Let's Prehend
A Manual of Human Ecology and Culture Design

Chapter 5: POLITICS, The Management of Society

"a kinder, gentler nation, ... a thousand points of light."
—Peggy Noonan

Needs and Wants

An objective look at human needs and how they are met shows that things have gone very badly for the human race in the past millennia, worse yet in the recent century, and horribly in the last decade. Human needs, as Maslow and others have outlined, include security of food, clothing and shelter, freedom from fear, harassment and torture. Above such security, humans deserve a rich and sustainable culture that does not destroy their social and ecological support systems.

What people decide to report they remember they want is poor data on which to manage society. Studies and common sense suggest that what people say they think they want does not predict the experience they will have when they get it. Happiness, human fulfillment is not so easily found. People in particular and world culture in general need more help than they are getting.

But given a healthy culture, humans enjoy deep and enriching lives. Relying on superficial wants and decisions is irresponsible of low value, Ei, and often pathological, Ai. [From Chapter 2]

Evaluation and Diagnosis

The task of politics is to manage the reconstruction of organic social life, ROSL, as explained in Chapter 4, SOCIOLOGY. The Evaluation and Dissociation charts help to analyze and discuss what's going on - human ecology - as well as what to do about it - culture design. The E and D charts are extremely generalized and can be applied to any complex system, situation or culture, small scale or large. Well meaning people offer ample suggestions, but without a framework for thought and discussion little progress is made. How are people to know what is happening and what might be done? How can we evaluate and diagnose the variety of explanations and proposals, much less design and direct the reconstruction of organic social life? That is the task of human ecology and culture design.

Modern Abstract Culture

[Brackets refer to essays herein and other sources.]

For example, the United States [OOPS] seems to be the main model for modern life, called Modern Abstract Culture, MAC. Most of the world's people are emulating U. S. as the frontier of modernism. MAC is driven by the Compulsion to the Abstract Life, CAL. Common evaluation of MAC in U. S. is well studied: How did this weird and pathological system of high rise buildings [HIGH RISE], slums [WARD SYSTEM], slurbs, cars [GRIDLOCK], wars [GEE], and waste develop?

Typical explanations describe the financing of buildings, development of suburbs, expansion of `services', outsourcing of production, commercialization of care, commoditization of people. We objecivists don't call it blame, just source. Did it happen because "When Corporations Rule the World", by maniacal managers, socialist bureaucrats [CGMs], corrupt politicians?

Is CAL and its MAC caused by the system or the people? RIDly folks (Rationalist-Idealists) look for causes, but objectivists try to transcend tragic reductionism and work to describe the complex organic interaction of people and systems.

Corporate managers internalize corporate values [ICE], putting aside human values. They are obliged to sell their souls to the system. When they do not, of if they resist, others eagerly replace them. Politicians must play the same game if they are to succeed [CGMs]. Since elections depend on money, their constituency is made of the donors who support them. Hence their role is to collect and distribute the nations wealth. How policy is made, how capital is allocated, how communities are designed? These processes are not easy to describe, but plenty of good scholarship is available.

The design and direction of the culture with so little regard to human values, as explained in earlier chapters, is an E chart analysis. There is too little development, Ei, of images, discourse, design and construction, too little to adequately deal with human values. Worse yet, no one is in charge. The builder of suburbs is just doing his job, the building and zoning codes may get some attention, but humans are unable to take a broader and deeper responsibility.

Healthy humans take responsibility for their lives, their actions, and their support system. To deny taking such human responsibility is sick. Also, it leads to a shallow and desperate life. Humans are the most adaptable and adjustable of species. People are obliged to work ever harder to adjust to increasingly pathological systems. Partly because of the gradually increasing stress, withdrawing inward to self focusing becomes more compulsive, and fewer people can afford a broader concerns. Few have the opportunity, or permission, to take broader human responsibility.

Worse yet, the people who have more power and the systems that do have more control, increasingly dissociate themselves from the human values. The medical system [NOTAM], prison system, military system [WE], etc. all exhibit terrible dissociations from human values and needs. Battered by outrageous fortune, people are often too traumatized to face such responsibility and react with fear and anger when so challenged

Chapter 6, ECONOMICS, explores the displacement of human responsibility by market mechanisms [HOG, HAND OF GOD].

Objective Politics

This objectivist approach seeks to describe political processes without regard to personal proclivities and pet projects. Let's try to transcend subjectivist indulgences and proceed with the task at hand, as objectively as we can. This is not about opinion, it's about description. Don't just `disagree' with a description. Instead, please try to correct and complete the description, as any objectivist scientist would try to do.

