How we look at politics
Posted: Tue May 14, 2013 9:38 am
Lately I’ve been thinking about the way we define our political worlds.
I think a lot of people define the world like this:
Freedom<------->Totalitarianism
Freedom on one side, totalitarianism on the other. Freedom is good, TotalitarianIsm is bad. So far, so good.
But while this makes sense as an individual scale, let’s try looking at it another way:
Are you an individual or a member of society?
Assuming you’re not part of a Stalinist Cell, a Borg Collective or Ayn Rand, most people answer ‘both’. We exist as both individuals AND as members of family, our church, our community, our country, our world.
We have free agency and free will, but environment is a factor. If you grow up in Minneapolis, the chances you will be a surfer are less than if you grow up in Honolulu. If your mother was a teenage crack addict, the chances you’ll be a brain surgeon are less than if she’s a graduate of Wharton School of Business. (If she’s both, I guess your chances are somewhere in the middle). Chances are if you are raised in the Yanomami tribe of the Amazon, you will not be a nuclear physicist.
Sometimes the group makes sacrifices for the individual, like a church sponsoring a refugee.
Sometimes the individual makes sacrifices for the group. It can be as large as someone risking their own life to rescue others from a burning building.
If we think about political cosmology in terms of Individual/Group dynamic instead of the Freedom/Totalitarian dynamic, you get a different perspective.
Indivdual<------->Community
Imagine each of these points (and others) plotted on a graph with 'Individual' on one end and 'Community' on the other. Most of our values would plot somewhere between the poles. In other words, 'Community' and 'Individual' rarely represent absolute values.
So when people say you're either a Capitalist or a Communist, I say I am not an absolutist. The values, strengths and weaknesses of the individual and the community should inform the design of economic, political, and social systems.
Homeostasis is the word I keep thinking of.
Ideally a system should be self-regulating. We should think of valuing the individual and valuing the community like a pH factor: extreme acid or basic is not good, we want a balance in the middle.
I think a lot of people define the world like this:
Freedom<------->Totalitarianism
Freedom on one side, totalitarianism on the other. Freedom is good, TotalitarianIsm is bad. So far, so good.
But while this makes sense as an individual scale, let’s try looking at it another way:
Are you an individual or a member of society?
Assuming you’re not part of a Stalinist Cell, a Borg Collective or Ayn Rand, most people answer ‘both’. We exist as both individuals AND as members of family, our church, our community, our country, our world.
We have free agency and free will, but environment is a factor. If you grow up in Minneapolis, the chances you will be a surfer are less than if you grow up in Honolulu. If your mother was a teenage crack addict, the chances you’ll be a brain surgeon are less than if she’s a graduate of Wharton School of Business. (If she’s both, I guess your chances are somewhere in the middle). Chances are if you are raised in the Yanomami tribe of the Amazon, you will not be a nuclear physicist.
Sometimes the group makes sacrifices for the individual, like a church sponsoring a refugee.
Sometimes the individual makes sacrifices for the group. It can be as large as someone risking their own life to rescue others from a burning building.
If we think about political cosmology in terms of Individual/Group dynamic instead of the Freedom/Totalitarian dynamic, you get a different perspective.
Indivdual<------->Community
- Government
- Family
- School
- Religion
- Business
- Community
Imagine each of these points (and others) plotted on a graph with 'Individual' on one end and 'Community' on the other. Most of our values would plot somewhere between the poles. In other words, 'Community' and 'Individual' rarely represent absolute values.
So when people say you're either a Capitalist or a Communist, I say I am not an absolutist. The values, strengths and weaknesses of the individual and the community should inform the design of economic, political, and social systems.
Homeostasis is the word I keep thinking of.
Ideally a system should be self-regulating. We should think of valuing the individual and valuing the community like a pH factor: extreme acid or basic is not good, we want a balance in the middle.