(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Sometimes one would wish that more people looked red when elections were held, in a certain disdain for the stubborn policy. The election in September is more about administration than free real political discussions. Instead of something really at stake, we are often served local game fiction. Perhaps several of the local elections' local issues could have been more globally oriented? Actually, the politicians' management of money for various tasks does not seem very political. Such priorities tend to satisfy opportune self-interest of voters on the right and the left. The sad thing is the Norwegians' lack of interest in risking themselves for the sake of others, knowing that it can diminish their own material goods. Is it really so hard to spend time helping them a little outside one's own close surroundings?
Is it now whether I vote Red, SV, MDG or Left? Yes, I could vote on all of them, since everyone has some issues with radical political will for change. Possibly Red, since the party's focus on the peace case and criticism of the Libya attack and NATO is consistent. Unfortunately, the importance of politicians and parties has fallen short of ignoring their entertainment value. Books like The Abolition of All Political Parties og Against choice (see page 20) says a lot about how politicians are subjugated to parties and party leaders, without being able to come forward with their own integrity. And why arrange elections when politics suffers from a democratic fatigue, which shows that only four percent in the West bother to be a member of parties?
One may wonder how free the political discussions really are and when they will rise above people's self-interest. It may seem that something totalitarian has long threatened political freedom: We read our own contemporary through the philosopher Hannah Arendt's thinking about totalitarian (The Origins of Totalitarianism), "the totalitarian" means neither tyrannical nor authoritarian. The totalitarian can be seen through terror and ideology, but also in far more modern forms of government and an eagerness to dominate indirectly through control. The totalitarian, in Arendt's sense of the word, does not necessarily have a practical useful purpose, but is just as much the power to create all sorts of new realities – we go far beyond the moral or nihilistic point of God's death, fall of traditions and norm dissolution. For now, on the one hand, one can lie big, as in 2001 where the new paradigm "war on terror" was invented. On the other hand, today's new consumer and control society "guides" human behavior to a degree that was not previously possible. If you look at Wikipedia, "the totalitarian" is described as a political system where the state does not recognize any limits to its authority, and tries to regulate all aspects of public and private life as far as possible. How to Tocqueville in Democracy in America wrote that since "the past has ceased to shed light on the future," man now moves wildly – thus we are an easy victim.
At the same time, submitting yourself psychologically may be desired by many – if you do not have a particularly heretical attitude to the existing. Interestingly enough – as one can also read from director Fassbinder's social criticism (see page 18) – people would like to submit to something; we may not be as individualistic as we think.
Is it possible that many people in front of the television screens during the municipal elections this September will be able to recall the solid links in Plato's cave parable? Where you consider the individual cases of the municipal election campaign as shadow pictures on the cave wall – rather than reflecting on what is so political in this struggle between the parties? Unless some anarchist breaks away from the links, he turns and discovers the candles as the light source of the shadow images. Then to discover that they are barking, and then follow the air drag towards the entrance where one surprisingly finds out from the darkness and out into the sunlight. Some may be so dazzled by this that they stay out there, while others become political beasts, and run into the cave to reveal the scam on the walls. Possibly inspired by the "attention of goodness" that Simone Weil writes in the said book on the abolition of parties.
Most people do not want to rise above the bread policy, as Arendt recommends with Kant's notion of "thoughtlessness" of thought, where one goes beyond himself and allows the general to take precedence. Her polis of equals and women, however, demands that one have a minimum measure of material and other security, where she constantly refers to some of the ancient aristocratic Greeks.
Would Arendt today criticize the Norwegian municipal merger and growing welfare apparatus as the administration's replacement of the policy? In Arendt's book Between Past and Future (1961) she attacks the emerging neoliberalism to have removed real freedom from the political sphere, where politics is "almost solely about the maintenance of life and the protection of life's interests". In the gigantic sphere of "social and economic life," its administration overshadows the political sphere of modern times. Only foreign policy, because relations between nations still foster enmity and sympathy without being reduced to economic factors, seems to remain a purely political area. " Well, over 50 years later, one can see how economics and self-interest totalize the way of thinking – as with the EU / Greece, where politics is replaced by banking economics. Foreign policy does not necessarily rise to the political level of a supranational community with a greater purpose for humanity.
For us in Ny Tid, now also attached to Klassekampen as a Norwegian «foreign document», is the international orienteringone the most political. Our texts on local politics are often about environmental protection and the global footprint. It is also about security policy – a suspicion and play on the fear of deviations and change. Where many prefer to remain in their cave as long as armed police and security companies keep "the others" away from the gate. And for us, local politics can be about letting in refugees and immigrants – a hospitality where municipalities think constructively about what they can contribute rather than one-sidedly thinking negatively about difference. This means that, like Sweden and Germany, the "renegotiated" 8000 Syrian refugees who could eventually come to local municipalities could be multiplied. To think "globally" means to let both the local and the global unite. Free political activity can be promoted by participatory democracy where decisions are made more locally, as has been practiced in several places in South America. Real political freedom can also be promoted by introducing community pay in some municipalities, so that we enable more people to become actively acting people – in a cultural and political sense.
Is this pure and happening idealism, or too old thought stuff in our time? Maybe. But it should be possible to look beyond his own municipality, see a little more of the sun – if not to see Plato's ideas of the true, the beautiful and the good, then at least to promote the solidarity of a larger international community. ?
truls lie
