Why politics is depressing
Oct. 26th, 2010 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snousleBeen thinking a lot lately about how my efforts should relate to political questions. In so doing, I find three fundamental sources of tension.
The first concerns what I was taught. Growing up in a fairly elite / white / wealthy school environment, I was taught that political activity is a virtue, perhaps an obligation. The wisdom of this sentiment is less than clear, but it's a feeling that's hard to shake, and it torments me constantly. The values drilled into me were a kind of tolerant liberalism; left-leaning, as urban Canadians tend to be, with plenty of room for (as an example) a South African objectivist schoolmate to argue earnestly in favor of aparthied and have his opinions heard and at least considered.
My modified take on these values is that politics is important enough to either approach it seriously or not at all. It's this interpretation of those values that gives me some breathing room in what has become a strange time for a strange country.
The second source of tension is more universal, and very apparent in American popular politics: while our innate political instincts were tuned by evolution to serve our needs in small-group environments, they are poorly adapted to modern mass democracy. So the most natural and common political act is also the least effective; namely, the one-on-one political argument. This really has nothing to do with politics in the nation at large, and everything to do with social dominance. Back in the stone age, when there was no "nation at large" to contend with, this instinct made perfect sense. Today, it's throwing gasoline on a burning house - your own house. To cast this as a noble activity is, therefore, kind of grotesque.
The primal instincts won't leave me alone, and often lead me astray. A thought I keep in mind here is that arguing about politics is like running in the Special Olympics: even if you win, you're still retarded. :-P
The third problem, which is somewhat related to the first, is that the "golden rule" is invalid when it comes to problems of mass cooperation. The prisoners dilemma serves as a model for all sorts of problems, such as pollution, consumer choices, and so forth, and describes our personal relationship to politics as existing in one of four categories. If we imagine the dillema played out with ourselves as one player, and "the nation" as another, we can analyze the consequences of personal choices as outcomes in the game.
Consider a simple act, picking up dog turds in the park. You can either clean up after your dog, or not - as can everyone else. The possible outcomes for you are:
Winner: Everyone picks up dog turds, as do you, and the park is pristine. This is the best outcome.
Freeloader: Everyone picks up dog turds, but you don't. The park is not much compromised, but you enjoy a major convenience.
Loser: Nobody picks up dog turds. You are not inconvenienced, but the park is a mess.
Sucker: You pick up your dog turds, but nobody else does. You are inconvenienced, and your efforts do not improve the park.
A REALLY STUPID THING about politics is that we are constantly pressured to be suckers. This is the worst possible outcome. I see promoting individual sacrifice without offering a path to the "winner" quadrant as being overtly cynical and undermining the very point of political activity. If you really, really want to turn people off of political activity for good, put them in the sucker role and let them figure it out for themselves.
There are many possible ways to the "winner" quadrant. For example, organizing a park-cleanup party can tip the scales so that the winner role becomes a stable and sustainable choice for everyone, thanks to improved social relations and a little peer pressure. Generally, cooperation is a consequence of repeated encounters that build trust between players - otherwise known as "social capital" in Francis Fukuyama's analysis. But not all dilemmas have winning solutions, and you can never take them for granted. They're hard, and they take work.
Needless to say, refusing the "sucker" role in favor of the "loser" role, as we have to do almost every day in countless little ways, is depressing and discouraging. Talk about a shitty choice.
It has not escaped my attention that I'm in the ideal position for political activity. There is a serious problem immediately at hand, the right-wing attack on science, that I'm unusually well prepared to act on. I have the time and the independence to take it seriously. What is lacking is a framework for making that effort mean anything. And, possibly, the mental discipline to lift the work out of ineffective interpersonal conflicts and into whatever institution that could productively accommodate it.
And there has to be something in it for me, something which makes it at least plausibly worthwhile. I'm very wary of the self-serving nature of political organizations, and how actual solutions to the problems they purport to address are avoided as existential threats.
Yeah, it's a tough thing, but maybe a "fart in a windstorm" is better than no fart at all. At least it relieves the pressure, LOL. Because doing nothing is making me a little crazy these days.
The first concerns what I was taught. Growing up in a fairly elite / white / wealthy school environment, I was taught that political activity is a virtue, perhaps an obligation. The wisdom of this sentiment is less than clear, but it's a feeling that's hard to shake, and it torments me constantly. The values drilled into me were a kind of tolerant liberalism; left-leaning, as urban Canadians tend to be, with plenty of room for (as an example) a South African objectivist schoolmate to argue earnestly in favor of aparthied and have his opinions heard and at least considered.
My modified take on these values is that politics is important enough to either approach it seriously or not at all. It's this interpretation of those values that gives me some breathing room in what has become a strange time for a strange country.
