taliesin...meImyself......POLITICS (6.15.97)

Okay, here we go...putting my foot in my mouth and generally making an ass of myself...A good humbling experience everyone should go through at least once in their lifetime!

The social division of labor is quite incredible. It's amazing how -- for want of a better word -- 'things' that affect our personal lives can precipitate out of the living brew and congeal into a glop of 'public' 'Political' issues and policies, and how in a 'democracy' such as the US people still talk of the government as a 'they' in opposition to an 'us, the people'.

Yeah, dislocating the blame to the other side makes it so much easier to deal with social problems. All that needs to happen to fix the world is for the others to finally wake up and smell the coffee, right? Isn't it such a pain that politics constantly interferes with your private life? Makes avoiding getting involved so difficult. And being so easily socially classifiable into so many statistical categories, especially if you happen to fall into one or more 'minority' categories, just further aggravates the problem...unless, of course, you can fool yourself into thinking that 'Politics' is isolable as a specific social sector with people and activities you can avoid, in which case, good for you. The bliss of ignorance. Being a descendent of Pandora and Psyche, I'm not one of the fortunate. Got enough curiosity to kill a cat nine-times over. So I dabble and try even if the 'truths' are unpleasant to say the least.

So, on to uninformed pet peeves of the moment...
(Sorry if they're too American for all you [non-existent] foreign visitors. Love to know more about your local politics if you care to share: email your thoughts to taliesin@doubt-beat.com)

A N . I L L U S I O N . O F . T R U T H

I think the operative rationale of politics is that people take care of their own kind, which is defined in more than one ways. Maybe there really isn't much of a right or wrong, just relatedness and desires. And the political arena is just a big unruly circus of mobs jostling for the consummation of desires for your own kind, however that's defined.

In this colored light, the illusion of rational methodology, moral certainty and attendant authority imbedded in most social and political discussions is a bit annoying. I wish the 'political' players and their audience would quit wasting so much time and money on packaging themselves to be the operatively or morally superior party. No mortal -- and everyone is one, even prophets and saints, political heavy-weights and geniuses in any and every discipline -- really has a clue how to operate the social engine properly, so quit looking for heaven on earth.

And having said that, there's nevertheless no point in becoming a misanthrope just because everyone's a fool sometimes or even most of the times. To do so would be to in effect presume, consciously or not, that you somehow are superior and can glimpse a heaven in the negation of what is.

D E S I R E S . I N . T H I S . Q U A R T E R

Very difficult to place myself on the political spectrum. The current narratives just don't fit very well. On individual issues perhaps one can flirt with certain quarters, but on the whole, given the range of issues impacting one's life, how can one resign oneself any one category?

So given that politics operates on issues and categories, I find little satisfaction in joining any party or faction and much more from trying, even if I fail, to make my actions, classically 'political' or otherwise, negotiate with my thoughts on politics and social issues. That is not to say I don't see any value to group efforts, just that when I participate, I do so with discomfort.

One group I provisionally subscribe to, at least for the last US presidential election, is the Natural Law Party, which I just discovered right before the election. So, okay, at first sight they seem a bit loony, and not just because they're not one of the major parties -- I was told that their British counter-part was doing fine until they aired a commercial featuring a levitating Swami Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of India. But tell me what's so rational about dismissing wholesale and without examination everything foreign and as yet incomprehensible to you.

Doubt and skepticism are useful tools until you start applying them haphazardly. And a belief in the validity of social 'sciences' is just that, a blind faith. Take all the polling for example, the statistics-collecting techniques currently employed are so grossly generalized. How can you take a few thousand individuals to stand for millions? I'd like to know how come I'm never polled. Furthermore, the questions asked always already pre-defined the answers. Besides, I don't think a 'science' whose findings affect how the 'nature' measured will evolve can be a proper science, at least not of the same standing as the sciences that measures mother nature. The influences of consciousness must be taken into consideration.

And while I'm on the question of Politics and election, although I don't know much about British politics, I thought I'd pass on a link to a funky site about the recent British elections, the General Election 1997 site. Gorgeous designs if nothing else. Another amusing election-related site, albeit about US elections, is the Vote For Me -- politics in America section at the U.S. PBS TV station web site which explore the fringes of election campaigning.

