Mushrooms in a Fairy Ring

A quick one:

I was reading The World is Flat again while in Borders for the 20% discount sale they held this week; Thomas Friedman has come up with yet another revised edition (the Red Edition) with two additional chapters, the ones I was reading. They didn't add much to the overall story, merely expanded some anecdotes in the Green Edition of last year, except one thing: he said, and i paraphrase, if what you want is not being done, that just means you're not doing it. In reference to Internet information uploading technologies and the Net itself as a medium of dissemination and civic action.

Civic action. I'd met Alex Au in person the other day and he said that political participation only counts when it is offline, in real life, otherwise it'd just be all sound and fury and merely an outlet for venting et cetera.

And then I read Sze Meng's latest post in Singapore Angle about what attributes the next PM should have, where he said in reply comments that "maybe the system is not cranking along fine because there are not enough robust actual dissent (aka make it harder to run) taken into serious consideration in major policies."

And it all sets me thinking. Thinking about political participation online and offline, about political participation as a citizen and as a member of Parliament. Do you see the false dichotomies and parallels that Alex Au and Friedman have drawn? - Like mushrooms sprung up in a fairy ring after some rain, there have to be roots that were always there growing deep and quietly, but steadily. Political participation of the true type, that is offline and in the real world by citizens, or that is offline in the real world in a political party by very active citizens, does not jump straight from total apathy. Civic action and becoming a member of Parliament both do not occur overnight; there has to be some effort and thought given by concerned individuals or groups, to matters at hand. To me there is no significant distinction between growing roots and growing mushrooms, because when the rain comes, as it will one day to all of us somehow or other, you will get good mushrooms from good roots anyway. So we can keep busy growing the roots, it is quite a full-time endeavour, as well as not being afraid to grow large nice mushrooms when we ownself feel necessary.

Let us talk more about roots and mushrooms. If the mushrooms, the desired outcome, is to have public policies that show equal concern and respect (concern for the individual's well-being, respect for the individual's right to self-determination and privacy), you must have the roots, people who are interested in discussing policies on those merits of balancing concern and respect, which is something different from the power struggle for policymaking in a government setting. Some people also call this rather altruistic type of action "civic action". If "civic action" sounds too fiery to be palatable, I would personally consider this roots to be a large but essential part of the political structure known as "deliberative democracy". To get a government of this type, you must have citizens who deliberate and discuss in meaningful ways (that means with good intentions for being constructive contributors), and who have been tested through the fire of public debate exposed to all persons in society (yes I mean all) on public policies.

To get good government, you must have citizens who can be government. This means your citizens should be interested in government and in policies. Yet in this country the average citizen's opinion is constantly devalued as too unsophisticated for thorough and fair hearing ("heartlanders" vs "cosmopolitans", "the conservative majority"), as if they can't speak for themselves liddat. And browbeaten endlessly with this personal attacks, we end up being the sheep we were told we were. Much kudos to Shianux for his stunning exposition on this, a while ago.

I wonder. I wonder why it seems to be the unspoken status quo in this country that deliberative democracy is perceived as a social ill, as "dissent", the Freudian slip of Sze Meng's mind*, when in fact it is the sole right and responsibility that every citizen has towards the care of his country. How could anyone rely on others to do his thinking for him, to align his values for him, to declare without transparency or accountability that 'this' is dissent and 'that' is not? Indeed, why is robust actual "dissent", the voice of your people, hardly officially acknowledged to exist?*

Civil and rational discourse. Deliberative democracy. Civic action.

Perhaps a short course of self-study on political philosophy is in order. Blogging has to wait till later, then.

*I acknowledge Sze Meng was discussing the question of why the citizens' roots and mushrooms don't seem to affect any government policy. But the authoritarian nature of this country's present political structure is not something I am well-read enough to critically discuss. I can only bitch about it very quietly in my offline world to raise some minimal awareness. Definitely need to grow more roots in this area of thought.

Disclosure

I think enough people know my real identity that I could not care less about being anonymous now. Anonymity hasn't furthered my cause in any way that I know of, in any case. Who likes talking to anonymous people who drone on and on about issues when they don't reveal enough about themselves to let others know why they talk about such issues? Nobody cares who I am and given how I write, I won't get sued anytime in the foreseeable future.

So. It has been said in my profile for some time now that I am a social work student. That is true. I am, however, a part-time social work student. In my normal daily hours I work. I work as a very little cog in a very large machine. I enjoy my paid work very much. Occasionally I get upset with the futility of being a very little cog in the very large machine, but on those days I remember I like my salary, if little else. Such upset phases often pass as unremarkably as they came, after some diddling and talks with the boss and colleagues, and I enjoy my work again. It is work of the type I can think about 24/7 and make some progress on, anytime 24/7.

As a very little cog in a very large machine I am, as I have said, part of a very large machine. I write this now because I have been doing a great deal of 'very large machine' work that I hope will further my little cog career, into a medium-sized cog perhaps. All is going well, but I am restless. I am restless that I am only doing things that will further my little cog career. This slavery to the 'cog'-ness of it all, the insistence that if I think this and do this I will get that (and I will be safe, because people say so), quite simply drives me up the wall if I do it for a long time without break, and I get itchy and rebellious. I want to be all aspects of me. The longer the denial, the more independent critical thinking I crave to do. So I talk.

I examine the things that matter to me on a larger scale. I cogitate on the Cognitive Dissonance blog (argh, stopstop). Love matters to me, as do hope and faith and the ability to define one's own path. Empathy and altruism matter to me. And you, who are reading this, matter to me. Because if you did not matter to me, I would not be writing this on a public medium. If you did not matter to me at all, if I did not care about you at all, I would be a happy little silent cog, content to be one, living in a bubble world pursuing my cog path. Content to be one day a medium-sized cog, and then a larger cog. But that is not my nature, I could never be happy that way. And so, perhaps, if you are like me, I want you to know that you are not alone, first. And that you will not die if you speak your mind.