Civic Duty

Citizens have one social duty, and that is to think. Does that mean we’re doomed? Often people grow resentful when they go to the effort of thinking and then nothing appears to change to suit them. In frustration, some may decide it’s no longer worth the effort to think about society’s problems when they have so many problems of their own. It’s much easier to wait to be told what to think about the bigger issues. But if you wait to be told, you are not free. You’ll be free for a while to make your personal decisions, but eventually all those people abdicating leave all power in the hands of a few.

Cynics say we are there already and always have been. I’m not so sure. It’s difficult to get the people in power to listen to you. But someone will always have to be in charge, and they’ll always be busy, with all the rest of us trying to reach their ear.

Our political system doesn’t help. I keep thinking of great questions to ask my congressman, but then I realize he doesn’t dare give me a straight answer, because I might talk to the wrong people, or someone might overhear him, and his unscripted words will have an unpredictable effect. Even if it turns out to be a good effect, no one wants to take the political risk anymore. It was never a good idea, and it becomes ever less of one.

For every moment of political risk, a politician will spend many hours refining the message, squeezing the future risk out of it as it becomes part of the party framework, or perhaps as many hours recanting it, reshaping it to prove it was misunderstood if it was disliked. When do they have the time to think in real terms about issues where the script has failed? With whom can they think in secure privacy? The world must be a dark, frightening place to a public official, never knowing when a chance comment or sincere intellectual experiment will blow up in his face.

Because the politicians dare not publicly think, we end up led by shadowy figures in the background, who are free to do the thinking away from public scrutiny. But that’s the real problem. We often find ourselves led through ideas none of us have had an opportunity to scrutinize and criticize until they’re about to become policy. Sometimes it is even later than that.

I get annoyed when my congressman, who once appeared to have a brain, just spouts the safe party position. But then I remind myself that by winning election he gave up the chance to do anything on his own initiative.