To vote or not to vote, or the importance of being honest with yourself and others STOP TELLING OTHER PEOPLE TO VOTE, PEOPLE! As an asshat that regularly brings up politics in polite company Im often faced with people telling me that they do not vote and do not intend to do so. Ill freely admit that this has bothered me for a long time. Ive always maintained that political apathy is the leading reason for why nothing ever seems to change. Now after thinking on the to vote or not to vote issue before and after the last municipal elections here in Reykjavík: that is still my conclusion. But this time it is because of completely different reasons. I, and almost everyone I know, was raised in the belief that it was my civic duty to vote come floods or hellfire. You vote or youre not a man [Im raised in a patriarchy]! This mantra echoes in the souls of even people I know who have never voted. Its no wonder that people are secretive or defensive about that decision since its looked down on. If you desire to do things that society looks down on you generally either try and hide it, justify it, or do not it. Its the last of those choices that troubles me now. People that do not care about politics, but vote due to their conscience telling them to. If you do not have any interest in following politics youre ignorant of politics by definition. This is not a bad thing, I for one am ignorant about football (soccer). This ignorance of ours does not make us any less of a human being. It simply means that I do not enjoy discussion on football, I actually loathe them. This is how I stop myself from talking about politics all the time; I force myself to realize that I could be talking football to an audience of myself. I also do not bet on the outcome of football games.. that would be financially irresponsible of me. If I had the choice between betting on football games or becoming somewhat of a pariah.. I hope Id select the latter option. But why should people with no interest, or knowledge of, local politics be required to vote or be shunned by you? What happens when people with no interest in politics are convinced that they have to vote regardless of their knowledge or interest in the activity? Do they suddenly become interested and knowledgable? Of course they do not. Theyll vote out of ignorance. There is a trend in many countries where certain political entities seem to do the stupidest shit and yet retain votes from social groups that they seem to disenfranchise at every turn. This is called voting against your interests. Nobody in their right mind would ever vote against their own interests, were just not wired that way. Nobody would willingly inflict evil upon themselves, not even evil malicious people. So it stands to reason that people are doing this despite their best interest. Because weve made them do it. Because theyre now voting for the same party over and over again because they have no interest in changing their vote as it would require more investment into the activity than they were willing to give it in the first place. It took the crash here in Iceland to wake people up and change the party %s noticably. Because our entire economy crashing was a wakeup call for people here, they switched the party they vote for; either from educating themselves or just on whim; or stopped voting. In all honesty, demanding that people vote is like demanding I play football. Actually its worse because who we vote into office really affects a lot of people. It would be more like demanding that I play football in your team against some other team and the outcome of the game is going to decide wether or not all the people in Finland have to wear their underwear inside out or not. It would be wholly irresponsible of you to make that demand, and it would be wholly irresponsible of me to acquiesce to it. What you really want is responsible voting. When you tell people with no knowledge of politics to vote: YOURE DOING IT BECAUSE YOU WANT THEM TO VOTE FOR YOUR PARTY. If you only cared for their civic duty youd be trying to convince them to take more interest on politics at which point youd realize the futility of your actions because you do not dictate the interests and life of others (unless youre voted into office and then only to a certain degree). Youre just disguising your intentions behind something with an implied social pressure behind it. Its manipulative wether you realize your true intentions or not (sidenote: its funny how often I find myself not having done that in hindsight). So if you do not vote: Stop feeling bad about it and embrace who you are without reservations. Now that you no longer feel bad about yourself: Could you please stop inciting other people not to vote. Those interested in politics should be allowed to stay interested rather than be hijacked by you to justify decisions you do not need to justify to yourself. Not voting is not a call to arms against the establishment. If you want to see what a call to arms against the establishment is: Look at the current situation in Turkey. Thats not what youre doing. Youre chosing to stay outside of the realm of politics and that is a choice, just not a political choice. If you want to affect change: do something. Form a party. Make some Molotovs. Go protest every day in front of government buildings. There are meaningful choices outside of not voting that are available to those interested. That is all.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 13:04:05 +0000
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