Article Contributed on: 5/6/2009 7:43:19 AM
Sometimes the political issues are so huge, with twists and turns and gotchas, it's hard to find a way to think about them. Most of us have job pressures, families, bills to pay, and, it seems, barely time to breathe, not alone time to follow political trends to glean "the big picture." it's just too much for one person to sort out.
We end up a bit like the blind men in the old parable. Each finds a part of the elephant to examine and tries to extrapolate from that the nature of the entire critter. For us, that's pretty much the way we relate to politics. We find a party that seems to represent the world the way we understand it, and then we try to fit the rest of the issues to the shape and form that we are comfortable with.
But the elephant and America are both complicated beasties with odd connections and inconsistent anatomies. Studying elephants' toenails tells you nothing about his eyes or ears. Studying his tail tells you nothing about his enormous mass, unless you get out of your comfort zone, and follow the anatomy further (an intrepidness many humans choose not to exercise when they're up to their ears in work already). Only then can you get some sense of the whole.
Knowing this about humans, political parties tend to keep one's focus on just the piece of the action a given party cares about. Some see executive power abuse as the biggest problem. Others see corporate intertwining with public projects as a sign of undue influence, and still others believe as long as we are taking care of the planet, the rest of the political scene is less critical. Consequently, when we are trapped in those "silos" of information, we don't run around looking for contradictory evidence, but accept what we hear and make our decisions on the basis of what we are told by folks we trust. We're happy with our piece of the elephant.
But both the elephant and the government have a few things in common. Run amok, they are dangerous and deadly creatures capable of destroying life with one huge slapdown, and without restrictions, are not capable of acting properly in polite company. They are very hard to control if you don't give them what they want and can be really cranky if you cause them pain of any kind.
Even if we don't have time to study all the ins and outs of politics and legislation, we can do a few things. We can make sure we keep the creature in an enclosure (in the case of government and bureaucracy and overreaching powers, checks and balances are the tool), sturdy enough to keep it from feeding on the trees in our own back yard (or our tax dollars). We can keep it from believing that we will give it everything it wants just because it is large, trumpets loudly, and tries to intimidate us.
Most importantly, we can see from the parable of the blind men and the elephant that they actually *could* have understood the beast had they been willing to spend even a small amount of time believing one anothers' experience of the creature. Had they made some effort to se how all of their individual assessments could be fit together into a cohesive whole, they would have "seen" the elephant in all its glory. But no, they were too intent on each having the right and only answer. They were too proud to think they might have missed something, and too rigid to ask for help from one another. So they kept their delusions, continued arguing about who was right, and totally missed the point. Sound familiar?
Interestingly enough, we do espouse "holistic" approaches in other parts of our lives. It's as though we really don't want to know just how powerful and destructive our government critter can be, and the parties certainly don't want us coming to some unique understanding without their "guidance." Or, we just plain can't admit that we've been working in the dark all this time.
Political parties must become less important than our understanding of our government and the world around us. It's time to stop blindly following dogma, and time to get a bit more intrepid, or at least converse with and listen to others who have the time and inclination to study the issues in detail. The creature has been straying from its enclosure, getting into areas that will endanger us and our children, and it's our responsibility to stop taking the parties' word for reality and do some real discussion amongst ourselves, finding common ground with all of the other blind men (and women) and together creating a full understanding of the way things work. Only then can we really start making real change that will keep us safe, strong, and prosperous.