What is new is obviously not the divisions or the strife or the conflict. What is new is the absence of a cultural infrastructure, ordinarily taken for granted, by which the divisions, the strife, the conflict might be adjudicated, resolved, or even spoken about intelligibly.
Appreciated the Arendt quotes. I think about these lines when it comes to education, and how schools and school adjacent extracurricular activities allow children little time to develop in privacy. Your writing here makes me think about the formative influence of remembering and mourning, and what we may lose in terms of human (and public) development without supporting these practices.
Also, looking forward to a possible Illich reading group.
Yes, thank you, I do love this essay. The idea of natality and protecting the old from the new and new from the old is useful to think about during this era of climate change and digital social disruption. Do we adults feel at home enough in the world to have a sense of what is valuable and worth passing on to future generations, the newcomers?
This was a great edition. I'm curious about your use of "we", as in, e.g.
> we've lost touch with a common repository of rites, rituals, gestures, language, and ceremonies through which we might acknowledge, commemorate, and perhaps even sublimate the death and suffering of our fellow citizens.
because, of course, the mandatory response to any deployment of the undifferentiated rhetorical "we" is:
We who?
This is connected, I think, to your identification of the destruction, or the zombification, of
> "the public” or “the public sphere"
singular, which is disassembled by "agents of disintegration," with the implication (I think?) that what remains is… wreckage? Shrapnel? Parts that would be better off as a whole?
There's another reading: that the process is not only disintegration or destruction, but also budding or calving: the production of fresh new publics, densely woven, overlapping.
This possibility seems especially "live" to me when you consider conversations beyond "politics" (as defined, ironically, by that 20th century mass-media public sphere: "the kinds of things you find in the politics section of a newspaper") and look at the publics now organized around, e.g., housing policy in California, home fermentation, cutting-edge AI research, sewing, obsolete printing technology, a particular brainy email newsletter -- all of them political in their own way.
So, a sincere question: who is the "we" of the Convivial Society?
Robin, great questions. You are, of course, right about the rhetorical "we." In fact, a couple of years ago I wrote about the slippery/evasive use of the rhetorical "we" in tech ethics discourse, my point basically was that there was not meaningful antecedent. That said, I'm not always as careful as I should be about it in my own use. In this case, what I had in view was something like the nation considered as a social/political/cultural unit, as a people. I wasn't sufficiently clear about this beyond a passing comment about how certain small communities may retain compelling cultural forms, but not the nation. So naturally the we did not include a fair share of international readers, although I hoped that some of this might nonetheless prove useful to them.
So I confess that there is an ambiguity or an uneasiness in my thinking about these matters. On the one hand, I'm glad to see the flourishing of small scale communities, or what I think of as human scale communities, of the sort you listed. I think these are essential to human flourishing and we're better off as members of such communities. It is in these publics or communities that we have the opportunity to "appear," as Arendt puts it, in our particularity, where we are known and our actions matter. May such budding increase.
On the other, it seems to me we need also to function reasonably well and decently as a nation, and I do worry that it is becoming harder to do so because the ties that might hold us together are fraying. I fear for the dark paths that may unfold before us as a result. This latter point is chiefly what animates my comments in this installment.
I hope this doesn't come across as to muddled or contradictory. It is a real tension, I think, and from one vantage point I can celebrate the developments, but from another I do worry deeply. Please do let me know if this makes some sense.
As for the "we" of the Convivial Society ... well, I've never thought to put that question quite like that. Readers might be able to answer it better than I, but my aspiration has been for this "we," insofar as it exists at all, to exist for the sake of thought, reflection, and, ultimately, love of neighbor. Perhaps even to assuage a kind of loneliness, as well. But now I feel a fresh installment coming on, so I better quit.
I mean, the Big Rhetorical "We" is very seductive; it soars! But I do think it conceals more than it illuminates, even (maybe especially) when it's used to stand in for "all the people of this nation."
I made a resolution a couple of years ago never to use "we" without a specific antecedent and although I have, of course, slipped up many times, I've been generally much better about it, and I think it's improved my writing & my thinking.
This whole question makes me think, also, of Alan Jacobs' recent blog post about the word "expert." That might sound like a non sequitur, but I think the issue is actually similar: language as talisman (and I do think the broad "we seem," "we must" of the Big Rhetorical "We" is talismanic) vs. language as clear communication of social configurations: https://blog.ayjay.org/my-expert-opinion/
Seductive is a good word, and I readily grant its talismanic quality (that was a great post from Alan, as per). Anchoring the pronoun on a concrete antecedent is always to be preferred in my view, I think we're basically on the same page with that. I guess the genuine question I'm left with is whether there's any reality that could be named by a "national we"? Does it exist at all? Do I belong, in a way that justifies the use of "we," to a real collective that includes citizens of Monterrey, Charleston, Anchorage, Bismark, and Miami? Or is that just a fiction?
