why i am leaving political science (written in the past tense)

As a junior at University, I felt it was time to think about where I was, mainly because my major was rapidly becoming the wrong avenue for the kind of work I wanted to do.

The first thing that clued me into this was my older brother. He's always been a strong voice of criticism in my life (in the best way possible), and he clued me into the issues that first started making me interested in politics. During a high school research paper on genetic manipulation, he clued me into the power and potential of companies like Monsanto. My initial enthusiasm eroded though, regretfully after I had handed my paper in, as I read deeper into the literature that started to appear about the mess of affairs arising from the power of genetically modified crops in the American mid-West. The power of so-called mega corporations within the context of an unchecked free market, I concluded, had to be checked by a regulatory framework of citizen activism  Later I began to understand the perspective of these free-market enthusiasts; that this would ideally be checked through educated and informed consumers, rather than the notoriously bureaucratic and inherently inefficient regulatory power of a government.

The people leading any revolution are always the intelligentsia.

Then the Great Recession happened. The informed consumer had been co-opted into supporting a system that created profit for the top percentiles of society, while leaving everyone below in the dust. After it was shown that the problem was both too much and too little government regulatory power, 2011 saw an unprecedented wave of support for the anti-establishment movements known as Occupy. On the Internet, still a relatively new thing, a group of hacker-activists (shortened to hacktivists), began to attack the global institutions that had led to the financial crash.

In essence, this was exactly what was needed. The public backlash to the unregulated financial markets was resulting in more and more informed consumers. People started to pay attention to where their money was, and what was being done with it.

Both sides of an argument are inherently wrong, because there is an exception to every rule.

I know this to be true, even though I'd liken it to saying: this statement is false.


Politically, the machine that governs the human world has always interested me. How could a system so complex and vast transform the will of the people into policy? I avidly studied political issues around the world, and after a semester abroad in England, realized that the deciding issues of one country's political season were arbitrary, and in general were reflective of last year's issues. From my University educated perspective, with a heavily liberal bias that I completely acknowledge, I encountered and sought out a lot of conservative and neo-conservative positions, in what I thought was a goal to conquer neo-conservatism across the world via a lot of class room style arguments and debates.

Yep, I was that kid in your political science class that actually spoke up a lot.

As I looked at the global powers, I began to question why our world is the way it is. In one class, I read Michael Foucault's Discipline and Punish. Foucault started his book with a terrifying, yet gripping, summary of an 18th century execution. From there, he transitioned into how our own society is reflective of this, and how we force the 'body' of society, comprised of individuals like ourselves, to conform to rules, laws, expectations. Why is it that people consent to a system that serves only to correct their behaviour to a standard? When I came out as gay while reading that book, it thrust the awkward re-examining of my own gender identity into this uncomfortable spotlight. I was constantly re-appraising my own behaviour through the filter of societal influence versus genuine personal development. Was I becoming a new me? Or was I merely conforming to how other people wanted and expected me to act?

Our expectations define our reality.

My generation has grown up wary and suspicious of our government. Coming from a small liberal New England town, we saw the violence and bombing across the world as senseless and counter-productive. Furthermore, I began to form parallels between the events that had been explained in my history classes and the present condition of world peace. US and French weapons sales that fuelled the violence during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1970's, I connected with the US 'intervention' in Iraq from 2003-2011. I began to monitor how on-going support for the Israeli state in its present shape had created a dangerous tension between the USA and the Arab World. Thinking of Foucault, I saw how the cycle of violence stemmed from the psycho-sociological coercion that kept the Palestinians under an Israeli government.

I further connected this through the gender spectrum with my own experience as I came out. Male dominated discourse focuses on these differences and issues that separate us, preferring both figuratively and literally to use the sword and pen to hash and spell out each others sides, so that both could become further entrenched. Freud would have a field day. Feminist discourse focuses on how men are wrong, and automatically gets you branded as a communist traitor, and ultimately means you won't get taken seriously anywhere except within your own feminist circle.

Arguments, except philosophic, are pointless because, rather than bringing people together over similarities, they always entrench each side over differences.

Even seeking out more traditionally feminist routes for etching out the sort of fundamental change that helps the world is riddled with their own problems. Reading articles and of examples (like these) made me realize that the two largest problems facing humanity today are sustainability and third-world development.

"You can’t eat your cake and have it too." 

Seeing the enormous mess that the First World has landed itself in, I'd say its time we let the Third World manage its own development. Western democracy, society, and economics, are hardly shining emblems of perfection, and its high time we stop pretending they are. Still, we should give the best we have to the heritage of countries that created our industrial and economic might. Charitable aid should come only in the form of the fruits of Western science and technology, and no longer hide in the guise of World Bank loans. I no longer want to be in the academic system that facilitates Western wealth at the expense of Third world populations. Lets find solutions and not make more problems.