[F&R] Reconciling Left and Right: A Political Journey

Part 1 of 3 (continued in post below)

Once there was a little girl who reached adulthood and had to leave her small village to make her way in the big world. Now, in the country she lived in, there were two cities, Leftville and Righton. Most people wanting to make their way in the world ended up in one of the two cities, because cities are where the action is, as everyone knows. So the girl started to do a little research so she could decide which to live in. The information was so conflicting and contradictory, though, that she couldn’t make up her mind. She asked the people in her village which was better, but everyone had a different opinion— so much so that it seemed to the girl at times as though people were talking about entirely different places. Throwing up her hands at last, she decided to go visit them both and see for herself.

The day she set out was a sunny one, full of hope and promise. The first stop for her would be Leftville. She crested a ridge and came upon the sprawling metropolis, bigger than anything she’d ever seen before. She approached the city gates and asked the guard: “Is Leftville a good place for a girl looking to make her way in the world?”

The guard replied, “Oh yes, absolutely! This is where you want to be, without a doubt. First of all you are young, and Leftville has traditionally been a city of the young. Second you are a woman, and Leftville is a champion of women and other traditionally marginalized groups. Come right in, your future awaits!” And he opened the gates.

The girl entered and couldn’t believe all the sights, sounds, and smells that hit her. Leftville was certainly full of colorful characters like she’d never seen before: Long-haired men, short-haired women, and all manner of beings of seemingly indeterminate gender bustled here and there. There were plenty of smiles, and good music wafted on the breeze. As she walked through the city, she saw much to admire: The people here were readers and scholars, lovers of theory, and their leaders spent their days spinning beautiful intellectual webs high above the town in gleaming, remote ivory towers. The city was full of art, music, and excellent cooking. People were always friendly and seemed to cooperate well with each other. They also seemed to really enjoy life.The girl was charmed. Perhaps this is my new home, she thought.

But as the days went by, the girl discovered some less-than-favorable facts about Leftville. She began to notice how shabby and ramshackle everything was. The buildings were run-down, the streets were full of garbage and potholes, and everything seemed perpetually worn out and useless. This was because there was no private property in Leftville, so everyone shared everything…and consequently nobody took care of things properly…it was somehow always mysteriously “somebody else’s job.” The work available was, in fact, uninspiring, and the girl thought it was unfair that everyone on a given work team got paid the same…even though a lot of people ended up loafing around. Then she started to get a sense of how Leftville was run. If you wanted anything “nice,” you had to use the black market, which was always choc-a-bloc with people standing in long lines. The rulers of Leftville seemed an odd bunch: The intellectuals presided in their lofty ivory towers, but they seldom deigned to descend to street level, where packs of thugs called “labor muscle” or “community patrols” seemed to rule the roost. But these groups had to be bribed to do anything, and were incredibly corrupt. Worst of all, despite the love of books and learning she’d been so thrilled with at first, Leftville was very closed-minded in some ways. People were super-sensitive about using certain words, for example, and would completely freak out if you happened to use the wrong one. She later learned this habit was called “political correctness,” but she never came to understand it—only that it seemed creepy and mentally repressive somehow, and was wielded as weapon by angry people who were trying to make her feel guilty for all sorts of things she’d never done. Finally, despairing of finding a clean shower and a lice-free bed, she threw up her hands and left the city.

[CONTINUED BELOW]

Part 2 of 3 (continued in post below)

Her trip to the second city, Righton, seemed not to take so long. After a few days’ journey, she forded a river and the metropolis hove into view. She approached the city gates and asked the guard: “Is Righton a good place for a girl looking to make her way in the world?”

The guard replied, “Oh yes, absolutely! This is where you want to be, without a doubt. First of all you are Christian, as I can see by that cross on your neck, and Righton has traditionally been a city of the faithful. Second you look ambitious, and Righton offers ambitious people a chance to be rewarded for their efforts and to live in comfort. Come right in, your future awaits!” And he opened the gates.

