Social Analysis 12/6 - Liberal Invitation Strategy

My progressive education at Bank Street was indeed a hyper-charmed, over-idealized version of what an Electric Kool Aid aficionado sees of the world... of course there is no way that I should have expected that the values I learned there (fairness, honesty, kindness) would apply in the real world. But one value which I refuse to abandon is the Liberal Invitation Strategy.

What you are about to read, perhaps will sound like the losers lament. Yet I think the honest man will find truth in it, the kind man will find warmth in it, the loyal man will find intrinsic value in it, and the moral man will find necessity in it.

Over the course of the last few busy birthday weeks and with holiday parties coming up, I would like to believe that my peers would find rationale in such a strategy, the essence of which is to truthfully identify and maximize moral content of any social gathering by an honest assessment of attendees. The politics of who is invited to the party, who is not, who is invited to the dinner pre-party or finals club after party, who was invited to the official pre game and who was the host of the unofficial pre game all detract from the celebratory nature of birthdays as well as the holiday season. Indeed, I am fed up with the petty nature that invitation and oversight have taken at my school and in my life. However, the capitalistic conventions of competition which are immediately instilled within every Harvard student upon their first walk through the gates of Harvard, have led to a false knowledge and concept of what is to be (in a moral sense) done. But what if each interaction was based on honesty rather than competition? What if we eliminated the tendency towards pre judgment on the basis of social currency? The "means" is a society in which we invite (let invite mean engage in open exchange in formal as well as informal settings) liberally, thereby maximizing socialization, and thereby, increasing the chances for optimal socialization (the surprise of finding that someone can be more of a friend than you thought them to be capable of).

The Nature of the Theory:
- The Liberal Invitation Strategy is a social strategy whereby in the course of compiling an invitation list, one incorporates those who may have seemed like less obvious choices (2nd, 3rd, or even 4th rung accomplices), includes friends of friends, and when appropriate enemies
- The logic in inviting enemies is that a true enemy's attendance will expose their tendency towards ill willed and disgraceful behavior
- The proof of invitation standard is that anyone who would be offended by not receiving an invitation should be invited, this can only be subjugated if the host/hostess would be offended by the invitee in question attending.

...When the non-invitation is a mere oversight and the invitee is of no real or genuine consequence either way, why not choose the polite route? [This of course is different in the case of limited resources to be distributed amongst invitees]

- All natural choices (people whom are in one's natural realm of friends or whom according to allegiance "deserve" invitation over others) should always be included (out of touch friends and less "popular" or "politically sound" friends are often the most vulnerable to this sort of invitational negligence and often the most offended)

...Excluding natural choices on the basis of politics is never a flattering reflection on the host or hostess. It perpetuates the cult "fad of bitchiness" which in my perspective has become particularly passe (circa Tina Fey's "Mean Girls")

When choosing whom to include and whom not to include, we often cheapen the aspects of inclusion and exclusion to the value of one list, one evening or one individual, but lack of caring who is hurt by our actions is a particularly vile and often offhanded contribution to a youth culture in which the values of honesty and kindness are rotting before us.

Although perhaps my own inviting skills have not been soundly tested, I will self reify my judgment on this particularly grim aspect of socialization based on its visceral nature: My mother would have never allowed me to behave in such a way. I wonder what my peers would say if they based their behavior on such a principle.


The maxim to leave with is: With chance of social conflagration, just pass out the invitation!
or perhaps, just...
"be nice!"