Political Games
In many a conversation that I've had with a friend, a common thread that we have shared is our aversion to politics in any form. It is a famous quotation that "Man is a Political animal", and while this is so, it is politics in its more specific sense that I find disconcertng. All this bickering, all the people saying one thing and meaning another, people making concessions that they have no intent of backing up, pledging their support for things that they have no intention of supporting. The nitty gritty politics that are involved with dealing with a specific individual or a group of people.
I guess its a particular mark of my cluelessness that I don't know how to deal with this in people. I always expect people to value honesty, sincerity, to abide by their promise and to strive sincerely for whatever word they give to it. It appears with the vast majority of people that we don't have this connection in common. People do not like playing these games, but they do not want to make the sacrifices that this involves. Better in the game it seems that honestly out of it.
Its a thing associated apparently with maturity. Children do not do this, they have no concept of sophisticated politics. Teenagers, are starting to get into the groove, but they don't know enough. They are active in their aggression, if they don't like someone then they will let them know. Its when you become an adult, that you know that you cannot be so overt, you have to hide and conceal, you have to become passive-aggressive in how you deal with people. It seems that this is the culmination of adult sophistication, to act like a petulant child. What an odd combination.
It appears that too be a truly upstanding adult, one needs to become a sophisticated teenager. All the ideals of youth, its commitment to higher ideals than that of the normal person but tempered with the maturity of adulthood in how to deal with people, in terms of not pushing them beyond what they can deal with and what you can reasonably expect of them. How odd that I seem to have come to the conclusion that what I ought to become is what I hope that I am. I need to think this through more carefully.
I guess its a particular mark of my cluelessness that I don't know how to deal with this in people. I always expect people to value honesty, sincerity, to abide by their promise and to strive sincerely for whatever word they give to it. It appears with the vast majority of people that we don't have this connection in common. People do not like playing these games, but they do not want to make the sacrifices that this involves. Better in the game it seems that honestly out of it.
Its a thing associated apparently with maturity. Children do not do this, they have no concept of sophisticated politics. Teenagers, are starting to get into the groove, but they don't know enough. They are active in their aggression, if they don't like someone then they will let them know. Its when you become an adult, that you know that you cannot be so overt, you have to hide and conceal, you have to become passive-aggressive in how you deal with people. It seems that this is the culmination of adult sophistication, to act like a petulant child. What an odd combination.
It appears that too be a truly upstanding adult, one needs to become a sophisticated teenager. All the ideals of youth, its commitment to higher ideals than that of the normal person but tempered with the maturity of adulthood in how to deal with people, in terms of not pushing them beyond what they can deal with and what you can reasonably expect of them. How odd that I seem to have come to the conclusion that what I ought to become is what I hope that I am. I need to think this through more carefully.
1 comment:
Ah man,
love the last paragraph. its like an elderly chaps said to me awhile ago bout a group we know. All the fire of youth but none of the wisdom of age.
I hope we can one day learn to harness them together.
I am scared of getting mature and loosing ideals, scare too of holding them to the exent of obstinance where by they loose there use and i hinder the very standard i want to do attain.
i hope we make it to being radical adults.
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