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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 7511183" data-attributes="member: 57112">That's fair. This is also a point where we generally find some measure of agreement; you know how I feel about semantics, for instance, and particularly how I feel about the modern academic movement to ascribe purely systemic applications to words that are more commonly used to refer to interpersonal issues (which is what I think is at least part of what you're alluding to). I certainly haven't been very forthcoming with an actual definition of "politics" with a boundary and a limit (or at least I wasn't earlier upthread). When I say, for instance, "everything is political", I'm being hyperbolic, not literal. Obviously there are many things that aren't politics. The point I'm trying to make, poorly in this case, is that there are a lot more aspects to our society and our culture that are actually political (as in, big-p Politics) than people are willing to admit, and that any attempt to disengage from politics is a political act because, if nothing else, it supports the politics of the status quo, intentionally or otherwise, and the politics of the status quo are neither apolitical nor politically neutral. Of course, at this point we could go back and forth for days (or at least as long as the thread survives, and if it came to that I doubt it would be days) about collective versus individual responsibilities and get absolutely nowhere, but I'm not inclined to do so.</blockquote>

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