PressThink: A Politics that is Dumber Than Spam

PressThink: A Politics that is Dumber Than Spam

Here’s what Vaclav Havel said in 1992 in a speech called, “The End of the Modern Era.” Havel, of course, is the playwright and political opponent of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia who became president of his country in 1990.

Many of the traditional mechanisms of democracy created and developed and conserved in the modern era are so linked to the cult of objectivity and statistical average that they can annul human individuality. We can see this in political language, where cliche often squeezes out a personal tone. And when a personal tone does crop up, it is usually calculated, not an outburst of personal authenticity.

Sooner or later politics will be faced with the task of finding a new, postmodern face. A politician must become a person again, someone who trusts not only a scientific representation and analysis of the world, but also the world itself. He must believe not only in sociological statistics, but also in real people. He must trust not only an objective interpretation of reality, but also his own soul; not only an adopted ideology, but also his own thoughts; not only the summary reports he receives each morning, but also his own feeling.