Don't Vote, Think!

Some rambling, florid prose on the subject of voter abstention.

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We are born into Chaos. The innumerable decisions, compromises, exultations and setbacks; the human interactions that have been the bedrock of the way our world is built, and thus how we as individuals are moulded, occurred before our conception was even a distant possibility. 

We inherit ideologies, customs, languages, habits, codes and laws without even the slightest concept of consent. We follow, and we follow blindly, traditions that in their first inception walked hand in hand with such antiquated delights as the abject oppression of women, a permanent slave class and institutionalized sexual abuse.

O, I hear you cry. Those wacky, lovable Greeks. 

Civilisation and the societal structures it clings to, reforms itself in tiny increments. Sometimes because of the demands of an outraged and oppressed group, sometimes because of the behest of an individual whose power outweighs any sense of human decency. The ideas tend to stay the same though, the institutions likewise: hierarchy, submission and domination, veneration of positions of authority. I would like to say that the rhetoric changes, but really, it only mutates into a form that sounds new to modern ears. 

Read any political history of almost any country in the last two hundred years and you will see that the same patterns of insufferable setbacks and limitations repeat themselves like some eternal political groundhog day. There is a distinct symmetry o thef fuck-ups that wind their way across nations and centuries, seemingly unstoppable in its repetitive agony.  It is literally enough to make a woman throw herself in front of a stampeding horse. Or a man set himself on fire in the middle of a busy Saigon intersection. 

Is it because the people involved were all useless; or was it because the institutions were inadequate? Instead of asking which automaton should fill the suit of governor, shouldn't we instead ask if the system that produces the governor can even come close to realising and redressing the problems that create the very horrific acts that I mentioned above?

(Case in point: How many of you have been disappointed at Obama's progress in his mission to bring the Rainbow Crystals from American Dream Valley back to Happyland?)

Of course, the crypto-jingoist will say, "Do you know how many people died to secure you what you enjoy today?". They will tell us to weigh, like neurotic Goldsmiths, the blood that has been split in wars and compare it to some abstract idea of progress, or an abused concept of freedom. They will shout "War!" and pretend that destruction (without creation) is the seed of all human advancement. That we must kill in kind so that we way shake hands with our brothers and sisters without fear. They will, in short, blackmail us using the sins of our ancestors and the blood of the innocent. 

And we must cry No! This is not about blood or guilt. This is about moving forward! Are proud histories of struggle merely excuses for absolute inertia? Or are they delicate maps of the pitfalls and victories on the road to a world where every human being can flourish and we can proudly say that all unnecessary suffering that can be conceivably avoided is a barbarity? 

Of course, here lies a quandary. In this age of unabated irony and cool detachment is anybody brave enough to demand absolute freedom to develop all their faculties to their fullest extent? To assert that an injury to one is an injury to all? That exploitation is an utter offence as well as being completely unnecessary? 

Can we not turn our backs on this system, these artifice of government that creates injustice and fosters corruption? Can we not realise that as soon as we become servile, we become stupid? Can we we not build a new world, the foundation of which being the assertion that individuals are intelligent enough to manage themselves and that disputes can be arbitrated through free agreement and open dialogue?   

Okay, enough questions. I will summarise and assert what I have already said: this time in plainer language.

1. Just because we are born into a world with a certain political system, it does not mean that we are obligated to take part in it. In fact, doing so may blind us to the massive inadequacies inherent in said political system and stop us from inventing our own, free from the blind servility and functional inefficiency that characterizes the current one.   

2. The current political system is not suited to deliver social and economic justice to the people of the world. Politics as it is corrupts those who take part in it, stunts the full intellectual development of human beings as well as perpetuating the idea that submission to power and privilege are in people's best interest. Such submission is in nobody's interest.

3. We can build a new, better world ourselves without surrendering  our autonomy. These new worlds are being built as we speak. People around the world are realising that they are the best people suited to make decisions about what affects them and are also realising that those who feign to know better are usually exploiters and profiteers. 

Finally, let me say.  I do not think I have all the answers. Only madness can sustain that feeling; however, if you wish to open a dialogue about any of the subjects above, or if you simply want to harangue and insult me for wasting my "freedom" that my masters have so benevolently bestowed upon me, my e-mail address is jedwithajnotag@hotmail.com   

Don't vote, Think!

Contact email: jedwithajnotag@hotmail.com