Politics is about government, the management of society. Objectivists, as explained in Chapter 1, REALITY AND PROCESS, describe how political systems work. Using this approach, let's analyze human ecology, and apply it to culture design. Then let's use the analytical charts as described in Chapter 2, REALITY AND PROCESS toward increasing value, Ei, and health, Ai, of political process. The E chart pictures the complexity of political processes. The D chart analyzes political health and disease.

Subjective Indulgences

The subjective aspect of politics is particularly potent because it taps ancient springs of tribal loyalty, often called `patriotism'. Humankind's deep need for tribal loyalty is sorely frustrated by the breakdown of public trust and the adversarial nature of modern abstract culture, MAC. People thirst for such loyalty and will tolerate considerable pain and distress to indulge it. Some people even sacrifice their lives and the lives of others when called upon to conform to their tribal loyalties.

Subjectivists might point out that current U. S. and world governments are inadequate and incompetent to manage mankind, that the institutions are abstract financial systems increasingly consolidating and dominating humankind, that the humans who manage the ruling systems are corporate robots or subhuman zombies.

But such "ain't it awful" (AIA) descriptions, though accurate, are of no use to remedy these tragic trends. The AIAs seem to deny themselves permission to face the problems, like whimpering children unable to approach mature human responsibility. Only an objective approach, as attempted in this chapter, offers tools and operations to prevent or postpone the impending doom of humankind and our supporting ecosystem.

Quasi Tribal Process, QTP

From our evolutionary origins, people have a basic need to participate in Quasi-Tribal Process, QTP, that is, political life. Many citizens feel cringes of political frustration and suffer 'alienation', isolation from community and from the body politic. Nevertheless, some small attention penetrates this pall of pain and attends to politics. This paucity of political participation results in a primitive public opinion, insufficient to deal with significant issues. Understandably, less than half the citizens convince themselves to accept that crumb of political experience: voting for the lesser of evils. [QUANDEM, QUANTIFICATION OF DEMOCRACY] Popular politics, like advertising and entertainment, attracts some of out most brilliant minds, who are willing to devote themselves to such tasks. [ICE, INTERNALIZATION OF THE CORPORATE ETHIC]

Imagine human beings throughout the rigors of evolutionary life always supported and enriched, more or less, by quasi tribal process, QTP. But in modern cultures the quantity of QTP is low and that deprivation is a loss to their security and quality of life. Political happiness results from engagement in QTP. A dearth of political participation is a deprivation of this contribution to full human life.

Political Value, E Chart of Political Power

Let's try an objective look at political systems, starting with the classic hierarchy of power, using the analytical scheme in Chapter 2, REALITY AND PROCESS. Let's postpone attention to the psychology of politics to Chapter 7, IDEOLOGY.

Starting with the E chart of politics: The intensity, I, measures political importance, influence, power, wealth, auctoritas, or whatever term is useful. The term `power' seems not quite right for the I parameter, but let it suffice temporarily for this gross I measure of political process. Recall from the scheme in Chapter 2, Ei is the measure of complexity, and value. Value is a quantity of politics that is more or less adequate to the tasks of the society. These tasks reflect human values as outlined in Chapters 3 and 4 - psychological values and the sociological values that support, nurture and enrich them. For a deeper look at complexity, check out Wikipedia.

While I can be measured by power or degree of integration, political value must include the E substructures, the people involved. For example, as hominids developed speech, I, they formed larger groups, E. Similarly, Homeland Security relies on high tech I to keep track of all those E.

Let E represent the number of people at any level of I, such as one E ruler, 10 Es of Cabinet heads, 100 Es of Senators, etc. Let's start with this simplified E chart of political structure:

The ruler, whatever she is called, is the person with the highest I, - could be the president's husband, or his wife as in the case of Nancy Reagan, or Vice President Cheney. Notice this E chart does not include such items as President Kennedy's Addison's disease with the required dose of cortisone as an important factor in his political decision making. This is only a tool, not a truth.

The oligarchy step may have more or less power, I, and also more or fewer people, E. The jagged line represents any particular political system down through the regional governments to neighborhood organizations, if any. Each level has an I bump of less power than the one above. This same analysis can be used to draw a curve depicting the United Nations or small music clubs. For practice, contrast the political power structure of a string quartet with a symphony orchestra on the E chart.

Any political system or subsystem can be described by the jagged line. The bottom of the line, 8,1, is the total population, E, that part of the polity sometimes called `citizenry', `subjects' or `masses'. In similar E charts, the E might refer to larger groups, such as Gerrymandered districts in a legislature, or nation-states in the United Nations.

