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28 October 2025
I haven't voted in a while, and forgot how far back that went. I knew it was before 2020, when I wrote a post about it. But then, I got something in the mail from the Voter Participation Center saying that I hadn't voted since before 2018 (apparently whether you vote is public record, though who you vote for is not). The idea was to get me more engaged in democracy. I have my reasons for not voting. But I felt the tug of the appetite in me for being engaged.
Perhaps I look bad to the Voter Participation Center, people who are well-meaning, and I crave to look good? Maybe I really feel like belonging to California and the US? Maybe I've been taught to have this appetite for political engagement?
The election this year is about whether to gerrymander California. I don't like gerrymandering, but I'm not sure it's worth breaking my fast. Which is my higher commitment, to make California and the Democrats follow a more principled path, or to be outside the partisan system so that I can better participate in a polarized political culture?
I think my overall attitude is to somehow try to be someone who is always living in the desert, apart from human society, and yet who is active in human society. Not necessarily the desert of "asceticism against natural desires and self-will", which can be reconciled with being in society somewhat reasonably, but instead the desert of "separateness from people and their culture, non-belonging and isolation". That's more of a challenge.