What John Maxwell said. I don’t memorise the name of my Representatives because I don’t need to memorise it. (I do, actually, give lots of thought to politics, but at the level of policy, rather than party or individual.)
If I care what he’s done supposedly on my behalf, I can look it up (but since I’m very much a political minority, especially in my locality, I don’t expect him to represent my opinions very well, and indeed would count doing so as a failure of his democratic duty, though perhaps not of his civic or constitutional one).
Likewise, if I wish to complain to him for something, I can look up his name.
Memorising it would be useful only if I was myself in politics and needed to have it to hand, or as a signaling mechanism to “prove I was politically aware”. (Ironically, politically aware in the least important way, but signaling mechanisms are often silly in that respect.)
I am thus rationally ignorant of my representative’s name, and that some Congressman at a speech thinks that makes me foolish suggests only that as a Congressman he thinks Congressmen being known by name is far more important than it is.
(Now, he may well be right—or at least not entirely wrong—about “influence”, though I suspect donations are a lot more effective than knowing their name in terms of getting any. And I of course speak here for groups in general, being unrelated to the Foresight people and uninterested in cryogenic preservation.)
What John Maxwell said. I don’t memorise the name of my Representatives because I don’t need to memorise it. (I do, actually, give lots of thought to politics, but at the level of policy, rather than party or individual.)
If I care what he’s done supposedly on my behalf, I can look it up (but since I’m very much a political minority, especially in my locality, I don’t expect him to represent my opinions very well, and indeed would count doing so as a failure of his democratic duty, though perhaps not of his civic or constitutional one).
Likewise, if I wish to complain to him for something, I can look up his name.
Memorising it would be useful only if I was myself in politics and needed to have it to hand, or as a signaling mechanism to “prove I was politically aware”. (Ironically, politically aware in the least important way, but signaling mechanisms are often silly in that respect.)
I am thus rationally ignorant of my representative’s name, and that some Congressman at a speech thinks that makes me foolish suggests only that as a Congressman he thinks Congressmen being known by name is far more important than it is.
(Now, he may well be right—or at least not entirely wrong—about “influence”, though I suspect donations are a lot more effective than knowing their name in terms of getting any. And I of course speak here for groups in general, being unrelated to the Foresight people and uninterested in cryogenic preservation.)