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| Sorting Boxes | ||||||||||
| Copyright 2004 D. Frank Robinson | ||||||||||
| The contemporary writers on the topic we call political in Western civilization typically assign their predecessors and contemporaries to either of two boxes - the methodological individualists or the methodological historicists. Some writers begin with the sorting and some writers conclude with the sorting. The 'sort first' writers usually obtain these two boxes as prefabricated by a predecessor who has been assigned to one box or the other and assign himself to the box in which he feels most comfortable and appears most attractive. The 'sort last' writers start with a recipe for fabricating the two boxes such that he will feel most comfortable in one box with one group of writers and the other box will appear as uncomfortable and unattractive as possible for the writers assigned to it. | ||||||||||
| Why, we may ask, is this a "two party/ two box " system? Are any other boxes possible? Are 'boxes' axiomatic? | ||||||||||
| Rest easy. I shall not attempt to explore all possible explanations for all possible questions nor shall I attempt to provide all possible refutations to all possible answers. | ||||||||||
| My inquiry is more modest. I simply wonder: What makes people seek a box for identification? Or what makes most people demand that other people seek a box for identification? | ||||||||||
| The 'box' is a metaphor for boundaries. Is it possible that humans imagine boundaries, so that they can imagine crossing them? How often do you hear talk which amounts to: "Here's where we are; and out there's where we SHOULD want to be?" This kind of talk typically becomes a discussion of "Where here is" , "What there will be like", and "What the MAP between here and there looks like." Head 'em up; move 'em out! | ||||||||||
| It would appear that both the individualist and the historicists boxes require wheels. Given wheels they become bumper cars in a demolition derby. Is it fun and is it lethal? | ||||||||||
| What happens to one who wants to straddle both boxes? What happens to one who wants a third box? Can one refuse to have any box at all? Can one make up a new game? | ||||||||||
| Such questions make the inhabitants of the two traditional bumper cars disoriented, angry and hostile. This results most often in a coalition/competition to flatten anyone outside the box(es). | ||||||||||
| There once were two species of humans inhabiting this planet at the same time. Creationists just gunned their engine. | ||||||||||
| If two, or more, species of humans still existed, how would we revise our boxes? In other words, there would be male and female homo sapiens and there would be male and female NOT homo sapiens and none of the combinations could produce hybrid offspring. | ||||||||||
| What kind of 'political' problem would that be for methodological individualists and methodological historicists? | ||||||||||
| One can suspect there would be some kind of "unification movement"; within each species to bridge the species gap through genetic engineering. It would, of course, be opposed by a "differentiation movement" to preserve what nature has put asunder let no man combine. | ||||||||||
| I pose this scenario to ask if it might be examined to throw some insight on perennial problems WITHIN this species - right NOW. | ||||||||||
| I have used uppercase in these three terms not to shout, but to 'box'. We have a "not within now" box and a NOT "not within now" outside the box. | ||||||||||
| It seems to all come down to forcing choices. Some people know this as the 'presumptive close'. | ||||||||||
| One person addresses the other as if the issues are resolved and "You're one of us now, of course." The rest is a forgone conclusion. Or, "You're NOT one of us now, of course." | ||||||||||
| I shall leave the implications open for now and conclude with this: Bifurcation (spitting into two) is often nothing more than a polemical (rhetorical) strategy for an argument supporting political unification - one party. If there are only two parties, they can be reduced to one more easily (with less resistance) than if there are three or four. But one party immediately confronts the conundrum of defining a party or parties NOT WITHIN it NOW. The easiest political course which avoids defining a disruptive resistance is to maintain TWO parties like binary stars circling around nothing and sweeping up as much a possible between them. So, method is metaphor. | ||||||||||
| But such stars are known to collide and resolve much of their constituents into subatomic particles unable to see the light and having always felt the heat - metaphorically speaking, of course. | ||||||||||