[BRIEF NOTE] On Communities and Consent
Mar. 8th, 2005 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI'll be writing a reply to the various comments to my post on consociationalism shortly. First, a brief reply to a point raised by Ikram:
There is no better way to challenge traditional prejudices than to take them head on, true. Practitioners of Falun Gong in China should go to the closest office of the Public Public Security Bureau to announce their religious affiliations. Every abused woman should tell her husband that until he's shapes up, he'll be living the life of a character from Lysistrata. Every teenage boy who realizes that he's gay or bisexual should tell his family promptly, even if it's at Sunday dinner with the preacher mere hours after the family's weekly session with the First Primitive Baptist Church. African-Americans in Deep South in the 1950s should have made a point of using whites-only water foundation and (if they were male) whistling at comely young white women.
Ikram's right. Wimps don't become martyrs. Wimps don't risk everything in their life up to and including the lives themselves to make a point.
I'm not sure, though, why we should go out of our way to force people to become martyrs. It's funny how many people claiming to defend religious freedom aren't defending the right of an individual to a private conscience so much as they're trying to create a right--hopefully inadvertantly--to dominate the consciences of others.
I'm neutral to positive on consociationalism as it relates to matters of territory, or matters of language, or other comparable fields, inasmuch as territory and language are relatively neutral subjects. Certainly, these subjects lead to questions with answers which both reflect and determine specific values: how should the territory be developed? how should the status of the language be defended?) It's quite possible to speak Basque as your first language and to not favour the destruction of all Indo-European languages in Euskadi, or to live in Ontario north of the French River and favour limiting mining activities without supporting the depopulation of the territory, or to believe that Québec is a distinct society and not favour the elimination or assimilation of everyone not pure laine. Language, territory, even various forms of national identity--all can be permeable to any individual, at relatively little cost.
Insofar as consociationalism relates to matters of personal conscience--in particular, to idealized expectations of personal conscience--I'm hostile to it. For me, it comes down to Rawls' veil of ignorance, I suppose. If I would feel outraged if, for instance, David Weale were made the sole guardian of Prince Edward Island identity though I as an Islander am critical of his anti-modern ideology, or if the most homophobic segments of the United Church of Canada were given any kind of authority over me though I'm a lapsed member at best, or if the fact of my substantially Scottish ancestry was used to command me to behave in conformity to some sort of synthetic "Scottish" identity in all of its dimensions--and I would, in all three circumstances--why shouldn't I be upset if other people were to be forced into similar situations? If the history of the 20th century has proved nothing else, it's that taking ideal definitions of ethnicity, religion, and genealogy and having them inspire state policies is a bad idea.
You know this issue too well for this sort of misrepresentation. For those Ontario Muslims that choose to follow self-proclaimed leaders who tell them to engage in binding arbitration, then yes, binding arbitration is practically inescapable -- by choice. Those too wimpy to reject social or familial pressure will follow social and familial pressure. That's hardly Khomeneiism.
There is no better way to challenge traditional prejudices than to take them head on, true. Practitioners of Falun Gong in China should go to the closest office of the Public Public Security Bureau to announce their religious affiliations. Every abused woman should tell her husband that until he's shapes up, he'll be living the life of a character from Lysistrata. Every teenage boy who realizes that he's gay or bisexual should tell his family promptly, even if it's at Sunday dinner with the preacher mere hours after the family's weekly session with the First Primitive Baptist Church. African-Americans in Deep South in the 1950s should have made a point of using whites-only water foundation and (if they were male) whistling at comely young white women.
Ikram's right. Wimps don't become martyrs. Wimps don't risk everything in their life up to and including the lives themselves to make a point.
I'm not sure, though, why we should go out of our way to force people to become martyrs. It's funny how many people claiming to defend religious freedom aren't defending the right of an individual to a private conscience so much as they're trying to create a right--hopefully inadvertantly--to dominate the consciences of others.
I'm neutral to positive on consociationalism as it relates to matters of territory, or matters of language, or other comparable fields, inasmuch as territory and language are relatively neutral subjects. Certainly, these subjects lead to questions with answers which both reflect and determine specific values: how should the territory be developed? how should the status of the language be defended?) It's quite possible to speak Basque as your first language and to not favour the destruction of all Indo-European languages in Euskadi, or to live in Ontario north of the French River and favour limiting mining activities without supporting the depopulation of the territory, or to believe that Québec is a distinct society and not favour the elimination or assimilation of everyone not pure laine. Language, territory, even various forms of national identity--all can be permeable to any individual, at relatively little cost.
Insofar as consociationalism relates to matters of personal conscience--in particular, to idealized expectations of personal conscience--I'm hostile to it. For me, it comes down to Rawls' veil of ignorance, I suppose. If I would feel outraged if, for instance, David Weale were made the sole guardian of Prince Edward Island identity though I as an Islander am critical of his anti-modern ideology, or if the most homophobic segments of the United Church of Canada were given any kind of authority over me though I'm a lapsed member at best, or if the fact of my substantially Scottish ancestry was used to command me to behave in conformity to some sort of synthetic "Scottish" identity in all of its dimensions--and I would, in all three circumstances--why shouldn't I be upset if other people were to be forced into similar situations? If the history of the 20th century has proved nothing else, it's that taking ideal definitions of ethnicity, religion, and genealogy and having them inspire state policies is a bad idea.
