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This article is a long-winded philosophical musing that misses the core point: You can only not care about politics if you are incredibly priviliged. Period.

This article is a long-winded philosophical musing that misses the core point: You can only not care about politics if you are incredibly priviliged. Period. If one of the main parties running wants to prevent you from marrying the person you love, you can't just be apolitical. If one of the parties running wants to allow police to disproportionally harass, arrest, and kill people who look like you, you can't just be apolitical. If you're poor, struggling to pay your bills, and one of the parties wants to add new hoops to jump through to claim any welfare or healthcare, you can't just be apolitical. If you have any empathy and care about any people in those positions, you can't just be apolitical. The only way to truly "not care" about politics is both to be very privileged and very selfish.

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curiousgeorgio 6y ago
And yet, the point you’re making is itself entirely political (just pointing that out). Many would disagree on the premise that it’s not the government’s job to be involved in any of those things. And that’s just as valid as your viewpoint. Also: downvoting something only because you disagree with it doesn’t help anyone. In fact, it’s one step on a path towards more oppression, not less.
- didibus 6y ago
  The person you're replying is arguing that in practice it isn't "OK", because if "OK" means that you can peacefully live your life as you please, but others are actively engaged in preventing you from doing so, you're forced to care about politics, because others make it not OK for you. Thus only if you are "privileged", meaning that people are letting you be free and giving you your fair share of the resources, can you in practice choose to "not care", since the politics don't affect you negatively. Also note that politics means: "the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status" and implies nothing about having or not a "Government". That depends very much on the political system itself.
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Vinnl 6y ago
Or just not (yet) aware of how privileged you are.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Furthermore, if you live on earth, and one of the main parties wants to let the planet warm uncontrollably... you might think you can not care, but you'll probably dislike the consequences in 30 years.
watwut 6y ago
Privileged people always cared about politics. That is how you stay privileged. Regardless of context and type of society - whether it is mini society of a company or state or some group. You gain and keep privileges by engaging in politics.
rubyn00bie 6y ago
It wreaks of privilege and decadence; the narrative too is shallow if not completely unoriginal. Born into a great hall, yet you have autonomy and aren't a slave? You leave at will? You're not Nietzsche. This is someone masturbating to their own ideas expecting everyone else to "love them" for it. It's vile.
Smaug123 6y ago
I am interested to discover from my karma change whether the following opinion is an unpopular one; it certainly is becoming increasingly unspeakable in the sense of http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html. --- I think you're drawing a false dichotomy here, especially with "If you have any empathy and care about any people in those positions, you can't just be apolitical.". One could be consumed with agony about all the things you mention, and still believe that it is better to focus on other things. The mere fact that a problem exists doesn't mean you must drop everything else to go and fix it, especially such a large and intractable problem as "a third of the population unfathomably has a worldview totally incompatible with my own". You may instead choose to solve a different problem where you think you have an actual chance of making progress. For example, I am of the LessWrong school, and I consider one of the greatest sources of suffering to be the fact that people die; but I am not reskilling into the field of human longevity, and I don't think (?) society would excoriate me for that. And since I have chosen not to work on that particular infinite well of suffering, I have to not care about it so much, for the sake of my own sanity and my ability to work on other things. If mere knowledge of the existence of an infinite well of suffering obliges you to expend huge amounts of effort on fixing it, woe betide you when you discover another one! If you want to put everything you have into solving one of the problems, then you simply have to weep, put aside the others, and try not to let the constant agony affect your efforts in the place where you think you can actually help. It certainly sucks hard that many people have their country's political decisions thrust in their faces every hour of every day. Come to that, 58mm people die every year, which is an overwhelming tragedy that most people manage to ignore most of the time so that they can actually get anything done. But I have the choice of investing effort into fixing only a very limited number of problems, and I do not judge someone who runs the numbers and thinks they can do more good by not pouring all their effort into the impossible ones. I stress again that politics really is extremely hard (just look at the US election results to see how much popular support there is for both of the two highly incompatible sides of the USA election).
- watwut 6y ago
  You are building false dichotomy between being apolitical and "drop everything else to go and fix it".
robocat 6y ago
Only the most privileged people have any reason to really care about politics, because only the most privileged have political power. The less privileged you are, the less point caring about politics. The least privileged have no political power at all. The less privileged are affected by political decisions but they don’t care about the politics per se, instead they care about how the effects of politics touch their lives (through laws, policy or practice.) Edit: In a democracy it is our responsibility to care about politics. However, it is a tragedy of the commons in that as an individual, time spent on politics is probably mostly wasted, given the amount of political power we control as an individual (assuming that political knowledge doesn’t give you much other benefit). A large percentage of the world’s population has even less power than the right to vote or otherwise be politically involved.
darkengine 6y ago
This seems backwards -- anecdotally, it feels like the most politically active people I know are doing quite well for themselves. In contrast, those who are working harder to make ends meet seem more likely to be apolitical. There is some data to back this up: https://hiddentribes.us/pdf/hidden_tribes_report.pdf https://hiddentribes.us/pdf/hidden_tribes_report.pdf
michaelt 6y ago
Eh, just because you'd benefit from something that can only be achieved politically, doesn't mean you have to do the work. This is a classic free-rider situation. I mean, I'd like house prices to be lower by increasing the supply in high demand areas. But I haven't actually done anything towards that.
username90 6y ago
I live in Sweden where those things aren't issues, is me being apolitical selfish? Or do I have to care about Americans shooting and abusing each other to not be selfish?

