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"The Personal is Political." This was a rallying cry of Second Wave Feminism and it was alive and well in the college classrooms of the Seventies. You could crudely translate that into, "If I get stuck having to stay at home and raise children the government better pay me for my service."
Suddenly, to a generation that was moving to the Narcissistic side of the fence, it really was all about me. When people believe they've got skin in the game emotions run high.
Yes, good point. I remember hearing "the personal is political" back in the late 80s and early 90s when I was in college. It's far more radicalized now than it was then.
Religious and Political views are largely emotional, with the left side of the brain disconnected with any discussion.
Anytime someone tries to convert you to their line of thinking is a good sign they're insecure with their beliefs, looking for someone to bolster their beliefs/ego's.
Rajneesh put it so wisely: All arguments are juvenile. 2 people with their minds mind off, bashing their heads against one another.
That take is interesting, but I don't agree. The Personal *is* Political--you have to be very isolated and priveleged for things that happen in the political realm to not affect your life at all.
And therein lies the core problem. The government is too involved in our lives and has become increasingly corrupt, inept, and authoritarian. Exactly what the Founding Fathers of the U.S. did not want. But, of course, the iron law of oligarchy kicked in a long time ago.
Mass media saturation shapes how our brains work. All of those stimuli subtly change the connections in our brains in one direction or another.
People who consume different media eventually have completely different ways of looking at the world on a neural circuit level. The world is the same, but the measuring tools are not.
US elections control the allocation of trillions of dollars yearly and have the power to shape world events and eras. They are incredibly important and everyone is trying to create brainworms that stick in your brain and change how you think, in the hopes that they can influence your vote.
I think people become obsessed with politics because the programming they are subjected to overwhelms what I would consider a healthy picture of reality.
First of all, wasel, I TOTALLY get what you're saying and I agree 100 percent with it. And I don't think your response is weird or abnormal.
Secondly - this:
My husband died unexpectedly four months ago. It was a complete shock to me. I mean it, I was totally gobsmacked. He was very "into" politics and pretty opinionated about it all, but even he didn't go around talking about it much except with me - and that was mainly because this was an election year and the elections were coming up. Our adult kids are of all different political views and opinions (as well as religious - that's another topic that can be very divisive and much discussed). But the instant he died, the very instant, politics and religion fell completely to the wayside in my mind. All I cared about was the love of my kids and family and friends. I have friends of every different sort of political belief, and not a whit of that mattered when my husband died. And you know what - every single person who I love just loved me back, surrounded me with love in fact. Politics and religion didn't mean a dang thing or make a bit of difference in their actions and in the love we shared. Those topics didn't even come up.
And since then, I've been able to make it very clear to everyone that I am uninterested in their political or religious beliefs. I mean, in the sense that I am not, I am simply NOT, going to argue with them, or in fact listen to any sort of diatribe. I hate to say it but that means I've had to block some people on social media, but oh well - I was sick of hearing all that stuff. But most people I'm able to just ignore it, not take the bait, not read their post or whatever.
They can do whatever they want but if they become too strident one way or the other, I'm checking out of their heartbreak hotel, so to speak. https://youtu.be/0h5aYg-C22A
I do not mind discussing politics at all, if your interlocutor is able to listen to different opinions. if he stands on his own and tries to prove it without listening to anyone, then this is already nonsense
Most people have a strong desire to engage in arguments. Politics is the perfect place to channel all that energy into one place and rant. Most arguments end up being incredibly superficial. If you look at this forum, you’ll see that the P&OC section gets the most traffic. That’s not by coincidence. As someone else mentioned, it’s become type of identity, a way to signal to the wider world, that this is my clan.
Great point. But the question is what clan do, for example, I fit into; an extreme left-winger, an AntiFa activist, who voted for Trump?
Oh-oh, jb. Sounds like a case for a mass shunning.
I feel somewhat the same - that politics has moved so far into Bizzaro World that there's no place for me anymore.
Hardly any of it has proved worth listening to. People keep arguing about what they're going to do, want to do and the only actual change I've seen in my seven decades in real life is where I am willing to take action in my little corner.
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