The Big Picture

A social organism is comprised of people forming associations for the purpose of conducting the necessary business of life in, one would suppose, the most salubrious fashion possible. Somehow, though, things always seem to get fouled up by a variety of noxious enterprises. Predatory banking practices, for example, and politicians who pander to moneyed interests while posing as champions of the people and who keep promising solutions for the problems caused by the “solutions” they had installed in the past. Corporations price gouging, price fixing, buying legislators, cooking the books, etc. I could go on. But whatever suspicions one may have regarding the machinations of the powers-that-be and their intentions toward the society at large, one must allow that, under the present system, the possibility for the proper coordination of social/political/economic dynamics required to conduct our affairs in the most salubrious fashion possible is sorely missing. That is, we lack a proper cybernetic network with which to synergize a confluence of all the organs of a social body so there is more symbiosis between them with less conflict and exploitation.

As it is now, the prevalent social dynamic is one in which members of particular associations tend to regard their group’s survival as paramount over recognizing and maintaining their proper role within the overall scheme of things. Examples of such behavior are rampant and indulged in by whatever kind of association one can think of be it a government agency, a business, a political party, a street gang, a religious organization, etc. We have, for instance, quasi-religious groups, either godly or secular, tearing at each other’s throats to secure some illusive high moral ground as their exclusive territory; right-to-life v pro-choice, for instance. Also, there are the political parties who contend that their ideology provides the only worthwhile perception to the absolute exclusion of all others and, thus, we forego the possibility of forging the super-vision necessary for more effective governance. We have bureaucracies like Health and Human Services, better known as Welfare, which exacerbate the very conditions they were formed to alleviate so as to ensure their own survival at the expense of those they were supposed to serve. We have street gangs like the Crips and Bloods, which are, perhaps, the most brutal manifestations of this pathologically insular mind set but they are merely conforming to the behavior of the society at large, i.e., their associations are the only ones that matter. And we have the media providing the asylum where all this pathology becomes institutionalized.

Competing factions, such as Right-to-life vs Pro-choice, the Crips vs the Bloods and such, can serve to check one another so that neither side will become all powerful but what cannot be checked is the continuing deterioration of the social fabric these contentious groups cause.

It seems like all of our institutions lack a sense of propriety in managing themselves in relation to other institutions and to the overall social organism to which they all belong. Without this holistic sense of things it is, of course, impossible to create and maintain a wholesome social/political system wherein all organs can achieve their proper goals while at the same time contributing to the health and well being of the whole society as they go about their business. With a sense of social propriety, a symbiotic confluence of all participating entities can be created that promotes particular and overall conditions of synergistic vitality. This is what all groups and individuals need to be interested in promoting in spite of their differences. This would make it possible for everyone to contribute to the integrity of the whole social organism while at the same time serving their own self-interests as well.

Is this an unrealistic ideal? All ideals are by definition unrealistic. They are unreachable goals worth striving to approximate. The ideal is to keep trying to get as close to the ideal as possible.

The merging of self-interest and common interest, however, is not some abstract alien idea that needs to be artificially imposed upon people; it is in our natures to be so oriented. The individual members of primitive tribes work for the welfare of the tribe because it is vitally connected to their own self-interest. In our more advanced societies we have individuals working for the common interest of various associations, or “tribes”, which are extensions of their self-interest, be it a business, a political party, a religious sect, etc. And, though, one may also believe that one is working for the betterment of the whole society through one’s associations, this does not always prove to be the case. A business can provide products and jobs but be harmful to the environment. Political parties in seeking their own advantage can interfere with establishing and promoting optimum social conditions. Religious leaders who insist that their beliefs should be the law of the land create conflicts in society that threaten the ongoing cohesion of the overall community to which they belong and which is based upon religious freedom. We can lose sight of the larger picture as we become overly obsessed with our own peephole view of the world. The question for society is how to manage and contain all its various groups in a coherent form.

Soviet communism attempted this through coercion from the top. The State had absolute power to create the perfect society and it botched the job. Attempting to micromanage a society from the top down is a flagrant violation of the nature of things. A macrocosm cannot create the microcosm. The microcosm creates the macrocosm. This is the natural condition of things and applicable to social organisms as well as any other structure. Trying to form a society the other way, from the top down, makes for unwieldy top-heavy structures that are impossible to balance and eventually must fall apart for that very reason. The social structure of the United States is also much too top heavy and seems to be losing the battle in its continual struggle to maintain a pragmatic balance. There is a lot of checking and finger pointing going on but nothing much to promote balance.

