Who’s responsible for the “inspiration deficit” in Canadian politics? Why of course, blame the young:
The young reject the political status quo, as they should, but they are too lazy to do anything about it. Most of the under-25s don’t even bother to vote. Instead of fighting for change, they wallow in their vanities and entitlements. Not much turns them on except the Idol shows, movies with smut humour and the latest hand-held instruments. Their disillusionment with the political class is understood. Their complacency isn’t. It will soon be their country. You’d think they’d want to take the reins.
I’m not sure if Lawrence Martin was being ironic when he wrote that — perhaps actually satirizing the position he presumably argued on behalf of. Those remarks actually demonstrate the deficiencies of “the old” more than they explain the deficiencies of “the young.”
Now this isn’t an attack on members of older generations. They’re no more to “blame” for their habits and ideas than we, the young, are for ours.
Young people’s disengagement from politics isn’t simply the fault of young people — you can’t “blame” non-voters for not voting, just as you can’t “blame” Conservative voters for voting Conservative, or NDP voters for voting NDP. It’s absurd. You’re welcome to try persuading people to vote differently (or vote at all), but you can’t fault people for their vote (or non-vote) counting (or not-counting) exactly as they intended. It’s like saying,
You know why the Liberals got so many votes in Toronto? It’s because so many Torontonians voted Liberal…
The problems that discourage and disillusion people (young and old) are deeply embedded. The challenge to fix them is going to take a lot of work, a lot of dialogue, and a lot more nuanced thought… And it will never be completely worked out: the process of working it out should be the whole point of politics.
First of all, voting shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all. Voting should be approached as merely a formal punctuation in what ought to be a continuous process of deliberation. Obviously elections are by far the most prominent aspect of our political system; but that disproportionality is precisely what needs to be corrected.
What happens in-between matters just as much. Ideas and contributions — even leadership — can come from anywhere depending on the specific issue of the day.
Our inherited (and outmoded) model is that politics is a game in which periodic tallies every few years matter more than ongoing, generative dialogue and progress (or even, for that matter, genuine conservation of past values); a game in which you pick sides and argue like crazed bastards even when you know you’re wrong; a game with little integrity; a game we’ve lost faith in; a game we don’t enjoy, can’t relate to, don’t understand.
When leaders and persuaders look at how to get more young people to vote, they tend to jump immediately to tricks, arm-twisting, superficial incentives and efforts to “energize”:
- “let’s produce a marketing campaign featuring pop performers or something”
- “let’s start a website with a cool name and ways to make young people feel more involved”
- “let’s put a younger, hipper, more attractive face on the party”
Those may eventually be parts of the solution, but if they’re conceived as individual tactics they’ll never address the root problems. In fact they may perpetuate the problems even further as long as they’re conceived within the old, limited, confrontational frameworks.
Like putting on a grandparent’s prescription glasses, the effect on a young person trying to look through the ideological and institutional lenses of older generations can be awkward and discomforting in a way that’s difficult to explain:
Something just isn’t right… I feel dizzy… I have a headache.
To others, these kinds of complaints may sound like excuses:
I just don’t identify with these candidates, nor what they represent… I don’t know what they’re talking about… I feel lost and bored… This is annoying.
But don’t blame the young… Better yet, don’t blame anyone.
Blame is an inherited concept we can do without. It belongs to the old system, not the future. Blame is useless to anyone interested in learning and creating real value; it’s only good for putting short-term scores on the board.
Don’t blame the young, don’t blame the old, blame the concept of blame from blinding people to what the real opportunities and dangers are.
Now if you’re established (I won’t say “old”) and you stand to lose something, and you fail to adjust your lenses to see the new ways some of us are approaching politics, then maybe there is a case in which we can talk about blame: think about potentially blaming yourself…
After all, it’s not like it hasn’t already started to happen.
Update: I really wish I could be a little less theoretical and divergent sometimes… David Eaves made a much more thoroughgoing and grounded argument. Here are two money quotes:
The problem with Martin’s piece is that he’s looking in the wrong place. He’s not looking at what young people are doing. He’s looking at what he thinks they should be doing… or more specifically, what he would have done when he was 25. [...]
Complaining that an Elections Canada campaign targeting young people didn’t work is akin to wondering why a marketing campaign on Facebook didn’t generate a bigger youth audience for a cable TV Matlock marathon. [...]
As they [young people] look at the institutions Martin assumes they should engage, they’re still evaluating: should we bail them out or should we just let them go bankrupt and start from scratch?
I vote scratch.
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