Isn't It Foolish to Pay Attention to Politics?

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The war correspondent Martha Gellhorn is mostly wrong here:

People often say, with pride, ‘I’m not interested in politics.’ They might as well say, ‘I’m not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future.’ ... If we mean to keep any control over our world and lives, we must be interested in politics.

Let me explain why I have this unpopular opinion.

Most of my friends and acquaintances pay a lot of attention to politics. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they average roughly 200-400 hours/year of thinking about or discussing politics. My hunch is that there’s something foolish about this. Not for absolutely everyone, but many of us. It’s not outrageously foolish to spend so much time following politics (e.g., it’s a lot more foolish to follow astrology), but the foolishness is significant all the same.

Just to be forthcoming, I am guilty of this too. I pay attention to politics against my will, which I take to be a sign of weakness. So, I’m criticizing myself as well as many others.

When I say it’s foolish to follow politics, I have in mind a comparative claim: for people who read posts like this one, it’s much better to watch sports, see films, or even scroll TikTok, for instance, than follow politics. (If you hate sports and films, make an apt substitution.) Better for you, and better for others.

• If I spend 250 hours/year watching or otherwise paying attention to sports, that can easily be a good way to spend my time. I don’t have any effect on sports by watching it, since I’m not an athlete, coach, manager, etc. But I get a great deal of fulfillment by doing so. I even got a BOOK out of it. In addition, when I watch or discuss sports with friends, we often bond over the experience, which is usually an excellent thing.

• If I spend 250 hours/year watching films, that can easily be a good way to spend my time. I get personal enjoyment out of it, at least most of the time. On other occasions, it supplies a way of avoiding various kinds of difficult thoughts or activities, ones I prefer to not do. I can also learn things from films that make me alter my life for the better. I learn things about human nature that help me interact with people better. That’s a concrete benefit.

• If I spend 250 hours/year scrolling on TikTok, that can easily be a good way to spend my time. I actually do scroll TikTok, and I’ve learned tons of interesting and useful facts—ones that have changed my life for the better. Yes, a large portion of it is mindless, but a decent portion of it gives me information that I actually use in my life, improving it. You can use it that way too.

In contrast, if I spend 250 hours/year thinking about and discussing politics, it doesn’t seem to me that there is much benefit compared to the three cases I just mentioned (as well as many others).

I need to make sure that my thesis is accurately understood.

I’m not saying that politics itself doesn’t matter to our lives. Of course it does.

In addition, I’m not saying it’s a waste of time to be genuinely politically active. In this post I’m talking only about merely following politics as a mere spectator—and not as a preliminary to concrete political action. If you’re literally marching in the streets, volunteering in various capacities such as driving people to and from voting sites, and so on, then you’re being politically active. I happen to think a lot but not all of that has little overall benefit too, but I won’t be addressing that issue in this post. One thing at a time.

Finally, I’m absolutely not saying there’s no benefit at all to following politics. If you live in Minneapolis these days, then you need to be clued in. And even if you live elsewhere, there is some benefit. I’m merely saying that the benefits are small in comparison, for almost all of us. Some of us think that watching sports or scrolling social media is relatively mindless and doesn’t have much benefit in comparison to many other things we can do with our time, such as playing with our children, reading a novel, or practicing the violin. Fair enough. Even so, my hunch is that sports, films, and TikTok are often if not always more valuable than paying attention to politics.

If we interpret the Martha Gellhorn quote charitably, we can say that she’s advocating actually doing politics, and not merely “being interested” in it as a mere spectator. In this post, I’m talking about closely following politics—not (a) engaging in political activity or (b) politics itself.

Some observations about (merely) closely following politics:

1. In doing so I’m certainly not influencing anyone to do anything that changes public policy or the like. It’s not as though I’m a senator, or I get to talk to a senator or other powerful figure and change their mind about something that alters public policies of any kind. I might convince some of my friends and acquaintances of various ideas—perhaps right here on Substack. But even then, nothing in government or society will change in the slightest due to my paying attention to politics. It’s not as though my newly-convinced friends are going to change a powerful politician’s mind on something of consequence.

