Confidence in the Law
The last thing we need is more confidence. Everything written, everything read, is nothing less than a hypothesis, a conjecture. Truth has eluded us with the persistence of a hermit, and every Being has proved nothing but it’s own antipole. The ever populist derision of ideology is a mere plume from the blackhole of the 1943 Consensus. Confidence leads to standards, and standards lead to Law. Law is a written declaration of confidence, a deposition of perceived Truth.
It has become hard to take back anything said or written, because, as evidence, it can be upheld in a Court of Law. But it is a dangerous thing to try a person on something said or written, or honestly thought at a certain point in life. In a way, it robs that person of the ability to change his mind. As a child, I was raised in a family where it was OK to believe that Africans are generally lazy. At a certain point in my childhood, I may have parroted this opinion in friendly conversation, a kid would say anything to be the popular ass. But if I were to persist in this manner today, and propagate the meme, under today’s laws I could be tried for the crime of Racism. Fortunately, through some proper self-education, I was able to overcome this racial prejudice. I no longer find it acceptable to foment the idea, and am thus rehabilitated into the status quo. I changed my mind, not because Science proved that Africans aren’t generally lazier than most of us, but primarily because I grew to distrust any tag that was introduced by members of a colonist élite who needed a boy to change their shirt, because it was too fucking hot to do anything under the African sun.
But am I still guilty of the crime of Racism today? I would argue in my defense that I am not, because I no longer am that stupid boy. I’ve changed into a different person, who hasn’t been guilty of racist beliefs in a long time. But if you caught me on tape some twenty years ago, I may have a hard time convincing the Judge of my sincerity. What is the statute of limitations on promiscuous thought? Be careful, we may have to arrest 30 percent of all Germans over 70.
My wife asked me recently if I knew the difference between the Left and the Right. I told her I did, but I had no idea. It looks like both have been inspired by the idea of Freedom. Contradictorily, both institute a Law of Man. The Right believes that society must be built upon some form of ’self-evident’ Natural Law, while the Left believes society’s Laws must be contrived, to serve all to an equal amount.
People who believe in any Law, whether self-evident or contrived, need not be so confident. Laws change, because the Truth tends to change, and Ethics tends to shift. In Ethics, Badiou describes how contemporary ethics is based upon culturalism, or rather, a ‘vulgar sociology, directly inherited from the astonishment of the colonial encounter with savages.’ Does this mean I have become a racist by tuning in to popular opinion? He concludes:
The only genuine ethics is of truths in the plural–or, more precisely, the only ethics is of processes of truth, of the labour that brings some truths into the world.
