A bit like a hang-over was what waking up Thursday morning felt like. For my previous blog, I almost wrote about the elections. I thought maybe I can write something that would still convince someone to go fill in the ballot.
I could have. But just like many opinions out there on the internet, my opinion would just have been swimming in a sea of the same opinions. A view that happened to be a fish in an ocean of differently opinionated fish, the elections have made clear.
How was a party that had been carrying out a deeply racist tax return system rewarded with even more votes?
The elections did not have the outcome I had hoped for, and honestly also expected. How was a party that had been carrying out a deeply racist tax return system (toeslagenaffaire) rewarded with even more votes than last elections in the previous cabinet? I don’t know. I do know the outcome of the elections, though, and they make me wonder.
If the party for which I voted got the same percentage of votes as the most racist, anti- everything, party, then I must be living in as much of a bubble as those other voters are. Then I must be as much of a climate, social security hippie as they are … well, let’s say a bit crazy (in my opinion). Anyway, how much am I supposed to care about all of this? I had as many votes to cast as every person in this country, only one. Still, I don’t like the things I don’t understand but are there anyway. It’s the biggest cliché of our time to say ‘we live in our bubbles’ and leave it at that. Let’s start adding some kind of valuation to that statement. What do we think of that? Is that just fine?
It’s the biggest cliché of our time to say ‘we live in our bubbles’ and leave it at that
Moments like last Wednesday are crucial to our democracy, and I noticed some fury in me on Thursday morning, but also a feeling of not caring much on Thursday afternoon. What is there I can do anyway? The past year has made me better friends with the pillows on my couch than with my fellow citizens.
That’s why I call for the following. After the pandemic, go out, look for that whic you don’t know, don’t understand, or disagree with. Go out and try to understand, because I think from understanding comes empathy and maybe even concern. Because I think I should care, and we should all care about our politics. We’ll see what the next four years bring when it comes to care for fellow citizens or care for big businesses, but then, politics is not all there is. Go out, and be disproved of, agreed with, and be amazed.
Livia Franssen is tweedejaars bachelorstudent Milieuwetenschappen en woont op Droef.
But why only after the elections? Why not try to understand different opinions at an earlier stage, or all the time? Is this some kind of wisdom that comes when growing older?