The Open Matt Project

Adieu

Inspired by the SFGate article, by Jennifer Nelson, posted in the comments:

I moved here from NYC in the early 90's as a more-or-less ignorant twentysomething who'd been a part of the whole punk/rebel scene and was used to a very diverse (and consequently conflictual) social environment. As I settled in, from Ashby Ave near Oakland, to MLK, to eventually Northside, I discovered the very same thing that you have written about. Namely, the intolerance of the tolerant.

Something about the persistant insistance of my peers and their corresponding groups, all dogmatic to a fault, rubbed me the wrong way and slowly forced me to investigate their claims and views in ever-increasing depth. I would say that if I entered Berkeley as an ultra-left radical, by midway through my stay I had somehow become a moderate centrist. Admittedly, this corresponded with my transition to becoming a thirtysomething and the natural progression to conservatism that tends to occur with that change, but I like to think it was more introspection than age that had to do with my transformation.

I find myself now, at least by Berkeley standards, a right-winger. I recently registered Republican. I have argued, with at least one notable success (out of hundreds), for the recent wars, and for a host of issues that I would have probably punched myself for ten years ago. I have often added the caveat, when I felt I was speaking to someone who had a pinhole's width of their ears open, that I was an -uncomfortable- conservative. That is, being forced to pick a side, I grudgingly picked the republican/right/conservative side.

But that is exactly the rub. I felt -forced- to pick a side. Ironically, the very same rebelliousness that granted me the freedom to disagree with society's norms and official authority is the same rebelliousness that forced me to analyze my own dissent. Berkeley forced my hand.

Now, I find myself surrendering the land. In the past year I have had only a handful of open dialogues with people here, and I cannot take it any longer. I'm moving back to New York this year, not defeated by the leftist lockstep, but rather depressingly bored by the near total absence of an open forum in which ideas can be examined. Although my friends frequently mention that New York is very liberal itself, the visits I have there include one key distinction; people there are more interested in being right than they are in being righteous.

Posted by Matt at January 5, 2004 01:53 PM