A LinkedIn colleague posts this. I didn’t want to rain on his parade there – we’ve got an interesting binary intellectual relationship – we either adamantly agree or vehemently disagree. This reflects the latter. The title is revelatory – the all-caps, his:
SOLIDARITY IS THE NECESSARY LINK BETWEEN VIRTUE & COMMON GOOD
It opens like this:
A good society requires more than virtuous individuals and fair institutions: it requires a mediating moral principle capable of binding persons, communities, and structures into a shared project of human flourishing.
Unfortunately, LinkedIn is a closed platform, so you’ll need an account to access the post. Anyway…
I can remember when I emerged from this mindset – or at least consciously reflected on it and declined the invitation.
When I was 10 years old, I remember thinking about historical ‘National Socialism’ – wouldn’t it be nice if we were all on the same page in solidarity? Then I realised that I’d have to be on their page; they wouldn’t be on mine.
Then, I realised that ‘solidarity’ isn’t a warm circle of clasped hands under a rainbow; rather, it’s a demand to harmonise one’s interior life with someone else’s tuning fork. So-called unity is almost always a euphemism for ideological choreography, and one doesn’t get to pick the routine.
Children are sold the Sesame Street version of solidarity, where everyone shares crayons and sings about common purpose. Cue the Beach Boys: Wouldn’t It Be Nice?
Meanwhile, the historical version is rather more Wagnerian: impressive in scale, suspiciously uniform, and with all dissenters quietly removed from the choir.
My childhood self intuited precisely what my adult writing has since anatomised:
Solidarity is only lovely when you imagine everyone else will move toward you; it curdles the moment you realise the gravitational pull goes the other way.
‘We’re all on the same page’ always becomes ‘Get on the page we’ve selected for you’ – or elected against your vote. The fantasy of we dissolves into the machinery of they.
This isn’t a bug in the system; that is the system. Solidarity requires a centre, and once there’s a centre, someone else gets to define its radius. Even the gentle, ethical, cotton-wool versions still rely on boundary enforcement: who belongs in the shared project, who must adjust their cadence, who is politely removed for ‘disrupting the collective good’. I’m more often apt to be that person than not. History merely illustrates the principle at scale; the mechanism is universal.
Anyway, this is how my brain works, and how I think how I do, and write what I write. As much as I witter on about episodic selves, this remains a prevalent continuity.
Philosophics 
What’s interesting to me about Otti is that at the same time he realises that much can be 🐂💩, he doesn’t accept that his held beliefs are subject to the same scrutiny. In his aces, it appears to be a devotion to Kant.
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Couldn’t read the paper, as I’m not LinkedIn, but … being one of those who would be found on the wrong side of the perimeter of more than a few groups, including ones I travel with, mostly, I support you wholeheartedly on this. From a safe distance, naturally, but wholeheartedly.
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Plurality is irreducible enough, meaning that the divergences are pronounced enough, that a micro-democracy of, say, a maximum of 200 active members is already rich enough in disagreements to build a shared understanding. This is a first step towards a pluralistic solidarity: a solidarity of meaning and ethics.
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