Link to my Novel, The Campaign
Just a shameless promotion post for my novel, available on Amazon and other ebook sellers The Campaign By Trip Powers
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Bulwark against Change: Human Nature, excerpt from The Campaign
The following is an excerpt from my novel, The Campaign. It is the first of four speeches delivered by the candidate, Jackson Turner, about the "Bulwarks against change". It's been a while since I have used this blog, and reading through my first attempts shows that I am still concerned about similar issues. The Campaign, Chapter 28 “Thank you for your warm reception. I hope that by the end of this speech I will have earned it.” More applause. “When I announced my intention to run for Senator, I made a pledge that this campaign would be about uncovering the realities that we all face, and the forces which keep us largely in the dark. The forces which support the status quo of injustice and inequality. One of my favorite quotes from anthropologist Marvin Harris led me to see things that we are not supposed to see. He made the claim that “Art and politics fashion the collective dreamwork that prevents us from understanding the realities of our social lives.” ...
Envision a new premise
There are some foundational, yet quite simple and elegant, ideas that inform my consciousness. I have already touched on a few but let me be more specific. "There is no one right way to live" Daniel Quinn in Ishmael . I have greatly enjoyed Quinn's books for they forced me out of the ineffective spiral that is issue based politics into a more holistic approach to what has been going on here. The idea above is so simple yet if you lived by it, so meaningful. What does "there is no one right way to live" imply? If there is no one right way then most of the folly of the world is put into a different focus - as attempts to make people live what one group deemed the "one right way". Timely is the disintegration of the Iraqi "state". Josh Marshall nailed it when he said the long term causes lie at the feet of the map drawers in 1917 in Paris and London, but nonetheless, the basic premise of the Iraq war was the Unites States trying to m...
Where to begin...
The first thing that we have to do is establish what the "gumption traps" are to making change happen in the world. The first one we have to tackle is "human nature." We have all been in a conversation with a defender of the status quo and probably had them on the ropes. Frankly, it is hard to defend this or this . At some point though the conversation will turn toward solutions and the best that most leftists can come up with is a fairer distribution of wealth, and the wealthy sacrificing (or something along these lines). At this point, our status quo friend says, "aha, that is contrary to human nature." And then they gleefully go and get another drink, as you sit frustrated because you don't know where to go next. Today, I hope to give you some ammo. The common understanding of this concept of human nature is this; "selfishness with meaness/lack of caring". Let's unpack this. It is not only that people do things in their bes...