This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Cal Poly chapter.
Photo by Nesrne Majzoub
“What’s your take on global politics now?”
“I don’t want to become cynical. I mean, I used to be more political than I am now, and it just seems to me that you just hear the same sort of thing over and over. And you’ve got to kind of give it to the politicians in the sense that they’re trying to plan for the future. I mean, you’ve got this whole global warming issue, like what exactly do we do? ‘I could drive a Prius, or join something to do my part for that.’ But it isn’t like ‘oh, let’s just build a highway or a dam’ because you don’t really know what the consequences will be for something like global warming yet. So, you’ve got to cut people come slack. I’m kind of wary of anybody who says, ‘I’ve got THE answer’. Politicians will get up and say, ‘we’ve got to do it this way’ and whatever. I mean, you do have to make decisions though. I don’t want to be a cynic here, but most of my experiences with politics have sort of been like that. It seems to me that on the news, it’s almost going to be negative by definition. My experiences working with people, working at the library, show that most people, most of the time, are really good and positive. So you have some hope there and don’t have to become a complete cynic. Most people are good most of the time. You put them in bad situations and they may make some bad decisions, but that’s your folks’ problem. You’re gonna have to fix all the things that we screwed up.”
“Do you have any advice for us?”
“I guess just work on the evidence. Really look at things and try to balance them without getting caught up in some ‘this is THE answer’ mentality. Have some respect for the other folks and know that it’s okay to disagree on certain parts of what to do with the data, but try to agree on the best approach that you can make with what you have. I guess I’m biased toward the scientific method and the idea that ‘let’s get as much information together as we can and understand that we have to make a choice and it may or may not be right, but be able to admit that we messed up and try it a different way’. Be open to your own fallacy…but that’s a hard thing to do when you’re too deep in the woods.”
~Doug Gates, Library Guru