(continued from Solving Politics, Part I)
Why are political cycles ruinous?
Because the political cycle isn’t steady-state.
Orbital decay is real.
PROBLEM II: POLITICS MOVES IN _RUINOUS_ CYCLES
As the political cycle repeats, it degrades.
Third layer:
(Orbital decay is real.)
Let’s lay off the bullet points, and have a long-form look at why.
When us/them tensions rise within a society, tribal divisions sharpen. This is not so much a fact of life as it is a force of nature. If tensions rise far enough, civility starts to break down, societal cohesion destabilizes, and (eventually) small patches of violent conflict begin to break out.
Worse, the problem is self-escalating. As the perception of personal security decreases, tribal identities become more and more important. Us/them divisions begin to harden in place. Anyone caught near the borders is forced to declare sides. Armed conflicts, both rhetorical and otherwise, widen and deepen.
“Us/them,” with one set of rules for us (and a separate set for them)
“Live/let live,” so long as they aren’t bothering us too much
“Other tribes” are blamed for whatever goes wrong. But if things go sufficiently wrong, internal “us/them” purges are carried out in hopes of restoring tribal purity. Further suspicions and subdivisions are bred by each new purge, as the splintering process repeats itself on a smaller and ever nastier scale.
Worse yet, orbital decay is an accelerating process.
A tribally destabilizing civilization becomes progressively more paranoid as it atomizes, making it far more vulnerable to political manipulation. This too is an escalating process.
Political power is traditionally maintained by rewarding your allies, punishing your enemies, and co-opting or discrediting your potential rivals; not by crafting broad-based political solutions to society’s problems. As more and more political power is poured into the battle for tribal consolidation, predictable consequences—partisan mistrust, rampant corruption, apathy, confusion, and civic disengagement—arise in the society at large. The bad drives out the good, as decent people are hounded from political power, or give up seeking it altogether.
Worse yet, at some point the entire political apparatus closes off, forming its own incestuous tribe. Coalitions shift as players rise and fall from media grace (and make no mistake, the media are players), but blame-shifting, cronyism, purges, and general nastiness remain endemic as tribalism takes open hold, increasingly transitioning from “under the table” to “over the counter.” The political system exists for its own sake now, and its original purposes have been cast by the wayside.
As the positional battle within the closed political system continues to intensify, the priorities of the active players transition from problem-solving to vote-buying as they scramble to secure their places at the high-stakes table.
By now at least four mutually reinforcing societal dynamics are in play:
As a long-term strategy, influence-peddling requires first capturing and then maintaining a portfolio of dependent constituencies, which means systematically NOT solving their problems;
The ever-increasing sums of cash needed to stay in the game must be variously raised, taxed, regulated, solicited, extorted, diverted from infrastructure projects, or otherwise borrowed wholesale against society’s accumulated wealth;
Some people begin to say “why should I work at all, if they are giving me free money?”
Others ask “why continue to work hard, if they are just going to take from me everything I earn?”
The ratchet continues to tighten. Work ethic, self-reliance, honesty, and personal accountability decline all across the population, while disillusionment and dependency continue to rise, fueling further tribal destabilization. Bit players are squeezed out or co-opted by the big fish (who are themselves already co-opted), leaving fewer and fewer honest brokers. More and more money flows into the political system for less and less societal gain. Infrastructure begins to fail.
Last layer:
(Too late to matter, the death spiral becomes apparent.)
Those who can afford it make good their planned escapes, taking their expertise and as much of their wealth as they can. And as the money runs out and production grinds to a halt, the political players finally, belatedly, begin realizing that they can no longer safely dismount from the ravenous societal tiger that they themselves have created. The only alternative is to tighten their grip and ride on, hoping that something—anything!—might happen along to save them.
Unfortunately, whatever shows up isn’t likely to be all that interested in saving anybody. A society that auto-cannibalizes its own accumulated human capital tends to leave itself wide open to foreign interference on a variety of scales, and few of them are benign. If powerful and hungry neighbors are present, then raids, invasions, or even outright annexations can be expected. If not, then the splintering process may simply continue indefinitely, as things continue to fall further apart. If that long slow drop has a bottom, a hard look at headlines and at human history suggests it has not yet been plumbed.
You see?
“Who decides?” is a society-destroying black hole of a question.
RECAP: POLITICS MOVES IN RUINOUS CYCLES
Appropriately enough, the just-described second great problem of politics can be restated in the language of orbital mechanics:
Shared momentum keeps society in orbit.
Social friction exerts a drag upon that momentum.
If too much momentum is lost, society spirals into the black hole.
Politics is the art of maintaining shared momentum (by managing social friction).
But “us/them” political messaging CREATES social friction…
Remember, social friction isn’t caused by simple tribalism or factionalism! Instead, it’s caused by universal disagreement over exactly how our tribal and factional boundaries should be redrawn. That’s why you can’t solve it by picking a winner.
This observation holds true across all possible political systems.
But then, that’s the value of an all-purpose, constraint-driven political map, isn’t it?
“Stop wasting your energy on things that CANNOT be solved or avoided,” constraints tell us, “and shift your focus to the things that CAN.”
THE EMERGING VALUE OF AN ALL-PURPOSE MAP
So far, our dual constraints have gifted us with
a definition,
Politics is the art of managing social friction
two of the three great problems of politics,
Politics moves in cycles (see the previous post)
Those cycles are ruinous to society (see THIS post)
three non-answers,
4/5 of the political cycle is fully constrained
stable “us/them” political solutions cannot be found
“us/them thinking” is hardwired into humanity
and, via the red arrow, an increasingly defined solution space:
human universals, to replace “us/them social managing”
consensus, to defuse social friction
self-evident observation, to counter distrust
That is, we MUST search for political solutions at the triple intersection of consensus, universality, and self-evident observation.
For that is the ONLY place where politics can be solved.
“Okay,” you ask, “but what happens if we don’t solve politics?”
“Can’t we just muddle through?”
CONSEQUENCES OF FAILURE
“Why should I even care about universal political constraints?” You might ask. “Us/them politics has gotten humanity this far. It’s a tough slog, but it’s the only game in town. Why not just accept the game and keep playing as usual?”
First, because all “us/them” politics must spiral into the society-destroying black hole. If there is any chance you might be around when it does, you SHOULD care, because the results tend to be, shall we say, personally unpleasant.
Human societies collapse whenever the dominant “us” coalition:
loses its ability to keep “them” at arm’s length
fragments itself by defaulting on its own promises
suffers both fates at once
Being there at that time is not something most people are equipped to handle.
“Okay, but supposing I retreat to a more philosophical plane,” you might say. “Human history is turbulent. Fortunes rise, and fortunes fall. One coalition fragments, and another emerges. Yes, occasionally huge bubbles form, persist for a long time, and then burst, but the overall picture is one of exuberant, continuous rebirth,” you might say. “Win some, lose some. I can’t change it, so why worry?”
The answer to that question brings us to the third great problem of politics, that great and growing double-edged sword:
P.III: THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY.
(to be continued, again)