Reality check

[erudito]

Read a truly remarkable book, Civilization and its Enemies: the Next Stage of History by Lee Harris.

Harris is the most prominent, and most insightful, of a particular class of commentator that the interaction of Sept 11 2001 with the rise of the blogosphere has created - the (formerly) non-political writer-commentator. Orson Scott Card, Jeff

Comments

[unsworn_nomore]

Suppose you are always a big loser from normal politics. Loyalty (which is self-denying), voice (which has already failed) or exit are your options. If you choose exit, you may find a like-minded group. Over time, those with weaker commitment will tend to leave such a group, intensifying identification with particular beliefs and practices within the group. If the group becomes more isolated, both paranoid cognition (supposing the worst of those you are not in communication with) and sinister attribution (exaggerating the degree to which they are the target of attention) are likely to grow. Both these aid group loyalty while damaging the knowledge-acquisition of members. A crippled epistemology can then greatly aid group cohesion.

*nods vigourously* I can't count how many times I've encountered this on all sides of the political spectrum - Totskyites, the Sydney Mardi Gras, Born-Agains...

social dynamics ultimately determine a lot, perhaps even all, of what we think of as politics.

Oh yes

[erudito]

I had so many 'aha!' responses myself.

The great thing about this analysis is it is, as you say, about social dynamics in a general sense, not restricted to particular ideologies, or even particular social milieus.

Re: Oh yes

[unsworn_nomore]

Indeed. I must track down a copy of this book myself.