The Nascent Pragmatist

The initial reason for this blog to exist is to take an internal monologue - a sincere question of where exactly I stand idealogically - and throw it out into the public square.  This is a blog about doubt and uncertainty, especially as they apply to politics.

To that end, I don’t expect this ever to become a popular blog.  Even though most people need more doubt rather than less, it isn’t exactly a popular prescription.  The Wikipedia page on Agnosticism starts by defining agnosticism as “the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims — particularly metaphysical claims regarding theology, afterlife or the existence of God, gods, deities, or even ultimate reality — is unknown or, depending on the form of agnosticism, inherently unknowable.”

Perhaps it is a personality trait, but in addition to being an agnostic (of the above definition) in religious matters, I am also very much one in the realm of politics. It seems a ludicrous proposition that any single political philosophy is inherently right or true.

Libertarianism, for example, is an admirable philosophy, and is built upon a wonderful mechanism (the market), but I nevertheless express a doubt that the universe just happens to have been constructed in such a way that everything works optimally provided all actors are given maximal degress of freedom.

Likewise, while the degree of focus and alignment possible under a top-down political system seems eminently desirable to this engineer, I well understand that monocultures are inherently vulnerable to decay and stagnation - and therefore understand that the argument that the government is incapable of running a large program efficiently has more than a grain of truth to it.

There are very intelligent, rational people on both sides of the big/small government arguments, and I have trouble thinking that either side is completely right or wrong.  Sometimes you need alignment.  Sometimes you need efficiency.  And sometimes you simply need to use the tools that each side provides to get to the best outcome that you can, imperfect though it may be.   There’s the pragmatist, I suppose.

Imagine for a moment that you have two tribes.  One reveres the Spoon above all else - and they use it to eat everything, even things the spoon isn’t really suited to eating.  The other venerates the fork - and likewise uses it to eat absolutely everything, no matter how inconvenient.

What I wish to hypothesize is the existence of the political spork - a device capable of using the mechanisms of each philosophy without being idealogically beholden to either tribe.

In truth, what I yearn for - as a pragmatist - is a way to use the tools that each side presents - free markets and regulation, personal responsibiliy and paternalism - and use them in a way that is more than simply a compromise position between the idealogies.  (And here the spork metaphor falls apart, seeing as it’s mostly just a compromise…)

So compromise - in the traditional sense of “A good compromise is one that makes everyone unhappy” - is right out.  I’m not sure why aiming to make people unhappy is a good goal.  It seems to me the point is to solve whatever problem we were compromising about in the first place.

As of right now, I’m still learning what might be needed in order to achieve this path - the one that is neither left nor right, but is also certainly not middle. (Perhaps it’s flying?)  But finding this pragmatic extremist path is what this blog is intended to be about.

Part of the fun, really, is not knowing where you are going.

(Coming up next:  A full disclosure of all of my known biases and prejudices.  Something that every blog ought to have, really.)