The meridian Line

We all have them - or perhaps half a dozen of them.
that all nice- collective- Meridian line- that we think defines or ought to define normality.
It is the line that everyone ought to follow- that everyone would follow if we were not being led astray by...
The shifting complexity of the world, becomes rather easily resolved into a handful of collective viewpoint.
Further thought becomes unecessary -
It also goes without saying that such line in the shifting sand are necessary volatile and collective.
They need to be collective in that it is in the sharing the viewpoint - or at least in the imagination of another in ones head, in their reality in oneself - that the lines gathers its power and meaning - and passions.
It also follows that these meridians are divisive- and that is the point: that is they define a norm, which is of course not share in the welter of being. The norm becomes then a standard to rally to, and otherwise bewildering complexity and oddity or perhaps merely the press of possibility is rationalized and contained in quiet or stroppy loathing.
Us against the world - hey!

The trouble is then that Meridian are the stuff of gangs -a collective piece of certainty- and gangs sell newspapers, and create politics.
All of which is fine - what else is a nation ? what else have they ever been (for good or evil)? What else are the traditional lines of left and right, but a making sense and creation of very basic meridian lines.
How else are you going to have a state?
There is nothing wrong with meridians in themselves (beyond the fostering of gross but necessary simplification).
That is not really the trouble,
The problem is rather that there is a threefold complexity clearly emerging the rules and meridians.

1) Firstly the old meridians lines, which kept the world simple have spilt and become endlessly more complicate. We simply have then dozens of meridians, all quietly opposed, and gently or loudly loathing one another.
2) Meridians are becoming self consciously very stroppy - in the best evangelical way. This is a mixed curse. In times before when a median was easily dominant it was quietly oppressive. Racism, for example in all its forms simply was everywhere- and so it did not need to fight its corner: The only warrior meridians were self conscious minorities - who certainly fought and converted, and aimed to be the majority few. Meridians used to tend to be powerful - and quiet (or ill or good) affairs. In the current situation all meridians are under threat, and feel they need to make a fuss - as they always feel like those religious or social minorities. Our meridian lines have become the the battle ground for self appointed minorities - as we are all the rebels now.
3) And yet at the same time- we lie is a society where the appeal is always to the old logic of democracy, and the majority having sway. Each meridian line then needs to make its pitch as the majority- as - the consensus. It will look then for ways to prove that it does hold such sway -and will rationalize set backs in terms of paranioa, and conspiracy.
Meridians then wage war as if they were a minority, and yet do so in the guize and name of the majority.
They want it all ways .
The trouble of course that these self appointed minority are becoming powers because the old simply meridians have shattered. Governments simple assumptions then that the support is out there, has slipped, and the new meridian lines matter.
All of which raises the deep question of whether one can really govern in the name of a handful of meridian lines, and their violently oppositions? It might well not be possible- it is surely hardly desirable. And if one cannot what will follow not merely politically, but all our sanity. the point after all of these lines in the sand was not initially political so much as personal -they are how the locate ourselves in the choasmsos of modernity..
A rhythm war based of meridian lines, and their willful incomprehension of other point of view, is not the wisest of moves, and yet it appears to be where we are heading.