Reluctant Reductionisms

Reviewing from Chapter I: notice that the E chart does not represent the `substructure' in any of these broad categories. It makes no differentiation among the overlapping organisms of government, business, associations, religions, etc., but lumps them together. Most often they coordinate power closely with each other, making this oversimplification more tolerable. The circle-and-arrow charts common with systems analysts helps to visualize that. Since this chart has only two dimensions, this simplification may imply to the neophyte that political systems are simpler than they really are.

Another distortion of this example is the narrow focus on the nation state, ignoring the integrative functions of the international organizations such as the multinational corporations, the International Monetary Fund, the Gang of Seven or Eight or Nine, Interpol, the United Nations, etc.. Imagine the Global Economy, GE - pronounced as in "gee whiz" - as the subsystem most in charge of controlling the ecopolitical process of humanity. GE is the controlling minor system, MS. [GLOBAL ECONOMY, GE and notes on Appiah, Barnet, Brecher, Dicken, Gates, Morrison, Sale, Thurow, and Vazquez - and many current sources.]

Alas, such reductionism is essential given the nature of mind. We can only continue, acknowledge the problem and courageously proceed with the objectivist task.

Visual Aids

Other charts different from these E and D charts are often used to display relationships in political systems. For example, many civics books describe the branches of government, their authority and feedback relationships with block-style charts, with lines to indicate the relationships. These civics charts often resemble E charts, with the power at the top and authority dribbling downward. Similarly, political anthropologist use labeled circles and arrows to picture the flow of money from the corporations through the lobbyists to the elected representatives and its feedback to `supply-side' incentives. Psychologists use similar sociograms to represent communications in groups such as congressional committees, classrooms or squads. Such simplifications, necessary as they are to our DIM human minds, need not discourage us or dissuade us from proceeding, objectively.

Burdens Of Rationalism - Idealism, BORs

Resistance to using Chart analysis of political process derives from several sources. The rationalist-idealist, RIDs tradition, prefers words that refer to words, not to words describing operating processes. They ask, "What do you mean exactly, what is the definition of this term?", thereby discounting this intellectual tool. Have sympathy for their retreat from infinite complexity into the DIM demands of mind.

This peculiar activity called `verbal proof' may be a hangover from our history. Worse yet, it goes back to the beginning and rests on the basic nature of mind as an information processing machine. Succumbing to this DIM demand, the RIDs focus on the formal aspects of politics, often avoiding what goes on under the table, unless it makes good copy.

A more anthropological and psychological view might even be considered disloyal, or at least abstruse, a threat to the verbal belief systems at the core of RIDs' DIM life. More expansive and inclusive views threaten a contracted ideology. That threat is roughly proportional to the amount of stress in the culture, analogous to the fragility of the mentally ill.

Thus, political fragility is another example of the fragility of contraction, FOC. In the more contracted mode, people may try to protect their integrity from this threat. The contracted RIDs escalate their contraction, according to the principle of the Dynamic of Escalating Contraction, DEC, as we see with our neocons. The RIDly alleviation of this pain, projects authoritarianism into intellectualism as a way of escaping distressful analysis.

Objectivist analysis must not be used as an excuse to fixate on mere words, nor to express either loyalty or disdain. These popular subjectivist indulgences may be common, but they are little help in describing things deeply, or in developing healthy discourse. Similarly, the objectivist must be careful and polite lest the whole effort be rejected or condemned, and the participants jailed or audited. Let this author's mild and modest approach serve as an example.

Subjective awareness does not necessarily describe the objective political relationships. If we limit objective analysis to what people say they think they feel, we are in a sorry state, as described in FOCUS GROUPS, FOGS. To accept people's primitive ideas of politics as objective would degrade analysis. Politics, like much of life, is subconscious, with occasional partial awareness. The sex lives of British Royalty or American presidents, the transfer of funds from business people to politicians, these and most other operations usually remain politically unconscious, though they can be raised to the level of public awareness. (MULTINATIONAL MONITOR, and many other sources.) The analysis of people's subjective political experience is the objective psychology of politics, called IDEOLOGY, Chapter 6.

Animals have politics too. Zoologists have a field day studying them. Zoologists are less hampered by idealist constitutions and common cliches. Animals cannot distract them with a world of words. The zoologists' task is difficult, their efforts are laborious and heroic, but it's easier for them to be more objective. But even they are burdened by human projections, as disclosed by the little boy at the zoo who asked his mother, "What did they do wrong?". Zoo theory uses charts to explain the power and cooperation among animals in their ecosystem. Zoo theory is a useful model in politics. Let's emulate their objectivity to penetrate the cliches of the day.

