Posts Tagged government

Date: March 18th, 2011
Cate: matt's life, observations + conclusions + beliefs, society + culture, things to think about

my experiences with being governed

Should I be worried that  as a citizen of a representative democracy, I don’t notice any difference between representatives? And I mean real, discernible differences that have a significant impact (positive or negative) on my life – I’d settle for a trivial impact, even.

All the changes in my life over the past 5 or 6 years have arisen from decisions that I’ve made - opportunities that I’ve taken advantage of, limbs I’ve gone out on, risks I’ve mitigated, mistakes I’ve made, people I’ve met, things I’ve read, etc. But ‘people I’ve voted for’ doesn’t fit in that list. I try to do the ‘right thing,’ research who I’m voting for, make sure I’m making an informed decision, but lately I’ve started to become curious whether it matters. I’m tempted to choose what I vote for randomly, the next election season.

I’m not complaining that my vote doesn’t count, it’s something more profound than that: that we’ve gone from an ostensibly dumb conservative republican president to a conversely smart liberal democrat president, and I can’t tell what’s different. We’ve still got soldiers in the middle east, and don’t-ask-don’t-tell might be repealed, but I’m not a soldier, you know? I’m not saying I don’t have opinions on those subjects, but they’re all in abstract, because none of it effects me. Financial crises? I’m doing about as well as ever. National disasters and civil unrest in those other countries somewhere across the sea, where I don’t know anybody and will never have to deal with their problems.

This might sound like bragging, or possibly uncaring, but it’s really not either – it’s complaining. If anything it sounds stupid, even to myself, when I wish that something drastic would happen, a touchstone I could look at and say, “X impacted Y, because I voted for Z.” What if we completely cut ties with middle eastern oil suppliers, and gas price quadrupled overnight? That’d be something. What if suddenly homosexuality was made illegal? What if the draft was reinstated? What if marijuana was legalized? Something big, something to be up in arms about. Something I’d feel good about dropping everything else to either fight or defend.

Short for a blog post, maybe, but the list of ways that my government impacts my life is shorter. I feel like that’s a problem.

 

Date: June 4th, 2008
Cate: society + culture

civil disobedience

I’m thinking about my country and government – especially our current government – and there are some things we disagree on. It’s kind of a weird position. I like our system of government (though I would like to see how things would work if we swung a little closer to a true democracy rather then a republic) because I think it’s more realistic then Marx’ socialism or a totalitarian structure – and I don’t want to deal with survival in anarchy.

That is to say, I really like the United States, but we’ve got a long way to go before we’re perfect.

Lately I’ve been thinking about civil disobedience. I’m sort of chafing under all of the rules and regulations, because there are a bunch of issues that bother me. Off the top of my head: separation of church and state, copyright infringement, illegal substances, xenophobia… and I think that these are social issues, not government issues, but they’ve somehow become (or in some cases, are in the process of becoming) a part of our laws.

So when I see a sign that says “no minors allowed” I ignore it. If I want to listen to music or watch a movie I download it. I don’t have much interest in most illegal substances, although given the chance to do something hallucinogenic I wouldn’t say no. I don’t really care one way or another whether our pledge of allegiance contains the phrase ‘under god’, but then again I feel uncomfortable about lots of ritual activities.

It’s sort of a self perpetuating cycle – each rule I break further confirms my belief that the rule was meaningless.

I’m probably going to get in trouble for this sort of attitude eventually, which is why it’s something that I need to think about. Sometimes when I’m second-guessing my own motives I wonder if my problems are trivial. However, it makes more sense to think of these problems as a symptom of a much bigger social attitude – conservative reasoning. Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat on the bus – and where you sit on the bus seems like such a trivial thing to get upset over. She did it because of the reasoning behind it. I want to go get lunch at a bar with my friends at work, but it’s three weeks before my twenty-first birthday – and just waiting a few weeks seems like a trivial thing to get upset over. But I’m doing it because arbitrary age laws are flagrantly discriminatory towards members of a minority group which has almost no course for redress.

I want to have more time – but thanks to mortality, I’ve only got so much to spend on things. I want to live a simple immaterial life, I want to buy every new video game console that comes out, I want to be a social activist, I want to just live on my own little island somewhere and not be bothered – but I don’t have enough time to that, since I’m busy going to class and working part time. I’m excited for the future, which I expect to be lots of fun, but for now I’m stuck with civil disobedience, and a sort of general dissatisfaction with the world around me. How depressing.