This train of discussion usually starts when I let slip one of my unpopular pacifist sentiments. For example:
Me: I don't think it's appropriate to use armed forces to impose or enforce peace.
Interlocutor: How on earth do you expect them to do that?
Me: I don't know exactly how it could be done. I have no specific training in that sort of thing.
Interloctor: See? It's impossible! You can't expect them to do something like that if you have no idea how it should be done.
But that's it exactly - I have no idea how it should be done. But I'm only 25 years old, I have but a single undergraduate degree, and I doubt I have the leadership skills to organize a birthday party. That's why I'm not leading the country. Anyone who claims to be qualified to lead a whole entire country should be able to come up with ideas that are so vastly beyond anything I can possibly think of that, until I learn of the ideas, I would have thought them impossible.
Our expectations of anyone who would dare think themselves worthy of leading us should be far beyond our expectations of ourselves. Accepting anything less is doing us all a disservice.
2 comments:
ah. but we vote for people we think "represent" us. including people who have something in common with us. the two conflict. we want an everyman, but not the intellect of an everyman. oh, the contradicitions.
I think we need to focus on electing people who can identify with us, rather than electing people with whom we can identify. For example, it might be unwise for me to vote for someone who's just recently out of university and still figuring out this "career" thing, so instead I should vote for someone who remembers clearly the challenges of being early in their career and can identify with people who are in that position today, but also has more knowledge and experience.
Of course, the problem is that a lot of (or if not a lot of, a very loud minority of) people who struggle and then succeed tend to take the attitude "Look, I was in a tough spot but I came out okay, so being in a tough spot isn't a problem at all! People shouldn't worry about it! No one helped me and I turned out okay, therefore people don't need help!" Success seems to make some people lose the ability to empathize.
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