Politics as evolutionary dialectic

ME and WE on the balance scale ⚖️

POLITICS (from Greek πολιτικά (politiká) 'affairs of the cities'): the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status.

If you listen to many “political” speeches given by people who want your vote, you would think that politics is all about policy. Economic policy. Energy policy. Healthcare policy. Immigration policy. Military policy. Foreign policy. Trade policy. Welfare policy. Farm policy. Tax policy. And so on.

During the presidential election cycle, the political parties construct their platforms out of these various issues (planks), and they communicate about and run on them. This reinforces the notion that politics and elections are all about policy.

And then, when a candidate or party gains power, they continue to talk about their policy agenda (though less often than during the campaign). They sometimes try to enact their policy agenda through the legislative process. Sometimes they even succeed.

But what if the real engine of politics was mostly about something else, and the policies were only the signals and signifiers and symbols for something much more fundamental and important?

Yin/Yang 🌓

DIALECTIC (daɪ.əˈlek.tɪk): A way of discovering what is true by considering opposite theories

I write about human nature within an evolutionary paradigm as first described by Charles Darwin (1809-1882) in On the Origin of Species (1859) and further developed by others since then. You can get a sense of what Darwin is proposing by reading this short collection of quotes from his writing.

One of the endless (and largely fruitless) debates in the evolutionary biology/psychology field is about whether people are basically selfish or caring. Whenever you see an issue framed in EITHER/OR terms, you should run away fast! Life is complex and understanding how it all works involves considering multiple factors at once (Both/And). It’s hard but satisfying.

Fact is that human beings benefit in the great contest for survival by a delicate balancing of caring for self AND others. The “right” balance point is always specific to the particular person and situation. We can never automate the ME/WE decision. It requires close analysis of the specific conditions of now. People, groups, organizations and societies need to continuously adjust their relative investment of precious resources (esp. time, attention, energy and money) in ME and WE. No matter how our collective investment plan is built, people will disagree with it and find fault with it sooner or later.

Dialectics are restless irritable things. The essence of a dialectic is that there is no “right” answer and the debate is never finished. No matter where the ME/WE scale comes to rest, somebody will want to either push it farther along its course or pull it back. Almost no one will be happy with the current set point for long.

Keeping the peace

War is policy continued with other means. — Carl von Clausewitz

Debate and discussion and negotiation and elections are channels that are designed to contain human conflict without spilling over into carnage. Wars break out when these less violent means of conflict resolution fail.

Politics is a system within which human beings can wrestle with the unresolvable but vital conflicts that life presents in abundance. The big debates over who gets what amount of the really important resources (like money and power and safety and opportunity and respect) are the essence of politics, regardless of the “policy” boxes we put them in.

In terms of the ME/WE balancing dialectic, wouldn’t it be convenient if we could construct two political parties, one to represent the ME position (self-interest, rights, independence, freedom) and the other the WE position (common/community interests, responsibilities, sacrifice, limits). Then we could let people sign up for the party that most reflected their opinions and preferences, and political campaigns and elections and policy debates could serve to thrash out the inevitable conflicts and differences.

Neither party would ever get everything it wanted, and both would always be pushing for more. Preventing spillovers into war would require boundary conditions like free-and-fair elections, good-faith factual policy debates and certain limits and non-negotiables (e.g. paying the sovereign debt, losers concede, rule of law, etc.).

But wait a minute!

We (in the U.S) already have two parties representing (imperfectly) the ME and WE poles of the dialectic (and you know which is which!). Members of the ME party will strive to get/keep as much of these resources for themselves as possible within a win/lose matrix. For them, inequality is just the eternal way of the world (as long as they’re not the losers!). Members of the WE party will watch out for the “least of us” and safeguard their interests by investing in them, even if at some cost to their own immediate self-interest. They will view this as a long-term win/win strategy for the shared health and safety of the community as a whole.

Within this ME vs. WE political dialectic, both parties will be frustrated and unhappy. Their mutual dissatisfaction is the dynamic energy that drives the political machine. The danger is that anger and frustration can morph into rage and hate where one’s political opponents become one’s existential enemies, and the rules of the game are spurned and anything goes. At that point, we are all at risk of policy debates moving into extra-political channels, to the danger of us all.

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