the people

Individuals are not necessarily stupid.
People are though.
Politicians are not concerned with the behaviour and needs of the individual. but with the average behaviour and needs of people.
Only in this way can he ensure that he has a chance to attract votes in sufficient numbers to give him access to power, which is the only thing that matters to him.
A democracy operates under the principle of "one head one vote", meaning that the vote of a cretin or a crook carries equal weight to that of a wise, intelligent and honest person. The importance is the quantity, not the quality of consent. And since it is known that cretins are more numerous than intelligent people, politicians can't do other than to cut his cloth accordingly. His only interest is to obtain the greatest approval, regardless of moral or qualitative values that can be as... _OMISSIS_ ...hoices.
When you take individuals as a whole, each individual's positive attributes are wiped out by the mediocrity of the whole. When you mix together different vivid and different colours, the result is grey. The same thing happens when you mix people: the result is a amorphous mass of modest requirements and superficial expectations.
Lets take four or five men or women "of success", and fifteen ordinary men or women: a fashion photographer, a tax lawyer, a molecular biology university professor, a company manager, a world class sculptor, five ordinary employees, three workmen, a waiter, a cleaner, a shipper, a warehouseman, a member of a finance team, two farm labourers.
The so called "successful" persons possess certain personal and professional attributes that give them an advantage in certain situations, however in nearly every case, in all oth... _OMISSIS_ ...aily living they behave in a mediocre way like everyone else. The moment you "blend" the "successful" people together, and add them to the mass of "common" people, the specific individual qualities that they posses become socially irrelevant and disappear, watered down by the preponderance of underlying common mediocrity.
The only requirement coming from this blend of people is the lowest common denominator of their vital, basic essential requirements. This means moreover that the politician they voted for will never promote the practice of, for example, molecular biology or fashion photography.
When you are dealing with the masses, any virtues and particular strengths of an individual vanish, whereas common defects are multiplied and become the dominant theme, basic, unhearing and unstoppable.
Therefore, since the politician's power base ... _OMISSIS_ ...upport from the masses, all he need do is to pander to the needs and requirements of the average person among the mass, at the same time ignoring the single requirements of individual members of the collective as well as their unpopular and uncomfortable virtues, avoiding everything that runs contrary to the dominant but flawed force of ideas.
Therefore even though politicians have to conjure up an image that is both one of enterprise and dynamism, by sponsoring initiatives or projects that confer visibility, the reality is that their actions must eschew originality and substance and embrace more pedestrian and commonplace concepts and ideas at the same time nurturing the deep and base feelings of the collective, and guarding against promoting innovative or morally weighty and bucking the trend. To behave differently would mean becoming marginalised and being swept away.
There are an infinite number of ... _OMISSIS_ ...s.
Take for example children's cartoons, video games for kids, rapper hip hop videos for adolescents, where boys are represented by "gormiti" (warrior figurines): armed violent monsters, muscular wrestlers to the point of excess; females are represented as "winxes" or "barbies", winking, sexy, given to shopping, make-up and sexually available. These stereotypes, so prevalent in modern society are taught from an early age, and see the male as a warrior-predator type and females as reproductive-prey. Homosexuality or feminism are considered as deviant forms of behaviour requiring correction or at the least understanding.
As a result, politicians - aside from generic statements of principle - aimed primarily at promoting tolerance, refuting discrimination and the debasing of women with sexist stereotypes, is unable to actually take contrasting positions and if he does so takes ... _OMISSIS_ ...ind parliamentary groups or impersonal political parties thereby allowing him to dissociate himself from having to take unpopular decisions.
A further example. People love purchasing fruit with bright shiny colours under the powerful supermarket lights. For them to appear so, oranges, lemons and apples are polished using shellac. People also love admiring nice red prawns, which are sprayed with boric acid once caught on the fishing boat. People in restaurants order hamburgers for their children which are filled with brightly coloured sauces, even though they are veritable chemical bombs. And so on: without colorants non-alcoholic beverages would appear bland, without thickeners and gelatine jams would be runny, without antioxidants crisps would not remain crunchy for long, without a stabiliser for maintaining foam in a glass beer would not keep its head, etc.. People buy with their eyes, they prefer to consume nice colourful things... _OMISSIS_ ... worry about the unseen consequences to their health.
As a result politicians who hold dear matters of public health enough to want to end such industrial and commercial practices, run the risk of coming up against opposing economic interests without there being any corresponding gain in popularity, thereby making it a losing battle. A battle he will not embark upon.

L’articolo sopra riportato è composto da contenuti tratti da questo prodotto (in formato PDF) acquistabile e scaricabile con pochi click. Si invita a scaricarsi il sampler gratuito per constatare l'organizzazione dei contenuti.

pdf 47 pagine in formato A4

10,00 €