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curiousgeorgio 6y ago

And yet, the point you’re making is itself entirely political (just pointing that out). Many would disagree on the premise that it’s not the government’s job to be involved in any of those things. And that’s just as valid as your viewpoint. Also: downvoting something only because you disagree with it doesn’t help anyone. In fact, it’s one step on a path towards more oppression, not less.

didibus 6y ago
The person you're replying is arguing that in practice it isn't "OK", because if "OK" means that you can peacefully live your life as you please, but others are actively engaged in preventing you from doing so, you're forced to care about politics, because others make it not OK for you. Thus only if you are "privileged", meaning that people are letting you be free and giving you your fair share of the resources, can you in practice choose to "not care", since the politics don't affect you negatively. Also note that politics means: "the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status" and implies nothing about having or not a "Government". That depends very much on the political system itself.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Vinnl 6y ago

Or just not (yet) aware of how privileged you are.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

Furthermore, if you live on earth, and one of the main parties wants to let the planet warm uncontrollably... you might think you can not care, but you'll probably dislike the consequences in 30 years.

watwut 6y ago

Privileged people always cared about politics. That is how you stay privileged. Regardless of context and type of society - whether it is mini society of a company or state or some group. You gain and keep privileges by engaging in politics.

rubyn00bie 6y ago

It wreaks of privilege and decadence; the narrative too is shallow if not completely unoriginal. Born into a great hall, yet you have autonomy and aren't a slave? You leave at will? You're not Nietzsche. This is someone masturbating to their own ideas expecting everyone else to "love them" for it. It's vile.

Smaug123 6y ago

I am interested to discover from my karma change whether the following opinion is an unpopular one; it certainly is becoming increasingly unspeakable in the sense of http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html. --- I think you're drawing a false dichotomy here, especially with "If you have any empathy and care about any people in those positions, you can't just be apolitical.". One could be consumed with agony about all the things you mention, and still believe that it is better to focus on other things. The mere fact that a problem exists doesn't mean you must drop everything else to go and fix it, especially such a large and intractable problem as "a third of the population unfathomably has a worldview totally incompatible with my own". You may instead choose to solve a different problem where you think you have an actual chance of making progress. For example, I am of the LessWrong school, and I consider one of the greatest sources of suffering to be the fact that people die; but I am not reskilling into the field of human longevity, and I don't think (?) society would excoriate me for that. And since I have chosen not to work on that particular infinite well of suffering, I have to not care about it so much, for the sake of my own sanity and my ability to work on other things. If mere knowledge of the existence of an infinite well of suffering obliges you to expend huge amounts of effort on fixing it, woe betide you when you discover another one! If you want to put everything you have into solving one of the problems, then you simply have to weep, put aside the others, and try not to let the constant agony affect your efforts in the place where you think you can actually help. It certainly sucks hard that many people have their country's political decisions thrust in their faces every hour of every day. Come to that, 58mm people die every year, which is an overwhelming tragedy that most people manage to ignore most of the time so that they can actually get anything done. But I have the choice of investing effort into fixing only a very limited number of problems, and I do not judge someone who runs the numbers and thinks they can do more good by not pouring all their effort into the impossible ones. I stress again that politics really is extremely hard (just look at the US election results to see how much popular support there is for both of the two highly incompatible sides of the USA election).

watwut 6y ago
You are building false dichotomy between being apolitical and "drop everything else to go and fix it".

robocat 6y ago

Only the most privileged people have any reason to really care about politics, because only the most privileged have political power. The less privileged you are, the less point caring about politics. The least privileged have no political power at all. The less privileged are affected by political decisions but they don’t care about the politics per se, instead they care about how the effects of politics touch their lives (through laws, policy or practice.) Edit: In a democracy it is our responsibility to care about politics. However, it is a tragedy of the commons in that as an individual, time spent on politics is probably mostly wasted, given the amount of political power we control as an individual (assuming that political knowledge doesn’t give you much other benefit). A large percentage of the world’s population has even less power than the right to vote or otherwise be politically involved.

darkengine 6y ago

This seems backwards -- anecdotally, it feels like the most politically active people I know are doing quite well for themselves. In contrast, those who are working harder to make ends meet seem more likely to be apolitical. There is some data to back this up: https://hiddentribes.us/pdf/hidden_tribes_report.pdf https://hiddentribes.us/pdf/hidden_tribes_report.pdf

michaelt 6y ago

Eh, just because you'd benefit from something that can only be achieved politically, doesn't mean you have to do the work. This is a classic free-rider situation. I mean, I'd like house prices to be lower by increasing the supply in high demand areas. But I haven't actually done anything towards that.

username90 6y ago

I live in Sweden where those things aren't issues, is me being apolitical selfish? Or do I have to care about Americans shooting and abusing each other to not be selfish?