The Human Condition

I find it unimaginable that anybody would go to the effort to invite you, Tim, to an evening of supposed joie de vivre and then not even bother. Unless of course maybe you arrived after the focus of the gathering had been reached, and the general populace had moved into more of a recovery and away from a paticipatory mode, possibly having having partaken too much of the table and bottle, merely passing time in a stupor in no fit state to fully appreciate your good self.

This is a common enough complaint and one which seems to be not only confined to social gatherings. All through society people seem to just switch off and merely existing, unthinking and dead. It is ironic that the social structures that enable them to live in this way rely on an active participation and when this is lacking they also die and become open for corruption. How often is it that our better angels are shouted down by the demons that also fill the void of our soul? While I agree that our species does have enormous capacity for goodness and love these seem but abberations when the sum of our actions is considered. The rest a mixture self interest and indifference.

By opting out people deprive the system they are told they love, democracy of its most required feature, that of an informed public. We have created a world for ourselves where we are no longer needed to participate or even be human, just functionaries. How can it be that less than two centuries after fighting so vigorously for the right to be acknowledged as worthy of recognition the masses no longer seem to want it? Is is that they have seen that it is of no value to them, are they bored, or is it one of those intangibles that it is simply enough to be recognised in the first place and then it no longer matters?

As I was sitting in a cafe today reading about upcoming elections I wondered whether it was that the world is just too big. When democracy was born there was a directness about it that people could grab hold of. For example in Florence at the start of the Renaissance the Signori held office for two months and at the end of this period those who were fortunate enough to be a part of the process gathered together and elected their next leader. Nowadays who could say that they actually affected anything. In the US they talk about whole states as swing states, what about the others are they a foregone conclusion and if so what is the point of turning up at the polling booth. I wonder if we are not interested because we didn't have to fight for it, much like how dynasties falter once the founders pass on, the passion has been lost and the privilege taken for granted.