{"id":1,"date":"2019-10-24T07:00:56","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T07:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.messiah.edu\/politicsinternationalrelations\/?p=1"},"modified":"2020-02-29T17:17:05","modified_gmt":"2020-02-29T17:17:05","slug":"welcome-to-the-civic-mind-civic-mind-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.messiah.edu\/politicsinternationalrelations\/2019\/10\/24\/welcome-to-the-civic-mind-civic-mind-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to the Civic Mind (Civic Mind Series)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the blog series Civic Mind, which focuses on unpacking the American political system to help citizens become better informed and more deliberative in their roles as participants in the political system.\u00a0 The goal of this series, one of three that this blog will launch this year, is to unpack events, processes, and policies so that people can be in a stronger position to evaluate them.\u00a0 Doing so can help us better understand the impact that they have on our lives and empower us to engage in the system in more valuable ways.<\/p>\n

One resource that I have found particularly helpful in thinking about what helps us be more evaluative rather than emotional in our political interactions is Daniel Kahneman\u2019s Thinking, Fast and Slow.\u00a0 A<\/em> psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics (2002), Kahneman is most known for his work distinguishing between what he calls System 1 (impulsive) and System 2 (deliberative) thinking.\u00a0 As he explains in this short interview<\/a> segment, using System 2 is more likely to produce outcomes with which we are satisfied because it lessens the chance of errors that come from us acting on impulse \u2013 whether in our personal circumstances or as we work together in larger groups. \u00a0\u00a0Casting votes as citizens and making collective decisions in policy certainly fall into the latter category.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s online environment, we have a quandary\u2013 we have access to a raft of information, but not all of it will help us become more careful consumers of it.\u00a0 In other words, just because we can \u201cGoogle it\u201d does not mean that a search result is credible.\u00a0 I will share more tips on effectively navigating online resources in some future posts.\u00a0 As a starting point, my librarian colleague Michael Rice and I have curated a manageable list of sources produced by nonpartisan and mostly non-profit organizations, who also share a goal of helping the public to access educational resources.\u00a0 We have placed it as a library guide<\/a> within the college library\u2019s webpages so that it is more broadly available for access. \u00a0This blog series will periodically highlight sources as they are relevant to the focus of a given post.<\/p>\n

The first full post of this series will discuss the foundations of democracy, as a way for us to consider our roles as citizens within this system.\u00a0 The series will post monthly, with special additional content available.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Profile<\/a>About the Civic Mind blogger (Dr. Robin Lauermann): \u00a0I currently serve as a Professor of Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations, which hosts this blog site. I have specific expertise in two sub-fields.\u00a0 Within American politics, I teach and research on topics related to political institutions, public policy, and political behavior, with special consideration as to how they impact the functioning of our political system.\u00a0 Within Comparative Politics, I look at many of the same themes, but within the regional areas of Latin America and Europe.\u00a0 Above all, my passion and work focus on empowering people \u2013 students, colleagues, and citizens \u2013 to be able to better understand our political system in order to navigate it and evaluate it constructively.\u00a0 With this series, I hope to provide such a forum, which can serve as a resource for citizens in evaluating policy, candidates and our system.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the blog series Civic Mind, which focuses on unpacking the American political system to help citizens become better informed and more deliberative in their roles as participants in the political system.\u00a0 The goal of this series, one of three that this blog will launch this year, is to unpack events, processes, and policies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11462],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civic-mind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.messiah.edu\/politicsinternationalrelations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.messiah.edu\/politicsinternationalrelations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.messiah.edu\/politicsinternationalrelations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.messiah.edu\/politicsinternationalrelations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.messiah.edu\/politicsinternationalrelations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.messiah.edu\/politicsinternationalrelations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.messiah.edu\/politicsinternationalrelations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/71"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.messiah.edu\/politicsinternationalrelations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.messiah.edu\/politicsinternationalrelations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.messiah.edu\/politicsinternationalrelations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}