Great interview here. Ive gotten increasingly agnostic and Ive gotten older, and increasingly wary of ideologies, including my own. So if you tied me to a lie detector, with a gun to my head, I would have to say, most of the time, Im somewhere on the libertarian-anarchist continuum. But I distrust myself. I distrust being rigidified and getting dogmatic, so I keep challenging my own assumptions and looking at alternatives. Knowing how dumb I am, I dont want to become another dogmatist. I saw what happened to Ayn Rand and sweet Jesus forbid it should happen to me. Now my political activity consists of making regular contributions to Amnesty International, which I regard as insurance, not as charity. Amnesty has a very simply policy, namely, People should not be locked up for their ideas. Im all for that. I figure anybody in jail for his or her ideas is depriving my brain of nourishment. If they could get out and publish their ideas it might inspire me; it might give me new ideas; it might cause brain growth. As long as one heretic is locked up, part of my brain is locked up and Im not getting the nourishment I need. So thats the one thing I still contribute to regularly: Amnesty. Im very cynical about politics. I have a wan, nostalgic hope that Jesse Jackson will win, just because a black president would restore a balance. So would a woman president, of course. -R.A.W.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 21:35:49 +0000