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April 20, 2006
Building a Grassroots Army: Volunteer Recruitment
Had another great DFAlink class the other night. This is one of the areas of politics that has always caused me a lot of trouble personally. I hate the notion of exploiting someone for personal gain. I'm a naturally intrinsically motivated person. I don't do anything I don't want to do, and I'm naturally resistant to all forms of positive reinforcement. The notion of being motivated by having my ego stoked is intellectually and morally offensive to me. I do because I want to do, not because of anything anyone tells me. Which is the exact opposite of the way the rest of the world works, it's all about ego stoking. Which is why I've always stayed away from politics in the past, I don't like it. Now having said all that, I do understand how it works. Before I turned towards the light and became a decent person, I was the grand master at this kind of stuff. For me the challenging moral question is if someone wants to be exploited is it ok to exploit them? People are trading you the most valuable resource on Earth, their time. Time they could be spending with their families and asking you to utilize it towards a political end. You have to so carefully measure the quality of life that this endeavor will give them verses what they are losing in the exercise. Or at least this is what pops into my head every time I think about it. The Republican party is particularly vile and destructive to the very fabric of our country, but what could these people be losing if they aren't doing something else. And the entire system is set up to create a spiraling increase of time required of people. Mind you the DFA techniques are very good because it makes sure their time is used as efficiently as Earthly possible. In one of the example the presenter used, he mentioned about a couple of high school kids that liked each other and were using the campaign he was running as an excuse to be together. He talked about making sure that they always ended up together and kept giving them more "opportunities" to work together. Would it not have been better for them to just set the two of them down in the same room and make them talk about their feelings and let them get on with their lives? That's my always been my concern, isn't the greater good more important than anything else?
Ultimately do the ends justify the means in this situation?
Check out the presentation on DFA Night School.
Posted by ManDrake at April 20, 2006 6:51 AM
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