We live in a political world
Love don’t have any place
We’re living in times where men commit crimes
And crime don’t have a face

 Bob Dylan , 'POLITICAL WORLD', 1989.

Today is John Locke’s birthday.

He was born August 29, 1632.

He never died, for his ideas were incorporated by the Founding Fathers of the United States of America into their fine new experiment in nation-building.

We all know of his ideas, even if we don’t know they were originally his. The ‘Social Contract’, especially.

This Social Contract is about the origin of society, and legitimizes Society’s  authority over the Individual.

We surrender some of our ‘freedoms’ to an authority that will protect our ‘rights’.

~

Locke believed that individuals, originally in a state of nature,

got together  and  agreed not to harm each other in their lives or possession,

and created Government to defend them,

to provide a "neutral judge", acting to protect their  lives, liberty, and property

 against those seeking to injure or enslave them.

~

We live in a political world
Wisdom is thrown into jail
It rots in a cell, is misguided as hell
Leaving no one to pick up a trail 

 ~

Thomas Hobbes famously said that in a "state of nature" human life would be

"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". In the absence of political order and law, everyone would have unlimited natural freedoms, including the "right to all things" and thus the freedom to plunder, rape, and murder; there would be an endless "war of all against all"

~

Locke  said government thus acts as an impartial, objective agent of   self-defense,  

 and derives its "just powers from the consent   of the governed,".

~

He also argued for separation of church and state!

Exquisite stuff, obviously. No one can argue with it. A genius, Locke, in his time. But..

Almost 400 yrs later, I think of a child telling me (reaching moral maturity) : “no, this is mine, you musnt take it, my mom and dad won’t let you if you try!”

~

Locke also tried his hand at real philosophy, epistemology , and blew it big time.

He was the “tabula rasa” guy. Arguing against both the Augustinian view of man as originally sinful

and the Cartesian position,

which holds that man innately knows basic logical propositions,

Locke posits an "empty" mind,

 a tabula rasa, which is shaped by experience;

sensations and reflections

 being the two sources of all our ideas”^]

~

1. A sensation is A physical feeling or perception from something that comes into contact with the body; something sensed.
   • 1921, Bertrand Russel, The Analysis of Mind:

~

A reflection is the capacity of humans to exercise introspection and the willingness to learn more about their fundamental nature, purpose and essence…

~

A Lockean self is a creature that senses, then classifies & develops its  purely physical sensations into abstract ideas, inclusive principles or generalizations by which we build up the vast sense data into some kind of pattern.

~

Sounds alright, intellectually. But not morally, or aesthetically, to me.

We live in a political world
Where mercy walks the plank
Life is in mirrors, death disappears
Up the steps into the nearest bank

We live in a political world
Where courage is a thing of the past
Houses are haunted, children are unwanted
The next day could be your last

Blake said, “What is ‘general nature’? “

With an eye to the famous General Will, I suppose…the basis of our democracy…

“Is there such a thing?

What is ‘general knowledge’?

Is there such a thing?

Strictly speaking, All Knowledge is particular.

To generalize is to be an Idiot.

To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit.

General Knowledges are those knowledges that Idiots possess.”

~

Reflection is just memory.

Memory of Reality is always less than the raw experience of it.

~

I remember reading a lot of Locke, and loving it. His political stuff  satisfied some innate part of me. The part that needed the world to make sense.

But Locke says I got no innate ideas, nothing but a blank slate to be written on.

So my experience with Locke was ambivalent.

~

Do I have anything inside, innate, when I am born? Or am I a howling ignorant beast at my mother’s breast, all Appetite? 

Will I need Mother’s protection forever?

Or can I stop suckling?

We live in a political world
The one we can see and can feel
But there’s no one to check, it’s all a stacked deck
We all know for sure that it’s real

Under the microscope
You can travel anywhere and hang yourself there
You always got more than enough rope

We live in a political world
Turning and a-thrashing about
 

We live in a political world
Where peace is not welcome at all
It’s turned away from the door to wander some more
Or put up against the wall

We live in a political world
Everything is hers or his
Climb into the frame and shout God’s name
But you’re never sure what it is