Governance, not Politics

(Just to be sure, this describes my opinion and understanding, and is in no way an official description of Bahá'í viewpoints)

I am a Bahá'í, and part of being a Bahá'í means no politics. More properly said, it means no party politics. Many people have an issue with this because it is super easy to think that this means you should not be fighting for a better world. I see it as much the contrary. Politics just like alcohol seems to have merit at first sight, but when properly tested can never deliver.

We need proper governance, we need to take responsibility of our world. What we have instead is an insistence on competition, a popularity contest, followed by doing thing because of ideological conviction. Nowhere in the system do we consider the reality of things, participation of stakeholders, science, economical viability and much more, except as an afterthought to give the politics any kind of semblance of justification.

Already when the first political parties were invented, the problems of this were observed and noted by Simone Weil in her book “On the Abolition of All Political Parties”, and not a single word about this was off the mark. She argued that when power works through a party system, decisions are optimized for the theoretical united goal of the party, instead of anything that will serve anyone well.

You can also see this in the way the political parties are described. They use the name of ideologies that are barely followed at all in practice, and we talk about politics in terms of these ideologies without any nuance of every situation. We fight for socialism, for communism, for libertarianism, for capitalism, for conservatism. Yet every single one of those is flawed as a complete system, as history has proven over and over again.

We need a society where communication is key, where nuance can be found in our judgement about every situation, and where we don't shout over local needs because of national conviction. We need to get rid of politics not to leave our countries without governance, but much the contrary: we need to elect people we know can govern because of their skills, knowledge and experience, not because of campaigning, party affiliation or even endorsements.

Long term we need to adapt systems to optimize for a non-partisan approach. But we can start applying this understanding today and right now in any system we deal with. Always vote per person, never per party. No strategic voting. Keep communicating, be locally engaged. Be in charge of your local community's affairs. Be responsible. Don't judge.

We see over and over again that only close communication about things that actually touch us makes a real difference. Focus on that, and don't waste your time and energy on things you cannot change. Through concerted efforts on the things we can change in the end we actually change everything. Stay strong. Let's be a blueprint of the world we need to become.