2. Tracking politics can make me a lot more knowledgeable, but does that increase in knowledge benefit me, my friends, my loved ones, or anyone else? I don’t see how. It takes little creativity to see that the acquisition of knowledge isn’t always a benefit. I can get more knowledgeable about many things, and it wouldn’t do anyone much good at all.

3. Although my political knowledge acquired by following politics can make me cast my votes well (or so let’s suppose), in the vast majority of cases only a tiny bit of attention to politics is needed for that purpose. And it’s not as though my vote counts for much anyway.

4. Following politics doesn’t do much to improve my life in concrete ways. As a result of paying attention to politics I don’t get more money, more love, or similar benefits. As with watching sports, I can form fulfilling bonds with people by discussing politics with them. That’s a good thing, no doubt. But in my assessment, the bonds forged over sports, for instance, are much more fulfilling than those formed over politics. One can form strong bonds with people by attending political rallies or protests or marches. But even then, going to sporting events with people (which is the analogous thing) can, and usually does, bring a lot more fulfillment. Not always but usually.

5. I don’t get a great deal of personal enjoyment out of it. Watching baseball can, and often is, great fun. Same for movies. Discussing politics doesn’t make me any happier. In fact, as most of us already know, most of the time it pisses us off or makes us a bit more despondent. When it comes to sports, my team might lose the championship, and in so doing make me a little depressed, but if this happened almost all the time—like in following politics—I wouldn’t be watching the sport.

The reply to me that starts with “But if no one followed politics, then …” isn’t apt. I’m certainly not saying that following politics at all is foolish. In fact, I definitely think that the world would be a better place if the amount of attention people gave to politics was increased, not decreased.

I’m only saying this, as my hunch: for the people I know, who are smart and well educated, spending something like 200+ hours/year on politics is foolish in the comparative way described above. Many of the people who read this are in that group. Again, some political spectatorship is beneficial, but the ROI gets really low pretty quickly, if not negative. Being an “informed citizen”, if you hold that that’s a good thing, is pretty easily done by these smart people in far fewer hours.

For what it’s worth, it was only recently in my life that I encountered smart, well-educated, intellectually curious people who not only spend little time following politics but who think that it’s a bit foolish to do so. They look at me with an understanding but “Oh, he’s one of those mildly silly people” expressions. I found it initially disconcerting, kind of like talking to someone who has a long-term successful polyamorous marriage, when you were thoroughly monogamous by default and without thought. It’s as though I got caught being narrow minded—and clueless that I was in that state.

Point (5) above, which said that I don’t get much personal enjoyment from following politics, is a half-truth. More accurately, I think we do get some personal enjoyment out of following politics—but the enjoyment is usually tainted. You might be able to guess what’s coming next.

Some will judge me to be overly cynical, but I think some of causal factors that do the most work in making us follow politics are the following—and when they do benefit us, they do so in an embarrassing manner (and yes, some of this applies to me as well):

• It can be enjoyable to find people to hate. It’s even better to do it with the support of others who hate the same people. Most of us have a need to hate. Following politics is great for this purpose.

• The same thing holds for the need to be angry towards an easily identifiable target.

• It can be enjoyable to make fun of others, even though it’s hardly something to be proud of. MAGA people get a lot of enjoyment making fun of libtards, and progressives love making fun of MAGA folk.

• We like to feel superior to others, and politics is an easy way to get that feeling.

• Many of us enjoy watching disaster movies. Right now, a lot of what’s happening in the USA looks like a disaster movie (whether you’re on the right or the left).

• Some of the political news is pretty earth-shaking, even when it’s not a disaster. There is enormously consequential action, pro or con, on global warming, on poverty, on immigration, and on similar things. We enjoy learning about such hugely consequential events.

The last two aren’t embarrassing, but the first four are.

For what it’s worth, I also think that adjusting your life to combat global warming is a waste of time, defended here. In contrast, helping the poor in huge ways is pretty easy, also defended in that piece.