In the queue of life

Saturday, May 1, 2010
In the queue of life
An affinity for human kind explains for me how the phrase "Conservative Arts" has seldom appeared in arguments for progress. The phrase "Liberal Arts," in contrast, reflects a truth easily understood about human history. We progress through the Liberal Arts, we learn through liberal attitudes. As conservative arts spurn innovation as too risky to tradition, it and progress have conflicting goals. Is that risk because our historical progress has been unpredictable? Each generation's progress involves unknown risks, trials and errors, gains and losses. We progress abruptly, not through an orderly process. Revolutions alone free us from the tyranny of waiting in the queue of life for our time and place in history.
The idea of having order in progress in waiting for poverty and exploitation to end can easily be an illusion. The peasant or the slave waiting to be free of exploitation will die waiting. Conservatives, of course, argue for the orderly progress of organic decay. Conservatives, however, are seldom among the ones at the back of any queue. For instance, you may have heard of Brazilian Gilberto Freye, a brilliant conservative scholar. But Freye offers us a cultural and anthropological apology for racial exploitation by the Portuguese in Brazil: (The Masters and the Slaves: a study in the development of Brazilian civilization; Order and Progress: Brazil from monarchy to republic). And he deflects the truth of some terribly cruel practices in the genocide of American natives, slavery and racism in both South and North America. A bedtime story conservative history like Freye's enables us to sleep undisturbed by the actions of our terrible ancestors.
All great discoveries that have brought us the modern world, including the European discovery of the American hemisphere, have been the products of a liberal imagination, a break with the traditional way of seeing the world. A rebel or innovator nearly always risks life and reputation in selfless actions. Conservative attitudes however tend to be selfish; few right wingers are not cynical about innovations and new ideas. And the conservative viewpoint is most succinctly expressed in the saying that the more things change, the more they stay the same. It is true, of course, but only for someone else, somewhere else.