Liberals and Liberalism have been seen by many to be a case of the middle path:A path chosen by cowards and ambivalent individuals to run from either extreme. I agree, its true-that many a man have used this as a transition phase while moving from one wing of thought to another.I have seen more than one freind who has swung from left to centre to right and back again.
Their reactions seem to be dictated to some extent, by which wing of society is acting in a more extreme and irrational fashion.To this extent, they are niether of the wings nor are they liberals- but are humans driven by emotional instincts.
Liberals in essence, are those, who choose to solve problems-innovating solutions unhassled by dogma of either wing of thought. Liberals are driven not just by ideology or theory but by a synthesis of rational thought and the values of human society.Liberal societies are those- which embrace free thought and free action, but act responsibly -knowledgable of the value of both. A liberal society is capable of evolution-in a stable fashion- rather than through leaps and jumps of societies seen through large chunks of history. Liberalism is continuous evolution and not revolution.
Liberals need not be moderate. Liberals can be extremists.Extremists in a way, thats subtly different to the present day connotation of the world. An extremist can be defined as a person who chooses to make a statement or to propel an event rather forcefully. We have numerous examples of such people.They include a Medha Patkar, who agitates for the millions of te displaced in the Narmada Valley.They include a Joeseph Rotblat and a Robert Oppenheimer- who gave up a promising careers to speak out against the atom bomb and the arms race. They include a Mordechai Vanunu- who gave up most of his life- to expose the Israeli atom bomb program. They include a Gandhi,a lone man in front of the tank at Tiannanmen, a technicianin a Polish shipyard and a million other men-well known and unknown.
Liberals, today, have been masqueraded as apologists for the various "outlawed" societies in this world. In other places, they have been seen as preachers of the outlawed gospel.that assumed, I would be inclined to see a particularly misled man two thousand years ago also as a liberal.
Liberalism, as I have known, extends not just to political thought, but to all other areas to where the human mind may stretch its long reach.Science is a prime candidate.On many fronts, science has been obstructed by the lack of free thought. Dogma has prevented the advance of science at speeds it could have gone.Free thought, liberal thought- the foundation of science is always not as universal as one would have thought possible.Anyway,thats another issue.Frustration i suppose, something which every dreamer in science has complained about.
The description of liberalism may well sound like an ideal arm chair idea. However,unlike previous experiments, liberalism is not a pure mechanical machine run by a irrationally rational computer or a machine run by pure emotion. It is the ideal synthesis of both.Here in may lie hope- to make make the world leap longer, faster and higher.
-a hopeful liberal
4 comments:
hmm.. interesting. and quite thought-provoking... never really thought abt liberalism do much..
if i've understood correctly, all of us who support left, right, centre, or none, based on the issues in question, would then be liberals... right?
agree with ur connection with science, though.. our tendency to just take certain things for absolute facts and not think outside the realms of these "facts" does hamper the progress of science at times...
Very well written. You should have this published.
Interesting....
this is a better version of the word liberal than used by most-both its proponents, and opponents.
For starters, it makes the seemingly self-evident(but ignored) truth that liberalism is NOT the same as being neutral.
As a right-winger once said:"there ain't nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow line, and a dead armadillo".
But liberalism is not the middle path. If anything, it is extremism in its purest form. Here, the liberal stands not with the imagined support of a haloed past, or the promise of a brighter future, but with the firm understanding that the present system (whatever it is) is flawed, will not take solace in empty words of stability, and tradition.
Where i believe the passage is flawed is:
The author seeks (like a true liberal that we see in usual circles) to make liberalism a catholic ideal.
Liberalism is not an all-embracing ideal-for then, as Anamika pointed out, anybody left, right, or centre could lay claims to being a liberal, as long as they believe their idea brings the world to the better place it never becomes.
No, you are wrong, my friend.
Liberalism is a particular political social ideal that seeks to give equal rights to all people, as individuals, not as groups.
Here is where liberalism turns away from the usual sincere, but misguided philosophies of any 'group-based' ideal. And as we know, both left and right are based on the idea of a community-the definition of what forms a community may vary, but one thing is certain--individual only forms a secondary role in it.
In modern philosophy, liberalism is the only path that champions the right of the individual to disagree with the society. Thus it seeks to liberate man from the chains of slavery that his 'community'(be it one identified by language, tribe, religion, sex, race, geography, or common history) seeks to bind him with...
In the end, liberalism believes that limits exist only for groups of men, not for one man.
heretic, you are right, I am wrong in using the word liberal for it.maybe i shouuld update it! thanks, it got me reading more.
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