What to Know Before You Go

[wm]

Hi Wayne,



Hmm. Okay, I'll bite - what's your definition of politics? From your comments on "civilization" and "polis", I've got a guess, but I'd rather not guess .

Marc

Marc,

To get my definition of politics, I think you can combine the contents of Plato's Statesman and Hobbes Leviathian. (If you prefer to use Aristotle's Politics to Plato, that should not be too much of a problem. I personally do not see much different between the two of them as far as origin and purpose of politics goes.) BTW, I suspect that 'polite,' 'politics,' and 'police' are probably all derived from the same root, which does not seem too coincidental to me. Politics is a civilized attempt to control conflict. When it fails, folks return to their uncivilized roots and use "knuckles" to try to solve their problems.

Politics is what happens when folks attempt to get agreement in a group that, unlike a family, has little in common besides being humans (in other words, no strong kinship ties). Usually that attempt to get agreement focuses on what their needs and desires are and how best to fulfill them, especially in an environment that is marked by scarcity. By scarcity I mean that each cannot get everything he or she wants without depriving others of the ability to fulfill all of their wants and desires. If nothing else, time will always be scarce. The condition of scarcity is why I evoked Hobbes' rather than Locke's myth of the origin of the political body we usually call government. However, the story in Plato's Republic about the education and lifestyle of the Guardians (AKA Aristotle's "natural leaders") would serve just as well. I think Plato's demand that the Guardians' property be held communally says a lot about the source of conflict.

[marct]

Hi Wayne,

To get my definition of politics, I think you can combine the contents of Plato's Statesman and Hobbes Leviathian.... Politics is a civilized attempt to control conflict. When it fails, folks return to their uncivilized roots and use "knuckles" to try to solve their problems.

Hmmm, okay, that was pretty much what I thought. More on the phylogenic development later in the post...

Politics is what happens when folks attempt to get agreement in a group that, unlike a family, has little in common besides being humans (in other words, no strong kinship ties). Usually that attempt to get agreement focuses on what their needs and desires are and how best to fulfill them, especially in an environment that is marked by scarcity. By scarcity I mean that each cannot get everything he or she wants without depriving others of the ability to fulfill all of their wants and desires. If nothing else, time will always be scarce. The condition of scarcity is why I evoked Hobbes' rather than Locke's myth of the origin of the political body we usually call government. However, the story in Plato's Republic about the education and lifestyle of the Guardians (AKA Aristotle's "natural leaders") would serve just as well. I think Plato's demand that the Guardians' property be held communally says a lot about the source of conflict.

Okay, have you noticed how this plays out as a line of evolution? Chaos -> kinship -> city/civilized? This is part of a narrative that comes out of European philosophy, theology and social theory; the idea that humans move in a linear fashion through particular stages or phases. Turgot used it in his Universal History, but that was just an updated version of Lucretius. The problem with it is that while it is a very compelling story, the archaeological data just doesn't support it.

First off, the "chaos" is hard to actually find. About the only ethnographic example we have is from the Anderman Islands, and that is more than somewhat suspect. If we go back into the archaeological record, we just don't find much to indicate systemic human vs. human conflict. Even Hobbes' characterization of life as "nasty, brutish and short" is wrong in pretty much all particulars. "nasty" is an aesthetic judgement as is "brutish", although that has implications of no arts which is clearly not the case with hunter gatherer groups. "short", well, what can I say but that the skeletal evidence from the early horticultural sites in the ME show that humans dropped several inches, suffered far more diseases (originally related to malnutrition such as rickets) and died on average about 15-20 years earlier than hunter gatherers.

Horticultural settlements appear to be a reaction to a climate shift about 10-12,000 years ago at least in the ME (there's some debate on that and a few pieces of evidence to suggest a much earlier date, but that could be a "winter quarters" arrangement). Within ~200 years, we start seeing differences in grave goods and in skeletal wear patterns which is usually taken as a sign of class differentiation. If Schmandt-Besserat is correct, then "civilization" was developed by accountants.

On your point about scarcity, I don't necessarily agree or disagree with you - I would prefer to have the specific context defined better. There is some indication that kinship systems expanded out into para-kinship systems as a way of alleviating situational resource scarcity and that concepts of feud evolved out of this - call it "primitive contract law" if you like. We certainly see what I would call "politics" operating in these systems, as we have seen it operating in hunter-gatherer systems (e.g. the !Kung San). BTW, we are seeing exactly the same structure developing in North America - a collection of para-kinship systems operating to control access to scarce resources. Personally, I find the parallelism compelling, so I would place "politics" earlier than cities, "civilization", and police.

Marc

[wm]

Okay, have you noticed how this plays out as a line of evolution? Chaos -> kinship -> city/civilized? This is part of a narrative that comes out of European philosophy, theology and social theory; the idea that humans move in a linear fashion through particular stages or phases.

Your linear model is not what I had in mind. First of all, I did not start with chaos. I also never indicated a linear progression. In fact if you read my post on the Hybrid wars thread, you will note that I suggested a harmonic or oscillating motion between two poles as the more likely way of understanding what happens--it is a dialectic of sorts, but not Hegelian. That is, it moves from thesis to antithesis; however the denial of the antithesis does not necessarily yield a new thesis (through synthesis); instead it may return to the original thesis. About the best I am willing to countenance is a spiral development whose slope is probably very small. It is probably more like the M.C. Escher "waterfall" in the graphic piece found here

I mentioned Plato's Republic in my earlier post. Perhaps what is most striking about that work is the concluding myth of Er(10.614-10.621), in which Plato eschews linear progress with the discussion of reincarnation.

BTW, it is not just Western philosophy/theology that notes stages of development. If you think I am conflating staged development, which is descriptive, with progress, which is normative, rest assured that I am not. I read my Hume and G.E Moore quite closely.

[marct]

Hi Wayne,

Not so much a conflation as an assumption of causation; it's partially built into Hobbes, which is why I was making the assumption. On oscillations, I have no problem with that as a metaphor. I'l pop over and read your post there.

Marc

[Rank amateur]

Politics is a civilized attempt to control conflict. When it fails, folks return to their uncivilized roots and use "knuckles" to try to solve their problems.

I strongly suspect that both politics and war are uncivilized and predate humanity. Gorillas have disputes over females and social mechanisms for resolving them. I strongly suspect that whether specific disputes are resolved by psychical force or negations depends on whether or not one gorilla is bigger than the other. They only negotiated when they were the same size. (As soon as one gorilla figured out would happen if he whacked the other over the head with a rock, he choose violence. When they both figured out how to use rocks, they both choose politics. When one figured out he could hide in a tree and ambush the other, it went back to violence, etc.. Thus, the importance of knowing how to fight, how to negotiate and having the biggest rock.)