Proportion and symmetry are part and parcel of the concept of balance and these three elements might serve us better as societal goals than do the concepts of justice, equality and liberty. Of course, balance, proportion and symmetry do not have the seductive power as the concepts of justice, equality and liberty do, but without the former principles in view the latter ones are mere mirages that torment us with continual disillusionment. But, again, balance, proportion and symmetry can only be achieved by allowing the microcosm to form the macrocosm as in the balance, proportion and symmetry achieved through anatomical organization.

Comparing the dynamics of the human anatomy to a social organism can serve to shed some light on the subject. In imagining the body politic of the United States as a human body the federal government would be its brain. As such, it is presently seen as an enormous monstrosity, grotesquely out of proportion to the social body that struggles to support it. It is a brain riddled with tumorous bureaucracies, all swollen out in cancerous profusion that consider themselves to be the whole purpose of the society they feed upon. They consider their existence to be vitally important. More so than the vitality of the whole organism. Nothing should happen unless it is first processed through their corridors. This would be comparable to an individual, who, through some weird genetic program, designed a brain to micromanage every detail of bodily function while interfering with much of the body’s necessary autonomous activity in the process.

The role of the brain in one’s body is to coordinate, synchronize and modify certain bodily conditions by being constantly alert and immediately and accurately responsive to them via the body’s nervous system. The messages to, from and within the brain must be handled swiftly and efficiently in order to maintain a healthy condition throughout the body. If, however, as it is with the federal government, communications are forced to slither around cancerous labyrinths oozing out ineffectual, contradictory, counterproductive signals then the condition is one of ill health. The brain is at odds with itself and is unable to function as a coordinated coordinating unit.

Now, this is not a prelude to a conservative harangue about the need for less government. No. Arguments for more or less government tend to obscure and distract from the rationale of establishing and maintaining a government proportionate to the body it is part of - which must now and always be the desired objective.

For this objective to be realized the government, of course, must change. Not just in the perennial transition of power, which is a meaningless exercise for entrenched bureaucracies and corporate power. Not just in terms of cosmetic change but in terms of a complete dismantling and re-creation of all the organs of the body politic on an on going basis. That is, continually, periodically taking our institutions apart and putting them back together again, forming and reforming them constantly in ways best suited to deal with the ever changing social configurations that have been consistently outmaneuvering our misshapen, overweight body politic for decades.

For this to happen, changes need to be made in government similar to those that have been and are being made in business. Namely, the transformation of linear, hierarchical bureaucratic dinosaurs into spatial arrangements of small, discrete, fleet of foot components able to respond and transform themselves as volatile social, economic and environmental conditions require.

As we have seen, it is the natural order of things to develop out from the microcosm to the macrocosm. The microcosm forms the macrocosm. Indeed, everything is created in like manner. The complex intricacy of the human body is formed and maintained through the autonomous networking of individual cells. And, in turn, a system of small integrated components is what we should be looking at for the re-creation of the social organism.

The big picture as presented here in these postings can be, I suppose, a rather daunting challenge for many people because it is such a departure from what is now in place. But what we need to realize is that what is now in place is actually out of place. It is out of place with the nature of things, with the prevalent technologies that are reconfiguring and shrinking the old world into a global village and with the great body of knowledge we now have about ourselves, the biosphere and our place within the whole scope of the natural realm.

Basically what we have realized is that we are not in the driver’s seat. We cannot make things conform to how we might imagine they should be. I refer you to the Soviet Union, for example. Also, we used to make boasts about conquering nature. We were, for instance, going to rid the world of disease once and for all! And now here we are horribly confounded by AIDS, untreatable TB and other diseases resistant to current methods of treatment.

We may find ways of genetically altering the agents of these diseases in order to defeat them but that will probably open the door to the rise of other viruses that will be able to compromise our genetic code in insidious ways - perhaps causing horrific mutations to take hold in the blink of an eye.

Who knows for sure, but that is the way the arms race between us and the viral world seems to go.

Our belief systems are also out of place. We have a totally wrongheaded Hobbesian view of them. We are operating under the impression that to be human means to exist in opposition to nature. We believe that religion was sent to us from some other world, some divine world that instructs us to take on the mantle of divinity in contradiction to our natural inclinations.

But religions were actually formed in opposition to the effects that civilized constructs have had on the nature of human beings. Our natural inclinations were once effectively modified and advantageously conditioned by the natural world which prompted us to form cohesive social groups that benefitted our survival. Freed from the constraints of the natural world by the imposition of civilizations our instincts, drives and appetites needed to be harnessed by some reasonable facsimile of the natural realm that attempted to match its conditioning power.

