“… a knowledge of the established rules of international morality is essential to the duty of every nation, and therefore of every person in it who helps to make up the nation, and whose voice and feeling form a part of what is called public opinion.”
John Stuart Mill
Few things will tank a potential joyous meeting among friends and colleagues like the discussion of public affairs (at least from my own experience). A quote from long memory bubbles to the surface every time I hear the word, ‘politics’.
"Opinions are like buttholes, everybody has one."
My mind adds to the sentiment that most people's opinions are about as untidy. I do not recall seeing someone proclaim their political opinions on the state of society, or our efforts to address them, with smiles on their faces as often as I see their frowns or their best portrayal of disdain (me included). It makes sense why one might think that such conversations are less likely to foster new friendships as opposed to extinguishing them. Party-poopers are not the first people on the guest list for the festivities (great pains are taken to keep them off the list altogether).
Aristotle’s writings indicate a position that a good and happy life must entail participation in politics.
“The end [or goal] of politics is the best of ends; and the main concern of politics is to engender a certain character in the citizens and to make them good and disposed to perform noble actions.”
Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics at 1099b30)
I can understand Aristotle's belief that participation in politics could be a factor in one's happiness. I'm unconvinced about the standard of virtue, however. I see his point, and for the longest time, I've disagreed with this sentiment in general. Seeing politicians speak on the nightly news tends to be the sort of thing that incites antagonism in me. Ice cream is the sort of thing that engenders my happiness, not congressional voices.
Still between bites of cookies and cream ice cream, the creeping questions crawl back into my memory.
Do I have a responsibility to engage in politics?
If so, how do I arrive at that conclusion?
Why should I care about public affairs if I don't believe my opinions will immediately impact me or induce change (at least in the short term)?
I keep a box of such unanswered questions stored somewhere in the closet of my head, collecting mental dust. My box has grown large enough to threaten easy dementia at some point because there is room for little else. Nevertheless, the fates played a game with me one day and cracked open this box to conjure some form of comedy from this mess by placing me in one of the most aptly named, 'crappy situations' of my parenting experience, and provided me also with the most up-to-date understanding of those questions of politics.
Nappy Time
(why do other English-speaking countries call diapers nappies?)
One of my infant children was screaming, very upset about having his diaper changed. As my luck would have it, the diarrhea became an unstoppable torrent. So far the only good fortune disposed to me in this tale was that this all occurred on the bathroom linoleum floor instead of the living room carpet.
My child was lying on the floor, doing his best to smear his hands into the little mess he’d made. I reached up to flush the toilet in case I needed to dispose of some emergency soiled toilet paper quickly.
Raising three children has taught me to never trust that the last person to use the toilet was diligent in flushing it. However my panic in the moment distracted me, and I didn’t look before I flushed.
The toilet had clogged with someone’s unflushed doody, now transformed into cement. To this day, part of me believes that one of the other two children did this purposefully. I imagine them sitting there plotting and matting large swaths of Charmin together into impassable clogs, all the while wearing a nasty grin on their face, flushed red with the intention, “Take this old man!”
The nasty in the clogged toilet began to suddenly rise, about to breach the surface. My child was lying on the bathroom floor screaming with his half-changed diaper now bursting with another volley.
If I picked my boy up and ran to the next room, the brown sewage would breach onto the floor.
If I dropped my kid into his cradle and rushed back to fight the rising tide, I might not make it in time, and my kid will continue spraying his crib brown.
Then the trifecta of trouble occurred as I glanced around quickly for the plunger and found that there wasn't one. Again… I think this was intentional.
Perhaps this is the best point to pause this narrative and take stock of an idea. When the possible result of a bad situation seems too undesirable, one can recognize the reluctance to imagine it. In other words, wishful thinking might play more of a role in our decision-making faculties than we tend to believe. While trying to bridge the notion of one’s responsibility towards politics with my dirty diaper story, it’s necessary to hang on to this notion about ‘wishful thinking’ while I deviate from this tale momentarily.
The Rape of Nanking
While the genocide of the Jews has been prevalent in American memories associated with world war II, I found that until about ten years ago, mine had been wholly ignorant of those committed by the Japanese against the Chinese in what has been called, "The Rape of Nanking." The Chinese were ruthlessly butchered, especially the women and children, at the hands of the Japanese. While the author argues that the atrocities against the Jews were done partially in secret until the close of World War II, the horrors against the Chinese were reported in local U.S. newspapers.
"And there is yet a third lesson to be learned, one that is perhaps the most distressing of all. It lies in the frightening ease with which the mind can accept genocide, turning us all into passive spectators to the unthinkable.”
“The Nanking atrocities were splashed prominently across the pages of the newspapers like the New York Times…
“Apparently some quirk in human nature allows even the most unspeakable acts of evil to become banal within minutes, provided only that they occur far enough away to pose no personal threat."
(Iris Chang).
Why Should I Care?
My opening quote from John Stuart Mill indicates his belief that all people have a responsibility to contribute their values of morality and ethics to public opinion. Like me, you may have some reservations about accepting this statement as entirely true. I cringe on his use of the word, ‘duty,’ on this topic. For me, it remains the first piece of a puzzle I’m trying to work out. The second piece rests on the history of the rape of Nanking, and Chang’s portrayal of the West in response to it. So far, these pieces bring something to mind about the nature of people, myself included:
A diminishing sense of urgency and responsibility to deal with a moral dilemma, provided that the problem faced is far away from us physically, or too far away into the future.
We often believe that our voices as individuals are such a small drop in the ocean of a necessary solution, that we simply don’t matter.
The unfortunate result of this calculus: say some prayers for those unhappy souls and go back to watching American Idol or the Steelers football game (wishful thinking).
…faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead…
“You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.
James 2:24
It's typically only when faced with immediate and proximate troubles, such as a torrent of sewage from an overflowing toilet and a screaming child, that the urgency for personal intervention prompts action. As this rising tide of trouble continues, so does the comedy (hopefully) of my story.
(to be continued in part two)