During our lazy float down the Rio Salado today, Mike Valle and I had a lot to talk about. He mentioned a new blog he had come across entitled I Want a New Left. The author, John Pepples, aims to develop a self-critical leftism. Now, having read quickly through most of his posts, I am a bit puzzled by the same thing that puzzles Mike: why does Pepples hang on to the 'leftism' label?
But labels aren't that important. What is important are the issues and one's stances on them. On that score, conservatives like me and Mike share common ground with Pepples. In his biographical statement he says that in college he majored in mathematics and took a lot of physics courses. "But this was during the late 60s and early 70s, when much questioning was occurring, and I ended up as a grad student in philosophy." Sounds very familiar! The 'sixties were a heady time, a time of ferment, during which indeed "much questioning was occurring." I started out in Electrical Engineering but also "ended up as a grad student in philosophy." I did, however, have a bit more luck career-wise and didn't experience the same difficulties getting into print.
Why did so many of us 60s types end up in philosophy? Because we were lost in a strange land, traditional understandings and forms of world-orientation having left us without guidance, and we needed to ascend to a vantage point to reconnoiter the terrain, the vantage point that philosophy alone provides.
Political change, a species of the genus doxastic change, is a fascinating topic. I recently stumbled upon an effort by a distaff blogger who documents her transition from a comfortable enclave of mutually reinforcing Democrats to the more open world of contemporary conservatism, and the hostility with which her turncoat behavior was rewarded. She calls her blog Neo-Neocon.
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