To the extent that religions are mock-ups of the natural state they are all the same.

Religion attaches self-interest to an after life which is good while self-interest in this life is bad.

But that’s looking at self-interest erroneously as some kind of isolated factor that needs to be dealt with in an exclusive manner.

In reality, however, we see that self-interest forms a natural dynamic with collective interests and we need to rearrange things, rearrange everything with reference to that dynamic.

This, along with the fact that everything is made-up from small discrete units, is the basis for the vision of things unfolding here in The Big Picture.

Collective-interest would be realized by giving free reign to self-interest - an enlightened self-interest that is not regarded as inherently evil and is immanently connected with collective-interests.

One’s self-interest is realized through collective-interests and collective-interest is realized through self-interest. All is realized from the microcosm on an individual basis inexorably connecting each and every individual to the society-at-large which is a direct expression of everyone’s self-interest.

Self-interest is dependent on collectives. The condition of the collective must be kept viable by the self-interested parties involved in forming the collective for their own self-interest.

Our self-interest needs to be released from grand institutions that claim to be operating on behalf of our self-interest while actually using us to pursue their own.

Individual self-interest left, in effect, alone and naked would soon join with the enlightened self-interest of others to form collectives that would genuinely benefit self-interest.

That is the recipe for a far less convoluted and much more user-friendly social system that will be explored further in subsequent posts.

In the midst of this latest crisis, the meltdown of behemoth Wall Street investment banks and other such institutions around the world, the powers-that-be are scurrying around trying to shore up the system in the short term so as to, at least, minimize the collapse. This is probably a necessary strategy in response to the present emergency and will, perhaps, be somewhat effective. But if it is part of an effort to preserve the system as it is for the long term…that will be a big mistake.

Among the noisy clatter of hammering together some jerry-rigged contraption to get us through the exigent circumstances we find ourselves in there have been some clarion cries for a new model, a new socioeconomic model to operate under that will provide a more coherent system.

Of course, once the faulty system now in place is patched up those cries will die down and it will be business as usual as we head for the next big crisis looming somewhere over the horizon.

Anyway, let’s consider a new model here just for the heck of it.

First of all, with reference to the current outrage, it seems that self-interest is the culprit in all these business and banking crises, past and present. Now, self-interest is considered by many to be a bad thing in and of itself. But it isn’t. It’s all a matter of how it’s directed. For example, self-interest during our primitive existence is what accounted for the formation of close knit groups where individuals put the solidarity of the tribe above themselves. It was self-interest in one’s own survival that bound individuals together. Surviving in the wild on one’s own was not an option. Belonging to a tribe increased one’s chances of survival exponentially. It was also in one’s self-interest to contribute to the tribe’s well-being, to see to it that it was as harmonious as possible. A tribe in optimum condition was much more likely to survive and that, again, benefited each and every individual’s self-interest because their survival depended upon the collective condition of the tribe.

The very same self-interest/collective-interest dynamic is a fundamental aspect of modern societies as well.

Although in our minds self-interest and collective-interest are separate, opposite and in conflict with one another, as the former is associated with capitalism and the latter with socialism, they are in fact always intertwined. It is plain for everyone to see that it is in everyone’s self-interest to be part of various collectives of one sort or another be it a family, school, club, business, gang, community, etc. Forming and being part of collectives is in the self-interest of everyone because that is how everyone’s self-interest can best be realized. One participates, then, in the maintenance of collective organizations as a means of fulfilling one’s self-interest while it is in the interest of the collective to allow individuals to pursue their own self-interest, which includes maintaining the collective-interest.

One’s self-interest is never pursued in an absolutely free state. It is amended and given relevance by the collectives one finds it necessary to belong to. But sometimes the collectives that individuals belong to, like Enron, Countrywide, Bear Sterns and the like operate in an isolated insular way only interested in generating profit for themselves. These collective entities believe they are pursuing their self-interest with their money making schemes but as they eventually find out they are not. They behave like cancerous tumors seeking their own growth at the expense of the whole social body’s well-being. The tumors metastasize and the cancer spreads.

A full realization and understanding of the self-interest/collective-interest dynamic on the part of each and every individual would be a positive step toward weaving a sound socioeconomic fabric in which everyone could put their trust.

With this in mind we need to rethink and redesign the whole system where the government, the economy, the banking industry, the media and the citizenry form a seamless social fabric.

We need to define the terms, create the framework and lay out a blueprint for the radical changes necessary to govern effectively and do business in the 21st Century.

