Other Politicky Stuff

OK, I know I talked about politics last time, and no I don’t want to start another series on this, but I actually found when writing my last post that I got very rapidly sidetracked when I tried to use voter turnout as a way of demonstrating the fact that everyone hates their politicians, and I thought I might dedicate a post to this particular train of thought as well.

You see, across the world, but predominantly in the developed west where the right to choose our leaders has been around for ages, less and less people are turning out each time to vote.  By way of an example, Ronald Reagan famously won a ‘landslide’ victory when coming to power in 1980- but only actually attracted the vote of 29% of all eligible voters. In some countries, such as Australia, voting is mandatory, but thoughts about introducing such a system elsewhere have frequently met with opposition and claims that it goes against people’s democratic right to abstain from doing so (this argument is largely rubbish, but no time for that now).

A lot of reasons have been suggested for this trend, among them a sense of political apathy, laziness, and the idea that we having the right to choose our leaders for so long has meant we no longer find such an idea special or worth exercising. For example, the presidential election in Venezuela – a country that underwent something of a political revolution just over a decade ago and has a history of military dictatorships, corruption and general political chaos – a little while ago saw a voter turnout of nearly 90% (incumbent president Hugo Chavez winning with 54% of the vote to win his fourth term of office in case you were interested) making Reagan look boring by comparison.

However, another, more interesting (hence why I’m talking about it) argument has also been proposed, and one that makes an awful lot of sense. In Britain there are 3 major parties competing for every seat, and perhaps 1 or two others who may be standing in your local area. In the USA, your choice is pretty limited to either Obama or Romney, especially if you’re trying to avoid the ire of the rabidly aggressive ‘NO VOTE IS A VOTE FOR ROMNEY AND HITLER AND SLAUGHTERING KITTENS’ brigade. Basically, the point is that your choice of who to vote for is limited to usually less than 5 people, and given the number of different issues they have views on that mean something to you the chance of any one of them following your precise political philosophy is pretty close to zero.

This has wide reaching implications extending to every corner of democracy, and is indicative of one simple fact; that when the US Declaration of Independence was first drafted some 250 years ago and the founding fathers drew up what would become the template for modern democracy, it was not designed for a state, or indeed a world, as big and multifaceted as ours. That template was founded on the basis of the idea that one vote was all that was needed to keep a government in line and following the will of the masses, but in our modern society (and quite possibly also in the one they were designing for) that is simply not the case. Once in power, a government can do almost what it likes (I said ALMOST) and still be confident that they will get a significant proportion of the country voting for them; not only that, but that their unpopular decisions can often be ‘balanced out’ by more popular, mass-appeal ones, rather than their every decision being the direct will of the people.

One solution would be to have a system more akin to Greek democracy, where every issue is answered by referendum which the government must obey. However, this presents just as many problems as it answers; referendums are very expensive and time-consuming to set up and perform, and if they became commonplace it could further enhance the existing issue of voter apathy. Only the most actively political would vote in every one, returning the real power to the hands of a relative few who, unlike previously, haven’t been voted in. However, perhaps the most pressing issue with this solution is that it rather renders the role of MPs, representatives, senators and even Prime Ministers & Presidents rather pointless. What is the point of our society choosing those who really care about the good of their country, have worked hard to slowly rise up the ranks and giving them a chance to determine how their country is governed, if we are merely going to reduce their role to ones of administrators and form fillers? Despite the problems I mentioned last time out, of all the people we’ve got to choose from politicians are probably the best people to have governing us (or at least the most reliably OK, even if it’s simply because we picked them).

Plus, politics is a tough business, and what is the will of the people is not necessarily always what’s best for the country as a whole. Take Greece at the moment; massive protests are (or at least were; I know everyone’s still pissed off about it) underway due to the austerity measures imposed by the government, because of the crippling economic suffering that is sure to result. However, the politicians know that such measures are necessary and are refusing to budge on the issue- desperate times call for difficult decisions (OK, I know there were elections that almost entirely centred on this decision that sided with austerity, but shush- you’re ruining my argument). To pick another example, President Obama (and several Democrat candidates before him) have met with huge opposition to the idea of introducing a US national healthcare system, basically because Americans hate taxes. Nonetheless, this is something he believes very strongly in, and has finally managed to get through congress; if he wins the elections later this year, we’ll see how well he executes.

In short, then, there are far too many issues, too many boxes to balance and ideas to question, for all protesting in a democratic society to take place at the ballot box. Is there a better solution to waving placards in the street and sending strongly worded letters? Do those methods at all work? In all honesty, I don’t know- that whole internet petitions get debated in parliament thing the British government recently imported from Switzerland is a nice idea, but, just like more traditional forms of protest, gives those in power no genuine categorical imperative to change anything. If I had a solution, I’d probably be running for government myself (which is one option that definitely works- just don’t all try it at once), but as it is I am nothing more than an idle commentator thinking about an imperfect system.