"It is striking to me, just now, how little we’ve grieved the loss. I don’t mean to say that families and friends of the dead have not grieved their loss, rather that as a nation we seem to have done very little of it."
I live in upstate NY. I work with and for developmentally disabled adults. Where I'm at, I've seen three serious hospitalizations, one very serious, related to Covid-19. It's a serious disease. I've also experienced the sudden death of a loved one not related to Covid-19 in the past week.
"100,000 COVID-19 deaths" is still an abstraction. It either affects someone you know or it doesn't. For most people, it just hasn't. In any "normal" year, there are approximately 7,500 deaths per day in the US. (please fact check that. maybe it's a little high, but I think it's about right), so 100,000 deaths in a couple of months should not be surprising, especially when it seems like, according to the pop account, non-covid deaths have just magically stopped. It's all covid all the time. It may seem harsh, but to many of us these Covid-19 deaths are tragic, but largely restricted to those elderly with underlying conditions, the people in your life that you wouldn't be surprised about if they suddenly fell mortally ill. Combine this with what we know of overreporting of these deaths, persons dying WITH it are listed as dying FROM it, so you get an infamous case like the guy with the obscene blood alcohol content, three times over the legal limit, likely dying of alcohol poisoning, but listed as a coronavirus death. That's an extreme example, but it's an extreme version of something that otherwise seems common to many grunts in the front lines of the health care system.
For comparison to our current crisis, in New York State alone, there are over 100,000 abortions (legalized murder of unborn persons) here every year. Our governor has enthusiastically acted to "enshrine" (religious language) Roe v Wade into law in NY. As a state and as a nation, we have done very little to mourn this loss.
Most years "we" New Yorkers routinely have 100,000+ largely unmourned deaths (at least in the public corporate sense that you are tilting at) right here in our state. "It demands acknowledgement and a reckoning, not simply a tallying. As I write this, however, it begins to feel almost as if we’re prepared to move on."
Appreciated the Arendt quotes. I think about these lines when it comes to education, and how schools and school adjacent extracurricular activities allow children little time to develop in privacy. Your writing here makes me think about the formative influence of remembering and mourning, and what we may lose in terms of human (and public) development without supporting these practices.
Also, looking forward to a possible Illich reading group.
You may be interested to know that one of those Arendt quotes actually came from an essay on education: https://thi.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Arendt-Crisis_In_Education-1954.pdf
Yes, thank you, I do love this essay. The idea of natality and protecting the old from the new and new from the old is useful to think about during this era of climate change and digital social disruption. Do we adults feel at home enough in the world to have a sense of what is valuable and worth passing on to future generations, the newcomers?
This was a great edition. I'm curious about your use of "we", as in, e.g.
> we've lost touch with a common repository of rites, rituals, gestures, language, and ceremonies through which we might acknowledge, commemorate, and perhaps even sublimate the death and suffering of our fellow citizens.
because, of course, the mandatory response to any deployment of the undifferentiated rhetorical "we" is:
We who?
This is connected, I think, to your identification of the destruction, or the zombification, of
> "the public” or “the public sphere"
singular, which is disassembled by "agents of disintegration," with the implication (I think?) that what remains is… wreckage? Shrapnel? Parts that would be better off as a whole?
There's another reading: that the process is not only disintegration or destruction, but also budding or calving: the production of fresh new publics, densely woven, overlapping.
This possibility seems especially "live" to me when you consider conversations beyond "politics" (as defined, ironically, by that 20th century mass-media public sphere: "the kinds of things you find in the politics section of a newspaper") and look at the publics now organized around, e.g., housing policy in California, home fermentation, cutting-edge AI research, sewing, obsolete printing technology, a particular brainy email newsletter -- all of them political in their own way.
So, a sincere question: who is the "we" of the Convivial Society?
Robin, great questions. You are, of course, right about the rhetorical "we." In fact, a couple of years ago I wrote about the slippery/evasive use of the rhetorical "we" in tech ethics discourse, my point basically was that there was not meaningful antecedent. That said, I'm not always as careful as I should be about it in my own use. In this case, what I had in view was something like the nation considered as a social/political/cultural unit, as a people. I wasn't sufficiently clear about this beyond a passing comment about how certain small communities may retain compelling cultural forms, but not the nation. So naturally the we did not include a fair share of international readers, although I hoped that some of this might nonetheless prove useful to them.
