RANT

[reasonandmusic]

If you're conservative, religious, right wing, easily offended or a lot of other things, you might not want to read this. I'm not going to be politically correct, either. Not that a lot of people read this journal.

I'm also really tired.

Comments

[troldtog]

"Progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged."

I always thought Umbridge's use of that line was particularly telling. There's a legitimate small-c conservative case for caution in changing long-standing traditions and institutions: developed wisdom of past generations and all that. And you often hear talk of "progress for progress' sake" ostensibly in the context of encouraging that sort of caution and incrementalism in fiddling with traditions.

But, taken literally, talk of "progress for progress' sake" is meaningless. No progress is for its own sake. Progress is only progress relative to some goal that depends upon some set of values that make that goal desirable. Progress is always for the sake of that accompanying set of values. And Rowling shows, with Umbridge's ideologically vacuous rhetorical flourish, how easily the language of what I think is a healthy impulse toward small-c conservatism and/or moderation is co-opted by people who don't genuinely believe in steady, careful, progress but simply have an interest in

[reasonandmusic]

Comment, comment, comment away! I'm totally open and friendly to new people randomly appearing in my journal -- this is about as "personal" as I get on this journal, aside from random occasional comments about music, so it's totally cool. :D I'm in fact rather happy that out of everything on here you chose to comment on this rant, odd as that is.

Umbridge, from the first time I read even a little about her, made all the hairs on my neck stand on end. Just like some conservatives do. 8D (In case you hadn't noticed.) And I agree with everything you've said -- some things can't be changed, or must be changed slowly, in order for progress to be actually accomplished. It's the people that refuse to accept any form of new idea just because it challenges traditionalist values that drive me up the wall.

It's a really sad fact that a lot of pet shops just don't seem to know (or care) about the proper treatment of their animals.

[troldtog]

Er, this is kind of a random comment out of the blue. I was doing reading for class when I came across a passage which reminded me of your rant here, and which I thought you might appreciate (if this turns out to just be spam, sorry XP). Mary Wollstonecraft, roasting Edmund Burke and his preference for the Wisdom of the Ages over first principles alive:

I glow with indignation when I attempt, methodically, to unravel your slavish paradoxes, in which I can find no fixed first principle to refute; I shall not, therefore, condescend to shew where you affirm in one page what you deny in another; and how frequently you draw conclusions without any previous premises:-it would be something like cowardice to fight with a man who had never exercised the weapons with which his opponent chose to combat, and irksome to refute sentence after sentence in which the latent spirit of tyranny appeared.

I perceive, from the whole tenor of your Reflections, that you have a mortal antipathy to reason; but, if there is any thing like argument, or first