7/ The Redemption of Politics

If I am right that we live, most immediately, in a world we create ourselves, then that world is, indeed, a "political world."

Our collective actions shape, and create, the realities we experience, and "politics" is just another name for "collective action."

Since the world we have created is neither a worthy nor appealing place, as Bob Dylan's song makes so painfully clear, it may be appropriate to focus on the implications of the idea that "we all know for sure that it's real." What if it's not?

By "real" people often mean that something is "inevitable," unchangeable and absolute; that it exists "in fact," independently of what we think about it.

But in the "political world" created by our own collective actions, nothing is either absolute or inevitable. We create the realities in our world, and can remake the world on a different pattern.