Yeah, I struggle for conclusions sometimes.

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Studying homosexuality

For part two of this multi-parter on sex & sexuality in one form of another, I would like to turn to the topic that first inspired this series in the first place: homosexuality. This is a subject that is notoriously hard to talk about without offending or angering one group or another, but I’m going to try and consider the subject (please tell me off if I ever refer to it as a problem) objectively, trying to analyse it as a concept. Not that this means I won’t end up using the wrong words at one point or another, but try to believe me when I say I’m not trying to.

From an evolutionary perspective, being gay doesn’t make much sense. Natural selection as a way of ensuring the ‘success’ of a species relies upon passing on genes to the next generation, and this clearly isn’t going to happen if the psychological imperative of a person is to mate with someone who they cannot have children with. It would seem, therefore, that since homosexuality is something not evolutionarily favoured, that it should have died out several million years ago, but this is patently not the case. This makes its root cause something of a poser- not being evolutionarily selected for would seem to root out any genetic cause, but it doesn’t appear to be simply a feature of just our modern society (both Leonardo da Vinci and King William II were probably gay) or even solely our species (bats, dolphins and lions are among a huge group of other animals to display homosexual behaviour). It’s not as if these are isolated cases either- between 8 and 15% of gulls on the Santa Barbara coast practice lesbian mating, and all bonobos (the smallest of the great apes) are bisexual. Compare this to the oft-quoted figure that 10% of human beings are gay, or even some of the other estimates that have been put about; I have heard it claimed that one third of British women are either lesbian or bisexual, whilst Alfred Kinsey, inventor of the notorious Kinsey Scale of Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating (o being totally hetero, 6 totally homo, 1-5 being various degrees of in between) claimed that less than 5% of people were exactly 0 or 6.

Homosexuality is, therefore, clearly nothing new, and from mere observation can certainly not be called ‘unnatural’. Indeed, for those of us who are gay, it clearly feels like the more ‘natural’ way of doing things. Just as the rest of us become attracted to and fall in love with someone in what is perceived the ‘normal’ way, so the precise same procedure is performed by homosexuals, the only difference (of course) being that their objects of affection are of their own gender. The fundamental difference is, then, simply a question of finding the ‘wrong’ group of people attractive compared to the norm, although exactly how and why this difference occurs is still a conundrum that has flummoxed far finer minds than mind.

So, if homosexuality has always formed a part of our existence, why has it attracted all the various degrees of hate that it has over the years? This, at least, we can clearly call a societal thing- the ancient Greeks are famous for their acceptance of homosexuality as a form of love (the Spartans even considering it the highest form), and since it is at least tolerated where else it occurs in the animal kingdom we must presume that the hating of it is something that has sadly developed within human culture. Among teenage boys especially, the very idea of homosexuality is considered kinda disgusting, presumably mostly because it appears so alien to the burgeoning sexual emotions of the majority of them. Then we encounter the fact that wanting to have sex with a man is a ‘naturally’ female trait, and since women have generally been shoved firmly into subservient positions for most of human history this does not hold well for the prospect of homosexuality gaining societal respect. It has also been postulated that the motions of male homosexual intercourse, requiring one of the men to adopt a submissive position and accept the penetration of an orifice that (let’s face it) wasn’t designed for the purpose, is quite a humiliating idea, further enhancing the level of disgust, and making homosexuality just seem ‘wrong’ to many, especially men, from quite a young age. Since young men who generally don’t get told what to do or think have historically tended to take up positions of power (ie sons of important people who tend to follow in their father’s footsteps), this has meant these burgeoning ideas are allowed to remain untempered and find their way into the upper echelons of society. From there, by means of both law (homosexuality has frequent been made illegal in various countries from time to time, when they ever acknowledged it actually exists) or religion (the Catholic Church render any further expansion of this point unnecessary), such views filter down and further reinforce the idea of it all being ‘wrong’. From there, persecution is merely a formality.

OK so… why is this persecution generally aimed at men? This one’s comparatively simple to answer, and the reason is twofold. Firstly, women have, as previously mentioned, tended to be considered less important then men throughout history and lesbian exploits have thus been less likely to be of any societal importance than those of their male counterparts. Secondly… well basically, straight men have tended to be in charge and set the rules, and straight men find lesbians sexy. And I’m not even going to try analysing that particular fact.

I’m not really aiming to try and draw any meaningful conclusions from this post, just to throw around a few ideas and explore a concept or two. Next post I’ll be sticking to another broadly sex-related theme, although I can’t tell you which as I have absolutely no idea.