My first piece of coursework is due in this week. It's a "self reflective" piece of a thousand words on one's own political socialisation: how, when and with what influences did you become aware of politics. It will be a challenge for me - I have twice as many years to cover as most of my classmates for a start! And have written many tens of thousands of words about my "political journey". But it will be an interesting exercise for later today.
But in the lectures leading up to it we've been exploring the mechanisms by which people acquire political awareness and this too is interesting in itself, not least because it leaves me wondering whether it is even possible to break people's acquired political culture in any great numbers sufficient to achieve a critical mass capable of engendering radical change.
The "Arab Spring", the images from the nineties of people who had never been allowed to vote before queuing for hours to take part in this strange thing called "democracy" and so on seemed to hold out hope that big change was possible.
But, as Albert Jay Nock said in "Our Enemy the State" these are all examples not of overthrowing the basic principles on which states are run, but seeking to emulate them, changing them in only small ways such as extending the franchise, demanding more say in an otherwise indistinguishable system. Just as the Reformation did not reject the Church so much as replace one type of Church with another.
One thing I found especially interesting was a discussion about the debate between the so called "primacy" school of thought and the "recency" idea. The former, as I understand it, says that we develop political awareness young, the latter that it happens as a result of later experiences. My immediate thought was that the latter cannot happen unless we have experienced the former, for the most part. And that seems borne out by recent events.
Spurred on by things that happen to them in adulthood, however traumatic or momentous they might be, people appear to choose to seek to change an existing system, not develop a system from first principles. However many people say that the 2003 anti war march, the 2010 anti cuts marches or the 2011 "Occupy Whatever" events are the first time they've got involved in such activities, and that they are a response to a deep felt sentiment at some current policy, very few are seeking to change radically the way things work.
Very few people advocate a whole new monetary system, instead just seeking to manipulate the current broken system to their ends not the hated bankers'. Few demanded absolute non-interventionism in response to moves to war against Iraq, but just to change the way we decide to go to war (many support the Afghanistan but didn't support the Iraq campaigns for example). Few stop to think, in one of my current pet hates, that it is the entire planning system that makes housing unaffordable: they just believe that a little tinkering here or there may change the beneficiaries a little.
They can only do this if they accept, somehow, deep down, the basis of the current systems. And this can only come from early inculturation in that system and an acceptance of it, even if they think its current manifestation is wrong around the edges.
Most people would hate to think that the Jesuits were right when they said "give me boy until the age of seven and I will give you the man" but they really do provide the evidence in their own inability to countenance radical change that Ignatius was onto something very profound.
Can we change it? When Obama said "yes we can" - it now appears he didn't really mean to do so in any radical way. But then he was standing for an office that possibly most epitomises conservative incrementalism. What in the world has to happen before radical change becomes possible?
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