Samfunnsengasjement som hobby

Den nye sesongen av Paradise Hotel kan få det til å rykke i elitist-foten til noen og enhver. Hvordan i alle dager kan noen se på dette? Har de ikke noe bedre å gjøre? Her trengs litt elitist-medisin.

Via LGM kom jeg over dette innlegget av Jonathan Bernstein. Han skriver om folks interesse for politikk:

...if you're reading this blog, odds are good that you're at least in the top 10% of all Americans in political knowledge, and more likely you're in the top 1%. And for those of us in that group, it's hard to imagine just how little the median American knows about the day-to-day events that we pay so much attention to. Even when in some sort of abstract way it makes sense for people to know about politics or public affairs -- for example, it makes sense for Medicare recipients to know how ACA affects them -- they just don't. Sometimes that's because people aren't well-educated enough to feel comfortable reading or even watching the news (...).  But often it's because people have other, more immediate things in their lives to attend to, or they pay attention only occasionally, or they have low tolerance for conflict, or they just don't see any connection between things happening in Washington and their lives.

(...) I've said this before...to get a sense of what politics is like for many Americans, I suggest thinking of something that you do encounter in some way all the time, but that you just have zero interest in. 

Robert Farley utdyper:

I follow politics not just because I think it’s my duty as a citizen, but also because I find the political entertaining. It has always been thus; I became a political scientist because I found politics fun and interesting. I have a taste for politics. Like Bernstein, I find some forms of mass entertainment mind numbingly boring and stupid. I think that it’s arrogant, however to suggest that my preference for baseball and politics over NASCAR and Jersey Shore represents an elevated level of consciousness, rather than just a particular set of tastes that don’t have any particular moral or ethical content.

Jeg er ikke sikker på om jeg er overbevist, men det er et viktig argument her. Joda: selvfølgelig må vi kunne forvente en viss porsjon samfunnsengasjement og politisk interesse av ansvarlige samfunnsborgere. Men engasjement for politikk og samfunnsspørsmål kan være en hobby så god - og dårlig - som noen.