History in the Making. Or perhaps it's just a re-run.

What happens if we were to include every little minute perspective difference in every situation we see?  Bringing fringe groups to the table has really never been tried in the past, and is there a good reason for that?

Don't you sort of create a meaner spirit about....well, just about everything?  I mean, if the two political parties in Congress voted on things using criteria of their experiences and perspectives based on where they lived and their environment, would anything ever get done?  While this is theoretically the way our government is supposed to work, particularly the House of Representatives, we have seen that this is not the case, as members generally vote on party lines strictly, which has become especially evident recently.  You can't expect two people to fully agree on one thing EXACTLY.  There's going to be different perspectives about an issue or thought process, but in the end they will come together.  This is evident even in the United Nations, the supranational example of world politics.  While not all interests for every nation are met in each resolution, the continuity of things supersedes individual interests of nations

THAT SAID..:

Tickner mentioned that the idea of what constitutes good knowledge have been disproportionately weighed against the value of statistics and hard numbers.  We have, it seems in the past, come to the conclusion that the best way to ascertain knowledge appears to be looking at the background of an event on Wikipedia or in a history book/encyclopedia.  While such an exercise will certainly give you an idea of how an event or time period was carried out from a factual standpoint, how do you know what the true emotional background of the event is?  You rarely, if ever, hear of eyewitness interviews of someone who lived through the feminist suppression of early modern Europe and beyond into the 20th century.  And perhaps that has to do with the saying that she gave, that "history is written by the victors."  How are we supposed to know how men became the victors in our society though?  Ideas of what constitutes good knowledge, we prioritized numbers and statistics, and not the emotional background of the knowledge

The political elite in governments across the world need to take into account the implications, not just on the hard numbers or statistics, but also the emotional implications of the decisions they make.  Perhaps then we wouldn't be so eager to enter wars, and perhaps be more willing to worry about domestic issues.  Anyone can argue that Medicare wasn't exactly the greatest fiscal triumph in our government's history, but most people regardless of political affiliation agree that it has provided this nation with an unparalleled social net that has become a bedrock of this nation's ideals.  I think, eventually, the healthcare reform passed earlier this year will meet the same fate.

We do have to listen to more perspectives, because if we have a blinded view of history, what precedence does that set?  Remember, those who don't learn their history are doomed to repeat it.  Also, how can we understand world politics without understanding the people?  While it's interesting to talk about the actors in international affairs, it's really the people that are the foundation of what we discuss, seeing that they are the rational force behind decision making, but are rarely discussed in the context of world affairs.  Perhaps now we are seeing a shift away from the interests of the state to the interests of the people.

I feel that this is a pertinent quote/an excellent way to get out some of my frequent dislike of Ronald Reagan.  This is the speech Mario Cuomo gave to the Democratic National Convention in 1984, and I feel that it outlines well how we have to stop looking at the prices of stocks and start looking at the value of our people as a whole:

"In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can't find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn't show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don't see, in the places that you don't visit in your shining city."