I wasn't going for genuine satire here, or even actual humour really, just silliness. I'm with you on there being a lot of overlooked good in people - by now I've looked at enough life situations 'from both sides now' that I know it's impossible for me to judge your average politician before I've tried my own hand at doing what they do (…
I wasn't going for genuine satire here, or even actual humour really, just silliness. I'm with you on there being a lot of overlooked good in people - by now I've looked at enough life situations 'from both sides now' that I know it's impossible for me to judge your average politician before I've tried my own hand at doing what they do (exhausting, unfathomably complicated, often thankless, filled with tradeoffs and unavoidable compromises).
I was going to step in here and defend the honour of our politicians, but you guys have done a great job of sorting this out on your own. A model for civilised debate on the internet, I congratulate both of you!
For what it is worth, I think we tend to project a great deal of our own psychological darkness onto our politicians, and scapegoat them for failings which are often in ourselves, or in the overall structure of our society. Or simply deep in human nature... Certainly there are some absolutely awful politicians, but they only exist because A) they run for office and, crucially, B) large numbers of people vote for them. So who is to blame here?
And I have met a reasonable number of politicians over the years, and found the majority of them to be pretty OK. A lot of them really DO want to make their country or town or whatever better. It's just that, when you actually make it into office, you can find there is no magic lever to pull that will make that happen.
Some countries are worse than others, of course, some parties are worse than others, some individual politicians MUCH worse than others. (I am always uncomfortably aware that at least 1% of the population meet the clinical criteria for psychopathy, and a disproportionate number of those end up as politicians – or CEOs.)
But my positive bias towards politicians may be due to the fact that one of my old sociology lecturers was Michael D. Higgins, former Mayor of Galway, later minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, leader of the Irish Labour Party, and now President of Ireland. He used to buy me coffee and cake in the university cafeteria after lectures, and tell me stories of his adventures, monitoring the elections in Nicaragua and so on. I got to know him quite well (he even launched my first novel, and so on), and he became my model for what a politician can be. I don't always agree with him (he has some of the usual blind spots common to most socialist politicians), but he is intelligent, principled, and does a lot of work to make the world a better place, as he sees it. And, over the years, I have met a few others like him. So I have hope!
This fits with my sense too Julian. I've never attempted a career in politics, but like many of us I spend half of every day thinking 'why won't so and so get back to me already, can't they see it's important, so inconsiderate, what poor communication skills' and the other half thinking 'aagh, so many people wanting me to get back to them, can't they ease up already, I can't get through all this today and don't know what to say to 'em yet anyway, I'll have to put all the non- urgent stuff off'. We're all of us the pesterer and the ignorer, fundamentally well-meaning, imagining others think about us more than they actually do, seeing intent where there isn't any, taking it too personally when someone doesn't do what we want and intending no harm at all when we don't do what they want, doing our best with limited information, making mistakes, muddling through. We imagine politicians are somehow different to this and everything they do is 100% directed and intentional (they're being evil on purpose and enjoying it!), when in reality the forces that shape their actions and inaction are even *more* complex and impersonal than the ones that shape ours. Like us, they're just muddling through.
I wasn't going for genuine satire here, or even actual humour really, just silliness. I'm with you on there being a lot of overlooked good in people - by now I've looked at enough life situations 'from both sides now' that I know it's impossible for me to judge your average politician before I've tried my own hand at doing what they do (exhausting, unfathomably complicated, often thankless, filled with tradeoffs and unavoidable compromises).
I was going to step in here and defend the honour of our politicians, but you guys have done a great job of sorting this out on your own. A model for civilised debate on the internet, I congratulate both of you!
For what it is worth, I think we tend to project a great deal of our own psychological darkness onto our politicians, and scapegoat them for failings which are often in ourselves, or in the overall structure of our society. Or simply deep in human nature... Certainly there are some absolutely awful politicians, but they only exist because A) they run for office and, crucially, B) large numbers of people vote for them. So who is to blame here?
And I have met a reasonable number of politicians over the years, and found the majority of them to be pretty OK. A lot of them really DO want to make their country or town or whatever better. It's just that, when you actually make it into office, you can find there is no magic lever to pull that will make that happen.
Some countries are worse than others, of course, some parties are worse than others, some individual politicians MUCH worse than others. (I am always uncomfortably aware that at least 1% of the population meet the clinical criteria for psychopathy, and a disproportionate number of those end up as politicians – or CEOs.)
But my positive bias towards politicians may be due to the fact that one of my old sociology lecturers was Michael D. Higgins, former Mayor of Galway, later minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, leader of the Irish Labour Party, and now President of Ireland. He used to buy me coffee and cake in the university cafeteria after lectures, and tell me stories of his adventures, monitoring the elections in Nicaragua and so on. I got to know him quite well (he even launched my first novel, and so on), and he became my model for what a politician can be. I don't always agree with him (he has some of the usual blind spots common to most socialist politicians), but he is intelligent, principled, and does a lot of work to make the world a better place, as he sees it. And, over the years, I have met a few others like him. So I have hope!
This fits with my sense too Julian. I've never attempted a career in politics, but like many of us I spend half of every day thinking 'why won't so and so get back to me already, can't they see it's important, so inconsiderate, what poor communication skills' and the other half thinking 'aagh, so many people wanting me to get back to them, can't they ease up already, I can't get through all this today and don't know what to say to 'em yet anyway, I'll have to put all the non- urgent stuff off'. We're all of us the pesterer and the ignorer, fundamentally well-meaning, imagining others think about us more than they actually do, seeing intent where there isn't any, taking it too personally when someone doesn't do what we want and intending no harm at all when we don't do what they want, doing our best with limited information, making mistakes, muddling through. We imagine politicians are somehow different to this and everything they do is 100% directed and intentional (they're being evil on purpose and enjoying it!), when in reality the forces that shape their actions and inaction are even *more* complex and impersonal than the ones that shape ours. Like us, they're just muddling through.
On scapegoating and projecting onto leaders, you might enjoy this half- sympathetic read of Girard (I'm only just becoming aware of his ideas and their co-option by the right) by one of my favourite writers (very much not on the right): https://harpers.org/archive/2023/11/overwhelming-and-collective-murder-rene-girard/
Oh not at all 🙂