It was one of those meetings that set out to change the world. All of us had the same altruistic objective: to make the world a better place, not only for ourselves, but for everybody. We didn't want anybody to be oppressed, or poor, or hungry, or unable to fulfill their highest potential.
We were New Age people, and we met to discuss ways and means of achieving whatever it was we wanted to achieve. On this night somebody wanted the group to agree on an action plan to do something. That something was to be based on a book doing the rounds at the time, a series of speeches which set out the author’s ideas on how to achieve what she called "a civil society".
It was full of wonderful glittering generalities, like "social capital", a phrase with which everybody agreed but nobody could define. Everyone had their own definition, which they thought was obvious, and certainly beyond the need for discussion. This allowed everybody to seem to agree on something without rigorous investigation of what that something actually was, but everybody knew that it was good, whatever it was, and so nobody could argue against it without appearing to be very Old Age indeed.
Political correctness is at its best when practised by politicians, who know that if they can fill a speech with politically correct generalities, they can get everybody to agree with them, even although they bitterly disagree with each other. As long as nobody tries to get at the meaning behind the words.
It seemed that everybody had there own special glittering generalisation, which formed the sine qua non of their position and therefore the action they thought was needed to save the world.
A generalisation is a statement that may apply to a subset of a group, and is then extended to include all members of the group. It is taken to be so obvious by the generaliser that no discussion is necessary or indeed to be tolerated. One of our members made the generalisation that ever since white people had landed in Australia, farmers had raped the land for their own greed, and hence were pillaging the “social capital” of the country, and had to be controlled. So he was for government control of the farmers.
Another was of the opinion that the banks controlled the world by creating credit, and that the only answer was for the government to take over the banks, and how if they did, this action would increase the “social capital”.
This “social capital”, they advocated, should be measured in some sort of Social Capital Index, to be published and used as an indicator of the performance of government. Everybody seemed to be for this concept, although no-one offered any idea of what the index would actually measure.
Well, not everybody agreed, just the majority. But those of us who disagreed were fairly silent, seemingly stunned for the moment by this deluge of self-righteous generalisation, our thoughts self-censored by the political correctness of it all.
I was going through various emotions, which included rage, sorrow and wonder. How well, I thought, would Hitler have rated under this proposed index? Here were a group of well meaning friends and acquaintances of mine, intelligent and caring, and what they were proposing was the most outrageous intrusion of government into the lives of the community since the Russian revolution, arguing that it was necessary for our survival.
But for the time I felt that to argue against it would be like arguing against motherhood and apple pie, which is how I often feel when confronted by political correctness. So I said nothing for the whole meeting, until the very end.
Robyn said something. We had to vacate the premises, and it became necessary to form some conclusion, which, of course, was impossible. So Robyn, bless her, said that often she felt overwhelmed by the immensity of the size of the problem, and had decided that it was beyond her to fix it, so she worked locally, on smaller problems for which she could take responsibility. Lighting grass fires, she called it.
What she was saying was exactly what Robert Pirsig said in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: "Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value."
Robyn said: "Next time you are down at your local shopping centre, and you see a Rotarian, or a Lion, or an Apexian, selling raffle tickets for a good cause, I suggest you buy one." Most of the group looked to be puzzled by this remark, but there were one or two smiles.
Robyn would be welcome in Erleichda, but I really don't want people who want to save the world. They have caused enough problems over the centuries, and they totally overwhelm me.
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