Why Engage in Political Thinking?

Page 15. The author is Glenn Tinder, who is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and the University of Massachusetts. He has books titled The Political Meaning of Christianity, Tolerance and Community, and Political Thinking: The Perennial Question.

The general point made by Glenn Tinder in his work Why Engage in Political Thinking? is that thinking is indeed hard work. More specifically, Tinder suggests that thoughts are fragile and intangible and can evaporate at the slightest distraction. And often you find yourself daydreaming when you are trying to think hard about something. He writes, “However, one who enters fully into the process of questioning set forth in the following chapters will discover that the difficulties of thinking are far more subtle and exasperating than those of mere hard work.” (pg. 15) In this passage, Tinder is suggesting that there are indeed difficulties involved in thinking that are not as obvious as physical work. In conclusion, it is Tinder’s belief that you must engage in political thinking because thinking is hard work and we need to do it on our own.

In my view, Tinder is right because to truly think through something you think is an issue takes a lot of thought and concentration. For example, if I wanted to solve world hunger, I would have to think of everything that goes into the world being hungry, all of the factors, who the stakeholders of the problem are, what resources we have available to fix the problem, and the history of the problem. I would probably end up daydreaming about something that I wanted to think of instead of world hunger. Although Tinder might object that one wouldn’t have to think of a problem so large, I maintain that even the smallest of problems are sometimes hard to work through. Therefore, I conclude that serious thinking can be very hard and that makes people not want to engage in political thinking.