Abstaining

sink

FionnMatthew wrote: »

It'd smashing to get published. Do you think it'd be a bit out of date now that the whole thing's over, though?

No, I think it's even more relevant now that there has been a no vote. I think a lot of people share your sentiments and would love to hear it. But be warned you might get a bit of a backlash from people who are enamored with populism, and who believe it's great that they can vote anyway they whish without taking the consequences into account.

kaiser sauze

What a great post, FionnMatthew!

You have absolutely shown in your post how the people of this country have abdicated the major responsibility in the process of democracy that they have.

I am ashamed to be an Irish person today.

FionnMatthew

Scofflaw wrote: »

People died to give you a vote: learn how to use it.

cordially,
Scofflaw

With respect, Scofflaw, I don't find that a convincing admonition, any more than I found the "people died for our freedom" campaign.

There are, initially, problems with the statement itself. Nobody actually died to give me a vote. A more accurate way of putting it would be to say that people died to ensure that the people might be enfranchised, as a body. With respect to each of the constituent parts of that body, this speaks more to the idea that people died so that I might have a choice to vote, rather than so that I might vote.

Another mistake is the idea that by the very fact that someone confers it on me, I am obliged to use it. People also "died so that I might be a Christian in safety." I am not at all sure I should feel obliged to be such, however. And I am, perhaps irrationally, vehemently antipathetic to Irish revolutionary romanticism.

Nevertheless, I consider it of doctrinal importance that I have a choice not to vote. This amounts to nothing more than that I may decide not to be a part of the decision-making body of this country, in this instance. As a freedom, I consider that an integral one. I derive this from observation of the internal logic of democratic philosophy, and I am loathe to believe that diachronic obligations to figures of the past would override the mechanics of of the political system that said figures wished to install.

With respect to social systems like our one, I don't believe it is wrong to think about them in a deontological framework, since talk of 'rights' and 'duties' is so loosely used. As far as I can see, the civic duty to vote intelligently is mutually reliant on the the right to vote. Should I choose not to exercise my voting right, no duty obtains. Conversely, should I consider it unfeasible that I may fulfill my duty to vote intelligently (for whatever reasons), I ought not to exercise my right to vote.

To do anything else, as far as I can see, is a perversion of democratic ideals. Those aforementioned martyrs to democratic ideals, would they have died so that a society could exist where all and sundry exercised their right to vote without any observance of the attached duty to do so rationally, intelligibly and informedly? Was it their dream that Ireland would be guided by gossip and hearsay, rather than a responsible, informed electorate?

In summary, I consider the civic duty to "learn how to use my vote" to obtain only insofar as I wish to exercise the vote I have been given the option of using. My current dearth of adequate time to do so places on me an obligation not to abuse the rights I have without observance of my civic duties therein. If I do have an obligation to those who died to establish democracy, (a view to which I am not favourably inclined) it is an obligation not to abuse my vote, and thereby contaminate the general will, which is a disservice to everyone else who voted.

If none of the above is found by you to be particularly convincing, I graduate to my second point in the post to which you were responding. It is my opinion that very few people observe their civic duty in the exercise of their voting rights. As a result, the general will is vastly diluted by the aggregate of uninformed, individual votes. Taken as a whole, the demos demonstrates very little collective rationality, and resembles nothing so much as a psychotic individual, whose personality has fragmented. Democracy, if the word had not come to mean something else, would be a pale memory.

In this situation, to exercise my voting right, even cognizant of my civic duty therein would be of dubious value. At best, I can hope to add mine to the almost drowned-out voice of the true demos. At worst, I could play the popular game, and add to the electoral noise. Neither, I believe, is very beneficial to the civic body. Both afford me membership of a social body which demeans me, and by doing either, I choose to set my vote on a level with, of an equal value with, the vote of someone who exercises no higher consideration or caution in his using it. I want no part of a game so vulgar as that. I abstain.

Respectfully, these, among others, are my pertinent reasons for sitting this one out. I hope you will appreciate why I am unresponsive to the more platitudinous of admonitions, which amount to a reiteration of what you might call the democratic categorical imperative - "it is always a good to vote - you must always vote!" To be honest, I don't believe that. I don't think the sentiment even belongs within a properly democratic philosophy, but rather in an ideology which rests on democratic foundations (since ideology can grow in any soil, with very little encouragement), a collection of sayings which governs the movements of people while dissuading them from thinking it through, and which assures us all that democracy is "universal good" before that conclusion has been borne out by experience and inquiry.

Democracy, as I know it, is the "least worst" form of government that we know of, not the "best for all time." The distinction is not semantics - The former encourages an attitude which primes individuals to the strengths of the system, while making us wary of its weaknesses, and ensures that the system works at maximal efficiency. The democratic categorical imperative, I believe, is an artifact of the latter kind, and whitewashes over any wise misgivings we might have. It's just one more white lie. To me, there's something sinister about a society that uses the influence of trendy (unbearable) young celebrities to coax an ignorant vote out of its youth. "Don't worry. It's easy! Just vote!" To me, that represents a cult of superficializing ignorance. This is the banalization of democracy.

passive

FionnMatthew wrote: »

With respect, Scofflaw, Extraordinarily large and abstract essay in complex format

Oy, don't overdo it :P. But do send the other one in to the Irish times, people need to seriously look at what's wrong with the election process in this country and all the attention seeking and confusion and lies that goes into getting someone to tick the right box...