Human politics is our field, closer to home. Politics began long before we were human. Our evolutionary ancestors and our contemporary primate cousins suggest a wide variety of group processes that we might well call politics. Let's look at politics from its early stages, as the political evolution of homonotsosapiens, an E chart image. The evolutionary biologists are busy on this.

We began as HUnter-Gatherers, HUGs. Over the millennia we increasingly intervened in the natural environment to make life easier and better. We became AGriculturalists, AGs. What the *Tofflers call industrial, post-industrial and modern ages are elaborations of this basic theme. For an elemental look at political evolution, read HUGs, describing what politics was like long before the Roosevelts.

For a detailed explanation of how the present world populations seems to be divided between the wealthy north and the impoverished south. [OOPS, A BRIEF HISTORY OF MANKIND, and NEW ECONOMIC POLICY, NEP.]

Political Value, E Chart of Political Process

The term `evaluation' emphasizes the dynamic value inherent in any complex system. In a sense, every system and every subsystem has a values and a life of its own, LOO. People want to belong. Politicians want to stay in power. Governments want to persist. All systems want to continue their process, to survive, to expand in its positive direction, up-right on the E chart. This `valuing' is the inherent dynamic of the political organism. Such is the objective value of process, regardless of the subjective value of how one might feel about it. Subjectively, politicians experience politics their own way... .

People naturally organize themselves, if given a chance. Imagine political systems not as abstract structures but as living organisms. They grow, evolve, perhaps contract and break down. The principle of organic growth, OG, applies. Politics evolves, up right on the E Chart, as on Fig 5-2:

Review the dynamics of systems on the E Chart from Chapter 2.

Down-right is the isovalue line. As the number of cars increases, but the highways do not increase enough, there is no net increase in value and transportation is not improved. Using this chart, imagine the representation of gridlock, or better public transport. These examples take the lite approach, postponing such subjects as the Nazis and the current U.S. administration until we gain more mental strength and courage.

In modern culture, political evolution must respond to the complexity of modern society. Adequacy of government, an E chart measure of value, includes the provision of basic necessities and quality of life. Consider political adequacy as a quantity, measured in many ways by political scientists and others.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt formulated these basic human needs as freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from want and fear. [The "Four Freedoms" were Franklin D. Roosevelt's formulation for the nation and the world in his State of the Union Address on January 6, 1941, just before what Studs *Terkle describes as THE LAST GOOD WAR.]

If government is not Ei adequate, socio-economic subsystems (you name them) may become minor systems and lord it over everyone else. For example, drug companies and other medical businesses have make U. S. medical every expensive while health care deteriorates. Review the Dissociation of the Minor System in Chapter 2. [NOTAM, Notes On The Anthropology of Medicine.]

E Chart of Governments

Let's refer to the basic theory in Chapter 2, abstracting objective value. The up-right direction can represent the adequacy of government to manage humankind and its sustaining ecosystem. Imagine current governments at 5,5 center, barely able to get by, sorely inadequate to the tasks at hand. Worse than this simple lack of value: humankind's energies and Earth's resources are pathologically engaged in brutish wars and rapacious competitions, as depicted by the Diagnosis charts later in this chapter.

Practicing Political Value

Political evolution, like the evolution of life, is represented on an E chart by the line moving up right, the direction of positive value, toward (9,9): more people, E, times more integration, i, as in Fig 5-1, .

For practice charting political process, let's measure the number of people, E, times their interactions, i, by placing some political system in the center of an E chart. A simple increase in number of people would be a movement to the right on the E scale; and an increase in the integration, interdependence, or intensity of their relationships would be a movement upward on the i scale. A political party that gets elected goes up and to the right.

Up-right is the direction of positive value: as the population increases, E, the supporting integrative systems, i, increase toward (9,9). For example, as world population increases, the supply of food also increases.

Increasing population moves to the right as when people, E, from world over visit the United States when pregnant so that their offspring might have the birth certificate of empire. If the ruler gains more influence, her point on the line moves upward to 1,10. Any level of the political structure, state governments at 3,7 for example, can bulge to describe changes in E and i.

Political breakdown would be downward, i, such as when the trains don't run on time, the prisons are not safe, people lack food, clothing or shelter, and the ecosystem degrades. However if the population increases but the organization does not, they follow the curve downward to the right, the iso-value curve. If i increases, an improvement of transportation for example, they move up right, the positive value curve.

