[- Do opportunistic idealists make good politicians?
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By Aileen, Section question corner Posted on Sun Nov 30th, 2003 at 07:04:51 PM EURODISCORDIA TIME
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In the midst of reading encouraging accounts of idealistic projects and conversations with friends about how many other women from our group feel the same need to "do something" that we have, a trivial little newspaper arrived in my household. Somewhere in the middle there was a small article about recently elected local politicians and their new responsibilities following local elections a few months ago.
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After reading about which of these politicians now have influence in which areas, I went rummaging through old files to find what I had written about one of them years ago, describing the breakdown of what had started out as a highly idealistic project to provide "alternative" Internet access. The whole project fell victim to an unpleasant combination of opportunism and incompetence, due mostly to the machinations of this man, who has now successfully gone into politics (having first gone into business with what was supposed to be a non-commercial, not-for-profit, social-critical computer network project).
I don't believe that people are ever purposely malicious, I think there always has to be a different possible interpretation as well. Nevertheless, it seems to me that especially projects that involve ideals need some kind of safety mechanism to protect them from self-destructing under the weight of conflicts, in the middle of a clash of convictions - from being sold out to opportunism as well?
There are so many different benefits that the people involved can derive from an idealistic project. What happens, though, when the benefits that various participants are pursuing turn out to be in conflict with one another or mutually exclusive? When what were thought to be common goals turn out to be quite different and the project can't go in all the different directions at the same time? Or does this call the whole foundation of the idealistic project into question? Is a project ever really idealistic, or is that just a convenient label to stick on less noble-sounding goals?
Why do people really engage in idealistic endeavors? |
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