First and foremost we need to focus on the fundamentals and then focus on them some more and then keep focusing on them.

Fundamentals like money. We need to know and have a firm grasp of what money’s purpose is in a social body. Generally speaking the purpose of money is to energize the work that needs to be done to create and maintain a healthy vigorous social body.

Money also plays into the self-interest/collective-interest dynamic.

Collective interest is created out of a universal self-interest - the interest to survive. Everyone has an interest in their own survival. In order to survive in a modern society one needs to acquire money, one way or another. This results in the creation of employers and employees, which form collectives – businesses - wherein one’s self-interest in making money can be realized as can the interests of the business.

There is also a self and collective interest to have a system for the purpose of handling money. That would, of course, be a banking system whose role would be, among other things, to facilitate the operation of the economic system.

The socioeconomic system now in place is top heavy, convoluted, disconnected and generally obsolete.

Take, for instance, the way money from the private sector is pooled for the benefit of the collective-interest. The pooling of money to serve the collective interest is, of course, in every one’s self-interest. For example, if some disaster befalls a particular area we all want to know that funds will be available for assistance. The pooling of money is now the purview of governments that have the power to tax. So, part of the money that is made in the private sector by individuals and businesses and in the pubic sector by government workers is collected, in the US for instance, by the IRS and then the congress decides how to redistribute it.

The whole rigmarole of taxation and redistribution is a bureaucratic nightmare that is all too expensive. The power to tax lends itself to abuse and it can never seem to be wielded in a judicious manner.

So, although a society needs to pool its money for its collective-interest it need not be accomplished through government’s power to tax.

Another way of pooling a society’s money will be submitted here a little further on. There is, as we shall see, a way of doing this that would have everyone paying their fair share and have appropriate funds readily accessible whenever and wherever they were needed.

But first let’s look at the circulation of money in the private sector. In the system now in place money starts its journey from the upper echelons of the federal apparatus and banking industry from where it finds its trickle down way to the rest of us. And when things are good this is supposed to be a boon to everyone. As Ronald Reagan claimed, “A rising tide raises all boats.” But somehow it doesn’t seem to work out that way. Like the tax system the manner in which money is circulated lends itself to abuse, is not judicious and is inefficient.

In designing a socioeconomic system we can take a lesson from the composition of everything else in existence. Every macro system is composed of micro bits. Everything is built by connecting small discrete bits together to form a macrocosm. The microcosm fashions the macrocosm - from infinitesimal quantum particles to the gigantic universe - from hydrogen atoms to enormous galaxies - the whole biosphere is made possible by miniscule molecules of DNA – life forms are made up of microscopic cells - buildings are built brick by brick, nail by nail, rivet by rivet. And this how a socioeconomic system should also be created and maintained. That is, built up from localities – communities, neighborhoods, towns, villages. So, the idea is to, first and foremost, support and secure the foundation of a social system and then go on from there.

So, the circulation of money would begin at the local level. Local banks, then, would begin the process of distributing the money supply throughout the whole system. The money would be supplied by the system’s “reserve”. Initially, the local banks would, of course, invest in their own communities in both the private and public sectors. Through sound banking practices local economies prosper and this adds to the banks’ value and their ability to borrow more money from the reserve. The local banks would use “extra” reserves to fund a county bank to handle larger investments in the area.

County banks would actually be comprised of local banks and they would invest in the larger projects that would benefit the operation of the localities. County banks would be dependent on local banks for funding and, so, could not take on any projects without approval from localities.

The county banks would, similarly, create state banks, state banks regional banks and the regionals a national bank. Local banks would have to have confidence in all the various banking terminals from the county to the national. The confidence level would determine the amount of capital local banks would invest in county banks, state banks and the rest. Local banks would control the money supply throughout the system. Thus the financial system would not stray very far from its foundation.

The social dynamic of self-interest/collective-interest also demands other services that need to be fulfilled by a system of government.

Government, however, would not have the power to tax. The public sector would be allocated funds by private citizens and businesses, via the banking system. The scope of government would be determined by whatever is deemed necessary by those in the private sector. That is, government would provide only those services deemed necessary by the people.

The government per se would have nothing to do with the collection and allocation of money. Whatever government is deemed necessary to support and integrate the system would receive the appropriate funds with which to operate efficiently. Such funds would amount to a share of the wealth generated by the economy to be allocated to government as required with respect to particular circumstances.

