Friday 5 July 2019

Pragmatism is the one true faith

Lying on my chair for three days in a nest of cushions, hobbling about with a stick, and dosing myself up with various pain-killers, reminds me of how vulnerable we are even to relatively minor ailments. A pulled back is nothing on the scheme of ill-health, but is sufficient to immobilise and cripple. So too is society vulnerable to small shocks. The frenzy of the social media, the intolerance of varied opinions, the prejudice against those who dare to be different, brings home just how rapidly civilisation can collapse if we do not constantly work to maintain its good health.

Recent politics presents a reversion to simian behaviour - screaming and throwing sticks, or in this case an equivalent nearest object, milkshakes. Intolerance of others is endemic in the system and the beliefs of modern politics as much as it is in so much of religion. Trump represents support for Israel. Corbyn's secret agenda to not prosecute anti-Semitic behaviour courts the Muslim vote, which is much stronger than the Jewish vote. Hence Khan's response to Trump, and the strong anti-Trump campaign in the Labour movement, and Corbyn's refusal to attend a state banquet in the presence of Trump. He can afford to lose the votes of the Jewish community, and fend off the critisism of the Chief Rabbi: it gains him a huge undercurrent of unvoiced support, enough even to overcome the strong Brexit support in Peterborough.

No one person can always be right; no single belief system is infallible; no one political system has the sole answer to all the world's woes. So must we be vigilant to oppose strident -isms that always insist they alone are right. If we are to adopt any -ism, let it be pragmatism, and try to pick the best from each person's ideas, for we each have something to contribute, if only a tiny part of the whole.

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