In the modern world the burgeoning technology accelerates political evolution, or devolution. Political evolution "allows but does not compel" dissociation from the supporting ecosystem. It seems to work out that way, not because of the technology, but because of the pathology, the compulsion to the abstract life, CAL. Political Ei, value without regard to dissociations, can make life better and richer for everyone, or sicker and poorer for many, as we so often see.

The classic issues of the individual vs the society, the problems of war, exploitation, degradation by modern abstract culture, MAC - all these are not simply E Chart value problems. These are Dissociation problems to be diagnosed on the D Chart, explained in the next section.

Political Pathology - D Chart of Political Process

In all complex systems, the i discontinuity is where the action is (iD). This action, from Fig 5-3, is the i step from the individual up to the political unit. All complex systems are in dynamic conflict between the controlling minor system, and its supporting subsystems. All governments manifest this dissociation of the minor system, DMS .

In politics, DMS includes the government vs the people, the individual vs the society, the powerful few vs the powerless many. These dissociations devolve into the warrior vs the producer, the victor vs the vanquished, the establishment vs the interloper, the creditor vs the debtor, the rich vs the poor, etc. Now and throughout history DMS is the basic dynamic, between the left Ei chart and the right Ei chart below.

On the E charts below, the high D curve on the left is referred to as `abstract' - it's a more dissociated system. The high A curve on the right is described as `organic' - It has a more gradual curve of political subprocess support systems. It's more complex. Abstract refers to the steep line, with a minimum of intermediary process, between the governors and the people. Call it Abstract Political Life, APL, loosely called `authoritarian'. Organic refers to the more gradually sloping line with graduated and overlapping subgroups from the top to the bottom of the political system, Organic Political Life, OPL, very loosely called `democratic'. [QUANDEM, Quantification of Democracy]

Organic politics is like organic gardening: add compost to the grass roots with face-to-face discussion, enlighten citizens with the sunshine of information, cultivate awareness by attending to important issues, irrigate with the water of coherent discourse, encourage growth with the heat of ferment. All this high A process enhances the bloom of a hundred flowers.

[The "Hundred Flowers" was a campaign lead by China's leader Mao Zedong in the late 1950s to encourage his previously passive and terrified populace to express themselves and upgrade their level of concern: "Let a hundred flowers bloom, a thousand fields of thought contend."]

Contrasting E CHARTS of Political Process, to derive the D CHART. Compare the slant:

In the left chart, we illustrate an abstract situation in which the individual and the total system are intact but the subsystems are barely operating. People are attended by, and attentive, to the top of government, but have little to do with middle levels. As with other complex systems, this process is described as `abstract', with high `i Dissociation, iD'.

The right-hand chart represents a more organic political system, with a complex of representative and communicative groups, high `i Integration, iI', called `Accord, A'. The move toward political health moves the curve from the steep left chart toward the gradual slope of right-hand chart. Organic politics means more small group and local participation. More people, E, involved in more politics at all levels of i means less alienation and apathy among the citizens.

RIDly Compulsions

Contrast this objectivist approach to the more common RIDs way of looking at it. (RIDs, Rationalist - IDealist, in Chapter I) Politicians are thought to be either corrupt or not corrupt. The hapless RID is tossed between these two Aristotelian extremes and lost in painful subjectivism . Obviously, politicians are always in between. Objectivists are obliged to look more closely at the human ecology of the situation in order to be able to intervene with the healthiest of culture designs.

Let's combine these two E charts into a single D chart below. The left side is the most abstract, like the left E chart above. The right side is the most organic, representing the more slanting curve of the right chart above. We hope this choice of terms grabs your attention, but please choose your own. The point is to avoid being enslaved by verbal rather than quantitative images. Just as reality is not made of words, so politics is not made of charts.

The i scale measures the intensity, integration or organization of the system. A measures the amount of organic process, and its opposite, D. We can use the words `power' and `harmony', since high D measures pressure and conflict of dissociation, whereas high A represents more cooperation and accord.

Let's use the new word `omnist' to refer to the high Ai condition. It derives from the Latin word for `all'. This word `omnist' means all-encompassing and totally responsible. Since humans are the highest Ei valued system, omnist also means concern for privacy and freedom of the individual, supported by government and culture. (We wanted to use the word `democracy', but it's been ruined.)