A good image to illustrate this system would be to imagine the whole society afloat on a national pool of money. Let’s say the entire value of the GDP would create this money pool which would be allocated for private and public sector projects. Each and every individual, each and every business would be contributing to it and withdrawing from it, via the banking system, for investments, or public works. Every segment of society including the federal government would be just another locality. In this vision of things everything flattens out floating on the pool. No higher and lower, only different perspectives and roles. One draws from and contributes to the general pool as one’s condition and circumstance dictate with reference to one’s ongoing and overriding need to preserve the solvency of the system as a whole.

Banks would be pivotal to this symbiosis. Government, business people and bankers would gather together to decide how available funds should be used in order to serve their mutual interests which must be kept in synch with the interests of the entire community as well. Bankers and businessmen would want to keep at a minimum the funds needed for government so it would not be a drain on the economy. On the other hand they would also have an interest in things being governed effectively in order to facilitate social and economic activity.

Every dollar spent for government would need to have real value to the whole community in making a vital contribution to society’s proficiency as a synergistic unit. One way to keep government limited would be for the banking industry, business and individuals to play by the rules, to effectively police themselves . The private sector would not have to spend a lot of money in lobbying efforts or contribute large sums to political campaign funds in seeking advantageous legislation and tax breaks. This would add to their value and free up resources for investment, research and development. Also government would not have the ability to bailout any businesses that got into trouble but it would have the ability to penalize businesses that misbehaved with hefty fines. So, a culture of self-regulation would be seen as advantageous in the private sector.

As for services that are now provided by government like water, sewage, garbage collection and disposal, road building and repair, etc., these could, at the discretion of the community, be contracted out by the bank to individuals able to oversee an efficient operation and be directly answerable to the community for their performance - thus, removing the need to create enormous inefficient and often corrupt government bureaucracies to deal with these matters. Run by private individuals the operations would need to use economically sound business practices though they would not be profit making affairs. People would be charged for the delivery of these services in terms of what it costs to deliver them. The target for the providers of these services would be to operate at cost though some subsidy might be necessary from the general pool of money to which everyone contributes. Things like the building and maintenance of roads would be financed entirely through the general pool of money. Recently, however, in some areas, the private sector has ventured into providing roads. This, apparently, is due to new technologies whereby tolls can be collected without inconveniencing drivers. A bar code on the windshield of their cars is read by a laser as the traffic speeds by. This is a good example of how technology can change traditional concepts of public and private sector arrangements. Generally speaking, all expenditures for infrastructure and basic services which the so-called private sector chooses not to handle have value to the social organism as long as they support a healthy vigorous economy. The infrastructure of a healthy social body, the roads, bridges, plumbing, etc. should cost the body much less than the value received. All organs of the social body must get just what they need to produce what they must through the circulation of money.

We have to be able to discern what our priorities are in terms of real value to our well being, in the long term especially, and see to it that resources are made available to invest in those priorities in a cost effective manner. With money going directly into certain needy areas for the purpose of dealing with specific problems there would not be the enormous waste of resources and effort there is today. So, disaster relief funds with more accurate targeting would be immediately available to affected areas through local banking systems.

The various terminals in a system of government would be formed as is the banking system. Basically we see the social body made up of a network of autonomous communities forming from within themselves all the political, social and economic organs needed for their own particular situations while at the same time creating out of themselves the larger body politic in which they would all be incorporated.

Communities, then, would function as centers unto themselves with respect to their associations with other communities and to the society at large as well. The communities would form out of themselves a county government made up of an individual representative from each community. This same process would be repeated at the county terminal with counties networking to form a state apparatus, and so on and so forth for regional and national terminals of government. The microcosm forms the macrocosm congruous to the contours of the microcosm and therefore prevents the macrocosm from becoming something alien to the microcosm.

All government terminals, in real-time communication with one another, could contribute what timely input each had to offer from their particular vantage point in regard to a given situation and decide among themselves how best to handle it. Generally speaking, it would be incumbent upon localities to resolve their own problems. When this would not be possible, however, the matter would be relegated to the proximate terminal and so on until some satisfactory solution was formulated. Lines of authority would not be altogether fixed but would be commensurate to the value of the input one had to offer in an ongoing process of checks and balances throughout the system.

So, if a problem were irreconcilable at a locality authority would be given to the proximate terminal to impose a solution. However, if and when the parties involved at the locality agreed to abide by a different solution arrived at among themselves, which they found preferable to the one imposed upon them by the county or other government terminal, then the imposed solution could be overturned in favor of the local agreement.

This kind of system would give communities better representation and allow for programs and policies to be as fine-tuned as possible to particular situations.

