Recently I've been spending my time reminding voters that election day comes soon, (next Tuesday) and reminding them of who they should vote for. There is no real expectation that anyone will take my advice and vote the way I want them to, but the theory is that the majority are smart enough to vote in their own best interests.
Oddly there have been several people in every batch of voters who didn't like my ideas on who and what to vote for. More interesting were those who thought that my calling to remind them of their need to vote was evil and insulting. One person told me that, if they could, they would bundle all the voter pamphlets, candidate mailings, ads and entreaties etc. and dump them on my personal doorstep, as if the whole annoying mess was my fault.
Yes, I know that the voting process has become fraught; however, we do still live in a democracy. If we don't vote who then is left to decide? Let's just remember that money talks and those who have it don't just vote, they pay for the legislation (ALEC) and the legislators (all parties) that lead us.
In spite of the fact that The United States Founders didn't trust the citizenry to be smart enough to rule themselves, we live in a country where one person - one vote is the rule. Where that's true the anti-election folks are abdicating their chance to run their own country. It's annoying to get called several times by multiple candidates and to find your mailbox stuffed with candidates info for sure. What's more annoying is to have those in power not represent the voters they were elected to serve.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Monday, October 7, 2013
The Trouble With Empathy...
Social Science has much to tell us recently about how people relate to each other across the class divide. Much of the recent research shows that, just as we suspected, those with social power not only have difficulty sympathizing with those below them - they can't even see or hear them.
The scientists suggest that being poor or of lesser social status makes us more empathic. If we have no money to hire help we are more apt to cultivate friends and neighbors to get things done. Research also finds that all of us have problems hearing and empathizing across the lines of class and status. Worst of all, the powerful consistently downplay the pains and problems of those less fortunate. We tend to focus our attention on those we value most.
As you can guess, this leads to rich congressmen cutting funding to the poor and less fortunate as well as other kinds of prejudice.
It would be just like a scientist to point these things out and then move on to some other area of research. Fortunately, there is research to suggest solutions. It turns out that people who are forced by fate or circumstance to talk and interact shed their prejudice fairly quickly. If, god forbid, you should make a friend across the class divide prejudice becomes even more difficult to maintain.
What frightens me is that we have a wide and growing divide between the powerful and the rest of us. That divide makes it much more difficult to reach across and find friendship and empathy with those who have more or less than us.
Remembering that we live in a democracy, finding ways to reduce the gap between the rich powerful elite and the rest of us is imperative. Democracy cannot survive with power in the hands of those who don't hear the poor. Oligarchy was not what the founding fathers envisioned, but it is what will persist if we can't find our way to empathize across those class and status lines.
The scientists suggest that being poor or of lesser social status makes us more empathic. If we have no money to hire help we are more apt to cultivate friends and neighbors to get things done. Research also finds that all of us have problems hearing and empathizing across the lines of class and status. Worst of all, the powerful consistently downplay the pains and problems of those less fortunate. We tend to focus our attention on those we value most.
As you can guess, this leads to rich congressmen cutting funding to the poor and less fortunate as well as other kinds of prejudice.
It would be just like a scientist to point these things out and then move on to some other area of research. Fortunately, there is research to suggest solutions. It turns out that people who are forced by fate or circumstance to talk and interact shed their prejudice fairly quickly. If, god forbid, you should make a friend across the class divide prejudice becomes even more difficult to maintain.
What frightens me is that we have a wide and growing divide between the powerful and the rest of us. That divide makes it much more difficult to reach across and find friendship and empathy with those who have more or less than us.
Remembering that we live in a democracy, finding ways to reduce the gap between the rich powerful elite and the rest of us is imperative. Democracy cannot survive with power in the hands of those who don't hear the poor. Oligarchy was not what the founding fathers envisioned, but it is what will persist if we can't find our way to empathize across those class and status lines.
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