Facebook has an option to list one's political preference. People on my friends' list claim associations that run the gamut, from Libertarian, to Conservative, to Very Liberal. Some people, though, list "Apathetic." I must admit that, while I'm no fan of most American conservatism, I understand conservatism. But apathy -- when people list "apathetic," I am forced to conclude that they either are not paying attention or have not engaged with people who are adversely (or positively, for that matter) affected by someone's policies, but probably both. Or perhaps such persons have simply been burned so many times that cynicism was a natural course.
Consider politics. This is one area that is especially relevant to me currently, as I am disgusted by being held hostage, along with every American and most of the world's economies, by Republicans in the House of Representatives, a fact which played no small part in prompting me to write this post. Some people do not follow politics. Usually, the reason given is that "they're all liars" or "they're all the same." Now, I possess a healthy bit of cynicism concerning politics and related things, but to recuse oneself from understanding anything, based on such a flimsy, naive cynicism is simply lazy. Politicians decide how our society functions, they decide what is legal, they decide whether we bomb and who we can imprison. Our politics affects real people's lives, and to simply say, generally with a certain smugness, that one is beyond all of it, is to simply slip into an indolent non-engagement.
Typically, the "naive" are considered those who are unabashedly optimistic. Often, this certainly is a hallmark of a kind naivete. But there another kind of naivete -- the kind which drives one to make simplistic, unrealistic statements such as, "All politicians are the same." Generally, in my experience, those who say such things are simply ignorant of the relevant issues and seek to hide this fact by asserting that they are above politics in general. Or they are disillusioned, having been led astray in the past, and thus overgeneralize to everyone who seems to fit within a certain category. So, for instance, someone who had a bad experience in college might say, "College is useless" (as is in vogue these days), and someone who has had a bad experience studying philosophy might conclude the same about that entire field. In most cases, this is an expression of frustration: frustration with the complexity of the relevant issues, and the difficulty of sifting through the nonsense to find something genuine. The assumption is that all cynicism is the opposite of naivete, but, in fact, there is substantial overlap. Sometimes, these generalizations are more-or-less accurate, but, more often than not, I think, they are manifestations of resignation: a capitulation to a powerlessness in an arena.
Recently, some Republicans have threatened to throw the world economy into chaos if their policies are not implemented, and others outright lie (or are disturbingly ignorant) about the effects. Now, it is not particularly relevant at this point what I think of Republican policies, in general. The point is that they threatened to throw us all off a cliff. As others have noted, this is a hostage situation. Some have tried to say that "the Democrats do the same thing." Without dwelling too much on the fact that this is obviously false to anyone even remotely paying attention, there are two possibilities: the person's view is so influenced by his partisanship that he does not recognize that government officials' holding our economy hostage is morally offensive, or he is so unengaged and ignorant of the situation that he is blissfully ignorant, resting upon his assumptions of the moral equivalency of all political antics.
This is intellectually unhealthy, and, for someone who has been paying attention, possibly dishonest. It may be a fascinating way in which people psychologically cope with a frustrating, complex world, but it brings us no closer to understanding what is actually happening or how to appropriately respond. In politics, there is often the implicit assumption that what one's politicians do does not actually affect him. Typically, these people come from relatively secure backgrounds, in which they have not felt the pain of badly implemented policies. They certainly have not gotten to know commonly disenfranchised minorities. They probably are only vaguely cognizant of the fact that missiles kill people. Presumably, they do not know any poor and sick people whose lives are directly affected by domestic policies. They likely do not realize that there are two wildly different philosophies currently battling over where to take our country, opting for the easy, lazy copout that they're all crooks.
Again, regardless of one's position on this or that issue, one should have a position on something, or at least be committed to understanding the issues involved, beyond simply restating, often shallowly, the positions of all sides. In politics, specifically, the point of a representative democracy is not that we elect people that we can trust; it is that we elect people who will work for us, because they know that we are watching them, and that if they don't, we can and will elect someone else. When this ceases to be the case, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
I do not pretend to be objective. I do not suppose that anyone is objective. We all have opinions, experiences, and beliefs which shape our worldview. We owe it to ourselves to understand, as much of possible, the worldview of those whose views differ from our own (and not simply the caricatures thereof which allow us to smugly confirm our own). Sometimes, we find them infuriating. I certainly do. But at least we find the real thing, or something close to it, infuriating and not a shallow misconception, a straw man to be beaten. If we are not willing to take this first, basic step, we will never engage with the world and those in it. I do not see how someone can interact with real people, in the real world, and not care about politics. But perhaps the problem is that many of us need not do so.
Annoyingly, this, too, can lead to the same unrealistic relativism. We do not want to be judgmental, but we do want to see clearly. We do not want to caricature, but sometimes certain philosophies, and the people implementing them, truly are as crazy and/or misguided as they seem. (Say, Republicans who think that explicitly threatening the fragile financial stability of the US and the world is an appropriate way of governing.)
Some of us forget that politics takes people to war, politics decides who is free and who is a slave, politics decides who lives, politics decides whether our water is clean, politics decides who goes to school and what students learn. Frustrating as the fact may be, politics is everywhere and always has been.
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