Through this kind of networking it would be possible to establish an integrated system that forms social bonds which allow for differences while not tolerating contamination. Bonds that define how we are individually oriented, how we fit into the overall scheme and how we can all find ways of making things work more harmoniously than is now the case.

A community must be able to decide for itself what policies and programs it needs to engender in order to keep itself fit and healthy. In extreme cases it might have to impose extreme measures on itself to achieve a healthy condition. Communities rife with crime, for instance, might choose to declare martial law to get things under control. Such a police state, enacted from within rather than imposed from without and enforced by members of the community, would be much more tolerable, would not threaten the law of the land with such extremism and could easily evolve into normalcy as soon as conditions warranted.

Some such communities have taken matters into their own hands with superb results. Citizens of a project in East St. Louis that had been under siege with theft, violence and drugs formed a committee with the power to decide who could, and who could not, take up residence within their borders. They were successful in cleaning things up by applying a policy of strict discrimination in regard to who would be allowed to be their neighbors. Such discrimination could not have been imposed by the government agency in charge of the project but administered by the people of the community upon their own it was an acceptable policy.

Government agencies residing in remote power centers which have no real interest in the communities under their purview cannot accurately prescribe the correct measures particular communities need to improve their conditions. The people living in the community know better than anyone what prescriptions to administer for the ailments they are inflicted with and no outside agency should be able to override the mandates they decide upon. They would, of course, be monitored, guided and influenced by the society at large.

People need to have a direct input with respect to their immediate surroundings so that they can effectively manage their environment. Being manipulated by remote centralized power structures distract and abstract us from immediate associations. Big business, big government, big media and big religion do more to distort people’s perception than to promote reason, balance and clear vision.

Within each of us resides a complex system of scales by which we weigh the appropriateness of what is going on around us. It is to everyone’s benefit that these individual systems be allowed to fully develop through their vigorous interaction with other individual systems to form and reform the social milieu within which the individuals reside. Being instructed and enveloped by remote power structures promoting a broad clinical socialization of society for their own interests weakens the necessary discriminatory apparatus of individuals which in turn erodes social cohesion.

One’s individual system of scales must be, first and foremost, fine tuned to one’s immediate environment in order to be able to weigh individual elements against each other, what is known about them, how they fit into the overall scheme, how one is effected by them, how one effects them and so on and so forth and through this process arrive at what action if any should be taken to deal with particular situations.

So, we have subjective views interacting with other subjective views to form objective harmony through which one feels one’s subjectivity vital and elevated in the social organism one is instrumental in forming. We see social order as growing out from ourselves rather than something to be imposed upon us. This conforms to the nature of things progressing from the microcosm to the macrocosm. If everyone as an autonomous arbiter of what is and is not conducive to a harmonious environment is not allowed to act as such then license is given, through the manipulation of centralized power structures, to those whose sense of harmony might be cacophonous.

The whole measure of a society can be taken by how it effects, and is affected by, the individual. In the United States individuals are primarily thought of as consumers to be cajoled, conned and/or compelled to buy any number of nicely packaged products from kitty litter to political platforms. Individuals are seen as quarry to be captured through the clever use of advertising techniques which operate on the irrational, the sensational, the unconscious level of our psyches. Hit them below the belt is the modus operandi. Or as one ardent member of a political movement once said, “When you’ve got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.”

We are continuously barraged with messages, images, and signals aimed at manipulating us in the crudest way possible. Appealing to our higher faculties would, one might suppose, be less democratic than appealing to the lowest common denominator. Anyway, one is jerked around this way and that way by government, business, media and a variety of crusading cults without any recourse for individuals to correspond in a mindful manner. The prevailing attitude of most every social, political, economic set and subset is “you are either for us or against us”.

One would think that perhaps the Media might be the place to provide a forum that would serve to find common ground between the various factions. However, the Media is merely a multi-ringed circus of personalities and events using the most salacious and titillating aspects of the social/political scene to garner the highest rating share possible. Media stars pose as the guardians of reason and rationality while merely serving to highlight the scenes of mayhem and madness they’re only too eager to broadcast. They are dutifully serving their master’s monstrous appetite for ratings.

The two aspects of the social dynamic, self-interest/collective interest must be vigilantly attended to so as to maintain the optimum balance between them at any given time. Such a balance cannot be arrived at from edicts and manipulations conjured up by a central authority that chronically or alternately favors one aspect of the social dynamic over the other. Going form under-regulating to over-regulating, for instance. It can only be arrived at through the vigorous interaction of individual members of communities, and their associations, as they strive to find and maintain an optimum balance at all times.

