Informed dissent

What do you do when you realize people are making arguments and decisions on things and have absolutely no idea what they are talking about? In our attention-deficit society, it is amazing that we know anything about the really serious issues that affect our lives. Whether it’s national, state, or local, I’m finding it more difficult to know what the issues are. I know what matters to me personally, and what is important for my family, and I can make decisions on different topics if it impacts those particular items accordingly. But: what are the major issues affecting my county or local municipality? I’m not 100% sure I know. I do know what I’m being told are the major issues nationally, but then again I have to keep in mind there are agendas in play.

Looking through the different media websites and blogs (I don’t trust TV news or newspapers –I’ll just raise my blood pressure), what qualifies as major issues differ depending on what their ‘slant’ is: terrorism, economy, creeping socialism, censorship, and social engineering are just some of the ‘axes’ people have to grind as I sift through. Personally, one big thing I care about is where this country is going in the long term. Looking at what is happening in the next year or two is important in how it affects the direction of the country 5 – 50 years down the road, at least that’s my perspective.

Too often it seems people are too concerned about fixing the here and now to really think through the impacts later on. If you look back in history, when speeches were made about the major issues facing the country, the discussion dealt with both the immediate and the long term effects. If you listen to any political speeches in the last 10 years or so, it’s all how to ‘fix’ the immediate problems with no discussion of long term concerns except in the vaguest and blurriest of terms. Listening to the pundits (both news and blog), they can give you wonderfully detailed accounts of how we got to the current situation (with the necessary partisan bent to fit the agenda). Unfortunately, they can do this because it’s all in the past and hindsight is 20/20. The information is there but no one seems to want to use it. No one seems to want to use this information to determine a better way forward, and no one seems to want to put the effort forward now to look at possible solutions to see those long term effects. It’s almost as if, as a country and people, we are unable to do higher level analysis.

One of the books I have on my shelf, and have tried to read (never quite got through it though and I really need to) is The Art of Rhetoric by Aristotle. Another book falling in this category is Logic by Isaac Watts. These books show how far we can stretch the mind if we are willing to put in the effort. Rhetoric allows you to argue your position effectively, and logic allows you to do the deeper thinking necessary to puzzle out issues put before you. They’re books, however, so I don’t know that society at large is willing or able to put in the work necessary to use these tools as they are meant.