Political Maturity
I met an old friend of mine over the lunch. For a person of my age (30) anyone beyond 5 years of friendship is an old friend. She's one of the few real American friends (born from American parents) that I've had in my 10 years of life in US. Our friendship was built upon our common interest towards politics and current affairs. She's actually even more involved with the current affairs. The amount that she's learned about Iranian politics/history in the past 7 years is certainly more than what I learned about America's.
We talked about idealism and the struggle that we went through in the Iran's reform, pre-Iraq war protests, Palestine-Israel conflict and bloodshed of 2001-2, Election 2004 , etc. And the fact that how little can be achieved in political activism. When I asked her: "Are you excited about the recent indictment of couple of crooks in the republican administration", she replied " If any good comes out of it. Do you think people remember it, some time down the road?". And she's fairly right, since little progress can come from close-door sessions of politics.
What are we becoming? Pessimist or realist? Should we call it political maturity or apathy? Certainly it is not apathy, since I care and follow up the events, but don't get excited that much. I was thinking about how my threshold of attention towards death of civilians have changed. I simply skim the daily news of death of 30-40 people in Iraq, Palestine, Israel, etc. Without considering the fact that how many families are being affected by an individual death. Certainly this can not be called political maturity!!
Maybe all this pessimism comes from the special circumstances of the world after September 11th have had. An era of political and historical ignorance, fanaticism and distorted public discourse which have removed any chance of achieving progress through political means. And probably part of my feelings is based on the fact that this is practically the first downturn of history that I'm actually seeing it. And it is all these continuous experiences which makes the life an interesting journey to learn and get mature out of these mess. Finally a little bit of optimism :)
We talked about idealism and the struggle that we went through in the Iran's reform, pre-Iraq war protests, Palestine-Israel conflict and bloodshed of 2001-2, Election 2004 , etc. And the fact that how little can be achieved in political activism. When I asked her: "Are you excited about the recent indictment of couple of crooks in the republican administration", she replied " If any good comes out of it. Do you think people remember it, some time down the road?". And she's fairly right, since little progress can come from close-door sessions of politics.
What are we becoming? Pessimist or realist? Should we call it political maturity or apathy? Certainly it is not apathy, since I care and follow up the events, but don't get excited that much. I was thinking about how my threshold of attention towards death of civilians have changed. I simply skim the daily news of death of 30-40 people in Iraq, Palestine, Israel, etc. Without considering the fact that how many families are being affected by an individual death. Certainly this can not be called political maturity!!
Maybe all this pessimism comes from the special circumstances of the world after September 11th have had. An era of political and historical ignorance, fanaticism and distorted public discourse which have removed any chance of achieving progress through political means. And probably part of my feelings is based on the fact that this is practically the first downturn of history that I'm actually seeing it. And it is all these continuous experiences which makes the life an interesting journey to learn and get mature out of these mess. Finally a little bit of optimism :)
posted by Mahaan @ 3:22 PM
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