Non-Political Space

In his recent article "Against Bipartisanship" (found here), Robert B. Talisse argues that the solution to our stark political divisions is not bipartisanship, but finding non-political space and activities within which to engage one another. I wholly agree.

Talisse argues that we have become so identified with our political positions that virtually every aspect of our lives has become political.

"The first thing to recognize is that our polarization problem cannot find its solution within efforts to craft venues for better politics. This is because the dysfunctions we face lie with the fact that politics has colonized the entirety of our social lives. To explain, the social spaces we inhabit — our workplaces, neighborhoods, schools, markets, places of worship, and parks — are increasingly sorted according to our political affiliations. This means that our ordinary social interactions tend to put us in contact only with those who are politically much like ourselves. What’s more, we as individuals have come to organize more and more of our everyday lives around our political loyalties. Not only do our rivals assign political significance to our daily routine; we do too. We tend to understand our consumer behavior and broader lifestyle choices to be ways of signaling our political identities. So we take our decision to shop at Whole Foods (or Walmart) to be an expression of our political values. We wear camouflage apparel as a means of providing a public representation of our political identity. And the same goes for those of us who carry our sundry belongings around in the latest MSNBC tote, which revealingly bears the slogan “this is who we are.” Consequently, not only are our social environments politically uniform, they have also become spaces where the uniformity is made manifest to us."

Our current situation reminds me of the evolutionary psychologist who explains my music choice in terms of an inherent drive within my species to survive and reproduce. It's not that I really like jazz, it's that I have an unconscious drive to not die or be the last one. Is everything reducible to some evolutionary drive? Is everything reducible to political identity? No and no.

The irony is that our politics and the political system are supposed to create the space for other things, like life and the living of it. Instead, we have made politics the end instead of the means. How has this happened?

Certainly there have been those who have consciously made an attempt to make everything political. They see everything in terms of politics and have gone a long way in convincing others to see the same. Then we have 24 hour news, which has to talk about something. And, there is the emphasis on power, and of course, the assumption that all power is political. But what is really at the root?

I would say we had an identity vacuum that needed filling and politics did the trick. Who are you? "Well, I'm a Democrat." Or, "I'm a Republican."  This is now who we are. We are not just political animals, we are our politics. Even political animals do other things. It use to be, not that long ago, that people's identities were informed by religion, or ethnicity, or vocation. Now, even those things have become political. Talisse certainly hit the nail on the head.

So, is he right? Do we need space that is not in any way political within which to associate? Yes, I think so. And, in a sense I would say we already have that. The problem is that we have politicized things and spaces that were not inherently political. We made the situation into something it wasn't. So, maybe it's a matter of perception.

We were the ones who started seeing everything as political, so maybe we can start seeing things for what they, without seeing them through a political lenses. When somebody says something that goes against my politics, maybe it's not them saying something against my politics. Maybe it's me hearing something they're not saying. Maybe that person wearing camo isn't making a political statement. Maybe they're wearing their favorite shirt, or maybe today is laundry day. In other words, maybe I need to take off the political glasses and let things be what they are.