Be Realistic: Demand The Impossible

Alex had a post a few days ago about the role of intuition in moral debate. He argued (essentially) that intuition is usually a bad guide to morality. In the comments I suggested that it was a mistake to draw to strong a distinction between intuition and rationality. Generally, I suspect, people intuit that something is wrong and then construct a rational explanation for why they feel that way. Ideally they will subsequently come to believe this rationalisation. I think an analysis of the roles of rationality and irrationality (I am not here regarding these as value judgements) in other contexts can potentially be instructive.

There is an implication in much leftist writing that rationality is the driving force behind social change; it is merely neccesary to show people in a rational and logical manner what is wrong with the status quo for them to be convinced of the need to radically alter the way the world is run. Noam Chomsky is arguably an exemplar of this way of thinking, although I doubt he's ever stated it explicitly. The problem with this approach is that despite an enormous volume of books, speeches, papers, dissertations, articles, pamphlets, websites and blogs providing evidence of the multitude of flaws of the current system, the number of people actively engaged in the struggle for a better world is limited to say the least. Clearly rational argument alone isn't sufficient.

My instinct is that the decision to move from a rational critique of the status quo to an active challenge to it is one which is neccesarily predicated on the irrational. It neccesarily entails a belief that change is possible, a faith that we can acheive something better. Neither of those things can be justified on the basis of evidence and rational evaluation alone. They can only be felt, hoped or wished for.

Quite what this insight entails from a strategic point of view I'm not sure although I'm certainly not suggesting we abandon rational thinking and debate which I believe should still underpin our worldview. While I'm aware that there is political theory looking at this area, I've read little of it. My instinct, however, is that if we accept the role of the irrational in politics that we clearly shouldn't be limiting ourselves just to listening to speeches, marching from A to B or reading pretentious blog posts. Activism should be engaging, fun, attractive; in short, it's time to make politics sexy again.