Why get involved?
Students often tell me they would like to get involved in politics of some kind, but they worry that they won’t have any impact and will waste their time. Like everyone else, they don’t want to be duped into thinking they can change something, if they actually can’t. And they especially don’t want to look like fools or be accused of tilting at windmills.
A good response to such worries (and it’s not only students who have them) is to consider why a person should get involved in politics in the first place. What are the purposes and outcomes of political engagement? We hear a lot of praise for people who “make a difference.” There’s even a regular NBC News segment devoted to assorted difference makers. How influential are they? Sometimes it’s hard to say, and scholars disagree about the relationship between political activism, institutional structures, and social change. In some contexts, the initiative for change may come from policy makers and other elites, rather than from grassroots activists. Sometimes disruptive protest tactics are effective, other times a moderate approach works better, and sometimes they complement each other. But overall it’s clear that political engagement matters enormously. Ordinary people working together have “made a difference” at all levels of government; they’ve brought about changes large and small in businesses, schools, universities, and other associations; and they’ve shaped economic conditions, political opportunities, and cultural practices of all kinds. Citizen activism has also played a key role in many major social reforms that we now take for granted, including universal suffrage, workplace safety, anti-discrimination law, environmental protection, and so on.
Nonetheless, focusing on outcomes can easily become paralyzing. Goals are often distant and success unlikely. Making things different doesn’t always make them better, and you can never be sure where your actions might lead. Politics is unpredictable.
So it’s worth remembering that making a difference for others is only one possible outcome of getting involved in politics. You might also make a difference for yourself — or in yourself. It can be personally enriching to speak publicly about something that really matters to you, regardless of what happens next. Political engagement can strengthen friendships, build community, and educate yourself and others. (And it can destroy friendships, alienate colleagues, and be incredibly frustrating for yourself and others — but hey, as my dad says, it’s an imperfect world.)
Now, the trick is that these personal benefits of speaking in public are byproducts of trying to make a difference. If personal enrichment is your main goal, then speaking in public won’t do much for you. Better just go back to piano lessons. If you try to enrich yourself by speaking out, you’ll become narcissistic and self-involved, and your actions won’t enrich you or anybody else.
Think of falling asleep: the harder you try, the less likely you’ll succeed. The same goes for self-confidence, self-respect, spontaneity, falling in love, and even smiling. (Here’s a test to see whether you can spot a fake smile.) The social theorist Jon Elster calls such things “essential byproducts,” because you can only get them indirectly, as a byproduct of doing something else.
The same principle applies to competitive sports. You may value the companionship and health benefits they bring, and maybe in some sense “everybody wins,” but if you don’t try to win you’ll ruin the game.
When it comes to political engagement, even though your actions may have little prospect of success, you need to try to succeed, or else you’re just messing around. But if you don’t succeed, there’s a good chance you’ll still get something out of it.
Having said that, everyone needs to find a way to get involved that’s right for them. Don’t like giving speeches? Attend a demonstration and carry a sign. Don’t like sleeping in a tent? Write letters to the editor of your local paper. Don’t like any of the political clubs on offer? Start one with some friends.
In any case, do your best to make a difference, but don’t assume your effort will have been wasted if you don’t.
Whose University? 
I like how you opened with an allusion to quixotism. It is a rather romantic illusion indeed, which I feel many people entertain, that a single person can account for unprecedented change in political situations. One of the forms this belief takes, seems to require of the participant a certain degree of moral purity. A rigid adhesion to a moral doctrine and an existential distrust of that menacing other side, are articles of faith required to impress upon others the absolute truths of my stance. If I am some sort of living categorical imperative, I can inspire those around me to greater heights. Politics though, becomes some sickly form of theology, where the truths have been revealed, and it is a sinful obstinacy, on the part of the other side, which creates disagreement. Prior to the workings of the political process, the answers have been decided. The ends of society are decided in advance, by simply reasoning, without an appeal to the people who populate that particular commonwealth. Perhaps this is borne out of some related fear of being dependent on others, which politics almost always requires, as opposed to being a self-reliant individual, which is certainly a more comfortable role.
While this is certainly a possibility, I think a more realistic view of politics has to be concerned with the relative validity of one’s conclusions, the importance of action and the presence of other actors. Once you leave the Socratic alp, the importance of pure theory is decreased. From Machiavelli to Melville to Weber, different thinkers have stressed just how important action is, and just how important it is to occasionally back-burner traditional morality’s answers to distinctly political questions. There isn’t one system guaranteed to return perfect results, so most times it is worthwhile to wade into the political quagmire and sort out your nagging doubts as time goes by. Your conclusions, more often than not, will have to accept some modifications, through the dialectic and a fair bit of compromise, as you interact with those “others” mentioned above. This may be, as the old expression has it, how the political “sausage” is made, but as you mention, it is also (or should I say, has the potential to be) a very enriching and liberating experience.
This was a good post Professor. I’m sorry it took me so many months to respond to this. The conversation about this hasn’t left me since it took place, and I didn’t know how to articulate what I wanted to say then, and even now I still don’t really know how to express it properly, but we can always try. I guess I have a different idea in mind when I think about ‘change’ within politics. I mentioned it to you pretty early in the year, that to precipitate change is a seemingly impossible task when you look at what you’re up against. On the analogy of sports, you may play, and you may feel better participating as opposed to sitting in the bleachers and admiring, but at the same time, it seems like politics is a sport in which an elementary school team, whose intentions, while they may be noble and good, nevertheless find themselves lined up against the San Diego Chargers, and proceed to take the greatest of shellackings. At the same time, that is mostly describing national politics, and likening politics to a minnow taking on a pike might be rash. But to me, that’s what it feels like when I see efforts like Occupy Wall Street hit a wall. It feels like the ultimate exercise in frustration. Here is a group, whose message, though seemingly scattered at times, has mobilized and garnered the attention of the media, just wasn’t able to make anything happen. Don’t quote me on this (or anything, for that matter), but I didn’t see anything come of it.
I also understand that change, in most cases, has to start out small and work its way up from there, which is where you point out the example of starting a club with your friends, holding a sign, or becoming active in your respective community. That sort of change seems much more possible, and in some ways, I have done (and am doing) exactly that. The idea of taking action to promote change both within the community, and in turn, in oneself, is surely something to be praised. And maybe that’s enough; maybe trying to shoot for the stars yields little light because the target’s too high. The message that in order to change politics, it requires mass participation (Arendt), is one that is either forgotten or never heard by many. But because the change that takes place within this participation is harder to see, politics seems more frustrating than fruitful to a lot of people, and I think that’s where individual involvement is crippled at the knees before any potential newcomer takes a step.