Orthopraxy and the US Election

With the US presidential election coming up, the amount of political discussion has increased in my everyday conversation. The question that inevitably gets posed to me is "Who are you going to vote for?" I respond "No one, I'm not voting" With that reply usually comes a gaze of consternation, a spiel about how it's my civic duty, and/or a reproof about those who don't vote can't complain. I explain that it's not that I'm apathetic or lazy. It's that I don't like the idea of voting for the lesser of two evils and that none of the "third party" candidates are any better. Then I hear the statement that it is better to participate than not to at all. Is it?

Ask anybody on the street that if voting is a good thing, most warm blooded American would say yes. Most true[sic] democratic societies have celebrities or other appeals of authority campaigning for us to "Go out and vote" or "Vote or Die." But underneath this is something pernicious, the development of a orthopraxy or mindless participation. As defined by Jacques Ellul, orthopraxy is "an action that in itself, and not because of the value judgments of the person who is acting, leads directly to a goal [...]." Is action of little or no thought better than no action? I made my decision BECAUSE I took the time to research and understand what every candidate has to offer. But there are countless others out there who will be voting for someone based on a pretense of promises and shallow reasoning. How many people will turn out and vote for Obama because he is black or for McCain because he isn't?

Moreover, how many people look beyond the stump speeches, talking points, and placations by these candidates for what they really offer? For most Americans, they won't. But I can not fully rest the blame on Americans for doing so. Most of us are too busy to take time out of our fast-paced lives to sit down, research, and think. People are assaulted daily by so much unsubstantiated soundbites and political rhetoric diffused by the media to think critically. Ellul explains in detail:

If we look at the average man, and not at those few intellectuals whose special business it is to be informed, what do we actually mean when we say this man is informed? It means that, aside from spending eight hours at work and two more commuting, this man reads a newspaper or, more precisely, looks at the headlines and glances at a few stories. He may also listen to news broadcasts, or watch it on TV; and once a week, he will look at the pictures in some kind of news magazine (Time, Newsweek, etc.). This is the case of the reasonably well-informed man, that is, of 98% of all people.

Now, what happens next to a man who wishes to be informed and receives a great deal of news each day? First, straight news reporting never gives him anything but factual details; the event of the day is only always a part, for news can never deal with the whole. Theoretically, the reporter could relate these details to other details, put them into context and even provide certain interpretations–but that would no longer be pure information. Besides, this could only be done for the most important events, whereas most news items deal with less important matters.

But if you shower the public with the thousands of items that occur in the course of a day or week, the average person, even if he tries hard, will simply retain thousands of items which mean nothing to him. He would need a remarkable memory to tie some event to another that happened three weeks or three months ago.

Moreover, the array of categories is bewildering — economics, politics, geography, and so on — and topics and categories change every day. To be sure, certain major stories occasionally become the subject of continuous reporting for several weeks or months, but that is not typical.

Ordinarily, a follow-up story on a previous news item appears two weeks to a month later. To obtain a rounded picture, one would have to do research, but the average person has neither the time or desire for it. As a result, he finds himself in a kaleidoscope in which thousands of unconnected images follow each other rapidly. His attention is continually diverted to new matters, new centers of interest, and is dissipated on a thousand things, which disappear from one day to the next.

The world becomes remarkably changeable and uncertain; he feels as though he is at the hub of a merry-go-round, and can find no fixed point or continuity; this is the effect information has on him. Even with major events, an immense effort is required to get a proper broad view from the thousand little strokes, the variations of color, intensity, and dimension the paper gives him. The world thus looks like a pointilliste canvas — a thousand details make a thousand points. Moreover, blank spots on the canvas also prevent a coherent view.

Our reader would then have to be able to stand back and get a panoramic view from a distance; but the law of news is that it is a daily affair. Man can never stand back to get a broad view because he immediately receives a new batch of news, which supersedes the old and demands a new point of focus, for which our reader has no time.

Unfortunately, politics plays on this disadvantage. Voters turn out because politicians dangle a nicely-wrapped, superficial bag of "change" over there nose and a promise of solutions. No thought, no analysis. Mindless participation. Maybe I am wrong for not voting. But I'd much rather be an independent thinker who does not vote than be part of an orthopraxy which truly undermines democracy and freedom. At the very least, we would be better off if the catchphrase was "THINK then VOTE or DIE."

Update: Jon Stossel recently put out a 20/20 story along the same lines (video).