Wednesday 12 May 2010

The slough of despond

I want to say something, but I'm not sure exactly what, or how to say it. As ever, I find myself unable to select between many ideas.

In general terms, though, I'm getting very bored with polemics. The stuff I've read since the general election has been utterly predictable, and not particularly productive.

And I'm talking about the Left here. I'm not particularly interested in what right wing commentators have to say, and I'm in the main, blissfully unaware of it since I don't generally read the stuff.

This isn't just a recent thing. Going back a few years, I can remember British Left Wingers shouting at Americans for being such morons as to elect George W Bush.

Great stuff. "Hey, Americans!, You're idiots!" Just the thing to swing people to a different point of view.

So I suppose I'm looking for things that fit together, rather than someone venting their opinions. I know the two are not mutually incompatible, but it ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it I supppose.

For example, I have a lot of time for both Mark Lynas and George Monbiot - both of them can be found in the blog list to the right of this post, but of the two, Lynas comes across as more trustworthy, and less agenda driven. Similarly, Justin McKeating at Chicken Yoghurt is starting to get on my nerves. Not that I don't think he has a point, more that I'm already aware of the issues, and the constant and unvarying reiteration is starting to get on my nerves. Nothing personal. Just where I am right now.

Things that fit together? Well there are certain ideas and concepts that make a lot of sense to me. Instead of being party political, or just evenhanded in their cynicism and distain for mainstream politics, these ideas stand up to logical analysis.

Here are a few:

  1. "You can't have indefinite growth within a finite system."
  2. "If you have a finite resource and you use some of it, there will be less of it available for you to use in future."
  3. "If something has an effect, making that something bigger will tend to have a greater effect."
  4. "order and complexity require energy."

Stuff like that.

On the other hand,

"David Cameron went to a posh school so he's evil" ?

Well so did Tony Benn. Grow the fuck up.

One of the first things this new government has done is to scrap the plans for Heathrow's third runway. Yes I know they plan to build a high speed rail link that will also use huge amounts of energy (and which is part of trying to continue with economic growth - see point 1 above) but I wonder if left wingers will be able to see pst their prejudices and put credit where credit is due?

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