Reflection after Dr. Borck's Lecture

To start, I enjoyed Dr. Borck’s presentation on love and friendship in politics. I consider a lecture successful if I leave still thinking about it and trying to come up with my own ideas surrounding the topic. These are the main things that kept me thinking about the politics discussion long after class had ended:

What is a friend? You could say that seeking friendship is human nature. It’s common to seek unity over loneliness. But if you look at all your past and current “friendships,” they are often much like “political friendships” or allies. For the duration of your friendship, they are someone to whom you may seek advice (political or social. Example: United Nations), or a companionship along some duration of your personal journey, or they may just be living their lives and poking their head in on yours once in a while. Regardless, this must be someone you would defend (politically or socially) when necessary, trust more than most people around (but never tell everything to) and with whom you have other common friends (other allies). But most importantly, friends are the people you have something in common with like career ambitions, music, or a hatred for the same country. So when it comes down to it, I’d define politics as a series of alliances or friendships. It’s just the teaming up of individuals that share a common friendship, common values and a common goal. Friendship is a uniting force that creates a body of people (a state) and the states form friendships that form a nation. Without friendship, there can be no love of country and no alliances because you must love your country and friends enough to go to war to defend them and potentially die for them. That’s a tall order unless there is love and friendship as a motivator. Without alliances or friendships or love, we’d all be lonely creatures with no ties to anyone, not even our families. We’d wander aimlessly and have little contact with other “nations.” Maybe you could argue that love and friendship are the reasons we go to war in the first place. We love our way of life and the people in our country to go to war to protect them and we sometimes follow our allies into battles that were not our own to wage because our friends needed backup. Perhaps friendship and love cannot exist without war and war wouldn’t exist without friendship and love. But then you could say that friends and enemies can end up being the same people or nations. What once may have been a strong ally can turn and become an enemy when there is a turn of power (sometimes caused by the reformations of friendships based around a new common and unifying goal) such as Russia, a former ally of the United States that became an enemy in World War II. Now think about all the friendships you’ve ever had that didn’t end quite the way you would have liked them to. Do you talk to them anymore? Do you smile or say hello anymore? Your friend became your enemy. You are no longer civil. There is hostility and while you may have common friends now, you might not always. A friend and enemy can be the same person, just not at the same time. And that’s what makes politics so interesting.