Being, or not being, interested in politics

Here's Johann Hari responding to a questionnaire:

Why did you get involved in the political world?

We're all born involved in the political world, whether we like it or not. The ground you stand on, the air you breathe, the hospital you were born in, the school you went to... that's all politics. The great war correspondent Martha Gellhorn said: "People will often say, with pride: 'I'm not interested in politics.' They might as well say, 'I'm not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future.'" There isn't anyone who is uninvolved in the political world; there are just some people who don't realise it yet.

What he says is true. It recalls Trotsky on the dialectic and, following Trotsky, Michael Walzer on war ('You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you'). The world we live in is, pervasively, political. Whether you like it or not, politics will therfore involve you - directly or indirectly.

In the particular way he glosses it, however, what Johann says is also false. The quote from Martha Gellhorn implies either that involvement in politics must translate into interest in politics, or that those who fail to develop the interest are fools. Johann follows up by suggesting that the realization of one's involvement in politics must come to everyone eventually. But these judgements presume too much. Involvement in something does sometimes generate an interest in it, but it doesn't have to; not everyone has a keen interest in the technology they depend upon in their daily lives or in food distribution systems. And while it is prudent to take an interest in what might come to affect you adversely, there is much about politics that can lead to a disinclination for following it too closely. Where individuals set the line between taking an interest in politics and not doing so, and how they apportion their attention to the different aspects of the world (some of these more and some less political, some perhaps more inspiring or elevating than politics) is a matter of legitimate choice on their part - so long as they have the choice to make and politics (or war) does not engulf them. It isn't obvious that the best way of living one's life is by being buried in the political to the same extent that those who choose to be do choose to be. It isn't obvious that people who find the pursuit of other interests more rewarding are lacking in either intelligence or virtue.