Our responsibility

Max Weber on the political vocation

Die Politik bedeutet ein starkes langsames Bohren von harten Brettern mit Leidenschaft und Augenmaß zugleich...

Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It requires passion as well as perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms–that man would not have achieved the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that, a man must be a leader, and more than a leader, he must be a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that resolve of heart which can brave even the failing of all hopes. This is necessary right now, otherwise we shall fail to attain that which it is possible to achieve today. Only he who is certain not to destroy himself in the process should hear the call of politics; he must endure even though he finds the world too stupid or too petty for that which he would offer. In the face of that he must have the resolve to say ‘and yet,’—for only then does he hear the ‘call’ of politics.

-Max Weber, Politik als Beruf (1919) (lecture delivered before the Freistudentischen Bund of the University of Munich)(Scott Horton transl.)

Reprinted from Harper’s Magazine June 2008

The Gambia is a country where due to a number of issues, basic information about and involvement in politics is hard to come by for the average citizen. In a country where a large population lives out of range of reliable cell phones, radio, television, newspapers and transportation, receiving political information is a near impossibility. Add to that difficultly in communication, whether it be crossing multiple languages and the low rates of literacy, it is hard for politicians to reliably spread their message. These realities leave a population unable to feel well integrated into the overall system.

This comes in contrast to the Western world and the United States in particular, where we are literally over-run with media. Overrun with so much media that we rarely have time to properly digest any of it. This macrocosm of information dissemination creates a different problem from the Gambian situation but with a similar result. Despite the abundance of basic information, we still lack understanding of the information or involvement.

The blame could be placed on the lack of depth that our news media seems to give to politics. It could be placed on the news ticker readings of CNN, could be blamed on the reliance on quotable zingers instead of in-depth review, or could be blamed on the popularity of Web 2.0 easy-to-read large font headlines.

However, we should not be so quick as to take some of the blame off ourselves and our own motivation. We could look at what might be the root. How willing are we as the average citizen to re-engage the world of politics? How much are we willing to trust that our involvement will lead to governance that returns back to the ideal, "Of the people, by the people, and for the people?" We must adjust our priorities and take time to read deeper into the issues that for better or worse will put a politician into power. We must be willing to openly debate their meaning, and respectfully compromise when someone has made the better argument. And finally, we must be willing to believe that if enough of us do this, the more important and pressing issues to everyday citizens will find their way to the surface and become the new talking points.