Thursday, March 23, 2006

Political Dissonance

I have only recently begun to think of myself as a person in a political sense – that is, a person for whom certain decisions are made by people who have no idea who I am. And I noticed that as soon as I began to think that way, I became acutely aware that actions were being carried out by these people in my name – with my tax dollars, for one, and also with the implicit assumption that I have condoned and currently assent to every single decision they make.

So when I don’t agree with them, the cognitive dissonance is staggering.

I didn't always feel this way about political decisions, so it's not an easy thing for me to describe. But of course I'm going to try. I'm an English major, after all.

So: I live in a society which supports me in ways I do not fully comprehend. My days are spent for the most part without the slightest consideration of death or suffering, and from what I understand, that condition is actually quite rare in the history of human experience. I try to appreciate that, but I do a poor job at it.

This society is upheld by all of its rules, institutions, and government, built one upon another. I don't agree with certain rules, but I follow most of them because they're necessary to prevent de-stabilization of society and because I hate being punished for things. I don't like certain institutions, like the Texas courts, for instance, which kill people on a monthly basis, but I do appreciate others, like the Tropicana company, which makes excellent orange juice. The same applies to my government and its various branches and representatives, with a notable exception - those are elected and are in the position to change both my society's laws and its institutions.

A company acts on the will of its executives, and I have no control over their actions - which, though often aggravating, is acceptable because I also feel no responsibility for those actions. When my government enacts a war and commits what I consider to be atrocities in the pursuit of this war, I cannot separate myself from that decision and that action. It was carried out with my assent, because I follow the laws of America and benefit from its institutions. And this hurts my heart in a way that I am not accustomed to.

So I have recently been thinking that I should do more to express this conflict, and this guilt, and this surprising anger. My wife is very good at expressing these things, so I'm learning. When you spend most of your life as a detached observer, it's not easy to join the fray. But I'm learning.

1 Comments:

At 7:49 PM, Blogger Valerie said...

Yes, I am very good at expressing my anger with society! They gave me a column, after all! If only you'd had a column during college...you could have instilled a little corner of liberalism in the conservative sea of V-tech. -Val

 

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