I think Up/Down is a more transparent way of thinking about power than Left/Right. No matter what philosophical justification one uses (human nature etc.), outsourcing the decision making process to a wider community enables power to become pooled. When communities recognise this dynamic (indigenous) they enable social systems to resist the pooling of power and the narcissistic tendencies of humans. Our "community" encourages the pooling of power.
Seeing as both our "Left" and "Right" models are really about dispersing wealth in an extractive and growth based economic model, they both have similar power models, despite their apparent opposition to each other. So, we end up being offered two apparently oppositional political systems both using the same power model, which obviously, is a bit of a con to say the least.
Until we realign the dominant value system to the needs of the least powerful we'll always be on this roundabout of left/right /whatever.
Sorry Charles, it's just a mish-mash of my thoughts from reading anthropological and political writers like Chomsky, Graeber, Harvey, Scott, Wolin, W.Davis, Foucault and the like. There's not a specific reference I can think of that encapsulates this specific notion really.
Mish-mash of thoughts is where new useful constructs begin, right? Inviting you to write up those thoughts along with whatever references you can recall, making a post here that myself and others may well find useful.
Yes, absolutely, the left right thing is nonsense. We need to get away from the whole 'power' thing being a thing. We should go back towards living egalitarian lives if you want any chance of social justice. This requires learning the skills of dialogue and not 'decision-making' but decisioning as life is an evolution of ideas, not a win-lose and then remain in 'power' concept. Whenever organisations or the military want to achieve a lot with a little, they create 'Special Project' teams or 'Special Forces' but all they're doing is living and operating as small hunter gather tribes, who are egalitarian.
Many good thoughts here. I think about human behavior all the time. That is the root of the climate crisis, 6th Extinction, and chemicals and plastics that fill our bodies. The aggression of Right wing thinking fails to recognize the finite nature of the planet, and sees life as survival of the fittest. Life has indeed been survival of the fittest, but the next leap in human evolution must be to recognize the necessity for cooperative behavior if we're to survive. With 8 billion people and growing, it's imperative. However, it's just possible the Right sees the brink of disaster as an opportunity. It's a disturbing thought I explored here. Thanks for the good article. https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/circumstantial-evidence
In 1988 I co-authored an article called “Social Evolution, Sociobiology, and Psychoanalysis.” In the late ‘80s when conservatives were promoting Sociobiological reasons to limit governmental regulations, we attempted to sort out what a sociobiological perspective could offer and what it could not. It explores the evidence for an evolutionary proclivity for cooperation in society. This article still makes interesting reading. Found at comw.org/socbio899.html
I want to call out that the timeline on privatization of land is off as well. This piece frames privatization as inherent in settling (ie moving from hunter-gatherer to agrarian society) but the notion of "private land" didn't exist until the beginning of capitalism. Sure, in Europe before capitalism, there were "kingdoms" which had boundaries, but residents/serfs still collectively worked the land and were able to harvest the fruits of their labor in doing so. The whole narrative that privatization of land came with agrarian society is inherently a pro-capitalist (Right) narrative, completely ignores history before it's inception, and exemplified in capitalists' erasure of that history.
Serfs worked on land owned by their lords. They were in a sense, the property of their lords because they weren't allowed to leave. The lords also owned the produce the serfs farmed except for a small proportion which they returned to the serfs for their survival. If we think about it in terms of surpluses, the lords seized the surplus the serfs created, much like how capitalists take the surplus workers make.
It is uncomfortable to acknowledge that the roots of capitalism lie in the beginnings of civilisation itself. To question whether civilisation itself was a mistake is taboo in today's society, but we should be intellectually open minded if we are to ever successfully pull ourselves out of the messes we have collectively created (environmentally, socially, etc)
Left and right can also be seen in terms of competition over the distribution of power. Throughout history, the "conservatives" and "reactionaries" have attempted to conserve and reestablish concentrations of power (as with warlords, kings, dictators and plutocrats), and "liberals", "progressives" and "radicals" have attempted to increase the distribution of power (with guilds, assemblies, legislatures and perhaps now collaboratives commons). This goes all the way back to the origins of patriarchal command and control societies about five or six thousand years ago. This view is largely obscured by the taboo against #talkaboutpower, described here: https://bit.ly/48rkWar
Conservatives and progressives today would both be considered extreme radicals 200 years ago.
