My latest at 3 Quarks Daily: Religion, Legitimacy, and Government in America, A Just-So Story. I DO like it, but I’m not (totally) pleased. It’s becomes a bit ragged toward the end; too many loose ends. It needs more work. Quite possibly more than I could have done within the compass of a 3QD piece. How much more, I don’t know.
What I like: the overall scope, the pieces (ideas, themes, concepts) I’ve set in place. It seems to me that the various things in the article (as posted), a no doubt a few others (see below), belong together and need to be understood together. What needs more work: they’re not as well connected as they should be (see below). Moreover, I’m not sure I know how to write the kind of piece I (think I’d) like to. I’m looking for a new mode, a new voice.
Some things the argument needs:
- an explicit account of identity as fundamental purchase on reality – it’s a peculiar business when identity itself has become the focus of one’s identity
- some remarks about the scope of the church and the state, as being explicitly different in 1776, and being overlapping and confused today
- inequality, hierarchy and egalitarianism (Boehm), as in my post, Hierarchy and Equality: The Essential Tension in Human Nature,
- Occupy Wall Street? – a protest against inequality that popularized the 1% vs. 99% and was itself absurdly flat
I suppose I could go on and on. For the moment it is enough that I've put them all in one place. And, these ARE themes & ideas I’ve been chewing on for awhile (the article itself is a somewhat revised version of one I wrote originally in 2004). I suppose I could write a book. But I don’t want to, not that book, not now.
We’ll see. More later.
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