Nothing’s new—some people still see it as dirty, pesky, and rotten. They say it still is—corrupted, abused, and defiled. No wonder people are getting tired; you may be getting tired. Politics makes people feel sick, tired, and burnt out!
People tend to lose interest when something becomes repetitive, toxic, and when it suffocates them. Just like when you finally let go of your past relationships (assuming you had one), you realize after you let go that they were too much baggage and weren’t worthy of your time. Or maybe in your academics, you recognized that everything became dull and repetitive. You study, you take the exam, pass or fail it, and then no matter the outcome, you study again creating an endless cycle. Each repetition makes you feel exhausted, tired and possibly burnt out.
A quick search on the web would tell us that burnouts are episodes of emotional and physical distress. It often leads to disenchantment and loss of motivation, reducing productivity as it saps out the energy of a person to initiate and do things. Burnouts are real, and if your exes and academics can make you feel that way, I’m pretty sure Politics also can. The feeling of vain repetitions, absence of developments, toxicity through corruption would certainly suffocate even the most visionary political activist towards tiredness, disillusionment, and apathy.
Currently, as I see it, burnouts and disinterest in political processes might have been intensified because of the pandemic. The isolations brought by the lockdowns proved to be a heavy toll on everyone’s mental health, making noise about politics a last priority. The thought of survival from this pandemic alone will outweigh the idea of politics in everyone’s mind. Nowadays, I commonly hear this statement, “Let’s stop politicizing things, we’re in a pandemic. Let’s just help one another.” For me, this reflects how people became more and more disinterested in any notions of politics. They feel that it is unnecessary, tiring, showing how they might be “politically burnt out” from everything that is currently happening.
However, in reality, there are limited studies on the term “political burnout”. Perhaps it can be because of how the word “burnout” is originally jargon in Psychology coined by the American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger in the 1970s. The psychologist used burnout to describe the consequences of severe stress and high ideals in “helping” professions. Moreover, a study by Ayala Pines of the University of California, Berkeley, in 1994 focused on how burnouts can also be experienced in political activism. She referred to this burnout as the result of the phenomenon in which highly idealistic individuals lose their spirit.
This article will take a glimpse, feel, and understand how some students from different political standpoints experienced tiredness, frustration, and apathy to political processes through their responses. I have prepared the same questions for all of them, and through their point of view, you shall be the judge if political burnout is practically real on the ground, and if it is, how do we get over it?
Do Militant Activists get Politically Tired?
For my first interview, I had the opportunity to talk to Ajay Lagrimas, a third year Physics student in UP Diliman and the spokesperson of Anakbayan UP Diliman with regard to his experience on political activism and political burnout.
First Question: On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate yourself on Political Awareness and Involvement?
Ajay: 9. The remaining 1 is for things that I am yet to explore.
Second Question: Do you think it's important to involve oneself in Political Affairs? Why?
Ajay: Yes, because everything is political. Education and our right to access it are political. Healthcare especially under this pandemic is political. Even choosing not to participate in socio-political discussions is political. Politics is a lens through which we view things and take actions in accordance with; it’s not just some lame topic about elections and politicians.
As iskolar ng bayan, it is our mandate to study the society and help in shaping it. We must recognize that the issues within our university are not separate from those outside of it. We cannot exclude systemic poverty in the urban poor from the neoliberal attacks against our education system that has killed the likes of Kristel Tejada. We cannot separate the oppression against landless farmers and our struggle towards national industrialization. We cannot cut off our fight for a national, scientific, and mass-oriented education from the general class struggle.
It is important to involve oneself in politics. But most importantly, it is essential that we side with the politics of the oppressed.
Third Question: Was there an instance before that you felt or showed tiredness, frustration, apathy/disinterest in anything that you might consider as political? Can you briefly explain the particular situation, if you had any?
Ajay: Yes, especially during my early days as a new activist. I knew the importance of taking a stand. I was well aware that there is oppression in our society as there is class struggle. And I knew deep in myself that the masses and the youth must struggle together to challenge this systemic repression. Despite this knowledge, I was caged in my comfort as a petite bourgeois and my individualist tendencies. I’d rather read Marx, Lenin, and Mao than join rallies or attend Basic Masses Integration (integrating within the communities of farmers and workers). I was an intellectual activist, and that was the problem - when all the theories you have learned remain as theories in your head. I was discouraged because no matter how many political contents I post or tweet, there seems to be no difference in the order of things. I remained quiet for a long time, even ignoring my collective, because there seems to be no inspiration to push forward.
Fourth Question: If you had any experience in #3, were you able to snap out of it? What made you regain your interest?
