Gotta Keep On Thinkin'

Walter Isaacson wrote a book about Albert Einstein. He said this in an interview: “The whole theme of the last century, and of Einstein’s life, is about people who fled oppression in order to go places to think and express themselves. Einstein runs away from the rote learning and authoritarianism of Germany as a teenager in the 1890s and goes to Italy and Switzerland. And then he flees Hitler to come to America, where he resists both McCarthyism and Stalinism because he believes that the only way to have creativity and imagination is to nurture free thought — rebellious free thought.”

For a political party to remain relevant, we need to continuously think of new ideas. Take for example the untouchability of the debt problem. Most of our political-economic leaders immediately recoil at the mere suggestion of reform as if whatever we have been doing and following for the last 25 years has helped keep our country both productive and competitive. Free thinking must not be stifled just because of the near-unanimity of an “expert community” that is so fearful of the consequences of a pathway diverse from what has been tried and tested and known to fail.

This campaign has taught me that the successful candidates can expertly mouth the same platitudes better than everyone else. Everyone is for God, against poverty, corruption and violence. The voters are simply not nuanced enough to see who among these candidates practice whatsoever they proclaim as manifested by their personal lives and public performance. Voters need to look deeper into whatever ideas these politicians promote and determine if they are able to think critically whenever they are presented with problems.

Survey after survey has shown that the people want to return the same re-electionists and incumbent politicians. Does this mean that people are generally happy with the way things are? I really think we need peaceful revolutionary reform, or am I mistaken? Because unless the people expect metanoia to occur, the coming vote may be summarized in 3 words: Business as Usual.