Oct 6, 2017 09:25 PM
https://aeon.co/ideas/democracy-is-like-...-having-it
EXCERPT: [...] The tyranny of democracy undermines democracy. This is in no way an anti-democratic thought. It simply applies to democracy a general insight about value, namely that sometimes, in order to realise something of value, one must strive for something else. Certain values are undercut by our single-minded pursuit of them. In such cases, the pursuit of the value in question produces its opposite.
To see how this works, consider a value such as fun. Surely it’s good to have fun? But fun can be had only as a byproduct of participating in activities that have some other objective. We have fun when engaging in pursuits whose point is something other than fun: winning the game, dancing to the song, experiencing the plunge of the rollercoaster, completing the crossword. Accordingly, the persistent boredom of teenagers is the product of their not having anything to pursue but entertainment. When fun itself is the name of the game, everything’s a drag.
Friendship, too, has this general structure. We need friends. Consequently, we ought to form deep friendships. But one of the surest ways to fail at making friends is to try to make them. Friendships emerge from activities other than friend-seeking. One gains friends by sharing experiences, undertaking common projects, and caring about other persons. No matter how good it is to have friends, friendship itself cannot be our pursuit. When we take friendship itself as our goal, we wind up friendless....
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/democracy-is-like-...-having-it
EXCERPT: [...] The tyranny of democracy undermines democracy. This is in no way an anti-democratic thought. It simply applies to democracy a general insight about value, namely that sometimes, in order to realise something of value, one must strive for something else. Certain values are undercut by our single-minded pursuit of them. In such cases, the pursuit of the value in question produces its opposite.
To see how this works, consider a value such as fun. Surely it’s good to have fun? But fun can be had only as a byproduct of participating in activities that have some other objective. We have fun when engaging in pursuits whose point is something other than fun: winning the game, dancing to the song, experiencing the plunge of the rollercoaster, completing the crossword. Accordingly, the persistent boredom of teenagers is the product of their not having anything to pursue but entertainment. When fun itself is the name of the game, everything’s a drag.
Friendship, too, has this general structure. We need friends. Consequently, we ought to form deep friendships. But one of the surest ways to fail at making friends is to try to make them. Friendships emerge from activities other than friend-seeking. One gains friends by sharing experiences, undertaking common projects, and caring about other persons. No matter how good it is to have friends, friendship itself cannot be our pursuit. When we take friendship itself as our goal, we wind up friendless....
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/democracy-is-like-...-having-it