Reflections on Politics on a Crisp Winter Day

It's been the first real chilly winter day we've had in Minnesota. I think it was around 15 F (-7C). It was sunny though and amazingly I didn't mind. So far I don't mind winter at all. So strange. I used to hate it.

I walked to my studio in this crisp air with a blazing blue sky above and sun. I got there and worked as usual.

There's been one odd side effect of working a lot. As I've mentioned previously I listen to NPR radio while I work. I hear so many news stories - Bush, Iraq, neoconservatives, the collapsing housing market, the poisoned Russian spy, Chinese pollution, trans-fats, Darfur, global warming, education for the deaf, Katrina rebuilding, Japanese pop culture.....

The list goes on and on.

I like to say that I've sworn off politics. But as I sit there working with my hands on my glass projects, I hear these stories and in-depth interviews and my mind starts to form arguments and opinions. I have always found myself naturally compelled to questions of society and politics and above all I've got a raging inclination to debate, to thoroughly chew up ideas and break them apart and examine them. I guess this is why I got a university degree in International Relations (lots of politics & economics) and nearly got a degree in anthropology (3 credits short).

But despite this inclination, a few years ago I decided to abandon politics, philosophy and such. I did this for a variety of reasons, all too complex to delve into here.

So this radio is troublesome. I enjoy hearing about the world and it is interesting. But it also tugs me back into a state of mind hot for debate and for inquiry. It re-engages me in questions I want to ignore. It pulls me back into a realm of thought and philosophy that I want nothing to do with.

But it's SO seductive. So engaging.

One big reason I don't want to think about these things is that I've come to realize that my ideas have become different from the ideas of the people that I know here, that I've grown up with. My family and friends are strongly liberal and quite ideological. Part of me is still that too. But I think if they knew some of the things I believe in now they get irritated, maybe even emotional, and think I've betrayed them. I swear I have done no such thing. I love them all dearly and I don't want to contradict them.

But I can't pretend to believe in the same things I believed in ten years ago either, when we used to share the same views. In my travels and my studies I've seen things and learned things that drastically changed my understanding of this complex world we live in. I would love to tell them about these things. To explain the effects these experiences had on my opinions. But that takes so long to explain, longer than most people have patience for. The only solution I see for now is to bottle it up, don't think about it, don't talk about it, leave it behind.

Some people will probably say this is typical of cultural re-integration. Everyone knows there's culture shock when a person goes abroad, but sometimes people don't realize there's also culture shock when a person returns home. When a person lives away from own culture for a long time, as I have done, their views often change dramatically. When they return home they discover there is now a gap between their beliefs and those of their friends and family. This can be terribly frustrating. They want to "enlighten" the people back home with the great new ways of seeing things that they have discovered. But that rarely works. They often may judge the views of the people who stayed behind as simple or naive. This isn't true either and only makes people angry.

The solution is not obvious and takes a long time to figure out. This seems to be where I'm at.