Such `total' concern and responsibility might be named `totalitarian', but unfortunately that term is already in common usage. `Totalitarian' commonly means `authoritarian', perhaps because our RIDly intellectual culture sees responsibility as pushing people around rather than structuring for cultural enrichment. Omnism avoids this problem by stressing that citizens personal security and development rests upon the protection and support of the general culture by government. (Later, this is a crucial issue in Chapter 9, EDUCATION)

To some folks, omnism looks like authoritarianism. People are understandably worried that political power is inherently limiting to `freedom'. The compulsion to the abstract life and its resulting modern abstract culture offer many examples of this threat. An omnist culture that expresses deeper freedom doesn't just survive and grow by itself. The expansion of personal freedom in organic political life and culture needs protection and planning by culture design.

Practicing Diagnosis

To practice this D chart analysis, consider the D-A parameter between these two extremes, from `abstract politics' to `organic politics'. Select a nation and describe which processes illustrate organic political life and which typify abstract politics.

For example, take two otherwise similar nation-states and compare their various abstract and organic components: in U. S. and Britain, the executive branches. Imagine why the British constitution is not written. Perhaps the British prefer the flexibility of a less written constitution and a lower i for the chief executive. This might be a reaction against continental Cartesian rationalism, or an assertion of organic process against RIDs. On a lower level of political life, compare drug war programs based on punishment to those based on therapy, a D-A parameter. [L. L. Whyte calls it the "Western dissociation".]

Our concern quickly broadens to include cultural aspects not usually considered political. Broader scope is an `intellectual' as opposed to a `rational' practice, inherent in the `objectivist' rather than the `idealist', view of politics.

The problem of reductionism burdens any discussion: Simple information, such as income distribution or voting rights, is easy to measure, and therefore tends to displace broader measures of the quality of political life. (Anthropologist Laura Nader in one study measured the quality of life by details such as the consumption of cut flowers and the amount of vacation time - a good-natured reductionism.) Concerns beyond welfare and security include identification with the greater group, meaningful ceremony, and participation in community projects, essentially `quasi-tribal process', QTP. Stuck with this reductionism, the contracted mind of RIDLY thinking reduces the vast human complex of Ei values toward narrow pursuit of wealth, simplistic patriotic images, and `gross' national product. "Gross" - in common parlance among the young - means crude and unpleasant. In economics, GNP, Gross National Product, is the total of goods and services produced, a distorting measure by the Commerce Department - but "growth" is not so simple.

Practice D Charts of Politics

To practice further, let's quantify organic political life on the D charts. What can be measured? Imagine a simple political representation: the absolute dictator would be on the high D side, an organic representative structure on the high A side. But look more closely and more anthropologically. In contrasting systems, how does the abstractness of an alienated electorate compare with the organic processes of a benevolent monarchy?

The most basic D-A measure in political diagnosis is the Power-Harmony parameter, PH, . For practice, analyze the most power-oriented political cultures. Nazi Germany comes to mind is a classic analysis of authoritarianism as it permeates politics, personality and culture. See the classic by *Adorno, THE *AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY, and *Fisher *AFTER THE FALL, Germany, the Germans, and the Burdens of History. "Fisher confirms all the cliches of a pushy, intolerant, rule-abiding, power-loving, deferential German. ... The sum of his observations supports the ongoing German project of demonizing all aspects of East German life and history, including the very idea of socialism....". Many more modern works study this issue in depth. Rafael *Ezekiel's THE *RACIST MIND, Portraits of Aryan Nation and Racist Mind, finds most such young men have lost a parent, especially a father, early in life. They need reconstructed organic social life, ROSL, perhaps more than most.

Within each political culture is an infinite complexity and dynamic. Each aspect can be analyzed for its power-harmony, PH. The Bill of Rights, for example, attempts to guarantee minimum security to all citizens - a level playing field in a bitter battle. The democrat tries to organize people to exercise power over their government. The omnist seeks to diffuse the power throughout the culture in the organic manner, OG. [LETS PARTY]

Pathologies of Politics

Let's consider using the D chart image by suggesting various dissociations. One dissociation is the split between the managers and the "frames". For example, how do the frames of reference in common political discourse diverge from the problems of the culture? The objective problems, as outlined in Chapter 4, SOCIOLOGY and elsewhere include the increasing breakdown of organic culture, the human support system, and the ecological support system. Yet common framing concerns the issues of the day: the economy, the wars, etc. Some religious fundamentalist, while reconstruction healthy organic quasi tribal life, perceive the breakdown of culture as important, but often frame it as abortion, gay marriage, etc., frames that have little impact except in elections.