Individuals that realize the self-interest/collective-interest dynamic and how it serves them as well as the society-at-large are guarantors of a viable social organism.

The idea that the natural order of things could in anyway be instructive to human concepts of social/political organization would probably be repulsive to most people. (Edward O. Wilson’s sociobiology met with extreme resistance from all sides.) We like to believe our civilized states are constructs that have nothing to do with the natural world. They are conceived supra-naturally stemming from minds that hover above the nature of things. That is the attractive idea.

However, as we shall see, by coming to know the natural order of things we can get a better appreciation of how to order ourselves, our societies, our world.

As we have seen here in prior postings the natural order of things requires a collaboration of what we commonly perceive of as polarizations. Socialism and capitalism work best in combination with one another as has been and continues to be borne out in many countries around the world. The same is true of liberalism and conservatism. In either case it is not a question of installing the one over the other, as many extreme ideologues would have us believe. Rather it is a question of how to form a synergy of the two that will contribute to creating and maintaining optimum societal conditions.

In democracies like the U.S., where right and left factions continually vie for domination, social imbalances generally seesaw from one era to the next. An era being that period of time necessary for the dominant political party of the moment to once again prove that its one-sidedness cannot provide the coherent vision required to maintain a healthful balance of social and/or economic conditions. Depending on circumstances either the left or the right point of view is generally favored and those who identify with the prevailing view are riding high on the political pendulum absolutely convinced of the correctness of their position, while those with the opposing view wait for the pendulum to swing back their way so they can once again hitch a ride on the upswing. And when back on top they take it as proof positive that they were absolutely correct in their convictions all the time. And so on and so forth ad nauseam. A grand farce if there ever was one.

Of course, things do change and it’s good to be able to adjust from liberal to conservative policies, and vice versa, as conditions warrant. However, with the system as it presently is, the separate factions contribute more to the drastic swings of the pendulum than to affecting ongoing stable directions. They both vie for the seat of power in order to install a predominance of their particular policies. Any so-called bipartisanship amounts to compromises which have more to do with insular political maneuvering within the halls of power than with fashioning a balanced vision of things for the purpose of forming a cohesive society.

Liberals and conservatives are always the main competitors in political bodies everywhere, with each side contending that it alone has, at any given time, all of the solutions to all of the existing social problems. But what are these factions of liberal and conservative all about? Where does this demarcation of political viewpoints originate? Is it an a priori systemization, a product of the mind, of pure logic, installed for reasons of convenience and definition? Or is the liberal/conservative formulation an intrinsic characteristic of the material world that has been co-opted by civilized minds as a pure intellectual invention? I submit that it is the latter case. I will show that the concepts liberal and conservative are dynamic properties of the natural world and it is not by free choice that we assign them their place in our political arenas. Liberal and conservative margins are a natural dynamic that is found in every natural system.

The dictionary definition of liberal is; not bound by orthodox tenets or established forms, more permissive, a letting go, allowing for deviation from the norm. Conservative is defined as; strict adherence to established forms, low tolerance for change.

We define liberal and conservative as opposites and confine them to separate insular categories while losing sight of the fact that the one could not exist without the other. Indeed, looking at the nature of things it seems that nothing at all could exist without the ongoing interaction of this dynamic duo.

The liberal/conservative dynamic is not unique to politics. Its tension is universally pervasive from microbial to galactic systems. From the infinitesimal particles of quantum physics to the gargantuan galaxies of the universe itself. Everything is characterized by simultaneous tendencies for continuity and change, or operates between conservative and liberal guidelines.

From its inception, the evolution of the universe has been prescribed by the forces of attraction and repulsion. The repulsive force, dark energy, is responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe. The attractive force, gravity, is resistant to that expansion. The repulsive force is a force for liberal change that pushes things apart while the gravitational force is a force for conservative constancy that seeks to pull things together.

The repulsive force or dark energy, discovered by cosmologists Dr. Joel Primack of the University of California, Santa Cruz and Dr. Katherine Freese of the University of Michigan, permeates space, pushes against gravity and is the dominant cosmological force. That dominance is what makes the universe possible.

Indeed, for a universe to happen, only the repulsive force could so dominate. If gravity were dominant things would have remained totally conservative and virtually unchanging. The dominance of gravity would not provide a meaningful role for the repulsive force. A dominant repulsive force, however, allows room for things to happen, allows for change and allows gravity a partnership in the revelation of our universe.

