Something about morality...

I would like to stake out a position on morality and responsibility that walks a line between utter dependence and vapid individualism. Staking personal feeling and enjoyment on other people ends up failing you. Not because of corruptability or any overriding sense of self interest, but because of the shifting nature of their own desire and requirements for life. No one leads a static life, with static approaches to desire. Predictions and expectations about the actions of others becomes its own form of truth process, a strange form of personal morality that conditions our actions in relation to a supposedly self evident set of goals. Acting for the sake of someone else always in reality is action for yourself. This concerns a notion I thought about before, I think. Uncritically endorsing the choices of the oppressed to found a political perspective fails to theorize why those choices are available to people. Power operates by offering certain rewards and sanctions to create subjects who willingly adopt positions that support the privilege of particular groups. Creating positions around the norms that define subjugated groups – some forms of identity specific feminisms, for example – assumes that those social norms have neutral content.

The other side to this process looks too much like libertarian ideology of pure self reliance and abandoning of any concern for others. I’m finding difficulty walking this line, trying to cultivate human concern and affect without assuming a relationship of reliance. I find it difficult to tell people that they have total control over the entirety of their lives, that they can create anything they want, as I have regularly seen the differential impact class/race/gender privilege has had on my life. This response would further insulate myself within these privileges if it had the result of blaming people for subjugation to social oppression.

Duncan