Another example is the dissociation of the management from the elected government. It may be necessary given that the electorate's frames are so dissociated, but crucial issues such as war, education, community design, and the general allocation of capital are not addressed by the elected government. It seems that the congress's job is to collect and disperse the money in response to their constituents, not the electorate - the lobbied interests. That leaves the electoral process as entertainment, and the politicians as stars. See a suggested solution in LETS PARTY.

Similarly, some presidents are in harmony with the military industrial complex and the multinational financial community, such as Bush the younger in his support of Cheney's war. In contrast, JFK incorrectly assumed he was the Commander in Chief and forbade the elaborately planned conquest of Cuba by stopping active U. S. support after the Bay of Pigs. As a result, he lost his life, as explained in the movie. Fiction can often afford to be more accurate than non-fiction.

Considering these dissociations on the D chart may offer some help in describing these processes more accurately and completely.

Stress & Contraction, the DEC of Political Systems

One component driving political evolution is stress. High stress challenges the organism and a usual response is contraction. It's the Dynamic of Escalating Contraction, DEC, from Chapter 2.

Imagine examples of stress induced contraction. The Versailles treaty resulted in runaway inflation and contributed to the rise of Hitler, our favorite example of a high iD contracted system. Notice a RID might deny systemic cause and regress to subjective defects, rather than describing this as a sub process of extremely complex organisms. The RID's subjective distress drives this intellectual contraction.

For example, consider the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia following the carpet bombing of most of the country side, with more bombs than US used on Germany in WWII. The peasants escaped to PnomPhen, which was not being bombed but rather provided with food and supplies by U. S. air lifts. But when the war ended, the overcrowded cities had only a few days food. Any responsible government would have to evacuate the city to prevent mass starvation. Such stress drives people crazy, with dire results: the Pol Pot regime killed almost as many as the Americans had.

The contracted leadership of the Military Industrial Complex (a term Kurt Vonegut gave to his friend Dwight Eisenhower, as he mentioned on his Charlie Rose interview.) promotes fear in the population. The 9/11/01 destruction of the World Trade Center was rarely acknowledged as a retaliation, but instead furnished the opportunity for the next program on the military menu, unrelated though it turned out to be. The repertoire of contractive modes we see in the media continues to drive the frightened populace to justify, tolerate and support endless military actions. United States, with a quarter of the World's capital and consumption, consumes much of this increasing world wealth to maintain and expand its contractive modes.

Any political culture or aspect of it can be placed on the D CHART OF POLITICAL PROCESS, Fig 5-5. Let leave a chart unlabeled, and let the readers quantify and compare the various governments on this chart. I makes for a lively discussion.

'Omnist' describes the more integrated politic, operating harmoniously on every level: rule by conciliation and accord, (9,9) on the D chart. `Authoritarian' refers to adversarial rules and interpersonal competition: rule by force and law, (1,9) on the D chart. Both are high on the i scale, but on opposite sides of the A scale.

In this sense, omnist political cultures offer the most security and support for individual growth and development, just as an organic forest is more complex and adaptable than a tree farm.

In contrast, the authoritarian position holds that the elite must be supported by the subjugation of others, a relationship that is often implicit and denied. Their `high culture' is sustained by the labors of the unfortunate. Their creative life requires the freedom from drudgery. Their freedom enables their contraction of responsibility. Their mental health is preserved by limiting their empathy to their own class. This authoritarian style derives from and supports the warrior ethic, as explained in, WARRIOR ETHIC, WE. This contrast may be represented by the Democrat and Republican Parties, if only the discourse were not so degraded and undeveloped, as discussed in IDEOLOGY.

It's important to analyze the D chart difference between a highly organized fascistic political system and a highly organized omnist system. Both have party organization all the way down to the individual, each person participates and develops quasi-tribal loyalty to the system. Yet the fascist system is on the dissociated side, relying on power, intimidation, exclusion, and fear: Machiavellian at best, Hitlerian at worst. All citizens try to adjust to both systems, each in her own way.

In a more organic system, the communication is toward agreement, power is moved down the i scale as much as possible, it's called "subsidiarity". Leadership may be strong, but communication goes up as well as down the i scale hierarchy. Similarly, as authoritarian adversarial modes decrease, people become more democratic and cooperative, moving to the right on the D Chart.

Measures of Democracy

If we are to be serious about politics, this term `democracy' demands attention. Let's free the term from its RIDly strangle hold and try to give it some objective meaning. Consider objectively processes involved in the common terms: voting, power, media, polls, and lobbyists. See QUANDEM, QUANTIFICATION OF DEMOCRACY.

