Further, with rare exeption the fruits of political change are unlikely to yield any significant material loss or gain for the activist. However empassioned we might have been during the fall of 2008 in support of our preferred candidate, at a personal level our lives were unlikely to be directly effected by the outcome. If John McCain was elected instead of Barack Obama, the chances are your life wouldn't be much different today; you would still get up in the morning, kiss the family goodbye, and go off to work. Your income probably hasn't been effected. If you were a mechanic, you are probably still a mechanic today, or you are still a lawyer, a waiter, a manager, or a plumber. At the margins, perhaps, a particular camapaign pledge to lower your taxes or grant some other tax rebate for something relevant to you (ie., interest on student loans, or closing costs of a new mortgage), may leave some extra change in your pocket, but certainly nothing is likely to happen that will substantially change your life.
So why do we do it? For some the answer might be a simple matter of delusion. Humans that we are, it is always easier and more natural to overestimate our importance in the world, rather than underestimate it. As any economist will tell you, the chances of your individual vote making the difference between one candidate and another is infinestimal (even in Minnesota). The prudent response to this is, "Well, yes, that may be true. But if we all thought that way then nobody would vote at all, and it is trends of opinion that matter anyway." Indeed, 'trends' captured in the form of the almighty snap-opinion polls are what candidates care about. Accordingly, they do not speak to individuals, but only to populations.
But we don't feel that way, do we? Consider this: In English, of course, we do not distinguish between a singlular and plural 'you', as in other languages (ie., usted vs. ustedes in Spanish). This is handy for politicians, as it allows them to stand above a crowd of countless throngs and declare "I am counting on you to support me!" In doing so, he achieves the seemingly impossible feat of leaving literally thousands of people with, at least a vague sense, that their candidate was looking right through the crowd and speaking directly to them.
No one truly believes this, of course--well, very few of us anyway (I would hope). So why do we knowlingly allow ourselves to be so thoroughly gripped by a delusion? My answer is because it helps us to justify what many of us cannot help ourselves to do, and this is to care about the well-being of the society to which we are a part. This, I believe, is primary--it came first. We are fundamentally social animals. At least since the breakaway of the genus homo from the pan line of primates some 4ish million years ago, the large proportion of our species' evolution has been in the context of communities. And, importantly, they were small communities likely ranging from a dozen or so to the low hundreds. Sociologists tell us that in communities of this size, it is still within the capacity of an individual to know everyone, and for everyone to know him/her. Contrary to Humphrey Bogart's 20th century world, the problems of "three little people" did "add up to a hill of beans" for 99.95% of the rest of human history that came before it. And as a result, we have "social genes," that were selected for by evolution because they made a very substantial difference, such that those who had them survived more and passed those genes on to their offspring.
As Aristotle observed (the world's first taxonimist, amongst his other titles), human beings are a "political animal." In this most basic sense, we care about politics because it is in our nature to do so, just as it is the nature of a snake to disregard sociality completely.
The next question to ask is, "Why are our politics what they are?"
