Historic India, before Partition, is an idea which appeals greatly to me. Not the colonial version, but the idea of an independent and tolerant India of larger scope.
I don’t pretend to have any good arguments for this idea, and I understand (to some degree) how and why it fell apart. I also understand that historic India was itself not very unified. That is in part what makes my attachment irrational, and perhaps the irrationality is part of the attachment itself.
What is your hopeless idea to which you retain an irrational attachment?
I irrationally hold to the view that God created an old earth, an earth with dinosaur bones and fern fossils already in it. Again I too know that it is irrational but cling to it.
Tyler,
This is an interesting irrational attachment; urges of this variety can pleasantly end up contributing to an enhanced understanding for us also. A book, perhaps?
India today doesn’t “feel” like a democratic country, and it surely has more trouble than western countries holding up the image of marshmellowy social cohesion. People simply pay more attention to their town or city, for cultural reasons and also because bureaucracies have grown immensely on the state level.
there is a reason india is termed a subcontinent. the typical indian state as the population of a large european country (some, like uttar pradesh aren’t that much less populous than the united states). the idea of a politically unified india is aurangezeb’s gift to hindu nationlists.
Doesn’t an independant and tolerant India of very large scope exist ? Maybe that idea is not irrational after all…
The Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, as modified by the 3rd of May Constitution. Now THAT’s pre-Partition…
> What is your hopeless idea to which you retain an irrational attachment?
Libertarianism
Free will, personal identity, the usual.
That I, and I alone, could “cure” Portia DeRossi’s lesbianism.
The American middle class.
Latin America developing their own successful version along the lines of the European Community or European Union. (really hoping that i am being pessimistic to call this irrational)
World Peace
I’m a Latin teacher. Take your pick.
But I love Cicero in part because of his hopeles, irrational attachment to the ideal of a Republic that everyone except him knew, at the time, was dead.
A college football playoff system, the end of the Electoral College, D.C. voting rights and that someday I will be able to go into space.
The Market, which though so perfect in graduate school and in formal proofs, so often fails to deliver anything that can nearly approximate Pareto.
PS also tomatoes
I cling to the same hopless ideas as Dr. Doofus and JS.
Many others cling to the hopeless idea of marriage.
The Long Summer Afternoon of Edwardian England.
Smoking Cigars.
Siestas.
Three martini lunches.
A Constitutional amendment prohibiting all forms of income tax.
Tyler,
. . .that some bioengineering firm will find a way to rejuvenate
people before I’m dead. (And that everyone will be able to
afford the treatment.)
Andromeda,
. . .that I will some day learn Latin (and classical
Greek, Hebrew, French, German. . . and get really good
at Elizabethan English.)
[Ehrlich's "Amo, Amas, Amat, and More" has the useful
phrases
ab abusu ad usum non valet consequentia
and
abusus non tollit usum
but not (at least that I remember) phrases meaning
"proper use does not give validity to improper use"
"legitimate use does not grant permission for illegal
use"
(As in: That Princess Diana used the media to promote
her charities and for other purposes, does not give the
paparazzi the right to pursue her without the restraints
of civility.)
Could you teach us a phrase or two?]
John
P.S. And, yes, peace, freedom, and an end to crime and
disease.
America.
That women are kind and generous and nurturing … and not just subtler and better at self-maximizing games than men.
That the Dardanelles attack in 1915 really could have worked, if there’d been an admiral in charge who growled, “these damn ships are obsolete anyway, I don’t CARE how many we lose … full steam ahead!”
Pre-oil Arabian Society.
I am a hopeless idealist. I cling to the ideas of ridding our culture(s) of
social dogma and repression of the human spirit. I dream that people will
be able to individuate, and in the process tear down the socialist
organization of expression and allow for true individual diversity on a
personal and cultural scale.
reason.
an independent Kurdistan!
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Yancey Ward nails it.
I live in a country addicted to socialism (Scotland) so my irrational hope may strike some as as eminently attainable. Not here, and not now….
I’d like to see a flat tax, a citizen’s basic income, the smallest of small governments.
And Celtic win the Champions League.
One day all Free Trade Uber Alles, Open Borderista tenured economists are fired and
will get a chance to taste a wonderful world of globalism in a private sector.
Repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment.
Pre-feminism women.
…and that Esperanto would win.
Thus ensuring the long-overdue rise to power of William Shatner.
I still believe that a propensity toward certain genetic mutations that facilitate particular survival needs are somehow triggered, and not completely random. This is at the level before selection. So, it’s a funny, mystical sort of belief.
Just once, before I leave here, I would like to hear one of the locals admit that if the state of Israel had never been formed and the United states didn’t exist, this place would still be a godawful mess…
Isaac Crawford
Blogging in Yemen!
http://www.isaharr.com
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