The Way We Were or The Way We are?

On Monday while we were discussing the recommended readings for class (that all of us read) a voice from the past came back in my head. At the beginning of the semester we had a question.

Are people born uninterested/interested in a topic or are people just not exposed to this topic and if they were then maybe they would be interested in it?

Much of the class said people choose what they like and aren’t just born with a like or a dislike. I thought to raise my hand in class and say how I disagreed with this but I figured without any support for my argument it wouldn’t really stand, think about it, it’s a tough thing just to BS, especially when its like a fourteen on one . So I put my opinion on the question way in back of my head because at the time I just didn’t have a good enough reason for it.

This question marched back into the front of my head on Monday. Their were two articles explaining why political involvement has been decreasing since the late sixties, one was by Markus Prior and one was by Rodrick Hart, I will some each article up in a sentence or two as the doc would say.

Hart says the involvement has decreased because nowadays with so many sources of information (internet, cable, satellite dish) people replace political activism with political knowledge, they feel that since they know so much then it’s as if they are active.

I would like to change what he says a little bit to sprinkle some optimism on this subject. Maybe back then people were more active because they didn’t know as much and anytime a leader of an anti (fill in the blank you can even choose) organization would say “This is bad lets protest” this person would just say yea this is bad and not really know why its bad or why the people who are doing it think its good, he would just it because just knows what the subject is bad but not why or how.

Now when someone protests they make sure they know everything about it until they know it’s truly wrong, therefore activism isn’t as often, but when it happens it is legitimate protest and has a better chance of making a difference, its not quantity its quality.

So we see this lack of activism could be a good thing, because now maybe these protests make a difference as opposed to back in the day when there so many that people just started to ignore them. That’s just an optimistic thought though, and not my main point.

Prior’s reason is contradictory to this but still drives home the same point, he says that back in the sixties or what I like to call the “olden days” their were no remotes (but there was electricity! unbelievable!) and whatever channel you were watching you were stuck with because you didn’t want to get up, so when something about politics came up you’d be to lazy to get up and change the channel. Back in the day political knowledge was forced down your throat; television stations made you watch it. It wasn’t like nowadays that you have (for example) the choice of “Politics or Sports”, back then it was “politics then sports” but not at the same time. Nowadays if something you don’t like is on you can just change the channel if you don’t like it. In really short they both blame the lack of political activism on technology.

I agree with Hart to a certain extent because in a sense all this knowledge that you have does mislead you to think that you are involved, and I will say a little bit of this is blamed on blogging, because instead of people rallying they will just complain online, but hopefully in the near future blogging will be a way of political activism (In Gillmor’s peachy world). Although I do think when he says more political knowledge=less activism he is sort of right. I will explain as the blog continues why I disagree with him.

However I don’t agree with Prior at all, he makes it seem as if people were never interested in politics at all and they just watched it because nothing else was on. He is saying a little different than Hart too, his argument is that people do not want to follow politics anymore therefore they aren’t active. This is contrary to Hart who says that people have a lot of political knowledge, even more then back then, and are not active because they substitute their political activeness with a in depth knowledge of it.

According to Prior the only reason why people watched politics back in the day was because that was the only thing on. I find that a little far fetched, the sole reason for political inactivity isn’t because people can get off the coach now, and the sole reason for political activity wasn’t because they were to lazy to get off the couch. It doesn’t even make sense, there is no way every one didn’t want to get up back then, when ever someone really doesn’t like something if they have the ability to change it he/she does. According to this current decline in political activism and knowledge people really don’t like politics, don’t you think if they really hated politics that much back then they would have changed the channel?

So what exactly resurrected my little voice in my head from mid September and gave me a support for my answer to the question that was asked? It’s rather complicated to explain my thought process but I will try my hardest. When I was thinking about the difference between these two explanations and my issues with them, my reasoning for my answer to it hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized I can combine the two opinions to give better answer for the decline in political activism and knowledge, and by doing this I can explain why I think that the way we are born is why we like and dislike things and not because you choose it.

As I said before I will explain my issues with Hart later on in my blog, and I am a man of my word. On a more selfish level this will prove my answer to the original question.

Hart says that all this knowledge brought the decline in activism, now people just know a lot and complains more, but they don’t protest in front of the white house anymore. Going by what Hart says, what would he answer to Prior when he proved (with his survey that he took) that people just don’t know anything about politics? Although I don’t agree with his reason the result he is true. Is the reason why the amount of people who have political knowledge has declined because they know too much like Hart says? No, That does not make any sense!
Now I will resolve both of my issues with Hart and Prior as I said before by combining them to prove myself right.