Ajay: Dialectical materialism would always say that the thing changes because of the contradiction of aspects within the thing. And that is what I experienced when I faced the extremes of my contradiction: either I succumb to becoming an intellectual activist or choose to fight along the ranks of the marginalized sectors who, while I was in my comfort, are dying everyday due to hunger, diseases, and tyranny. That is when I decided to bring the struggle on the streets and communities, outside my comfortable class. With the help of my collective, I was able to go beyond the individualist tendencies that had chained me to becoming complacent with my small contribution in the national democratic movement. It is from the urban poor, farmers, and workers where I found the real meaning of struggle as Marx said in his famous line: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” Theory and practice - these are the most important things for us to continue our advocacies.
A table talk with my friend from Law
For my second interview, I approached a friend of mine (who refuses to disclose his name) who is a law student and is currently working in the Department of Justice. I was curious whether someone who is working in the government would have a different point of view in political activism and if he experienced himself, a political burnout.
First Question: On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate yourself on Political Awareness and Involvement?
Law Student: 7
Second Question: Do you think it's important to involve oneself in Political Affairs? Why?
Law Student: I think it is tremendously important to be involved in political affairs, so much so that I believe it is our duty to participate in the political process. It is through participating in political discourse that we get to exercise our democratic rights such as the right to freely express ourselves, to petition the government, and to share our notions of an ideal society. It is through involvement in political affairs that we get to increase and improve our understanding of the people’s political thoughts, our awareness of social realities, and our appreciation of our own political beliefs. It is also through political involvement that we can bring about change in society and better the lives of our people. It is my opinion that a person who does not involve himself in political affairs deprives himself of the opportunity to develop as a person and to help the people around him.
Third Question: Was there an instance before that you felt or showed tiredness, frustration, apathy/disinterest in anything that you might consider as political? Can you briefly explain the particular situation, if you had any?
Fourth Question: If you had any experience in #3, were you able to snap out of it? What made you regain your interest?
Law Student: My experience did not entirely remove my interest in politics. My experience, to be more precise, just brought about a lack of willingness to actively participate. However, I feel that I will never be completely detached from politics and I will never be unconscious to the problems pervading society. If anything were to snap me out of the situation that I find myself in, it would probably be an apparent betterment of political society or a more politically aware citizenry.
“I don’t care about Politics” says my hard-sciences-supremacist-friend
For my third interview, I decided to take a much different direction. If our first two interviewees do somehow have a background in politics, my third interviewee (who refused to disclose his name) is an engineering student who is a self-confessed apathetic person to political issues and structures and argues that natural science is the only way to go.
First Question: On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate yourself on Political Awareness and Involvement?
Engineering Student: At most 4-5 I think. Random news would inform me of current social events.
Second Question: Do you think it's important to involve oneself in Political Affairs? Why?
Engineering Student: Although it’s preferable to be knowledgeable in different fields of study, I feel that we shouldn’t push people to be immersed in things that they, in the first place, don't want to be in. We all have specializations. I don’t believe that everything is political. Politics might affect my field of interest, like fundings, government policies and such but my discipline in itself is objective and is naturally devoid of value judgements or subjective views politics is notoriously known for. So, I don’t believe that it is essential or necessary for everyone to be involved in politics.
Third Question: Was there an instance before that you felt or showed tiredness, frustration, apathy/disinterest in anything that you might consider as political? Can you briefly explain the particular situation, if you had any?
Engineering Student: I always find political issues depressing since, there’s no clear cut solutions for social problems, unlike in engineering that we have formulas and accurate measurements to rely on. It seems like everyone has their own opinion on something and everyone is super aggressive about it, so any political discourse is depressing and draining at the onset.
Fourth Question: If you had any experience in #3, were you able to snap out of it? What made you regain your interest?
Engineering Student: I don’t have any plans to gain interest in politics. I say, let the social science majors do their thing and let we, engineers and natural scientists construct things and pursue innovations in technology.
At some point in our life, we all might get politically sick, tired and eventually decide to get out of it (although in reality, you can’t). Still, it’s crucial to remember that politics is a struggle, and struggle is arguably irremovable from our way of living. Political participation is a must in a world where liberty is always deemed vulnerable and fragile. In this view, detaching oneself from politics is a privilege not everyone can afford. Indifference to political processes is often motivated by selfish interests and it consequently harms those who are the most vulnerable—the oppressed and the marginalized.
That is why it is only through our collective efforts— by respecting others and realization of its necessity that we can get through it, make the struggle a little bit more bearable, and in time, develop the study of politics to be more enlightening but at the same time be genuinely amicable to everyone. Let’s make things poli-interesting!
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