Re: a political being

I didn't mean to define "politics" (or variants on the word) as active,
deliberate group alignment. Your non-activity empowers those who do
act; poo-pooing the inevitable failure (won't argue with you there)
doesn't hide the fact that you did nothing to stop it while it was
happening. But this is really beside the fact.

More importantly, you're able to stand back as a detached observer and
describe what "they" do to others living "over there" -- you don't
describe politics, in other words, that directly and immediately affect
you. You talk about concentration camps and gulags but not about what
your city council did last year. My point, in my last post, is that you
have the freedom to take this attitude because you don't believe your
city council's actions one way or the other will have that great an
affect on you. They wouldn't, of course, because you don't see things
significantly differently from the city council _in the areas that they
could affect you_.

L:et's forget about this dramatic Nazi and Communist stuff. If your
city council levied a $50 per hour tax on psychiatric sessions, I think
you'd get involved in politics :). Clint Eastwood, of all people, ran
for mayor in Carmel, CA because the city council there passed a law
forbidding the eating of ice cream on public sidewalks. His attitude?:
enough is enough.

What John would say, probably, about the rhetoric of power is an
extension of this. These alignments are wired into our language.

None of this, of course, has anything to do with a denail of personal
responsibility or the recognition that many of our problems stem from
our own behaviors and attitudes. My claim was that this facet of our
existence is inescapable, not that it's the only or even the most
significant facet of our existence -- that we're kidding ourselves
whenever we think this isn't present. In the context of our discussion
of the Gospels, to say or imply one text is "pure" of politics and then
condemn another for being so laden with politics is a bit naive, because
all texts are laden with political implications.

Jim

Scottie Bowman wrote:

> '... simply that being present in the world aligns your interests
> with some people and against others -- hence, you're a political
> being ...'
>
> I don’t have any doubt that, had I been a Jew living in Germany
> in 1935, I should have been deeply ‘politicised’ - & perhaps
> eventually dead.
>
> Short of that kind of extremity, though, might it not be that some
> of us are so sceptical of ‘group action’ that our instinct is firstly
> to withhold our participation & secondly to point cynically to what
> is almost invariably a failed or corrupted outcome.
> The brave dawn of 1917 leads to the Gulag, the Freedom Marches
> to all those black corpses in Vietnam. And so on & so bloody on.
>
> Although in my last post I disclaimed allegiance to either Jesus
> or Sigmund, I remain sufficiently conditioned to think the ‘real’
> trouble, the ‘real’ pain can only be effectively tackled from ‘within’.
> Seductive & all as it is to blame ‘them.'
>
> Mind you, I was under the impression that ‘politicisation’ had some
> connection with the kind of thing John refers to as the ‘rhetorics
> of power’– & that you could observe it as close to home as in
> the bullying of homosexuals or a mere battle over a school timetable.
> In your experience, are these conflicts resolved – & I mean resolved,
> not ‘settled’ – by decisions of the groups involved?
> Or by the individuals reappraising themselves?
>
> Scottie B.
>
>
>

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Received on Tue Jul 29 09:47:01 2003