The same holds true for the political field, as well. An ultra-conservative government, as a force of gravity, would not allow for change and any sign of liberalism would be crushed. Governments based on the free play of contesting ideologies allow for periodic dominance of either the liberal or conservative tendency. The liberal tendency seems to be generally dominant in free societies because it allows room for necessary change. States, like the Soviet Union, that are overwhelmingly resistant to change do not fare so well.

Of course, it should be noted here, that an ultra-liberal system allowing change for change sake could not work either. It would lack the necessary continuity to hold itself together and would soon disintegrate into total chaos. So, like the formation of our universe, our political realm is defined by an expansive/gravitational, repulsive/attractive, liberal/conservative dynamic. And, again, such dynamics are found throughout the nature of things.

Galaxies began as a liberal free-for-all mix of hydrogen and helium atoms trapped in pockets of gravity. The action of the gravitational force is eventually able to define particular galaxies and form their individual stars.

Stars themselves are masses of chaotic liberal change held in place by the force of gravity. A star is formed when an enormous amount of hydrogen gas collapses in on itself around a particular center of attraction. As it contracts the gas heats up and becomes a force for expansion. A balance between expansion and contraction is arrived at and the result is a controlled ongoing nuclear explosion. A star, in a sense, is in a liberal rush to change into something other than what it is. It seems hell bent on burning out as fast as possible, to self-destruct, to let go of itself completely while its gravitational force serves to conserve it as a nuclear furnace through time that manufactures a liberal array of new atoms which are all very conservative in their make up.

In a dying star the liberal and conservative forces go their own separate ways. The star explodes and some of its matter, freed from the conservative restraints of the core, is liberally jettisoned into space. The core of the star can then become an ultra-conservative neutron star, or black hole. Through its enormous gravitational pull a neutron star reduces all the matter in its gravitational field to fundamental particles. It’s like trying to take things back to conditions that existed at the time of the big bang. That is as reactionary as anything can get.

The material world is made up of particles that are also formed by a conservative/liberal dynamic. Inside a proton, a particle forming the nucleus of an atom, the liberal side of the equation holds sway. Its constituent repellent quarks are constantly involved in a complexity of constantly fluctuating interactions with the conservative gluons that corral the quarks as best they can. There is no accounting to a prescribed orderly existence, no commitment to an established order. However, the proton itself, comprised of these frenzied quarks, is an extremely stable, conservative object for which any variance in its ongoing consistency has yet to be detected. The proton’s stability has been calculated to continue for ten million million million million million years.

The rules that govern the linking of atoms to one another are also very conservative. The resulting molecular structures, however, amount to a very liberal array of material forms. Everything that exists, then, is a result of a dialogue between conservative and liberal tendencies.

DNA and the proteins they code for are highly conservative in structure and performance while the resultant biosphere is highly liberal in its resplendent variety. The overall integrity of genetic mechanisms is maintained between liberal and conservative elements, as in agents that favor mutation and those that favor invariance. A workable balance between the two elements must be maintained in order for life to endure and evolve.

If agents in favor of invariance were too conservative life could not have evolved passed the cellular colony stage. If the liberal elements, the agents for change, i.e., mutation, had held sway, every cell reproduced would have been so radically different from the previous one that no agreeable constitution could have been arrived at in order to produce a coherent life form beyond those of individual cells.

Likewise, if primitive groups of hunter/gatherer/scavengers were totally conservative affairs totally bereft of any liberal tendencies whatsoever we would still be living in caves.

Our freedom lies in using our intelligence to determine how the liberal/conservative dynamic can best be configured at any given time. That is, constantly evaluating what we need to be conservative about and what is best left to a liberal approach, tempered with the knowledge that neither liberalism nor conservatism, in and of itself, qualifies as a stand alone societal operating system. Such a regimen, if humanly possible, would serve to eliminate the extraneous noise in the political arena due to unwarranted claims of absolute righteousness from either side of the aisle. It would also encourage a more realistic overview of political organization and its relationship to society as a whole.

Political ideologies are not objective. They cannot in and of themselves show us the way to an optimum social organization. No particular ism is above the social landscape. They are part of it. No ism is capable of molding a viable society according to its precepts alone. History has demonstrated this fact time and again but it’s a lesson we seem incapable of learning. That’s one reason why history seems to be stuck in a vicious cycle.

We are caught up in a power game. Politicians seek power to try to impose a one-sided view on society rather than to use their power to benefit the society as a whole. Presently we are too factionalized, too much at war with ourselves, wielding particular isms like clubs to try and clobber those wielding different clubs. We need to be able to see how isms can effectively work together. That is where the real power lies.