So what 18+ US citizens aren't voting this year?

[Kasz216]

akuma587 said:

The_vagabond7 said:
I feel the need to clarify. Apathy isn't truly my justification for not voting. It sort of is.

I feel completely unaffected by anything either of them can possibly do. I believe that happiness and fulfillment are internal not external. My well being isn't dependent on my taxes, or my health care, or who can get married, or the price of oil, or the stockmarket, or my wages increasing relative to inflation, or any of that. I feel that if my happiness depended on such constantly changing, ephemeral and shallow things then I would be a flake, or shell of a person, or just lacking something personally.

I live for no reason other than because I want to. If this becomes the communist states of america it means nothing to me comrade, if world war 3 is started I will relax in the scorched grasses of what used to be my town. Neither candidate is able to offer or deny me anything so why should I vote for them? On behalf of others that could be helped or harmed? Which others? Why should I take a side arbitrarily?

nah, on Nov 4 I'll be playing Resistance 2 and thats about the only thing that I will be doing differently than today.

I completely agree with you that your happiness should mostly be based on how much you value yourself and your own development as a person.

But I think there is more to life than your own happiness, and I don't just mean that you should want everyone else to be happy.  There are reasons why intelligent and already self-actualized people are so committed to politics in whatever capacity, because the society you allow yourself to be a part of says something about you. 

To give the extremest of extreme examples, I will mention the Germans who lived in Germany during Hitler's ascent to power and subsequent tyranny.  Many Germans were not exactly comfortable with the Holocaust, but they sat by idly and let it happen.  They aren't as guilty as the people who caused the Holocaust, but even a lot of German people who did nothing wrong still felt incredibly guilty about the fact that they didn't do anything or remained in a country that would allow such an atrocity to happen.  Its kind of like the realization at the end of Schindler's List that Oscar Schindler has that he could have helped a few more people by just doing a little bit more.

I am as big of an individualist as anyone, but I am extremely conscious of the faults of the society I live in and am sometimes ashamed of those faults.  Voting is obviously only one element of changing things around you, but it is an important part.  If you don't agree with either candidate then you don't necessarily have a conflict, but I for one have not abandoned the notion that my actions as a whole are meaningless in relation to society.

 

There is no such thing as a self actualized person.

Minor psychological nitpick there... but as someone who has a degree in the field I can state anyone who has read Maslow and has the capacity to understand it realizes this is not an actual concept.  (One of my teachers was actually chosen by Maslow to be one of his students directly by the man.)