Like many members of my generation, I'm really very politically apathetic. Call it a combination of my education in the hard sciences and the academic idealism that touts the stance that we scientists are too important to lower ourselves to political involvement; a real-world cynicism gained from the entering the world post-Kennedy assasinations, in the height of the Vietnam war protests and being innudated with Watergate broadcasts; and my inherently rebellious nature against authoritarian bureaucracies.
Whatever combination of the above factors may have contributed, the result is yet another politically apathetic Xer who, before 2004, never voted; and who might never vote again. I believe I will drag myself to a voting booth in the future anytime I hear a candidate tout his belief in God, because that whole God & Government thing has always scared the shit out of me, but other than that, I have an ingrained belief that all politicans are lying sociopaths and that any good person who ever entered the political realm for the purpose of trying to fix this broken piece of shit system has either been corrupted or conspired against. And so the song goes.
Recently, I've spent a large amount of time researching politics and history, and some of the texts that I have found most valuable to understanding today's political climate are texts written previous to about the 1940's. We all know that Machiavelli, Moore, Plato, Marx, Descartes and Jefferson are required political reading but one would do themselves no favors by ignoring the brilliant political analyses of men such as Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain and HG Wells, the latter who penned one of the most thorough world history outlines it has been my pleasure to read.
These men were free thinkers born before the machine of compulsory education brainwashed over this land, and their overarching and multi-topical analyses demonstrate just how thoroughly a person can comprehend a subject without the aid of school masters and professors. When one compares the sort of common sense logic and multifield tasking utilized by these long dead intellectuals with the specialization and jargoning mumbo-jumbo of today's academic intellectual, the facade and specialization mission of modern education begins to crumble.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Melisande, well that explains that: very funny and some important points too - thanks and welcome!