Beyond Conventional Thinking

Life's rich pageant, outside the halls of state

Brian Doherty | July 27, 2004

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The people who try to forge something new—whether an object, or a technology, or a way of life—will change and benefit the world far more directly than any conventioneer or politician is likely to, and probably have more fun doing so. As Alexander Cockburn recently and correctly noted, the quality of life of his (mostly lefty) readership in terms of coffee, bread, and vegetables has improved enormously in the past 30 years. And it was not thanks to any government initiative. And what we eat and drink everyday, in a healthy life, ought to mean much more to us than the machinations of those in Washington.

Where do we live? We live with ourselves and with other people, both in person and virtually; we live with our work; we live with the objects of cultural production that help us make sense of our lives and our work, or merely, in ways often indefinable even to ourselves, delight and divert us. We ought not, to the extent we can help it, live in George Bush's America, or John Kerry's.

One of government's most pernicious effects is the way it colonizes our consciousness, in a manner deeper and more significant than advertising or markets ever manage. I would call upon my fellow citizens to loosen the mental bondage government has over them, to ignore it rather than engage in pointless and hopeless efforts to change it, but I don't think I really need to.

Increasing lack of voter participation is often cast as sad, hopeless, a betrayal of our ancient Greek tradition of civic virtue, active participation in the business of the polis, as a vital responsibility of a good man. Still, Washington has made itself an unworthy object of civic virtue, selling itself to us primarily as either nursemaid or tyrant. Sure, it tries to take lots of our money and tell us what to do about everything from diet to what we can say on the radio.

But there is still, God bless America, plenty of room to ignore it and to live the life of a free human being, not a civic robot. In those niches come the possibilities of widespread change that should really excite even the most government-besotted pundits: people as free as they can manage to be, making a free choice to create something new, in the form of new methods of art and commerce, new ways to relate to and impact the natural environment. And what it can generate is so inspiring that even a week's worth of Democratic convention coverage won't make me forget it.