Astringency

Andrew Denton/Oprah Winfrey/Parkinson/Kosche asks: Why didn't you consider public office?

I reply: Well, in a word Astringency which I just discovered today after reading an excellent opinion piece in Time magazine is like the opposite of empathy, before that I'd been relying on the german word - Schadenfreude as a prominent tendency of mine that I thought would eventually evolve into a PR liability. You know the fact that I seem to delight in the misfortune of others I don't empathise with.

And essentially as I see it the democratic process has evolved into a demerit system where the public is the unaccountable tyrant. Scapegoating is the modus operandi of all governments but it is crucially necessitated by the fact that the general population can not be found accountable.

Fat cat's on wall street, that shall remain nameless, because they are nameless, because they don't exist. I mean are there people who work in the finance sector that do stupid irresponsible stuff? yes. Are there people who work in the Automotive industry, the medical industry, the forestry industry, the retail grocery industry and the NGO development and aid agency industry that do stupid irresponsible stuff? without ANY exception YES! joy!

Why? Because they have stupid customers. But it's considered business suicide to blame your customers.

In principle I agree, but I cannot accept that 'the customer is always right' or that tyranny of the majority doesn't exist.

Imagine you have a friend in your circle that lives with their conservative parents but enjoys experimenting with some party drugs. Now the parents no doubt will probably err on the far too astringent side, but suppose that friend then seeks out an enclave of people more empathic to his hobby.

So he moves out of home, stops associating with the parents and over a long process of selection surrounds himself with as many people as possible that share his habit and are keen to reinforce and escalate it?

I mean take any kind of addictive behavior and you'll find there's always demand for enablers. People who help you continue with the behavior. The bad news is that life is full of enablers because its easy to do.

I have far more friends, notably Harvard, that would rather eat with me in a restaurant than go running or cycling with me. Because it's much harder to muster up the will power to run or cycle, but its pretty easy to just order some food, eat and pay.

Eating is about the only vice I engage in these days, apart from plain old sloth I guess.

But I hope people can see that our mentality is punishing people for having a stance that has left our government incapable of actually dealing with anything.

In our desire to have leaders who are not negative, and only negative about being negative, we end up totally unaccountable.

So in conclusion, the time article I linked to up top, covers the issue much more succinctly and eloquently than I do. I just got a fancy new word to use.