The trend of "giving up politics" for self-improvement

There are many problematic trends I see within the self-improvement space, but one recurring theme I see that I would especially like to eradicate is with the idea that politics, like office gossip or sports, must but let go of to move forward with a better life. I specifically remember a Mark Manson (one of the most mainstream "self improvement" genre writers out there), talking about giving up politics and sports as New Year's resolutions a while ago, as if they were the same thing, and I have seen this sentiment echoed across many big "self-improvement" blogs, podcasts, and the like. As if the outcome of a sports game were equally consequential to a political election? What kind of foolishness?

I understand how it feels futile when both US political parties get money from the same big corporations, but they are not equally hopeless, and these "self-improvement" people aren't even saying that we should challenge the two party system and become active for progressivism, they are saying that it all doesn't matter anyways. That politics, like sports, is something people get all worked up about but is not actually important. I agree on the account of sports--it is ridiculous that there is a "List of soccer stampede disasters" Wikipedia page detailing the hundreds of people that have died from being crushed to death over what color jersey wins. If you want to give up caring about sports, by all means do as you please. But when you "give up" politics, you are abandoning social progress and those that are most oppressed by the current lack of social progress. Politics, unlike sports, has moral consequences.

It is uncomfortable to recognize this truth because it comes with the weighty responsibility of keeping up with the news, empathizing with the injustices of the world, doing the hard work of liberating our minds from how they've been moulded by a toxic society, and taking action on all of these things. Unlike sports, which is a game created artificially for entertainment, politics is a system artificially created to govern a people, and it shapes the happiness of every individual. Do not put those two things together. And if you do see these things as the same, you only ever cared about politics in that way that white econ major frat boys who did debate in high school do--politics is like chess, some game of witty banter and winning and ambition, not the life and death battle for justice that it is.

How much you are respected regardless of your identity--that is political. How easily you can go to school, what kind of school it is, and who goes to that school with you--that is political. How much money you have the opportunity to make, and then how much you have to pay in taxes--that is political. Even the pandemic we are in that is taking hundreds of lives everyday is political. These things are all governed by policy and people's political ideologies. Even if you think you are "apolitical," you are a political being if you interact in any way with society (interacting with people, buying things, working, going to school, paying taxes, etc.). Identifying as "apolitical" simply means you either have enough privilege where you haven't felt the injustice of the system, or more likely, you are not aware of how you have been disadvantaged, because unless you are white, and male, and cis, and heterosexual, and perhaps most importantly, wealthy, then you have been unjustly disadvantaged in this society in some way.

Granted, it is hard to realize how you have been disadvantaged in society because it is covered up. How many people know that corporations (Netflix, Amazon, GM, Delta, Chevron, Delta, and more) pay ZERO dollars in federal taxes, while us citizens pay taxes? And the taxes we pay go on to fund the tear gas and bullets used on us when we peacefully protest. They hardly fund our schools which for some bizarre reason are mostly funded by property taxes, thus ensuring class (which is often also racial) separation. It is also trendy these days to say things like "human rights issues are not political." Again, I see how that is a more comfortable approach, but these so called "non-political human rights issues" can be traced back directly to government policy, and denying that also obfuscates the fact that they have government policy solutions too (closing tax loopholes like setting up fake companies on Caribbean islands, defunding the police, installing community support measures to stop the school to prison pipeline, introducing federal funding rather than property tax funding by cutting our bloated military budget, etc.). You, the reader, most likely know these things, and perhaps all your friends do too, but the fact that right now it is a match between Joe Biden and Donals Trump shows that clearly most of America does not care to know or act on these things.

I would like to conclude with discussing the self-improvement article that finally sent me over the tipping point and made me sit down and write this all. It was an article by the School of Life, an institution I still greatly admire, but they wrote this article about Voltaire's Candide, which concludes with the following:

"...we must keep a good distance between ourselves and the world, because taking too close an interest in politics or public opinion is a fast route to aggravation and danger. We should know well enough at this point that humans are troublesome and will never achieve – at a state level – anything like the degree of logic and goodness we would wish for. We should never tie our personal moods to the condition of a whole nation or people in general; or we would need to weep continuously...Stop worrying yourself with humanity if you ever want peace of mind again. Who cares what’s happening in Constantinople or what’s up with the grand Mufti."

