The Tea Party

I blogged my thoughts on Libertarianism's view of individual vs. collective, and then later on the line between individual freedom and collective responsibility. Now there is an excellent opinion piece in the New York Times that addresses the U.S. American myth of individual autonomy and its significance to the Tea Party movement. It touches on both Cartesian notions of individual subjectivity and Hegelian ideas on the relationship between subjectivity and interdependence. The piece:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/the-very-angry-tea-party/

Faith

It seems to me the most muscular form of faith would be one that involves a conscious choice to presuppose the objects of faith—to live as though they were true—while still remaining aware that they themselves may have no actualization in the material world. This would be a complete faith, exercised by choice and aware of non-actuality. Its impact would still register in every facet of reality, including the material, without its being literal. Immature faith conflates the objects of faith with the material world, and believes them in a literal way. The ironic corollary to this conflation is separation—a dichotomy and a dualism between the mundane and the spiritual. Just as ironically, to separate the objects of faith from their material actualization, allowing objects of faith and the laws of the material world each to be free and functional in their own right and part of a larger whole, evaporates the dichotomy between them and frees one to enjoy the impact of faith on life without needing to strive any longer—inwardly or outwardly—over the material actuality of objects of faith themselves. 'Go your way; your faith has made you whole.'

Individual and Collective

I lost a 13-year-old nephew this past weekend. He was riding a little ATV on private land without a helmet, was thrown from it, and died instantly of a head injury. There is no sense pointing any fingers. It happened, and we all have to make sense of it on every level.

My mind running on as usual, it put me in mind of things like helmet laws (none applied in this case), and any regulation of private behaviors with outcomes that can be statistically tracked as collective phenomena, and are therefore signficant to the public common good. There are people who do not have well developed senses of collective reality and resent certain types of regulation as the 'gummint' trying to take away their freedom. It seems like a difficult question—the line between individual freedom and collective well-being.

All abstract thorizing about individual and collective aside, we lost a sweet, young nephew, cousin, grandson, brother, son, and friend, and it hurts.