Be prepared. If you're like me when you hear the phrase be prepared what immediately pops into your head is Disney's Lion King where Scar is in his cave singing "Be Prepared" with the hyenas marching past in style reminiscent of the Third Reich. Or maybe you think of the phrase from your days of scouting, as "be prepared" is the motto of both the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America.
But what does that phrase have to do with politics you may ask? Well let me tell you a little story. In my political ideologies class I heard two girls, both of whom are poli-sci majors, sitting behind me complain about the fact they had to read so much for said class. I (can try to) understand the fact many college student probably don't relish spending part of their college experience reading the works of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau. But I read Communist Manifesto my sophomore year of high school "for a bit of light reading",as Hermione would say, after I was introduced to the concepts of Marxian Communism because I wanted to understand why Communism had gained such a bad reputation (the answer, by the way, lies in the fact every real world application of communism was a small coup-de-tat, not a massive uprising of the proletariat, so those who couped had to impose some form of an authoritarian state in order to maintain their power).
Coming back from tangent land, I've written about the fact one should learn about political and take an active role in it, but I forgot to mention that being a politically conscious individual is a process, and you need to be prepared to accept that fact. Take that political ideologies class for example: the best way to learn the opinions of others in terms of their political views is to hear it from the person themselves. And Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau aren't just random people who liked to write- they knew what they were talking about through years of study and participation in the political process, and so I'm about to go to class-and further my study of what they learned.
Now I'm not saying go and pick up the copy of The Prince for your next bedtime reading book. Start with what you know and go from there. And be prepared for the fact there will be times when you don't understand something-trust me, there were moments reading Marx when I had to re-read parts and investigate meanings and implications of what he said.
So remember that politics is like anything else, you need to be prepared to expand your horizons and also be prepared that sometimes it means you may have to read or take part in discussion, but the rewards of being politically conscious are numerous because knowledge is certainly power.
