11/12/2016–A vote for president is considered “civic duty” by many people I know. Forget for a moment I’ve never tried to define what a civic duty is. First I’d like to consider what a vote is, as completely as possible.
The best (simplest) way I can explain what I think a vote is highlights two aspects of a vote–utility and essence. “Utility” is the part that relates to the value of whatever consequence you predict is. This is the old “lesser of two evils” thinking. You may only vote for candidate “A” because you’ll do anything to avoid “B” getting elected (we’ll return to what doing “anything” really means later). So, it’s a way to use your vote to do “the most good for the most people” in a sense, following the utilitarian’s motto. This utilitarian aspect of voting also underlies why you wouldn’t vote for a 3rd party who’d never win, since your vote is literally a non-factor in the presidential outcome, thus has zero utility (pretend there’s no vale in a protest vote to the 3rd party candidate). You are saying “you all decide, I recognize I am not affecting the outcome”. However, due to the second aspect of what makes a vote. It’s not the same as not voting, and is certainly not “throwing away your vote”.
The second element of a vote is essence–the purpose, core, or fundamental meaning of what it is “to vote”. This may be considered the internal piece, where utility is the external. I think they’re distinct because they drive different outcomes (potentially). Utility–based voting would lead to voting no matter who the candidates are, whereas essence–based voting would lead to not voting if no candidate was “viable” for you. I think this is what kept some people from voting this election, as in the past, except for those who also neglected the other decisions to be made (e.g. state elections), as you can’t claim to not vote out of principle for every position of government based on who’s running for president.
This leads me to the earlier concept of “civic duty”. Whether you believe you should always vote because of it or you believe you didn’t vote because of principles, these beliefs are of little value if you do nothing between elections. In other words, “civic duty” wouldn’t exist for one day out of every four years–true respect for civic duty would be incessant. The voter who does nothing “civic” (other than pay taxes and obey laws) for three years 364 days has no business playing the civic duty card to convince others to vote. How many letters or emails has he/she sent to his/her congress rep? How much time have they given to local community building? Speaking of “essence”, what is the essence of civic duty, anyway? If it’s a list of things which “help a civilization thrive”, you’d better be doing a few of those things before pointing out another’s failure to participate in civic duty. That’s why doing “anything” is not one day in four years voting for candidate “A”. Saying you’d “do anything” to keep “B” out of office would be so weak unless your civic participation extended beyond voting.
If anything, the real duty is to educate oneself as best you can and then participate accordingly; it’s not simply to vote for president no matter what.
I think we’re indebted to the “whole” as parts of it. The alternative is unsustainable. So I guess I need to begin the infinite process of education–based civic participation. For now, I think beyond the basics of taxpaying following law, that it’s understanding how communities are built and thrive which most enables effective “civic duty”.
But I’ll probably feel otherwise next time I think about it.
QOTW: “I want your (communication) style.”
?FNW: How’s the Crossroads event? Success!