Just a review of a major point: why am I too “full of
myself” to join up to support a single issue to help a given constituency in
need? Why am I unwilling to march and
scream in a demonstration like any “prole”?
Many constituencies of individual people can be
affected by sudden changes (imposed by politicians, by enemies, or by natural
causes) beyond their control. These
vicissitudes can result in “existential” challenges to how individual people
can go on and see themselves.
But typically, meeting a particular need for a
particular group by itself missed the larger context in which policy questions are
faced. For example, I certainly support “marriage
equality”, but to focus on it in the way fundraising and crowdsourcing is
usually done, overlooks major other extensions of the issue, such as the
parental leave issue, and the tension in our culture between those with and
without responsibilities for raising children, and also a somewhat skewed tension
over the “importance” of procreation itself to some people.
I understand how “black lives matter” as a phrase does
communicate the pain of some people, but “all lives matter” indeed; but the
real point is that if indeed we care about all human life, many of us face
personal challenges of the heart (in dealing with others up close and personal
when they ask for attention, as with “the poor”) that may be unwelcome.
And, likewise, being converted to one particular
religions faith or belief, on someone else’s say-so (and personal experience),
overlooks the whole context where modern physics really does support spirituality.
It is true that I got into writing (authoring books
and blogging) first over the “gays in the military” issue back in Bill Clinton’s
90s. (Grand old days, the country did
well.) That particular issue affects a
relatively small number of active duty (and potential) “soldiers”, so it sounds
narrow. But the less direct implications
for many other civilians (not just gay) in many other areas of life could be
broad.
I connected the issue to my own
experience with the draft (and the deferment system) and US policy, and how it
played out against class and race and privilege on the one hand, and with the
whole panoply of issues are personal privacy and personal expression (as they
were in the 90s at first) on the other.
The issue involved forced intimacy in an unusual way, and invoked
questions about the government’s (or “society’s”) capacity to compel uneven
sacrifices from its citizens in ways that transcend any “axiom of choice.”
Later, in my “second career”, I focused on COPA, and
now on Section 230, which sound like narrow issues. But they do beg the question of continuing
the “permissive” environment which encourages user generated content (if “amateur”). UGC is a very useful “institution” to support
the normal press, to keep politicians and corporate interests “honest”, and
force the main media to cover issues with more subtlety. On the other hand, the
“permissiveness” tends to burden people with larger family responsibilities,
especially for raising kids – something that doesn’t always happen just because
of a personal choice as libertarians see it.
Cyberbullying, and now even asymmetric recruiting by enemies, is one of
the negative results. So these issues
have wide implications for both self-expression and stability.
The biggest context of all is still "national security". I'm not socially competitive enough to make it in a world thrown back to the 19th century by EMP or maybe a massive solar storm. Maybe that's my biggest point.
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