'Loose Talk'
By Benjamin Benedict

It Works For Me

Our method of arriving at any given conclusion is to consider the alternatives. It is something that our success and our survival depend on.  This has led to what are generally called ‘arguments’. It occurs to me that this adversarial process is now ceasing to serve us as well as it has and that we are now living in an age where to hold a specific point of view is both simplistic and dangerous.

Of course we must make decisions, but I have to question the structures that have evolved from this necessity. We are divided into camps, and whatever the question at hand, it always seems to be a matter of opting for one camp or another.

This seems to be the best that can be done in an imperfect world, but is it? Take the field of medicine. Would not a more open minded approach to ‘alternative’ and ‘oriental’ medicine have kept millions out of our hospitals, and have avoided millions of operations? I suspect so.

It is interesting that in times of war, political parties cooperate, but as soon as the conflict is over, it is back to the old ‘right and wrong’ scenario. Why do things suddenly become so black and white? Well, of course they do not. It is a construct which leads to the best manipulator of the supposed facts being the likely victor. The reality is that as soon as the structure has to work efficiently in the face of a powerful, opposing element, say in a team sport or on a ship, the concept of dispute disappears.

I recently spent a number of weeks commenting on the daily news articles posted by a left-wing, American blog. What impressed me was, to put it kindly, the ‘wishful thinking’ behind so many of the pieces. How can it be constructive to overstate the case? I have recently received two emails from people who I would normally consider to be clear thinkers. One concerned the supposed fact that the holocaust is not taught in UK schools the other concerned Ronald Reagan’s purported diary comment on George Bush’s son, ‘GW’. Both were spurious, but neither party would make a retraction or so much as apologise. They portrayed their broadcasts as ‘fun’ but they were simply lies, which is where all this ‘wishful thinking’ ends.

Satire is something else again. It is the antidote to this contentious system of ours, but that does not make the system safe and true. Satire simply makes fun out of the fact that it is not. Even if the administrators are safe and true (as I believe they usually are) the combative nature of the terrain is bound to reduce all but the most straight-backed to a compromised shadow of their former selves. There is an amusing movie where Jack Lemon and James Garner play two former US Presidents. Their own essential corruption gives the plot a much needed touch of reality, but why should this be so?

Looking at the world from another perspective, I have recently read and reviewed Mark Leonard’s book, ‘What Does China Think’. It struck me how in China much political thought is peculiarly cooperative and even experimental to western eyes. For all of China’s dictatorial pomposity, ideas can be considered objectively and rather than being espoused or rejected, there can even be a ‘test-run’.     

‘It works for me,’ is all anyone can say about anything, anymore. There is no point in arguing, but every point in considering the options. We must learn how to do this without limiting our freedom.

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