Election Thoughts [1] | Election Thoughts [2] | Election Thoughts [3]

In the previous post I concluded that the terrorising dimension of the pressure to choose is not simply down to our ignorance of what the choices might mean, or even our ignorance of what we actually want, but our fear of not really knowing who we are and who we want to be. Thus, when we are asked, as Zizek puts it, whether we’d like soft or hard pillows in our hotel room, we are unsure what sort of person we are trying to be, and whether that person ought to be a ‘hard pillow’ or ‘soft pillow’ person. Fortunately, pillow choices are trivial. Unfortunately, political choices are a more significant bed-fellow.

However, even though the choices we are going to make are profoundly non-trivial, our energy levels – outside of the political class- in making those choices are fantastically low. But simply: most people couldn’t care less. More people will vote with more passion – and having given more focused attention to their choice over a number of weeks – about a reality TV show than about how they are to be governed.

This has been the cause of huge consternation to political theorists. Marxists in particular are generally furious with the working class for not rising up from their apathy and joining the revolution. As Zizek notes:

Why is it that the working class does not complete the passage from in-itself to for-itself and constitute itself as a revolutionary agent? This problem was the main motivation for the turn to psychoanalysis, evoked precisely in order to explain the unconscious libidinal mechanisms which were preventing the rise of class consciousness.

We are likely to see this frustration played out even more as delamination from politics continues, and thus more likely to see politicians turn to national-psychoanalysis to try to work out why people don’t really want to engage. This could be one of the fulcra of this election, as Cameron runs on a ticket of giving power back to people – people may well turn round and say ‘we don’t want it, we’re too busy watching Pop Idol,’ and vote Labour instead.

The answer that the shrinks in the media ought to give is that this ‘terrorising dimension of the pressure to choose’ – from hundreds of breakfast cereals when we wake up to scores of television channels and millions of websites when we get home – is causing people to retreat. Rather than helping people to extend themselves and find out something of the answer to the question ‘who do we want to be,’ the over-abundance of choice simply leaves us exhausted.

What does this mean for us as we approach the election? Well, if you are reading this you are probably of a class of person who is already more engaged politically than the norm. So make it your business to read manifestos carefully, question your prospective representatives closely and reflect for a while on the sort of community and country you want. Once you’ve done that, lament the fact that, in all likelihood, a majority of people in this country will vote without having done any of this:

Voters were asked to say which party had proposed eight key manifesto pledges. They wrongly identified four: reducing the increase in national insurance contributions (naming Labour not the Tories); allowing unsuccessful schools, hospitals and the police (the Tories, not Labour); tightening up takeover rules (the Tories not Labour); and requiring foreign workers employed in public services to speak fluent English (the Tories not Labour).

In only one case, the £150-a-year tax break, did more than half of voters (60 per cent) correctly identify the party making the proposal.

[Source: The Times]

Who’s to blame for that is another matter. But with all parties having been caught with the snouts in the trough, and with so little done on issues that matter, it appears politicians have really only themselves to blame.

Election Thoughts [1] | Election Thoughts [2]

In the previous two posts I’ve tried to set out a critique of the choice agenda that main parties are promoting, and also the ‘rights’ / devolved power agenda that is a central tenet of the Conservative Party manifesto.

The key question that was rightly asked yesterday was ‘is there a desire in the population for all these devolved powers?’ On top of working more hours than ever before as well as looking after children, do people want to be running their own schools, sitting on the boards of hospitals and police forces, and working out if they should be sacking their MPs? I’ll get to this problem of perceived apathy in a later post, but first I want to return to the issue of choice.

In the first post, I posited two problems with ‘choice’. Firstly, our democratic choice is actually fairly limited, and this is a systemic problem that those in power don’t have much will to change. Secondly, choice in public services must mean surplus capacity, which would imply waste – something that all parties are keen to show they can eradicate.

However, there are deeper problems with choosing that Žižek notes in First As Tragedy, Then As Farce:

The incessant pressure to choose involves not only ignorance about the object of desire, but, even more radically, the subjective impossibility of answering the question of desire.

In other words, not only are we not informed enough about what we are choosing, we are also not entirely sure what we want in the first place. In the voting context: not only do very few people really read party political manifestos in any depth and know the ins-and-outs of the differences in policy, but we are not even sure which of these policies would be best for ourselves and/or our nation anyway.

Beyond even this though, the problem of so much choice actually reflects back on us a deeper anxiety. Not only are we not sure what the choices mean, nor what we actually want – we are also not sure who we are. Using a typically banal example, Žižek gets to the heart of the issue:

Herein resides the terrorizing dimension of the pressure to choose – what resonates even in the most innocent inquiry when one reserves a hotel room (“Soft or hard pillows? Double or twin beds?) is the much more radical probing: “Tell me who you are?”

This then I think leads us to a much more radical conclusion about our task in these next few weeks before the General Election: not only do we need to probe our representatives for what they are actually offering to do, we also need to reflect carefully on what we really want – personally and as a nation. But even beyond that lies the deeper question that this period of campaigning should prompt us to spend time reflecting on: who are we, and what sort of people do we want to be?

The terrorizing choice is thus not between Conservative or Labour. The choice is between the kind of self that I want to become, the kind of nation we want to be. Whoever can provide the environment within which this self-development can occur is the one who deserves our vote.

The people who brought you the ‘there’s probably no God, so just relax and get on with life’ have created a new campaign aimed at parents. They want to encourage parents to give their children freedom of choice. The campaign urges parents not to label children with their beliefs.

The key problem here is, of course, that it’s simply biased. Humanist parents are going to try to encourage their children to see the world in the ‘right’ way that they see it, just as religious parents are too.

But beyond that, I also believe it’s a highly irresponsible model of parenting that they are suggesting. Parents do not and should not see their children as blank canvases that they should not make any mark on. If they did there would be no education. It is the responsibility of every parent – and every society – to do its best to pass on the history and story of the family or culture they have come from – as long as this is then followed by an invitation to freedom beyond it.

In fact, this invitation to freedom has long been a part of religious and cultural traditions. The Amish’s rumspringa is a time when their young people are required to leave the community. It is if they choose to come back that they become full members. We have traditionally sent children ‘up’ to university – the language is important because it suggests the time on the mountain where we think about the ministry we are going to have when we ‘come down.’

Humanist, Christian, Muslim parents all have this equal challenge: to bring children up who are informed but free. Labels are not helpful; boundaries and a secure sense of self and history are.