I do see the good in have an established order. Any establishment is going to be good for somebody, and a very good establishment is probably going to be very good for a lot of people. Coupled with that, though, must be the idea that there is no such thing as a free lunch. In simplified form, if my life is better for having more resources, I must be aware that somewhere there are now fewer resources for other people. That is a pretty basic concept, and it would be condescending to belabor the point.

The gist of my feeling is that no established order is going to be perfect, and that’s why I think the tension between what we want and what we can achieve is so important. That tension is at least part of what drives the evolution of social structures. This driven change is good, in my opinion, because it helps to avoid that unchecked consolidation of power that you refer to.

In the interest of saving Jesus from supervillain status, I think there are probably many ways of going about the kind of revolt we’re talking about. Jesus seems to have inspired more people than he might have if he had resorted to The Joker’s methods.

those are good questions. i haven’t had a lot of time to flesh out my ideas lately and to that end i’m not sure i could even offer acceptable answers even if i had the time.

but i will say this: generally speaking i am becoming more and more convinced that any sort of order — and i use the word very loosely as i’m somewhat uncomfortable with it — that is worth being pursued or termed as being normative in the sense that it perpetuates the least amount of oppression, domination, etc. possible, must be situated as local and contextual as feasibly possible.

as such, i tend to agree with lyotard and other postmoderns and poststructuralists in that i am suspicious and altogether antagonistic toward the hegemony of the metanarrative and the coercive, unilateral, and unregulated use of power by the establishment for the sake of artificial “order.”

there is a certain tension in there somewhere. and i’m not sure what to do with it.

The whole thing makes me think of Lyotard’s “incredulity toward metanarratives.” Is there/can there be an order (economic, social, or whatever you prefer) that does not include the obedience of those who observe it? Perhaps more importantly, is there/can there be an order in which a Joker/Christ will feel at home?