Now that the US Presidentials are over, I can finally start thinking about blogging and writing again.
Sounds like an odd thing to say, doesn’t it? Why would the US elections keep me as a European, a writer or a philosopher from blogging my mind? The answer is easily given. There are only two ways to go about a topic that is so invasive in our everyday lives and has such a massive presence in the news: either you avoid talking about it completely, but then the avoidance will always show in your writing since it is what is on everyone’s mind after all OR you do write about it and open a can of worms that you cannot close again.
Of course I had an opinion on the votes and the elections, of course I have a personal stance and a professional one since I can rarely dissociate the one from the other. As someone trained in philosophy going about in the world, you can rarely not be influenced by the things and current topics around you and think about them with your ‘philosophical’ mind. So, even if I wasn’t to talk about the elephant in the room, I would in a way by avoiding it meticulously.
So the main question remains: why not blog about it if it’s such an important issue of our time?
Because in the myriad of comments, opinions, partisanship battles, demeaning thought processes etc. my word doesn’t count for anything. Not amongst the friends that I live around, close contacts over the internet that I’ve come to consider my friends on certain levels, not among the people that share my faith or convictions or the people I respect. Because just as the media coverage enlightens our knowledge of the world (not to be confounded with actual knowledge, I’m just referring to factual knowledge), it also taints and escalates the dialogue. There is practically no informed discussion to be had about anything in this respect. Not about the kind of dog Obama’s kids will get or the colour of Palin’s breakfast cereal.
I have in all honesty only seen ONE explame of a discussion that could be called constructive and instructive for both camps in all of over 2 years of following the whole circus called U.S. Presidential Election.
What a sad bottom line that makes.
And something I was not ready to expose myself to. There are only so many fall-outs with friends and family that you can get past and once certain things are being said… the going back is almost impossible. The Philosopher’s Attic isn’t about that. It’s about looking at the world in a different manner. It’s about getting a small spark of something else in your day and in mine. And that is what I’ll try to bring back now that this race is over.
A great weekend to all of you.
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Interesting . . . It is a bit of a paradox that the philosophical examination of things that you refer to, while nice to be considered “above it all”, is actually at the heart of it all. Perhaps that’s part of why it’s difficult to make headway with people while they are obsessed with this election that has consumed our minds for the last 26 months.
It may be true that it is over, but for those pushing for fundamental change in they way of government over here, their work has just begun – likewise the work of those who fear this change (for both valid and invalid reasons) has also just begun.
We may not want to hear your views on the Obama kids’ dog (I’m voting for a cockapoo, personally) – the discussion about Obama’s worldview and how it differs from the previous administrations’ worldviews is important and should continue. Hopefully, people will be more civil about things, but I’m not holding much hope for that.
I actually told someone yesterday that “I am philosophical about the outcome of this election, now that I’ve calmed down” It’s always useful to have a couple of philosophers around during these times.
Oh, and welcome back to blogging!
Thanks for your insight on this, Greg.
You are quite right in pointing out that the real work is only starting and I should have pointed that out, because after all that is what is on my mind as well. It is a trivial and fundamental truth of any election process, any political decision or even any process for opinion.
Concerning the civility of dialogue: I don’t hold a lot of hope for that either. In all honesty, I might not be old enough to say it, but I do feel like I have been witnessing a decline in the nature of conflictual dialogue in the last 10 years. Certain basic corner stones of communication simply seem eradicated from general use. Such as know what you’re adopting, know why you’re saying what you’re saying, respect the other even if they seem idiotic, unfounded and even mean to you etc.
Most interestingly enough it always articulates itself in ‘anybody that is not voting as I do, is wrong, illiterate, stupid etc. etc.’ as if the fact that I am adopting a certain view that can ben sanctioned by a higher power (such as moral authority, Church authority, etc.) makes me automatically right, proper and decent. For me that is just another version of the ‘who’s not with me is against me’ stance and it is pure poison to any real dialogue in its first an most important sense as an exchange.
For change (which is contained in ex-change) in opinion and attitude can only be achieved in a graceful and respectful manner. That is my personal view on communicational theory in a nutshell.
Thank you for having me back!
Yes, this past 2-year-long election season here in the States has been perhaps the saddest presidential election to date, but not necessarily because of the candidates – for both Presidential candidates were not the typical partisans that we have normally been forced to choose between in recent years (I voted for Nader in 2004). Between the biases and frivolities of the media and the propaganda and hate-laced rhetoric of the millions of commentators, bloggers, and YouTube “experts”, there was very little truth or substance being communicated to anyone. Regardless of what was actually said or believed by either candidate, you could always count on their words being twisted and distorted and spread about the world more quickly than their actual message was.
I eventually stopped talking about politics as well, for many of the same reasons. Living in the Southeastern US, where ideological and racial tensions are still very evident and often quite tense, and the divide between urban and rural is so sharp, I found myself walking on eggshells around just about everyone, as most seemed to hold some strong (and too often, misinformed) position about one candidate or the other, and as Election Day approached, the divisions and tensions only grew exponentially. I was so sickened by all of the political mess, I was about to the point of swearing off caring about politics ever again and not even participating in the elections.
What really bothered me, as one who follows Christ, was how nasty it got once a large number of Christians got involved. I mean all of the tabloid-esque political discourse before the official party nominations and selection of VP candidates took place was bad enough, but once many Christians got involved and started really spewing venom all over the political landscape, I noticed the divisions growing dramatically, and the devolution of serious political discourse progressed significantly. I was not immune to the attacks either. The few times I expressed views that were more moderate, conciliatory, and open-minded to some Christians who are close to me, I was verbally torn down and made to feel like I am some ungodly heathen for even thinking such things.
Of course, this wasn’t exclusive to Christians of a certain political persuasion either – I caught flak from the other end as well whenever I’d slip up and say that I thought both candidates were good men who were capable of leading well. My spiritual well-being wasn’t questioned by them, but I was always informed (often with much exaggeration) of the many flaws of the candidate they opposed.
So I simply shut my mouth – with the exception of trying to let other followers of Christ know how sad it is that we’ve let politics turn us into such bitterly vicious people – and waited until November 5th.
I will say that it was quite touching to see the response of so many African-Americans after the victor was announced. There was a sense of genuine hope and excitement – many of the students’ parents and grandparents had lived through the egregious discrimination of the 60′s and earlier, and it did my heart much good to see this page in the history of my country being turned. (Unfortunately, shortly afterwards, I was kept busy for the rest of the night dealing with immature incidents of hate-laced slurs being written in the residence halls.)
Overall, this has been a very disheartening election season for me, and while I am watching to see what will transpire next with a sober mind, I am also trying to stave off a growing dread of 2012.
I think Julius Caesar summed it up quite well when he said “Human nature is such that we become either too confident or too fearful when circumstances change.”
I hope that sobriety of mind makes a comeback one day, and that those of us who still cling to that pesky notion that we can have different views and perspectives in this beautifully diverse world and still live at peace with – and even care about – one another, will see that dream become more and more reality.
Thank you for your thoughts and feelings on this one, Lucas.
We share certain feelings of discomfort when it comes to certain groups of politicised Christians and I think we’re right to assume that something in the way we apprehend the reality of politics today has changed in that respect.
One important thing I discovered was the fact that people now are looking to political leaders to be their spiritual or moral leaders as well and for me that is a fundamental change to the generation of our parents for instance where Rome got what was Rome’s, and God what was his.
The combatant and militant tone with which the partisanship has become inflamed is a shocking occurrence indeed and something that we need to be conscious of and even fight against to preserve the liberty of opinion and free vote.