While there may appear to be a long-term historical trend toward greater distribution of power, it's not evenly occurring around the world, can be seen to be reversed even in "liberal democracies", and has no guarantee of continuing.
Another perspective on this is the dynamic of love, power and justice as fundamental human sociopsychological "drives". The Right is stuck on Power (and tramples Love), and the Left is stuck on Love (and is naive about Power) I'm working on the idea that Justice (equality, fairness) may be the balancing factor.
But does the problem with justice then become how subjective it is? Is it just to defend yourself with lethal force or not? Is it just to protect an embryo or to give control to the pregnant woman?
Where ideas of justice differ slightly, compromise can be made, but where they differ greatly, we are reduced to the other power dynamics taking hold.
Thanks for your comment. The assumption is that "justice" is a pointer to a general socialpsychological drive similar to power (which is pretty clear) and "love" pointing to caring, compassion and altruism. In this view, the psychological drive for justice means wanting fairness and equality in the sense of universal freedom from power, and that this drive is basically hardwired into every human being. However 1) it can be wired in different strengths, 2) it runs into tensions with Love and Power, and 3) it can be compromised by delusional confusion about what is real.
and it reinforced information from the book "The Dawn of Everything", which provides evidence that early holocene societies were highly varied in the extent to which they pursued equality over power, and that societies that strongly defended equality against power were not unusual.
Part of my view on this is from considering where humanity and civilization would be if there were not a built-in psychological drive for fairness, equality and "justice".
It's not like it's an obvious thing to be constructed and maintained through conscious reason and intention as a societal artifact. Further, there is lots of literature on this.
If the reality of a psychological "drive" for "justice/fairness" exists, then to me the question is not how it can be implemented or not in the details of social mores and law. The question is how the drive for Justice can be elevated and directed at mass scale in combination with the drive for Love to resist and overcome the drive for Power.
I've only recently started thinking about this, and I don't even have approaches for this.
Yet it is possibly a way out of the perpetual dualistic conflict between "Right (power)" and "Left (love)".
Maybe people who tend to lean toward the Right would agree that Justice/Fairness is a virtue, as would people who lean to the Left. And they could be shown ways in which excessive emphasis on Power or Love harmed Justice.
It's not about converting the hard core on the Right or Left. In what remains of Western democracy, elections are won on the margins.
I see, and thanks for the paper, it sounds interesting. Certainly something to aim for, reminds me of what the Greek city states were attempting and what the American founders attempted to emulate somewhat. Though obviously the constitutional framework was too loose and prone to corruption.
I know Dr. King’s solution was a “tender heart and a tough mind,” as in love your neighbor and even your enemies, but still think critically and stand for what is just, even if it takes self sacrifice. Soft heart and soft minds were caring, but easily swayed by injustice like eugenics (love subservient to power).
Hard hearts and soft minds lead to radical hate like the white supremacists. While hard hearts and tough minds led to treating people like numbers and statistics. They might possibly do what is best for the greater good, but they sacrifice the individual to do it.
The question is, even if we who are searching were to find the answer to all of this, how do we convince the rest of society to enact needed change before it’s too late?
Unfortunately the answer is another question: too late for what and who? My goal is to reduce suffering and environmental destruction as much as I can. I try not to calculate how much that will be.
Thank you! this is a brilliant and clear summary of where I believe many people’s minds are at who are looking at the polycrisis and are confused about how to proceed (me included). I just finished reading Tyson Yunkaporta who talks of acceptable violence in aboriginal society (similar to what you describe). The ‘What is Politics Podcast’ dives deep into this subject from an anthropological perspective. Might be worth a listen? https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/what-is-politics/id1472767978
“Since the notion of private property first entered our language as we stopped roaming and began to settle, the Right has cast its shadow over our homes.”
I would recommend you read “The Dawn of Everything” by Davids Wengrow and Graeber.
Our social course is not linear, we didn’t move from non-property to property in early human development. We did a whole bunch of different social structures inside and outside of that binary.
