Relativity

2002-12-08 - 7:31 a.m.

There are two entries I want to make right now...one about how I can completely be crazy, how I undercut myself, hwo there's a devil inside that wants me to make an ass of myself. The age of the internet allows me to make an ass of myself in front of people who've never seen me via forums posts while drunk.

The other entry, which I've decided to write, I think, is about my beliefs, and activism, and being a socialist, and how I doubt myself sometimes.

The big concern comes up when I compare myself to other people, and their beliefs. Especially really smart people who I really disagree with. What if they have better information than I do? What if war, or capitalism, or whatever is actually the best or only way? What if I'm being foolishly idealistic by hoping for alternatives?

There is a group of right-wing folks that argue that pacifists are more harmful than they are helpful. By arguing against war, they say, pacifists are actually -helping- despotic dictators. Would we have argued to leave Hitler alone? There are some conflicts that require force to resolve. There are rumours that, during the cold war, the Russians were secretly funding certain protest groups because they helped to destabilize the US, on a social platform, by making the moral battlefield seem less two-sided.

Those are valid concerns. Which was more reprehensable: Hitler's extermination of millions of Jewish, Homosexual, Handicapped, and non-white, non-acceptable people, or the violence and lives lost to stop him? Which is more reprehensible: Saddam Hussein or bin Laden's human rights violations, or the force that the US intends to use against them?

It's easy to condemn a lot of the stances that the US, and western nations in general, take, in part because they're inconsistent. There are crimes against humanity in China, in Africa, in South America...in many of the countries that -aren't- experiencing George W.'s wrathful gaze. In South America, and elsewhere, a lot of those crimes are being perpetrated by people trained by the US government to do exactly what they're doing. The US isn't interested in following through with human rights, at least based on past actions: they had an opportunity to depose Hussein during the gulf war, to stablize Iraq after the dust cleared, but they didn't. The oil fields were opened again and they stepped back. Already, Afghanistan is turning into a chaotic set of nation-states, the different tribal groups unable to work together and the US forces, that are -supposed- to be working to restore the country, are being pulled into other conflicts. It's easy to condemn the US because their stated policies don't always mesh with their actions, and even their stated policies are hypocritical. I won't touch the debateable competency of the US president.

But there's still doubt. Where do I put my faith? Where do I get my news? I can only make decisions and choices and form beliefs based on the information available to me. By reading one article over another, even if I'm not aware of the effects, I've changed what choices I may make down the road. Should we go to war or not? If I read a paper that says Iraq is sincere about following the Arms inspectors, will my thoughts be different than if I read an article saying that they're lying and prepared to bomb us?

There's a reason why media must be free: if I can't trust the news I see, then I can't trust the beliefs I hold. The absolute best I can do is take information from a few sources, trust my gut when comparing what they say, and hope that I'm somewhere close to the truth. But if I make a decision based on three lies instead of one, how is that any better?

Right now, I'm fairly certain that I have a good grasp of reality, or at least as strong as I can get, but there's so little out there that can act as ballast, or an anchoring point when I'm uncertain.

I wish I had done a rough draft of this entry, because I think I've misplaced my point.

The fear is that we could end up in a 1984-like world, where the news tells me nothing but lies. I can imagine how disconnected that would make me feel, to know or suspect something that everyone else considers complete nonsense. How can I judge my own validity, how can I be sure I'm not some conspiracy kook?

It's a really frightening thing, and that's probably closest to the source of the unease I feel when watching CNN and seeing how -different- its emphasis is, how skewed, comparatively, its stories are to the rest of the world's.

Cheers,

The Magus

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