL -- You're right to observe that "the not-yet-ancien regime has matters well in hand". But one might have said the same thing about the original ancien regime in oh say 1785.
You just can't prognosticate this stuff. It comes like a thief in the night, as the man said.
Being a fairly pessimistic guy myself, I don't suppose you and I will live to see Larry Summers and Hillary Clinton hanging from lampposts -- though I'm taking my vitamins and flossing my teeth and watching my diet, just on the off chance.
Posted by MJS | January 13, 2010 10:51 PM
Posted on January 13, 2010 22:51
On a related note:
No arguing that activism is considered absolute proof of conviction by most liberal political lights. Activism is the unarguable stigmata, the nail hole in the palm as proof. Yessir, when it comes to putting your money where your mouth is, when it comes to "put up or shut up," when it comes to "lead, follow or get out of the way," political activism answers any and all charges of faintness of heart. It requires tremendous amounts of time and energy and has only one small flaw.
It doesn't work. Not for liberals. Tea partiers armed with baseball bats and megaphones get results. But liberal activism is sort of like sending a rabbit to sell wolves on the benefits of veganism.
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/01/bass-boats-and-queer-marriage.html
Posted by Sean | January 13, 2010 11:37 PM
Posted on January 13, 2010 23:37
aaaahhhh... Mike... a GW PoliSci degree... fine academy of inculcation, that one. Can't exactly blame her, that's what GW does! Good enough college but like Georgetown it's a bit too insular-DC, the perspective of Govt is Good is just a bit too inescapable. Now if she'd gone to Montgomery College-Takoma Park, she may have encountered a few socialists, but her degree wouldn't have the same market value and would only be an AA not a BA/BS. heh heh heh.
Posted by C F Oxtrot | January 13, 2010 11:59 PM
Posted on January 13, 2010 23:59
I confess to being of at least two minds on this question. I've been troubled (well, perhaps that's not quite the word, but let it stand) by Stop Me's unrelenting negativity. Call me Jocasta.
Summers as a lamppost ornament, sure. Hillary, well, I'd have been quicker to agree a year ago. Now, well, we've done far worse for SoS, and more than once recently, too.
But wrt lampposts, I'm not optimistic. Not only is Bonaparte in the wings, I don't see him politely waiting his turn for Dalton and Co to do their dirty first.
And in the best of cases, in the words of the immortal Wm Randolph Yeats, 'Ireland shall get her freedom and you still break stone'.
Posted by Jonathan Lundell | January 14, 2010 1:45 AM
Posted on January 14, 2010 01:45
lamp post justice for all
Posted by op | January 14, 2010 8:31 AM
Posted on January 14, 2010 08:31
@ Charles F. Oxtrot: Y'know what's really sad is that when the DW and I are having a political argument, I can tell I'm winning when she gets all pissy and starts brandishing her PoliSci degree in my face like some kind of talisman, as if she expects me to be impressed because she majored in PoliSci and I was just a lowly art student. Then, I tell her that I'm not impressed -- and then she really gets pissed off.
@ Jonathan Lundell: Jeez, man, how much worse could we have done than Hillary Fucking Clinton as Secretary Of Snake? Basically, she's Madeleine Albright, only slightly prettier.
Posted by Mike Flugennock | January 14, 2010 1:55 PM
Posted on January 14, 2010 13:55
"She was pretty bad, but I've seen worse" (name the poet)
Yes, Albright. Rice. Rumsfeld (effectively).
Posted by Jonathan Lundell | January 14, 2010 5:41 PM
Posted on January 14, 2010 17:41
Hey, JL, give her time.
Posted by MJS | January 15, 2010 10:40 AM
Posted on January 15, 2010 10:40