Most countries that make great economic and social progress are not democracies. South Korea moved from Level 1 to Level 3 faster than any country had ever done (without finding oil), all the time as a military dictatorship. Of the ten countries with the fastest economic growth in 2016, nine of them score low on democracy.
The communist system in Cuba is an example of the danger of getting hooked on a single perspective: the seemingly reasonable but actually bizarre idea that a central government can solve all its people’s problems. I can understand why people looking at Cuba and its inefficiencies, poverty, and lack of freedom would decide that governments should never be allowed to plan societies. The health-care system in the United States is also suffering from the single-perspective mind-set: the seemingly reasonable but actually bizarre idea that the market can solve all a nation’s problems. I can understand why people looking at the United States and its inequalities and health-care outcomes would decide that private markets and competition should never be allowed anywhere near the delivery of public goods.
Elena Esposito puts it, “nothing is as unoriginal as the desire to be original.”
We find simple ideas very attractive. We enjoy that moment of insight, we enjoy feeling we really understand or know something. And it is easy to take off down a slippery slope, from one attention-grabbing simple idea to a feeling that this idea beautifully explains, or is the beautiful solution for, lots of other things.
Esposito goes on to note that the character of the nephew in Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew (1805) is taken as a crazy person because his originality has no familiar correlates. Anyone who is too authentic risks not being appreciated as such.
I call this preference for single causes and single solutions the single perspective instinct.
Anyone who is too authentic risks not being appreciated as such.
“I do look at those figures,” he said. “but they are not so accurate. So I have also made it a habit to watch the marches on May first every year. They are a popular tradition in our country. And I look at people’s feet, and what kind of shoes they have. I know that people do their best to look good on that day. I know that they cannot borrow their friend’s shoes, because their friend will be out marching too. So I look. And I can see if they walk barefoot, or if they have bad shoes, or if they have good shoes. And I can compare what I see with what I saw last year. “Also, when I travel across the country, I look at the construction going on. If the grass is growing over new foundations, that is bad. But if they keep putting new bricks on, then I know people have money to invest, not just to consume day to day.”
Under the current US system, rich, insured patients visit doctors more than they need, running up costs, while poor patients cannot afford even simple, inexpensive treatments and die younger than they should.
Esposito, we replace the word “fashion” with “authenticity”: Tis is another really peculiar strange feature of modern culture: We all, as individuals, would like to achieve and express our individuality, our originality—that what makes us unique and special. And we want, we would like, the others to accept it. And we do it with a detail, with a combination of colors, with a variation of [authentic] forms that must be at the same time recognizable as [authentic], and original as our own. Te same and the diferent at the same time. For example we wear the same shoes that the other is wearing but of a diferent color, or combined with something else. We all know the subtle devices we use in following [authenticity], so that diversity in [authenticity] must be somewhat the same in order to be appreciated. Te new, in a sense, must be a little bit old otherwise we wouldn’t recognize it, we wouldn’t appreciate its novelty. A perfect original would be incomprehensible
Since authenticity needs to be recognizable, authentic individuals need to be authentic in more or less the same “fashion.
Most countries that make great economic and social progress are not democracies. South Korea moved from Level 1 to Level 3 faster than any country had ever done (without finding oil), all the time as a military dictatorship. Of the ten countries with the fastest economic growth in 2016, nine of them score low on democracy.
Under the current US system, rich, insured patients visit doctors more than they need, running up costs, while poor patients cannot afford even simple, inexpensive treatments and die younger than they should.
Nothing is as unoriginal as the desire to be original.
Since authenticity needs to be recognizable, authentic individuals need to be authentic in more or less the same “fashion.