So I confess that there is an ambiguity or an uneasiness in my thinking about these matters. On the one hand, I'm glad to see the flourishing of small scale communities, or what I think of as human scale communities, of the sort you listed. I think these are essential to human flourishing and we're better off as members of such communities. It is in these publics or communities that we have the opportunity to "appear," as Arendt puts it, in our particularity, where we are known and our actions matter. May such budding increase.
On the other, it seems to me we need also to function reasonably well and decently as a nation, and I do worry that it is becoming harder to do so because the ties that might hold us together are fraying. I fear for the dark paths that may unfold before us as a result. This latter point is chiefly what animates my comments in this installment.
I hope this doesn't come across as to muddled or contradictory. It is a real tension, I think, and from one vantage point I can celebrate the developments, but from another I do worry deeply. Please do let me know if this makes some sense.
As for the "we" of the Convivial Society ... well, I've never thought to put that question quite like that. Readers might be able to answer it better than I, but my aspiration has been for this "we," insofar as it exists at all, to exist for the sake of thought, reflection, and, ultimately, love of neighbor. Perhaps even to assuage a kind of loneliness, as well. But now I feel a fresh installment coming on, so I better quit.
I mean, the Big Rhetorical "We" is very seductive; it soars! But I do think it conceals more than it illuminates, even (maybe especially) when it's used to stand in for "all the people of this nation."
I made a resolution a couple of years ago never to use "we" without a specific antecedent and although I have, of course, slipped up many times, I've been generally much better about it, and I think it's improved my writing & my thinking.
This whole question makes me think, also, of Alan Jacobs' recent blog post about the word "expert." That might sound like a non sequitur, but I think the issue is actually similar: language as talisman (and I do think the broad "we seem," "we must" of the Big Rhetorical "We" is talismanic) vs. language as clear communication of social configurations: https://blog.ayjay.org/my-expert-opinion/
Seductive is a good word, and I readily grant its talismanic quality (that was a great post from Alan, as per). Anchoring the pronoun on a concrete antecedent is always to be preferred in my view, I think we're basically on the same page with that. I guess the genuine question I'm left with is whether there's any reality that could be named by a "national we"? Does it exist at all? Do I belong, in a way that justifies the use of "we," to a real collective that includes citizens of Monterrey, Charleston, Anchorage, Bismark, and Miami? Or is that just a fiction?
“. . . has its place, but ideally [not] in the service of values and goods that cannot be accounted for numerically.” presumably?
"It is striking to me, just now, how little we’ve grieved the loss. I don’t mean to say that families and friends of the dead have not grieved their loss, rather that as a nation we seem to have done very little of it."
I live in upstate NY. I work with and for developmentally disabled adults. Where I'm at, I've seen three serious hospitalizations, one very serious, related to Covid-19. It's a serious disease. I've also experienced the sudden death of a loved one not related to Covid-19 in the past week.
"100,000 COVID-19 deaths" is still an abstraction. It either affects someone you know or it doesn't. For most people, it just hasn't. In any "normal" year, there are approximately 7,500 deaths per day in the US. (please fact check that. maybe it's a little high, but I think it's about right), so 100,000 deaths in a couple of months should not be surprising, especially when it seems like, according to the pop account, non-covid deaths have just magically stopped. It's all covid all the time. It may seem harsh, but to many of us these Covid-19 deaths are tragic, but largely restricted to those elderly with underlying conditions, the people in your life that you wouldn't be surprised about if they suddenly fell mortally ill. Combine this with what we know of overreporting of these deaths, persons dying WITH it are listed as dying FROM it, so you get an infamous case like the guy with the obscene blood alcohol content, three times over the legal limit, likely dying of alcohol poisoning, but listed as a coronavirus death. That's an extreme example, but it's an extreme version of something that otherwise seems common to many grunts in the front lines of the health care system.
For comparison to our current crisis, in New York State alone, there are over 100,000 abortions (legalized murder of unborn persons) here every year. Our governor has enthusiastically acted to "enshrine" (religious language) Roe v Wade into law in NY. As a state and as a nation, we have done very little to mourn this loss.
Most years "we" New Yorkers routinely have 100,000+ largely unmourned deaths (at least in the public corporate sense that you are tilting at) right here in our state. "It demands acknowledgement and a reckoning, not simply a tallying. As I write this, however, it begins to feel almost as if we’re prepared to move on."