Politicians and the Needs of Civil Society

We live only once in this world which we know of, and they say that it is what you make of life that counts. This is true to some extent or another. Yet, what we are and the experiences we have in our lives are very much determined by how people treat us as fellow human beings. It is also about how society perceives us and treats us as individuals or as an individuals of a kind, and the fairness or lack of it that governments are willing to give us. If we consider a single mother, the needs she has, it is important that a proactive government is there for her, not out of compassion, but because she has got needs, and it is a government's role to cater for her needs, and  her needs should be of importance to a politician who means well, and who doesn't want to discriminate against a part of society. Considering her as sinful, and legislating with this in mind is surely abdicating of one's responsibility as a politician. We shouldn't condemn her as anything less in a world of unequals, because she isn't what is deemed by some as part of  a "normal" family unit. No government should be a judge of what is "normal" and "what isn't", what is "natural" and "what isn't" and legislate accordingly. This kind of dichotomy is what has led to minorities of our country and others to suffer prejudice. If, one says that a person is living an unnatural existence, because he or she is gay or lesbian, one is saying that there is a superior kind of person who is not gay or lesbian, and that this should give the latter greater rights to the former. This is what I count as discrimination. And, discrimination is wrong and should be condemned.

It is easy to say that one's point of view is right, because it is objective, or because it abides to a natural law. Yet, what is natural or unnatural is culturally determined, it is what some human beings do to come to terms with themselves to the detriment of others. Coming to terms with our own existence in a world which exists materially, but which only gets a meaning through language when   human beings decide to give it a meaning, is our own private business, and shouldn't be imposed on other people. There is no meaning out there, no natural laws, there are human beings who happen to find ways of surviving whatever is thrown at them. Language is what we have, and the language that politicians should be using should be of the kind that liberates rather than suppresses.