Before 2008 I had no interest in politics, none whatsoever. As I have explained recently I felt that representative democracy was idotic, shallow and a waste of time. I have since then changed my mind.
Representative democracy is still idiotic but only a waste of time until real democracy rises. Until then I’m really glad for the mostly free speech and open internet.
Mind you, there are political and economic forces working on applying censorship on the Internet in our modern world.
The discussion about this doesn’t enter the massmedia – or main media – is being accomplished in an incredibly silent way. Some of it is masked behind the movement to fight illegal porn but once it is in effect unregulated grassroots politics will eventually find it more difficult to become political movements. Particularly with the electronic evesdropping we now know of.
One scary aspect of this is the TPP – but a good place to start selfeducation about it is at Wikileaks. Which I must admit that I still need to read more into
Since late 2012 I’ve become more and more interested, not about politics but about democracy as a concept and how it affects our lives in many different ways. One aspect is certainly how the power of government affects our lives and how we have some power, yet very limited, to affect who’s in charge.
There are other more subtle aspects for example about how we view ourselves and our values and in partular if our sense of duty and responsibility – not to a state but to our community – affects our reaction to our immediate environment. How do we participate in discussions, how do we approach different views, how we develop self respect and respect in general.
Many concepts come to mind, because democracy has to do with a way of life rather than politics. Yet politics have hijacked the concept since the French Revolution.
I began discussing various topics of this nature with people around me and was quite active engaging people. I soon realized that young people where particularly interested in these matters. The closer to voting age the young ver, the more they were interested in the value of their vote. Many felt that the “right to vote” by itself was of paramount importance. Others felt that the vote had become devalued by our political systems and a waste of effort to use it.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGg7zHXKal8
Today I was checking on Youtube for a video where both George Galloway and Nigel Farage would be present. Both of them excellent orators for democracy and open discussion, coming from seemingly opposite end of the arena – yet both of them growing grassroot (the way I see grassroots).
What did I find? An audience of young people, under twenty, yet with votes; asking intelligent mature questions of distinguished politicians. I recommend this hour long video for many reasons, but many questions and many answers and discussions are interesting to whole idea of democracy.