The second source of tension is more universal, and very apparent in American popular politics: while our innate political instincts were tuned by evolution to serve our needs in small-group environments, they are poorly adapted to modern mass democracy. So the most natural and common political act is also the least effective; namely, the one-on-one political argument. This really has nothing to do with politics in the nation at large, and everything to do with social dominance. Back in the stone age, when there was no "nation at large" to contend with, this instinct made perfect sense. Today, it's throwing gasoline on a burning house - your own house. To cast this as a noble activity is, therefore, kind of grotesque.
The primal instincts won't leave me alone, and often lead me astray. A thought I keep in mind here is that arguing about politics is like running in the Special Olympics: even if you win, you're still retarded. :-P
The third problem, which is somewhat related to the first, is that the "golden rule" is invalid when it comes to problems of mass cooperation. The prisoners dilemma serves as a model for all sorts of problems, such as pollution, consumer choices, and so forth, and describes our personal relationship to politics as existing in one of four categories. If we imagine the dillema played out with ourselves as one player, and "the nation" as another, we can analyze the consequences of personal choices as outcomes in the game.
Consider a simple act, picking up dog turds in the park. You can either clean up after your dog, or not - as can everyone else. The possible outcomes for you are:
Winner: Everyone picks up dog turds, as do you, and the park is pristine. This is the best outcome.
Freeloader: Everyone picks up dog turds, but you don't. The park is not much compromised, but you enjoy a major convenience.
Loser: Nobody picks up dog turds. You are not inconvenienced, but the park is a mess.
Sucker: You pick up your dog turds, but nobody else does. You are inconvenienced, and your efforts do not improve the park.
A REALLY STUPID THING about politics is that we are constantly pressured to be suckers. This is the worst possible outcome. I see promoting individual sacrifice without offering a path to the "winner" quadrant as being overtly cynical and undermining the very point of political activity. If you really, really want to turn people off of political activity for good, put them in the sucker role and let them figure it out for themselves.
There are many possible ways to the "winner" quadrant. For example, organizing a park-cleanup party can tip the scales so that the winner role becomes a stable and sustainable choice for everyone, thanks to improved social relations and a little peer pressure. Generally, cooperation is a consequence of repeated encounters that build trust between players - otherwise known as "social capital" in Francis Fukuyama's analysis. But not all dilemmas have winning solutions, and you can never take them for granted. They're hard, and they take work.
Needless to say, refusing the "sucker" role in favor of the "loser" role, as we have to do almost every day in countless little ways, is depressing and discouraging. Talk about a shitty choice.
It has not escaped my attention that I'm in the ideal position for political activity. There is a serious problem immediately at hand, the right-wing attack on science, that I'm unusually well prepared to act on. I have the time and the independence to take it seriously. What is lacking is a framework for making that effort mean anything. And, possibly, the mental discipline to lift the work out of ineffective interpersonal conflicts and into whatever institution that could productively accommodate it.
And there has to be something in it for me, something which makes it at least plausibly worthwhile. I'm very wary of the self-serving nature of political organizations, and how actual solutions to the problems they purport to address are avoided as existential threats.
Yeah, it's a tough thing, but maybe a "fart in a windstorm" is better than no fart at all. At least it relieves the pressure, LOL. Because doing nothing is making me a little crazy these days.
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-26 07:21 pm (UTC)ANY science education you can put out there is better than none, even if only one person changes their mind as a result of it.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-26 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-26 07:25 pm (UTC)And then there's the comedic approach: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert seem to be doing very well for themselves these days. Although one can argue that their comedy IS serious (...does that make sense)?
no subject
Date: 2010-10-26 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-26 08:10 pm (UTC)One fortunate thing about this is that sometimes the "irrationality" of instinctive politics bumps problems into the winners quadrant - for example, we can be grateful that people vote despite the lack of obvious rewards for doing so. Being fiercely pro-social Canadians makes us unusually inclined towards optimism when it comes to human nature, and this particular illusion is remarkably self-fulfilling. Hence, Canadian parks are very nice places.
But the illusion breaks down for more important issues. Would you forgo flights to Seattle to make an inconsequential dent in atmospheric C02? Probably not, and you shouldn't, because I can absolutely guarantee you that your effort would be wasted.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-26 08:16 pm (UTC)I would take their work as extremely serious - they have too much at stake to risk being sincere or genuinely spontaneous.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-26 08:26 pm (UTC)But anyway I don't think the comparison is good ... politics is not really like that. You don't have to win all the way or even a lot of the way to make a beneficial difference.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-26 09:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-26 09:17 pm (UTC)If you want to do something substantively political, find something in your own backyard that you think sucks and work to change it locally. For no personal gain or self-aggrandizement. Do it for a year. Then re-examine these musings.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-26 09:30 pm (UTC)But I've learned to accept that. I do my contribution and it seems enough others do as well to make the thing happen and it all works out. I also sometimes like the input into decision making that goes along with it. Some others may call me a chump but that's the least of what I've been called in my life.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-26 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-26 11:00 pm (UTC)The #2 activity I've looked at is working in the local soup kitchen. Though I've got lots of ulterior motives there. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2010-10-26 11:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 06:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 02:49 pm (UTC)Seems like you came to a good conclusion.