Plurk paste

Scot Nakagawa on Facebook - you really should follow him

For years through my late teens, twenties, and thirties I never considered that it might be my role to translate complicated theories and philosophical concepts for people I organized. I mean, I educated people and trained them in all sorts of things, but never did I consider involving them in my own epistemological reflections, or self-education in social theory. I bogarted the goods.

I rationalized this by assuming that people like simplicity. They like thinking in pretty plain categories. And my experience demonstrated that this is often true. Moreover, my peers and mentors were very clear on this point, reminding me that if I made things too complicated, my audience would get lost, even become alienated.

But, over the years, I started to think, you know, maybe the assumption that people will be repelled by complicated ideas is another way to say that if we were to translate those complicated ideas for our base those ideas would undermine our authority. And, it would undermine it because that authority is founded on oversimplification and categorization in the service of simple demonization which, in turn, is an easy and convenient little path to catharsis.

When you become the source of catharsis for people in pain, you gain great power over them. What makes people resistant to uncritically kneeling to that kind of authority is understanding that power is complicated.