Sometimes Norm seems to be one of the very few who make sensible blog posts.

It recalls Trotsky on the dialectic and, following Trotsky, Michael Walzer on war ('You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you'). The world we live in is, pervasively, political. Whether you like it or not, politics will therefore involve you - directly or indirectly. . .

Involvement in something does sometimes generate an interest in it, but it doesn't have to; not everyone has a keen interest in the technology they depend upon in their daily lives or in food distribution systems. And while it is prudent to take an interest in what might come to affect you adversely, there is much about politics that can lead to a disinclination for following it too closely. Where individuals set the line between taking an interest in politics and not doing so, and how they apportion their attention to the different aspects of the world and its contents (some of these more and some less political, some perhaps more inspiring or elevating than politics) is a matter of legitimate choice on their part - so long as they have the choice to make and politics (or war) does not engulf them. It isn't obvious that the best way of living one's life is by being buried in the political to the same extent that those who choose to be do choose to be. It isn't obvious that people who find the pursuit of other interests more rewarding are lacking in either intelligence or virtue.

He's gently disputing the assumptions and implications of statements by Johann Hari, but Norm's bit stands alone and could have been posted without reference to anything else.

I'm not interested in politics but I'm well aware that it is interested in me, like war, but more so. And, like war, we would do well to have less of it. They may both be inescapable, but that does not mean that we are improved by wallowing in them.

As I see it, politics and war are entertainments, things we do to occupy ourselves while life proceeds. I don't mean that they are irrelevant - both can, after all, disrupt or even end the proceedings. I mean that they are not creative, can not contribute to the proceedings in any constructive way. Politicians and warriors are like class clowns, sitting in the back, talking and launching spit balls, failing to learn lessons or advance understanding.

Seen from a distance it is the advance of knowledge and understanding that matters, that determines the trend lines, while war and politics are excursions from the trend line. They may sometimes be large amplitude excursions, but are none the less sideshows to the main events.

Not everyone is satisfied with such long term and large scale perspectives, arguing that much mischief can be done during those excursions and that we would do well to work to dampen them, or something. Human life spans are too short to get much satisfaction from such long and large perspectives.

True enough. But I think that we need to examine the idea that close attention can dampen the amplitude of excursions. It may be, as I think, that this just increases the energy in the system and so makes things oscillate faster and further. The harder you try to damp things down the worse things get.

There's a lot to be said for boredom, and a lot to be said against interesting times.