With another U.S. general election season in full swing, I'm struck again by how profoundly our communication channels can break down in this setting. You can look at elections along several dimensions; we each choose our preferred dimensions before we select candidates. By "dimensions" I mean scales on which we assess candidates like:
- Democrat - Republican
- Conservative - Liberal
- Global - Local
- Faith based - Secular
- Ideological - Pragmatic
- Honest - Dishonest
- Detailed - Conceptual
- Symbolic - Specific
I'm sure there are many others. I've seen otherwise friendly relationships turn tense because of a clash in dimensions. And that's even before declaring a candidate selection. For example, I don't value the "Democrat - Republican" or the "Conservative - Liberal" dimensions. So I tend to ignore them when I assess a candidate. Then if I express my assessments to someone who prioritizes those two dimensions, he or she tends to map those assessments onto his or her own dimensions. That, of course, leads him or her to defend in terms of those dimensions; I try to explain that that's not at all what I meant; tensions rise; etc etc etc.
I'm sure this whole clash of dimensions happens in others settings too. But it seems more raw in this setting.
5 comments:
I'm increasing under the conviction that conservatism and liberalism/progressivism (to slice off one of the dimensions on your list) are both legitimate human impulses that serve us to one degree or another at different times in our lives both at the personal and the public level. Making a movement out of one type of human impulse just doesn't make sense to me anymore.
I'm with you! This is a wise observation.
The problem with the labels are they are just that -- most people, including politicians, don't fall squarely into any of them. Those who do are usually cartoon characters.
For me, the first thing I look for in a candidate is authenticity, and what I mean by that is: is he --in aggregate -- who he says he is?
Someone asked me what my political views were recently and I had a hell of a time trying to explain to them that liberal conservative did in fact exist. Go figure.
Yep -- it's called a Libertarian
Post a Comment