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Showing posts with label 'politics'. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 'politics'. Show all posts
Sunday, 15 November 2015
Sunday, 16 August 2015
Sunday, 9 February 2014
The 'i's Have it
I've been questioning what direction my life has been going in lately. Or, more accurately, i've been questioning how i'm living my life. This came about due to the myriad of things that are going on in my life, this MindBodyGreen site, much music i'm listening to at the minute (George Harrison, John Lennon and many more. Not gonna give you an exhaustive list, that'd steal too much focus and sap the snappiness from this post which, if i'm totally honest, is already struggling to be appealing) and a few other things.
To cut to the chase, i'm busy trying to be a better person. I'm working on my self-centredness because i believe many of the world's problems stem from too much ego in some form or other. Won't go into the whole shebang, suffice to say that it creeps into politics and more (governments that put money before principles ruin lives and teach some citizens that wealth is more important than values and ethics). Sure some of it's human nature, but human endeavour is more powerful than that. My way of trying to improve this situation (in my life, at least) is to save the image in the above link as my desktop and also use a bit of linguistic relativism to help me too.
A bit of linguistic relativism, you say? Whaddaya mean by that? Well, i'll tell you what i mean by that. You may have noticed that i'm not capitalizing the 'i's in this post. The idea is that a capital 'i' represents a cult of self-importance. A self-honorific if you like, conveying an arbitrary importance of the speaker. I don't believe it's that common in world languages actually (Spanish 'yo' doesn't use it, neither does French 'je'. After that i'm stumped). I know there are many Asian languages that have a plethora of honorifics for others and it would be easy to speculate that members of that speech community behave better towards each other. Only speculate, you understand.
I'm thinking that by de-capitalizing the 'i', i'll encourage a sense of humility within myself. Hey, it's worth a go. I'll not do it in academic essays or whatever... So far it seems groovy. Obviously i'm not doing it at the start of sentences either - i'm not anti-grammar, just pro-experimentation.
Well, what do you think? Have i lost more of the plot or am i onto something? Comment maybe?
To cut to the chase, i'm busy trying to be a better person. I'm working on my self-centredness because i believe many of the world's problems stem from too much ego in some form or other. Won't go into the whole shebang, suffice to say that it creeps into politics and more (governments that put money before principles ruin lives and teach some citizens that wealth is more important than values and ethics). Sure some of it's human nature, but human endeavour is more powerful than that. My way of trying to improve this situation (in my life, at least) is to save the image in the above link as my desktop and also use a bit of linguistic relativism to help me too.
A bit of linguistic relativism, you say? Whaddaya mean by that? Well, i'll tell you what i mean by that. You may have noticed that i'm not capitalizing the 'i's in this post. The idea is that a capital 'i' represents a cult of self-importance. A self-honorific if you like, conveying an arbitrary importance of the speaker. I don't believe it's that common in world languages actually (Spanish 'yo' doesn't use it, neither does French 'je'. After that i'm stumped). I know there are many Asian languages that have a plethora of honorifics for others and it would be easy to speculate that members of that speech community behave better towards each other. Only speculate, you understand.
I'm thinking that by de-capitalizing the 'i', i'll encourage a sense of humility within myself. Hey, it's worth a go. I'll not do it in academic essays or whatever... So far it seems groovy. Obviously i'm not doing it at the start of sentences either - i'm not anti-grammar, just pro-experimentation.
Well, what do you think? Have i lost more of the plot or am i onto something? Comment maybe?
Monday, 2 December 2013
'Negative Advertising'
Can you be a political party worth voting for if you rely on 'negative campaigning'? I'd like to make it clear that I'm not commenting on specific parties, if anything I'm apathetic about our current system, other than disliking the Conservatives and what they stand for, and racist parties.
This goes beyond the rather facile idea that 'if you say bad things there mustn't be anything nice to say' although, what with the current recession and many parties' reluctance to actually tell anyone what their policies are, there could well be something to that.
Negative advertising plays on people's fear by encouraging them to take action lest their worst nightmares come true. By stimulating a human's fear, you are lessening their ability to make a reasoned judgement. When afraid, humans don't behave how they do under normal circumstances, they feel pressured and are more likely to rush a decision. It's bad democracy, let alone bad ethics.
Martin Sorrell on Thursday's This Week says that parties are more likely to use this tactic during times of a country's economic strifes. That's reasonable in terms of logic - there are more fears to exploit, after all. Hitler was one of many leaders who exploited existing economic problem for his own game, blaming groups of people for problems that are too wide-reaching and complex to be caused by those not in power. I think it's an awful tactic, so cynical and exploitative. I have no conception of what this was like in 1930s Germany, but now, I realise, given all the problems many people face in today's world and ceaseless messages of 'how bad it is for us all', how unfair it is to then put more stress on the country and its residents by stirring the fear pot further.
Although I realise how futile it is, I'd urge politicians to grow a back-bone. You should be going into the job because of how positive you feel about change and helping people, not how loud you can shout about peoples' faults, not about how much you want to cling on to money and power at all costs and not because you don't care about the plight and emotional state of the very people who (supposedly) control your future through voting.
I'm not saying politicians must be all happy, sunshiney, glass-half-full people all the time, I'm saying they shouldn't be so reckless and cynical as to tread on the backs of their electorates while they are already down. I'm sure a lot of it is down to the system - I believe it encourages people to put self-interest first, to keep political heads above water and to cynically compete with opponents that they could learn from if they listened. It probably makes people so bitter they don't have any positivity left in them.
Still doesn't mean they should spread negativity like anthrax over the country and pick the pockets of its dead citizens.
This goes beyond the rather facile idea that 'if you say bad things there mustn't be anything nice to say' although, what with the current recession and many parties' reluctance to actually tell anyone what their policies are, there could well be something to that.
Negative advertising plays on people's fear by encouraging them to take action lest their worst nightmares come true. By stimulating a human's fear, you are lessening their ability to make a reasoned judgement. When afraid, humans don't behave how they do under normal circumstances, they feel pressured and are more likely to rush a decision. It's bad democracy, let alone bad ethics.
Martin Sorrell on Thursday's This Week says that parties are more likely to use this tactic during times of a country's economic strifes. That's reasonable in terms of logic - there are more fears to exploit, after all. Hitler was one of many leaders who exploited existing economic problem for his own game, blaming groups of people for problems that are too wide-reaching and complex to be caused by those not in power. I think it's an awful tactic, so cynical and exploitative. I have no conception of what this was like in 1930s Germany, but now, I realise, given all the problems many people face in today's world and ceaseless messages of 'how bad it is for us all', how unfair it is to then put more stress on the country and its residents by stirring the fear pot further.
Although I realise how futile it is, I'd urge politicians to grow a back-bone. You should be going into the job because of how positive you feel about change and helping people, not how loud you can shout about peoples' faults, not about how much you want to cling on to money and power at all costs and not because you don't care about the plight and emotional state of the very people who (supposedly) control your future through voting.
I'm not saying politicians must be all happy, sunshiney, glass-half-full people all the time, I'm saying they shouldn't be so reckless and cynical as to tread on the backs of their electorates while they are already down. I'm sure a lot of it is down to the system - I believe it encourages people to put self-interest first, to keep political heads above water and to cynically compete with opponents that they could learn from if they listened. It probably makes people so bitter they don't have any positivity left in them.
Still doesn't mean they should spread negativity like anthrax over the country and pick the pockets of its dead citizens.
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