Here’s a fact about myself: I love to debate. In class, if one of my students argues red, I will argue blue. Next session, another student argues blue, I argue red. This comes down to my pedagogy in teaching, but that isn’t the point here; the point is that I find myself in debates all the time. Now I should make it clear that I don’t do this for the sake of trying to be right, nor because I want to change people’s minds. Really, debating is like projecting for me. It’s exercise for my brain. I am the kind of person that learns best in a dialogue. When I am debating with someone, I learn a lot both about their positions and about my own feelings.

It probably goes without saying that, lately, politics have made their way into a lot of these debates. This doesn’t bother me; I tend to think of humans as inherently political because we are inherently social, and, as a teacher, I think it is part of my job to be informed on the things that can and do affect the lives of my students.

I spent the majority of last year living in a van. Specifically, my girlfriend and I both owned vans, and we spent most of the time in hers (the bed was bigger). A month ago, we sold her van for a trailer in which we now reside up in the Tablelands in Bishop. Now, believe it or not, this fact about my life gets very different reactions from climbing and non-climbing populations. Climbers tend to think it’s awesome; we, as climbers, know the special place dirtbagging has in our cultural mythos. Non-climbers think it absolutely nuts.

So when I discuss politics with friends, family, and others, of whom many are not climbers, this fact of my life colors their judgement of my opinions. And this is as it should be. If politics is the extension of social life, to a degree, then it makes sense that our political concerns would align with our personal ones. When I talk about politics with a friend who doesn’t climb, what they see is someone who doesn’t have a mortgage, a car payment, kids, and who spends most of his free time either running around various outdoor settings to scramble around rocks or training for those times. Basically, it is a question of ethos: Because I am perceived as less invested in this system we call American Society, my opinion is of less value.

Now, I sympathize with their view. I really don’t have much invested, at least monetarily (I’d argue that choosing to become a teacher is pretty invested), in the “system,” and this generally makes the impacts of legislative decisions less heavy on me. By the same token, I really do spend most of my free time running around the outdoors. Hell, I spend the majority of my time there, considering how permeable the barriers between you and Nature are when you live in a van/trailer. And climbing is a pretty frivolous activity. Ultimately, does it really matter I send or not?

That is all to say that people are right to take my lifestyle into account when they consider my political views. It’s only natural. What I have issue with, however, is the idea that my outsider position somehow weakens the credibility of my viewpoints. I feel that, maybe, my outsider view gives me a more objective standpoint.

We all know, either intellectually or through experience, of the Sunk Costs Fallacy. Here is an example: You have watched 17 seasons of The Walking Dead, but you have noticed that the last few seasons have been a little less quality than the earlier seasons. The new season is out, and it is terrible. And yet, you watch the entire thing, spending x number of hours watching a show you really don’t like anymore. Your reasoning is that you have already put so much time into the show that you feel as if you have to finish. This predilection towards continuing with something no longer beneficial to you because of the time you have already invested is a version of the Sunk Costs Fallacy. The point is that having investment in a system can itself become a reason for continuing that system, regardless of the value and/or effectiveness of it.

Intrinsically, we know, as a social group, that a true view of the merits of a social system can only come from the outside. Just look at the writers and social critics that we have, historically, looked up to. Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, King Jr., Abbey, Parks, Anthony: All of these were people who, either by choice or by race or by gender, existed on the fringes of society. It was this very outsider-ness that gave them their honest view of the world around them. And who were the people that fought the changes these pioneers sought? Those invested in the system. Those with something to lose.