Upon entering the city, she gasped a little, because Righton seemed even more impressive than Leftville had. The buildings were taller, cleaner, and more beautiful, and well-dressed, organized people were moving crisply and purposively in a neat, orderly fashion. After the chaos of Leftville, it seemed a welcome sight indeed. There wasn’t as much art and music, and people didn’t seem as friendly to strangers as they had in Leftville, but there was a sense that at least here things were orderly and predictable, and that there were definite rewards for hard work. Huge, glass towers punched a skyline of opulent condominiums, where every luxury imaginable spilled from ample balconies. The city was full of churches and talk of God, and the presence of police everywhere made her feel safe as a woman, in a way she hadn’t in the shantytowns of Leftville. Perhaps this would be her choice of home.

But as time went on she discovered that here, too, things were not what they seemed. For one, the idea of fair reward for fair work that had seemed attractive to her at first was revealed, upon closer examination, to be a rigged game. At the very top of the tall buildings lived a distant class of overlords who knew the secret alchemy of manipulating money and seemed to grow richer and richer without doing much real work at all, sucking more and more of the resources for themselves and depriving everyone else. To question this was, in Righton, a kind of blasphemy; met with shocked gasps of outrage and wild, finger-pointing accusasions of being a "hippie" or a "commie" (whatever these were), evidencing a close-mindedness similar to the hysterical “political correctness” she had run across in Leftville. There was very little public space in Righton – no parks or sidewalk benches, and if you stopped to rest on the street the police would shoot you warning looks. She then discovered something else…that as the elites of Righton passed their days in idle luxury atop high buildings, the city was to a large degree supported by a groaning populace of near-slaves, kept strictly out of sights and off the stainless clean streets. These subterranean laborers were told that someday they, too, might be able to live in the beautiful buildings if they worked hard, but in fact a vanishingly small number were ever able to. Most were snared in complex debt traps, whereby they worked harder and harder but somehow, inexplicably, their debt grew larger and larger and they got farther and farther away from their original goals of wealth and success. The system had been perverted to funnel the fruits of their labor upwards to the idle elites, while the toiling became ever more severe. Disillusioned, the girl realized she could never be happy here, and headed on her way.

[CONTINUED BELOW]

Part 3 of 3 (continued from above)


Once outside the second city, she was now at a loss. Where to go next? What to do? She saw a speck of light on the horizon and, with lack of better options, headed off in that direction. When she got closer she saw a small town appear before her eyes. It was bigger than her native village, but smaller than either of the two cities. Most of the houses were still new, and it looked like a new city was being built. Intrigued, she approached the guard at the town gates. “What is this place? And is it a good place for a girl looking to make her way in the world?”

The guard smiled. “Our community has no name yet. And as to whether or not it’s a good place to make your way, that too remains to be seen. But everyone here shares one thing in common: they have been to both Leftville and Righton in search of a better life, and found both lacking. Here, we are many different types of people, and we don’t always agree with each other. But we share certain ideals. From Leftville, we take the love of learning and art, the celebration of different ways of life, the enjoyment of the now, the compassion of caring for those who are a downtrodden, and a lack of materialism. From Righton we take a respect for traditions and order, a love of individual liberties, and a belief in efficiency and effectiveness, and we place a high value on self-reliance and self-responsibility. The two sets of values don’t always gel, but as you see we are building a new city, trying to make it work…and also we are looking for other ways, new ways that haven’t even been thought of yet. If you’d like to join us, please do, but remember, there is a lot of work to be done and our city is just starting out.”

The girl knew this odd little city with no name didn’t pretend to offer a clearly defined set of answers to life’s problems, as the other two did. It was much smaller, too, so the safety-in-numbers aspect would be missing. It was new, meaning the future was fraught with uncertainty…but also opportunity. The girl decided she’d give it a go here. Rather than merely looking for answers, she’d help create them herself, here on the fringe, with her new friends.

And she lived happily ever after.