The culture design approach is to raise the level of discourse, relate the content of the discourse to important issues. Then foster participation for those interested in politics to gather, enlighten themselves and each other. Then empower the activists to communicate up and down the levels of power. But allow those citizens not active to benefit from the process without guilt or disloyalty, always welcoming them into the party.

Burden Of Old Bureaucracy, BOOB

The contraction-expansion dynamic, CED, is especially evident in the evolution of government. Each bureaucracy, whether government or private, has a dynamic oscillation between its survival and aggrandizement (high iD), and its service and accord, (high Ai). Economists such as Milton Friedman assert that government is contractive, repeating the classic, "That government is best which governs least, governs best." In strange agreement, the Marxists and others imagine government being replaced with organic management, and call it "the withering away of the state." Bureaucratic contraction may proliferate now, at the climax of the WARRIOR ETHIC, WE, but as the reconstruction of organic political life, ROPL, proceeds, a more organic bureaucracy can grow. Bureaucracy, like death and taxes, will always be with us. It is an essential minor system of the political organism. But it can carry more or less of the DMS. The Bureaucratic Syndrome, BS, needs constant attention or it gets worse, iD.

Without reform, BOOB stultifies the individual, depriving the clerks of their most human qualities of empathy, intelligence, sensitivity, flexibility, adaptability. Instead, officials often fall into power-grabbing and status-seeking, degrading the quality of the organization and their own lives. The result is a system gone mad as explained in CLERKS GONE MAD, CGMs, .

The advancing technologies of communication enable a Development of Meaning in Politics, DOMP. The turning point has already passed. The emphasis on ecology in the media, and the declarations of an environmentalists, enhance this new paradigm. Granted, even though the present scene may look like computer fascism to the likes of author Jerry Mander, and the ecosystem continues to degrade, and the threat of war haunts us, surely the governing of mankind will turn around just in time.

[In May 1993, Hillary R. Clinton. used the term "*POLITICS OF MEANING" as discussed on PBS TV's INSIDE WASHINGTON. Conservative Charles Krauthammer, MD Psychiatrist, said the term gave him the "willies", a paranoid RIDs reaction by a Denial Ideologist.]

Reconstruction of Organic Political Life, ROPL

There are no firm rules to follow, no strict directives or absolute beliefs, there are only quantitative evaluations and diagnoses of politico-cultural systems. Similarly, there are no necessary temperaments or virtues or laws or credos, there are only human beings in all their glorious variety and versatility. Nevertheless, images of the Reconstruction of Organic Political life, ROPL, may be helpful - not prescriptive, just encouraging. One sample is LETS PARTY, .

Leadership is needed to focus attention and present the images, up-right on the E chart. Imagine an image of `grass roots democracy' through the mass media, presented so that people understand the program. Then, let each and any small group, neighborhood, work, family, church, etc. share their concerns, begin to develop and reflect images of how the good society might operate. A variety of feedback systems from direct representative hierarchies, opinion poles, focus groups, web sites etc. develops the discourse, `vertically integrates', VI. That's political evolution, Ei. Leadership can allow consensus to grow, values to deepen, empathies to expand, responsibilities to mature.

As political discourse matures, words take on more meaning. Just as organic political process grows, so people's mental political model develops. The public discourse and the citizen's thinking evolve. With lively discourse, the rigidities of belief and the artificiality of cliches are displaced with generalizations based on real experiences and observations. Authoritarian politics and malicious mentalities mellow in a nurturing and supportive culture. Dynamic vigor drives the political system toward reconstruction of organic life, not only omnist politics but also sustainable economics. All aspects of ideological life, from the most practical recycling through community development and including arts ceremonies and religions enrich and support each other.

Organic politics increases Grass Roots Responsibility, GRR. For example, formal law-from-on-high abstains from such issues as abortion, euthanasia, and victimless crimes, leaving responsibility to the grass roots. If individual and local freedom is abused, some form of Grievance Democracy, GD, drives the problem up a ladder. GD means that you don't have to go to most meetings except to complain - because management is so good, so honest, so closely watched, so organicly developed, that you don't have to worry.

Free enterprise, community construction, and enrichment of culture should be released from the bondage of big government and big business. Let the people who live the life and do the work make as many of the decisions as possible, broadening the base on the E chart, toward accord on the D chart. Pushing process to its lowest practical level is called "subsidiarity". See LIBERTYVILLE, for a culture design fantasy.

Organic political life rests upon organic social life. A political organization which lacks function becomes thin, degenerate, and undemocratic, resembling modern political parties. Therefore, the reconstruction of organic social life, ROSL, is basic to the reconstruction of organic political life, ROPL.

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