Left v. Right is how the Top divides the Bottom. Yes slogans are dumb but they can be powerful nonetheless. I find this one is easily understood and will stick for most who hear it from a friendly source.
Where do people see the role of Citizens Assemblies in this dynamic?
While neither right nor left in their makeup (one would assume a 50/50 split if the selectors are doing their job) I suspect that outcomes would skew left because they would favour the rank and file and not the ruling class.
This is a bogus discourse, because both the Left and Right serve Capitalism, serve technology and technique. Both also are totally dependent on cheap energy and enjoy a totally wasteful lifestyle.
Maybe we must fire our presidents, gouvernements, senators, parlements and political parties. We should vote for ideas instead of people. The ideas with most votes will be put in place by civil servants. A commission of people, who were drawn and are in function for a short period of time, make sure the civil servants do wat they are supposed to do.
Human beings like most animals and chickens too spontaneously create pecking orders. And, unfortunately in the case of human beings they dump their shit, both psychic and chemical (etc) on to those at the bottom of the hierarchy who get to live in the middle of vast chemical and oil-refining landscapes where toxic chemicals pervade the water, air and the soil too.
If by whatever means the dominant Alpha males (and females too) die or are deposed in one way or another the unconscious pattern that controls any group of whatever size quickly re-arranges itself with new Alpha males and females replacing the dead or deposed.
Perhaps with some similar callings as your words here, which resonate powerfully for me...?
A quote from it, and then will let it speak for itself, as it will, or not... 🙏🌻
“Human community cannot change in the ways it must now, if we are to survive, for as long as we remain separate from these local places where we live.”
I think Up/Down is a more transparent way of thinking about power than Left/Right. No matter what philosophical justification one uses (human nature etc.), outsourcing the decision making process to a wider community enables power to become pooled. When communities recognise this dynamic (indigenous) they enable social systems to resist the pooling of power and the narcissistic tendencies of humans. Our "community" encourages the pooling of power.
Seeing as both our "Left" and "Right" models are really about dispersing wealth in an extractive and growth based economic model, they both have similar power models, despite their apparent opposition to each other. So, we end up being offered two apparently oppositional political systems both using the same power model, which obviously, is a bit of a con to say the least.
Until we realign the dominant value system to the needs of the least powerful we'll always be on this roundabout of left/right /whatever.
Interesting notion. Do you have reference to a fuller exploration of this?
Sorry Charles, it's just a mish-mash of my thoughts from reading anthropological and political writers like Chomsky, Graeber, Harvey, Scott, Wolin, W.Davis, Foucault and the like. There's not a specific reference I can think of that encapsulates this specific notion really.
Mish-mash of thoughts is where new useful constructs begin, right? Inviting you to write up those thoughts along with whatever references you can recall, making a post here that myself and others may well find useful.
Let me get back to you Charles, could probably whittle a pretty good summery of my thinking about power
Yes, absolutely, the left right thing is nonsense. We need to get away from the whole 'power' thing being a thing. We should go back towards living egalitarian lives if you want any chance of social justice. This requires learning the skills of dialogue and not 'decision-making' but decisioning as life is an evolution of ideas, not a win-lose and then remain in 'power' concept. Whenever organisations or the military want to achieve a lot with a little, they create 'Special Project' teams or 'Special Forces' but all they're doing is living and operating as small hunter gather tribes, who are egalitarian.
Many good thoughts here. I think about human behavior all the time. That is the root of the climate crisis, 6th Extinction, and chemicals and plastics that fill our bodies. The aggression of Right wing thinking fails to recognize the finite nature of the planet, and sees life as survival of the fittest. Life has indeed been survival of the fittest, but the next leap in human evolution must be to recognize the necessity for cooperative behavior if we're to survive. With 8 billion people and growing, it's imperative. However, it's just possible the Right sees the brink of disaster as an opportunity. It's a disturbing thought I explored here. Thanks for the good article. https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/circumstantial-evidence
In 1988 I co-authored an article called “Social Evolution, Sociobiology, and Psychoanalysis.” In the late ‘80s when conservatives were promoting Sociobiological reasons to limit governmental regulations, we attempted to sort out what a sociobiological perspective could offer and what it could not. It explores the evidence for an evolutionary proclivity for cooperation in society. This article still makes interesting reading. Found at comw.org/socbio899.html
Thank you, Charles. I'll read your paper as soon as I am done writing a new article here. I took a glimpse last night, it looks interesting.
