#understanding context

@oreillymedia was kind enough to send me complimentary copies of Understanding Context by Andrew Hinton. It’s a book on how we make sense of the (information) world and our place in it. The parking sign was included in the chapter on Language as Infrastructure as an example of graphics giving form to abstract concepts. Get your copy here.

I am generally a fan of the U.S. Constitutional system, but I am tired of appeals to the founders of the nation to silence opposition and change. Determining what the founders intended is an interesting intellectual exercise in history which provides precedent and identity, but ultimately what the founders intended for the country over 200 years ago is unimportant to the society currently be constructed and lived within.

Along with our much vaunted rights and freedoms the founders enshrined slavery, dismissed the rights of women, and determined property was the only true measure of citizenship.  In 1790 only adult white male property-owners were granted the right to vote, but we have since enfranchised the vast majority of adult citizens which most contemporary Americans would view as progress.  Our world and our understanding of it have changed dramatically in the last two centuries and along with it our definitions of justice, compassion, and dignity.  Why would our expectations of government not change in parallel?  This is why there is a process to amend the Constitution, because it is not a holy document, but one meant to be altered over time so that it can keep up with our constantly evolving society.

The "founding fathers" were not gods, angels, or prophets.  They were flawed men attempting an idealistic experiment during the period of the European Enlightenment.  Their words, deeds, and laws set our nation on a course, but it is the living who determine whether we want to change the trajectory.  We cannot escape the consequences of historical choice, but we are not beholden to continue the course if we wish to change it to avoid disaster or better our shared world.  

When I see conservative arguments that the founders did not intend a law or outcome for society, it makes me laugh.  The founders may have been intelligent men exploring the ideas of the European Enlightenment, but they could not scry the future.  None of the founders possessed precognition, and could not see what our nation, let alone the world, would become.  It is up to us living in the current moment to determine our best course of action and what we want our society and its government to be.  History can provide examples, warnings, and guidance to build knowledge of what has been done and what we might do, but it is up to the living generations to forge that knowledge into actionable wisdom.

Tradition builds continuity of community across time, which builds collective identity and ideals.  The appeal to the founders comes from an impulse to connect with previous generations and create the idea of a persistent people with shared goals and interests.  These are psychologically and sociologically valuable concepts, and provide a great deal of comfort through learned meaning and shared experience.  However, when this reverence for tradition and the past is elevated to a point where it becomes a quasi-religious fixation on mythological past glories they become dangerous to the progress contemporary Americans.  The ideals are disjointed from the lived experience of the present.