I sometimes think it's necessary to give ammunition to beleaguered political factions, especially internet conservatives who really need a break from being attacked by internet leftists, although I am capable of changing my mind on that. Nice article.
You are so right to make this distinction. On Election Day one time, I encouraged my students not to vote--you know, just to mix it up a little bit, and because everyone else was encouraging them to vote. If you haven't done your homework on the issues involved in the election, consider that you may be a part of the problem, rather than the solution!
Still, we need a normative criterion to distinguish between these two kinds of politics. Part of the problem is that almost everyone *thinks* they are on the side of justice, and that everyone else is blinded by their own self-interest.
Agreed. I've been thinking about possible normative criteria and they're all subject to bias. Even something like "does doing X thing contribute tangibly to improving some identifiable person's life?" isn't quite enough, because I know people who would make that argument about voting, at least on certain issues. I think an iterative process of some kind with both internal and external feedback is probably needed, but that's expensive and most people won't have access to decent external feedback, given our current culture. So I'm not sure what the answer is, exactly. Definitely need to chew on this more.
I sometimes think it's necessary to give ammunition to beleaguered political factions, especially internet conservatives who really need a break from being attacked by internet leftists, although I am capable of changing my mind on that. Nice article.
You are so right to make this distinction. On Election Day one time, I encouraged my students not to vote--you know, just to mix it up a little bit, and because everyone else was encouraging them to vote. If you haven't done your homework on the issues involved in the election, consider that you may be a part of the problem, rather than the solution!
Still, we need a normative criterion to distinguish between these two kinds of politics. Part of the problem is that almost everyone *thinks* they are on the side of justice, and that everyone else is blinded by their own self-interest.
Agreed. I've been thinking about possible normative criteria and they're all subject to bias. Even something like "does doing X thing contribute tangibly to improving some identifiable person's life?" isn't quite enough, because I know people who would make that argument about voting, at least on certain issues. I think an iterative process of some kind with both internal and external feedback is probably needed, but that's expensive and most people won't have access to decent external feedback, given our current culture. So I'm not sure what the answer is, exactly. Definitely need to chew on this more.