Great addition to the chat with paddy. Fleshing out some ideas touched on. What happened in Papua? Did I miss something?!
A fair bit!
Here's a podcast episode with the Chairman of the Freedom Fighters in West Papua: https://www.planetcritical.com/p/fighting-for-freedom
And a story about bumping into Macron: https://www.planetcritical.com/p/imperial-offsetting-a-la-macron
I want to call out that the timeline on privatization of land is off as well. This piece frames privatization as inherent in settling (ie moving from hunter-gatherer to agrarian society) but the notion of "private land" didn't exist until the beginning of capitalism. Sure, in Europe before capitalism, there were "kingdoms" which had boundaries, but residents/serfs still collectively worked the land and were able to harvest the fruits of their labor in doing so. The whole narrative that privatization of land came with agrarian society is inherently a pro-capitalist (Right) narrative, completely ignores history before it's inception, and exemplified in capitalists' erasure of that history.
Serfs worked on land owned by their lords. They were in a sense, the property of their lords because they weren't allowed to leave. The lords also owned the produce the serfs farmed except for a small proportion which they returned to the serfs for their survival. If we think about it in terms of surpluses, the lords seized the surplus the serfs created, much like how capitalists take the surplus workers make.
It is uncomfortable to acknowledge that the roots of capitalism lie in the beginnings of civilisation itself. To question whether civilisation itself was a mistake is taboo in today's society, but we should be intellectually open minded if we are to ever successfully pull ourselves out of the messes we have collectively created (environmentally, socially, etc)
Left and right can also be seen in terms of competition over the distribution of power. Throughout history, the "conservatives" and "reactionaries" have attempted to conserve and reestablish concentrations of power (as with warlords, kings, dictators and plutocrats), and "liberals", "progressives" and "radicals" have attempted to increase the distribution of power (with guilds, assemblies, legislatures and perhaps now collaboratives commons). This goes all the way back to the origins of patriarchal command and control societies about five or six thousand years ago. This view is largely obscured by the taboo against #talkaboutpower, described here: https://bit.ly/48rkWar
Conservatives and progressives today would both be considered extreme radicals 200 years ago.
While there may appear to be a long-term historical trend toward greater distribution of power, it's not evenly occurring around the world, can be seen to be reversed even in "liberal democracies", and has no guarantee of continuing.
Another perspective on this is the dynamic of love, power and justice as fundamental human sociopsychological "drives". The Right is stuck on Power (and tramples Love), and the Left is stuck on Love (and is naive about Power) I'm working on the idea that Justice (equality, fairness) may be the balancing factor.
But does the problem with justice then become how subjective it is? Is it just to defend yourself with lethal force or not? Is it just to protect an embryo or to give control to the pregnant woman?
Where ideas of justice differ slightly, compromise can be made, but where they differ greatly, we are reduced to the other power dynamics taking hold.
Thanks for your comment. The assumption is that "justice" is a pointer to a general socialpsychological drive similar to power (which is pretty clear) and "love" pointing to caring, compassion and altruism. In this view, the psychological drive for justice means wanting fairness and equality in the sense of universal freedom from power, and that this drive is basically hardwired into every human being. However 1) it can be wired in different strengths, 2) it runs into tensions with Love and Power, and 3) it can be compromised by delusional confusion about what is real.
This was my starting point for this thinking,
https://jabsc.org/index.php/jabsc/article/view/6709/5767
and it reinforced information from the book "The Dawn of Everything", which provides evidence that early holocene societies were highly varied in the extent to which they pursued equality over power, and that societies that strongly defended equality against power were not unusual.
Part of my view on this is from considering where humanity and civilization would be if there were not a built-in psychological drive for fairness, equality and "justice".
It's not like it's an obvious thing to be constructed and maintained through conscious reason and intention as a societal artifact. Further, there is lots of literature on this.