Apart from big P politics, which I probably don't really get involved in frequently enough -- although I beg to differ from the opinion that equates Politics with politics, and lack of involvement in Politics with political apathy -- I'm a sucker for environmentalism, hoax and all. Or perhaps sustainable growth is a better description.

Maybe it's because I live in such a cluttered home, the issue of trash accumulation really hits my nerves. The thought that there really isn't an 'away' where trash will disappear into, that refuse will stay around, taking over landfills, costs me some sleepless nights. It's not a question to be stilled by assurances from 'scientists' that it is no threat at all to our well-being for it leads to other questions. Questions of excess and of what underlies the desires that fuel our 'rational' undertakings. And sometimes that undermines the validity of 'solutions' to other social problems such as unemployment. The thought of creating more jobs, more opportunities for producing things which may require harder sales pitches and creation of artificial consumptive desires...Ugh! The stupid things one worries about and nurtures till they're out of proportion!

In any case, that sets the stage for my interest in some loony ideas such as the Earth Ships concept, which is about building self-sustaining environmentally-'friendly' architecture out of recycled material. And on the same alchemical idea of turning 'base material' into 'gold', I find the recent PBS tv program the New Urban Renewal quite touching and inspiring. While I don't know all the nuances involved in urban planning, the concept of grass-root reclaiming of urban war zones sits better with my current doubts about the validity of doctoring from the outside by those who have little personal investments in the success of the healing process.

The PBS web site, by the way, is quite nice, with lots of different sections supplementing their TV programs. Which brings me to another issue: charitable donations -- public television in the US is always airing donation pleads.

I've donated to PBS and other charitable groups before, but there's something I find very disconcerting about dealing in cold hard cash. On the one hand there's advantages to money's flexibility, how it can be stocked away and exchanged for any item of necessity later on. But the fact that it is freely exchangeable also makes it less trustworthy for me. How can you be sure that the $ you give to charity, government, and lobbying groups is going to translate into humanitarian relief rather than pocket changes for lubricating an inefficient or corrupt bureaucracy. Furthermore, rather than satisfying the guilt of being privileged, it just makes me more painfully aware that I haven't invested much personally to make a difference. In any case, it's an unresolved issue for me.

H O W . T O . M E A S U R E . I N V O L V E M E N T

Obviously I don't think big-P Politics is all there is of politics. Being Politically apathetic has just as much political ramification as being an activist and being political doesn't have to mean taking sides on Political or 'public' issues.

When it comes to citizenry and governing, I don't think chastening people to join some political organization is going to solve anything. As someone who's very stubborn herself, I understand how forcing righteousness down someone's throat is not a viable long-term solution. An obedient bunch of brainless idiots in a 'politically correct' society is no better than what we have. No 'solution' is absolute. All depends on context. What may be a 'solution' today may through its cumulative implementation become a future problem. And without smart and active citizenry, where is the solution to that future problem going to arise?

The leader-follower structure of major political movements really ought to be re-thought. Every single major political figure has his/her personal and selfish reason for thinking the way s/he does. While acknowledging the applicability of their contributions, let's not deify and dehumanize them. No leader is a leader without the followers. No idea can be great without the followers who implemented the idea and thus made it significant. When we deify the great thinkers, we also make their legitimate contributions vulnerable to unjustified attacks based on their personal life, and not on the merit of their contribution.

I'd say invest in people, not abstract and generalized rules and laws. Cultivate their sense of community and their problem-solving ability. A conviction that arise out of self-interest would probably be more lasting than one that's imposed from without. The other side of big 'P' politics has to do with one's personal development. Everything that one does or not has political consequences, and there's no point in waiting to know what's politically 'right' or 'correct' to start getting 'politically' involved. Live, try, fail or succeed, and try again is all that there is to do.

I N . C O N C L U S I O N

It was very nice to ramble on to myself. Now time to get off my narcissistic keyboards and get political, and save some band-width and electricity.