Generation 2.0: Political individuals in the 21st century (hat tip to Jon Worth)

Jon Worth has written an article on political individuals in the 21st century that I can almost completely sign.

It is titled " It’s not a generational issue, it’s more important than that" and the main paragraph for me is the following:

"Blogs, Twitter and e-Communications more generally have given people like Eurosocialiste, Boris Wandoren, Kosmopolit, Julien Frisch and I the kind of public voice we would never otherwise have had.

We’re young(-ish) individuals, answerable almost uniquely to ourselves, people strong views. In times past we would have been the annoying, nagging people at party political meetings, trying to hold everyone else to account. The internet means we have a wider audience to rant air our concerns.

We’re fine to argue back and forth on Twitter, because we’re the sort of people who would be arguing about how to make the world a better place over a coffee or a beer anyway; doing it online is hence really natural.

I totally agree with Jon, although I think that it is still a generational issue as I have written in a comment to Jon's post:

"In our generation, people like us have the technical possibilities to remain active although classical party structures are not what attracts us.

This is why some of us – still a small elite – can express their position more freely than within the compromise-driven and promotion-oriented political environment the generations before us have to live with (if they don’t learn to creatively use the opportunities they would have)."

The generation 2.0 of political individuals is using its freedom to freely express its views on politics and political ideals; we are using the means we dispose of to say what we wouldn't say in the standard political environment - not because we wouldn't be ready to defend our ideals but because time and circumstances would limit our focus and distract our attention from what we find important.

The problem with the EU is that it is even more 1.0 than national party politics - more compromises, more technocratic understanding, more self-limitation due to false diplomacy. In some ways, blogging and tweeting are the only real means to express true political positions on EU-related matters, the rest is bargaining and power plays.

And since we are bored with these, we are here, discussing openly in the widths of the internets, no matter whether the Generation 1.0 (beta version) listens or not.