If the reality of a psychological "drive" for "justice/fairness" exists, then to me the question is not how it can be implemented or not in the details of social mores and law. The question is how the drive for Justice can be elevated and directed at mass scale in combination with the drive for Love to resist and overcome the drive for Power.
I've only recently started thinking about this, and I don't even have approaches for this.
Yet it is possibly a way out of the perpetual dualistic conflict between "Right (power)" and "Left (love)".
Maybe people who tend to lean toward the Right would agree that Justice/Fairness is a virtue, as would people who lean to the Left. And they could be shown ways in which excessive emphasis on Power or Love harmed Justice.
It's not about converting the hard core on the Right or Left. In what remains of Western democracy, elections are won on the margins.
I see, and thanks for the paper, it sounds interesting. Certainly something to aim for, reminds me of what the Greek city states were attempting and what the American founders attempted to emulate somewhat. Though obviously the constitutional framework was too loose and prone to corruption.
I know Dr. King’s solution was a “tender heart and a tough mind,” as in love your neighbor and even your enemies, but still think critically and stand for what is just, even if it takes self sacrifice. Soft heart and soft minds were caring, but easily swayed by injustice like eugenics (love subservient to power).
Hard hearts and soft minds lead to radical hate like the white supremacists. While hard hearts and tough minds led to treating people like numbers and statistics. They might possibly do what is best for the greater good, but they sacrifice the individual to do it.
The question is, even if we who are searching were to find the answer to all of this, how do we convince the rest of society to enact needed change before it’s too late?
Unfortunately the answer is another question: too late for what and who? My goal is to reduce suffering and environmental destruction as much as I can. I try not to calculate how much that will be.
Thank you! this is a brilliant and clear summary of where I believe many people’s minds are at who are looking at the polycrisis and are confused about how to proceed (me included). I just finished reading Tyson Yunkaporta who talks of acceptable violence in aboriginal society (similar to what you describe). The ‘What is Politics Podcast’ dives deep into this subject from an anthropological perspective. Might be worth a listen? https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/what-is-politics/id1472767978
“Since the notion of private property first entered our language as we stopped roaming and began to settle, the Right has cast its shadow over our homes.”
I would recommend you read “The Dawn of Everything” by Davids Wengrow and Graeber.
Our social course is not linear, we didn’t move from non-property to property in early human development. We did a whole bunch of different social structures inside and outside of that binary.
Those possibilities are still there.
Left v. Right is how the Top divides the Bottom. Yes slogans are dumb but they can be powerful nonetheless. I find this one is easily understood and will stick for most who hear it from a friendly source.
Where do people see the role of Citizens Assemblies in this dynamic?
While neither right nor left in their makeup (one would assume a 50/50 split if the selectors are doing their job) I suspect that outcomes would skew left because they would favour the rank and file and not the ruling class.
This is a bogus discourse, because both the Left and Right serve Capitalism, serve technology and technique. Both also are totally dependent on cheap energy and enjoy a totally wasteful lifestyle.
Great post, thank you
Um. Earth is a Being. Earth is.
We are The Impact to this Being, Earth. Cease it, Humanity, Humanity.
Now 8 Billion living how ? Well ?
Maybe we must fire our presidents, gouvernements, senators, parlements and political parties. We should vote for ideas instead of people. The ideas with most votes will be put in place by civil servants. A commission of people, who were drawn and are in function for a short period of time, make sure the civil servants do wat they are supposed to do.
Human beings like most animals and chickens too spontaneously create pecking orders. And, unfortunately in the case of human beings they dump their shit, both psychic and chemical (etc) on to those at the bottom of the hierarchy who get to live in the middle of vast chemical and oil-refining landscapes where toxic chemicals pervade the water, air and the soil too.
If by whatever means the dominant Alpha males (and females too) die or are deposed in one way or another the unconscious pattern that controls any group of whatever size quickly re-arranges itself with new Alpha males and females replacing the dead or deposed.
Something I wrote a long time ago, and republished again here more recently:
https://www.johnfridinger.net/p/starting-with-community
Perhaps with some similar callings as your words here, which resonate powerfully for me...?
A quote from it, and then will let it speak for itself, as it will, or not... 🙏🌻
“Human community cannot change in the ways it must now, if we are to survive, for as long as we remain separate from these local places where we live.”