Politics

Well here we go again with another election. I am a rather apolitical person with a social conscience. I have heard it said as an artist and a human being everything we do is political in some way. I tend to believe this to be indeed true. Even apathy is a political statement.

As an artist and a citizen living within society I can't afford to be complacent or apathetic.
I have no desire to be the guilty bystander. It is difficult to reconcile oneself to this when it comes election time in Canada. People are cynical and fed up with the inaction of politicians and their inability to relate to the common working man or women as they generally appear to live in ivory towers, squabbling among them selves about who is right or wrong and taking the moral high ground. When it comes to politicians I think most folks would see this description of politicians taking the moral high ground as being an oxymoron.

So the inevitable question I am left with once again, is who to vote for and as an artist and a struggling student when I think about it, I have to consider the lesser of four evils or the one that comes close to my concerns as an artist and as a Canadian.

All I have to say is, I will once again vote.

God help me and our country.


“It is true, political problems are not solved by love and mercy. But the world of politics is not the only world, and unless political decisions rest on a foundation of something better and higher than politics, they can never do any real good for men. When a country has to be rebuilt after war, the passions and energies of war are no longer enough. There must be a new force, the power of love, the power of understanding and human compassion, the strength of selflessness and cooperation, and the creative dynamism of the will to live and to build, and the will to forgive. The will for reconciliation.” - from Introductions East & West. The Foreign Prefaces of Thomas Merton