> Otherwise, scratching the left or right side of your nose may be a political statement and preferring a trackpad or a mouse may be a statement regarding values.
This isn't keeping things tractable, it's keeping them rational. You're not required to limit your scope to remain rational. In fact, the claim that scope has to be limited can be a way to intentionally exclude things from being evaluated rationally.
If there's a reasonable way that the orientation of a nose scratch can have political implications, then it should be considered. There's not one, though, so we don't really have to worry about it. But I fear that the criterion you're using for your nose-scratching example is the "Oh, come on..." criterion. If someone comes up with a real argument that there's a right way to scratch your nose, you don't exclude it because of "really?"
The limitation argument applies to the meaning of the word political rather than the application of the concept. While one can look at the political angle of anything, describing everything as political means the label "political" ceases to have any meaning whatsoever.
If everything is political then what's not political? Definitionally nothing. So saying "X is political" becomes equivalent to "X is".
This is a specific case of a broader truth, which is that expanding the definition of a category lowers the information entropy of that category.
This isn't keeping things tractable, it's keeping them rational. You're not required to limit your scope to remain rational. In fact, the claim that scope has to be limited can be a way to intentionally exclude things from being evaluated rationally.
If there's a reasonable way that the orientation of a nose scratch can have political implications, then it should be considered. There's not one, though, so we don't really have to worry about it. But I fear that the criterion you're using for your nose-scratching example is the "Oh, come on..." criterion. If someone comes up with a real argument that there's a right way to scratch your nose, you don't exclude it because of "really?"
reply