On Losing My Audience
A friend said to me, “when you get into politics, you lose half your audience.” He is right of course and that is expected. My aim in writing is to find the words to speak with integrity, to discover my voice, to be my own reader first and foremost. What control do I have over what others are thinking? None at all.
If Nature appears to function as we think, I have no control, or at best a bare minimum over what my own mind thinks.
The range of our intellectual freedom is severely limited by our genetic inheritance.
Also consider the hand-off of habits from parent to child, — habits which were not consciously chosen by the parents, and certainly would not have been passed on to the child, if the adult parent had awareness of what they were doing. Beating, punishment because the parent is displeased with a child’s performance. Was not the adult-parent punished when he or she was a child?
Habits leave deep tracks, ruts, and becoming excruciatingly difficult to change. Compassion for ourselves and others is the ultimate word of wisdom, as far as I can tell. Compassion is the first step to release, to finding a better way.
To our main point, our upbringing channels our thinking in deep ways. Added to that are the constraints of our socialization into the culture of the land/people of our birth that takes place when we learn our first language. Language is the conduit of culture. Language constrains the logical possibilities of our thought. If you were born in Europe or elsewhere in the West, your thinking will be markedly different than that of someone born in China. I am free to think as I please, within the constraints of my language. Culture determines us as rigidly as does instinct for an animal without the facility of language.
I think that the words of language can function as a mirror, reflecting back to us, the image of our minds, for our awareness and for our examination. That is what I attempt to accomplish on a good day, with the words that are written down in the blog posts. If I am fortunate to maintain focus, I will find apt words to express my own sense of what happens around me, everything, politics included. The words will give shape to what was formless and shifting emotion, as changing, as outside of my control as are the waves of Lake Michigan. With some good words I come to see an image of myself and of the world as it is and was at that time.
Of course politics is a part of all of that. Can politics be split off, forbidden as a subject in polite company? I do not think it is wise, or honest to maintain that illusion. That is the recipe of denial. Politics, how we manage our “common good” will surreptitiously emerge behind our backs, taking us unawares because we lacked the courage to directly address the matter.
I realize that political discourse is uncomfortable. What ought to be done and what can be done, is unclear, so we are uncomfortable because the way forward is more difficult than we thought. And at times there is no way forward. This is the monster that we all fear. But we can never know unless we try.
If you happen by this blog, you may be helped to understand yourself a bit better by something that I have written. That is a “bonus” that makes me happy.
But losing my audience? I can live with that.
2 thoughts on “On Losing My Audience”
I think the assumption that when you enter politics you lose half your audience is just a cliche’ish soundbyte that re-enforces the inaccurate idea that an either/or mentality is built in and inescapable in our political landscape or in our political discussions. It’s the same version of combat politics that FOX and CNN would love everyone to emulate to improve their ratings and in the meanwhile while taking sides not have any original thinking, problem solving, meaningful dialogue with one another, or intelligent focus on finding solutions that are win win situations for both sides, etc. etc.
A good politician with such skills increases his/her audience not decreases his/her audience. That is provided they are a skillful politician. And, provided their potential new audience doesn’t buy into the idea that the either/or mentality that FOX and CNN perpetuates and would like it’s viewers to believe is hard wired into its audiences to improve its ratings.
There have been plenty of skilled politicians who increased their audience rather than lost half their audience. One need only cite Harold Washington, Ronald Reagan, Jim Thompson, John Kennedy Robert Kennedy, John McCain, and Bill Clinton as examples.
No one is inately a political stereotype nor need be…would seem to be a better creed to consider as a conversation opener. And, a less fatalistic or defeatist one than your friend spoke.
Just food for thought. And food for thought is desperately needed I’m this time of soundbytes.
Tobin, thanks for your stimulating response and extension to my own struggle with the “life and death” contest that we are apparently engaged at this time. The idea that a way forward is unclear, which contains the possibility that there is not a way forward under the circumstances, has to do with the conundrum presented by our current practice of capitalism. “Always increase profit” is the ruling principle and now we have a society that is radically out of balance. We have a ruling class of one percent or even less of the population, in a representative democracy. The ruling class has massively more power than do their fellow citizens. Some continue to exercise their privilege without restraint. That impresses me as a terminal condition, a stage 4 cancer.
To put a fine point on the matter, how is health care ever to be affordable as long as the entire sector is subject to the purview of Wall Street?
And yes, I have some understanding of what it means to be an outlier. Outliers — writers, playwrights, painters, are minority voices that are important even in the best of times. The creative work comes at a price and if it’s good seduces us. I think that it is well that we label such work as “entertainment” though it is much, much more. Also, I think the work, the result of a singular life is what is most important and most durable. The work is more important than the man or woman.
It is supremely important to do good work.