[373] Middle Ground Zero

I want to talk about the idea of “the middle way.” I also want to criticize ideas and statements that masquerade as the reasonable adult way of understanding the world.

Initially, I think about the ideal political situation. The idea of negotiating a center that keeps extreme positions at either end, and the reasonable people basically being able to agree on a common premise. In a democracy, it's theorized that rational actors with the perfect information would make decisions in service to their best interests. Clearly, that works every time. I think there are places, like our political realm, where that idea, that there is indeed a middle ground, does a lot of work in misleading our cultural conversation.

Another easy one is health. Would you rather be healthy or have cancer? Why not shoot for the middle ground and we just give you diabetes and a broken leg. It's manageable and not immediately life threatening, right? But no, you'll insist that you want to be healthy. Most sane people would because when it comes to the stark reality of “I feel like shit” it's so very clear what an ideal situation would look like.

I was reading over a reddit thread, specifically this one “hate the liberals” guy's comments to people expressing frustration over Obama's new bill to lower student debt interest rates. Examples of his comments amount to “you were an adult, you shouldn't have signed the loan,” “You're a fucking retard thinking the government owes you anything,” “Education is not free (n)or a right,” “I made better decisions than you, studied something better than you, I don't want to pay for you,” and “you entitled parasites don't seem to understand life isn't fair and that not everyone succeeds.” There are severely worse comments, but this will do for now.

Let's respond line by line. This idea that “you were an adult” seems to say that “now that you're a reasonable and wise individual with no unfair barriers and perfect information, you picked the objectively worst thing to do to yourself in this situation.” I, at least, had about as much choice to go to college as I have to currently work at McDonalds. It's amazing how many parents bought the idea that college meant job and opportunities well before their kids did. It amazes me to think that we'd admonish someone for, what's been touted as the “adult” thing to do, go to college, for incurring the costs that became normalized at all levels of society, in order to do so.

It's not being “reasonable” to lean on the idea that “well, people are adults!” Adults in a context. Or children who are as old as adults who've never been taught or engaged with by a reasonably better interpretation of the word “adult.”

The idea that the government doesn't owe you anything is particularly interesting. In a representative democracy, the government owes you everything. The government owes you its very jobs. If the majority of people with unreasonable crippling debt call on the government to do something about it, the government should respond. This accounting and thought experiment has been done hundreds of times. Things like relocating agribusiness and oil subsidies. Why begrudge the guy who tried to get educated and be responsible instead of writing angry letters to the banks? What did the government owe them? Whatever it was, it's still being paid.

Education not being free nor a right is a statement of fact. But, more to the point, nothing is a right besides the right to die. And then, only if you don't drag that phrasing into the political arena! Rights are bread from understanding and struggle. When you have access, ability, and intention, a “right” starts to manifest in louder and louder fashion. How many blacks and women have been explained to them the rights they don't have in our democracies over the years?

There are things you state because they are true. There are things you state, while incidentally true, only serve to promote the status quo or deliberately ignore other avenues. To say something like “don't touch that pot, it's hot” is not the same kind of factual claim as “don't complain because the government doesn't owe you anything.” The second statement is the kind of folded argument “logic” you get from religious types. “Well, you can't prove there's not a god!” Okay...true, but that usually has absolutely nothing to do with why you think that god doesn't want me to have an abortion. If you don't want to get burned, you don't touch the pot. If you want a different financial obligation, allegedly you appeal to your representatives.

The next lines are about personal responsibility. I don't know how you can talk of responsibility without speaking to what society considers responsible. It goes back to simply going to college in the first place. That's what higher paying jobs expect. That's what they did, that's their standard, and for a great many things, college isn't simply a giant waste of money. But, not only are kids in schools screwed going in, but when they're out, a lot of the jobs they were shooting for, say in medicine, are proving less than useful in paying back their loans anymore than the art student can. There's an underlying societal/governmental problem that makes a truly “responsible” decision, at best difficult, and at worst practically arbitrary.

Finally, the idea that not everyone succeeds and that life isn't fair. Maybe you come across someone who's been in a serious car accident. Do you pull up next to them and yell “life's not fair fucko!” and speed off in celebration of your ability to better avoid being in accidents? Probably not. It's a statement of “fact” that doesn't really speak to whether or not the accident happened on a bridge that wasn't reinforced or a road that wasn't properly paved. It ignores the poor car quality standards that could have reduced it to a fender bender instead of someone bleeding out on the pavement.

There are levels of responsibility and “fair” that we install. Also, we install them for reasons. If you want to speed, you don't argue with the cop that it's not fair he pulled you over. Why make the care able to go so fast if I can't use it! It's fair to assume that most people most of the time should try to drive in ways that don't make it more likely for you to die arbitrarily. We'll leave aside Montana's odd speed experiment, imposing speed limits and seeing an increase in death, with that analogy.

There is a, I don't know what else to call it but “religious zealotry” that people, at some level or another subscribe to that they coat in unhelpful and unnecessary “facts” to try and sound reasonable or advocating for “something in the middle.” These are idealists not because they understand what's actually ideal, but because they are allowed to create and defend to the death what they personally define as ideal. They subscribe to axioms about age or habits of “good leaders” instead of describing the context under which different ideas are formed. They appeal to reputation and common ethics above cause and effect evidence.

These are the people who say one of the dumbest and most popular statements right now, “there are some scientists that don't believe in global warming.” If you watch the episode of “Years of Living Dangerously,” try not to throw something through your TV when the pastor of one of the country's biggest churches argues that “because you haven't addressed my points!” He's neither convinced nor impressed. It's a guy you can't persuade ice melts, but you'll try, until you don't know whether you hate him or yourself more.

The “middle way,” to me, is not making these empty aphorisms about “life” or “how it works.” Nor is it taking a bath in shit, then in honey, and showing off how beautiful you look and awesome you smell. Put the shit in the garden and the honey on the toast. Understand that every time you say “Democrats suck” you're not really saying anything. The middle is about perspective, not leveraging bad or empty ideas against each other. It means you can advocate for equal opportunity without bankrupting potentially vital pieces of infrastructure. It means you're influenced by history and examples that aren't feeling laden anecdotes. It means you can respect when the responsibility is truly yours, you know, like for going to school, and when you should expect the burden for certain things, like how it's paid for, to be on everyone. Every old person on Medicaid who complains about entitled millennials should unironically drop dead on the spot.

“Objective” is not a negotiation. You don't want just a little bit of cancer. In the same way you don't track increasing tuition for 30 years, for no other reasons beyond corruption, and blame kids for “being adults who made the poor decision to pay for an education.”