In my opinion I think the reason for the lack of political interest, activism and knowledge nowadays is for one reason, not everybody like the same things because everybody is different. This may seem as a very elementary explanation but it makes a lot of sense. How? I will again have to go back and really make sense of these two (in my opinion) contradicting views.

Although I didn’t agree with what Prior said I do believe in the phrase “take everything with a grain of salt”, if you take a little bit of what he said, sense can be made of it. As prior said politics was one of the only things on back then and people didn’t really have a choice because they wanted to watch television and this is all that was on. Now that other tings are people don’t watch anymore. Hart says that all this knowledge caused a lack of activism because since they know so much they think it’s like being active.

When you combine these two it works perfectly. Back in the day people weren’t given a choice what to watch the television stations in unison dictated what we watched and in a way what we would be interested in. Now we have options so the majority of Americans do not know much about politics because now they see that politics aren’t the only thing one can be interested. If there were all these options of interests back then, the lack of political knowledge would be identical to what it is now. This decline isn’t because of a lack of availability, it’s because now you have the ability to be interested in something that fits your personality.

Nowadays there are loads of fanatics some are political fanatics some are sports fanatics some are celebrity gossip fanatics and some clothing fanatics ect….. People found interest in these things because for whatever reason it fit their personality. Were all of these interests available to them? Of course! Were any of them rammed down their throat or put in front of them consistently? No!

So then how could these people be so interested in these things? Its simple for whatever reasons each specific topic fit each person’s personality. They could have chosen anything, but these things drew an interest to them. If I don’t know anything about cars does that mean that the in depth knowledge of cars is being hidden from me from the government, so that I wont build a car that could survive on something other than oil which would cause gas prices to go down and the government may lose money? Again No! It just means that I don’t care what’s in a car I just care how fast it goes, but the information is still available to me.

Same with politics the government doesn’t make it hard to find or unavailable to us in order so that we wont form contradicting opinions to them. In fact it would be easier for them if more people were interested in politics because then they could shape their opinions to like the government.

People are born with a liking to certain things, in a day and age were any information is a click away it is kind of impossible to say that information is being hidden. When someone doesn’t click on a war in Iraq headline its not because they can’t see it, rather it’s because they are a kind of person who is not interested in that.

A better way to show this is to explain what entertainment is, Encarta says three definitions (http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/entertainment%2520.html).
1. art of keeping people entertained: the various ways of amusing people, especially by performing for them
2. enjoyment: the amount of pleasure or amusement somebody gets from something
3. performance or exhibition: something that is produced or performed for an audience

So as we see entertainment is clearly subjective, everybody gets their kicks from different things, one person thinks its hilarious when Colbert tears the Bush administration a new one, and one person will fall a sleep because they don’t find it funny , one person will say “O , My, Gawd” when they hear about the Britney Spears divorce and the other will say who cares, one person will jump out of his seat when they see a slam dunk, the other will just say it’s a ball going in a basket. All these people are entertained in different ways and bored by what others say is entertaining.

Think about what your interests are, and then think about why you are so interested in them. I highly doubt the reason why you are so interested in these things is because it was the first thing you saw and said “hey this must be what I am interested in”. it came about because you saw all the options and for some reason this spoke to you.

So the political knowledge and activism hasn’t declined because political information is hidden, it is as available as any other news in the world if not more. It has declined because people have found things that actually entertain and interest them. Back then there were no options, now there are options so people can pick interest that fits the way they think and what they like.

As I said before, in a day and age were every bit of information is available to you with the click of a button it’s highly impossible to say something so widely known as politics aren’t available to everyone.
Nowadays people do know about politics a little, to quote Tocqueville “You don’t have to stop living life to be an informed citizen” you just need to know what’s going on. Now everybody can know what’s going on with out knowing a lot. Everybody knows there is a war going on and everybody knows who our president is. So we see that people are exposed to politics and if they thought it were interesting they would pursue it as one of their interests’s, but for whatever the reason it doesn’t fit the kind of things that interest them so they don’t pursue it.

Now going back to the question that started this, Are people born uninterested/interested in a topic or are people just not exposed to this topic and if they were then maybe they would be interested in it? After my very long answer I can put it simply now. People are exposed to everything these days; the way we are born causes us to choose what we are interested in.