Everything is political; being apolitical just means you support the status quo.
If a person feels strongly about some special political cause, fantastic, they ought to make their case convincingly. But the idea of castigating others for not putting in the time or enthusiasm to share their superior moral clarity is exhausting.
In other words, "you don’t have time or inclination to obsess about the political origins and implications of every atomic micro-decision in your day because doing so is a tremendously tedious and unproductive burden that frequently yields no meaningful insight or behavior change" is a lot of words to say that you support the status quo.
I think everybody does, on issues that aren't important to them.
There are loads of issues folks are just not engaged with enough to have a qualified opinion (their perspective not mine), which is fine. I view that as living in the status quo but not necessarily evidence of endorsing the status quo.
For instance, do we really expect your average citizen (American in this case) to have a thought out POV on qualified immunity? Policing tactics? Effective tactics to address diversity in the workplace? Herd immunity? Actuarial risk assessment of economic activity during the pandemic? If not are they supporting the status quo?
I think most people just shrug and I don’t blame them. Processing information in the era of the death of expertise has made even having an opinion right now an absolute hellscape.
Also - being apolitical is a political stance, in itself.
Separately, not opposing the status quo is more like accepting it than supporting it, and these are all different.
Your lack of nuance rather proves the point of the great grandparent post.
Exactly. Anybody who earnestly tries to be informed will realize that there are limits to what they know and subjects for which they are not [yet] informed. There needs to be room for people to say "I'm not informed on that issue, so I don't have an opinion."
Their response was "I get paid per signature, will you sign it so I can make more money?"
My response, "That's an even worse reason, are you telling me someone buying this prop its way into the ballot?" He left at this point.
> You could also be apolitical because you find all available options to be unacceptable
Is this apolitical, or is it having a politics that is not well represented? It seems more like the latter to me.
Being apolitical is implying that you think that it's good enough as it is to not care.
I think being apolitical is more about having an objective view and judging opinions based on merit rather than the political spectrum they originated from. Could also mean you're either are against all political views, or have none, but this last one seems less likely to happen in practice. People tend to have an opinion, more or less informed or objective as it may be.
It is completely reasonable for someone to say they don't like the status quo but also are uncertain about whether a policy improves on the status quo due to their limited knowledge. If that isn't being apolitical we may as well strike the word from the dictionary. It is technically a political stance, but it is not forceful enough to be called support of anything.
I should add, this goes in both directions and I see it from both sides of the political spectrum. I consider myself an independent. I try to judge all issues individually and fall into different camps depending on what we're talking about, but political dialogue has become so toxic that I've gotten to the point where I just cast my vote and move on.
Take for example how we got to religious freedom. In the past, if you were the wrong religion, you would be tortured and executed.
In a lot of places, this led to horrendous religious wars where literally millions of people died. In the end, we ended up with freedom of religion as a compromise. The state would no longer compel you to choose a religion.
Of course each religion thought they were right and the others were wrong. But they stopped using the power of the state to compel conversions. They would still proselytize and try to persuade other people to join their faith, but they stopped trying to use the power of the state to compel people. After that, religion became a lot more apolitical.
Sometimes begin apoliticial means you don't think it is worth using the power of the state to change the status quo. You may be against the status quo, and think debate or persuasion is more effective.
In addition, reference to the status quo in the quote is simplistic. A lot of times the status quo is like an armistice line between two warring sides. Many times the status quo includes things you are for and things you are against. Maybe the way the status quo is right now, the benefit of the things you are for, is greater than the burden of the things you are against. If you try to change the status quo, you may end up destabilizing the status quo so much, that when the new equilibrium is reached, you end up losing some of things you were for.
If you think you hold no political opinion this is usually a sign that you can afford to do so. Just like my grandfather who fought in the Wehrmacht and said afterwards that he wasn't convinced, he just went the easy way and didn't question his orders. Was that apolitical? I don't think so — it was more an excuse he told himself to avoid responsibility for what he helped create.
Sorry, but sometimes inaction is political, because it means you are willing to give the controls to the next person who grabs it as long as you don't think you will end up worse off. "I don't care what happens to anyone but me", may sound apolitical, but it really isn't.
