Sunday, March 11, 2007

Political Ideology

Political Ideology - what an interesting conversational topic. I guess we all have an ideology. Do we know what it is? Do we care? Should we?

There is definitely an argument that many of us in life simply do not give our ideologies a passing thought. It's not that we don't care aout the state of the city/nation/world - it's just that such ideological thinking may not be as pressing upon our time and thoughts as say more important and 'loud' thoughts such as career advancement, the kids' soccer league, mountains of laundry. Simply put, ideological thought is something some may see as the sole charge of the philosophical elite such as Plato or Aristotle.

But, nevertheless, we all retain some opinions on almost all matters at the end of the day.

This exercise was beneficial to me in that it gave me cause to reflect upon such matters. I entered the revered company of Plato and Aristotle and I mused awhile upon such things. I guess we could be guilty of assuming our political ideologies may be the same as our parents - they were Republican so that's good enough for me - or we may align ourselves with what seems most popular where we live - all my neighbors vote Democrat and my boss campaigned for our Democratic candidate, that must be a worthy cause.

Simply put, it is not sufficient to allow our ideologies to be guided and shaped in such a way. We need to take and stand, ponder what we believe and align ourselves with one political ideology or another.

1 comment:

ChrisC said...

How is it going, I agree with your statement, with all that goes on in our day to day lives some people don't take the time to sit and think about their political ideology, and as you said about taking the party affiliation from our parents or friends, but everyone should take a little time to think about what they believe in and how they want to make a change and vote for what they believe and not those surrounding them. Good job and welcome back from Scotland.