The end.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/d7fb099b13844d56.jpg[/atsimg]

Pretty cool story.
Could you forward that up to who ever controls our society?

Interesting story. I'm a guess the girl is you Partygirl.

So is that the road you took to get to were your at? I never was much for politics and all such things, so really I wouldn't know about Leftville or Righton, even if I was living in them. But I suppose everything has its place and is there for a reason.

I for one hope you find whatever your looking for in you little journey. But however your right, nothing exists that isn't at first created.

Fantastic analogy for the false left/right paradigm. The new city may still be small, but it's growing at a rapid pace..

It's obvious that we are quickly evolving past the broken 2-party system

reply to post by galadofwarthethird


Yep its me. Nice new avatar, BTW.

The road I took? I'm still on it, as are we all...right? But I think what tipped me off was realizing that there are things that are "left" and things that are "right" that are lumped together...but logically there is no reason whatsoever for them to go together. For example, I am a serious born-again Christian, so people presume my "natural orientation" is conservative...but I am also an environmentalist, so when people hear that, they think i'm a natural liberal...people seem freaked out by my wanting to believe in both, but really when you look at it straight-on, there is no reason at all you can't be a Christian environmentalist -- without compromising on either. None whatsoever! I decided I didn't care what other people thought, I'd be both as strong and pure a Christian as I could, and as strong and pure an environmentalist as I could. And there is no contradiction at all.

So when I realized this, I realized that left and right are artifical collections of ideas, lumped together for expedience rather than based on any underlying connections. This made me mad! Why was the world trying to herd me into one of these two "cities" when so many third-way combinations are possible! New combinations of ideas are fertile and productive, and we need fertile productive new ideas more than ever! Why is there a conspiracy to prevent mix-and-match of planks from both parties? Rhetorical question - the answer is only that if people did this, they would deprive both parties of their power, in both votes and money. So its the one single thing both left and right absolutely agree on: they both want to push you to live in one of the two "cities" -- rather than constructing your own community!

They will never force me into one of their cities now that I see this truth. Never!

Anybody who thinks the twentysomething generation is beyond hope needs to read Partygirl.

Well done!

Good read, Partygirl. My flag puts you in the lead. I like the spin you've woven into politics.

As always, rock on.

Very accurate and insightful.

Paradise is as colorful as lefville and as rich as righton.

reply to post by Partygirl

Yep its me. Nice new avatar, BTW.

Thought so it seemed like you. Ya the new avatar is a drawing of a character that I can relate to, from a game I once played, about the zone of the enders.

The road I took? I'm still on it, as are we all...right?

Sounds like your questioning yourself...But anyways, If you say so...then sure why not I am on that road.

I however suck at taking roads, especially if there is a fork in the main road. And especially if I have lost my deciding coin...It's either heads or tails, but more then once I have flipped my cat to decide on something and on which path to take..... She lands on her feet I go one way, she does not land on her feet I go the other way....And you know what they say about cats and always landing on there feet....Yup I was cheating in my decisions, as they say "the game was rigged"...And the cat landed on its feet.

But anyways I will trust your opinion on such things concerning roads and town with strange names, you definitely seem to know way more about it then me. Because alas! wherever I go that's were I am at.

So when I realized this, I realized that left and right are artifical collections of ideas, lumped together for expedience rather than based on any underlying connections. This made me mad! Why was the world trying to herd me into one of these two "cities" when so many third-way combinations are possible! New combinations of ideas are fertile and productive, and we need fertile productive new ideas more than ever! Why is there a conspiracy to prevent mix-and-match of planks from both parties?

Rhetorical question - the answer is only that if people did this, they would deprive both parties of their power, in both votes and money. So its the one single thing both left and right absolutely agree on: they both want to push you to live in one of the two "cities" -- rather than constructing your own community!

Partygirl your like pretty smart and stuff, and you do have a way with words and stories. However your the strangest party girl I have ever run across anywhere, I would even say that your avatar name is a bit misleading.