I hate this. I absolutely hate this.

Do not try and be high and mighty and imagine yourself as above politics when you are simply lowering yourself beneath it in cowardice. Taking an interest in politics is a fast route to aggravation and danger. That is the whole point. We must fight these systems because they are aggravating and dangerous. And humans are troublesome and selfish but you have only to read about history to know that like MLK said, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." Granted, we sometimes go backwards (like right now with economic inequality), and the world continues to be fucked up in so many ways, but why are you throwing in the towel when history has shown that activism and giving a shit is the only way we have ever achieved progress. Excuse me if I tie my personal moods to how others are treated--that is called being a decent, empathetic human being. To turn away from the plight of others is not being the bigger person, it is being the cowardly person. And to think that to stop worrying and caring about these issues is the path to "a peace of mind?" How do you go to sleep at night knowing you have done nothing to make the world a better place? If not a better place for you because you are cocooned safely in your privilege, then for your fellow beings and sentient creatures.

And "who cares what's happening in Constantinople or what's up with the grand Mufti?" Are you serious?? It's because there were people who DID care what was happening in Constantinople or what the grand Mufti was doing that progress ever happened. It enrages me that all of us benefit off of people in the past who cared to get political, who cared to repair this seemingly irreparable world, and then we look down on "getting political" today. People walk around reaping the benefits of people in the past who have bothered to care about politics (and they often venerate these people of the past too), and then these present people turn around and refuse to get political as a sign of "maturity."

And these same people are the ones who think they would have been an abolitionist or a suffragist in the past--if you would like to know the answer to that hypothetical, all you have to do is look at your place in today's world. History is not over. It is always being made. What are you doing to fight today's problems? It is especially ironic because those before fought so hard to expand the circle of control, to democratize power, and yet with all the power we have today, we turn our backs on it, saying it's too stressful. Of course it's stressful. Fighting the good fight is sometimes stressful, demoralizing, and painful, but it is also rewarding and liberating.

Do these people think that feudal overlords just one day decided on their own to stop feudalism? That women were simply handed over the vote? That nice white men decided to just one day abolish slavery? (Actually considering how pervasive the "Lincoln freed the slaves" narrative is, maybe people actually think that). But you have only to read the biographies of past activists to know that "every moral...reform...is struggling against the wind and tide of popular clamor" (Garrison). There were people who gave enough of a damn about justice to demand it, fight for it, and sometimes die for it. How futile they must have felt, for in every generation those obstacles feel surmountable. And yet they tried anyways. These people were brave enough to put aside their social comfort and challenge the morality of those around them, which is probably the most difficult thing for us social creatures to do.

As people suffer so deeply from oppressive political systems it makes me tear up with anger to think that not only are people abandoning those most vulnerable to these systems, but also doing it in this self righteous way, in the name of self improvement.

I agree in a sense with Voltaire, this idea that we must "Il faut cultiver notre jardin," or "tend to our own garden." You cannot carry the weight of the world's problems on your shoulders. I know many activist friends who do that, and it is ironic because we often feel that way mostly because

so many people refuse to carry any burden, who I suppose are too busy "self improving." But let us re-interpret the idea of tending to our own small patch of land (our circle of influence, what we can do within our own short lifetimes, etc.), and re-interpret the idea of "self improving." We should self-improve with the goal to create strong, intelligent, and critically thinking versions of ourselves so that we may carry forth with societal advancement. As Mary Wollstonecraft writes, we must "labour to reform [ourselves] to reform the world." In other words, we are only ever able tend our small garden, but let our garden have meaning. Let it be a garden of caring about things, and difficult growth, so that it may feed into and be a part of a greater, healthier ecosystem.