Interestingly, both meanings are in the dictionary[1] and the argument that there is just one is either coming from ignorance or bad faith. The GP's "being apolitical just means you support the status quo" definitely looks like a troll. It uses "support" as "endure" (an unusual meaning in such a context) but implies "support" as "promote".
Back when I studied ethics we were talking about the famous trolly problem. The professor proposed multiple scenarios and after each asked the auditorium who would act and who wouldn't. I can vividly remember three points:
1. Even seemingly clear cut ethical questions weren't clear cut at all. Rarely as much as 80:20 more often 60:40
2. Doing nothing always gets a perk over doing smomething. If you do something you might have done the wrong thing and feel silly for it - if you do nothing it is easier to brush off.
3. When the professor rephrased a scenario in such a way that you had to take basically the same decision, but your role was more direct (instead of pulling a lever to sacrifice one person, you'd have to push them in front of the trolly) nearly nobody would do so.
These differences in perception of indirect and direct effect is what we use to excuse ourselves in cases where our inaction would have saved lives ("I could have easily pulled the lever and saved four lives" VS "I couldn't have pushed that person in front of the trolly, even if it would have saved lives").
Similarily my grandfather's generation would have said: "There was nothing I could have done to stop it anyways" - with the unspoken part beeing "without taking a personal burden". Note that we live in one of the few areas where people were hiding in the mountains to resist the Nazis and these were partely people he personally knew. So he knew one could do something, he just either didn't dare, chose to (conveniently for him) not think about it, or only felt sorry in hindsight.
As another data point: At least where I grew up not helping someone in need (e.g. of first aid) is a felony, as long as the circumstances allowed you to help. Not sure how this is in the US tho
Back to the trolley problem and the thesis of everything being a subject of politics as in politics as "the principles relating to or inherent in a sphere or activity, especially when concerned with power and status." and "a particular set of political beliefs or principles".
Is a rich aristocrat on the court of the french king who puts sticks down his throat so he can vomit and eat on while the poor starve at the gates apolitical? This aristocrat is completely minding his own business, might even be a very nice soul who never hurt a fly.
In my eyes there is rarely any way to act apolitical. Even if you exile yourself in the desert that would be a choice that e.g. influences your family. This influence on your surrounding world is what makes things political, because we constantly decide how to interact with the society around us. And it doesn't matter if you hold strong political opinions or are oblivious to everything, what you do is still a part of politics (e.g. by signaling others what is commonly accepted behavior and which your (polical) values are. Do you pull the lever and kill the man or do you let the five other people die? What if they are kids? What if they are old people? What if they are black?
Decisions like these are not arbitrary, they show us fundamental truths of how we think and work in relation to our surroundings, and this is – in my book – political.
And there were all kinds of ignorant kids, grew up in podunk poor towns, but still had an opinion about the civil and the uncivil. They were certainly political. And they volunteered to fight fascism and quite a lot of them died for it. Now, fascism is just name calling. It's not a real thing that exists, or could exist. It's just politics, which is also unimportant and mostly make believe. It's something that his site considers anti-intellectual.
So when people intentionally refuse to think and wilfully run from fundamental truth, the situation is pretty dire. Apolitical is indistinguishable from apathy. Perhaps some part of it's cognitive dissonance, that at least suggests there's an awareness of a conflict that matters enough to ignore because it's more comfortable.
Indeed. The premise of the problem is that you believe that a certain action will cause a certain effect and the actual effects of your actions do not matter as it's an ethical and not mechanical, medical or engineering problem.
>In my eyes there is rarely any way to act apolitical.
It is understood. I just wanted to make you aware that in some other people eyes it's bonkers.
Somebody needs to tell me what voting is supposed to be about, then.
It reminds me of what happens to the numbers if we allow for 2 + 2 = 5 to be true. Effectively 1 will end up being equal to 0, and since every number multiplied by 1 is it self, and every number multiplied by 0 is 0, we end up with all numbers being equal to 0. Effectively rendering them useless.
Politics is about applying collective power from an entity funded by taxpayers. There is nothing political about the decision of whether or not to assist an elderly woman who is lost, or volunteer to coach a youth basketball team, or you know, just do decent things to make the world a better place that doesn't require the application of the collective power of our government institutions.