Promiscuity and Politics

A reflection from long-time mentor and fine fellow, Gil Bailie:

Promiscuity means the lack of standards by which to judge or sort out things. Psychological promiscuity ... is the kind of involvement in mimetic contagion and mimetic desire which reaches the point [that] the self becomes unstable, because of the multitude of its influences. We do not have to be influenced by a multitude of people [in a negative way]; all that influence simply needs to be thematized. We do not want to turn off the influences of other people; we need other people ... The way the Christian economy works is we reach God through Christ, we reach Christ through each other. So we don’t want to be stopped being influenced, but that influence needs to be thematized or else it becomes polymorphously perverse -- and that is the mimetic crisis.

Politicians, by the way, depend upon promiscuity to confusticate the voting public. It is like spinning someone around with a blindfold on. Thus, the more citizens who are bewitched, bothered, and bewildered - or, in a word, promiscuous - the better for the politician.

It pays to have too many influences. It keeps the voting public helpless and more easily "governed".