I Hate You, My Lovely France!

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Philosophy Now
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I Hate You, My Lovely France!

Post by Philosophy Now »

Hamid Andishan tells us how Sartre, a philosopher of freedom, had problems with the politics of the land of liberté, and how this affected his view of human rights.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/118/I_ ... ely_France
Ansiktsburk
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Re: I Hate You, My Lovely France!

Post by Ansiktsburk »

Let's leave the kindergarten level, that is presented in this article. The basic message of the article is - Sartre protested againt a "France" that used terms like "human rights presupposes a high degree of civilization" to defend military actions in their colonies after the war.

Sound kind of obvious on a cozy level, a lot like "what idiots the americans were to vote for Trump"(something my Facebook newsflow is littered with). But people aint stupid. There are always reasons, and most often good reasons when a lot of people react in the same manner.

There is, I suppose, all over the western world besserwissers that goes "why are you whining, people in Kongo are starving". And that said from a position where the cause of whining do not affect themselves. But that is not how you look upon your life. What you do, no matter if you are the son of Bill Gates or a street child in Bogotá, is you ground some kind of expectations for your life. Much depending on the cirkumstances you are born into, of course but anyhow, you form a basic sketch for how your life is to be.

And what you do not like is when you get decreases that is well below your expectations. And, face it, both Swedes in 1995 as well as French in 1945 had much of the expectations depending on the economic situation they were born into. A situation with the western countries being in a very good economic situation, most probably depending on the rest of the world being held back. But anyhow, people are going to listen to things that makes negative derivata bearable. Even though people are starving in Kongo.

The interesting thing is, that when a person goes above a certain level of expectation, they do not longer fear the status for themselves. My experience, as a lower class kid, that has gone to university and do now spend my time with people from the upper classes is that -
Ayn Rand point of views is the cause for the "rich leftists", "PC"-people or whatever you call the guys like the very Bourgeouise Sartre. What you see is that one guy that "Makes money", comes into property big enough will enable the siblings to have a feeling that "work 9 to 5" is not what I want to do with my life. They do not really see a threat from "cheap chinese labour". In fact, that might be to their advantage since their source of money, that well might have been formed 3 or more generations back really gains from jobs disappearing from their home country. And I do not think that Sartre saw any threat to his personal standard or life objectives from Algeria or French Africa being or not being colonies. The expectations of life for this kind of people is not threatened.

But for the guys in the middle, that matters. It might not, from a perspective of the elite, seem morally fair to do things to defend a middle-class position. But face it, you do want to keep your job.

We do see loads of this in my home county that is accepting hoards of refugees from Irak, Syria and other chaos countries. The "reasons" from the anti-refugee-immigration people, and that is A LOT of people, are often things like "jihadists", or pure racist comments. But the bottom line is - we do not want a big, unemployed under-class that generates a lot of crimes and social welfare. As for jobs the chinese and Indians (and automization) are greater threats than the Syrians, but it is the same cup of tea.

The things considered here, the well-being of westerners compared to the "third" worlds need of development is a really tough nut to crack. But there it is. Things are global, and there will have to be global solutions than NOT ONLY makes things for people in the third world better but also makes the prospects for the middle classes in the western world acceptable. No matter what rich leftist moralists say. Trump, Brexit and Nationalist parties all over the place makes that obvious.

The Ideology that bears, I think, the solution to this is called, if I translate directly from my uncouth maiden language "structural conservatism". I do not really know what that is called in English or American. Not a conservatism that strives for USA 1958, but simply the view that "All changes should be made slowly". Look at the social democrats VS the communists. Ponder upon what would have been if Gorbatjov had been allowed to continue his Perestrojka and Glasnost.
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