my politics
I wooed Quinn in London with a proud defence of euro-socialism, aimed at the sort of migratory libertarian that she was back then. Americans rarely hear socialism defended, which I think made me exotic. And while staunchly in the mid-left of Britain to my friends, I secretly loved the libertarian movement from a safe distance. Dzm once said that technological utopians were like the marxist-leninist boys she knew back in Yugoslavia, who'd use their fine dialectic primarily to seduce. I couldn't see much use in libertarian writing in the real world, but you could certainly get me into bed with it.
Since then, I think Quinn and i have awkwardly squeezed past and swapped quadrants on that chart. Sitting here in America, putting together the missing cultural pieces of what I'd read, I tried on a few of the weirder positions that emerge from the witches' brew of ideologies here. Quinn, on the other hand, spent some time studying proper economics and I think came to the conclusion that most of the practical suggestions of her childhood heroes were built on sand and crack-rock.
The end result is that i think both our politics are now completely fucked-up. Quinn looks pretty lefty to a first approximation, but occasionally says these things (like her gung-ho approach to genetic engineering) that make it look she might pull out a gun and start darwinistically shooting everyone who was too weakened by their complicity with the class struggle to fight back. Meanwhile, I think if I ever dared said what I thought about some standard positions in polite company, I'd be left with no polite company at all, just a few bum-fluff moustachioed overprivileged rich white kids to keep me in my old age.
But what do I really think? I wanted for a long time to have a wiki page with my politics on it - mainly because it changes so often, but also because I liked the idea that other people could change my politics on a daily basis, and I'd be happy to try that out.
But mostly, I think the strange attractors that my opinions whirl around are these:
1. Long term plan: beating the heat death of the universe, somehow.
2. Flag-waving irrational support for homo sapiens and descendant species. Wider fondness for intelligent life in general.
3. Belief in protecting safety of (2) and execution of (1) through radical diversity of approaches.
4. Distrust of stratified authority (realistically, mainly due to how my monkey brain is miswired).
5. Whacked personal theory that all of the above can be best addressed by extreme decentralisation of power, implemented in as close to irrevoccable physical law as is possible.
6. Tentative belief that whacked anarcho-capitalist theories hold as best an analysis for how (5) would work as anything I can see.
7. Instinctive dislike for denial of externalities and power stratification problem exhibited by (6)
There, I said it. One day, I'll look back on these opinions, and laugh, or else have myself thrown into jail for crimethink.
Since then, I think Quinn and i have awkwardly squeezed past and swapped quadrants on that chart. Sitting here in America, putting together the missing cultural pieces of what I'd read, I tried on a few of the weirder positions that emerge from the witches' brew of ideologies here. Quinn, on the other hand, spent some time studying proper economics and I think came to the conclusion that most of the practical suggestions of her childhood heroes were built on sand and crack-rock.
The end result is that i think both our politics are now completely fucked-up. Quinn looks pretty lefty to a first approximation, but occasionally says these things (like her gung-ho approach to genetic engineering) that make it look she might pull out a gun and start darwinistically shooting everyone who was too weakened by their complicity with the class struggle to fight back. Meanwhile, I think if I ever dared said what I thought about some standard positions in polite company, I'd be left with no polite company at all, just a few bum-fluff moustachioed overprivileged rich white kids to keep me in my old age.
But what do I really think? I wanted for a long time to have a wiki page with my politics on it - mainly because it changes so often, but also because I liked the idea that other people could change my politics on a daily basis, and I'd be happy to try that out.
But mostly, I think the strange attractors that my opinions whirl around are these:
1. Long term plan: beating the heat death of the universe, somehow.
2. Flag-waving irrational support for homo sapiens and descendant species. Wider fondness for intelligent life in general.
3. Belief in protecting safety of (2) and execution of (1) through radical diversity of approaches.
4. Distrust of stratified authority (realistically, mainly due to how my monkey brain is miswired).
5. Whacked personal theory that all of the above can be best addressed by extreme decentralisation of power, implemented in as close to irrevoccable physical law as is possible.
6. Tentative belief that whacked anarcho-capitalist theories hold as best an analysis for how (5) would work as anything I can see.
7. Instinctive dislike for denial of externalities and power stratification problem exhibited by (6)
There, I said it. One day, I'll look back on these opinions, and laugh, or else have myself thrown into jail for crimethink.